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- Herausgeber: e-artnow Collections
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Explore the dynamic interplay of passion and power in the anthology 'Passion & Power - 3 Castle-Set Classic Novels,' a rich collection that captures the essence of Gothic and historical fiction. This anthology showcases the inherent drama and mystique of castles, which stand as monumental symbols of ambition, authority, and mystery. Each narrative, intricately woven by the participating luminaries, delves into the depths of human ambition, power struggles, and romantic entanglements. The diversity in narrative style—from the atmospheric to the psychologically thrilling—offers readers a profound glimpse into the ever-relevant themes of human nature and societal constructs. The authors unifying this collection—Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, William Harrison Ainsworth, and R. D. Blackmore—are canonical figures whose works have significantly shaped the landscape of 19th-century literature. Their collective contributions to Gothic and historical fiction, grounded in the age of Romanticism and Victorian realism, provide crucial insights into the historical and cultural milieus of their time. The anthology notably aligns with movements celebrating the past's grandeur and the complex human emotions entwined with power, creating a vicarious bridge between historical intrigue and literary artistry. 'Recommended for readers eager to embark on a literary journey through time, 'Passion & Power' is a compelling invitation to explore passions that defy boundaries and power dynamics that illuminate human resilience. Beyond mere entertainment, this anthology serves as a timeless artifact that enriches our understanding of past narratives while fostering a dialogue between varied artistic expressions and thematic explorations. Such a collection promises not merely to educate but to engage and provoke thought, all within the confines of captivating storytelling.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Passion & Power - 3 Castle-Set Classic Novels
Table of Contents
Introduction
These three novels are bound by a shared fascination with places of concentrated authority and the passions stirred around them. Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton’s Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete unfolds against a beleaguered city; William Harrison Ainsworth’s Windsor Castle turns on the emblematic seat of sovereignty; and R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone places an individual’s name at the forefront, suggesting intimate feeling set against a world of power. Read together, they explore how fortified settings—literal or symbolic—shape allegiance, desire, and destiny, making architecture not mere backdrop but a crucible where private motives meet public forces.
The titles themselves chart a dialogue between person and place. Leila or, the Siege of Granada entwines a personal figure with a moment of martial pressure, implying a tension between inner conviction and collective fate. Windsor Castle situates narrative energy within a palace whose very name stands for lineage and rule, prompting reflection on life lived under scrutiny. Lorna Doone, by foregrounding a name, suggests the primacy of personal identity amid heightened circumstances. That progression—person-and-place, place, person—frames the collection’s conversation about how individual lives intersect with the structures that govern them.
Across the three works, recurrent motifs rise naturally from their settings. Walls, gates, and vantage points evoke thresholds where choices are tested. Courts, councils, and musters imply the choreography of power, while private chambers hint at confidences and vows. Rumor and witness become narrative pressures in spaces designed to stage or conceal truth. The geography of each book—cities under strain, halls of authority, and scenes where belonging is contested—becomes an instrument for examining visibility and concealment, proclamation and silence. In each, the built environment channels emotion, turning stone and timber into agents of suspense and meaning.
The dilemmas these texts pose are variations on a shared theme: how to reconcile loyalty with love, tradition with change, and communal duty with personal conscience. In a siege, fidelity and survival clash in stark relief. In a royal stronghold, obedience, ambition, and proximity to power sharpen ethical questions. In a narrative named for a person, the stakes of affection and honor gather around identity itself. Together, they consider whether strength lies in steadfastness or in transformation, and how authority maintains itself when confronted by the claims of the heart.
Their tones and perspectives productively diverge while remaining in conversation. Leila or, the Siege of Granada suggests martial urgency and collective peril. Windsor Castle implies ceremony, surveillance, and the subtle negotiations of a life lived near the center of rule. Lorna Doone, with its personal title, invites a more intimate focus on attachment, kinship, and the risks of choosing one’s own path. The shifts from battlements to corridors to inward resolve create a spectrum of narrative energies, enabling the collection to move from spectacle to scrutiny, from grand canvases to finely grained emotional textures.
These contrasts and continuities speak powerfully to contemporary concerns. Modern readers encounter here the enduring question of how institutions mold private lives, and how love and loyalty persist within systems that reward conformity. The novels’ attention to architecture and landscape anticipates current interest in how spaces encode memory and authority. Their dynamic between visibility and secrecy resonates in an age attentive to surveillance, reputation, and public performance. By dramatizing the pressures of belonging and dissent, the collection offers a lens for thinking about identity, community, and the costs of power.
Taken together, Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete, Windsor Castle, and Lorna Doone compose a triptych of passion and power shaped by fortification, ceremony, and personal resolve. The sequence moves from the outer pressures of conflict, through the formalities of rule, toward the inner reckonings of the heart. As these narratives echo and counterpoint one another, they reveal how places of strength can become theaters of vulnerability, and how feeling can recalibrate fate. The collection invites reflection on the architecture of authority and the architecture of emotion—and on the surprising ways they interlock.
Historical Context
Socio-Political Landscape
These castle-centered romances stage decisive thresholds in political power. In Leila or, the Siege of Granada, the last Nasrid stronghold confronts the centralizing union of Ferdinand and Isabella, with clerical authority pressing policy through the Inquisition. Windsor Castle dramatizes Tudor absolutism, where court factions contest access to Henry VIII and religion becomes statecraft. Lorna Doone moves to the late Stuart periphery, exploring how a semi-lawless clan collides with the Crown’s tightening reach after the Monmouth Rebellion. Across the trio, fortresses symbolize sovereignty: siegeworks, chapel, and keep delineate contested jurisdictions, while personal vows and dynastic calculations fuse private passion with public power.
