United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I was faithful and that is more, and once or twice you thought that you loved me. Now I wish that those Teules had come an hour later, and we had died together there upon the stone, that is I wish it for my own sake, not for yours. Then we escaped and the great struggle came. I told you then that I understood it all.
From my childhood I have known that this evil overshadowed me, and now it is at my door. 'If I, who am only a god, may venture to speak to the lord of the earth, I answered, 'I say that the reply is easy. Meet force by force. The Teules are few and you can muster a thousand soldiers for every one of theirs.
'As this blood of yours sinks into the earth, so may the memory of your past life sink and be forgotten, for you are born again of the people of Anahuac. I, Teule, swear to be faithful to the people of Anahuac and to their lawful governors. I swear to wage war upon their foes and to compass their destruction, and more especially upon the Teules till they are driven into the sea.
'Swift! strip them for the altar. But the Teules were gone, nor, search where they would, could they find them. 'Their God has taken them beneath His wing, I said, speaking from the shadow and in a feigned voice. 'Huitzel cannot prevail before the God of the Teules. Then I slipped aside, so that none knew that it was I who had spoken, but the cry was caught up and echoed far and wide.
It was happy for him that he could not foresee that dreadful day when he, the noblest of men, must meet a felon's doom at the hand of these very Teules. Yet so it came about, for the destiny that lay upon the land smote all alike, indeed the greater the man the more certain was his fate.
'Guatemoc sends these words, he said; 'I hear that you, my brother, are free and safe with my cousin Otomie in the mountains of the Otomie. I, alas! linger in the prisons of the Teules like a crippled eagle in a cage. My brother, if it is in your power to help me, do so I conjure you by the memory of our ancient friendship, and of all that we have suffered together.
And as they are foes, so this my lord is their foe, and as doubtless you have heard, of all the deeds of arms that were wrought upon the night of the slaying of the Teules, none were greater than his, and it was he who first discovered their retreat.
'Disloyal girl, he said; 'do you dare to set your lover before your country? Shame upon you, shameless daughter of our king. Why, it is in the blood as the father is so is the daughter. Did not Montezuma forsake his people and choose to lie among these Teules, the false children of Quetzal? And now this Otomie follows in his path.
This intelligence soon spread over the country; and the natives said that such measures could only be attempted by teules, or superior beings, by which name they distinguished their idols, but ever afterwards applied to the Spaniards.
And now! Now we came two fugitives from the vengeance of the Teules, I borne in a litter by four tired soldiers, while Otomie, the princess of this people, still clad in her wanton's robe, at which the women mocked, for she had been able to come by no other, tramped at my side, since there were none to carry her, and the inhabitants of the place cursed us as the authors of their woes.
Word Of The Day