The Infidel Volume Ii Part 17

There was something affecting even to the iron-hearted conqueror in the situation and demeanour of the poor infidel, thus beseeching, and evidently with as much sincerity as simplicity, a death of honour after a life of patriotism; and Cortes would have renewed his caresses and a.s.surances of friends.h.i.+p, had not his ears been that moment struck by voices without, p.r.o.nouncing the name of Juan Lerma, with brutal execrations. He signed to those cavaliers who had conducted the monarch to his presence, to lead him away; and a moment after, Juan Lerma was conducted up to his footstool. Dejected, spiritless, overcome perhaps by the ferocious calls for vengeance which had heralded his steps to the palace, as well as by the exhaustion of long bodily suffering, he did not raise his eyes from the floor, until he heard the voice of Cortes p.r.o.nounce the faltering words,--

"Juan of Castillejo, I have done you a great wrong.--Yes," he continued, with a louder voice, when Juan looked up, surprised not more by his altered tones than by a name so unexpected and unknown, "Yes, and let all bear witness to my confession;--I have done thee, not one wrong only, but many; for which I heartily repent me, and, before all this a.s.semblage, do beseech thy forgiveness."

"My forgiveness, senor!" stammered Juan, while all the rest looked on in amazement.

"Thy forgiveness," repeated the conqueror, with double emphasis. "Thou hast been belied to me, bitterly maligned; but heaven has punished the slanderer, who slew mine own peace of mind, that he might compa.s.s thy death."

"Alas, senor," said Juan; "in his death-gasp, Guzman confessed to me--"

"Speak not of Guzman--forget him.--Have ye heard, my masters! and well taken note of what is spoken? Now begone, all, and leave me alone with my recovered prodigal.--Juan--Juan Lerma,--Juan of Castillejo," he cried, as soon as the wondering audience had vanished; "if Guzman have confessed to you, you must know why I have been maddened into wrath and injustice.--But thy sister, Juan, where is thy sister? my poor Magdalena? Ah, Juan! it was but a fiendish aberration, that set me against the child of my sister!"

With these words, he threw himself upon Juan's neck, and embraced him with a fervour that indicated the return of all his old affections, uttering a thousand exclamations, in which he mingled recurrences to the past with many a reference to the present and future. "This will be a glad day to Catalina, for she ever loved thee--Dolt that I was, to think that her love could be aught but a mother's! My father, Juan, my father, too! his gray hairs will yet be laid in a grave of joy; for he shall behold the son of his daughter seated in the inheritance of a n.o.ble father. And thy sister--she shall s.h.i.+ne with the proudest and n.o.blest.--I knew thee upon the causeway, too, though I was left in a coma, and half expiring. We have full proof of thy claims.--And thy princess, too--dost thou remember the silver cross?" taking it from his bosom--"Were there a duke's son demanded her, she should be thine.--What ho! some one bring me--But, nay--Thy sister, Juan! does she not live?"

Juan was stunned, stupified, bewildered, by a transformation in his own character and in the feelings of the general, so sudden and so marvellous. Yet he strove to reply to the last question, and was in the act of uttering a broken and hasty explanation, when a loud cry came from the pa.s.sage, and rus.h.i.+ng out, they beheld a party of soldiers bearing, in a litter of robes torn from the burning palace, the body, or the living frame, they knew not which, of the unhappy nun, over whom the penitent Gregorio was bitterly lamenting.

It was indeed Magdalena, her garments scorched, her face like the face of the dying. Yet she did not seem to have suffered from the flames. The soldiers had found her in a part of the palace not touched by the fire, and scarce invaded by the smoke; and perhaps a subtle physician would have traced her dreadful condition rather to some overpowering convulsion of spirit than to any physical, injury. She was indeed dying, the victim of contending pa.s.sions, with which the education of a cloister had so ill fitted her to contend.

We will not speak of the meeting of Juan and his dark-eyed proselyte. It took place beside the couch of the dying girl, who, for love of him, had given up the vows of religion and the fame of woman, and perished with frenzy, when she discovered that that love was more than the love of a sister.

At nightfall, and while she still lay insensible, save that a faint moan occasionally trembled from her lips, there arose a tempest of lightning, thunder, and rain, far exceeding in violence any that had before burst over the heads of the Spaniards, and which Bernal Diaz has recorded in his history, as having been the most dreadful that ever confounded his mind and senses. It seemed as if the warlike divinities of Mexico were now taking leave of their broken altars and subjugated people, with a display of strength and fury, never more to be exercised. It ceased not until midnight, and then only when it had discharged a bolt that shook the island to its foundation, and tumbled many a ruined cabin and dilapidated palace, upon the heads of their unhappy inmates.

