"Let them be taken round to the front, that the dogs may look upon the artillery," said the Captain-General; and perhaps added in his thoughts, "that they may creep up to my footstool, taking in my greatness from afar, until their humility dwindles into submissiveness." Presently the curtain of the great door was pushed aside, and the Mexicans entered, preceded and followed by armed men; the old Ottomi being in advance of all. They were twelve in number, the chief or principal being a man of lofty stature and manly years, wholly differing from the orator Olin, for whom Cortes looked in vain among the others. To indicate the high rank of the ambassador, two attendants sustained over his head, on little rods, a gay canopy or penthouse of feathers. His green mantle (for that was the colour worn by an ambassador,) was of the richest material, the border being wrought into scroll-work with little studs of solid gold. His buskins, for such they might be called, were of crimson leather, and a crimson fillet was wound round his hair, which was, otherwise, almost covered with little tufts or tassels of cotton-down of the same hue. Each of these singular decorations was the evidence and distinguishing badge of some valiant exploit in battle; and it was therefore manifest to all in the slightest degree acquainted with the customs of Anahuac, even at the first sight, that the barbarian was a man of renown among the Mexicans. A cluster of rattling grains of gold, suspended to his nostrils, indicated that he belonged to the order of Teuctli,--a race of nobles inferior only to the _Tlamantli_, or vassal-kings; and the red fillets showed that he was a Prince of the House of Darts, the highest of the several chivalric branches into which this order was divided, the two next appertaining to the House of Eagles and the House of Tigers.--In introducing these barbaric terms, we have no desire to inflict upon the reader a dissertation on Aztec chivalry, but simply to make him aware, that these singular infidels were, in their way, nearly as well provided with the vanities of knighthood and nobility as some of the European nations in the Middle Ages.