hat is another name for Quetzal,' he said. 'It has long been
prophesied that his children would return, and now it seems that the
hour of their coming is at hand,' and he sighed heavily, then added: 'Go
now. To-morrow you shall tell me of these Teules, and the council of the
priests shall decide your fate.'

Now when I heard the name of the priests I trembled in all my bones and
cried, clasping my hands in supplication:

'Slay me if you will, O king, but I beseech you deliver me not again
into the hands of the priests.'

'We are all in the hands of the priests, who are the mouth of God,' he
answered coldly. 'Besides, I hold that you have lied to me.'

Then I went foreboding evil, and Guatemoc also looked downcast. Bitterly
did I curse the hour when I had said that I was of the Spanish blood and
yet no Spaniard. Had I known even what I knew that day, torture would
not have wrung those words from me. But now it was too late.

Now Guatemoc led me to certain apartments of this palace of Chapoltepec,
where his wife, the royal princess Tecuichpo, was waiting him, a very
lovely lady, and with her other ladies, among them the princess Otomie,
Montezuma's daughter, and some nobles. Here a rich repast was served to
us, and I was seated next to the princess Otomie, who spoke to me most
graciously, asking me many things concerning my land and the people of
the Teules. It was from her that I learned first that the emperor was
much disturbed at heart because of these Teules or Spaniards, for he was
superstitious, and held them to be the children of the god Quetzal, who
according to ancient prophecy would come to take the land. Indeed, so
gracious was she, and so royally lovely, that for the first time I felt
my heart stirred by any other woman than my betrothed whom I had left
far away in England, and whom, as I thought, I should never see again.
And as I learned in after days mine was not the only heart that was
stirred that night.

Near to us sat another royal lady, Papantzin, the sister of Montezuma,
but she was neither young nor lovely, and yet most sweet faced and sad
as though with the presage of death. Indeed she died not many weeks
after but could not rest quiet in her grave, as shall be told.

When the feast was done and we had drunk of the cocoa or chocolate,
and smoked tobacco in pipes, a strange but most soothing custom that I
learned in Tobasco and of which I have never been able to break myself,
though the weed i