offering to the Teules. Listen: let me tell you
something of those wars in which we have fought before you give us to
the Teules and our mouths are silent for ever. Where shall I begin? I
know not. Stay, I bore a child--had he lived he would have been your
prince to-day. That child I saw starve to death before my eyes, inch by
inch and day by day I saw him starve. But it is nothing; who am I that
I should complain because I have lost my son, when so many of your sons
are dead and their blood is required at my hands? Listen again:' and
she went on to tell in burning words of the horrors of the siege, of the
cruelties of the Spaniards, and of the bravery of the men of the Otomie
whom I had commanded. For a full hour she spoke thus, while all that
vast audience hung upon her words. Also she told of the part that I
played in the struggle, and of the deeds which I had done, and now and
again some soldier in the crowd who served under me, and who had escaped
the famine and the massacre, cried out:

'It is true; we saw it with our eyes.'

'And so,' she said, 'at last it was finished, at last Tenoctitlan was a
ruin and my cousin and my king, the glorious Guatemoc, lay a prisoner
in the hands of Malinche, and with him my husband Teule, my sister, I
myself, and many another. Malinche swore that he would treat Guatemoc
and his following with all honour. Do you know how he treated him?
Within a few days Guatemoc our king was seated in the chair of torment,
while slaves burned him with hot irons to cause him to declare the
hiding place of the treasure of Montezuma! Ay, you may well cry "Shame
upon him," you shall cry it yet more loudly before I have done, for know
that Guatemoc did not suffer alone, one lies there who suffered with him
and spoke no word, and I also, your princess, was doomed to torment.
We escaped when death was at our door, for I told my husband that
the people of the Otomie had true hearts, and would shelter us in our
sorrow, and for his sake I, Otomie, disguised myself in the robe of a
wanton and fled with him hither. Could I have known what I should live
to see and hear, could I have dreamed that you would receive us thus, I
had died a hundred deaths before I came to stand and plead for pity at
your hands.

'Oh! my people, my people, I beseech of you, make no terms with the
false Teule, but remain bold and free. Your necks are not fitted to the
yoke of the slave, your sons and daughters are of too high a blood