Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/52

40 necklace of alternate gold and silver hearts; and on the altar before him, three human hearts which had recently been torn from living breasts, were still quivering and bleeding, fresh from the immolated victims.

In the other chamber, or sanctuary, were the milder emblems of Tezcatlipoca, who "created the world and watched it with providential care." The lineaments of this idol were those of a youth, whose image, carved in black and polished stone, was adorned with discs of burnished gold, and embellished with a brilliant shield. Nevertheless, the worship of this more benign deity was stained with homicide, for on its altar, in a plate of gold, the conqueror found five human hearts; and, in these dens of inhumanity, Bernal Diaz tells us, that the "stench was more intolerable than in the slaughter houses of Castile!"

Such is a brief summary of the observations made by the Spaniards during a week's residence in the city. They found themselves in the heart of a rich and populous empire, whose civilization, however, was, by a strange contradiction for which we shall hereafter endeavor to account, stained with the most shocking barbarity under the name of religion. The unscrupulous murder, which was dignified with the associations and practice of national worship, was by no means consolatory to the minds of men who were really in the power of semi-civilized rulers and bloody priests. They discovered, from their own experience, that the sovereign was both fickle and feeble, and that a caprice, a hope, or a fear, might suffice to make him free his country from a handful of dangerous guests by offering them as sacrifices to his gods. The Tlascalans were already looked upon with no kind feelings by their hereditary foes. A spark might kindle a fatal flame. It was a moment for bold and unscrupulous action, and it was needful to obtain some signal advantage by which the Spaniards could, at least, effect their retreat, if not ensure an ultimate victory.

News just then was brought to Cortéz that four of his countrymen, whom he left behind at Cempoalla, had been treacherously slain by one of the tributary caciques of Montezuma; and this at once gave him a motive, or at least a pretext, for seizing the Emperor himself, as a hostage for the good faith of his nation. Accordingly, he visited Montezuma with a band of his most reliable followers, who charged the monarch with the treachery of his