Cortes turned with rapid questionings to Doña Marina, the native captive princess and his interpreter. Passing across the further end of the square, on the way to Tlaloc's temple, were lines of sable-robed priests, trains of flower-decked youths and maidens from the priests' seminaries, crowds of devout worshippers; and in the midst of all, borne aloft in view of every eye, a number of lovely children, tiny creatures scarcely beyond the days of infancy, dressed in bright-hued festal robes, wreathed with flowers, and seated in gay litters, around each of which gathered groups of chanting priests, and the parents who had sold them. Wide-eyed and dumb with wonder were some of these little ones. And on them the priests frowned. Others, startled, terrified, with tiny, helpless arms outstretched to their miserable, deluded mothers, were drowned in tears, choking with piteous sobbings. And on them the priests cast pitiless smiles, and sang and danced with wilder fervour than before. Those tears were of good omen for the god's acceptance of his worshippers' prayers. Dry-eyed sacrifices were fruitless ones.[7] [Footnote 7: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico'--Prescott.] But the exacting god was to have no sacrifice that day, dry-eyed or otherwise. The procession was passing on, when at length Hernan Cortes, with a horror-stricken shout of comprehension, raised his head from Doña Marina, and turning to face his followers exclaimed, in a voice that literally trembled with passion and haste: "Comrades! look yonder. See ye that sight? See ye those helpless babes, decked out thus bravely as the heathen nations of old were wont to deck four-footed beasts for sacrifice? Those babes are sold for sacrifice by a black, well-nigh incredible bigotry. Twenty minutes hence, without your succour, their innocent hearts will have been plucked from out their riven breasts, as offerings to that blasphemous god who pollutes the sign of our redemption. Say, comrades, shall this thing be?" The men started a step forward with cheeks aflame. "No!" exclaimed Alvarado. "By St. Jago and our good swords, no!" "No!" echoed the whole band, as though with one voice. "No!" cried Cabrera, impetuously. "Not if we have to put every man in Cempoalla to the sword to deliver them." And with these exclamations it seemed, for one moment, as though the Spaniards were going to rush forward pell-mell, and effect a rescue. But Cortes raised his hand and checked them. There was time yet to proceed more peaceably. He turned back to the Cacique. "You see," he began. "I see there is another of those red-cloaked demons yonder," muttered Cabrera in a tone of bitter loathing to Montoro. But the low aside formed no interruption to the General, who continued, with determination--