enabled to restore these walls, and steep
them again in colour: wait till, by the help
of those saints who ever wait on our
enlightened and progressing nation, I refine
with fresh bloom and dye these tarnished
butterfly wings, polish again each fairy
pillaret, solidify each gilded cell of the honeyed
domes, repuncture the starlet holes of the
trellice-work, and re-emblazon every badge
and bearing of my great country's by-gone
kings. I will—Saint James being my help—
devote the rest of my poor life to this noble
work: I will, Heaven helping, restore to life
this dead palace of beauty: and when I die,
I will only pray our extremely virtuous and
honoured Queen to allow me to be buried
under the entrance door-step, that every foot
that enters may tread on the poor grave of
the sinner Balthazar, who loved the beautiful
old place so well."

He said all this in so touching a way, that
I had to devote all my energies to staring at
the bottom of my glass, or I should have had
to confess my emotion. As it was, one hot,
big tear fell on the guitar-board, and
remained a watery blot on its light polished
surface.

Balthazar struck the strings furiously:

"The Cid was sleeping in his chair, with all his
    knights around,
The cry went forth along the hall that the lion was
    unbound."

"They press'd around the ivory throne, to shield
    their lord from harm:
The good Cid woke and gently rose, without fear or
    alarm;
He went to meet the lion, with his mantle on his
     arm."

"And of course dragged him safely back
to his den?" I said. "Why, Wombwell would
have done that; he used to drub his lions
with a crow bar."

"Don't compare the Cid to Hummel," said
Balthazar. "I knew him well: he was a
mere piano-player, and wrote some pretty
music."

I bowed deprecatingly, for the Don was an
impracticable man.

"Well," he said, "you see all this work,
and you have praised it. Observe my argument.
This was the proof of the mental
condition of the Moors—of the Moors who carried
mathematics, and medicine, and botany, and
indeed all learning, to a marvellous pitch.
The best doctors and astronomers of the
Middle Ages were from Spain. They kept
the great Greek books alive: they knew of
paper and gunpowder, if they did not invent
them. From them came the germs of half
our modern discoveries. How great they were
in art, this palace, the Grenada Alhambra,
and our wonderful Giralda, show, being the
high-water mark of their achievements. I
will tell you a story, from Abul Pharajius, to
prove to you, how the Sultans of. that age of
Islamism ruled."

"Go on," I said, performing an Eastern
salute with a laughing face, and dragging
through the window bars a great bough of
waxen orange blossoms to smell at; "thy
servant is listening with a thousand ears"

"Mark, then, O son of the faithful, that
of all the Abassides of the Black Banner,
Mutaded and Almanzor alone were beloved
by Allah. It is not often given to kings to
be wise or happy. Wisdom and happiness
are not to be seen among the crown jewels.
Yet the one is often among the brown mugs
on the peasant's shelf, and the other is kept
on many a cottage mantelpiece. Does not,
indeed, Elmacer tell us, in the words of truth
—Elmacer, the golden-mouthed historian,
writing to Zurita, the poet, who was called
by men, for his truth, 'Zurita of the golden
heart '—that Al Raschid, one day, reading in
the book of Hafiz the well known line, 'take
what the world can give thee, but death is
surely at the bottom of the casket '? and so
when they strewed the spoil of nations round
the bed of the dying Mahmoud, the great
Gaznevide, he wept aloud to think of the
vanity of the world—"

"Cut it short, O Commander of the Faithful,
for we dine at the Fonda Europa at
half-past three," was the irrelevant interruption.

Balthazar, who did not understand English
clearly, and was not easy "to sit upon," went
on more fervently than ever.

"And did not Azzud-ed-Dowlah, dying of
consumption in his Palace of Happiness,
exclaim in verse: 'I have slain the princes of
men, and have laid waste the palaces of
kings. I have dispersed them to the East
and scattered them to the West, and now the
grave calls me and I must go.'—But I am
wandering."

"You are," I said. "May your joy
increase, and your tongue, O Balthazar,
shorten."

"Well, one day a Nubian slave, who was
fanning away the flies from the great
Mutaded, struck off that jewelled turban, on
which the Pyramid of Light was the meanest
jewel. The Sultan only exclaimed, 'The boy
is sleepy—let him go and rest.' Now, the
vizir, hearing this, fell down at the Sultan's
feet, kissed the ground, and exclaimed: 'O
Commander of the Faithful! I thought such
clemency was possible only in Heaven.'—
For to tell the truth, this Caliph used
generally if a slave of the kitchen over-roasted
a joint, to instantly bury him alive. You see
my argument?"

"I cannot say I do."

"I tell you this story to show how great
the power these monarchs exercised over
men; and these were Moors."

"Yet we, the Spaniards, crushed them, and
drove them out."

"And I have always wondered how you
did it."

"Well, we did. Do you know what made
us do it?—who led us, who focussed our