The capture of the Inca and his instalment as a prisoner of state in the House of the Serpent had been followed after a few days by the gathering of a mock court, a poor semblance of the imperial state from which he had so swiftly fallen. Mama-Oroya, his Queen-Wife or Coya, together with the rest of the princesses and ladies of his household, had been brought from the pleasure-house by the hot springs on the other side of the valley under an escort of Spanish horse, and installed with perfect freedom of movement in the house of his captivity. At the same time there had come into the city hundreds of other nobles and ladies of the court with their households and retinues, and these the Conquerors, as they may well now be called, after it had been decided in solemn council neither to slay them nor, as had also been proposed, to cut off their right hands before driving them out of the city, had taken as their attendants, or, as some have said, their slaves, so that, in the words of the old chroniclers, the meanest soldier that followed the banner of Pizarro lived in better style than many a noble of Castile. Those who had so far endured unheard-of hardships and toil found themselves in a moment exalted to a position of undreamt-of luxury and ease. The spoils of the Inca’s camp had been so great that every man ate his rations and drank his liquor from dishes of silver and vessels of gold; and as iron became too precious, by reason of its rarity, such of the horses as wanted shoes were shod with silver instead of it. Every cavalier in the army had taken to himself a mistress or two chosen from among the dark-eyed beauties of the Inca’s court, saving only Alonso de Molina, who had left his heart behind him far away in old Castile, and still remained faithful to her who had it in her keeping, although, as the wayward Fates would have it, the day was not to be far distant when his eyes should behold one fairer even than she. Even Pizarro himself, yielding to an example he would gladly have controlled had he been able, had succumbed for a while to the luxurious temptations which beset the Conquerors in the hour of their first victories, yet, with true policy and chivalrous generosity, he had insisted that the sanctity of the Inca’s person and household should be respected. In the eyes of every Spaniard the House of the Serpent was sacred ground, and not even the Captain himself entered it save as the guest of his captive. But there was one who laughed at these restrictions, though outwardly he obeyed them with all humility. This was Filipillo the interpreter, and he, though born in such a condition as might have fitted him to be the slave of the humblest member of Atahuallpa’s court, now dared to aspire to nothing less than the possession of the Princess Pillcu-Cica, whose beauty had fired his lawless fancy when he had first seen her sitting by the Inca’s throne at the Pleasure-House of the Hot Springs.