University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

The assault upon the garden and palace of Guatimozin,
though the last blow given to his power,
it has not been thought needful to describe in any
of its details. It is well known, that the occasion
was used by the few nobles of the empire who yet
survived, to withdraw their monarch with his family
from the island, in the vain hope of reaching the
main land, through a line of brigantines and armed
piraguas. It is also well known, that, notwithstanding
the stratagem with which these faithful
barbarians essayed to protect the last of their native
lords, by exposing their own defenceless gondolas
to destruction, he was captured, in consequence of
his magnanimous self-devotion, and transferred with
his trembling family, from his royal piragua to the
galley of Garci Holguin.

Drums, trumpets, falconets, fire-arms, and human
voices at once proclaimed the importance of the
capture, and the triumph of the victors; and with
all the speed of sails and oars, the fortunate cavalier
bore his prize towards the nearest landing in possession
of the Spaniards, deriding and even defying
the claim set up by Sandoval, as the superior officer,
to the honour of presenting the prisoner to the Captain-General.
Long before he had reached the palace
of Axajacatl, it was known throughout the
whole city that Guatimozin was in the hands of the
besiegers. The warriors who still fought in the

garden, beheld the surrender on the lake, instantly
threw down their arms, and submitted with sullen
indifference to the fate they had long anticipated.
With the interview betwixt the king and the conqueror
all readers are familiar. The Captain-General,
sumptuously dressed, and in the midst of such
state as could be prepared for an occasion so imposing,
received the prisoner, (in whose wasted
figure and dejected countenance it was not possible
to recognize the half-forgotten Olin,) in the hall
of the palace of Axajacatl, where his ancestors had
been kings and princes, but into which he now entered
a captive and vassal. The Captain-General
received him not only with respect, but with an
appearance of sympathy and kindness. In truth,
he could not but admire the fortitude of his youthful
foe; and he reflected, not without exultation,
that if his desperate resistance had increased the
pains and perils of conquest, and frequently dashed
all hopes of success, it had made his own triumph a
thousand times more glorious. He descended from
his chair of state, and raising the dejected captive
from the floor, upon which he had flung himself in
token of submission, he embraced him with many
expressions of respect and encouragement.

“Fear not—neither for thy life nor crown,” he
said. “Thou perceivest, the king of Spain, my
master, is invincible. Reign still in Mexico; but
reign as his vassal.”

He would have replaced on the captive's head
the copilli of gold, which had been brought from the
gondola and put into his hand; but Guatimozin rejected
it with a melancholy gesture, saying,

“It is the Teuctli's—I am no more the king.
Malintzin! be merciful to the people of Mexico:
they are now slaves. Have pity also on the women
and children, that come from the palace; for they
are of the household of Montezuma. As for myself,

Malintzin, hearken to what I say. The kings of
Mexico have all died; when they gave their breath
to heaven, the crown was on their front, and the
sceptres on their bosom. Why then should I live,
who am no longer a king? Malintzin, I have fought
for Mexico, I have shed blood for my country, and
now I shed tears; I can do no more for my people
—It is fitting, therefore, that I should die—But I
should die like a king.”—He extended his hand,
and touched the jewelled dagger that glittered in
the baldric of his foe. The action was without any
sign of hostility, and his countenance, now uplifted
upon Cortes, was bathed with tears. “Let Malintzin
do the work—Plunge this dagger into my bosom,
and let me depart.”

There was something affecting even to the iron-hearted
conqueror in the situation and demeanour
of the poor infidel, thus beseeching, and evidently
with as much sincerity as simplicity, a death of honour
after a life of patriotism; and Cortes would
have renewed his caresses and assurances of friendship,
had not his ears been that moment struck by
voices without, pronouncing the name of Juan
Lerma, with brutal execrations. He signed to those
cavaliers who had conducted the monarch to his
presence, to lead him away; and a moment after,
Juan Lerma was conducted up to his footstool.
Dejected, spiritless, overcome perhaps by the ferocious
calls for vengeance which had heralded his
steps to the palace, as well as by the exhaustion of
long bodily suffering, he did not raise his eyes from
the floor, until he heard the voice of Cortes pronounce
the faltering words,—

“Juan of Castillejo, I have done you a great
wrong.—Yes,” he continued, with a louder voice,
when Juan looked up, surprised not more by his
altered tones than by a name so unexpected and
unknown, “Yes, and let all bear witness to my

confession;—I have done thee, not one wrong only,
but many; for which I heartily repent me, and, before
all this assemblage, do beseech thy forgiveness.”

