He took
good care, however, to guard his remaining daughter, who had no
disposition to elope: it is thought, indeed, that she secretly
repented having remained behind: now and then she was seen leaning
on the battlements of the tower, and looking mournfully towards the
mountains in the direction of Cordova, and sometimes the notes of
her lute were heard accompanying plaintive ditties, in which she was
said to lament the loss of her sisters and her lover, and to bewail
her solitary life. She died young, and, according to popular rumor,
was buried in a vault beneath the tower, and her untimely fate has
given rise to more than one traditionary fable.
The following legend, which seems in some measure to spring out of
the foregoing story, is too closely connected with high historic names
to be entirely doubted. The Count's daughter, and some of her young
companions, to whom it was read in one of the evening tertulias,
thought certain parts of it had much appearance of reality; and
Dolores, who was much more versed than they in the improbable truths
of the Alhambra, believed every word of it.
Legend of the Rose of the Alhambra.
FOR SOME time after the surrender of Granada by the Moors, that
delightful city was a frequent and favorite residence of the Spanish
sovereigns, until they were frightened away by successive shocks of
earthquakes, which toppled down various houses, and made the old
Moslem towers rock to their foundation.
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