Chapter IV: Part 4

But in this fleecy covering, the wolf
So hid its teeth that it was at the door
Before they dreamed of treachery. The gulf
Lay many leagues behind their foes; its shore
And all the distance had been gained by stealth.
Tlascala had been humbled on the march,
And promised spoils from Montezuma's wealth;
But they had reached the keystone of the arch,
At superstition's beck. The Aztec's gods
Had chained their valor, or their greater odds
Would crushed the viper, as it should have been,
And left it to a purer age, to seek a common kin.
The Monarch gave them hostelry and cheer,
Food of the rarest and the sparkling pulque,
And quarters for their troopers, all quite near
To his own palace gates. The very bulk
Of his well-laden markets was thrown down
To their repletion, for their loaded board.
They fared as princes favored of the crown,
Of all the best the Kingdom could afford.
The fair Malinche was interpreter,
And Montezuma spoke to them through her.

He told them of the mighty Quetzalcoatl,
And how he recognized them as his kin;
He thought he had their history, the whole
Vast riddle of their ancient origin.
"I rule a mighty nation," quoth the King.
"All Anahuac is subject to my sway;
And yet, I recognize that you have come
From the strong palace of a mightier lord,
To whom I bend as subject; and with you
We now will sway the scepter of his will.
We long have watched his coming from the East,
And now that he has sent his messengers,
Our hearts are ready for his wise commands.
We would have urged your coming on before,
But that we heard of tales of cruelty,
Which, haply we may now believe as false,
We welcome you with all our open hearts,

"And hope you may enjoy our humble fare.
We are not wise, as you are, for our lives
Have not caught wisdom from the fountain head,
And hung upon the lips of Quetzalcoatl;
Yet are we cousins in the faded past,
And welcome you as brothers and as friends."

How caught the Spanish Chieftain at the words!
How did he gloat upon this artifice!
How useless hung their heavy-hilted swords
That they should win a nation at this price!
With what a care he turned the dusty past,
To cover up the semblance of disguise;
And fix their superstition still more fast,
That he might clutch and carry home the prize.

"There _is_ grandeur in the tented field;
The bivouac and the smoldering camp-fires."
The human soul unconsciously must yield
To its supremest charm, where man aspires
To meet his fellow-man at one great bar;
And "valor speaks to valor" of its claim,
In all the panoply of stubborn war,
And drops the gauntlet in a nation's name.
It may be terrible, but it is grand
To see the banners flaunting in the breeze;
To hear the bugle blare and stern command;
And see opposing forces strive to seize
From Nature's stern arbitrament of force
The laurel that shall deck the victor's brow;
And turn the stream of nations from its course.
The cutting of new sod by such a plow
May tear up all the tender ties of life;
And hearts be turned to ashes in its path;
These are the ponderous incidents of strife,
And made legitimate when wrath meets wrath;
But when the assassin creeps into our hearts,
And draws around him all their sanctities,
And he becomes a parcel of our parts,
And all we have or claim are made as his,
What human brush can paint the upraised hand
That smites our confidence at such an hour?
What simile can human tongue command?
It is, indeed, beyond our mortal power.
We talk of devil, but the word is tame;
It cannot reach the climax we have sought;
It only frets us into hotter flame,
And beggars all the litany of thought.

I do not claim that Cortez was not brave;
Nor would I tear one laurel from his brow.
I only claim he stole the devil's glaive;
He held it then, and let him hold it now.
The issues of their lives are both with God,
The brown-eyed Monarch and the dark-eyed Knight.
The flowers of charity should strew the sod
Above them both; yet, Cosmos! was it right?
O world of human hearts and human lives!
Was Montezuma worthy of this fate?
O world of husbands! world of tender wives!
Behold your Aztlan! bleeding, desolate,
And say, if all their multiple of sins,
Though they be blacker than the blackest night,
Were worthy of the end that now begins
To grind them down to powder? Was it right
For Spain to steal the scepter from the hand
That held it out in welcome to their doors,
And poured their treasures out as free as sand,
And oped with lavish all their loaded stores;
To steal the key of superstition's gate,
And break the lock upon their hard-earned gold,
And, fattening at their table, steal their plate,
And feasting on their lambs to steal their fold;
To make a prison of the room he gave
In which to hold the Monarch as a slave?
O pitying God! thy thunderbolts were scarce.
Why crushed they not this hell-begotten farce?

