Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/157

Rh In accordance with this spirit, he sent for his own wife, Catalina Suarez, to whom he had been united under such peculiar circumstances. Sandoval happened to be on the coast when she arrived, and undertook to escort her to the capital. Cortés met them near Tezcuco with a brilliant retinue, and tendered all the honor which the wife of the governor of so vast and rich a country could be expected to receive. At Mexico she was greeted with processions, ringing of bells, and salvos, and at night the queen city shone ablaze with illumination, multiplied in the mirrored surface of the dark waters. Amid all this joyous demonstration Cortés is said to have borne a heavy heart, covered by a mask of cheerfulness. This is not unlikely, for the rather humble origin of his wife, the not wholly spotless fame of her family, and the half compulsory marriage, all must have tended to diminish the devotion of the husband, and caused him to regard her as a bar to the ambitious dreams nursed by his ever-increasing fame and power. This view was quite general, prompted partly by her unheralded arrival, which made it appear as if she had come unbidden, in quest of a truant lord. Nothing in his conduct, however, gave color to the rumor. He showed loyal attention to her every wish and comfort, and exacted all the deference from others that should be accorded to the ruler's consort. She reigned indeed a queen, a position to which the wildest dreams of Catalina or her match-making mother had never