Page:Romance of History, Mexico.djvu/75

 by him, and that he hoped they would have cause to be satisfied with his arrival there."

When his visitors had departed he turned to Aguilar to inquire how this slave, picked up in the land of Tabasco, could speak the Aztec language. Malinche or Marina, as the Spaniards had christened her, then told them the strange story of her life.

On the death of her father, a cacique and ruler of a large province in Mexico, her mother speedily married again, and when a son was born her one aim was to give him the poor girl's heritage. One night she was seized and secretly sold to some traders, whilst the mother, pretending to her people that Malinche was dead, lavished money on a magnificent mock funeral. The child was taken to Tabasco, and there bought by a chief, and thus by a freak of fortune she came into the hands of the white strangers and was carried back to her own country. To find a faithful interpreter was to the Spaniards a matter of supreme importance, and when Cortés saw that she was quick and bright, and would soon learn Spanish, he was greatly pleased. Malinche herself was charmed to be of use to these wonderful white men, who treated her so kindly. "She was handsome and clever," says Bernal Diaz, "and one that would have an oar in every boat." "She looked," adds the old soldier with admiration, "the great lady that she was." Another chronicler calls her "beautiful as a goddess." She was always treated by the Spaniards with the greatest courtesy, and addressed invariably as Doña Marina.

As the Indians seemed so friendly, Cortés decided 53