"For the love of God, señores!" cried Villafana, finding speech at last, "what do you mean? what do you design? You will not kill an innocent man? Will you judge me at the charge of a liar? Gaspar is my sworn foe. I will make all clear.—Señor, I have been drinking, and my mind is confused: take me not at this disadvantage. Oh, for God's sake, what do you mean?—The list? what, the list? 'Tis for a merry-making—a rejoicing for my birthday. I will explain all to your excellencies.—I am an innocent man.—Gaspar is a forsworn caitiff—a caitiff, señores, a caitiff!—I claim trial by the civil judges."—
"Gag him," cried one.
"Strike him on the mouth," said another. And Villafana, gasping for breath, uttered, for a moment, nothing but inarticulate murmurs.
"De Olid, Marin, De Ircio," cried Cortes, rapidly, and with inexpressible decision, "ye are judges of life and death; Sandoval and Alvarado, by right of office, ye can sit in judgment; Quinones, Guzman, and the rest, I make you, in the king's name, special associates of the others.—Why, here is a court, not martial, but civil; and the dog shall have judgment to his content! He stands charged of treason.—Guilty, señores? or not guilty?"
"Guilty!" cried all with one voice: and De Olid added, "Let us take him into the garden, and hang him to the cedar-tree."
"To the window," said Cortes, pointing with his sword to the stout cords, hanging so invitingly from the serpent's-head; and in an instant the victim was dragged upon the platform.
Up to this moment, his fears had been uttered rather in vehement complaints than in outcries; but now, when he perceived that he was condemned by a mockery of trial, doomed without the respite of a minute's space to pray, the rope dangling before his eyes, and already in the hands of a cavalier, who was bending it into a noose, he uttered a piercing scream, and endeavoured to throw himself on his knees.
"Mercy!" he cried, "mercy! mercy! I will confess—I can save all your lives—Mercy! mercy!"
Of all the sights of horror and disgust, villany, transformed at the death-hour, into its natural character and original of cowardice, is among the most appalling. Villafana was as brave as a ruffian could be; but when imagination is linked in the same spirit with vice, courage expires almost at the same moment with hope. With a weapon in his hand, and that at liberty, Villafana, perhaps, would have manifested all the valour in which despair perceives the only hope, and died like a man. As it was, bound and grasped in the arms of strong men, entirely helpless and equally without hope, his death staring him in the face, he gave himself up at once to unmanly fears, and wept, screamed, and prayed, until the guards, at watch in the vestibule, sank upon their knees and conned over their beads, to divert their senses from cries so agonized and so horrible.
As he strove to prostrate himself before his inexorable judges, he was pulled up by the cavaliers, and among others by Don Francisco de Guzman, whose countenance he recognized.