esire for revenge by vouchsafing them a single fact or a single moan.

By Inca's side was Valverde, who had been assiduous in his endeavors to
make him a Christian. The friar was ready to offer such grim
consolation as he could to the wretched Peruvian in whose death
sentence he had concurred. Atahualpa had hitherto turned a deaf ear to
all his importunities, but at the last moment Valverde told him that if
he would consent to receive baptism, he should be strangled instead of
burnt to death. Atahualpa asked Pizarro if this was true, and being
assured that it was, he abjured his religion to avoid the agonies of
fire, and was thereupon baptised under the name of Juan de Atahualpa.
The name John was given to him because this baptism _in extremis_ took
place on St. John the Baptist's day. Rarely, if ever, has there been a
more ghastly profanation of the Holy Sacrament of Regeneration!

Before he was garroted, Atahualpa begged that his remains might be
preserved at Quito with those of his mother's people. Then he turned
to Pizarro and {92} made a final request of that iron-hearted man, that
he would look after and care for the Inca's little children. While he
was strangled and his body was being burnt, the terrible soldiery could
be heard muttering the magnificent words of the Apostolic Creed for the
redemption of the soul of the monarch. Incidentally it may be noted
that a little later the Spaniards burnt old Chalcuchima, of whom they
had got possession by treacherous promises, at the stake. He did not
embrace Christianity at the last moment, but died as he had lived, a
soldier and a Peruvian.

The character of Atahualpa may be learned from his career. He was a
cruel, ruthless usurper, neither magnanimous in victory nor resolute in
defeat. As I have said, it is impossible to admire him, but no one can
think of his fate and the treacheries of which he was a victim without
being touched by his miseries. If he sowed the wind he reaped the
whirlwind, and bad as he was, his conquerors were worse.

Pizarro placed the diadem on Toparca, a youthful brother of the late
Inca. When he was alone with his attendants, the boy tore the _llauta_
from his forehead, and trampled it under his foot, as no longer the
badge of anything but infamy and shame, and in two short months he
pined and died from the consciousness of his disgrace. Whereupon
another Peruvian, Manco Capac, the legitimate heir of Huascar, appeared
before Piz