Listen now to the end of
my tale and you will surely forget the rest. For one month you will live
with your wives, and this month you will pass in feasting at all the
noblest houses in the city. On the last day of the month, however, you
will be placed in a royal barge and together with your wives, paddled
across the lake to a place that is named "Melting of Metals." Thence you
will be led to the teocalli named "House of Weapons," where your wives
will bid farewell to you for ever, and there, Teule, alas! that I must
say it, you are doomed to be offered as a sacrifice to the god whose
spirit you hold, the great god Tezcat, for your heart will be torn from
your body, and your head will be struck from your shoulders and set upon
the stake that is known as "post of heads."'
Now when I heard this dreadful doom I groaned aloud and my knees
trembled so that I almost fell to the ground. Then a great fury seized
me and, forgetting my father's counsel, I blasphemed the gods of that
country and the people who worshipped them, first in the Aztec and Maya
languages, then when my knowledge of these tongues failed me, in Spanish
and good English. But Otomie, who heard some of my words and guessed
more, was seized with fear and lifted her hands, saying:
'Curse not the awful gods, I beseech you, lest some terrible thing
befall you at once.
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