And when the Aztecs, goaded to the quick
By the proud insolence of such a horde,
Could bear no longer parley, but were sick
Of such a visitor at such a board,
And rose en masse to crush the viper's fang,
They bring the Monarch out to face the crowd,
And plead for their immunity; the pang
That wrung his breast (for he, indeed, was proud)
Was like an arrow in his royal heart;
And yet he prayed for their forgiveness then,
And like a martyr bravely bore their part--
Search history; and find out greater men,
And they are less forgiving. There he stood,
His nation thronged before him, in its wrath;
Yet did he plead, before this multitude,
To spare the serpent, now across their path;
He could not name a promise not unbroke,
He could not offer one excuse for time,
He could not tell them why to hold their stroke,
He plead for hands scarred over with their crime.

Did ever charity reach loftier height?
Can Christian Spain outshine this sad, brown face?
How many souls in Christiandom, as white,
Would faced his countrymen, from such a place?
Great Montezuma! where shall we find room!
When Spain has such a multitude of saints
To save your enemies, you courted doom,
Yet would not kiss the cross with your complaints;
Therefore, anathema!--It will not do,
To pass a heretic at Heaven's gate;
You held no mumbled crucifix to view--
The Infallible has said it, you must wait.
Wait for a riper age to touch the chord
That quivers, all unconsciously, your praise;
When justice, _only_, draws the tardy sword,
And Earth's abhorrence covers those old days
With its repentant ashes, then my King
May rest his memory upon stubborn facts
Nor minstrels falter when they fain would sing
Their elegies implanted with _his_ acts.
The Holy Inquisition, from old Spain,
And St. Bartholomew, from "Ma belle France,"
The hissing fagots of sweet Mary's reign--
These million martyrs, with their melting glance,
Look at _his_ agony, across the sea,
_Who_, blind in superstition, groped his way
O'er harmless victims and much misery
To where the rays were slanting into day.
In Europe's face the star of Bethlehem,
With its benignant splendor, shed its light;
_These_ but the groping nomads of old Shem,
Lost in the meshes, of a rayless night.
_Those_, neath the palm of Earth's philosophy;
_These_ on the torchless desert, not a star
To guide them through life's potent mystery;
_Those_ bringing all the wisdom from afar,
Though Montezuma's sins had cried to Heaven
In a far greater stress; yet what were they,
Paling his cruelties, and still forgiven,
To pour out greater vials the next day?
O Spain! you lent the sanction of your name,
To cover up the foulest deed of time;
Upon your skirt is fastened this great shame,
And nation never wore the brand of a more causeless crime.

DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.

One sad, sad task, awaits my faltering pen,
And I have done. One flower upon _his_ grave,
Who in his dying could, alas! not save
His country from the vulturous maw of men.
They played upon the monarch with their arts,
Till he became a captive in their hands;
It was consistent with their _Christian_ hearts
That their good host should follow their commands.
They said their _Christian_ lord across the sea
Must have his treasure for their _Christian_ use.
All this was bitter, yet, he did agree,
And bent a patient knee to their abuse.

They struck their temples, and the red, right hand
Of Aztlan rose upon them. They could bear
To see their monarch littled, and their land
Made tribute to a stranger; but, beware
Stern warriors of Castile! touch not their gods.
The hearts of Aztlan are but human hearts,
And at some shrine the whole creation nods;
Invade the sanctum, and the whole man starts.
Las Casas[S] would have won them with his love--
The potent key that opens every gate.
Let not deceit claim sanction from above;
It may assist upon the wheels of fate,
But what Spain offered through such legatees
Was worse than powder on the bated flame.
To gather fruit from such ill-freighted trees,
Was worse than stealing nightmare from a dream.

In Christ's good name they stole the monarch's gold;
They changed the name of Christ to treachery;
They gathered all the spoils their hands could hold,
And pointed to their Master on the tree.
Their Master? No! since Lucifer was hurled
Down from the shining chambers of the just
To vent his spleen upon a new-made world,
He never had a worthier task in trust,
Than that he gave to Spain's inglorious knights,
To rob this people of their vested rights.