Leila situates its drama in 1491–1492, when Granada’s emirate, beleaguered by internal dissension and external pressure, faces the ultimatum of surrender. The novel registers competing claims of sovereignty: the embattled Nasrid court, the consolidating Spanish monarchy, and ecclesiastical tribunals asserting doctrinal purity as policy. Diplomacy, siege negotiation, and ritual spectacle structure political life, while edicts on conversion and exile shadow private households. Cross-confessional encounters expose fragile arrangements of coexistence and the punitive edge of religious nationalism. The castle becomes a palimpsest of dynastic memory and impending erasure, its walls echoing debates over allegiance, conscience, and the price of unification.
In Windsor Castle, the palace functions as a theater of Tudor policy. Confessional shifts circulate through corridors, from chapel to council chamber; noble families maneuver for preferment; the king’s marital politics catalyze dissolution and surveillance. By contrast, Lorna Doone locates power at England’s margins. Exmoor farms endure taxation, billeting, and rumor after the failed rising of 1685, while a fortified valley clan enacts its own rough jurisdiction. Magistrates, militia, and assizes represent the state’s fitful penetration into regional life. Both novels show how decrees become lived realities, translating proclamation into bread, fear, and precarious protections under stone.
Intellectual & Aesthetic Currents
Composed in the Victorian era, these narratives combine historical romance with a taste for spectacle and moral inquiry. Medievalism animates their castles and rites; Gothic atmospheres sharpen danger, prophecy, and transgression; and antiquarian habits supply topography, costume, and ritual detail. Romantic ideals of passionate constancy and heroic ordeal shape characterization, yet a sober interest in governance, evidence, and archival verisimilitude tethers fantasy to record. The novels court the picturesque—ruins at sunset, pageants, processions—while linking landscape to conscience. Their prose balances lyrical cadence with forensic enumeration, inviting readers to weigh legend against document and emotion against institutional memory.
Leila adapts Orientalist conventions to a late-medieval Iberian tableau, praising artistic refinement and courtly grace in Granada while dramatizing the violence that attends confessional triumphalism. The narrative juxtaposes rational persuasion with ecstatic zeal, staging debates on toleration, providence, and the ethics of conquest. Its chapters unfold like set pieces—torchlit councils, music, and sacred processions—creating a quasi-theatrical rhythm. Intellectual curiosity about science and letters in al-Andalus contrasts with dogmatic surveillance, inviting readers to consider whether civilization is measured by power, learning, or mercy. The prose favors aphorism and antithesis, an oratorical style that frames history as moral disputation.
Windsor Castle delights in ceremonial display and architectural minutiae, aligning literary pleasure with the choreography of monarchy. Pageant, hunt, and masque stage the union of personal charisma and institutional theater, while carefully plotted interiors guide readers through archives of dynastic symbol. Lorna Doone, by contrast, champions pastoral intensity and memory. Its first-person voice favors lived labor, seasonal cycles, and regional dialect, investing the landscape with moral weather. Violence erupts, yet the narrative often pauses for husbandry and craft, asserting a vernacular ethics. Together, the books contrast courtly performance with rural sincerity, testing romance against quotidian endurance.
Legacy & Reassessment Across Time
Lorna Doone achieved enduring popularity, long serving as an emblem of regional romance. Its evocation of Exmoor prompted literary tourism and place-branding, while successive editions standardized dialect for broader readerships. Stage and screen adaptations across the twentieth century emphasized pastoral vistas and outlaw spectacle, sometimes downplaying the novel’s laboring routines. Critics have debated its balance of sentiment and realism, its treatment of clan violence, and the heroine’s agency within patriarchal structures. Recent readings foreground environmental attentiveness and the politics of memory, noting how first-person retrospection turns rebellion and reprisal into a meditation on community resilience.
Windsor Castle once rivaled courtroom chronicles in popularity, yet later critics faulted its melodrama and emblematic characters. Current reassessment values its role in shaping a visual “Tudor imaginary,” its mapping of ceremonial space, and its influence on heritage consciousness. Leila, less frequently read, endures in discussions of Orientalism and religious politics. Its sympathetic portraiture coexists with exoticizing frames, prompting debate about whether tolerance is imagined paternalistically or dialogically. Both works illuminate how Victorian historical romance mediates national myth: sovereignty, confession, and courtship become narrative technologies through which readers negotiate identity, empire, and the ethics of remembering conquest.
Passion & Power - 3 Castle-Set Classic Novels
Castles, Conflict Power
Passion, Loyalty Identity
Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
Leila or, the Siege of Granada, Complete
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I. THE ENCHANTER AND THE WARRIOR.
It was the summer of the year 1491, and the armies of Ferdinand and Isabel invested the city of Granada.
The night was not far advanced; and the moon, which broke through the transparent air of Andalusia, shone calmly over the immense and murmuring encampment of the Spanish foe, and touched with a hazy light the snow-capped summits of the Sierra Nevada, contrasting the verdure and luxuriance which no devastation of man could utterly sweep from the beautiful vale below.
