“Speak, false santon! art thou dumb?” cried the king.
“A curse light on thee, dull fool!” cried Almamen, fiercely. “What matters who the instrument that would have restored to thee thy throne? Yes! I, who have ruled thy councils, who have led thine armies, I am of the race of Joshua and of Samuel—and the Lord of Hosts is the God of Almamen!”
A shudder ran through that mighty multitude: but the looks, the mien, and the voice of the man awed them, and not a weapon was raised against him. He might, even then, have passed scathless through the crowd; he might have borne to other climes his burning passions and his torturing woes: but his care for life was past; he desired but to curse his dupes, and to die. He paused, looked round and burst into a laugh of such bitter and haughty scorn, as the tempted of earth may hear in the halls below from the lips of Eblis.
“Yes,” he exclaimed, “such I am! I have been your idol and your lord. I may be your victim, but in death I am your vanquisher. Christian and Moslem alike my foe, I would have trampled upon both. But the Christian, wiser than you, gave me smooth words; and I would have sold ye to his power; wickeder than you, he deceived me; and I would have crushed him that I might have continued to deceive and rule the puppets that ye call your chiefs. But they for whom I toiled, and laboured, and sinned—for whom I surrendered peace and ease, yea, and a daughter’s person and a daughter’s blood—they have betrayed me to your hands, and the Curse of Old rests with them evermore—Amen! The disguise is rent: Almamen, the santon, is the son of Issachar the Jew!”
More might he have said, but the spell was broken. With a ferocious yell, those living waves of the multitude rushed over the stern fanatic; six cimiters passed through him, and he fell not: at the seventh he was a corpse. Trodden in the clay—then whirled aloft—limb torn from limb,—ere a man could have drawn breath nine times, scarce a vestige of the human form was left to the mangled and bloody clay.
One victim sufficed to slake the wrath of the crowd. They gathered like wild beasts whose hunger is appeased, around their monarch, who in vain had endeavored to stay their summary revenge, and who now, pale and breathless, shrank from the passions he had excited. He faltered forth a few words of remonstrance and exhortation, turned the head of his steed, and took his way to his palace.
The crowd dispersed, but not yet to their homes. The crime of Almamen worked against his whole race. Some rushed to the Jews’ quarter, which they set on fire; others to the lonely mansion of Almamen.
Ximen, on quitting the king, had been before the mob. Not anticipating such an effect of the popular rage, he had hastened to the house, which he now deemed at length his own. He had just reached the treasury of his dead lord—he had just feasted his eyes on the massive ingots and glittering gems; in the lust of his heart he had just cried aloud, “And these are mine!” when he heard the roar of the mob below the wall,—when he saw the glare of their torches against the casement. It was in vain that he shrieked aloud, “I am the man that exposed the Jew!” the wild wind scattered his words over a deafened audience. Driven from his chamber by the smoke and flame, afraid to venture forth amongst the crowd, the miser loaded himself with the most precious of the store: he descended the steps, he bent his way to the secret vault, when suddenly the floor, pierced by the flames, crashed under him, and the fire rushed up in a fiercer and more rapid volume, as the death-shriek broke through that lurid shroud.
Such were the principal events of the last night of the Moorish dynasty in Granada.