 | MEMENTOS OF BOABDIL. The Alhambra |  |
MEMENTOS OF BOABDIL.
While my mind was still warm with the subject
of the unfortunate Boabdil, I set forth to trace
the mementos connected with his story, which yet
exist in this scene of his sovereignty and his misfortunes.
In the picture gallery of the Palace of the
Generaliffe, hangs his portrait. The face is mild,
handsome and somewhat melancholy, with a fair
complexion and yellow hair; if it be a true representation
of the man, he may have been wavering
and uncertain, but there is nothing of cruelty or unkindness
in his aspect.
I next visited the dungeon wherein he was confined
in his youthful days, when his cruel father
meditated his destruction. It is a vaulted room
in the tower of Comares, under the Hall of Ambassadors.
A similar room, separated by a narrow
passage, was the prison of his mother, the virtuous
and the small windows secured by iron bars.
A narrow stone gallery, with a low parapet, extends
round three sides of the tower just below the
windows, but at a considerable height from the
ground. From this gallery, it is presumed, the
queen lowered her son with the scarfs of herself
and her female attendants, during the darkness of
night, to the hill-side, at the foot of which waited
a domestic with a fleet steed to bear the prince to
the mountains.
As I paced this gallery, my imagination pictured
the anxious queen leaning over the parapet, and
listening, with the throbbings of a mother's heart,
to the last echo of the horses' hoofs, as her son
scoured along the narrow valley of the Darro.
My next search was for the gate by which Boabdil
departed from the Alhambra, when about to
surrender his capital. With the melancholy caprice
of a broken spirit, he requested of the catholic
monarchs that no one afterwards might be
permitted to pass through this gate. His prayer,
according to ancient chronicles, was complied with,
through the sympathy of Isabella, and the gate
walled up. For some time I inquired in vain for
such a portal, at length my humble attendant,
Mateo, learned among the old residents of the
which, according to tradition, the Moorish king
had left the fortress, but which had never been
open within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
He conducted me to the spot. The gateway is
in the centre of what was once an immense tower,
called la Torre de los Siete Suelos, or, the Tower of
the Seven Moors. It is a place famous in the superstitious
stories of the neighbourhood, for being the
scene of strange apparitions and Moorish enchantments.
This once redoubtable tower, is now a mere
wreck, having been blown up with gunpowder,
by the French, when they abandoned the fortress.
Great masses of the wall lie scattered about, buried
in the luxuriant herbage, or overshadowed by
vines and fig-trees. The arch of the gateway,
though rent by the shock, still remains; but the
last wish of poor Boabdil has been again, though
unintentionally, fulfilled, for the portal has been
closed up by loose stones gathered from the ruins,
and remains impassable.
Following up the route of the Moslem monarch
as it remains on record, I crossed on horseback,
the hill of Les Martyrs, keeping along the garden
of the convent of the same name, and thence down
a rugged ravine, beset by thickets of aloes and Indian
with gipsies. It was the road taken by Boabdil to
avoid passing through the city. The descent was
so steep and broken that I was obliged to dismount
and lead my horse.
Emerging from the ravine, and passing by the
Puerta de los Molinos, (the Gate of the Mills,) I
issued forth upon the public promenade, called the
Prado, and pursuing the course of the Xenil, arrived
at a small Moorish mosque, now converted
into the chapel, or hermitage of San Sebastian. A
tablet on the wall relates that on this spot Boabdil
surrendered the keys of Granada to the Castilian
sovereigns.
From thence, I rode slowly across the Vega to a
village where the family and household of the unhappy
king had awaited him; for he had sent them
forward on the preceding night from the Alhambra,
that his mother and wife might not participate
in his personal humiliation, or be exposed
to the gaze of the conquerors.
Following on in the route of the melancholy
band of royal exiles, I arrived at the foot of a chain
of barren and dreary heights, forming the skirt of
the Alpuxarra mountains. From the summit of
one of these, the unfortunate Boabdil took his last
look at Granada. It bears a name expressive of
of Tears.) Beyond it a sandy road winds across
a rugged cheerless waste, doubly dismal to the unhappy
monarch, as it led to exile; behind, in the
distance, lies the “enamelled Vega,” with the Xenil
shining among its bowers, and Granada beyond.
I spurred my horse to the summit of a rock,
where Boabdil uttered his last sorrowful exclamation,
as he turned his eyes from taking their farewell
gaze. It is still denominated el ultimo suspiro
del Moro, (the last sigh of the Moor.) Who can
wonder at his anguish at being expelled from such
a kingdom and such an abode? With the Alhambra
he seemed to be yielding up all the honours
of his line, and all the glories and delights of life.
It was here, too, that his affliction was imbittered
by the reproach of his mother Ayxa, who
had so often assisted him in times of peril, and had
vainly sought to instil into him her own resolute
spirit. “You do well,” said she, “to weep as a
woman over what you could not defend as a man!”
—A speech that savours more of the pride of the
princess, than the tenderness of the mother.
When this anecdote was related to Charles V.,
by Bishop Guevara, the emperor joined in the expression
of scorn at the weakness of the wavering
haughty potentate, “I would rather have made
this Alhambra my sepulchre, than have lived without
a kingdom in the Alpuxarras.”
How easys it is for them in power and prosperity
to preach heroism to the vanquished! How little
can they understand that life itself may rise in
value with the unfortunate, when naught but life
remains.
| MEMENTOS OF BOABDIL. The Alhambra | |