Elevating His Voice
Of A Sudden, He Told The Infidel He Lied, And Raising His Arm At The
Same Time He Smote Him On The Head With His Sheathed Sword.
In an
instant the Court of Lions glistened with the flash of arms," insomuch
that the American lady whom
We saw writing a letter beside a friend
sketching there must have been startled from her opening words, "I am
sitting here with my portfolio on my knees in the beautiful Court of the
Lions," and if Muley Aben Hassan had not "overheard the tumult and
forbade all appeal to force, pronouncing the person of the ambassador
sacred," she never could have gone on.
V
I did not doubt the fact when I read of it under the level boughs of the
beechen tree with J. W., sixty years ago, by the green woodland light of
the primeval forest which hemmed our village in, and since I am well
away from the Alhambra again I do not doubt it now. I doubt nothing that
Irving says of the Alhambra; he is the gentle genius of the place, and I
could almost wish that I had paid the ten pesetas extra which the
custodian demanded for showing his apartment in the palace. On the
ground the demand of two dollars seemed a gross extortion; yet it was
not too much for a devotion so rich as mine to have paid, and I advise
other travelers to buy themselves off from a vain regret by giving it.
If ever a memory merited the right to levy tribute on all comers to the
place it haunts, Washington Irving's is that memory.
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