This spirited description, which deserves comparison with Livy's picture of the rout at Cannæ, shows Prescott at his best. In it he has shaken off every trace of formalism and of leisurely repose. His blood is up. The short, nervous sentences, the hurry of the narrative, the rapid onrush of events, rouse the reader and fill him with the true battle-spirit. Of an entirely different _genre_ is the account of the entrance of the Spanish army into Mexico as Montezuma's guest, and of the splendid city which they beheld,--the broad streets coated with a hard cement, the intersecting canals, the inner lake darkened by thousands of canoes, the great market-places, the long vista of snowy mansions, their inner porticoes embellished with porphyry and jasper, and the fountains of crystal water leaping up and glittering in the sunlight. Memorable, too, is the scene of the humiliation of Montezuma when, having come as a friend to the quarters of the Spaniards, he is fettered like a slave; and that other scene, no less painful, where the fallen monarch appears upon the walls and begs his people to desist from violence, only to be greeted with taunts and insults, and a shower of stones. But most impressive of all and most unforgettable is the story of the _noche triste_--the Spanish army and their Indian allies stealing silently and at dead of night out of the city which but a short time before they had entered with so brave a show. "The night was cloudy, and a drizzling rain, which fell without intermission, added to the obscurity. The great square before the palace was deserted, as, indeed, it had been since the fall of Montezuma. Steadily, and as noiselessly as possible, the Spaniards held their way along the great street of Tlacopan, which so lately had resounded with the tumult of battle. All was now hushed in silence; and they were only reminded of the past by the occasional presence of some solitary corpse, or a dark heap of the slain, which too plainly told where the strife had been hottest. As they passed along the lanes and alleys which opened into the great street, or looked down the canals, whose polished surface gleamed with a sort of ebon lustre through the obscurity of night, they easily fancied that they discerned the shadowy forms of their foe lurking in ambush and ready to spring on them. But it was only fancy; and the city slept undisturbed even by the prolonged echoes of the tramp of the horses and the hoarse rumbling of the artillery and baggage-trains. At length, a lighter space beyond the dusky line of buildings showed the van of the army that it was emerging on the open causeway. They might well have congratulated themselves on having thus escaped the dangers of an assault in the city itself, and that a brief time would place them in comparative safety on the opposite shore. But the Mexicans were not all asleep.