Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/240

220 this vast though plain pile, embracing three courts and practically three stories, they occupied only the southern section, the central being left to state officers and the northern and eastern to soldiers and prisoners. It faced the great plaza with its throng of people and imposing cathedral, but was otherwise relieved only by a small garden. Maximilian, with his unassuming informality and sailor traits, looked upon it as a cloister, and soon selected for his chief residence the palace of Chapultepec, standing on the oval hill 160 feet high, and a league south-west of the capital. It stood within groves of cedar, elm, and poplar, interspersed with wild shrubbery and flowers, the building rising upon different terraces in plain and irregular form, and nothing gorgeous within to remind the royal pair of their imperial presence.

For this spot, hallowed by the myths as a resting-place for monarchs, Montezuma had shown his predilection when oppressed with omens of a falling throne, or drawn by longing for peaceful intercourse with nature; watching from the forest-girded summit the city reflected in the changing waters of the lake, and surrounded by verdure-clad shores, with whitened tenements, waving fields, and the shady copse, which extended in variegated hues until it merged in the hazy distance with the circling ranges that marked the limits of the valley. And now another last monarch