“My forgiveness, señor!” stammered Juan, while
all the rest looked on in amazement.

“Thy forgiveness,” repeated the conqueror, with
double emphasis. “Thou hast been belied to me,
bitterly maligned; but heaven has punished the
slanderer, who slew mine own peace of mind, that
he might compass thy death.”

“Alas, señor,” said Juan; “in his death-gasp,
Guzman confessed to me—”

“Speak not of Guzman—forget him.—Have ye
heard, my masters! and well taken note of what
is spoken? Now begone, all, and leave me alone
with my recovered prodigal.—Juan—Juan Lerma,
—Juan of Castillejo,” he cried, as soon as the wondering
audience had vanished; “if Guzman have
confessed to you, you must know why I have been
maddened into wrath and injustice.—But thy sister,
Juan, where is thy sister? my poor Magdalena?
Ah, Juan! it was but a fiendish aberration, that set
me against the child of my sister!”

With these words, he threw himself upon Juan's
neck, and embraced him with a fervour that indicated
the return of all his old affections, uttering a
thousand exclamations, in which he mingled recurrences
to the past with many a reference to the
present and future. “This will be a glad day to
Catalina, for she ever loved thee—Dolt that I was,
to think that her love could be aught but a mother's!
My father, Juan, my father, too! his gray hairs
will yet be laid in a grave of joy; for he shall behold
the son of his daughter seated in the inheritance
of a noble father. And thy sister—she shall
shine with the proudest and noblest.—I knew thee
upon the causeway, too, though I was left in a

coma, and half expiring. We have full proof of thy
claims.—And thy princess, too—dost thou remember
the silver cross?” taking it from his bosom—
“Were there a duke's son demanded her, she
should be thine.—What ho! some one bring me—
But, nay—Thy sister, Juan! does she not live?”

Juan was stunned, stupified, bewildered, by a
transformation in his own character and in the feelings
of the general, so sudden and so marvellous.
Yet he strove to reply to the last question, and was
in the act of uttering a broken and hasty explanation,
when a loud cry came from the passage, and
rushing out, they beheld a party of soldiers bearing,
in a litter of robes torn from the burning palace, the
body, or the living frame, they knew not which, of
the unhappy nun, over whom the penitent Gregorio
was bitterly lamenting.

It was indeed Magdalena, her garments scorched,
her face like the face of the dying. Yet she did
not seem to have suffered from the flames. The
soldiers had found her in a part of the palace not
touched by the fire, and scarce invaded by the
smoke; and perhaps a subtle physician would have
traced her dreadful condition rather to some overpowering
convulsion of spirit than to any physical
injury. She was indeed dying, the victim of contending
passions, with which the education of a
cloister had so ill fitted her to contend.

We will not speak of the meeting of Juan and his
dark-eyed proselyte. It took place beside the couch
of the dying, girl, who, for love of him, had given up
the vows of religion and the fame of woman, and
perished with frenzy, when she discovered that that
love was more than the love of a sister.

At nightfall, and while she still lay insensible, save
that a faint moan occasionally trembled from her lips,
there arose a tempest of lightning, thunder, and
rain, far exceeding in violence any that had before
burst over the heads of the Spaniards, and which

Bernal Diaz has recorded in his history, as having
been the most dreadful that ever confounded his mind
and senses. It seemed as if the warlike divinities
of Mexico were now taking leave of their broken
altars and subjugated people, with a display of
strength and fury, never more to be exercised. It
ceased not until midnight, and then only when it
had discharged a bolt that shook the island to its
foundation, and tumbled many a ruined cabin and
dilapidated palace, upon the heads of their unhappy
inmates.

