CHAPTER XXI
The assault upon the garden and palace of Guatimozin, though the last blow given to his power, it has not been thought needful to describe in any of its details. It is well known, that the occasion was used by the few nobles of the empire who yet survived, to withdraw their monarch with his family from the island, in the vain hope of reaching the main land, through a line of brigantines and armed piraguas. It is also well known, that, notwithstanding the stratagem with which these faithful barbarians essayed to protect the last of their native lords, by exposing their own defenceless gondolas to destruction, he was captured, in consequence of his magnanimous self-devotion, and transferred with his trembling family, from his royal piragua to the galley of Garci Holguin.
Drums, trumpets, falconets, fire-arms, and human voices at once proclaimed the importance of the capture, and the triumph of the victors; and with all the speed of sails and oars, the fortunate cavalier bore his prize towards the nearest landing in possession of the Spaniards, deriding and even defying the claim set up by Sandoval, as the superior officer, to the honour of presenting the prisoner to the Captain-General. Long before he had reached the palace of Axajacatl, it was known throughout the whole city that Guatimozin was in the hands of the besiegers. The warriors who still fought in the garden, beheld the surrender on the lake, instantly threw down their arms, and submitted with sullen indifference to the fate they had long anticipated. With the interview betwixt the king and the conqueror all readers are familiar. The Captain-General, sumptuously dressed, and in the midst of such state as could be prepared for an occasion so imposing, received the prisoner, (in whose wasted figure and dejected countenance it was not possible to recognize the half-forgotten Olin,) in the hall of the palace of Axajacatl, where his ancestors had been kings and princes, but into which he now entered a captive and vassal. The Captain-General received him not only with respect, but with an appearance of sympathy and kindness. In truth, he could not but admire the fortitude of his youthful foe; and he reflected, not without exultation, that if his desperate resistance had increased the pains and perils of conquest, and frequently dashed all hopes of success, it had made his own triumph a thousand times more glorious. He descended from his chair of state, and raising the dejected captive from the floor, upon which he had flung himself in token of submission, he embraced him with many expressions of respect and encouragement.
"Fear not – neither for thy life nor crown," he said. "Thou perceivest, the king of Spain, my master, is invincible. Reign still in Mexico; but reign as his vassal."
He would have replaced on the captive's head the copilli of gold, which had been brought from the gondola and put into his hand; but Guatimozin rejected it with a melancholy gesture, saying,
"It is the Teuctli's – I am no more the king. Malintzin! be merciful to the people of Mexico: they are now slaves. Have pity also on the women and children, that come from the palace; for they are of the household of Montezuma. As for myself, Malintzin, hearken to what I say. The kings of Mexico have all died; when they gave their breath to heaven, the crown was on their front, and the sceptres on their bosom. Why then should I live, who am no longer a king? Malintzin, I have fought for Mexico, I have shed blood for my country, and now I shed tears; I can do no more for my people – It is fitting, therefore, that I should die – But I should die like a king." – He extended his hand, and touched the jewelled dagger that glittered in the baldric of his foe. The action was without any sign of hostility, and his countenance, now uplifted upon Cortes, was bathed with tears. "Let Malintzin do the work – Plunge this dagger into my bosom, and let me depart."
There was something affecting even to the iron-hearted conqueror in the situation and demeanour of the poor infidel, thus beseeching, and evidently with as much sincerity as simplicity, a death of honour after a life of patriotism; and Cortes would have renewed his caresses and assurances of friendship, had not his ears been that moment struck by voices without, pronouncing the name of Juan Lerma, with brutal execrations. He signed to those cavaliers who had conducted the monarch to his presence, to lead him away; and a moment after, Juan Lerma was conducted up to his footstool. Dejected, spiritless, overcome perhaps by the ferocious calls for vengeance which had heralded his steps to the palace, as well as by the exhaustion of long bodily suffering, he did not raise his eyes from the floor, until he heard the voice of Cortes pronounce the faltering words, —
"Juan of Castillejo, I have done you a great wrong. – Yes," he continued, with a louder voice, when Juan looked up, surprised not more by his altered tones than by a name so unexpected and unknown, "Yes, and let all bear witness to my confession; – I have done thee, not one wrong only, but many; for which I heartily repent me, and, before all this assemblage, do beseech thy forgiveness."
