Don Antonio's two sons were enraged with him, and when the premeditated storming of the Alhambra was unsuccessful, they fled to the so-called King of the Alpujarras, Aben Humega, in the Sierra Nevada, and fell covered with honor in that unexampled war of extermination.
"You should have come to us sooner," interrupted the Duenna; "then you would have looked round you: it was not as it is now; Flanders carpets on the floors, tapestry of gold and silk on the walls; gold and silver goblets on the tables, that one thought they must break under them." We silenced the old woman with difficulty, and Manuela went on with the narrative.
"The insurrection was suppressed, the Moors scattered, fallen, or imprisoned. As long as the philanthropic Marquis of Mondejar ruled in Grenada, my father lived undisturbed in the seclusion to which his own wish and his diminished fortune consigned him; when the noble Marquis was recalled, my father was arrested as a secret devotee of Islamism. The King's half-brother, Don John of Austria, who next held the government, again set him free from prison. My father came here to live in peace, far from the remains of his former associations. For ten years he remained undisturbed; he went daily to church, but otherwise never left the house, employing the whole of his time in the study of learned writings and in my education.
