life of Cortez was endangered
By a plot of the Aztec attendants
(Cortez was the stoniest master,
To the Knights as well as the natives,
And no wonder his life should be threatened.

The scar of a crime on our nature,
With remembrance of wrong we inflicted,
Puts a double watch on our victim;
We are prone to measure in manner,
Each soul in the pitiful bushel
That holds the shrunk grains of _our_ manhood.)
And Cortez turned his eyes for an answer,
To the plot that was laid for his footsteps,
On the staunch Aztec King, Guatamozin;
He had fought a brave battle for Aztlan,
And the Spaniards had felt his prowess
In the hardly wrenched sword of their triumph;
But when the despair of his nation
Settled down on his heart as a mountain,
No treachery lingered to poison
The flow of his deeply drawn sadness.

Yet, the wrongs he had laid on the people,
Stalked out as a ghost on the Chieftain.
And the sad eyes of poor Guatamozin,
Were his guilty conscience' accuser;
And though not a stain was upon him,
Yet the Chief was condemned by Cortez.
Then Malinche's warm heart overflowing,
When she saw how unjust was the sentence,
Gave its plea with the beautiful pathos
Of the life that is simple and loving.
Though she was baptized as a Christian,
And was charmed with the life of the God-Son,
Yet the water the priest sprinkled on her
Purged not from her veins the warm Aztec
Which, charged with a just indignation,
Poured out on her Chieftain its measure:

"As a faithful God is my witness--
Not a throb of my heart has wasted
Its pulse on the suit of another,
Since you glittered my life with its purchase,
I have loved you too well for my worship,
Which has hardly a God, but my Chieftain;
But I plead for my country and people--
You showed me a Christ that was loving,
Whose life was a psalm of forgiveness,
Who touched the hot lips of our anger
With the tender finger of patience.
I was won by his great example,
It warmed the cold stone of the Aztec