The people gather at the palace gates,
And vengeance writes itself upon each face;
Their generosity no longer waits,
They spit upon, and spurn the outraged place.
It harbors those who wrote themselves as knaves
Upon the pliant tablets of their lives,
And now the incensed nation only craves
Deliverance for their children and their wives.
They know the belching cannon of the knights
Will make sad havoc in their stately host;
They know that Spain and Fate to-day unite;
They know, if fortune fails them, all is lost;
But they can bear no longer to be torn,
And swear by all the gods to pluck this thorn.
The Spaniards see their perfidy, too late;
And call great Montezuma to the gate.
"Why are my people here to-day in arms?
These stranger friends are still my welcome guests;
They soon will turn them backward to their homes.
Shall we raise hands against great Quetzalcoatl?
We fight against the gods? Lay down your arms!
Go to your homes, and all shall yet be well,
And peace shall reign in all Tenochtitlan[T]!"
They bent before him reverently at first.
It was a moment--then their anger burst:
"Base Aztec! woman! coward! sneaking slave!
The whites have made a puppet of your name!
Talk not of fighting 'gainst our honored gods;
We soil their sacred robes if we submit!"
A cloud of stones and arrows flew the air;
And Montezuma fell a victim of _their_ rage and _his_ despair.
His heart had broke when he beheld the throng,
For he was burning with his country's wrong;
And when the missiles smote his fevered crest,
His very soul was reaching out for rest.
_They_ only helped to roll the burden off,
So long imprinted on his saddened face--
It was _too_ much to hear his people scoff--
He fell; and they removed him from the place.
He never rose again, nor wished to rise;
He made no effort to outlive his land;
He felt _his_ weakness, and he heard _her_ cries;
He saw _her_ sinking with _his_ wasting sand.
He knew his enemies had stole the garb
Of gods to fasten on him their deceit;
That they had stung the nation with their barb,
And he would not survive its sore defeat.
He felt their scoffings were deserved of him,
For he should gathered wisdom with his years;
He saw his weakness when his sight was dim,
And poured his wasting moments out in tears.

They called the Priest to shrive him for his death--
The worthy Monk Olmedo[U] takes his palms;
It is in vain; his very latest breath
Repulses all their uninvited alms.
He dies an Aztec--honor to his name!
And spurns the symbols that have crushed him down.
What mockery when he is all aflame
With their abuses! Give him back his crown,
His country's honor, and its hard-earned gold.
But force no wormwood to his fevered lips;
His hand is pulseless, and will soon be cold;
His life was shadow; and his death--eclipse.

Great are the consolations of the cross--
The Father-Son of Calvary, and time.
Their glory compensates a kingdom's loss;
But piety must not be wed to crime.
Did all the roses blossom from the cross,
And all the thorns grow out upon the waste?
Then were the metal guarded from the dross,
And every crust be suited to our taste;
But bitter-sweet is all the book of life,
And thorns and roses crowd the tangled way;
And good and evil, always, are at strife--
Night always dogs the footsteps of the day.
Yet "figs cannot be gathered from the thorn,"
Nor "grapes from thistles," says the patient Lord--
One great, good life, like a new angel born,
Is the most potent sermon ever heard.

The hands that smote the Monarch in the face
Did honor to his ashes, cold and dead.
Their anger was rubbed out, and not a trace
Was left, as with their slow and measured tread
They bore his sacred ashes to the tomb
Within the walls of old Chapultepec,
Where stately trees, and flowers perennial bloom,
And, all the pulses of their lives in check,
Bow down to kiss the shrine of memory.
The sacred hush of death comes none too oft
To still the fevered brain and make us free--
It is a gentle hand, and moves so soft
That it compensates all our misery
By chaining all the lions of our life
And placing durance on the throbbing drum
That marshals us to earth's unpitying strife.
How should we reverence the hand that strikes our passions
dumb!

Cortez and Montezuma; Aztlan, Spain--
The very mingling of these words is pain.
The one, bold, cold, unscrupulous and brave,
And making of each obstacle a slave;
Seeking _his_ glory in the name of Christ,
To gain his ends unfaithful to each tryst.--
The fault is with the ethics of his race,
Which justify the means for _any_ end,
And leave the moral aspect without place,
And to the foulest acts their ready sanction lend.
The thought of holding man to his account,
And throwing merit against circumstance,
Of cleansing souls at one great common fount,
Of holding out to man an equal chance--
These things were not considered in the least.
The glory of himself and Spain were first;
All the excesses pardoned by the Priest
Weaned the poor soul from any moral thirst.
A golden apple trembled on the limb,
And he must pluck it, at whatever cost.
What matter whose?--it should belong to him;
It was too tempting, and must not be lost:
The wall that lay before it must be scaled,
The owner of the field must be destroyed,
And if his _prowess_, in the effort failed,
_Deceit_ and _treachery_ must be employed.
The unbridled passions of the human soul
Linked with the crucifix in his emprise.
The lion, loosened and in full control--
The semblance of the Lamb to Aztlan's eyes:
A faithful offspring of the Papish loins,
The features of the Church in duplicate,
Though baser metals pass for golden coins,
Only earth's charity can make brave Cortez great.