"My forgiveness, señor!" stammered Juan, while all the rest looked on in amazement.
"Thy forgiveness," repeated the conqueror, with double emphasis. "Thou hast been belied to me, bitterly maligned; but heaven has punished the slanderer, who slew mine own peace of mind, that he might compass thy death."
"Alas, señor," said Juan; "in his death-gasp, Guzman confessed to me – "
"Speak not of Guzman – forget him. – Have ye heard, my masters! and well taken note of what is spoken? Now begone, all, and leave me alone with my recovered prodigal. – Juan – Juan Lerma, – Juan of Castillejo," he cried, as soon as the wondering audience had vanished; "if Guzman have confessed to you, you must know why I have been maddened into wrath and injustice. – But thy sister, Juan, where is thy sister? my poor Magdalena? Ah, Juan! it was but a fiendish aberration, that set me against the child of my sister!"
With these words, he threw himself upon Juan's neck, and embraced him with a fervour that indicated the return of all his old affections, uttering a thousand exclamations, in which he mingled recurrences to the past with many a reference to the present and future. "This will be a glad day to Catalina, for she ever loved thee – Dolt that I was, to think that her love could be aught but a mother's! My father, Juan, my father, too! his gray hairs will yet be laid in a grave of joy; for he shall behold the son of his daughter seated in the inheritance of a noble father. And thy sister – she shall shine with the proudest and noblest. – I knew thee upon the causeway, too, though I was left in a coma, and half expiring. We have full proof of thy claims. – And thy princess, too – dost thou remember the silver cross?" taking it from his bosom – "Were there a duke's son demanded her, she should be thine. – What ho! some one bring me – But, nay – Thy sister, Juan! does she not live?"
Juan was stunned, stupified, bewildered, by a transformation in his own character and in the feelings of the general, so sudden and so marvellous. Yet he strove to reply to the last question, and was in the act of uttering a broken and hasty explanation, when a loud cry came from the passage, and rushing out, they beheld a party of soldiers bearing, in a litter of robes torn from the burning palace, the body, or the living frame, they knew not which, of the unhappy nun, over whom the penitent Gregorio was bitterly lamenting.
It was indeed Magdalena, her garments scorched, her face like the face of the dying. Yet she did not seem to have suffered from the flames. The soldiers had found her in a part of the palace not touched by the fire, and scarce invaded by the smoke; and perhaps a subtle physician would have traced her dreadful condition rather to some overpowering convulsion of spirit than to any physical, injury. She was indeed dying, the victim of contending passions, with which the education of a cloister had so ill fitted her to contend.
We will not speak of the meeting of Juan and his dark-eyed proselyte. It took place beside the couch of the dying girl, who, for love of him, had given up the vows of religion and the fame of woman, and perished with frenzy, when she discovered that that love was more than the love of a sister.
At nightfall, and while she still lay insensible, save that a faint moan occasionally trembled from her lips, there arose a tempest of lightning, thunder, and rain, far exceeding in violence any that had before burst over the heads of the Spaniards, and which Bernal Diaz has recorded in his history, as having been the most dreadful that ever confounded his mind and senses. It seemed as if the warlike divinities of Mexico were now taking leave of their broken altars and subjugated people, with a display of strength and fury, never more to be exercised. It ceased not until midnight, and then only when it had discharged a bolt that shook the island to its foundation, and tumbled many a ruined cabin and dilapidated palace, upon the heads of their unhappy inmates.
