Chapter XXXI: Once for All--They Shall Cease

The number of priests in the capital of the empire of Mexico itself amounted, at the time of the conquest, to very many thousands--five thousand for the immense chief _teocalli_, or house of God, alone.

These priests were gathered together in great establishments, where a most rigorous discipline was maintained, much after the fashion of Roman Catholic institutions. And as with the empire itself, so was it, in a lesser degree, with the empire's tributaries. In those also chiefs and people endeavoured to make their peace with heaven, as in the old world, by such immense endowments of lands and riches as tended naturally to swell the ranks of a race so well provided for, and regarded with such supreme reverence.

The smiling territory of Cempoalla was as well provided as its neighbours, with these numerous ministers of a religion that so strangely blended bloodthirsty superstition with exalted faith and enlightenment.

Juan de Cabrera fondly supposed that in slaying a man whom he honestly looked upon as a murderer of the blackest die, deserving death, he had rid that city, at any rate, of its one hideously-skilful executioner, and, as he put it, "that no more of that sort of work could go on for the present, either in their presence or their absence." But he made a most tremendous mistake.

"The king is dead. Long live the king."

The priest-executioner-in-chief had fallen, before the altar of the god he had served with such dreadful fidelity. He had died yesterday, to-day he had a successor burning with ardour to avenge him by increased sacrifices, to atone for those deferred, and to prove his own consummate skill in the detestable work.

"If only," was his fierce wild prayer--"if only the one invisible, supreme God would grant that some of the sacrilegious, infidel white faces might fall into the hands of the Cempoallan warriors, that they themselves might be offered up as peace-offerings to the insulted Huitzilopotchli!"

Were his prayer granted there was no doubt that the morose and gloomy-natured priest would not spare also to inflict upon the prisoners some prior tortures, ingenious enough in their barbarous cruelty to have excited the admiring envy of the most savage of Inquisitors.

But meantime he had other business on hand--sacrifices truly, but sacrifices drawn from the families of his own nation; and, moreover, sacrifices of such a nature that, had he been as wise as he was ruthless, he would have delayed their attempted offering until those white-faces had left his land. They were just the last drops needed to fill the Spaniards' cup of boiling indignation full to overflowing.

Exquisitely fertile and luxuriant as the whole district of Cempoalla looked to the Spanish eyes, so wearied with the barren tracts of sand, and marshy swamps of their recent station, there had in reality been a considerable time of drought lately, and the Indians were beginning to have fears for some of their harvests. Tlaloc, the god of rain, whose symbol of a cross had so disconcerted Cabrera and Father Olmedo, had to be propitiated.

For some days past a solemn festival had been decreed in his honour. The victims were bought for the altar, the invitation to the faithful was announced, and, although a priest had been slain in the night, the imperious god of rain must not be deprived of his offerings in the morning. Thence the sounds which had so suddenly arrested all speech and movement of the two armies, Christian and heathen, met together in the great square of the city.

The waiting and suspense were short. The sounds of musical instruments and of a wild melodious chant drew rapidly nearer. They reached the square, and the Spaniards turned wondering eyes upon each other.

"The procession of the Fête Dieu!" exclaimed Cabrera in bewilderment.

"One might well suppose so," returned Montoro, almost equally surprised.

Cortes turned with rapid questionings to Doña Marina, the native captive princess and his interpreter.

Passing across the further end of the square, on the way to Tlaloc's temple, were lines of sable-robed priests, trains of flower-decked youths and maidens from the priests' seminaries, crowds of devout worshippers; and in the midst of all, borne aloft in view of every eye, a number of lovely children, tiny creatures scarcely beyond the days of infancy, dressed in bright-hued festal robes, wreathed with flowers, and seated in gay litters, around each of which gathered groups of chanting priests, and the parents who had sold them.

Wide-eyed and dumb with wonder were some of these little ones. And on them the priests frowned. Others, startled, terrified, with tiny, helpless arms outstretched to their miserable, deluded mothers, were drowned in tears, choking with piteous sobbings. And on them the priests cast pitiless smiles, and sang and danced with wilder fervour than before. Those tears were of good omen for the god's acceptance of his worshippers' prayers. Dry-eyed sacrifices were fruitless ones.[7]

[Footnote 7: 'Hist. Conquest of Mexico'--Prescott.]

But the exacting god was to have no sacrifice that day, dry-eyed or otherwise.

The procession was passing on, when at length Hernan Cortes, with a horror-stricken shout of comprehension, raised his head from Doña Marina, and turning to face his followers exclaimed, in a voice that literally trembled with passion and haste:

"Comrades! look yonder. See ye that sight? See ye those helpless babes, decked out thus bravely as the heathen nations of old were wont to deck four-footed beasts for sacrifice? Those babes are sold for sacrifice by a black, well-nigh incredible bigotry. Twenty minutes hence, without your succour, their innocent hearts will have been plucked from out their riven breasts, as offerings to that blasphemous god who pollutes the sign of our redemption. Say, comrades, shall this thing be?"

