Don Juan is received with much formal courtesy in the court of the Alberca—where the water cisterns are guarded by low hedges of sweet shrubs—by the sheikhs and emirs attending on the king, a glittering band of dark-visaged eunuchs. By them Don Juan alone is led to the tower of Comares, through marvellously worked arches dropping with golden stalactites, a vista of vestibules of scarcely earthly beauty, panelled and embroidered in patterns of roses, bosses, emblems, borders, and arabesques all in pale Oriental shades of red, green, and blue; a scene of enchantment utterly bewildering to the simple mind of the Castilian knight. Then under more snowy arches, set with filigree edges, as of gems, into the Hall of the Ambassadors, glowing with gold and deep azure, with open-pillared balconies overhanging the precipitous banks of the Darro, giving a glimpse of outer splendour to the sombre walls, to prepare the mind of the stranger for the awful presence of Muley Hassan, seated upon a golden throne, inclosed by screens and hangings of jewelled embroideries fringed with pearls. Gold and silver tissues lie at his feet, and at his back a divan of dark heads, dazzling white turbans, and plumed casques with trembling gems; a vaulted artesonado dome over his head radiant with stars scintillating in a ground of crystal and tortoise-shell.
As the good knight, nothing daunted, stands forth in glittering armour, before the old king, under a battery of hostile eyes, he speaks his message in a loud, clear voice:
“I come, O Caliph of Granada! from the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, to demand the tribute due, for the permission to occupy the land of Spain, conquered from your ancestors by San Fernando of Castile!”
As he listens, a bitter smile curls Muley’s bearded lips, and his hand seeks the handle of a jewelled dagger at his side.
“Tell the Spanish rulers,” he says, in a voice tremulous with passion, “that the sovereigns of Granada who paid tribute are all dead. My mint coins nothing but dagger-blades and lances!”
War—bitter war—spoke in these words. Nor did the haughty bearing of the turbaned court belie the sign.
So Don Juan accepted it, but he was too discreet a knight to permit this impression to influence the lofty courtesy of his departure, as, with fitting salutations, he returned, filled with amazement at all the wonders he had seen.
Nor was the impression lessened as he passed through the Court of Lions, followed by a band of swarthy attendants, black-skinned Ethiopians and Nubians, naked but for a white cloth about their loins, and noted the giant forms of the marble lions filled with leaden pipes, which support the double basins, to the verge of which the fountain rises; the Arab porticoes and pavilions around the court, light as air, and range upon range of snowy arches, worked with the fineness of a chiselled cup.
If architecture at all, an Oriental fantasia, utterly unreal! the splendour of the Hall of Justice, of the Abencerrages, which follows on either side, with long vistas of many-domed halls opening into other patios, where violets, roses, and orange-trees blaze in the light, entered by portals glowing with brilliant mosaics, a low arch, specially pointed out to him by a noble Moor, more courteous than the rest, in the Hall of Justice, as leading to the place of execution. Whether intended as a hint to him of his danger, or of the swift course of justice towards the condemned, did not appear. At any rate, Don Juan remained perfectly unmoved; he had confessed before he started, and his life belonged to his sovereign—but when he was joined by a flippant emir, oiled and combed, who ventured to enter into an argument against the Christian faith, and especially the folly of believing in the immaculate conception of the Virgin, forgetting all the prescribed bearing of an envoy, he dealt him a sounding blow on the head with his sheathed sword.
In an instant a noise like thunder swept through the court, and the long lines of white arcades, at the back of the pavilion, were darkened by masses of Africans, black as night, stolid, passionless, their silver breastplates and long earrings shining on their dark skins, carrying immense clubs, studded with brazen nails. In advance the captain, the fatal bowstring hanging on his arm, and his eyes turned to obey the gesture of command to torture or to slay.