Notwithstanding all the tumult in the
city, the mourning for the dead and the fear that hung over it like a
cloud, the ceremonies of religion and its feasts were still celebrated
strictly, more strictly indeed than ever before. Thus on this night a
festival was held in my honour, and I must sit at the feast crowned
with flowers and surrounded by my wives, while those nobles who remained
alive in the city did me homage, and with them Cuitlahua, who, if
Montezuma were dead, would now be emperor. It was a dreary meal enough,
for I could scarcely be gay though I strove to drown my woes in drink,
and as for the guests, they had little jollity left in them. Hundreds
of their relatives were dead and with them thousands of the people; the
Spaniards still held their own in the fortress, and that day they had
seen their emperor, who to them was a god, smitten down by one of their
own number, and above all they felt that doom was upon themselves. What
wonder that they were not merry? Indeed no funeral feast could have been
more sad, for flowers and wine and fair women do not make pleasure, and
after all it was a funeral feast--for me.
At length it came to an end and I fled to my own apartments, whither my
three wives followed me, for Otomie did not come, calling me most happy
and blessed who to-morrow should be with myself, that is with my own
godhead, in heaven.
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