CHAPTER XXV.
DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.
June, 1520.
A Living Death — The Old Imperial Party and the New Power — Aztec Defiance — Perilous Position of the Spaniards — Disappointment to Cortés — Another Sally — The Dying Monarch — He has no Desire to Live — His Rejection of a New Faith — He will None of the Heaven of the Spaniards — Commends his Children to Cortés — The Character of Montezuma and of his Reign.
Long before this the Spaniards had learned that the power which had arisen in Montezuma's stead was of a different quality from that lately wielded by the poor caged monarch, whose proud spirit they had so blighted and brought low. No Quetzalcoatl or other personage, fair or dark, heaven-descended or of import infernal, might now interpose to prevent the killing and cooking of the strangers. Cortes had thought that the late spoliation of idols would fill the people with awe toward beings so superior to their gods. But when he threatened that if they did not lay down their arms not a man of them should remain alive, nor one stone be left on another throughout all their city, they laughed at him, the priests abetting. "How speak you so foolishly," they said, "mortal as we now know you to be, when for every Spanish life we are prepared to sacrifice, if need be, twenty-five thousand of our own lives?" They had cut off retreat at the causeways, so that the lake alone was open to exit, and here they were prepared with fleets of canoes filled with resolute men. Even should the Spaniards hold out against
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