In the streets of the Moorish city many a group still lingered. Some, as if unconscious of the beleaguering war without, were listening in quiet indolence to the strings of the Moorish lute, or the lively tale of an Arabian improrvisatore; others were conversing with such eager and animated gestures, as no ordinary excitement could wring from the stately calm habitual to every oriental people. But the more public places in which gathered these different groups, only the more impressively heightened the desolate and solemn repose that brooded over the rest of the city.
At this time, a man, with downcast eyes, and arms folded within the sweeping gown which descended to his feet, was seen passing through the streets, alone, and apparently unobservant of all around him. Yet this indifference was by no means shared by the struggling crowds through which, from time to time, he musingly swept.
“God is great!” said one man; “it is the Enchanter Almamen.”
“He hath locked up the manhood of Boabdil el Chico with the key of his spells,” quoth another, stroking his beard; “I would curse him, if I dared.”
“But they say that he hath promised that when man fails, the genii will fight for Granada,” observed a third, doubtingly.
“Allah Akbar! what is, is! what shall be, shall be!” said a fourth, with all the solemn sagacity of a prophet. Whatever their feelings, whether of awe or execration, terror or hope, each group gave way as Almamen passed, and hushed the murmurs not intended for his ear. Passing through the Zacatin (the street which traversed the Great Bazaar), the reputed enchanter ascended a narrow and winding street, and arrived at last before the walls that encircled the palace and fortress of the Alhambra.
The sentry at the gate saluted and admitted him in silence; and in a few moments his form was lost in the solitude of groves, amidst which, at frequent openings, the spray of Arabian fountains glittered in the moonlight; while, above, rose the castled heights of the Alhambra; and on the right those Vermilion Towers, whose origin veils itself in the furthest ages of Phoenician enterprise.
Almamen paused, and surveyed the scene. “Was Aden more lovely?” he muttered; “and shall so fair a spot be trodden by the victor Nazerene? What matters? creed chases creed—race, race—until time comes back to its starting-place, and beholds the reign restored to the eldest faith and the eldest tribe. The horn of our strength shall be exalted.”
At these thoughts the seer relapsed into silence, and gazed long and intently upon the stars, as, more numerous and brilliant with every step of the advancing night, their rays broke on the playful waters, and tinged with silver the various and breathless foliage. So earnest was his gaze, and so absorbed his thoughts, that he did not perceive the approach of a Moor, whose glittering weapons and snow-white turban, rich with emeralds, cast a gleam through the wood.
The new comer was above the common size of his race, generally small and spare—but without attaining the lofty stature and large proportions of the more redoubted of the warriors of Spain. But in his presence and mien there was something, which, in the haughtiest conclave of Christian chivalry, would have seemed to tower and command. He walked with a step at once light and stately, as if it spurned the earth; and in the carriage of the small erect head and stag-like throat, there was that undefinable and imposing dignity, which accords so well with our conception of a heroic lineage, and a noble though imperious spirit. The stranger approached Almamen, and paused abruptly when within a few steps of the enchanter. He gazed upon him in silence for some moments; and when at length he spoke it was with a cold and sarcastic tone.
“Pretender to the dark secrets,” said he, “is it in the stars that thou art reading those destinies of men and nations, which the Prophet wrought by the chieftain’s brain and the soldier’s arm?”
“Prince,” replied Almamen, turning slowly, and recognising the intruder on his meditations, “I was but considering how many revolutions, which have shaken earth to its centre, those orbs have witnessed, unsympathising and unchanged.”
“Unsympathising!” repeated the Moor—“yet thou believest in their effect upon the earth?”
“You wrong me,” answered Almamen, with a slight smile, “you confound your servant with that vain race, the astrologers.”
“I deemed astrology a part of the science of the two angels, Harut and Marut.”
“Possibly; but I know not that science, though I have wandered at midnight by the ancient Babel.”
“Fame lies to us, then,” answered the Moor, with some surprise.
“Fame never made pretence to truth,” said Almamen, calmly, and proceeding on his way. “Allah be with you, prince! I seek the king.”
“Stay! I have just quitted his presence, and left him, I trust, with thoughts worthy of the sovereign of Granada, which I would not have disturbed by a stranger, a man whose arms are not spear nor shield.”
“Noble Muza,” returned Almamen, “fear not that my voice will weaken the inspirations which thine hath breathed into the breast of Boabdil. Alas! if my counsel were heeded, thou wouldst hear the warriors of Granada talk less of Muza, and more of the king. But Fate, or Allah, hath placed upon the throne of a tottering dynasty, one who, though brave, is weak—though, wise, a dreamer; and you suspect the adviser, when you find the influence of nature on the advised. Is this just?”
Muza gazed long and sternly on the face of Almamen; then, putting his hand gently on the enchanter’s shoulder, he said—
“Stranger, if thou playest us false, think that this arm hath cloven the casque of many a foe, and will not spare the turban of a traitor!”
“And think thou, proud prince!” returned Almamen, unquailing, “that I answer alone to Allah for my motives, and that against man my deeds I can defend!”
With these words, the enchanter drew his long robe round him, and disappeared amidst the foliage.
CHAPTER II. THE KING WITHIN HIS PALACE.
In one of those apartments, the luxury of which is known only to the inhabitants of a genial climate (half chamber and half grotto), reclined a young Moor, in a thoughtful and musing attitude.
