The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his hand fell down; and so still was he that they began to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred, and said faintly, but distinctly,—
“Nearer, uncles, nearer.”
The old men bent over him, listening.
“A message to Guatamozin,—to whom I give my last thought as king. Say to him, that this lingering in death is no fault of his; the aim was true, but the arrow splintered upon leaving the bow. And lest the world hold him to account for my blood, hear me say, all of you, that I bade him do what he did. And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and give it to him—”
The voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the ancients stooped,—
“Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he murmured, and they were his last words,—his will.
A wail from the women proclaimed him dead.
The unassoilzied great may not see heaven; they pass from life into history, where, as in a silent sky, they shine for ever and ever. So the light of the Indian King comes to us, a glow rather than a brilliance; for, of all fates, his was the saddest. Better not to be than to become the ornament of another’s triumph. Alas for him whose death is an immortal sorrow!
Out of the palace-gate in the early morning passed the lords of the court in procession, carrying the remains of the monarch. The bier was heavy with royal insignia; nothing of funeral circumstance was omitted; honor to the dead was policy. At the same time the body was delivered, Cortes indicted the murderers; the ancients through whom he spoke were also the bearers of the dead king’s last will; back to the bold Spaniard, therefore, came the reply,—
“Cowards, who at the last moment beg for peace! you are not two suns away from your own graves! Think only of them!”