Visitors came
not merely from the city, but from all parts of the country; but
nobody knew him, and there began to be doubts in the minds of the
common people whether there might not be some truth in his story. That
Boabdil and his army were shut up in the mountain, was an old
tradition which many of the ancient inhabitants had heard from their
fathers. Numbers went up to the mountain of the sun, or rather of
St. Elena, in search of the cave mentioned by the soldier; and saw and
peeped into the deep dark pit, descending, no one knows how far,
into the mountain, and which remains there to this day- the fabled
entrance to the subterranean abode of Boabdil.
By degrees the soldier became popular with the common people. A
freebooter of the mountains is by no means the opprobrious character
in Spain that a robber is in any other country: on the contrary, he is
a kind of chivalrous personage in the eyes of the lower classes. There
is always a disposition, also, to cavil at the conduct of those in
command, and many began to murmur at the high-handed measures of old
Governor Manco, and to look upon the prisoner in the light of a
martyr.
The soldier, moreover, was a merry, waggish fellow, that had a
joke for every one who came near his window, and a soft speech for
every female. He had procured an old guitar also, and would sit by his
window and sing ballads and love-ditties to the delight of the women
of the neighborhood, who would assemble on the esplanade in the
evening and dance boleros to his music.
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