Then Otomie ceased weeping and answered:

'I cannot curse you, Guatemoc, for the gods have smitten my father
with a madness as you smote him with your arrow, and it is best that
he should die, both for his own sake and for that of his people. Still,
Guatemoc, I am sure of this, that your crime will not go unpunished,
and that in payment for this sacrilege, you shall yourself come to a
shameful death.'

'It may be so,' said Guatemoc, 'but at least I shall not die betraying
my trust;' and he went.


Now I must tell that, as I believed, this was my last day on earth,
for on the morrow my year of godhead expired, and I, Thomas Wingfield,
should be led out to sacrifice. Notwithstanding all the tumult in the
city, the mourning for the dead and the fear that hung over it like a
cloud, the ceremonies of religion and its feasts were still celebrated
strictly, more strictly indeed than ever before. Thus on this night a
festival was held in my honour, and I must sit at the feast crowned
with flowers and surrounded by my wives, while those nobles who remained
alive in the city did me homage, and with them Cuitlahua, who, if
Montezuma were dead, would now be emperor. It was a dreary meal enough,
for I could scarcely be gay though I strove to drown my woes in drink,
and as for the guests, they had little jollity left in them. Hundreds
of their relatives were dead and with them thousands of the people; the
Spaniards still held their own in the fortress, and that day they had
seen their emperor, who to them was a god, smitten down by one of their
own number, and above all they felt that doom was upon themselves. What