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Rh character of the invaders. Gods of the air no longer were they now to him. Intelligence must have reached him by this time of their cruel acts in Tabasco, of their insatiable lust, of their low-born manners and total lack of all generous feelings. These were not the attributes of gods, that they displayed!

Some of the Spanish writers would have us believe that Montezuma consulted his gods, making sacrifices to them of tender children, and they commanded him to repel the invaders. But it seems more probable that he now saw the error into which his superstition had led him, and if he still believed in the coming of Quetzalcoatl, he was now assured that the peace-loving god would not come in the guise of these bloody-minded adventurers. In his total ignorance of another country than that of Mexico and its contiguous territory, he was puzzled to explain their origin, and hence was easily led to accept the popular tradition. No, these were not the emissaries of the Feathered Serpent, of the Prince of Peace; he would have nothing further to do with them. Yet his generous nature—generous in great things, despite the fact that his treasure was accumulated through the oppressions of his suffering subjects—refused to let the strangers go without a show of hospitality, and a gift for that monarch they pretended had sent them on this mission. Hence it was that he would dismiss them loaded with favors, and that he would sever all connection between them and his subjects. Ill-fated, short-sighted monarch! He mistook the natures of the beings he was dealing with; he had thought them at least sensible to generous treatment, while they were in fact strangers to every sentiment of the kind! He had not reflected upon the consequences of such a display of the wealth of his kingdom upon these men whose god was gold, whose creed was as bloody as that of the Aztecs in their palmiest days.