But Montezuma conquers all our thought--
Tenochtitlan and old Chapultepec.
No greener shrine for memory can be sought;
The heart and conscience both alike bedeck
The unfading spectre of a soul sincere,
Who tugged at destiny against the dark--
The hand, unconscious, drops its laurels here.
His brown hands could not helm the fateful bark
Against the baleful breakers of old Spain;
Yet, who _is_ proof against the foils of men.
His life is but a psalmody of pain.
What soul unmoved can touch it with the pen?
The link that bound the old world with the new,
With pure and patient hands, might been upturned,
And every missing chapter brought to view
By Clio gathered, and again inurned
In history's cloister; Egypt and Aztlan
Strike palms upon the bridges of the years;
But Spain denies the privilege to man,
And fills the vacuum with a nation's tears.
O Monarch of the fading, mighty past!
Great Montezuma! we are wed to thee.
Back of thy name the ocean is so vast
That we can only write--Eternity,
And leave the secret in thy broken breast.
We would that we could taken thy warm palm,
Held out in welcome from the mellow West,
And poured upon thy stricken life the balm
Of real enlightenment; and point thee back,
Over the ridges of the years, to God;
To where your people lost the beaten track,
And ever afterward were left to plod.
Those great sad eyes, once filled with light from Heaven,
Would shone like diamonds when they found the way,
And every fibre of thy nature striven
To turn thy nation's darkness into day.
Alas! 'tis vain! we beat the empty air.
Our tears are mingled with thy wasting breath;
We _all_ are torn with thy warm heart's despair,
And mourn with Aztlan at thy fateful death.

CONCLUSION.

From sire to son the stern bequeathment falls
Of some misguided action in the past,
And, though our nature with the victim calls
And we are smitten with his overcast,
Still are we weak against the wheels of fate,
Which leaves the pensioner thus desolate.

The by-ways of the father must turn back
Sometime upon the highway that he left;
Though dark and sinuous may be the track,
And life of all its luster be bereft,
Still hangs the heavy impulse on the soul,
Unsatisfied, till it shall reach its goal.

The destiny was hard that brought proud Spain
Upon the fading summerland of gold;
Its retribution is no less a pain;
The grip of fate, so pulseless and so cold,
Brings back the shudder to the human heart;
Humanity is wounded with _each_ part
That feels the puncture of her cruel blade.
Nor is the censure less upon the hand
That strikes _so_ hard to force the debt thus paid.
The tender conquest of some heathen land
The brightest jewel is, of any crown--
God never licensed human hand to strike a foe when down.

When Spain's recruited army turned them back
To glut their ire on Guatamozin's head,
There never was a deeper furrowed track,
More thickly cindered with the myriad dead;
And when at last his bloody sceptre fell,
Tenochtitlan was likest to a hell.

The brave barbarian was put to rack
To force divulgence of his scattered gold.--
Is there a garment of a deeper black,
To cover up the fingers that could hold
Such hellish orgies after all the past?
The palm is thine, O Spain! and hold it to the last!

Yet one more turn upon the screw of time:
Thy red, right hand must slay this waif of fate;
And thou must put the climax to the crime,
And crush the heart thou has made desolate.
Enough! thou art the acme of the earth--
May God's great pity ever spare thy duplicated birth!
No, no, not Spain! _her_ better angel waits,
And _has_ been waiting all these weary years
For Castellar to open wide her gates,
That she may wash her garments with her tears;
But priestcraft, Rome, or demon, all the same--
That makes a desert of her rich champaign;
And sends her forth through history, so tame.
It is, her evil genius; but it is not Spain.

* * * * *

As Kohen prophesied, their race was run--
Their error cleaved upon them as a curse;
The fading phalanx of the Summer sun
Has crossed the borders of the universe.
We only catch the shadow of their flight;
They pass out with the sunset into night.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Anahuac, the country dominated by the Aztecs at the time of the conquest.

[E] "Mars or Mexitli." I have taken the easier of the names given to the war-god. Huitzilopotchli or Mexitli both were used, the former more in general use than the latter, at the time of the conquest.

[F] Huit-zilo-potch-li, the Aztec war-god.

[G] Quetzalcoatl, the god of the harvest, probably some ancient leader deified. See Prescott.

[H] Tlappalan, the Elysian to which Quetzalcoatl passed, probably referred to the chambers of the sun.

[I] Nez-a-hual-co-yotl, one of the famous kings of Tezcuco (a nation allied to that of the Aztecs). Prescott enlarges on his character, truly a wonderful one for the time and age.

[J] Montezuma, a corruption from the original Aztec, which was Moctheuzoma.

[K] Nez-a-hual-pil-li, successor to Neza-hual-co-yotl, and a worthy one, though not so gifted.

[L] Tecollas, Temples of worship.

[M] Caligula, a Roman Emperor whose name has become a synonym of crime.

