Contending feelings kept him in a continual turmoil, and he earnestly wished for an opportunity that might divert both the court and himself from a subject of which he was so disagreeably the hero.
Fortune again favoured his desires, by bringing about an event as terrible as it was altogether unexpected.
CHAPTER II.
The battle is their pastime; they go forth
Gay in the morn as to the summer's sport:
When evening comes, the glory of the morn,
The youthful warrior, is a clod of clay.
Home.
The streets and squares of Granada were thronged with a bustling and confused crowd. Here groups were assembled talking earnestly, and evincing all the signs of surprise and terror—there others were running about as if the dreaded event was actually come to pass. A continual hum was heard in every corner of the city; every tongue was eloquent in telling, and happy was he who could obtain an attentive listener, where all were eager to assume the part of orators. Indeed the cause of these demonstrations was important: several expresses had arrived, announcing the insurrection of the Sierra Bermeja, with the additional calamity that the terrible El Feri de Benastepar, whom they all supposed to have been slain, was not only safe and alive, but with the means of renewing a desperate warfare, and actually possessed of a force sufficiently strong to enable him to march upon Granada.
The town of Alhaurin, and several villages in the vicinity of the Sierra Bermeja were likewise in arms, and the rebellion seemed rapidly to extend throughout the whole of the surrounding country.
The rage of the Christians on receiving this intelligence was greatly increased by the insolent carriage of their fellow-citizens of the Mahomedan creed. Indeed, they evinced, in the triumph of their demeanor, the workings of smothered hatred, that only waited an opportunity to explode. Granada itself would have become a scene of tumult and bloodshed, had not Count de Tendilla speedily resorted to measures of precaution to insure public tranquillity. Various bands of veteran soldiers patrolled the streets, where the confused murmur of discontent, or the whispering group of sedition, was heard on all sides.
The queen was highly incensed at this fresh instance of the refractory and turbulent disposition of her new subjects. Her former edicts were again proclaimed through the city, not only against the aiders and abettors of the rebels, but even against such as should hold communion with them, howsoever slight or incidental.
The indignation of Alonso de Aguilar was strongly depicted on his noble and manly features, when in the presence of the assembled court he grasped the standard of the cross, and in a tone of resolution and enthusiasm—
"By the holy sign on this banner," he cried, "and by all the honors of my house, I swear not to return to Granada until this accursed rebellion is rooted out, and the promoters brought to punishment. Ere this month be past, El Feri de Benastepar, or Don Alonso de Aguilar, shall be numbered with the dead."