same time making a movement, as if he
would embrace him. He was prevented, however, by the timely interference
of two Aztec lords from thus profaning, before the assembled multitudes
of his people, the sacred person of their master.

After this formal introduction and interchange of civilities, Montezuma
appointed his brother, the bold Cuitlahua, to conduct the Spaniards to
their quarters in the city, and returned in the same princely state in
which he came, amid the prostrate thousands of his subjects. Pondering
deeply, as the train moved slowly on, upon the fearful crisis in his
affairs which had now arrived, his ear was arrested by a faint low voice
in the crowd, which he instantly recognized as Karee's, breathing out a
plaintive wail, as if in soliloquy with her own soul, or in high
communion with the spirits of the unseen world. The strain was wild and
broken, but its tenor was deeply mournful and deprecatory. It concluded
with these emphatic words--

The proud eagle may turn to his eyrie again,
But his pinions are clipped, and his foot feels the chain,
He is monarch no more in his wide domain--
The falcon has come to his nest.

With an air of bold and martial triumph, their colors flying, and music
briskly playing, the Spaniards, with the singular trail of half savage
Tlascalans, the deadly enemies of the Aztecs, made their entrance into
the southern quarter of the renowned Tenochtitlan, and were escorted by
the brave Cuitlahua, to the royal palace of Axayacatl, in the heart of
the city, once the residence of Montezuma's father, and now appropriated
to the accommodation of Cortez and his followers.

As they marched through the crowded streets, new subjects of wonder and
admiration greeted them on every side. The grandeur and extent of the
city, the superior style of its architecture, the ample dimensions,
immense strength, and costly ornaments of the numerous palaces, pyramids
and temples, separated and surrounded by broad terraced gardens in the
highest possible state of cultivation, and teeming with flowers of every
hue and name--the lofty tapering sanctuaries, and altars blazing with
inextinguishable fires,--and above all, the innumerable throngs of
people who swarmed through the streets and canals, filling every
door-way and window, and clustering on the flat roof of every building
as they passed, filled them with mingled emotions of admiration,
surprise and fear.

The swarming myriads of