[N] Courier, a courier came daily from the coast, and Couriers from different parts of the Empire; their only script was the picture prints; rude, it is true, and yet wonderful in conveying the different shades of meaning.

[O] Montezuma's protest against human sacrifice though not literally fact, so far as the historic record is concerned, is hazarded as not inconsistent with his historic character.

[P] Tlalocan, Prescott has not left on record the name of the High Priest, and the name given, I have thought in keeping with the Aztec language.

[Q] Teuhtlile, the Embassador sent to meet Cortez. He was high in the councils of the King.

[R] Malinche, Interpreter and Mistress of Cortez.

[S] Las Casas, a worthy Spanish Padre, who was constantly protesting against the villanous conduct of the cavaliers. Prescott pays him a glowing tribute.

[T] Te-noch-ti-tlan, the Aztec for the city of Mexico.

[U] Olmedo, a priest of that easy piety that characterized the cavalier, ready to grant absolution in case of all excesses.

MALINCHE.

INTRODUCTION.

I may properly place "Malinche" as supplementary to "Montezuma," as dealing with characters coincident to, and cotemporaneous with those concerned in the "Conquest," and also as covering a period subsequent to, and immediately succeeding the Conquest.

To the student of history, Malinche (in her position of interpreter during the entire period of the Conquest) presents at once so much that is unique and charming, and yet such a sad commentary on the criminal practices of the sixteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries, that I have often wondered that a stronger and more practiced hand has not ere this claimed the privilege of championship.

According to Prescott, she was born in the town of Painnalla, Province of Coatzacualco, in the southeastern extremity of what is now Mexico; that she was the daughter of a Cacique (a sort of provincial Governor) and prospective heiress to large estates; that after the death of her father, her mother, with indecent haste, forms another union, and in time presents the stepfather with a son; that they jointly combine to be rid of Malinche, whom they sell to itinerant traders; and, to cover their device, they pretend that she is sick and use the child of a servant for their criminal pantomime; the child dies, thus completing the deception, except the hypocritical mourning to which this unnatural mother is said to have been equal.

Malinche is sold by the traders to the Cacique of Tabasco, and reaches maturity about the time of the Conquest. She seems to have been a favorite in the house of the Cacique, which would indicate that he had become acquainted with her origin, and after the surrender of the town to Cortez, she is one of the twenty female slaves presented to the Conqueror and his allies.

Either from enlarged opportunities or her natural aptness, and probably both, she is found by Cortez to be just the person he needs for interpreter. Mutual attraction leads them into the closest relations, and it is but just to Malinche to state that there is no indication of her knowledge of the Conqueror's wife in Cuba, until she arrives at the Capitol. There is also nothing to indicate more than a momentary estrangement between Malinche and Catalina.

Catalina lived but about three months after her arrival at Mexico; and it seems that Malinche assumes the same relations as before, when Cortez journeys South, where in time they reach the precincts of the maiden's nativity, and she meets her mother, after all the years of their cruel separation. Here the beautiful sincerity of the Christianity she had espoused, shines forth as she quiets her mother's fears, and professes to doubt her mother's original intent to sell her. She loads her mother with jewels and seems to cherish no feeling not consistent with the warmest relations of daughter and mother.

The statement soon after is, that Cortez presents her to Don Xamarillo with all the sanction of marriage, and he enriches her with some of the largest estates in her native province; and there the historic account closes. Incidentally, it is mentioned that a son was born during the period of this _affaire du coeur_.

I stated that the historic account closes here, but M. Charny and others enlarge on the traditionary feeling of South Eastern Mexico, and if we may credit his statements (and many times tradition carries more heart and more of the essential elements of truth in it than the cold pencil of history), Malinche is so woven into the social structure as to become almost the patron saint of that part of the country.

And Prescott (rather inclined to the fruit than the blossom of history) speaks of Malinche as being reverently held by the Aztec descendants as the guardian angel of Chapultepec.

I have endeavored thus to present the salient features of this part of the historic drama, adding and enlarging only as it became necessary to connect the events and do justice to the fair subject of the endeavor; and whatever criticism may be offered, I can, without hesitancy, claim the credit of candor and a desire to eliminate from all the facts of the case the plain, unvarnished truth.

I began at first to write the idyl in nine-syllabic measure, but soon found myself cramped in expression, and in recopying I have thrown off restraint and used the double terminal with both nine and ten syllables, having no desire and finding no occasion to use the eight syllable measure which Longfellow has so immortalized in the "Song of Hiawatha."

The sacred relations of man and wife, like those of any other _sacrament_ entered into voluntarily, are no less binding in the _spirit_ than in the _letter_ of the law; and it is a gratifying truth that the statutes of many of the States of the Union are being so remodeled as to recognize the _fact_, rather than the _form_ of marriage; and the tendency is, certainly toward the correction of many abuses, as leading to a more enlarged knowledge of social responsibilities.

