elations as before, when Cortez
journeys South, where in time they reach the precincts of the maiden's
nativity, and she meets her mother, after all the years of their cruel
separation. Here the beautiful sincerity of the Christianity she had
espoused, shines forth as she quiets her mother's fears, and professes
to doubt her mother's original intent to sell her. She loads her mother
with jewels and seems to cherish no feeling not consistent with the
warmest relations of daughter and mother.

The statement soon after is, that Cortez presents her to Don Xamarillo
with all the sanction of marriage, and he enriches her with some of the
largest estates in her native province; and there the historic account
closes. Incidentally, it is mentioned that a son was born during the
period of this _affaire du coeur_.

I stated that the historic account closes here, but M. Charny and others
enlarge on the traditionary feeling of South Eastern Mexico, and if we
may credit his statements (and many times tradition carries more heart
and more of the essential elements of truth in it than the cold pencil
of history), Malinche is so woven into the social structure as to become
almost the patron saint of that part of the country.

And Prescott (rather inclined to the fruit than the blossom of history)
speaks of Malinche as being reverently held by the Aztec descendants as
the guardian angel of Chapultepec.

I have endeavored thus to present the salient features of this part of
the historic drama, adding and enlarging only as it became necessary to
connect the events and do justice to the fair subject of the endeavor;
and whatever criticism may be offered, I can, without hesitancy, claim
the credit of candor and a desire to eliminate from all the facts of the
case the plain, unvarnished truth.

I began at first to write the idyl in nine-syllabic measure, but soon
found myself cramped in expression, and in recopying I have thrown off
restraint and used the double terminal with both nine and ten syllables,
having no desire and finding no occasion to use the eight syllable
measure which Longfellow has so immortalized in the "Song of Hiawatha."

The sacred relations of man and wife, like those of any other
_sacrament_ entered into voluntarily, are no less binding in the
_spirit_ than in the _letter_ of the law; and it is a gratifying truth
that the statutes of many of the States of the Union are being so
remodeled as to recognize the _fact_