University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

The soldiers of Alvarado differed in no wise from
those veterans whom Don Amador had found standing
to their arms on the banks of the River of Canoes;
only that they presented, notwithstanding their loudly
vented delight, a care-worn and somewhat emaciated
appearance,—the consequence of long watches, perpetual
fears, and, in part, of famine. They broke

their ranks, as has been said, as soon as they beheld
their general, and surrounded him with every expression
of affection; and, while stretching forth their
hands with cries of gratitude and joy, invoked many
execrations on their imperial prisoner, the helpless
Montezuma, as the cause of all their sufferings.
Among them, Don Amador took notice of one man,
who, though armed and habited as a Spaniard, seemed,
in most other respects, an Indian, and of a more
savage race than any he had yet seen; for his face,
hands, and neck were tattooed with the most fantastic
figures, and his motions were those of a barbarian.
This was Geronimo de Aguilar, a companion of Balboa,
who, being wrecked on the coast of Yucatan,
had been preserved as a slave, and finally, adopted
as a warrior, among the hordes of that distant land;
from which he was rescued by Don Hernan,—happily
to serve as the means of communication, through
the medium of another and more remarkable interpreter,
with the races of Mexico. This other interpreter,
who approached the general with the dignified
gravity of an Indian princess, and was received
with suitable respect, was no less a person than that
maid of Painalla, sold by an unfeeling parent a slave to
one of the chieftains of Tobasco, presented by him to
Cortes, and baptized in the faith under the distinguished
title of the señora Doña Marina; who, by interpreting
to Aguilar, in the language of Yucatan, the communications
that were made in her native tongue,
thus gave to Cortes the means of conferring with her
countrymen, until her speedy acquisition of the Castilian
language removed the necessity of such tedious
intervention. But at this period, many Spaniards
had acquired a smattering of her tongue, and
could play the part of interpreters; and, for this reason,
Doña Marina will make no great figure in this
history. Other annalists have sufficiently immortalized
her beauty, her wisdom, and her fidelity; and
it has been her good fortune, continued even to this
day, to be distinguished with such honours as have
fallen to the lot of none of her masters. Her Christian
denomination, Marina, converted by her countrymen
into Malintzin, (a title that was afterwards
scornfully applied by them to Cortes himself,) and
this again, in modern days, corrupted by the Creoles
into Malinche, has had the singular fate to give name
both to a mountain and a divinity: the sierra of Tlascala
is now called the mountain of Malinche; and
the descendants of Montezuma pay their adorations
to the Virgin, under the title of Malintzin.

Don Amador de Leste, attended by De Morla,
as well as his new acquaintance, Alvarado, was able
to understand, as well as admire, many of the wonders
of the city, as he now, for the first time, planted
his foot on its imperial streets.

The retreat of the salt waters of Tezcuco has left
the present republican city of Mexico a full league
west of the lake. In the days of Montezuma, it stood
upon an island two miles removed from the western
shore, with which it communicated by the dike or calzada
of Tlacopan,—now called Tacuba. The causeway
of Iztapalapan, coming from the South, seven
miles in length, passed over the island and through
the city, and was continued in a line three miles
further to the northern shore, and to the city Tepejacac,
where now stand the church and the miraculous
picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Besides these
three great causeways, constructed with inconceivable
labour, there were two others,—that of Cojohuacan,
which, as we have mentioned, terminated in the
greater one of Iztapalapan, at the military point Xoloc,
a half league from the city; and that, a little southward
of the dike of Tacuba, which conveyed, in
aqueducts of earthenware, the pure waters of Chapoltepec
to the temples and squares of the imperial
city. The island was circular, saving that a broad
angle or peninsula ran out from the north-west, and
a similar one from the opposite point of the compass:
it was a league in diameter; but the necessities of
the people, after covering this ample space with their

dwellings, extended them far into the lake; and perhaps
as many edifices stood, on piles, in the water as
on the land. The causeways of Iztapalapan and
Tacuba, intersecting each other in the heart of the
island, divided the city into four convenient quarters,
to which a fifth was added, some few generations
before, when the little kingdom of Tlatelolco, occupying
the north-western peninsula, was added to Tenochtitlan.
On this peninsula and in this quarter,
Tlateloeco, stood the palace of an ancient king, which
the munificence of Montezuma had presented to Cortes
for a dwelling, and which the invader, six days
after the gift, by an act of as much treachery as
daring, converted into the prison of his benefactor.

