The Three Beautiful PrincessesLegend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyYears passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.
The Three Beautiful PrincessesLegend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyYears passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.
The Three Beautiful PrincessesLegend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyYears passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.
The Three Beautiful PrincessesLegend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyYears passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.
The Three Beautiful Princesses
Legend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyYears passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.
Legend tells us that when Mohammed el Haygari, or ‘the Left-handed,’ reigned in Granada he once encountereda train of horsemen riding back from a foray in Christian lands. He observed in the ranks of their captives a beautiful damsel richly attired, and learned that she was the daughter of the commander of a frontier fortress which had been taken and sacked in the course of the expedition. The lady was accompanied by a duenna, and Mohammed ordered that both women should be conveyed to his harem.
Day by day he urged the captive damsel to become his queen. But his faith as well as his age caused her family to reject his advances. In his perplexity he resolved to enlist the good graces of her duenna, who undertook to plead his cause with her young mistress. She told the lady that she was foolish to pine in a beautiful palace, who had henceforth been used only to a dull old frontier castle, and that by marrying Mohammed she could make herself mistress of all she surveyed instead of remaining a captive. At last her arguments prevailed. The Spanish lady consented to unite herself to the Moorish monarch, and even outwardly conformed to his religion, which the duenna also embraced with all the fervour of a proselyte, being re-named Kadiga.
In course of time the Spanish lady presented her lord with three daughters at a single birth. The Court astrologers cast the nativities of the infants, and with many ominous warnings cautioned their father to keep strict guard over them when they arrived at a marriageable age.
Shortly afterward his queen died, and Mohammed, with the astrologers’ warning ringing in his ears, resolved to shut the princesses up in the royal castle of Salobreña, a place of great strength, overlookingthe Mediterranean, where he felt certain no harm could come to them.
The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed GalleyThe Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed Galley
The Three Princesses watch the Approach of the White-sailed Galley
Years passed and at length the princesses became of marriageable age. Although they had been brought up by the discreet Kadiga with the greatest care, and had always been together, their characters were of course very different one from another. Zayda, the eldest, was of an intrepid spirit, and took the lead in everything. Zorayda, the second, had a strong sense of beauty, which probably accounted for the fact that she spent a large portion of her time gazing in the glass, or in the fountain which plashed and sang in the marble court of the castle. Zorahayda, the youngest, was soft and timid, and given to reverie. All three were surpassingly beautiful, and as she gazed upon them the shrewd old Kadiga would shake her head and sigh. When they inquired of her why she did so, she would turn the question aside with a laugh and direct the conversation to a less dangerous topic.
One day the princesses were seated at a casement which commanded a noble view of the heaven-blue Mediterranean, the dreamy waters of which whispered musically to the palm-shadowed shores which skirted the height upon which the towers of Salobreña stood. It was one of those evenings on which we feel it difficult to believe that we are not temporary sojourners in a land of vague deliciousness, where all is beautiful as it is unreal. Mists dyed in the sunset rose like incense from the urns of twilight, hiding the far distances of sea and sky. From between the curtains of sea-shadows there drifted a white-sailed galley, which glided toward the shore, where it anchored. A number of Moorish soldiers landed on the beach, conducting several Christianprisoners, among whom were three Spanish cavaliers richly dressed. These, though loaded with chains, carried themselves in a lofty and distinguished manner, and the princesses could not refrain from gazing upon them with intense and breathless interest. Never before had they seen such noble-looking youths, who had so far only beheld black slaves and the rude fishermen of the coast, so small wonder was it that the sight of these brave cavaliers should arouse commotion in their bosoms.
The princesses remained gazing until the prisoners were out of sight. Then with long-drawn sighs they turned from the window and sat down, musing and pensive, on their ottomans. The discreet Kadiga, finding them thus, learned from them what they had seen, and in answer to their inquiries regarding such beings related to them many a tale of cavalier life in Christian Spain, which only served to heighten the curiosity which the appearance of the captives had excited. But it did not take the sage old woman long to discover the mischief she was doing, and, full of fears for which she could scarcely account, she dispatched a slave to her royal master, with the symbolic message of a basket filled with leaves of the fig and vine, on which lay a peach, an apricot, and a nectarine, all in the early stage of tempting ripeness, which Mohammed, skilled in the Oriental language of fruits and flowers, rightly interpreted as meaning that his daughters had arrived at marriageable age.
Recalling the advice of the astrologers, he resolved to bring the princesses under his immediate guardianship, and at once commanded that a tower of the Alhambra should be prepared for their reception. He himself setout for Salobreña to conduct them thither, and on beholding them, and perceiving how beautiful they were, he felt glad that he had wasted no time in bringing them to Court. So conscious was he of the danger that three such beauties would run that he prepared for his return to Granada by sending heralds before him, commanding every one to keep out of the road by which he was to pass, on pain of death. Then, escorted by a troop of the most hideous black horsemen he could find, he set forth on the journey to his capital.