The ceiling of cedar-wood, glowing with gold and azure, was supported by slender shafts, of the whitest alabaster, between which were open arcades, light and graceful as the arched vineyards of Italy, and wrought in that delicate filagree-work common to the Arabian architecture: through these arcades was seen at intervals the lapsing fall of waters, lighted by alabaster lamps; and their tinkling music sounded with a fresh and regular murmur upon the ear. The whole of one side of this apartment was open to a broad and extensive balcony, which overhung the banks of the winding and moonlit Darro; and in the clearness of the soft night might be distinctly seen the undulating hills, the woods, and orange-groves, which still form the unrivalled landscapes of Granada.
The pavement was spread with ottomans and couches of the richest azure, prodigally enriched with quaint designs in broideries of gold and silver; and over that on which the Moor reclined, facing the open balcony, were suspended on a pillar the round shield, the light javelin, and the curving cimiter, of Moorish warfare. So studded were these arms with jewels of rare cost, that they might alone have sufficed to indicate the rank of the evident owner, even if his own gorgeous vestments had not betrayed it. An open manuscript, on a silver table, lay unread before the Moor: as, leaning his face upon his hand, he looked with abstracted eyes along the mountain summits dimly distinguished from the cloudless and far horizon.
No one could have gazed without a vague emotion of interest, mixed with melancholy, upon the countenance of the inmate of that luxurious chamber.
Its beauty was singularly stamped with a grave and stately sadness, which was made still more impressive by its air of youth and the unwonted fairness of the complexion: unlike the attributes of the Moorish race, the hair and curling beard were of a deep golden colour; and on the broad forehead and in the large eyes, was that settled and contemplative mildness which rarely softens the swart lineaments of the fiery children of the sun. Such was the personal appearance of Boabdil el Chico, the last of the Moorish dynasty in Spain.
“These scrolls of Arabian learning,” said Boabdil to himself, “what do they teach? to despise wealth and power, to hold the heart to be the true empire. This, then, is wisdom. Yet, if I follow these maxims, am I wise? alas! the whole world would call me a driveller and a madman. Thus is it ever; the wisdom of the Intellect fills us with precepts which it is the wisdom of Action to despise. O Holy Prophet! what fools men would be, if their knavery did not eclipse their folly!”
The young king listlessly threw himself back on his cushions as he uttered these words, too philosophical for a king whose crown sate so loosely on his brow.
After a few moments of thought that appeared to dissatisfy and disquiet him, Boabdil again turned impatiently round “My soul wants the bath of music,” said he; “these journeys into a pathless realm have wearied it, and the streams of sound supple and relax the travailed pilgrim.”
He clapped his hands, and from one of the arcades a boy, hitherto invisible, started into sight; at a slight and scarce perceptible sign from the king the boy again vanished, and in a few moments afterwards, glancing through the fairy pillars, and by the glittering waterfalls, came the small and twinkling feet of the maids of Araby. As, with their transparent tunics and white arms, they gleamed, without an echo, through that cool and voluptuous chamber, they might well have seemed the Peris of the eastern magic, summoned to beguile the sated leisure of a youthful Solomon. With them came a maiden of more exquisite beauty, though smaller stature, than the rest, bearing the light Moorish lute; and a faint and languid smile broke over the beautiful face of Boabdil, as his eyes rested upon her graceful form and the dark yet glowing lustre of her oriental countenance. She alone approached the king, timidly kissed his hand, and then, joining her comrades, commenced the following song, to the air and very words of which the feet of the dancing-girls kept time, while with the chorus rang the silver bells of the musical instrument which each of the dancers carried.
The music ceased; the dancers remained motionless in their graceful postures, as if arrested into statues of alabaster; and the young songstress cast herself on a cushion at the feet of the monarch, and looked up fondly, but silently, into his yet melancholy eyes,—when a man, whose entrance had not been noticed, was seen to stand within the chamber.
He was about the middle stature,—lean, muscular, and strongly though sparely built. A plain black robe, something in the fashion of the Armenian gown, hung long and loosely over a tunic of bright scarlet, girdled by a broad belt, from the centre of which was suspended a small golden key, while at the left side appeared the jewelled hilt of a crooked dagger. His features were cast in a larger and grander mould than was common among the Moors of Spain; the forehead was broad, massive, and singularly high, and the dark eyes of unusual size and brilliancy; his beard, short, black, and glossy, curled upward, and concealed all the lower part of the face, save a firm, compressed, and resolute expression in the lips, which were large and full; the nose was high, aquiline, and well-shaped; and the whole character of the head (which was, for symmetry, on too large and gigantic a scale as proportioned to the form) was indicative of extraordinary energy and power. At the first glance, the stranger might have seemed scarce on the borders of middle age; but, on a more careful examination, the deep lines and wrinkles, marked on the forehead and round the eyes, betrayed a more advanced period of life. With arms folded on his breast, he stood by the side of the king, waiting in silence the moment when his presence should be perceived.
He did not wait long; the eyes and gesture of the girl nestled at the feet of Boabdil drew the king’s attention to the spot where the stranger stood: his eye brightened when it fell upon him.
“Almamen,” cried Boabdil, eagerly, “you are welcome.” As he spoke, he motioned to the dancing-girls to withdraw. “May I not rest? O core of my heart, thy bird is in its home,” murmured the songstress at the king’s feet.
“Sweet Amine,” answered Boabdil, tenderly smoothing down her ringlets as he bent to kiss her brow, “you should witness only my hours of delight. Toil and business have nought with thee; I will join thee ere yet the nightingale hymns his last music to the moon.” Amine sighed, rose, and vanished with her companions.