As long as the sad story of Malinche has a present application, and may be said to be the perspective of the grossly distorted foreground of our social structure, so long will its rehearsal have its use in the world; and I only regret that a stronger hand and a more perfect pen might not have been loaned to its portrayal.

H. H. RICHMOND.

MALINCHE.

Old Painnalla of Coat-za-cual-co,
Passing down the road of the "Conquest,"
Through the silent portals of Lethe,
Was greatest of Mexican hamlets;
The birthplace of brown-eyed Malinche,
Whom the Spaniards call Dona Marina;
And the noble Cacique, great Tezpitla,
With his shrew of a wife, Zunaga--
All are names deserving of story,
For they cling to the garment of greatness.

A daughter is born to Zunaga,
And the worthy Cacique Tezpitla,
Though he warms to the little stranger,
Had hoped that the gods would have given
A son and Cacique for the province.
They named their young daughter Malinche;
The priest called the gods to protect her,
And sprinkled her brow and her bosom
With water, the purest of emblems;
Commends her to Tez-cat-li-po-ca,
The soul of the earth and the heavens;
To Quet-zal-coatl, god of the harvest;
And at all the shrines with their homage,
They offered the richest of jewels.

Tezpitla soon sleeps with his fathers,
And Malinche, too young to have known him,
Has hardly begun with her prattle,
Ere he passes away to the sunset,
To the palace of gold Tonatu',
Where his warriors had gone on before him
To their rest, in the dazzling chambers
That shine from the face of the day god.

Zunaga a little while murmurs,
And mourns at the chieftain's departure,
When Mohotzin, a friend of Tezpitla
(Who had shared oft times in his battles
And sat many times at his table),
In sympathy visits the widow;
And his sympathy turns to wooing,
His wooing and winning are easy.
For Zunaga (the name of the faithless)
Yields a ready ear to his sighing,
And pity is parent of loving.
The bride takes the place of the widow,
And the funeral leads to the wedding.

A son is soon born to Mohotzin,
And the sire with the faithless Zunaga,
Bend their heads to the hurt of the helpless,
To disherit the artless daughter;
She sends up inquisitive glances,
To the guilty eyes of her parents.
Thus the perfect faith of our childhood,
Stands to smite at the evil endeavor,
Yet how is it cruelly wounded
By the cunning hand of its kindred!

She is sold as a slave to the merchants,
Whose itinerant traffic encounters
This cruel and conscienceless couple.
Scarcely five years the miniature maiden,
When decoyed from her favorite pastimes,
Under guise of a frolicsome journey;
She is hurried away into bondage,
To gain the estate for her brother.
And all this is done under shadow
To cover the basest of actions.
Malinche is said to be dying,
The mother is bent at the bedside,
Where is laid the child of a servant;
It dies, to complete the deception,
And Zunaga bewails, as is fitting
In well painted actions, the daughter.
The funeral pageant is greater
Than the one attending Tezpitla;
And thus, did the misnomered mother
Strive to hide the print of her sinning.

How fares it with bonnie Malinche,
Thus stung in the morn of her childhood?
The merchants have gone to Tabasco,
The slaves are the bearers of burden,
The maid is thus borne from her kindred.
She, too young to plead for ransom,
Little heeds the force of her venture;
And in time, they have traversed the river,
And have reached the town of Tabasco.
The merchants immured in their traffic,
Sell the maid to a wealthy landlord,
The worthy Cacique of the province.

Thus cruelly shorn of her birthright,
Malinche grows up as a servant
In the house of this wealthy master,
The playmate and charm of his children.
She gathers the boon of contentment
With the easy faith of her childhood.
Her mother is almost forgotten,
When a former nurse of Zunaga,
Having served the time of her ransom,
Has sought the Cacique for employment.
She knows the whole piteous story,
Of the maid and her heartless mother;
Her soul is drawn back to the maiden,
And she knows, with the whole of her nature,
That this is her old master's daughter.
And Malinche, across the threshold,
Calls back all the thoughts of her childhood,
And each feels the grasp of the other,
And the past is all plain to Malinche.

The noble Cacique of Tabasco
Heard all of the pitiful story,
And swore, by the gods, to avenge her
"Of her cruel and faithless mother,
With her heart as hard as the itztli,
The sanctified blade of the prophet."
He would seek the king, Moctheuzoma,
That ruled in the city of temples,
Tenochtitlan, greatest of cities,
And tell him the tale of Malinche,
That all of her wrongs might be righted
And the maiden restored to her birthright.

