Almahide, ou l'esclave reine
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Almahide, ou l'esclave reine (8 vols., 1661-3) is a novel sequence by Madeleine de Scudéry.
Description by Dunlop
The romance of Almahide
also by Mad. Scudery, is founded on the dissensions of the Zegris and Abencerrages (see supra, ii. p. 405, etc.), and opens with an account of a civil broil between these factions in the streets of Granada. The contest was beheld from the summit of a tower, by Eoderic de Narva, a Spanish general, who had been taken prisoner by the Moors, and Fernand de Solis, (a slave of Queen Almahide,) who, at the request of the Christian chief, related to him the his- tory of the court of Granada.
On the birth of Almahide, the reigning queen, an Ara- bian astrologer predicted that she would be happy and unfortunate, at once a maid and a married woman, the wife of a king and a slave, and a variety of similar conim- drums. In order that she might avoid this inconsistent destiny, her father Morayzel sent her to Algiers, under care of the astrologer, who must have been the person of all others most interested in its fulfilment. The expedi- tion falls into the hands of corsairs who scuttle the vessel, and sail off with Almahide to Origni, an isle off the Nor- man coast, where she grows up under the care of Dom
which Voltaire has appreciated. Ci^lie gives us portraits of all the people who made a noise in the world at the date its author lived (Cf. Borrommeo, supra, vol. i., p. 3). . . . Letter from Voltaire to Mmo. Deifant, April 24, 1769.
^ Almahide ou I'esclave reyne par Mde. Scud^ry, Paris, 1660, 8 vols. See Bib. Univ. des Romans, 1775, Aout. pp. 155-214. An English translation, by J. Phillips, London, 1677, fol., and a German b? F. A. Pernauern, Niimberg, 1697.
Fernand, one of her attendants, who had been captured with her. Subsequently the pirates set sail for Constan- tinople, in order to sell Almahide to the Sultan. They are wrecked on the coast of Andalusia. Dom Fernand is separated from his charge, who was received in the palace of Doih Pedro de Leon, the duke of Medina-Sidonia, where a reciprocal attachment arose between her and Ponce de Leon, son of that nobleman, and she soon after won the affections of the marquis of Montemayor, heir of the duke d'Infantada, having in the meanwhile embraced Christianity.
At length the parents of Almahide, learning that she was in the palace of Medina Sidonia, sent to reclaim her, and she was accordingly delivered up to them. Ponce de Leon followed her to G-ranada, in the garb of a slave : in that disguise he got himself sold to Morayzel, the father of Almahide, who presented him to that lady. A similar stratagem was adopted by her other Spanish lover, who allowed himself to be taken prisoner in a skirmish with the Moors, commanded by Morayzel, who ordered him to be conducted to Granada, and presented likewise as an attendant to his daughter.
The dissensions which arose between the two lovers thus placed around the person of their mistress, are re- strained by the prudence and temper of Almahide, but each watehes in secret an opportunity of supplanting his rival.
Meanwhile Boaudilin, king of Granada, beheld his em- pire a prey to the factions of the Zegris and Abenoerrages. As the monarch was of the former tribe, it was judged advisable, in order to heal the dissensions, that he should chuse a queen from among the latter. Unfortunately he was so deeply enamoured of Miriam, a woman of low birth, whom it would have been unsuitable to have raised to the regal dignity, that he refused to offend her by espousing another. In these circumstances, Almahide was requested to impose on the public, by performing for a season the exterior offices of queen. She readily con- sented to execute a part in this plan ; but she had scarcely entered on the public performance of royalty, when the king fell in love with her pseudo majestv, and unexpectedlj proposed that she should not confine herself to the discharge of the ostensible duties of her situation. This important change in the original stipulation was re- sisted by Almahide, on the ground that her heart was already engaged to another, and the romance breaks off with an account of some ineffectual stratagems, on the part of the king, to discover for whose sake Almahide rejected a more ample participation in the cares of royalty.
It will be perceived that the romance is left incomplete,
and the part of which an abstract has been given, though
published in eight volumes 8vo., can only be regarded as
a sort of introductory chapter to the adventures that were
intended to follow.
