One evening, as the prince was more than usually eloquent in pouring into the ear of Zephyr the tale of his love, the mimic bird, perched upon a flowering orange tree, that filled the garden with its delicious perfume, repeated the name of his mistress, as often as her lover uttered it, occasionally connecting with it the name of Guatimozin, and then adding some endearing epithet, expressive of the most ardent admiration. The prince was first amused, and then vexed, at the frequent repetition of the name of his rival. In vain did he endeavor to induce the mischievous bird to substitute his own name for that of Guatimozin. As often as he uttered the name of the princess, the echo in the orange tree gave back “noble Guatimozin,” or “sweet Guatimozin,” or some other similar response, which left no doubt on the mind of Cacamo, that the heart of his mistress was pre-occupied, and that the nephew of Montezuma was the favored object of her love. The next day, he bade adieu to Tenochtitlan, placed himself at the head of the army of Tezcuco, and plunged into a war then raging with a distant tribe on the west, hoping to bury his disappointment in the exciting scenes of conquest.
Guatimozin was of the royal blood, and, as his after history will show, of a right royal and heroic spirit. From his childhood, he had exhibited an unusual maturity of judgment, coupled with an energy, activity, and fearlessness of spirit, which gave early assurance of a heroism worthy of the supreme command, and an intellectual superiority that might claim succession to the throne. His training was in the court and the camp, and he seemed equally at home and in his element, amid the refined gaieties of the palace, the grave deliberations of the royal council, and the mad revelry of the battle-field. His figure was of the most perfect manly proportions, tall, commanding, graceful—his countenance was marked with that peculiar blending of benignity and majesty, which made it unspeakably beautiful and winning to those whom he loved, and terrible to those on whom he frowned. He was mild, humane, generous, confiding; yet sternly and heroically just. His country was his idol. The one great passion of his soul, to which all other thoughts and affections were subordinate and tributary, was patriotism. On that altar, if he had possessed a thousand lives, he would freely have laid them all. Such was the noble prince who had won the heart of Tecuichpo.
Meanwhile, to the anxious eye of her imperial father, the clouds of fate seemed to hang deep and dark over the realm of Anahuac. Long before the prophetic wail, which welcomed the lovely Tecuichpo to a life of sorrow, Montezuma had imbibed from the dark legends of ancient prophecies, and the faint outgivings of his own priestly oracles, a deep and ineradicable impression that some terrible calamity was impending over the realm, and that he was to be the last of its native monarchs. It was dimly foreshadowed, in these prophetic revelations, that the descendants of a noble and powerful race of men, who had many ages before occupied that beautiful region, and filled it with the works of their genius, but who had been driven out by the cruelty and perfidy of the Toltecs, would return, invested with supernatural power from heaven, to re-possess their ancient inheritance.[B] To this leading and long established faith, every dark and doubtful omen contributed its appropriate share of confirmation. To this, every significant event was deemed to have a more or less intimate relation. So that, at this particular epoch, not only the superstitious monarch, and his priestly astrologers, but the whole nation of Azteca were prepared, as were the ancient Jews at the advent of the Messiah, for great events, though utterly unable to imagine what might be the nature of the expected change.
These gloomy forebodings of coming evil so thoroughly possessed the mind of Montezuma, that the commanding dignity and pride of the monarch gave way before the absorbing anxiety of the man and the father, and, in a manner, unfitted him for the duties of the lofty place he had so nobly filled. He yielded, as will be seen in the sequel, not without grief, but without resistance, to the fixed decrees of fate, and awaited the issue, as a victim for the heaven-appointed sacrifice.
It was about fifteen years after the prophetic announcement of the doom of the young princess of the empire, that Montezuma was reclining in his summer saloon, where he had been gloomily brooding over his darkening prospects, till his soul was filled with sadness. His beautiful daughter was with him, striving to cheer his heart with the always welcome music of her songs, and the affectionate expression of a love as pure and deep as ever warmed the heart of a devoted child. She had gone that day into the royal presence to ask a boon for her early and faithful friend, Karee. This lovely and gifted creature, now in the full maturity of all her wonderful powers of mind, and personal attractions, had often been admitted, as a special favorite, into the royal presence, to exhibit her remarkable powers of minstrelsy, and her almost supernatural gifts as an improvisatrice of the wild melodies of Anahuac. Some of her chants were of rare pathos and sublimity, and sometimes she was so carried away with the impassioned vehemence of her inspiration, that she seemed an inspired messenger from the skies, uttering in their language the oracles of the gods. On this occasion, she had requested permission to sing a new chant in the palace, that she might seize the opportunity to breathe a prophetic warning in the ear of the emperor. She had thrice dreamed that the dark cloud which had so long hung over that devoted land, had burst in an overwhelming storm, upon the capital, and buried Montezuma and all his house in indiscriminate ruin. She had seen the demon of destruction, in the guize of a snow white angel, clad in burnished silver, borne on a fiery animal, of great power, and fleet as the wind, having under him a small band of warriors, guarded and mounted like himself, armed with thunderbolts which they hurled at will against all who opposed their progress. She had seen the monarch of Tenochtitlan, with his hosts of armed Mexicans, and the tributary armies of Tezcuco, Islacapan, Chalco, and all the cities of that glorious valley, tremble and cower before this small band of invaders, and yield himself without a blow to their hands. She had seen the thousands and tens of thousands of her beloved land fall before this handful of strangers, and melt away, like the mists of the morning before the rising sun. And she had heard a voice from the dark cloud as it broke, saying, sternly, as the forked lightning leaped into the heart of the imperial palace, “The gods help only those who help themselves.”