But, in the white heat of his anger,
A stranger appears at the river--
'Tis the pale-faced chief, and his army,
With his soldiers clad like the fishes,
With the shining scales for their frontlets,
With their weapons charged with the lightning,
Like the thunderbolts of great Thaloc,
With their four-legged gods, like the bison,
With the head of a man in the center,
And the flaming nostril distended,
Breathing fire, like the front of a dragon,
When they shake the earth with their tramping.
Surely these were the legates of heaven,
Great Quetzalcoatl, surely fought with them.
And in vain was the chieftain's endeavor,
Tabasco soon fell to their prowess,
And they must now purchase appeasement.
And the worthy Cacique of Tabasco
Forgets all his pledges of ransom,
And Malinche is one of the twenty,
Of the maids that he gives to Cortez.
As pure as the bright water lily
That shines from the rim of Tezcuco;
As bright as the rays of Tonatu',
Rising out of the gulf of Mexitli;
As chaste as the moon in its glances,
At the mirroring face of Chalco;
As fresh as the breezes that banquet
The morn in the isles of the spices--
Even such was the Maid of Painnalla,
The beautiful brown-eyed Malinche.

Cortez has been seeking a sponsor
To ravel the intricate language,
When he is informed of the maiden,
And she is first brought to his presence.
A favorite child of the household,
She is robed in the neatest of vestures.
The feather-cloth covers her shoulders,
Her waist is enclosed with a girdle
Holding skirt of the finest of cotton,
Her feet on the daintiest sandals,
Her face, veiled with gossamer pita,
Lends the highest charm to her blushes.

With Aguilar first she converses
(He had lived some years with the natives,
Borne ashore where his vessel had stranded).
She had learned all the various shadings,
The many and quaint dialections,
Of the several Anahuac nations;
And not long till the noble Castilian
Yields its palm to her ready conquest.
The mighty commander, brave Cortez,
With his piercing dark eyes, was her teacher;
For love is the aptest of pupils,
And the heart is your ready translator.
The words of the Chief were no longer
The meaningless voice of the stranger,
But the language of Spain and of heaven.

Cortez, cast a thought to the island;
To his early love, Catalina;
To the prison of fierce Velasquez;
His reluctant marriage in Cuba.
Yet, how faithful had been the Dona!
And never yet had been broken
_His_ pledges of perfect devotion;
But the morals of Hispagniola
Are subject to easiest bending.
The priest giving ready indulgence
To sins that are nearest to nature,
And Malinche, robbed of her birthright
And denied the boon of a mother,
Had only her love to direct her,
Which led her unerring to Cortez;
He opened his arms to receive her,
(She, the purest jewel of Aztlan)
And, as moth falls into the torchlight,
She fell to his brilliant alluring.

If purest of wifely devotion,
With its love that is _all_ of woman,
If the absence of wrong intention
In the innocent glow of nature,
Uninspired by the shadow of evil,
Made her wife, she was wife of Cortez.
Not a whisper of Catalina,
His beautiful wife on the island,
Had the chieftain given the maiden;
And she felt as free as the water
On the rugged brink of 'Morenci;
As the bee to gather the honey
From the nectaries on the mountains
And the multiple bloom of the valleys.
She thought there was naught to prevent her
From her lavish of love on the Chieftain.

O the faith that is always faultless,
That ever grows up toward Heaven,
(To the center of love returning)
Whence it sprang as seed from the Godhead!
How its track is hounded by evil!
How its purity pants in the darkness!
How it flutters into the pitfalls!
And how its white wings are broken
And its plumage stained and bedraggled!
But 'tis only the earth that despoils it,
To teach it more earnest endeavor,
To lift the wing higher in ether,
And fix the eye firmer on Heaven.

But alas! for bonnie Malinche;
Her faith had no heavenly fragrance,
Except in its helpless dependence.
It knew not the way of the angels,
But groped like the vine in the cavern,
Always reaching out for the sunlight,
Always tender and white of fiber.
And the worthy father, Olmedo,
Taught the maid the lore of the ages;
Taught of life, and death, and the Savior,
And the beautiful boon, resurrection,
And the story of Magdalene,
Of much loving, and much forgiving;
Yet he whispered naught of the Chieftain,
And the maiden lived on in blindness,
Though "Credos" and "Ave Marias"
Fell as pearls from the lips thus laden
With the story of Jesu' and Mary.
And as Christ touched the lips of childhood
And made them the text of his sermon,
(The innocent sponsors of Heaven)
Malinche, enrapt at the story,
Shined out through her every action,
Translating the life of the God-Son,
To speak in behalf of her people.
She plead for the chiefs of Tlascala--
Las Casas had no abler ally
When he struck the stone heart of Cortez--
And the stonier heart of Castile,
In his earnest prayer for the Aztecs
And the ill-starred King Moctheuzoma.
Her blood gave its ardent petition
In behalf of her race and her people,
Her bronzed hand pressing the balance
On the side of mercy and manhood.