As the cavalcade was approaching Granada it chanced to overtake a small body of Moorish soldiers with a convoy of prisoners. It was too late for the soldiers to retire, so they threw themselves on their faces on the earth, ordering their captives to do likewise. Among the prisoners were the three cavaliers whom the princesses had seen from the window of the castle of Salobreña, and they, too proud to obey the order to grovel before their pagan enemy, remained standing.
The anger of the royal Mohammed was aroused by this flagrant defiance of his orders, and, drawing hisscimitar, he was about to decapitate the unfortunate captives, when the princesses gathered round him and implored mercy for them. The captain of the guard, too, assured him that they could not be injured without great scandal, on account of their high rank, and described to the irate monarch the manner in which these illustrious youths had been taken captive while fighting like lions beneath the royal banner of Spain. Somewhat mollified by these representations, Mohammed sheathed his weapon. “I will spare their lives,” he said, “but their rashness must meet with fitting punishment. Let them be taken to the Vermilion Towers and put to labour.”
In the agitation of the moment the veils of the three princesses had blown aside so that their radiant beauty was revealed. In those romantic times to see was often to love at once, and the three noble cavaliers fell sudden victims to the charms of the royal damsels who pleaded so eloquently for their lives. Singularly enough, each of them was enraptured with a separate beauty; but it would be as impertinent as illogical to ask the reason of this sleight of cunning Dame Nature, who in romance, perhaps, is represented as being more judicious than she really is.
The royal cavalcade now pressed onward, and the captives were conducted to their allotted prison in the Vermilion Towers. The residence provided for the princesses was all that imagination could ask and splendour devise. It was situated in a tower somewhat apart from the main palace of the Alhambra, and on one side was cheered by the prospect of a garden beautiful as the first step into paradise, while on the other it overlooked a deep and umbrageous ravine that separated the grounds of the Alhambra from those of the Generalife. But to the beauties of this delightful place the princesses were blind. They languished visibly, and by none was their indisposition remarked so shrewdly as by old Kadiga, who guessed its cause without any great difficulty. Taking pity upon their forlorn condition, she told them that as she was passing the Vermilion Towers on the preceding evening she heard the cavaliers singing after the day’s labours to the strains of a guitar, and at the request of the princesses she arranged with their jailer that they should be set to work in the ravine, beneath the windows of the damsels’ apartments.
The very next day the captives were given labour whichnecessitated their presence in the ravine. During the noontide heat, while their guards were sleeping, they sang a Spanish roundelay to the accompaniment of the guitar. The princesses listened, and heard that it was a love ditty addressed to themselves. The ladies replied to the sound of a lute played by Zorayda, the burden of which was:
The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.
The rose by the screen of her leaves is concealed,
But the song of the nightingale pierces the shield.
Every day the cavaliers worked in the ravine, and an intercourse was maintained between them and the no less captive princesses by songs and romances which breathed the feelings of either party. In time the princesses showed themselves on the balcony when the guards were wrapped in noonday slumber. But at length this desirable condition of affairs was interrupted, for the three young nobles were ransomed by their families and repaired to Granada to commence their homeward journey. They approached the aged Kadiga, and requested her to assist them to fly with the princesses to Spain. This proposal the old dame communicated to her young mistresses, and finding that they embraced it with alacrity a plan of escape was arranged. The rugged hill on which the Alhambra is built was at that time tunnelled by many a subterranean passage leading from the fortress to various parts of the city, and Kadiga arranged to conduct the royal damsels by one of these to a sally-port beyond the walls of Granada, where the cavaliers were to be in waiting with swift horses to bear the whole party over the borders.
The appointed night arrived, and when the Alhambrawas buried in deep sleep the princesses, accompanied by their duenna, descended from their apartments to the garden by means of a rope-ladder—all save Zorahayda, the youngest and most timorous, who at the decisive moment could not endure the idea of leaving her father. The advance of the night patrol which guarded the palace made it necessary for her sisters and Kadiga to fly without her. Groping their way through the fearful labyrinth, they succeeded in reaching the gate outside the walls. The Spanish cavaliers were waiting to receive them. The lover of Zorahayda was frantic when he learned that she had refused to leave the tower, but there was no time to waste in lamentations; the two princesses mounted behind their lovers, Kadiga behind another rider, and, dashing the spurs into the flanks of their steeds, the party galloped off at top speed.
They had not proceeded far when they heard the noise of an alarm from the battlements of the Alhambra, while a lurid watch-fire burst into flame on its topmost turret. Lashing their horses to a frenzy of speed, they succeeded in outdistancing their pursuers, and by taking unfrequented paths and hiding in wild barrancas they were at last so fortunate as to reach the city of Cordova, where the princesses were received into the bosom of the Church and united to their respective lovers.
Mohammed was well-nigh demented at the loss of his daughters, but, rather unnecessarily, took pains to redouble his watch over the one who had remained. The unfortunate Zorahayda, thus closely guarded, repented of her vacillation, and we are told that many a night she was seen leaning on the battlements of the tower in which she was confined, looking in thedirection of Cordova. Legend, never very merciful either to heroine or reader, says that she died young, and her melancholy fate gave birth to many a sad ballad, both Moorish and Castilian, so that she was at least successful in inspiring song—a celebrity to which her more fortunate sisters did not attain.