Here she choked, bursting into tears; nor did I think it well to answer
her that there was this difference in the matter, that whereas, with
the exception of one infant, those sons whom I had lost were almost
adolescent, the babe she bore lived but sixty days.

Now when the Queen first put it in my mind to write down the history of
my life, I remembered this outbreak of my beloved wife; and seeing that
I could write no true tale and leave out of it the story of her who was
also my wife, Montezuma's daughter, Otomie, Princess of the Otomie, and
of the children that she gave me, I let the matter lie. For I knew well,
that though we spoke very rarely on the subject during all the many
years we passed together, still it was always in Lily's mind; nor did
her jealousy, being of the finer sort, abate at all with age, but rather
gathered with the gathering days. That I should execute the task without
the knowledge of my wife would not have been possible, for till the very
last she watched over my every act, and, as I verily believe, divined
the most of my thoughts.


And so we grew old together, peacefully, and side by side, speaking
seldom of that great gap in my life when we were lost to each other and
of all that then befell. At length the end came. My wife died suddenly
in her sleep in the eighty-seventh year of her age. I buried her on the
south side of the church here, with sorrow indeed, but not with sorrow
inconsolable, for I know that I must soon rejoin her, and those others
whom I have loved.

There in that wide heaven are my mother and my sister and my sons;
there are great Guatemoc my friend, last of the emperors, and many other
companions in war who have preceded me to peace; there, too, though she