Scarce five weeks before, Cortes sallied from the palace with seventy soldiers, ragged, yet curiously bedight with gold and silver; now he returned full-handed, at his back thirteen hundred infantry, a hundred horse, additional guns and Tlascalans. Surely, he could hold what he had gained.
The garrison stood in the court-yard to receive him. Trumpet replied to trumpet, and the reverberation of drums shook the ancient house. When all were assigned to quarters, the ranks were broken, and the veterans—those who had remained, and those who had followed their chief—rushed clamorously into each other’s arms. Comradeship, with its strange love, born of toil and danger, and nursed by red-handed battle, asserted itself. The men of Narvaez looked on indifferently, or clomb the palace, and from the roof surveyed the vicinage, especially the great temple, apparently as forsaken as the city.
And in the court-yard Cortes met Alvarado, saluting him coldly. The latter excused his conduct as best he could; but the palliations were unsatisfactory. The general turned from him with bitter denunciations; and as he did so, a procession approached: four nobles, carrying silver wands; then a train in doubled files; then Montezuma, in the royal regalia, splendid from head to foot. The shade of the canopy borne above him wrapped his person in purpled softness, but did not hide that other shadow discernible in the slow, uncertain step, the bent form, the wistful eyes,—the shadow of the coming Fate. Such of his family as shared his captivity brought up the cortege.
At the sight, Cortes waited; his blood was hot, and his head filled with the fumes of victory; from a great height, as it were, he looked upon the retinue, and its sorrowful master; and his eyes wandered fitfully from the Christians, worn by watching and hunger, to the sumptuousness of the infidels; so that when the monarch drew nigh him, the temper of his heart was as the temper of his corselet.
“I salute you, O Malinche, and welcome your return,” said Montezuma, according to the interpretation of Marina.
The Spaniard heard him without a sign of recognition.
“The good Lady of your trust has had you in care; she has given you the victory. I congratulate you, Malinche.”
Still the Spaniard was obstinate.
The king hesitated, dropped his eyes under the cold stare, and was frozen into silence. Then Cortes turned upon his heel, and, without a word, sought his chamber.
The insult was plain, and the witnesses, Christian and infidel, were shocked; and while they stood surprised, Tula rushed up, and threw her arms around the victim’s neck, and laid her head upon his breast. The retinue closed around them, as if to hide the shame; and thus the unhappy monarch went back to his quarters,—back to his captivity, to his remorse, and the keener pangs of pride savagely lacerated.