his instructions, saying it showed a low disposition to wish to be employed in such things as breeding cattle and planting cacao, and he at once dispatched a soldier, Alonzo Luis, to summon immediately to Mexico the Spaniards Pizarro had left behind.
The samples of gold and accounts that all the country was rich led our captain, after deliberating with Ordas and other officers and soldiers, to say to Montezuma that all the caciques and towns under his rule should pay tribute to our king, and that he, most wealthy of all, should give from his treasure. Montezuma replied that he would ask all his towns for gold, but many would be able at best to give but trifling trinkets inherited from their forefathers. He then dispatched caciques, ordering each town where the gold mines were to give as many gold bars, and of the same weight, as they were wont to pay to him. He sent two bars as a sample.
Within twenty days the messengers came back. The monarch then summoned Cortes and our officers, and several of us whom he knew from our standing sentinel in his apartments, and said, "Malinche, and other officers and soldiers, I am greatly indebted to your great king for his having thought it worth his effort to send from such distant countries to make inquiries after me. But the thought that most deeply impresses me is that he must be the one who is to rule over us, according to the saying we have from