“My friend,” said the king, when alone with Almamen, “your counsels often soothe me into quiet, yet in such hours quiet is a crime. But what do?—how struggle?—how act? Alas! at the hour of his birth, rightly did they affix to the name of Boabdil, the epithet of El Zogoybi. [The Unlucky]. Misfortune set upon my brow her dark and fated stamp ere yet my lips could shape a prayer against her power. My fierce father, whose frown was as the frown of Azrael, hated me in my cradle; in my youth my name was invoked by rebels against my will; imprisoned by my father, with the poison-bowl or the dagger hourly before my eyes, I was saved only by the artifice of my mother. When age and infirmity broke the iron sceptre of the king, my claims to the throne were set aside, and my uncle, El Zagal, usurped my birthright. Amidst open war and secret treason I wrestled for my crown; and now, the sole sovereign of Granada, when, as I fondly imagined, my uncle had lost all claim on the affections of my people by succumbing to the Christian king, and accepting a fief under his dominion, I find that the very crime of El Zagal is fixed upon me by my unhappy subjects—that they deem he would not have yielded but for my supineness. At the moment of my delivery from my rival, I am received with execration by my subjects, and, driven into this my fortress of the Alhambra, dare not venture to head my armies, or to face my people; yet am I called weak and irresolute, when strength and courage are forbid me. And as the water glides from yonder rock, that hath no power to retain it, I see the tide of empire welling from my hands.”
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.
“Light of the faithful,” said he, when Boabdil had concluded, “the 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.”
“Thou speakest as if the armies of Ferdinand were not already around my walls,” said Boabdil, impatiently.
“The armies of Sennacherib were as mighty,” answered Almamen.
“Wise seer,” returned the king, in a tone half sarcastic and half solemn, “we, 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.”
“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, 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.”
“Prove to me thy power,” said Boabdil, awed less by the words than by the thrilling voice and the impressive aspect of the enchanter.
“Is not the king’s will my law?” answered Almamen; “be his will obeyed. To-morrow night I await thee.”
“Where?”
Almamen paused a moment, and then whispered a sentence in the king’s ear: Boabdil started, and turned pale.
“A fearful spot!”
“So is the Alhambra itself, great Boabdil; while Ferdinand is without the walls and Muza within the city.”
“Muza! Darest thou mistrust my bravest warrior?”
“What wise king will trust the idol of the king’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 enchanter’s lore to whisper to thy heart the answer in the name of ‘Muza’?”
“Oh, wretched state! oh, miserable king!” exclaimed Boabdil, in a tone of great anguish. “I never had a father. I have now no people; a little while, and I shall have no country. Am I never to have a friend?”
“A friend! what king ever had?” returned Almamen, drily.
“Away, man—away!” cried Boabdil, as the impatient spirit of his rank and race shot dangerous fire from his eyes; “your cold and bloodless wisdom freezes up all the veins of my manhood! Glory, confidence, human sympathy, and feeling—your counsels annihilate them all. Leave me! I would be alone.”
“We meet to-morrow, at midnight, mighty Boabdil,” said Almamen, with his usual unmoved and passionless tones. “May the king live for ever.”
The king turned; but his monitor had already disappeared. He went as he came—noiseless and sudden as a ghost.
CHAPTER III. THE LOVERS.
When Muza parted from Almamen, he bent his steps towards the hill that rises opposite the ascent crowned with the towers of the Alhambra; the sides and summit of which eminence were tenanted by the luxurious population of the city. He selected the more private and secluded paths; and, half way up the hill, arrived, at last, before a low wall of considerable extent, which girded the gardens of some wealthier inhabitant of the city. He looked long and anxiously round; all was solitary; nor was the stillness broken, save as an occasional breeze, from the snowy heights of the Sierra Nevada, rustled the fragrant leaves of the citron and pomegranate; or as the silver tinkling of waterfalls chimed melodiously within the gardens. The Moor’s heart beat high: a moment more, and he had scaled the wall; and found himself upon a green sward, variegated by the rich colours of many a sleeping flower, and shaded by groves and alleys of luxuriant foliage and golden fruits.
It was not long before he stood beside a house that seemed of a construction anterior to the Moorish dynasty. It was built over low cloisters formed by heavy and timeworn pillars, concealed, for the most part by a profusion of roses and creeping shrubs: the lattices above the cloisters opened upon large gilded balconies, the super-addition of Moriscan taste. In one only of the casements a lamp was visible; the rest of the mansion was dark, as if, save in that chamber, sleep kept watch over the inmates. It was to this window that the Moor stole; and, after a moment’s pause, he murmured rather than sang, so low and whispered was his voice, the following simple verses, slightly varied from an old Arabian poet:—
As he concluded, the lattice softly opened; and a female form appeared on the balcony.
“Ah, Leila!” said the Moor, “I see thee, and I am blessed!”
“Hush!” answered Leila; “speak low, nor tarry long I fear that our interviews are suspected; and this,” she added in a trembling voice, “may perhaps be the last time we shall meet.”
“Holy Prophet!” exclaimed Muza, passionately, “what do I hear? Why this mystery? why cannot I learn thine origin, thy rank, thy parents? Think you, beautiful Leila, that Granada holds a rouse lofty enough to disdain the alliance with Muza Ben Abil Gazan? and oh!” he added (sinking the haughty tones of his voice into accents of the softest tenderness), “if not too high to scorn me, what should war against our loves and our bridals? For worn equally on my heart were the flower of thy sweet self, whether the mountain top or the valley gave birth to the odour and the bloom.”
