I had lost my betrothed, the love of
my youth; for twenty years I had lived a savage chief among savages and
made acquaintance with every hardship, wedded to a woman who, although
she loved me dearly, and did not lack nobility of mind, as she had shown
the other day, was still at heart a savage or, at the least, a thrall
of demon gods. The tribe that I ruled was conquered, the beautiful city
where I dwelt was a ruin, I was homeless and a beggar, and my fortune
would be great if in the issue I escaped death or slavery. All this I
could have borne, for I had borne the like before, but the cruel end of
my last surviving son, the one true joy of my desolate life, I could
not bear. The love of those children had become the passion of my middle
age, and as I loved them so they had loved me. I had trained them from
babyhood till their hearts were English and not Aztec, as were their
speech and faith, and thus they were not only my dear children, but
companions of my own race, the only ones I had. And now by accident, by
sickness, and by the sword, they were dead the three of them, and I was
desolate.
Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should a sweetheart
give us the go by we fill the world with moans and swear that it holds
no comfort for us. But when we bend our heads before the shrouded shape
of some lost child, then it is that for the first time we learn how
terrible grief can be.
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