Before this crisis had yet arrived, there occurred another incident, in which, as in all others since his return from the South Sea, the virtues of Juan Lerma were made the instruments of still further misfortune. He beheld Magdalena but once, after the adventure of the garden; and she was then raving with delirium, in which she did not know even him. The fate of Zelahualla was still wrapt in obscurity; for such had been the suddenness of the attack in the garden, that none knew of her fate, and Magdalena was incapable of uttering any rational word, to remove the mountain of anxiety from his breast. His scheme to effect the deliverance of the princess had doubtless thrown her into the power of the Spaniards; and the thought of such a captive in such hands, preyed upon him with a bitterness that exceeded death. He fought no more, and indeed he was urged no longer by the king, who was himself reduced to such desperation, that he thought no further of stratagems, but merely of blind and sullen resistance. On the third day after the battle, he was summoned by Techeechee to attend the king in public; and without questioning for what purpose, he gloomily obeyed, taking with him the Spanish sword with which he had been provided, on the day of his attempted escape. It was midday: no sound of contention came to his ears, for the besiegers were yet lying in their quarters on the dikes, healing their wounds and lamenting their friends; but the quiet of the garden was broken by the howling of the beasts, and the shrill streams of birds of prey,--of such at least as had not already been slaughtered, to appease the hunger of the wretches, who yet fought for their expiring empire. One circumstance, had Juan noticed it, might have convinced him of the dreadful extent and intensity of the suffering, of which he had been before apprized. The trees of the garden had begun to be robbed of their leaves, but not by summer heat or autumnal drought;--the tender shrubs were stripped of their bark;--the smaller plants had been rooted up, and even the grass, in some places, torn from the earth, and even the earth itself upturned, in the search after edible roots.--All that could be gnawed by the teeth of man had vanished, or did soon after vanish, from the garden. When the Spaniards walked afterwards through their conquest, not a green leaf, as they have recorded, was found in all the city.