“Alas!” answered Leila, weeping, “the mystery thou complainest of is as dark to myself as thee. How often have I told thee that I know nothing of my birth or childish fortunes, save a dim memory of a more distant and burning clime; where, amidst sands and wastes, springs the everlasting cedar, and the camel grazes on stunted herbage withering in the fiery air? Then, it seemed to me that I had a mother: fond eyes looked on me, and soft songs hushed me into sleep.”
“Thy mother’s soul has passed into mine,” said the Moor, tenderly.
Leila continued:—“Borne hither, I passed from childhood into youth within these walls. Slaves ministered to my slightest wish; and those who have seen both state and poverty, which I have not, tell me that treasures and splendour, that might glad a monarch, are prodigalised around me: but of ties and kindred know I little: my father, a stern and silent man, visits me but rarely—sometimes months pass, and I see him not; but I feel he loves me; and, till I knew thee, Muza, my brightest hours were in listening to the footsteps and flying to the arms of that solitary friend.”
“Know you not his name?”
“Nor, I nor any one of the household; save perhaps Ximen, the chief of the slaves, an old and withered man, whose very eye chills me into fear and silence.”
“Strange!” said the Moor, musingly; “yet why think you our love is discovered, or can be thwarted?”
“Hush! Ximen sought me this day: ‘Maiden,’ said he, ‘men’s footsteps have been tracked within the gardens; if your sire know this, you will have looked your last on Granada. Learn,’ he added, in a softer voice, as he saw me tremble, ‘that permission were easier given to thee to wed the wild tiger than to mate with the loftiest noble of Morisca! Beware!’ He spoke, and left me. O Muza!” she continued, passionately wringing her hands, “my heart sinks within me, and omen and doom rise dark before my sight!”
“By my father’s head, these obstacles but fire my love, and I would scale to thy possession, though every step in the ladder were the corpses of a hundred foes!”
Scarcely had the fiery and high-souled Moor uttered his boast, than, from some unseen hand amidst the groves, a javelin whirred past him, and as the air it raised came sharp upon his cheek, half buried its quivering shaft in the trunk of a tree behind him.
“Fly, fly, and save thyself! O God, protect him!” cried Leila; and she vanished within the chamber.
The Moor did not wait the result of a deadlier aim; he turned; yet, in the instinct of his fierce nature, not from, but against, the foe; his drawn scimitar in his hand, the half-suppressed cry of wrath trembling on his lips, he sprang forward in the direction the javelin had sped. With eyes accustomed to the ambuscades of Moorish warfare, he searched eagerly, yet warily through the dark and sighing foliage. No sign of life met his gaze; and at length, grimly and reluctantly, he retraced his steps, and quitted the demesnes; but just as he had cleared the wall, a voice—low, but sharp and shrill—came from the gardens.
“Thou art spared,” it said, “but, haply, for a more miserable doom!”
CHAPTER IV. THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
The chamber into which Leila retreated bore out the character she had given of the interior of her home. The fashion of its ornament and decoration was foreign to that adopted by the Moors of Granada. It had a more massive and, if we may use the term, Egyptian gorgeousness. The walls were covered with the stuffs of the East, stiff with gold, embroidered upon ground of the deepest purple; strange characters, apparently in some foreign tongue, were wrought in the tesselated cornices and on the heavy ceiling, which was supported by square pillars, round which were twisted serpents of gold and enamel, with eyes to which enormous emeralds gave a green and lifelike glare: various scrolls and musical instruments lay scattered upon marble tables: and a solitary lamp of burnished silver cast a dim and subdued light around the chamber. The effect of the whole, though splendid, was gloomy, strange, and oppressive, and rather suited to the thick and cave-like architecture which of old protected the inhabitants of Thebes and Memphis from the rays of the African sun, than to the transparent heaven and light pavilions of the graceful orientals of Granada.
Leila stood within this chamber, pale and breathless, with her lips apart, her hands clasped, her very soul in her ears; nor was it possible to conceive a more perfect ideal of some delicate and brilliant Peri, captured in the palace of a hostile and gloomy Genius. Her form was of the lightest shape consistent with the roundness of womanly beauty; and there was something in it of that elastic and fawnlike grace which a sculptor seeks to embody in his dreams of a being more aerial than those of earth. Her luxuriant hair was dark indeed, but a purple and glossy hue redeemed it from that heaviness of shade too common in the tresses of the Asiatics; and her complexion, naturally pale but clear and lustrous, would have been deemed fair even in the north. Her features, slightly aquiline, were formed in the rarest mould of symmetry, and her full rich lips disclosed teeth that might have shamed the pearl. But the chief charm of that exquisite countenance was in an expression of softness and purity, and intellectual sentiment, that seldom accompanies that cast of loveliness, and was wholly foreign to the voluptuous and dreamy languor of Moorish maidens; Leila had been educated, and the statue had received a soul.
