It is a whimsical caprice of fortune
to present, in the grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a namesake
and descendant of the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of
Andalusian chivalry, leading an almost mendicant existence about
this once haughty fortress, which his ancestor aided to reduce; yet,
such might have been the lot of the descendants of Agamemnon and
Achilles, had they lingered about the ruins of Troy!
Of this motley community, I find the family of my gossiping
squire, Mateo Ximenes, to form, from their numbers at least, a very
important part. His boast of being a son of the Alhambra, is not
unfounded. His family has inhabited the fortress ever since the time
of the conquest, handing down an hereditary poverty from father to
son; not one of them having ever been known to be worth a maravedi.
His father, by trade a ribbon-weaver, and who succeeded the historical
tailor as the head of the family, is now near seventy years of age,
and lives in a hovel of reeds and plaster, built by his own hands,
just above the iron gate. The furniture consists of a crazy bed, a
table, and two or three chairs; a wooden chest, containing, besides
his scanty clothing, the "archives of the family." These are nothing
more nor less than the papers of various lawsuits sustained by
different generations; by which it would seem that, with all their
apparent carelessness and good humor, they are a litigious brood.
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