Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 2.djvu/228

 but the hand of Providence could have led their countrymen safe through the heart of this powerful empire.

In the midst of the admiring circle, the brow of Cortés alone was observed to be overcast, and a sigh, which now and then stole audibly from his bosom, showed the gloomy working of his thoughts. "Take comfort," said one of the cavaliers, approaching his commander, and wishing to console him in his rough way for his recent loss, “you must not lay these things so much to heart; it is, after all, but the fortune of war." The general's answer showed the nature of his meditations. "You are my witness," said he, “how often I have endeavoured to persuade yonder capital peacefully to submit. It fills me with grief, when I think of the toil and the dangers my brave followers have yet to encounter before we can call it ours. But the time is come when we must put our hands to the work."

There can be no doubt that Cortés, with every other man in his army, felt he was engaged in a holy crusade, and that, independently of personal considerations, he could not serve Heaven better than by planting the Cross on the bloodstained towers of the heathen metropolis. But it was natural that he should feel some compunction, as he gazed on the goodly scene, and thought of the coming tempest, and how soon the opening blossoms of civilisation which there met his eye must wither under the rude breath of war. It was a striking spectacle, that of the great Conqueror, thus brooding in silence over the desolation he was about to bring on the land! It seems to have made a deep impression on his soldiers, little accustomed to such proofs of his sensibility; and it forms the burden of some of those romances, or national ballads, with which the Castilian minstrel, in the olden time, delighted to commemorate the favourite heroes of his country, and which, coming midway between oral tradition and chronicle, have been found as imperishable a record as chronicle itself.1

Tacuba was the point which Cortés had reached on his former expedition round the northern side of the valley. He had now, therefore, made the entire circuit of the great lake; had reconnoitred the several approaches to the capital, and inspected with his own eyes the dispositions made on the opposite quarters for its defence. He had no occasion to prolong his stay in Tacuba, the vicinity of which to Mexico must soon bring on him its whole warlike population.

Early on the following morning, he resumed his march, taking