ere but half as wonderful as it promised to be, I should end my days
as Sir Thomas Wingfield. To this I answered her Majesty that pen and ink
were tools I had no skill in, yet I would bear her command in mind.
Then I made bold to give her a great emerald that once had hung upon the
breast of Montezuma's daughter, and of many a princess before her, and
at the sight of it her eyes glistened brightly as the gem, for this
Queen of ours loves such costly playthings. Indeed, had I so desired,
I think that I might then and there have struck a bargain, and set the
stone against a title; but I, who for many years had been the prince of
a great tribe, had no wish to be a knight. So I kissed the royal hand,
and so tightly did it grip the gem within that the knuckle joints shone
white, and I went my ways, coming back home to this my house by the
Waveney on that same day.

Now the Queen's wish that I should set down the story of my life
remained in my mind, and for long I have desired to do it before life
and story end together. The labour, indeed, is great to one unused to
such tasks; but why should I fear labour who am so near to the holiday
of death? I have seen things that no other Englishman has seen, which
are worthy to be recorded; my life has been most strange, many a time it
has pleased God to preserve it when all seemed lost, and this perchance
He has done that the lesson of it might become known to others. For
there is a lesson in it and in the things that I have seen, and it is
that no wrong can ever bring about a right, that wrong will breed wrong
at last, and be it in man or people, will fall upon the brain that
thought it and the hand that wrought it.

Look now at the fate of Cortes--that great man whom I have known clothed
with power like a god. Nearly forty years ago, so I have heard, he died
poor and disgraced in Spain; he, the conqueror--yes, and I have learned
also that his son Don Martin has been put to the torture in that city
which the father won with so great cruelties for Spain. Malinche, she
whom the Spaniards named Marina, the chief and best beloved of all the
women of this same Cortes, foretold it to him in her anguish when after
all that had been, after she had so many times preserved him and his
soldiers to look upon the sun, at the last he deserted her, giving her
in marriage to Don Juan Xaramillo. Look again at the fate of Marina
herself. Because she loved this man Cortes, or Malinche, as the Indians