It was in the midst of this conflict of the elements,
that the broken spirit passed from its weary
prison; and what had been beauty and affection,
genius and passion, became a clod, to claim kindred
with its fellow of the valley. It was better indeed
that she should thus perish; for her nature was
above that of earth, and even the passion that destroyed
her, pure, enthusiastic, and devoted as it
was, was unworthy the spirit it had subdued. It
was such as is the molewarp to the rose-bush, or the
myrtle-tree, which he can destroy by burrowing at
their roots, even when the winter's blast can scarce
rive away a branch.

The remains of this ill-fated being were interred
upon a sequestered hill, west of Mexico, where
Gregorio Castillejo built a hermitage, and mourned
over her for the few years he survived her. He
left the odour of sanctity behind him, and the hermitage
is now forgotten in the chapel built upon its
site, and dedicated to Our Lady de los Remedios.
To this place Cortes withdrew, with his whole army,
in order that the ruined city might be purified of
corses and rubbish, that rendered it horrible even
to a soldier, no longer inflamed by the fire of battle.
He soon, however, removed to Xochimilco, the
Field of Flowers, where the time of the purification
was devoted to solemn rejoicings and profane festivities.

To all those who may yet be disposed to consider
our account of the strength and splendour of
the empire of Montezuma as fabulous, we recommend
no better study than the honest, worthy, and
single-minded historian, Bernal Diaz del Castillo,
who lived to complete his Historia Verdadera, fifty
years afterwards, in the loyal city of Guatimala, in
which he held the honourable post of Regidor, the
venerable, and, at that period, almost the sole survivor
of the followers of Cortes. He has recorded
one striking proof of the vast multitudes of pagans
that had been concentrated within the island of
Mexico. After averring, with a solemn oath, that,
after the fall of the city, the streets, houses, squares,
courts, and canals, were so covered with dead bodies,
that it was impossible to move without treading upon
them, he relates, that, Cortes having ordered all who
survived, principally women and children, and the
wounded, to evacuate the city, preparatory to its
purification, `for three days and three nights, all
the causeways were full of the wretched fugitives,
who were so weak and sickly, so squalid and pestilential,
that it was misery to behold them.' Three
broad highways, covered, for the space of three days
and nights, by a moving mass of widows and orphans,
the trophies of a gallant achievement! the
first fruits of the ambition of a single individual!

As Bernal Diaz retained, to the last, a jealous regard
for the honour of his leader, this friendly weakness,
taken into consideration along with the infirmities
of memory incident to his advanced age,
may perhaps account for his failure to complete the
story of Juan Lerma. He may have recollected, as
is often the case with an old man, the earliest facts
of the story, while the later ones slipped entirely
from his mind.

Of Cortes himself, it is scarce necessary to apprize
the reader, that he lived to subdue other empires,
and experience the ingratitude of a monarch,

whose favour he had so amply merited. He fought
for renown, for his king, and for heaven. Heaven
alone can judge the merit of his acts, for men
are yet unwilling to sit in judgment upon the brave;
his king requited him with insults and positive oppression;
and fame has placed him among those
who have trodden out the wine-press of human desolation,
and live in marble.

As for the young Count of Castillejo, his claims
to the inheritance of his father were too well substantiated
to be resisted; and the crimes of Gregorio
had left none to oppose. As a subordinate in
the work of conquest, there was nothing in him to
be feared; and when he bore from a land he could
only remember with sorrow, a bride whose father
had borne the witching name of king, he was received
with as much favour, and distinguished by
as many honours, as any other Conquistador, who
transplanted among the dames of Castile, a wife
wooed within the palaces of Montezuma.

The fate of Guatimozin is well known. The
crown he was still enforced to wear, did not protect
him from the torture of fire; nor could his noble
character and unhappy fall secure him from a death
of degradation. Four years after the fall of his
empire, and at a distance of several hundred
leagues from his native valley, he expiated upon a
gibbet, a crime that existed only in the gloomy
and remorseful imagination of the Conqueror. And
thus, with two royal kinsmen, kings and feudatories
of Anahuac, he was left to swing in the winds, and
feed the vultures, of a distant and desert land. He
merited a higher distinction, a loftier respect, and a
profounder compassion, than men will willingly accord
to a barbarian and INFIDEL.