American library books ยป Fiction ยป Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (chrysanthemum read aloud txt) ๐Ÿ“•

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glides from yonder rock, that hath no power to retain it, I see the tide of empire welling from my hands.โ€

The young king spoke warmly and bitterly; and, in the irritation of his thoughts, strode, while he spoke, with rapid and irregular strides along the chamber. Almamen marked his emotion with an eye and lip of rigid composure.

โ€œLight of the faithful,โ€ said he, when Boabdil had concluded, โ€œthe powers above never doom man to perpetual sorrow, nor perpetual joy: the cloud and the sunshine are alike essential to the heaven of our destinies; and if thou hast suffered in thy youth, thou hast exhausted the calamities of fate, and thy manhood will be glorious, and thine age serene.โ€

โ€œThou speakest as if the armies of Ferdinand were not already around my walls,โ€ said Boabdil, impatiently.

โ€œThe armies of Sennacherib were as mighty,โ€ answered Almamen.

โ€œWise seer,โ€ returned the king, in a tone half sarcastic and half solemn, โ€œwe, the Mussulmans of Spain, 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.โ€

โ€œYet,โ€ said Almamen, โ€œwhile 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.โ€

โ€œThe base misers! they deserve their fate,โ€ answered Boabdil, loftily. โ€œGold 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 manโ€™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;โ€”[The tribe of Hanifa worshipped a lump of dough]โ€”the race of Moisaโ€”[Moses]โ€”would sell the Seven Heavens for the dent on the back of the date-stone.โ€โ€”[A proverb used in the Koran, signifying the smallest possible trifle].

โ€œYour laws leave them no ambition but that of avarice,โ€ replied Almamen; โ€œand 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?โ€

โ€œYes!โ€ returned Boabdil, quickly; โ€œfor 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 dieโ€”a king!โ€

โ€œIt is nobly spoken,โ€ said Almamen, coldly.

โ€œYou approve, then, my design?โ€

โ€œThe friends of the king cannot approve the ambition of the king to die.โ€

โ€œHa!โ€ said Boabdil, in an altered voice, โ€œthou thinkest, then, that I am doomed to perish in this struggle?โ€

โ€œAs the hour shall be chosen, wilt thou fall or triumph.โ€

โ€œAnd that hour?โ€

โ€œIs not yet come.โ€

โ€œDost thou read the hour in the stars?โ€

โ€œLet 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.โ€

โ€œMysterious man!โ€ said Boabdil; โ€œwhence, then, is thy power?โ€”whence thy knowledge of the future?โ€

Almamen approached the king, as he now stood by the open balcony.

โ€œBehold!โ€ said he, pointing to the waters of the Darroโ€”โ€œyonder 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 enterโ€”our gross senses cannot survey. This, then, is my lore. Of other worlds know I nought; but of the things of this world, whether men, or, as your legends term them, ghouls and genii, I have learned something. To the future, I myself am blind; but I can invoke and conjure up those whose eyes are more piercing, whose natures are more gifted.โ€

โ€œProve to me thy power,โ€ said Boabdil, awed less by the words than by the thrilling voice and the impressive aspect of the enchanter.

โ€œIs not the kingโ€™s will my law?โ€ answered Almamen; โ€œbe his will obeyed. To-morrow night I await thee.โ€

โ€œWhere?โ€

Almamen paused a moment, and then whispered a sentence in the kingโ€™s ear: Boabdil started, and turned pale.

โ€œA fearful spot!โ€

โ€œSo is the Alhambra itself, great Boabdil; while Ferdinand is without the walls and Muza within the city.โ€

โ€œMuza! Darest thou mistrust my bravest warrior?โ€

โ€œWhat wise king will trust the idol of the kingโ€™s army? Did Boabdil fall to-morrow by a chance javelin, in the field, whom would the nobles and the warriors place upon his throne? Doth it require an enchanterโ€™s lore to whisper to thy heart the answer in the name of โ€˜Muzaโ€™?โ€

โ€œOh, wretched state! oh, miserable king!โ€ exclaimed Boabdil, in a tone of great anguish. โ€œI never had a father. I have now no people; a little while, and I shall have no country. Am I

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