“What does it mean, my lord Cacama?” asked the monarch, gravely.
Cacama’s eyes dropped as he replied,—
“When we write of you, O king, we paint an eagle; When we write of the ’tzin Guatamo, we paint an owl.”
“What!” said the lord Cuitlahua, “would the ’tzin attack his king?”
And the monarch looked from one to the other strangely, saying only, “The owl is the device on his shield.”
Then he entered the palanquin; whereupon some of the nobles lifted it on their shoulders, and the company, in procession, set out for the tianguez. On the way they were joined by Iztlil’, the Tezcucan; and it was remarkable that, of them all, he was the only one silent about the paper.
The Iztapalapan street, of great width, and on both sides lined with gardens, palaces, and temples, was not only the boast of Tenochtitlan; its beauty was told in song and story throughout the Empire. The signal of assemblage for the day’s great pastime found Xoli and his provincial friend lounging along the broad pave of the beautiful thoroughfare. They at once started for the tianguez. The broker was fat, and it was troublesome for him to keep pace with the hunter; nevertheless, they overtook a party of tamanes going in the same direction, and bearing a palanquin richly caparisoned. The slaves, very sumptuously clad, proceeded slowly and with downcast eyes, and so steadily that the carriage had the onward, gliding motion of a boat.
“Lower,—down, boy! See you not the green panache?” whispered Xoli, half frightened.
Too late. The Chalcan, even as he whispered, touched the pavement, but Hualpa remained erect: not only that; he looked boldly into the eyes of the occupants of the palanquin,—two women, whose beauty shone upon him like a sudden light. Then he bent his head, and his heart closed upon the recollection of what he saw so that it never escaped. The picture was of a girl, almost a woman, laughing; opposite her, and rather in the shade of the fringed curtain, one older, though young, and grave and stately; her hair black, her face oval, her eyes large and lustrous. To her he made his involuntary obeisance. Afterwards she reminded many a Spaniard of the dark-eyed hermosura with whom he had left love-tokens in his native land.
“They are the king’s daughters, the princesses Tula and Nenetzin,” said Xoli, when fairly past the carriage. “And as you have just come up from the country, listen. Green is the royal color, and belongs to the king’s family; and wherever met, in the city or on the lake, the people salute it. Though what they meet be but a green feather in a slave’s hand, they salute. Remember the lesson. By the way, the gossips say that Guatamozin will marry Tula, the eldest one.”