And for a while he returned to his choclatl. When next he looked up, and spoke, his face was bright and smiling.
“With a train, my children, you are to go in advance of me, and meet Malinche at Xoloc. Embrace him, speak to him honorably, return with him, and I will be at the first bridge outside the city. Cuitlahua and Cacama, be near when he steps forward to salute me. I will lean upon your shoulders. Get you gone now. Remember Anahuac!”
Shortly afterward a train of nobles, magnificently arrayed, issued from the palace, and marched down the great street leading to the Iztapalapan causeway. The house-tops, the porticos, even the roofs and towers of temples, and the pavements and cross-streets, were already occupied by spectators. At the head of the procession strode the four heralds. Silently they marched, in silence the populace received them. The spectacle reminded very old men of the day the great Axaya’ was borne in mournful pomp to Chapultepec. Once only there was a cheer, or, rather, a war-cry from the warriors looking down from the terraces of a temple. So the cortege passed from the city; so, through a continuous lane of men, they moved along the causeway; so they reached the gates of Xoloc, at which the two dikes, one from Iztapalapan, the other from Cojohuaca, intersected each other. There they halted, waiting for Cortes.
And while the train was on the road, out of one of the gates of the royal garden passed a palanquin, borne by four slaves in the king’s livery. The occupants were the princesses Tula and Nenetzin, with Yeteve in attendance. In any of the towns of old Spain there would have been much remark upon the style of carriage, but no denial of their beauty, or that they were Spanish born. The elder sister was thoughtful and anxious; the younger kept constant lookout; the priestess, at their feet, wove the flowers with which they were profusely supplied into ramilletes, and threw them to the passers-by. The slaves, when in the great street, turned to the north.
“Blessed Lady!” cried Yeteve. “Was the like ever seen?”
“What is it?” asked Nenetzin.
“Such a crowd of people!”
Nenetzin looked out again, saying, “I wish I could see a noble or a warrior.”
“That may not be,” said Tula. “The nobles are gone to receive Malinche, the warriors are shut up in the temples.”
“Why so?”