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But as I lay in the chamber of the palace of Chapoltepec, the tramp of the guards without my door reminded me that I had little now to do with love and other delights, I whose life hung from day to day upon a hair. To-morrow the priests would decide my fate, and when the priests were judges, the prisoner might know the sentence before it was spoken.
I abode in Mexico ten days, wandering sadly about the city and up to the hill of Chapoltepec, where Montezuma's pleasure-house had been, and where I had met Otomie. Nothing was left of its glories except some of the ancient cedar trees. On the eighth day of my stay an Indian stopped me in the street, saying that an old friend had charged him to say that she wished to see me.
The name means a deciduous cypress, a common tree in Mexico, and of which we had already seen such splendid specimens in the grove near Tezcuco, and in the wood of Chapoltepec. This was a remarkable tree as to size, some sixty feet round at the lower part where the roots began to spread out.
The clearness of the air enabled them to see distinctly the shining cities, the lakes, woods, fields and gardens, and in the midst of all the fair city of Mexico rose as it were from the waters of the great lake, with its towers and temples white and gleaming, and behind it the royal hill of Chapoltepec, the residence of the Mexican kings, crowned with the very same gigantic cypress trees which to this day fling their broad shadows across the land.
Alas! the bravest can do nothing against the power of famine. Hunger is a very great man, as the Indians say. Now the Aztecs fighting alone were face to face with their foes and the last struggle began. First the Spaniards cut the aqueduct which supplied the city with water from the springs at the royal house of Chapoltepec, whither I was taken on being brought to Mexico.
The emperor had moved his household from Chapoltepec to the palace in the great square facing the temple, and this palace was a town in itself, for every night more than a thousand human beings slept beneath its roof, not to speak of the dwarfs and monsters, and the hundreds of wild birds and beasts in cages.
They laid it in the hall of the palace, whence it was hurried secretly and at night to Chapoltepec, and there hidden away with small ceremony, for it was feared that the people might rend it limb from limb in their rage. With Otomie weeping at my side, I looked for the last time on the face of that most unhappy king, whose reign so glorious in its beginning had ended thus.
The general's plan of action against Mexico was to send Sandoval with one division to take possession of Iztapalapan at the southern end of the lake, while Alvarado and Olid were to secure Tlacopan and Chapoltepec upon its western shore, and at the latter place destroy the aqueduct, and so cut off the supply of fresh water from Mexico.
And there the high priest called out my dignity to the thousands who were assembled beneath, and every one of them bent the knee in adoration of me, the priests above and the multitudes below. And so it went on till I grew dizzy with the worship, and the shouting, and the sounds of music, and the sights of death, and very thankful was I, when at last they carried me back to Chapoltepec.
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.
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