The envoys were royally entertained, as was the custom, by fete and feast, and made to feel that they were guests of a great monarch.
The nature of their mission was not known beyond the three representatives, nor was it expected to be until officially announced. Maxtla had not the slightest idea as to the significance of it.
In the forenoon of the day following their arrival at the palace, and about the time of the opening of the tourney at Tlacopan, an audience was granted the envoys; and, in the presence of the king and his counselors, the embassy's mission was made known, and the conditions of the ultimatum presented.
Maxtla was astounded and exasperated by what seemed to him the audacity of his petty neighbors. He, however, held his feelings partially under subjection. With all his fierceness and cruelty of disposition he was politic and cunning. He saw, as he thought, in the action of Tlacopan and her allies, a pretense for advancing his interests in that direction—the very thing he had been scheming to bring about, and shaped his course accordingly.
His reply to the envoys was to the effect that the action of the governments they represented was an insult, not only to his own dignity as a monarch, but that of his great empire. Tezcuco, he said, was his by conquest, and would not be relinquished except by force of arms. The enthronement of the despised Hualcoyotl, he further said, would be resisted to the last extremity.
"Go back to your masters," said he, "and say to them that we scorn their implied threats, and will resent the insult they have offered us with the whole force of our empire."
Maxtla's reply to the conditions of the ultimatum was equivalent to a declaration of war, and as such the embassy interpreted it.
Every respect was shown the envoys and their suit; and, when they departed from the Tepanec capital, they were escorted with due courtesy beyond the city's confines.
In a very short time after their departure the word went abroad throughout Maxtla's dominions that a war was imminent. His scattered forces began immediately to concentrate, and orders were issued for new levies to be made on Tezcuco and his other dependencies for additional troops.
In due time the couriers returned from Tezcuco with the startling intelligence that all the Tezcucans proper, who were subject to military duty, had gone to attend the tourney at Tlacopan, leaving only his own adherents available for immediate service.