It was in the midst of this conflict of the elements, that the broken spirit passed from its weary prison; and what had been beauty and affection, genius and passion, became a clod, to claim kindred with its fellow of the valley. It was better indeed that she should thus perish; for her nature was above that of earth, and even the passion that destroyed her, pure, enthusiastic, and devoted as it was, was unworthy the spirit it had subdued. It was such as is the molewarp to the rose-bush, or the myrtle-tree, which he can destroy by burrowing at their roots, even when the winter's blast can scarce rive away a branch.
The remains of this ill-fated being were interred upon a sequestered hill, west of Mexico, where Gregorio Castillejo built a hermitage, and mourned over her for the few years he survived her. He left the odour of sanctity behind him, and the hermitage is now forgotten in the chapel built upon its site, and dedicated to Our Lady de los Remedios. To this place Cortes withdrew, with his whole army, in order that the ruined city might be purified of corses and rubbish, that rendered it horrible even to a soldier, no longer inflamed by the fire of battle. He soon, however, removed to Xochimilco, the Field of Flowers, where the time of the purification was devoted to solemn rejoicings and profane festivities.
To all those who may yet be disposed to consider our account of the strength and splendour of the empire of Montezuma as fabulous, we recommend no better study than the honest, worthy, and single-minded historian, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who lived to complete his Historia Verdadera, fifty years afterwards, in the loyal city of Guatimala, in which he held the honourable post of Regidor, the venerable, and, at that period, almost the sole survivor of the followers of Cortes. He has recorded one striking proof of the vast multitudes of pagans that had been concentrated within the island of Mexico. After averring, with a solemn oath, that, after the fall of the city, the streets, houses, squares, courts, and canals, were so covered with dead bodies, that it was impossible to move without treading upon them, he relates, that, Cortes having ordered all who survived, principally women and children, and the wounded, to evacuate the city, preparatory to its purification, 'for three days and three nights, all the causeways were full of the wretched fugitives, who were so weak and sickly, so squalid and pestilential, that it was misery to behold them.' Three broad highways, covered, for the space of three days and nights, by a moving mass of widows and orphans, the trophies of a gallant achievement! the first fruits of the ambition of a single individual!
As Bernal Diaz retained, to the last, a jealous regard for the honour of his leader, this friendly weakness, taken into consideration along with the infirmities of memory incident to his advanced age, may perhaps account for his failure to complete the story of Juan Lerma. He may have recollected, as is often the case with an old man, the earliest facts of the story, while the later ones slipped entirely from his mind.
Of Cortes himself, it is scarce necessary to apprize the reader, that he lived to subdue other empires, and experience the ingratitude of a monarch, whose favour he had so amply merited. He fought for renown, for his king, and for heaven. Heaven alone can judge the merit of his acts, for men are yet unwilling to sit in judgment upon the brave; his king requited him with insults and positive oppression; and fame has placed him among those who have trodden out the wine-press of human desolation, and live in marble.
As for the young Count of Castillejo, his claims to the inheritance of his father were too well substantiated to be resisted; and the crimes of Gregorio had left none to oppose. As a subordinate in the work of conquest, there was nothing in him to be feared; and when he bore from a land he could only remember with sorrow, a bride whose father had borne the witching name of king, he was received with as much favour, and distinguished by as many honours, as any other Conquistador, who transplanted among the dames of Castile, a wife wooed within the palaces of Montezuma.
The fate of Guatimozin is well known. The crown he was still enforced to wear did not protect him from the torture of fire; nor could his noble character and unhappy fall secure him from a death of degradation. Four years after the fall of his empire, and at a distance of several hundred leagues from his native valley, he expiated upon a gibbet, a crime that existed only in the gloomy and remorseful imagination of the Conqueror. And thus, with two royal kinsmen, kings and feudatories of Anahuac, he was left to swing in the winds, and feed the vultures, of a distant and desert land. He merited a higher distinction, a loftier respect, and a profounder compassion, than men will willingly accord to a barbarian and INFIDEL.
THE END
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