Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/41

Rh Spaniards, to whom he had become endeared by his gentle manners, his fine, fair presence, resembling that of a Castilian rather than of a native American, and by his devotion to their interests. The Tezcucans hastened to elect for successor Ahuaxpitzactzin, afterward baptized as Cárlos, a not fully legitimate son of Nezahualpilli; for the scheming and unpatriotic Ixtlilxochitl does not appear to have been liked in the Acolhua capital, whatever his influence in the northern provinces which he had wrested from the rest. This independent conduct of the electors did not please Cortés, who might have approved their choice if submitted with due humility, and so he persuaded them to reconsider the selection in favor of his well-deserving protégé Ixtlilxochitl, baptized as Fernando Pimentel, though generally referred to under the former name, now the cognomen of his family.

Although but twenty-one years of age, Ixtlilxochitl could point to a career almost unparalleled for one so young, and one that might, under different circumstances, have placed his name among the most illustrious in Nahua annals. At his birth already astrologers drew strange portents from the stars. The child would in the course of time become the friend of strangers, turn against his own blood, change laws and institutions, and even rise against the gods. He should be killed. "Nay!" replied the king, "have not the gods willed his birth, and this as the time approaches for