Filled and agitated with the stirring influence of this prophetic vision, Karee, who had always regarded herself as the guardian genius of Tecuichpo, now imagined the sphere of her duty greatly enlarged, and deemed herself specially commissioned to save the empire from impending destruction. Weaving her vision, and the warning it uttered, into one of her most impassioned chants, and arraying herself as the priestess of nature, she followed Tecuichpo, with a firm step into the royal presence, and, with the boldness and eloquence of a prophetess, warned him of the coming danger, and urged him to arouse from his apathy, unbecoming the monarch of a proud and powerful nation, cast off the slavery of his superstitious fears, and prepare to meet, with the power of a man, and the wisdom of a king, whatever evil might come upon him. Rising with the kindling inspiration of her theme, she ventured gently to reproach the awe-struck monarch with his unmanly fears, and to remind him that on his single will, and the firmness of his soul, hung not only his own destiny but that of wife and children; and more than that, of a whole nation, whose myriads of households looked up to him, as the common father of them all, the heaven-appointed guardian of their lives, liberty and happiness. At length, alarmed at her own energy and boldness, so unwonted even to the proudest noble of the realm, in that royal presence, she bent her knee, and baring her bosom, she lowered her voice almost to a whisper, and said imploringly—
The vision of the beautiful pythoness had deeply and powerfully affected the soul of Montezuma; and her closing appeal moved him even to tears. Though accustomed to the most obsequious deference from all his subjects, even from the proudest of his nobles, he had listened to every word of Karee with the profoundest attention and interest, as if it had been from the acknowledged oracle of heaven. When she ceased, there was a breathless silence in the hall. The monarch drew his lovely daughter to his bosom in a passionate embrace. Karee remained prostrate, with her face to the ground, her heart throbbing almost audibly with the violence of her emotions. Suddenly, a deep long blast from a distant trumpet announced the arrival of a courier at the capital. It was a signal for all the attendants to retire. Tecuichpo tenderly kissing her father, took Karee by the hand, raised her up and led her out, and the monarch was left alone.
In a few moments, the courier arrived and entering, barefoot and veiled, into the royal presence, bowed to the very ground, handed a scroll to the king, and departed. When Montezuma had unrolled the scroll, he seemed for a moment, as if struck with instant paralysis. Fear, astonishment, dismay, seized upon his soul. The vision of Karee was already fulfilled. The pictured tablet was the very counterpart of her oracular chant—the literal interpretation of her prophetic vision. It announced the arrival within the realms of Montezuma, of a band of pale faced strangers, clad in burnished armor, each having at his command a beautiful animal of great power, hitherto unknown in that country, that bore him with the speed of the wind wherever he would go, and seemed, while he was mounted, to be a part of himself. It described their weapons, representing them as having the lightning and thunder at their disposal, which they caused to issue sometimes from dark heavy engines, which they dragged along the ground, and sometimes from smaller ones which they carried in their hands. It delineated, faithfully and skilfully their “water houses,” or ships, in which they traversed the great waters, from a far distant country. The peculiar costume and bearing of their commander, and of his chiefs, were also happily represented in the rich coloring for which the Aztecs were distinguished. Nothing was omitted in their entire array, which could serve to convey to the eye of the emperor a correct and complete impression of the appearance, numbers and power of the strangers. It was all before him, at a glance, a living speaking picture, and told the story of the invasion as graphically and eloquently, as if he had been himself a witness of their debarkation, and of their feats of horsemanship. It was all before him, a terrible living reality. The gods whom he worshipped had sent these strangers to fulfil their own irresistible purposes—if, indeed, these were not the gods themselves, in human form.
The mind of Montezuma was overwhelmed. Like Belshazzar, when the divine hand appeared writing his doom on the wall, his soul fainted in him, his knees smote together, and he sat, in blank astonishment, gazing on the picture before him, as if the very tablet possessed a supernatural power of destruction.