It was in the midst of this conflict of the elements, that the broken spirit pa.s.sed from its weary prison; and what had been beauty and affection, genius and pa.s.sion, became a clod, to claim kindred with its fellow of the valley. It was better indeed that she should thus perish; for her nature was above that of earth, and even the pa.s.sion that destroyed her, pure, enthusiastic, and devoted as it was, was unworthy the spirit it had subdued. It was such as is the molewarp to the rose-bush, or the myrtle-tree, which he can destroy by burrowing at their roots, even when the winter's blast can scarce rive away a branch.

The remains of this ill-fated being were interred upon a sequestered hill, west of Mexico, where Gregorio Castillejo built a hermitage, and mourned over her for the few years he survived her. He left the odour of sanct.i.ty behind him, and the hermitage is now forgotten in the chapel built upon its site, and dedicated to Our Lady de los Remedios. To this place Cortes withdrew, with his whole army, in order that the ruined city might be purified of corses and rubbish, that rendered it horrible even to a soldier, no longer inflamed by the fire of battle. He soon, however, removed to Xochimilco, the Field of Flowers, where the time of the purification was devoted to solemn rejoicings and profane festivities.

To all those who may yet be disposed to consider our account of the strength and splendour of the empire of Montezuma as fabulous, we recommend no better study than the honest, worthy, and single-minded historian, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who lived to complete his _Historia Verdadera_, fifty years afterwards, in the loyal city of Guatimala, in which he held the honourable post of Regidor, the venerable, and, at that period, almost the sole survivor of the followers of Cortes. He has recorded one striking proof of the vast mult.i.tudes of pagans that had been concentrated within the island of Mexico. After averring, with a solemn oath, that, after the fall of the city, the streets, houses, squares, courts, and ca.n.a.ls, were so covered with dead bodies, that it was impossible to move without treading upon them, he relates, that, Cortes having ordered all who survived, princ.i.p.ally women and children, and the wounded, to evacuate the city, preparatory to its purification, 'for _three days and three nights_, all the causeways were full of the wretched fugitives, who were so weak and sickly, so squalid and pestilential, that it was misery to behold them.' Three broad highways, covered, for the s.p.a.ce of three days and nights, by a moving ma.s.s of widows and orphans, the trophies of a gallant achievement! the first fruits of the ambition of a single individual!

As Bernal Diaz retained, to the last, a jealous regard for the honour of his leader, this friendly weakness, taken into consideration along with the infirmities of memory incident to his advanced age, may perhaps account for his failure to complete the story of Juan Lerma. He may have recollected, as is often the case with an old man, the earliest facts of the story, while the later ones slipped entirely from his mind.

Of Cortes himself, it is scarce necessary to apprize the reader, that he lived to subdue other empires, and experience the ingrat.i.tude of a monarch, whose favour he had so amply merited. He fought for renown, for his king, and for heaven. Heaven alone can judge the merit of his acts, for men are yet unwilling to sit in judgment upon the brave; his king requited him with insults and positive oppression; and fame has placed him among those who have trodden out the wine-press of human desolation, and live in marble.

As for the young Count of Castillejo, his claims to the inheritance of his father were too well substantiated to be resisted; and the crimes of Gregorio had left none to oppose. As a subordinate in the work of conquest, there was nothing in him to be feared; and when he bore from a land he could only remember with sorrow, a bride whose father had borne the witching name of king, he was received with as much favour, and distinguished by as many honours, as any other _Conquistador_, who transplanted among the dames of Castile, a wife wooed within the palaces of Montezuma.

The fate of Guatimozin is well known. The crown he was still enforced to wear did not protect him from the torture of fire; nor could his n.o.ble character and unhappy fall secure him from a death of degradation. Four years after the fall of his empire, and at a distance of several hundred leagues from his native valley, he expiated upon a gibbet, a crime that existed only in the gloomy and remorseful imagination of the Conqueror.

And thus, with two royal kinsmen, kings and feudatories of Anahuac, he was left to swing in the winds, and feed the vultures, of a distant and desert land. He merited a higher distinction, a loftier respect, and a profounder compa.s.sion, than men will willingly accord to a barbarian and INFIDEL.

THE END.