s still hard to come by here in England, I was led to
my sleeping place, a small chamber panelled with cedar boards. For a
while I could not sleep, for I was overcome by the memory of all the
strange sights that I had seen in this wonderful new land which was so
civilised and yet so barbarous. I thought of that sad-faced king, the
absolute lord of millions, surrounded by all that the heart of man can
desire, by vast wealth, by hundreds of lovely wives, by loving children,
by countless armies, by all the glory of the arts, ruling over the
fairest empire on the earth, with every pleasure to his hand, a god in
all things save his mortality, and worshipped as a god, and yet a victim
to fear and superstition, and more heavy hearted than the meanest slave
about his palaces. Here was a lesson such as Solomon would have loved to
show, for with Solomon this Montezuma might cry:

'I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings
and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the
delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments, and that of all
sorts. And whatsoever my eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld
not my heart from any joy. And behold, all was vanity and vexation of
spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.'

So he might have cried, so, indeed, he did cry in other words, for, as
the painting of the skeletons and the three monarchs that is upon the
north wall of the aisle of Ditchingham Church shows forth so aptly,
kings have their fates and happiness is not to them more than to any
other of the sons of men. Indeed, it is not at all, as my benefactor
Fonseca once said to me; true happiness is but a dream from which we
awake continually to the sorrows of our short laborious day.

Then my thoughts flew to the vision of that most lovely maid, the
princess Otomie, who, as I believed, had looked on me so kindly, and I
found that vision sweet, for I was young, and the English Lily, my own
love, was far away and lost to me for ever. Was it then wonderful that
I should find this Indian poppy fair? Indeed, where is the man who would
not have been overcome by her sweetness, her beauty, and that stamp
of royal grace which comes with kingly blood and the daily exercise of
power? Like the rich wonders of the robe she wore, her very barbarism,
of which now I saw but the better side, drew and dazzled my mind's eye,
giving her woman's tenderness some new quality, sombre and strang