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Narvaez awoke in great consternation, and the Spaniards, who were astonished at the noise, knew not well what to do in their fright.
This courtesy and magnanimity raised the character of the Alcayde Rodrigo de Narvaez still higher in the estimation of the Moors, who extolled him as a perfect mirror of chivalric virtue; and from that time forward, there was a continual exchange of good offices between them.
Velasquez was about to dispatch Panfilo de Narvaez with a commission as captain-general to arrest him, and send him in chains to Cuba. The king, however, would not permit this, and Narvaez was sent forth charged to be friendly to Cortes. But this was not to be. Events prevented, and Narvaez finally decided to place Cortes and his whole army under arrest.
Narvaez disembarked without opposition, near to the fort of San Juan d'Ulloa, but upon summoning the Governor of Vera-Cruz, Sandoval, to give up the town to him, Sandoval seized the men who were charged with the insolent message, and sent them off to Mexico, where Cortès at once released them, and then gained from them circumstantial information as to the forces, and the projects of Narvaez.
To this the peasant answered, "Senor sinner that I am! cannot your worship see that I am not Don Rodrigo de Narvaez nor the Marquis of Mantua, but Pedro Alonso your neighbour, and that your worship is neither Baldwin nor Abindarraez, but the worthy gentleman Senor Quixada?"
Neither the Spaniards nor the allies could leave the pueblo without being overwhelmed. Alvarado at last compelled Montezuma to show himself on the walls and bid the people stop fighting, to enable him to strengthen his position and hold it until the arrival of Cortes, and some fifteen hundred men, his own force and that of Narvaez combined.
As De Narvaez shot past he placed his petronel against his breast and fired point blank at De Roberval, but quick-witted Bastienne, who saw his intention, struck her master's horse on the nose, and the animal, careering wildly, received the contents of the charge in the heart. The Spaniards rapidly returned to the attack.
All this the peasant heard, and from it he understood at last what was the matter with his neighbour, so he began calling aloud, "Open, your worships, to Senor Baldwin and to Senor the Marquis of Mantua, who comes badly wounded, and to Senor Abindarraez, the Moor, whom the valiant Rodrigo de Narvaez, the Alcaide of Antequera, brings captive."
But the conservatives and absolutists were against him; and, as the result of a counter-insurrection, Gen. Narvaez, the leader of the conservatives, became chief of the cabinet ; but he was dismissed two years later. The constitution was divested of some of its liberal features. Christina, her dissolute mother, returned from France, whither she had fled.
Cold, disease, famine, thirst, and the fury of the waves melted them away. Narvaez himself perished, and of his wretched followers no more than four escaped, reaching by land, after years of vicissitude, the Christian settlements of New Spain. The interior of the vast country then comprehended under the name of Florida still remained unexplored.
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