All day, however, the mind of Lope Sanchez was distracted with a
thousand cares. He could not help hovering within distant view of
the two statues, and became nervous from the dread that the golden
secret might be discovered. Every footstep that approached the place
made him tremble. He would have given any thing could he but have
turned the heads of the statues, forgetting that they had looked
precisely in the same direction for some hundreds of years, without
any person being the wiser.
"A plague upon them!" he would say to himself, "they'll betray
all; did ever mortal hear of such a mode of guarding a secret?" Then
on hearing any one advance, he would steal off, as though his very
lurking near the place would awaken suspicion. Then he would return
cautiously, and peep from a distance to see if every thing was secure,
but the sight of the statues would again call forth his indignation.
"Ay, there they stand," would he say, "always looking, and looking,
and looking, just where they should not. Confound them! they are
just like all their sex; if they have not tongues to tattle with,
they'll be sure to do it with their eyes."
At length, to his relief, the long anxious day drew to a close.
The sound of footsteps was no longer heard in the echoing halls of the
Alhambra; the last stranger passed the threshold, the great portal was
barred and bolted, and the bat and the frog and the hooting owl
gradually resumed their nightly vocations in the deserted palace.
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