Leila | Page 5

are not the blind fanatics of the Eastern
world. On us have fallen the lights of philosophy and science; and if the
more clear-sighted among us yet outwardly reverence the forms and
fables worshipped by the multitude, it is from the wisdom of policy, not
the folly of belief. Talk not to me, then, of thine examples of the
ancient and elder creeds: the agents of God for this world are now, at
least, in men, not angels; and if I wait till Ferdinand share the destiny of
Sennacherib, I wait only till the Standard of the Cross wave above the
Vermilion Towers."
"Yet," said Almamen, "while my lord the king rejects the fanaticism of
belief, doth he reject the fanaticism of persecution? You disbelieve the
stories of the Hebrews; yet you suffer the Hebrews themselves, that
ancient and kindred Arabian race, to be ground to the dust, condemned
and tortured by your judges, your informers, your soldiers, and your
subjects."
"The base misers! they deserve their fate," answered Boabdil, loftily.
"Gold is their god, and the market-place their country; amidst the tears
and groans of nations, they sympathise only with the rise and fall of
trade; and, the thieves of the universe! while their hand is against every

man's coffer, why wonder that they provoke the hand of every man
against their throats? Worse than the tribe of Hanifa, who eat their god
only in time of famine;--[The tribe of Hanifa worshipped a lump of
dough]--the race of Moisa--[Moses]--would sell the Seven Heavens for
the dent on the back of the date-stone."--[A proverb used in the Koran,
signifying the smallest possible trifle].
"Your laws leave them no ambition but that of avarice," replied
Almamen; "and as the plant will crook and distort its trunk, to raise its
head through every obstacle to the sun, so the mind of man twists and
perverts itself, if legitimate openings are denied it, to find its natural
element in the gale of power, or the sunshine of esteem. These Hebrews
were not traffickers and misers in their own sacred land when they
routed your ancestors, the Arab armies of old; and gnawed the flesh
from their bones in famine, rather than yield a weaker city than
Granada to a mightier force than the holiday lords of Spain. Let this
pass. My lord rejects the belief in the agencies of the angels; doth he
still retain belief in the wisdom of mortal men?"
"Yes!" returned Boabdil, quickly; "for of the one I know nought; of the
other, mine own senses can be the judge. Almamen, my fiery kinsman,
Muza, hath this evening been with me. He hath urged me to reject the
fears of my people, which chain my panting spirit within these walls;
he hath urged me to gird on yonder shield and cimiter, and to appear in
the Vivarrambla, at the head of the nobles of Granada. My heart leaps
high at the thought! and if I cannot live, at least I will die--a king!"
"It is nobly spoken," said Almamen, coldly.
"You approve, then, my design?"
"The friends of the king cannot approve the ambition of the king to
die."
"Ha!" said Boabdil, in an altered voice, "thou thinkest, then, that I am
doomed to perish in this struggle?"
"As the hour shall be chosen, wilt thou fall or triumph."

"And that hour?"
"Is not yet come."
"Dost thou read the hour in the stars?"
"Let Moorish seers cultivate that frantic credulity: thy servant sees but
in the stars worlds mightier than this little earth, whose light would
neither wane nor wink, if earth itself were swept from the infinities of
space."
"Mysterious man!" said Boabdil; "whence, then, is thy power?--whence
thy knowledge of the future?"
Almamen approached the king, as he now stood by the open balcony.
"Behold!" said he, pointing to the waters of the Darro--"yonder stream
is of an element in which man cannot live nor breathe: above, in the
thin and impalpable air, our steps cannot find a footing, the armies of
all earth cannot build an empire. And yet, by the exercise of a little art,
the fishes and the birds, the inhabitants of the air and the water,
minister to our most humble wants, the most common of our
enjoyments; so it is with the true science of enchantment. Thinkest thou
that, while the petty surface of the world is crowded with living things,
there is no life in the vast centre within the earth, and the immense
ether that surrounds it? As the fisherman snares his prey, as the fowler
entraps the bird, so, by the art and genius of our human mind, we may
thrall and command the subtler beings of realms and elements which
our material bodies cannot enter--our gross senses cannot survey. This,