took no heed of me. Never did I see such madness as possessed them, for
these poor fools believed that henceforth they should eat their very
bread off plates of gold. It was for gold that they had followed Cortes;
for gold they had braved the altar of sacrifice and fought in a hundred
fights, and now, as they thought, they had won it.

The room of the stone house where they prisoned me had a window secured
by bars of wood, and through these bars I could see and hear the
revellings of the soldiers during the time of my confinement. All day
long, when they were not on duty, and most of the night also, they
gambled and drank, staking tens of pesos on a single throw, which
the loser must pay out of his share of the countless treasures of the
Aztecs. Little did they care if they won or lost, they were so sure
of plunder, but played on till drink overpowered them, and they rolled
senseless beneath the tables, or till they sprang up and danced wildly
to and fro, catching at the sunbeams and screaming 'Gold! gold! gold!'

Listening at this window also I gathered some of the tidings of the
camp. I learned that Cortes had come back, bringing Guatemoc and several
of the princes with him, together with many of the noble Aztec ladies.
Indeed I saw and heard the soldiers gambling for these women when they
were weary of their play for money, a description of each of them
being written on a piece of paper. One of these ladies answered well to
Otomie, my wife, and she was put up to auction by the brute who won her
in the gamble, and sold to a common soldier for a hundred pesos. For
these men never doubted but that the women and the gold would be handed
over to them.

Thus things went for several days, during which I sat and slept in my
prison untroubled by any, except the native woman who waited on me and