"O you who gaze on the lions fixed to their places! remark that they only require life to be perfect. And you to whom this Alcazar and this kingdom fall as an inheritance, take them from the noble hands who have governed them, without displeasure and without resistance. May God preserve you for the work which you come to perform, and protect you for ever from the revenge of your enemy! Honour and glory be yours. O Mohammed! our king, endowed with great virtues, by the aid of which you have conquered all! May God never permit this fine garden, the image of your virtues, to have a rival that surpasses it! The substance which tints the basin of the fountain is like mother-of-pearl beneath the clear sparkling water; the flowing stream resembles melting silver, for the limpidness of the water and the whiteness of the stone have no equals; they might be likened unto a drop of transparent essence on a face of alabaster. It would be difficult to follow its course. Look at the water and look at the basin, and you will not be able to distinguish whether it is the water that is motionless or the marble that ripples. Like the prisoner of love, whose visage is covered with vexation and fear by the look of the envious, so is the jealous water indignant at the stone, and the stone envious of the water. To this inexhaustible stream may be compared the hand of our king, who is as liberal and as generous as the lion is valiant and strong." It was in the basin of the Fountain of Lions that the heads of the thirty-six Abencerrages, whom the Zegris had drawn there by stratagem, fell. The rest of the Abencerrages would have shared the same fate, had it not been for the devotedness of a little page, who ran at the risk of his life to warn them against entering the fatal court. On having your attention directed to the bottom of the basin, you perceive large reddish spots, an indelible accusation left by the victims against their executioners. Unfortunately, the erudite world declares that the Abencerrages and the Zegris have never existed. With respect to this I am completely guided by romances, popular traditions, and the novel of Monsieur de Châteaubriand, and I firmly believe that these purple-looking marks are blood and not rust. We had established our head-quarters in the Court of Lions; our furniture consisted of two mattresses, which we rolled up in a corner in the day-time, of a brass lamp, of an earthenware jar, and of a few bottles of sherry that we kept in a fountain to render the wine cool. We slept one night in the Hall of the Two Sisters, and the next in that of the Abencerrages, but it was not without some slight fear, as I lay stretched on my cloak, that I looked at the white rays of the moon, which appeared quite astonished at crossing the yellow and flickering flame of a lamp, shoot through the openings of the roof into the water of the basin and across the shining ground.