The appearance of this vast and remarkable city
so occupied the mind of the neophyte, that, as he
rode staring along, he gave but few thoughts, and
fewer words, either to his kinsman or the page. It
was sunset, and in the increasing obscurity, he gazed,
as if on a scene of magic, on streets often having
canals in the midst, covered alike with bridges and
empty canoes; on stone houses, low indeed, but of a
strong and imposing structure, over the terraces of
which waved shrubs and flowers; and on high turrets,
which, at every vista, disclosed their distant pinnacles.
But he remarked also, and it was mentioned
by the cavaliers at his side as a bad omen, that neither
the streets, the canals, nor the house-tops presented
the appearance of citizens coming forth to
gaze upon them. A few Indians were now and then
seen skulking at a distance in the streets, raising their
heads from a half-concealed canoe, or peering from
a terrace among the shrubs. He would have thought
the city uninhabited, but that he knew it contained as
many living creatures, hidden among its retreats, as
some of the proudest capitals of Christendom. Even
the great square, the centre of life and of devotion,
was deserted; and the principal pyramid, a huge and
mountainous mass, consecrated to the most sanguinary
of deities, though its sanctuaries were lighted

by the ever-blazing urns, and though the town of temples
circumscribed by the great Coatepantli, or Wall
of Serpents, which surrounded this Mexican Olympus,
sent up the glare of many a devotional torch,—yet
did it seem, nevertheless, to be inhabited by beings as
inanimate as those monstrous reptiles which writhed
in stone along the infernal wall. In this light, and in
that which still played in the west, Don Amador marvelled
at the structure of the pyramid, and cursed it
as he marvelled. It consisted of five enormous platforms,
faced with hewn stone, and mounted by steps
so singularly planned, that, upon climbing the first
story, it was necessary to walk entirely round the
mass, before arriving at the stair-case which conducted
to the second. The reader may conceive of the
vast size of this pagan temple by being apprised,
that, to ascend it, the votaries were compelled, in
their perambulations, to walk a distance of full ten
furlongs, as well as to climb a hundred and fourteen
different steps. He may also comprehend the manner
in which the stairways were contrived, by knowing
that the first, ascending laterally from the corner,
was just as broad as the first platform was wider
than the second; leaving thus a sheer and continuous
wall from the ground to the top of the second terrace,
from the bottom of the second to the top of the third,
and so on, in like manner, to the top.

But the pyramid, crowned with altars and censers,
the innumerable temples erected in honour of nameless
deities at its foot, and the strange and most
hideous Coatepantli, were not the only objects which
excited the abhorrence of the cavalier. Without
the wall, and a few paces in advance of the great
gate which it covered as a curtain, rose a rampart
of earth or stone, oblong and pyramidal, but truncated,
twenty-five fathoms in length at the base, and
perhaps thirty feet in height. At either end of this
tumulus, was a tower of goodly altitude, built, as it
seemed at a distance and in the dim light, of some
singularly rude and uncouth material; and between

them, occupying the whole remaining space of the
terrace, was a sort of frame-work or cage of slender
poles, on all of which were strung thickly together,
certain little globes, the character of which Don
Amador could not penetrate, until fully abreast of
them. Then, indeed, he perceived, with horror, that
these globes were the skulls of human beings, the
trophies of ages of superstition; and beheld, in like
manner, that the towers which crowned the Golgotha,
(or Huitzompan, as it was called in the Mexican
tongue,) were constructed of the same dreadful materials,
cemented together with lime. The malediction
which he invoked upon the builders of the ghastly
temple, was unheard; for the spectacle froze his blood
and paralyzed his tongue.

It was not yet dark, when, having left these haunts
of idolatry, Don Amador found himself entering into
the court-yard of a vast, and yet not a very lofty,
building,—the palace of Axajacatl; wherein, with
drums beating, and trumpets answering joyously to
the salute of their friends, stood those individuals of
the garrison who had remained to watch over their
prisoners and treasures. The weary and the curious,
thronging together impatiently at the gate, mingling
with the garrison and some two thousand faithful
Tlascalans, who had been left by Cortes as their
allies, and who now rushed forward to salute the
viceroy of their gods, as some had denominated Don
Hernan, made such a scene of confusion, that, for a
moment, the neophyte was unable to ride into the
yard. In that moment, and while struggling both to
appease the unquiet of Fogoso, and to drive away
the feathered herd that obstructed him, his arm was
touched, and looking down, he beheld Jacinto at his
side, greatly agitated, and seemingly striving to disengage
himself from the throng.

“Give me thy hand,” cried Don Amador, “and
I will pull thee out of this rabble to the back of Fogoso.”

But the page, though he seized upon the hand of

his patron, and covered it with kisses, held back,
greatly to the surprise of Don Amador, who was
made sensible that hot tears were falling with the
kisses.

“I swear to thee, my boy! that I will discover thy
father for thee, if it be possible for man to find him,”
said the cavalier, diving at once, as he thought, to
the cause of this emotion.

