The effect of this unexpected catastrophe seemed equally appalling to both the belligerent parties. The Aztecs, struck aghast at their own sacrilegious deed, dispersed in sorrow and shame to their homes; while the Spaniards felt that they had lost their only remaining hold upon the forbearance and regard of a mighty people, whose confidence they had shamefully abused, and whose altars and houses they had wantonly desecrated. It was a season of agonizing suspense. To retreat from their post, and abandon the conquest which they once imagined was nearly achieved, might be as disastrous as it would be humiliating. To remain in their narrow quarters, surrounded with countless thousands of exasperated foes, on whom they must be dependent for their daily supplies of food, seemed little better than madness. To the proud spirit of the haughty Castilian, the alternative was scarcely less to be dreaded than martyrdom. It was manifestly, however, the only resource, and he resolved to evacuate the city.
Meanwhile, active hostilities had been temporarily suspended. The unhappy Montezuma, smitten even more severely in heart than in person, refused alike the condolence of his friends and the skill of the Castilian surgeon. Tearing off the bandages from his wounds, “leave me alone,” he cried, “I have already outlived my honor and the affection and confidence of my people. Why should I look again upon the sun or the earth. The one has no light, the other no flowers for me. Let me die here. I feel indeed that the gods have smitten me, when I fall by the hand of one of my own people.”
In this disconsolate mood, the spirit of Montezuma took its flight. In vain did the Castilian general endeavor to suppress, for a time, the tidings of his death. The loud wailing of his attendants, would have published it far and wide among the thousands of affectionate hearts, that listened for every sound that issued from the palace, if they had not, unknown to the Spaniards, established a kind of telegraphic signal, by means of which they communicated to the priests on the great Teocalli, daily reports of the progress of his disease. When the sad signal was given, announcing the solemn fact, that the great Montezuma had laid down his honors and his troubles together, it was responded to by the mournful tones of the great drum of the temple, by ten measured muffled strokes, conveying the melancholy intelligence to every dwelling in Tenochtitlan.
The breathing of that populous city was now one universal wail, that seemed to penetrate the very heavens. Partly from a sincere regard for the fallen monarch, and partly from the hope that he might thus conciliate the good will of his afflicted subjects, Cortez directed his remains to be placed in a splendid coffin, and borne in solemn procession, by his own nobles, to his palace, that it might be interred with the customary regal honors. It was received by his people with every demonstration of affectionate joy and respect. Conveyed with great pomp to the castle of Chapoltepec, followed by an immense train of priests, nobles, and common people, it was interred amid all the imposing ceremonies of the Aztec religion. His wives and children, frantic with grief, gathered around those hallowed remains, and testified, by all those tender and delicate tokens which seem the natural expression of a refined feminine sorrow, their profound sense of the inestimable loss they had sustained.
By one of those singular coincidences, which tend so strongly to confirm the too easy credulity of the superstitious, and give an unnatural emphasis to the common accidents of life, it was the festival of the new moon, the very day on which Montezuma had promised Tecuichpo that he would join the household circle at Chapoltepec, that his lifeless remains were borne thither, in the solemn funereal procession.
“Alas! my father,” she cried, “is this the fulfilment of that only promise which sustained my sinking courage in the hour of separation?” She said no more. The more profound the sorrow, the fewer words it has to spare. “The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.”
CHAPTER VIII.
BRIEF REIGN OF CUITLAHUA—EXPULSION OF THE SPANIARDS—GUATIMOZIN CHOSEN EMPEROR—HIS MARRIAGE WITH TECUICUPO.