their city at once if it were not for some business we were carrying through with Montezuma.
Ambassadors from Mexico were present during the whole of this interview and heard all the promises made, and when the Tlaxcalans had withdrawn they half laughingly remarked to Cortes that he should not trust such assurances; they were nothing but treacherous tricks, for the Tlaxcalans merely intended, failing to conquer us in open combat, to get us into their town and kill us. Cortes told the ambassadors that he was not troubling himself about the Tlaxcalan intentions; and when the Mexicans found him thus determined they begged him to wait six days in our camp that they might send messengers to Montezuma. Faithful to their word, within six days six Mexican chief men arrived from the great city with a rich present of gold trinkets wrought in various shapes and two hundred pieces of cotton cloth interwoven with feathers. When they offered these to Cortes they told him Montezuma was delighted to hear of our success, but he prayed him most earnestly not to go with the people of Tlaxcala to their town, and on the whole not to trust them, for they were merely wishing to rob us of our gold and cloth and were themselves so poor they did not have a single decent cotton cloak.
At this very moment delegates arrived from Tlaxcala saying all the old caciques of the town were
