Then came the advance guard, brilliant in gorgeous liveries and plumed head-dresses, and after these rank upon rank of nobles with plumed casques of burnished silver on their heads and their bodies covered with armour of golden scales from shoulder to thigh. Then a body of priests, bare-headed and robed in flowing garments of snowy whiteness. Then followed a brilliant and orderly throng of nobles and warriors blazing with gold and silver and bright-hued uniforms shining with gems, and, borne aloft in the midst of these was the open litter, gorgeous with bright and many-tinted feather work, in which Atahuallpa sat in his golden chair, blazing with gold and gems, and motionless as a statue hewn out of pale bronze. Not a Spaniard was to be seen as the splendid pageant reached the entrance to the square. Those who came in front separated into two long lines, and between them the Inca’s bearers advanced into the great open space. As they reached the middle of it the Spanish trumpets rang out, and the guard of honour sallied forth in all the bravery of polished steel and gay caparisons to meet it. The first salutations were exchanged with a gravity befitting the occasion, and, these being over, Vincente de Valverde, Bible in hand, and attended by Brother Joachim bearing the great crucifix on his right hand, and the interpreter Filipillo, carrying the recollection of the fair face and bright eyes of the Princess Pillcu-Cica in his heart, on his left, advanced with slow steps towards the side of the Inca’s litter. Atahuallpa now for the first time turned his head and stared in cold surprise at this strange apparition, and Valverde, giving him little time for wonder, plunged forthwith into an exhortation long enough to have wearied out anything more sensitive than the stony indifference of the Inca. In fervent heedlessness of the fact that every word had to pass through the mind and the lips of Filipillo before it could be understood, he expounded the whole Christian faith from the Fall of Man to the mystery of Pentecost, and from thence he deduced the descent of the Pope as the successor of the Apostles, and, passing from this to the Divine right of kings under the sanction of the Vicar of Christ, he proved to the satisfaction of any good Catholic that His Majesty of Spain was the true lord and rightful owner of all the lands of the West, including Atahuallpa’s empire, since he who sat in the chair of St. Peter had given them to him. Finally, seeing at length some signs of impatience on the frowning countenance of the Inca, he held up the Bible, proclaiming it as the Word of the Most High which he and those with him were commissioned to preach in every land under the sun. When he had at length come to an end Atahuallpa turned his eyes on to Filipillo and said-- “Speak, slave, and if thou understandest the speech of this strange creature tell me what he says that I may answer.”