After a few minutes of intense suspense, she again stole to the lattice, gently unclosed it, and looked forth. Far, through an opening amidst the trees, she descried for a single moment the erect and stately figure of her lover, darkening the moonshine on the sward, as now, quitting his fruitless search, he turned his lingering gaze towards the lattice of his beloved: the thick and interlacing foliage quickly hid him from her eyes; but Leila had seen enough—she turned within, and said, as grateful tears trickled clown her cheeks, and she sank on her knees upon the piled cushions of the chamber: “God of my fathers! I bless Thee—he is safe!”
“And yet (she added, as a painful thought crossed her), how may I pray for him? we kneel not to the same Divinity; and I have been taught to loathe and shudder at his creed! Alas! how will this end? Fatal was the hour when he first beheld me in yonder gardens; more fatal still the hour in which he crossed the barrier, and told Leila that she was beloved by the hero whose arm was the shelter, whose name is the blessing, of Granada. Ah, me! Ah, me!”
The young maiden covered her face with her hands, and sank into a passionate reverie, broken only by her sobs. Some time had passed in this undisturbed indulgence of her grief, when the arras was gently put aside, and a man, of remarkable garb and mien, advanced into the chamber, pausing as he beheld her dejected attitude, and gazing on her with a look on which pity and tenderness seemed to struggle against habitual severity and sternness.
“Leila!” said the intruder.
Leila started, and and a deep blush suffused her countenance; she dashed the tears from her eyes, and came forward with a vain attempt to smile.
“My father, welcome!”
The stranger seated himself on the cushions, and motioned Leila to his side.
“These tears are fresh upon thy cheek,” said he, gravely; “they are the witness of thy race! our daughters are born to weep, and our sons to groan! ashes are on the head of the mighty, and the Fountains of the Beautiful run with gall! Oh that we could but struggle—that we could but dare—that we could raise up, our heads, and unite against the bondage of the evil doer! It may not be—but one man shall avenge a nation!”
The dark face of Leila’s father, well fitted to express powerful emotion, became terrible in its wrath and passion; his brow and lip worked convulsively; but the paroxysm was brief; and scarce could she shudder at its intensity ere it had subsided into calm.
“Enough of these thoughts, which thou, a woman and a child, art not formed to witness. Leila, thou hast been nurtured with tenderness, and schooled with care. Harsh and unloving may I have seemed to thee, but I would have shed the best drops of my heart to have saved thy young years from a single pang. Nay, listen to me silently. That thou mightest one day be worthy of thy race, and that thine hours might not pass in indolent and weary lassitude, thou hast been taught lessons of a knowledge rarely to thy sex. Not thine the lascivious arts of the Moorish maidens; not thine their harlot songs, and their dances of lewd delight; thy delicate limbs were but taught the attitude that Nature dedicates to the worship of a God, and the music of thy voice was tuned to the songs of thy fallen country, sad with the memory of her wrongs, animated with the names of her heroes, with the solemnity of her prayers. These scrolls, and the lessons of our seers, have imparted to thee such of our science and our history as may fit thy mind to aspire, and thy heart to feel for a sacred cause. Thou listenest to me, Leila?”
Perplexed and wondering, for never before had her father addressed her in such a strain, the maiden answered with an earnestness of manner that seemed to content the questioner; and he resumed, with an altered, hollow, solemn voice:
“Then curse the persecutors. Daughter of the great Hebrew race, arise and curse the Moorish taskmaster and spoiler!”
As he spoke, the adjuror himself rose, lifting his right hand on high; while his left touched the shoulder of the maiden. But she, after gazing a moment in wild and terrified amazement upon his face, fell cowering at his knees; and, clasping them imploringly, exclaimed in scarce articulate murmurs:
“Oh, spare me! spare me!”
The Hebrew, for such he was, surveyed her, as she thus quailed at his feet, with a look of rage and scorn: his hand wandered to his poniard, he half unsheathed it, thrust it back with a muttered curse, and then, deliberately drawing it forth, cast it on the ground beside her.
“Degenerate girl!” he said, in accents that vainly struggled for calm, “if thou hast admitted to thy heart one unworthy thought towards a Moorish infidel, dig deep and root it out, even with the knife, and to the death—so wilt thou save this hand from that degrading task.”
He drew himself hastily from her grasp, and left the unfortunate girl alone and senseless.
CHAPTER V. AMBITION DISTORTED INTO VICE BY LAW.
On descending a broad flight of stairs from the apartment, the Hebrew encountered an old man, habited in loose garments of silk and fur, upon whose withered and wrinkled face life seemed scarcely to struggle against the advance of death—so haggard, wan, and corpse-like was its aspect.
“Ximen,” said the Israelite, “trusty and beloved servant, follow me to the cavern.” He did not tarry for an answer, but continued his way with rapid strides through various courts and alleys, till he came at length into a narrow, dark, and damp gallery, that seemed cut from the living rock. At its entrance was a strong grate, which gave way to the Hebrew’s touch upon the spring, though the united strength of a hundred men could not have moved it from its hinge. Taking up a brazen lamp that burnt in a niche within it, the Hebrew paused impatiently till the feeble steps of the old man reached the spot; and then, reclosing the grate, pursued his winding way for a considerable distance, till he stopped suddenly by a part of the rock which seemed in no respect different from the rest: and so artfully contrived and concealed was the door which he now opened, and so suddenly did it yield to his hand, that it appeared literally the effect of enchantment, when the rock yawned, and discovered a circular cavern, lighted with brazen lamps, and spread with hangings and cushions of thick furs. Upon rude and seemingly natural pillars of rock, various antique and rusty arms were suspended; in large niches were deposited scrolls, clasped and bound with iron; and a profusion of strange and uncouth instruments and machines (in which modern science might, perhaps, discover the tools of chemical invention) gave a magical and ominous aspect to the wild abode.
