It
breathes along the very walls. Wherever Antonio turned his eye, he
beheld inscriptions in Arabic, wherein the perpetuity of Moorish power
and splendour within these walls was confidently predicted.
Alas! how has the prophecy been falsified! Many of the basins, where
the fountains had once thrown up their sparkling showers, were dry and
dusty. Some of the palaces were turned into gloomy convents, and the
barefoot monk paced through these courts, which had once glittered
with the array, and echoed to the music, of Moorish chivalry.
In the course of his rambles, the student more than once encountered
the old man of the library. He was always alone, and so full of
thought as not to notice any one about him. He appeared to be intent
upon studying those half-buried inscriptions, which, are found, here
and there, among the Moorish ruins, and seem to murmur from the earth
the tale of former greatness. The greater part of these have since
been translated; but they were supposed by many at the time, to
contain symbolical revelations, and golden maxims of the Arabian sages
and astrologers. As Antonio saw the stranger apparently deciphering
these inscriptions, he felt an eager longing to make his acquaintance,
and to participate in his curious researches; but the repulse he had
met with at the library deterred him from making any further advances.
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