and chiefly through the treason of the
Tlascalans, Anahuac is fallen, and Tenoctitlan is a ruin sown with dead
like a field with corn.'

'It is true,' cried a voice.

'Yes, people of the Otomie, it is true, but I say that had all the
warriors of the nations of Anahuac played the part that your sons
played, the tale had run otherwise. They are dead, and because of their
death you would deliver us to our foes and yours, but I for one do not
mourn them, though among their number are many of my kin. Nay, be not
wroth, but listen. It is better that they should lie dead in honour,
having earned for themselves a wreath of fame, and an immortal dwelling
in the Houses of the Sun, than that they should live to be slaves, which
it seems is your desire, people of the Otomie. There is no false word
in what I said to you. Now the sticks that Malinche has used to beat out
the brains of Guatemoc shall be broken and burnt to cook the pot of the
Teules. Already these false children are his slaves. Have you not heard
his command, that the tribes his allies shall labour in the quarries and
the streets till the glorious city which he has burned rises afresh upon
the face of the waters? Will you not hasten to take your share in the
work, people of the Otomie, the work that knows no rest and no reward
except the lash of the overseer and the curse of the Teule? Surely you
will hasten, people of the mountains! Your hands are shaped to the spade
and the trowel, not to the bow and the spear, and it will be sweeter to
toil to do the will and swell the wealth of Malinche in the sun of the
valley or the shadow of the mine, than to bide here free upon your hills
where as yet no foe has set his foot!'

Again she paused, and a murmur of doubt and unrest went through the
thousands who listened. Maxtla stepped forward and would have spoken,
but the people shouted him down, crying: 'Otomie, Otomie! Let us hear
the words of Otomie.'

'I thank you, my people,' she said, 'for I have still much to tell you.
Our crime is then, that we drew an army after us to fight against the
Teules. And how did we draw this army? Did I command you to muster your
array? Nay, I set out my case and I said "Now choose." You chose, and of
your own free will you despatched those glorious companies that now are
dead. My crime is therefore that you chose wrongly as you say, but as I
still hold, most rightly, and because of this crime I and my husband are
to be given as a peace