Now as the hill of the Alhambra rises from the very
midst of the city of Granada, being, as it were, an excrescence of the
capital, it must at all times be somewhat irksome to the
captain-general, who commands the province, to have thus an imperium
in imperio, a petty independent post in the very centre of his
domains. It was rendered the more galling, in the present instance,
from the irritable jealousy of the old governor, that took fire on the
least question of authority and jurisdiction; and from the loose
vagrant character of the people who had gradually nestled themselves
within the fortress, as in a sanctuary, and thence carried on a system
of roguery and depredation at the expense of the honest inhabitants of
the city.
Thus there was a perpetual feud and heart-burning between the
captain-general and the governor, the more virulent on the part of the
latter, inasmuch as the smallest of two neighboring potentates is
always the most captious about his dignity. The stately palace of
the captain-general stood in the Plaza Nueva, immediately at the
foot of the hill of the Alhambra, and here was always a bustle and
parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling
bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and public square in
front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally
strut backwards and forwards, with his Toledo girded by his side,
keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his
quarry from his nest in a dry tree.
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