Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/276

262 I surrendered peace and ease, yea, and a daughter's person and a daughter's blood—they have betrayed me to your hands, and the Curse of Old rests with them evermore—Amen! The disguise is rent: Almamen, the santon, is the son of Issachar the Jew!"

More might he have said, but the spell was broken. With a ferocious yell, those living waves of the multitude rushed over the stern fanatic; six cimeters passed through him, and he fell not: at the seventh he was a corpse. Trodden in the clay—then whirled aloft—limb torn from limb,—ere a man could have drawn breath nine times, scarce a vestige of the human form was left to the mangled and bloody clay.

One victim sufficed to slake the wrath of the crowd. They gathered like wild beasts, whose hunger is appeased, around their monarch, who in vain had endeavoured to stay their summary revenge, arid who now, pale and breathless, shrunk from the passions he had excited. He faltered forth a few words of remonstrance and exhortation, turned the head of his steed, and took his way to his palace.

The crowd dispersed, but not yet to their homes. The crime of Almamen worked against his whole race. Some rushed to the Jews quarter, which they set on fire; others to the lonely mansion of Almamen.

Ximen, on quitting the king, had been before the mob. Not anticipating such an effect of the popular rage, he had hastened to the house, which he now deemed at length his own. He had just reached the treasury of his dead lord—he had just feasted his eyes on the massive ingots and glittering gems; in the lust of his heart he had just cried aloud, "And these are mine!" when he heard the roar of the mob below the wall,—when he saw the glare of their torches against the casement. It was in vain that he shrieked aloud, "I am the man that exposed the Jew!" the wild winds scattered his words over a deafened audience. Driven from his chamber by the smoke and flame, afraid to venture forth amongst the crowd, the miser loaded himself with the most precious of the store: he descended the steps, he bent his way to the secret vault, when suddenly the floor, pierced by the flames, crashed under him, and the fire rushed up in a fiercer and more rapid volume, as the death-shriek broke through that lurid shroud.

Such were the principal events of the last night of the Moorish dynasty in Granada.