Page:Romance of History, Mexico.djvu/250

 speed. The Spaniards alone, a stronger race and familiar with the disease, seemed to escape its baneful breath. It was in the crowded capital that la viruela wrought its greatest havoc, and there the people perished "like cattle stricken with the murrain."

Cuitlahuac, the emperor, was one of the first to fall. Four months only had he reigned in Montezuma's place, but in that time he had rallied his subjects and driven the strangers with slaughter from his city. To the royal palace on the cypress-crowned hill of Chapoltepec he dragged himself to die, and with his last breath he bequeathed "the intolerable burden of government" to his nephew Guatemoc, or, as he was usually called, Guatemozin, the tzin or lord Guatemoc.

In their magnificent robes of office, attended by three hundred of the nobles of Mexico, the four great lords, the electors of the empire, met together and confirmed Cuitlahuac's choice. But first arose the teoteuctli, the high priest, garbed in sable, to invoke by solemn prayer the blessing of the supreme God.

"O Lord!" he cried, "Thou knowest that the days of Cuitlahuac, our king, are at an end. Thou hast placed him beneath Thy footstool. He has trodden the path which we all must tread, and he has gone to the house whither we all must follow, the home of everlasting shadows. There, where none shall trouble him, he is gathered to rest. . . . Thou gavest him joys to taste, but not to drink; the glory of empire passed before his eyes like the madness of a dream. With tears and prayers to Thee he took 214