“I have loved you well, Guatamozin. Very good it was to mark you come up from boyhood, and day by day grow in strength and thought. I never knew one so rich in promise. Ours is a proud race, and you seemed to have all its genius. From the beginning you were thoughtful and provident; in the field there was always a victory for you, and in council your words were the soul of policy. O, ill was the day evil came between us, and suspicion shattered the love I bore you! Arise! I have not crossed the lake for explanations; there is that to speak of more important to us both.”
The ’tzin arose, and looked into the monarch’s face, his own suffused with grief.
“Is not a king punished for the wrong he does?”
Montezuma’s brows lowered, chilling the fixed look which was his only answer; and the ’tzin spoke on.
“I cannot accuse you directly; but this I will say, O king: a just man, and a brave, never condemns another upon suspicion.”
The monarch’s eyes blazed with sudden fire, and from his maxtlatl he drew a knife. The ’tzin moved not; the armed hand stopped; an instant each met the other’s gaze, then the weapon was flung away.
“I am a child,” said the king, vexed and ashamed. “When I came here I did not think of the past, I thought only of the Empire; but trouble has devoured my strength of purpose, until my power mocks me, and, most miserable of men, I yearn to fly from myself, without knowing where to find relief. A vague impulse—whence derived, except from intolerable suffering of mind, I know not—brought me to you. O ’tzin, silent be the differences that separate us. Yours I know to be a tongue of undefiled truth; and if not for me now, for our country, and the renown of our fathers, I believe you will speak.”
The shame, the grief, and the self-accusation moved the ’tzin more than the deadly menace.
“Set my feet, O king! set my feet in the way to serve or save my country, and I will tread it, though every step be sown with the terrors of Mictlan.”
“I did not misjudge you, my son,” the king said, when he had again perfectly mastered his feelings.