“For that I came. Speak!”
“I obey gladly. The opportunity is dearer to me than any honor. And, speaking, I will remember of what race I am.”
“Then—I condemn your policy.”
The monarch’s face remained placid. If the bluff words wounded him, he dissembled consummately.
“It was not well to go so often to the temple,” Guatamozin continued. “Huitzil’ is not there; the pabas have only his name, his image and altar; your breast is his true temple; there ought you to find him. Yesterday, you say, you were for war; the god was with you then: to-day you are for peace; the god has abandoned you. I know not in what words the lords Cuitlahua and Cacama urged their counsel, nor on what grounds. By the Sun! theirs is the only policy that comports with the fame of a ruler of Aztecs. Why speak of any other? For me, I would seek the strangers in battle and die, sooner than a minstrel should sing, or tradition tell, how Guatamozin, overcome by fear, dwelt in their camp praying peace as the beggar prays for bread.”
Literally, Guatamozin was speaking like a king.
“I have heard your pearl-divers say,” he continued, “that they never venture into a strange sea without dread. Like the new sea to them, this subject has been to your people; but however the declaration may strike your ears, O king, I have sounded all its depths. While your priests were asking questions of speechless hearts; while your lords were nursing their love of ease in the shade and perfume of your palace; while your warriors, forgetful of their glory, indulged the fancy that the new enemy were gods; while Montezuma was watching stars, and studying omens, and listening to oracles which the gods know not, hoping for wisdom to be found nowhere as certainly as in his own royal instincts,—face to face with the strangers, in their very camp, I studied them, their customs, language, and nature. Take heart, O king! Gods, indeed! Why, like men, I have seen them hunger and thirst; like men, heard them complain; on the other hand, like men, I have seen them feed and drink to surfeit, and heard them sing from gladness. What means their love of gold? If they come from the Sun, where the dwellings of the gods, and the hills they are built on, are all of gold, why should they be seeking it here? Nor is that all. I listened to the interpreter, through whom their leader explained his religion, and they are worshippers, like us, only they adore a woman, instead of a great, heroic god—”
“A woman!” exclaimed the king.
“Nay, the argument is that they worship at all. Gods do not adore each other!”