Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/98

84 never visibly moved the multitude in this manner. Even the great decennial fête had been rather the occasion for a general disappearance of Indians than for their appearance.

What did it all mean? The authorities were distinctly ill at ease, and the few troops massed at Cajamarca when the news came in of Garcia's Indian revolt at the other end of the country had been put under arms. The doors of the city's eight churches were militarily guarded, for each one of these buildings might have made a fortress. The rest of the troops had been gathered in the main square, not far from the ruined palace in which stands the stone on which Atahualpa, last King of the Incas, was burned alive.

These ruins were the goal of the Indians' long pilgrimage over the mountains, the visit to that stone being the religious and outward pretext for this mute manifestation by a conquered race.

Don Christobal, amazed at what he saw, nervously remembered that the great Indian revolt of 1818 had been preceded by just such happenings. Were the Interaymi festivals which began next day really to be the signal for one of those revolts which the governments of Peru had long decided were no more to be feared?

As he was putting this question to himself, the Marquis caught sight of the post-office, and