Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/634

618 the lieutenant, Morelos removed the cigar he had all the while been smoking, and said in a tone of indifference, "Señor Carranco, it seems we know one an other."

He was conducted back to camp, and as the intelligence spread before them that the great leader had been captured, vivas and salvos rose in every direction, accompanied by yet more tumultuous demonstrations of joy. Concha was so delighted that he omitted further pursuit, to the saving of not a few distinguished lives, and gave his soldiers free access to the captured baggage train. Mexico also went into ecstasies, and the viceroy distributed rewards and promotions with liberal hands. The decline of Morelos' influence was little understood or considered among the royalists. To them his name towered in all the magnitude of the once ruler of the south and creator of the congress, whose victories stood uneclipsed by those of any rival chief.

On the way to Mexico the prisoner passed through Tenango, now in ashes, to become there as elsewhere the object of the curious who lined the thoroughfares and crowded the approaches. The attentions accorded him, and the varied demonstrations of the curious, seemed at first to flatter his vanity, but soon they be came annoying. Among others Colonel Villasana pressed him with needless questions, asking after an impatient reply what he would have done with him and Concha if the capture had been reversed. "I