But before he had well done speaking, the press
thickening around him, drew the boy from his side;
and when he had, a moment after, disengaged himself,
Jacinto was no longer to be seen. Not doubting,
however, that he was entangled in the mass, and
would immediately appear, he called out to him to
follow; and riding slowly up to Cortes, he had his
whole attention immediately absorbed by the spectacle
of the Indian emperor.

Issuing from the door of the palace, surrounded
as well by Spanish cavaliers as by the nobles, both
male and female, of his own household, who stood
by him,—the latter, at least,—with countenances of
the deepest veneration,—he advanced a step to do
honour to the dismounting general.

In the light of many torches, held by the people
about him, Don Amador, as he flung himself from
his horse, could plainly perceive the person and habiliments
of the pagan king. He was of good stature,
clad in white robes, over which was a huge mantle
of crimson, studded with emeralds and drops of gold,
knotted on his breast, or rather on his shoulder, so
as to fall, when he raised his arm, in careless but
very graceful folds; his legs were buskined with
gilded leather; his head covered with the copilli, or
crown, (a sort of mitre of plate-gold, graved and
chased with certain idolatrous devices,) from beneath
which fell to his shoulders long and thick locks of
the blackest hair. He did not yet seem to have
passed beyond the autumn of life. His countenance,
though of the darkest hue known among his people,
was good, somewhat long and hollow, but the features

well sculptured; and a gentle melancholy, a
characteristic expression of his race, deepened, perhaps,
in gloom, by a sense of his degradation, gave
it a something that interested the beholder.

In the abruptness with which he was introduced
to the regal barbarian, Don Amador had no leisure
to take notice of his attendants, all princely in rank,
and, two or three of them, the kings of neighbouring
cities: he only observed that their decorations were
far from being costly and ostentatious;—a circumstance,
which, he did not then know, marked the
greatness of their respect. In the absurd grandeur
which attached to the person of their monarch, no
distinction of inferior ranks was allowed to be traced,
during the time of an audience; and in his majestic
presence, a vassal king wore the coarse garments of
a slave. So important was esteemed the observance
of this courtly etiquette, that, at the first visit made
him, in his palace, by the Spaniards, the renowned
Cortes and his proud officers did not refuse to throw
off their shoes, and cover their armour with such
humble apparel as was offered them. But those days
were passed; the king of kings was himself the vassal
of a king's vassal. Yet notwithstanding this, it
had been, up to this time, the policy of Don Hernan
to soften the captivity, and engage the affections, of
the monarch, by such marks of reverence as might
still allow him to dream he possessed the grandeur,
along with the state, of a king. Before this day,
Cortes had never been known to pass his prisoner,
without removing his cap or helmet; and indeed,
such had been so long the habit of his cavaliers, that
all, as they now dismounted, fell to doffing their
casques without delay, until the action of their leader
taught them a new and unexpected mode of salutation.

The weak spirit of Montezuma had yielded to the
arts of the Spaniard; and forgetting the insults
of past days, the loss of his empire, and the shame
of his imprisonment, he had already conceived a species
of affection for his wronger. Cortes had no

sooner, therefore, leaped from his horse, than the
emperor, with outstretched arms, and with his sadness
yielding to a smile, advanced to meet him.

“Dog of a king!” said the invader, with a ferocious
frown, “dost thou starve and murder my people,
and then offer me the hand of friendship? away
with thee! I defy thee, and thou shalt see that I can
punish!” Thus saying, and thrusting the king rudely
aside, he stepped into the palace.

A wild cry of lamentation, at this insult (it needed
no interpretation) to their king, burst from the lips of
all the Mexicans; and the Spaniards themselves were
not less panic-struck. The gentle manners of Montezuma,
and his munificence, (for he was in the daily
habit of enriching them with costly presents,) had
endeared him to most of his enemies; and even the
soldiers of the garrison, who had so lately accused
him of endeavouring to famish them, had no belief
in the justice of their charges. Many of them therefore,
both soldiers and hidalgos, indignant and
grieved at the wanton insult, had their sympathies
strongly excited, when they beheld the monarch roll
his eyes upon them with a haggard smile, in which
pride was struggling vainly with a bitter sense of humiliation.
De Morla and several others rushed forwards
to atone, by caresses, for the crime of their
general. But it was too late; the king threw his mantle
over his head, and without the utterance of any complaint,
passed, with his attendants, into his apartments.
His countenance was never more, from that day, seen
to wear a smile.

Don Amador de Leste was greatly amazed and
shocked by this rudeness; and it was one of many
other circumstances, which, by lessening his respect
for the general, contributed to weaken his friendship,
and undermine his gratitude. But he had no time to
indulge his indignation. He was startled by a loud
cry, or rather a shriek, from the lips of the knight
Calavar; and running to the gate, beheld, in the

midst of a confused mass of men, rushing to and fro,
and calling out as if to secure an assassin, his kinsman
lying, to all appearance dead, in the arms of his
attendants.