When Father Olmedo, therefore, kneeling at his side, with the uplifted crucifix, affectionately besought him to embrace the sign of man’s redemption, he coldly repulsed the priest, exclaiming, “I have but a few moments to live, and will not at this hour desert the faith of my fathers.”[148] One thing, however, seemed to press heavily on Montezuma’s mind. This was the fate of his children, especially of three daughters, whom he had by his two wives; for there were certain rites of marriage which distinguished the lawful wife from the concubine. Calling Cortés to his bedside, he earnestly commended these children to his care, as “the most precious jewels that he could leave him.” He besought the general to interest his master, the emperor, in their behalf, and to see that they should not be left destitute, but be allowed some portion of their rightful inheritance. “Your lord will do this,” he concluded, “if it were only for the friendly offices I have rendered the Spaniards, and for the love I have shown them,--though it has brought me to this condition! But for this I bear them no ill will.”[149] Such, according to Cortés himself, were the words of the dying monarch. Not long after, on the 30th of June, 1520,[150] he expired in the arms of some of his own nobles, who still remained faithful in their attendance on his person. “Thus,” exclaims a native historian, one of his enemies, a Tlascalan, “thus died the unfortunate Montezuma, who had swayed the sceptre with such consummate policy and wisdom, and who was held in greater reverence and awe than any other prince of his lineage, or any, indeed, that ever sat on a throne in this Western World. With him may be said to have terminated the royal line of the Aztecs, and the glory to have passed away from the empire, which under him had reached the zenith of its prosperity.”[151] “The tidings of his death,” says the old Castilian chronicler, Diaz, “were received with real grief by every cavalier and soldier in the army who had had access to his person; for we all loved him as a father,--and no wonder, seeing how good he was.”[152] This simple but emphatic testimony to his desert, at such a time, is in itself the best refutation of the suspicions occasionally entertained of his fidelity to the Christians.[153]