The men started a step forward with cheeks aflame.

"No!" exclaimed Alvarado. "By St. Jago and our good swords, no!"

"No!" echoed the whole band, as though with one voice.

"No!" cried Cabrera, impetuously. "Not if we have to put every man in Cempoalla to the sword to deliver them."

And with these exclamations it seemed, for one moment, as though the Spaniards were going to rush forward pell-mell, and effect a rescue. But Cortes raised his hand and checked them. There was time yet to proceed more peaceably. He turned back to the Cacique.

"You see," he began.

"I see there is another of those red-cloaked demons yonder," muttered Cabrera in a tone of bitter loathing to Montoro.

But the low aside formed no interruption to the General, who continued, with determination--

"You see, my followers and I have one heart in this matter. And I, for my part, am resolved that within this hour the idol gods shall be destroyed. Use your authority to stay yonder procession on its further course to sin, and thus hinder bloodshed."

But even before his words were ended it became evident that force must effect, if possible, what persuasion could not do. The Cacique's reply to the imperative demand was a swift signal to his army. It was obeyed as swiftly.

The Indian warriors gathered up from all sides, with shrill cries and clashing of weapons. The priests began to rush on with the litters and their wailing occupants, towards the temple, for the consummation of the sacrifice. The Spaniards, with Montoro de Diego at their head, flew forward, moved to too heart-sickened a pity to wait any longer upon the rule of orders. And soon the whole square and the entire route to the temple was one scene of wild uproar. The priests, in their sombre cotton robes, and dishevelled tresses matted with blood flowing over their shoulders, rushing frantically amongst their warrior brethren, urging them on to the fray, and calling upon them to protect their gods from violation.

All was war and tumult where so lately had been peace and friendly brotherhood.

Cortes took his usual prompt and decided measures. While Montoro led the rescue party, and ceased not his determined onslaught until he had delivered the infants back to arms that, in the new turn of affairs, were stretched out readily enough to receive them again, Cortes, by a bold manœuvre, and the firing off of those terror-speaking guns, gained possession of the great Cacique himself and of some of his principal subjects, including the chief priests.

"Now," he authoritatively commanded once more, and with a better chance of being obeyed. "Now, Nezahualth, you and your people are in my power. Give orders that not another arrow is shot this day, or disobedience shall cost you all your lives."

"The gods will protect us," exclaimed a frenzied priest.

Cortes turned upon him with a cold, haughty glance.

"Did the gods protect thy brethren yesternight? The Spaniards were two to a multitude, and the Spaniards' God gave them victory. Thy god gave his followers up to disgrace and death!"

Whatever effect these words of reminder had upon the Totonac priest, they had a powerful one upon the Totonac chieftain, the Cacique of Cempoalla. With a sudden lowering of his lofty head, he dropped his face into his hands, and exclaimed bitterly that the white men must work their will, and the gods must avenge themselves.

"Even so," said Cortes sternly. "Thus it must be, for from this hour, once for all, their idols shall be destroyed from this city, and the human sacrifices shall cease."

This settled the matter. The Christians were not slow in availing themselves of the Cacique's submission to the inevitable.

At a signal from Cortes fifty soldiers darted off to the chief temple, sprang up the great stone stairway as eagerly as Montoro de Diego and Cabrera had done the night before, entered the building on the summit, the walls of which were black with human gore, tore the huge wooden idols from their foundations, and dragged them to the edge of the terrace.

The fantastic forms and features of these symbolic idols meant nothing to the Spaniards' eyes but outward and visible representations of the hideous lineaments of Satan. With the greatest alacrity, cheered on by Cabrera, the soldiers rolled the colossal monsters down the steps of the pyramid, amidst the triumphant shouts of their own companions, and the groans and lamentations of the awe-struck natives, who forthwith gave up all hopes of the coming harvest in despair.

The work was finally crowned by the burning of the images in the presence of the assembled, startled multitudes. That finishing touch proved a wise one. Hitherto, during the work of desecration, the Totonacs had waited in trembling expectation of some fearful exhibition of their insulted god's great power and glory. But now. Poor impotent deities! they had not been able even to prevent the profanation of their shrines, the destruction of their own representations.

"What think ye of your gods now?" asked Pedro de Alvarado contemptuously, as he spurned a heap of the smouldering ashes with his foot, and turned his scornful eyes upon a group of humbled priests beside him.

