They were walking to and
fro, with solemn pace, but paused and beckoned to him. The old
soldier, however, took to flight, and could never afterwards be
prevailed upon to enter the Alhambra. Thus it is that men sometimes
turn their backs upon fortune; for it is the firm opinion of Mateo,
that the Moors intended to reveal the place where their treasures
lay buried. A successor to the invalid soldier was more knowing; he
came to the Alhambra poor; but at the end of a year went off to
Malaga, bought houses, set up a carriage, and still lives there one of
the richest as well as oldest men of the place; all which, Mateo
sagely surmised, was in consequence of his finding out the golden
secret of these phantom Moors.
I now perceived I had made an invaluable acquaintance in this son of
the Alhambra, one who knew all the apocryphal history of the place,
and firmly believed in it, and whose memory was stuffed with a kind of
knowledge for which I have a lurking fancy, but which is too apt to be
considered rubbish by less indulgent philosophers. I determined to
cultivate the acquaintance of this learned Theban.
Immediately opposite the Hall of the Abencerrages a portal, richly
adorned, leads into a hall of less tragical associations. It is
light and lofty, exquisitely graceful in its architecture, paved
with white marble, and bears the suggestive name of the Hall of the
Two Sisters.
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