The Hebrew cast himself on a couch of furs; and, as the old man entered and closed the door, “Ximen,” said he, “fill out wine—it is a soothing counsellor, and I need it.”
Extracting from one of the recesses of the cavern a flask and goblet, Ximen offered to his lord a copious draught of the sparkling vintage of the Vega, which seemed to invigorate and restore him.
“Old man,” said he, concluding the potation with a deep-drawn sigh, “fill to thyself-drink till thy veins feel young.”
Ximen obeyed the mandate but imperfectly; the wine just touched his lips, and the goblet was put aside.
“Ximen,” resumed the Israelite, “how many of our race have been butchered by the avarice of the Moorish kings since first thou didst set foot within the city?”
“Three thousand—the number was completed last winter, by the order of Jusef the vizier; and their goods and coffers are transformed into shafts and cimiters against the dogs of Galilee.”
“Three thousand—no more! three thousand only! I would the number had been tripled, for the interest is becoming due!”
“My brother, and my son, and my grandson, are among the number,” said the old man, and his face grew yet more deathlike.
“Their monuments shall be in hecatombs of their tyrants. They shall not, at least, call the Jews niggards in revenge.”
“But pardon me, noble chief of a fallen people; thinkest thou we shall be less despoiled and trodden under foot by yon haughty and stiff-necked Nazarenes, than by the Arabian misbelievers?”
“Accursed, in truth, are both,” returned the Hebrew; “but the one promise more fairly than the other. I have seen this Ferdinand, and his proud queen; they are pledged to accord us rights and immunities we have never known before in Europe.”
“And they will not touch our traffic, our gains, our gold?”
“Out on thee!” cried the fiery Israelite, stamping on the ground. “I would all the gold of earth were sunk into the everlasting pit! It is this mean, and miserable, and loathsome leprosy of avarice, that gnaws away from our whole race the heart, the soul, nay—the very form, of man! Many a time, when I have seen the lordly features of the descendants of Solomon and Joshua (features that stamp the nobility of the eastern world born to mastery and command) sharpened and furrowed by petty cares,—when I have looked upon the frame of the strong man bowed, like a crawling reptile, to some huckstering bargainer of silks and unguents,—and heard the voice, that should be raising the battle-cry, smoothed into fawning accents of base fear, or yet baser hope,—I have asked myself, if I am indeed of the blood of Israel! and thanked the great Jehovah that he hath spared me at least the curse that hath blasted my brotherhood into usurers and slaves”
Ximen prudently forbore an answer to enthusiasm which he neither shared nor understood; but, after a brief silence, turned back the stream of the conversation.
“You resolve, then, upon prosecuting vengeance on the Moors, at whatsoever hazard of the broken faith of these Nazarenes?”
“Ay, the vapour of human blood hath risen unto heaven, and, collected into thunder-clouds, hangs over the doomed and guilty city. And now, Ximen, I have a new cause for hatred to the Moors: the flower that I have reared and watched, the spoiler hath sought to pluck it from my hearth. Leila—thou hast guarded her ill, Ximen; and, wert thou not endeared to me by thy very malice and vices, the rising sun should have seen thy trunk on the waters of the Darro.”
“My lord,” replied Ximen, “if thou, the wisest of our people, canst not guard a maiden from love, how canst thou see crime in the dull eyes and numbed senses of a miserable old man?”
The Israelite did not answer, nor seem to hear this deprecatory remonstrance. He appeared rather occupied with his own thoughts; and, speaking to himself, he muttered, “It must be so: the sacrifice is hard—the danger great; but here, at least, it is more immediate. It shall be done. Ximen,” he continued, speaking aloud; “dost thou feel assured that even mine own countrymen, mine own tribe, know me not as one of them? Were my despised birth and religion published, my limbs would be torn asunder as an impostor; and all the arts of the Cabala could not save me.”
“Doubt not, great master; none in Granada, save thy faithful Ximen, know thy secret.”
“So let me dream and hope. And now to my work; for this night must be spent in toil.”
The Hebrew drew before him some of the strange instruments we have described; and took from the recesses in the rock several scrolls. The old man lay at his feet, ready to obey his behests; but, to all appearance, rigid and motionless as the dead, whom his blanched hues and shrivelled form resembled. It was, indeed, as the picture of the enchanter at his work, and the corpse of some man of old, revived from the grave to minister to his spells, and execute his commands.
Enough in the preceding conversation has transpired to convince the reader, that the Hebrew, in whom he has already detected the Almamen of the Alhambra, was of no character common to his tribe. Of a lineage that shrouded itself in the darkness of his mysterious people, in their day of power, and possessed of immense wealth, which threw into poverty the resources of Gothic princes,—the youth of that remarkable man had been spent, not in traffic and merchandise but travel and study.
As a child, his home had been in Granada. He had seen his father butchered by the late king, Muley Abul Hassan, without other crime than his reputed riches; and his body literally cut open, to search for the jewels it was supposed he had swallowed. He saw, and, boy as he was he vowed revenge. A distant kinsman bore the orphan to lands more secure from persecution; and the art with which the Jews concealed their wealth, scattering it over various cities, had secured to Almamen the treasures the tyrant of Granada had failed to grasp.
