Being asked what relationship the men bore to one another, Cortés said that all were brothers, friends, and companions, with the exception of a few servants.[1]
Montezuma afterward elicited from the interpreters who the officers and gentlemen were, and in conferring favors he sent them more valuable presents through the mayordomo, while the rest obtained inferior gifts by the hand of servants.[2] At his departure from the Spanish quarter the soldiers with redoubled alacrity fell into line to salute a prince who had impressed them both with his gentle breeding and his generosity, and the artillery thundered forth a salvo, partly to demonstrate that the caged lightning was a fearful reality.[3]
The following forenoon Cortés sent to announce that he would make a return visit, and several officers came to escort him. Arrayed in his finest attire, with Alvarado, Velazquez de Leon, Ordaz, Sandoval, and five soldiers, he proceeded to the residence of Montezuma, in the new palace as it has been called, situated in the south-east corner of the great temple plaza.[4] If they had admired the palace forming their own
- ↑ 'Eramos hermanos en el amor, y amistad, é personas mui principales,' is the way Bernal Diaz expresses it. Hist. Verdad., 66.
- ↑ Gomara, Hist. Mex., 102-3. 'Los haçia proveer luego, assi de mugeres de serviçio, como de cama, é les daba á cada uno una joya que pessaba hasta diez pessos de oro.' Oviedo, iii. 500-1.
- ↑ Vetancvrt, Teatro Mex., pt. iii. 129. Sahagun, followed by Acosta, Brasseur de Bourbourg, and others, states that the artillery was discharged at night to startle the natives. Hist. Conq. (ed. 1840), 85.
- ↑ It is so depicted in the old Nuremberg view of the city, already referred to. Ramirez, Carbajal Espinosa, and Alaman give the extent, and the latter enters into quite a lengthy account of its situation with respect to present and former outlines of the quarter. Disert., ii. 202, etc.; Carbajal Espinosa, Hist. Mex., ii. 221-2; Ramirez, notes in Prescott's Mex. (ed. Mex. 1845), ii. app. 103. Humboldt places it opposite the southern half of the western temple side, Essai Pol., i. 190, but that site is assigned by all the above historians to the old palace of Montezuma, so called — not the Axayacatl where Cortés was quartered. The mistake is probably owing to his ignorance of the fact that the residence of the Cortés fanily stood first on the site of the new palace of Montezuma, whence it was moved to that of the old palace when the government bought the former.
Hist. Mex., 101-2; Peter Martyr, dec. v. cap. iii.; Duran, Hist. Ind., MS., ii. 441-2; Herrera, dec. ii. lib. vii. cap. vi.; Torquemada, i. 452-3; Ixtlilcochitl, Hist. Chich., 296; Peralta, Not. Hist., 107-8. Acosta implies that Cortés now reconciled the Tlascaltecs with the Aztecs. Hist. Ind., 521.
