The niece was an orphan of an officer who had fallen in the wars. She had been educated in a convent, and had recently been transferred from her sacred asylum to the immediate guardianship of her aunt, under whose overshadowing care she vegetated in obscurity, like an opening rose blooming beneath a brier. Nor indeed is this comparison entirely accidental; for, to tell the truth, her fresh and dawning beauty had caught the public eye, even in her seclusion, and, with that poetical turn common to the people of Andalusia, the peasantry of the neighborhood had given her the appellation of “the Rose of the Alhambra.”
The wary aunt continued to keep a faithful watch over her tempting little niece as long as the court continued at Granada, and flattered herself that her vigilance had been successful. It is true the good lady was now and then discomposed by the tinkling of guitars and chanting of love-ditties from the moonlit groves beneath the tower; but she would exhort her niece to shut her ears against such idle minstrelsy, assuring her that it was one of the arts of the opposite sex, by which simple maids were often lured to their undoing. Alas! what chance with a simple maid has a dry lecture against a moonlight serenade?
At length King Philip cut short his sojourn at Granada, and suddenly departed with all his train. The vigilant Fredegonda watched the royal pageant as it issued forth from the Gate of Justice, and descended the great avenue leading to the city. When the last banner disappeared from her sight, she returned exulting to her tower, for all her cares were over. To her surprise, a light Arabian steed pawed the ground at the wicket-gate of the garden;—to her horror, she saw through the thickets of roses a youth in gayly embroidered dress, at the feet of her niece. At the sound of her footsteps he gave a tender adieu, bounded lightly over the barrier of reeds and myrtles, sprang upon his horse, and was out of sight in an instant.
The tender Jacinta, in the agony of her grief, lost all thought of her aunt’s displeasure. Throwing herself into her arms, she broke forth into sobs and tears.
“Ay de mi!” cried she; “he’s gone!—he’s gone!—he’s gone! and I shall never see him more!”
“Gone!—who is gone?—what youth is that I saw at your feet?”
“A queen’s page, aunt, who came to bid me farewell.”
“A queen’s page, child!” echoed the vigilant Fredegonda, faintly, “and when did you become acquainted with the queen’s page?”
“The morning that the ger-falcon came into the tower. It was the queen’s ger-falcon, and he came in pursuit of it.”
“Ah silly, silly girl! know that there are no ger-falcons half so dangerous as these young prankling pages, and it is precisely such simple birds as thee that they pounce upon.”