"Verily they be fine gods," added Father Juan Diaz, ever ready to hit those who were down. "As able, i' faith, to help ye as to assert their own dignity."

So began the priests and people of Cempoalla, apparently, to think themselves. With bowed heads and dejected steps they left those humiliating mounds of ashes. The day of solemn festival was turned into a day of turmoil and mourning.

The people of that fair land of Mexico had received their first trample under the iron heel of the conqueror. In their abject dejection they aided in the business of their own humiliation.

By Cortes' orders a number of the Totonacs cleansed the floor and walls of the teocalli from their foul impurities; a fresh coating of stucco was laid on them by the native masons, and an altar was raised, surmounted by a lofty cross, and hung with garlands of roses.

"And now, my friends," exclaimed Cortes, addressing the multitudes assembled around the base of the pyramid temple, watching proceedings with a stupefied wonder--"and now, put by your sad thoughts and your saddened countenances, for a brighter day has dawned for you than you have ever known hitherto. I have spoilt one procession, but I will make you full amends with another and more glorious."

With the easy vivacity and changeableness of the semi-civilized nature, the Indians roused up at the Spanish General's new tones of cheerful friendship, and greeted his short speech with shouts of approval, smiles, and nods, which received full reply. Sternness had done its work; he was quite ready now to be as joyous and cordial and brotherly as they would let him. They went from one extreme to the other--from animal-like ferocity to childlike docility, owing to the weakness of their nature. But Cortes, from the dark brows of the resolute victor who would be obeyed, to the courteous, agreeable friend, from policy, and an almost unequalled power of self-command. He promised the procession, and it was soon formed.

Once more Spaniards and Indians assembled in the great square. Side by side, no longer conqueror and captive, but host and guest once more, moved on with calm and stately steps the two leaders, the tall, slender Spaniard, the tall, corpulent Indian chief. Following them came the two armies, in the same brotherly union. Then the Totonac priests, no longer wearing their dismal black garments with those suggestive dark-hued stains upon them, but clothed in white robes, and, like their brother Christian priests, bearing great lighted candles in their hands; while an image of the Virgin, little less roughly made in those days than the idols so lately deposed, but half-smothered under the sweet-scented, brilliant burden of flowers, was borne aloft, and, as the procession climbed the steps of the temple, was deposited above the altar, and a solemn mass, performed by Father Olmedo, concluded the great ceremony, instead of a bloody sacrifice.

"At the same time," murmured Montoro to a companion late that night, as he paced the courtyard of the Spanish encampment--"at the same time, methinks, these poor creatures can but credit us with the cruel insolence of strength, which has destroyed their idols to make way for our own. They had a cross which they adored; we have cast it down to erect our own. They had idols which they reverenced; we have burnt their images but to set up another."

"Even so," replied the good priest, in the same low tones. "My fears go with your thoughts--that they must have strange doubts as to our honesty."

"We preach against idols, and yet have them," added Montoro. "I wonder if our work this day has done much good for the salvation of souls?"

"It has done some good for the salvation of bodies, at any rate," broke in Juan de Cabrera from his sentry post, opposite to which the two friends had paused in the interest of their conversation. "It is thanks wholly and solely to thee, all throughout, Toro, that that hapless little company of babies is alive to-night. And so, my long-faced friend, instead of looking solemn as an old crow, thou shouldst be the merriest fellow in the company."

"Ho, there!" cried the voice of a fourth comer on the scene. "Who talks of merriment, I would know, forsooth, at this sleepy hour of the night, and with never an honest bit of gambling allowed to pass the watch hours by. For my part, I feel glum as a sulky bear."

"Then keep thy distance," was the retort. "For this sultry weather makes me suspicious that my bones may be in a dried-up state, and somewhat too easily crackable, my very esteemed Señor Velasquez de Leon."

Montoro laughed.

"Didst say, Juan, bones or brains were crackable?"

"Both--or meant to," said the young man. "My bones, and Leon's brains. But come, Leon, hast thou not come to relieve guard? for that Toro there, thief that he is, robbed me of my rest last night, and I shall fall asleep on the march to-morrow."

"Better not," replied Velasquez, with a warning shake of the head. "Be advised in time, lest thou mightest get left behind, and then thou wouldst assuredly be raised by the Totonac priests to the honour of the post of one of their lost gods. Thy beauty matches to a marvel that of their striking god of war."

"I'll match him in the striking trait on thee then, at any rate," cried Cabrera, as he raised his arm. But the next instant it was caught, and held fast for a moment in a good firm grip before it was let go.

"How now, my crack-brained schoolboy?" said the laughing voice of the General. "Hast had not enough of brawls during the past day to last thee even over one night? Keep thy blows for the turbulent spirits we may meet on the road to Mexico."