"noble Guatimozin," or "sweet Guatimozin," or some other
similar response, which left no doubt on the mind of Cacamo, that the
heart of his mistress was pre-occupied, and that the nephew of Montezuma
was the favored object of her love. The next day, he bade adieu to
Tenochtitlan, placed himself at the head of the army of Tezcuco, and
plunged into a war then raging with a distant tribe on the west, hoping
to bury his disappointment in the exciting scenes of conquest.

Guatimozin was of the royal blood, and, as his after history will show,
of a right royal and heroic spirit. From his childhood, he had exhibited
an unusual maturity of judgment, coupled with an energy, activity, and
fearlessness of spirit, which gave early assurance of a heroism worthy
of the supreme command, and an intellectual superiority that might claim
succession to the throne. His training was in the court and the camp,
and he seemed equally at home and in his element, amid the refined
gaieties of the palace, the grave deliberations of the royal council,
and the mad revelry of the battle-field. His figure was of the most
perfect manly proportions, tall, commanding, graceful--his countenance
was marked with that peculiar blending of benignity and majesty, which
made it unspeakably beautiful and winning to those whom he loved, and
terrible to those on whom he frowned. He was mild, humane, generous,
confiding; yet sternly and heroically just. His country was his idol.
The one great passion of his soul, to which all other thoughts and
affections were subordinate and tributary, was patriotism. On that
altar, if he had possessed a thousand lives, he would freely have laid
them all. Such was the noble prince who had won the heart of Tecuichpo.

Meanwhile, to the anxious eye of her imperial father, the clouds of fate
seemed to hang deep and dark over the realm of Anahuac. Long before the
prophetic wail, which welcomed the lovely Tecuichpo to a life of
sorrow, Montezuma had imbibed from the dark legends of ancient
prophecies, and the faint outgivings of his own priestly oracles, a deep
and ineradicable impression that some terrible calamity was impending
over the realm, and that he was to be the last of its native monarchs.
It was dimly foreshadowed, in these prophetic revelations, that the
descendants of a noble and powerful race of men, who had many ages
before occupied that beautiful region, and filled it with the works of
their genius, but who had been dri