"It has been a strange time here, since you left. I have been, for the most part, at the capital. The news that came, from day to day, of the progress of the whites filled everyone with surprise, and consternation. "We of the council met daily, but Montezuma passed his time at the shrines and among the priests. He was a brave warrior and a great general, once, but he is no longer himself. My father's prophecy seems to have unmanned him, and he has given himself up wholly to superstition. I believe in our gods, and pay them due honor; but I do not hold that a man should not think for himself, or that he should trust wholly in the priests, who are but men like ourselves; and who are, methinks, but poor judges of worldly affairs, though wise and learned in matters concerning religion. Montezuma thinks otherwise, and the result is that no orders have been issued, no determination arrived at, and we have the disgrace of seeing a handful of strangers installed in the capital. "Mind, my counsels have always been that they should be conducted honorably from the coast, and treated as ambassadors; but we have done neither one thing nor the other. They have been loaded with gifts, but forbidden to come here. Yet since they came, in spite of orders, we have seemed as if we feared to meet them; and I blush at the thought of the treacherous plan to destroy them, at Cholula. "The gods had prophesied that they would find their grave there. But the gods were wrong; and it may be that the God of the whites is more powerful than ours. If not, how is it that they did not avenge the indignities offered to them by the whites, at Cempoalla, where their images were hurled down from their altars? And at Cholula, where the most sacred of all the temples was attacked and captured, and the emblem of the White God set up on its summit? "You yourself, Roger Hawkshaw, warned us against these Spaniards. You said that they were cruel masters to the people they had conquered, and above all things cruel in the matter of religion, forcing all who came under their sway to accept their God, under pain of death; and that they would slay even you, a white man like themselves, did they know that you did not belong to their people. Tell us what is to be done. Why are these men in our capital? What are their objects? Brave and strong as they are, they cannot hope to overcome a nation, or to force all Anahuac to forsake their own gods and to accept the God of the whites." "I know not what are the designs of Cortez, the leader whom you call Malinzin. I should say the Spaniards are here with several motives. In the first place, there is the desire for wealth and spoil; in the second, religious ardor--the desire to bring all within the pale of their Church; in the third place, the love of adventure; and, lastly, the honor they will receive, at the hands of their sovereign, for opening so rich an empire to his arms." "You do not think, then, they intend to conquer us?"