When the light first shines in the cavern
Damp and dark with moldering ages,
It gathers each gleam of the crystals
That cycles have hoarded in brilliance;
So the heart, groping back to the sunlight,
Over graves of its superstitions,
Throws its shoots through every crevice
That promises health to its fibers.
Thus the virgin soul of Malinche
(The image of God on its tablet)
Made the glow of her first impressions
The heart and the soul of the gospel.

But how cunningly clasp the fetters
That fate has unconsciously molded;
And yet, how they pinion our passport
On the trend of further indulgence--
The conquest was hardly completed,
And the maid in the fullest enjoyment
Of the treasure she aided to purchase
When the island divulges its secret,
And the wife of his early loving,
And the wife of his after loathing,
Appears at the door of the Chieftain.
O Malinche! brown-eyed Malinche!
The finger of fate is upon you;
The wrongs of your conscienceless mother
Were the scar and bane of your _childhood_.
The years with their velveted footfalls
Have forced them far back in the shadows,--
But here comes a heart that is bleeding
For the touch of its earliest treasure.
With an even right you have won it;
Upon your warm bosom have worn it.
But another, unknown, has possessed it,
And puts forth her hand to recover.
Will you strike at her just petition?
Love is love; but hers is the older,
And it has grown sharp with its longing;
The hunger of years is upon it,
And pleads all the patience of loving.

They met, the brown maid of Painnalla
And the pale, blushing rose of the island,--
Malinche and sad Catalina.
The Dona gave voice to her murmur
In words that were pungent and bitter,
Reproaching the maid for the beauty
That had stolen the heart of her husband.
But Malinche returned no reproaches
When she heard the whole truth from the Dona;
But her tears, as the dew of the morning,
Which like diamonds filled her dark lashes,
Smote the tender heart of the maiden:

"O maiden, most hard and unconscious!"
Cried Malinche, out of her sobbing,
"Hear the bitter tale of my lifetime;
And the Heavenly melting of pity
Will fill all the place of your loathing."
Then she told her the whole sad story--
How her cruel mother betrayed her,
How she fell a slave to the Chieftain,
And was called upon to interpret.
"But the heart is easily broken,
Fair maiden!" Malinche continued.
"And before I knew, I had fallen;
And I hung on his matchless features,
The wonderful glow of his prowess,
And the liquid flow of his language,
Till I could no longer resist him.
I thought I was free to embrace him,
And I gave my whole life to his keeping.
How I thrilled to his first caressing,
And panted to gather his kisses!
How I hung on the lips of the morning
That shadowed his life with new danger!
Could I die for the love I bore him,
I would pity the weight of the casket
That gave such a featherlike measure;
Could I stand in the breach of danger
To shelter his form from the missile,
I could mourn that the Father had given
But only one heart for the arrow.
I loved him! I loved him! I loved him!
And this is my furtherest pleading."

And long ere Malinche had finished
The Dona had mingled her weeping,
And each held the hand of the other
In truce of their worthless repining;
And Malinche, as Magdalene,
Would have washed the feet of her Master,
But the Dona rather preferred her
As companion and friend in pastime;
So they passed their time in the solace
Of a friendship closely cemented.

But the beautiful flower of the island
Fell a prey to the varying climate
And the dormant love of the Chieftain.
She pointed her white hands to heaven,
And she gave back to Mary Mother
Her tired soul as white as the snowdrift.
The busy brown hands of Malinche
Had never once tired of their office
In smoothing her feverish pillows.
Her fresh, perfect faith pointing upward,
Helped to pinion the soul for its passage.
"Farewell to thee, fair Catalina!
Though you tore my heart with your coming,
You have torn it worse with your going.
May the angels, shrouding your sorrow,
Pour their multiple bliss in your welcome,
And paradise pant with your beauty,
And Heaven, as white as your goodness,
Shine out through the doors for Malinche;
For I envy your early passage,
And would gladly have gone before you.
I have found earth's love but a fetter
To cripple the wing of our exit."

And after he humbled the Aztecs,
The Chieftain soon turned to the southward,
Still holding the hand of Malinche,
As if the cold palm of the Dona
Had never intruded its presence;
His memory, cold as her pulses,
Gave hardly a throb at departure,
But Malinche wept o'er her ashes,
And prayed that the blessing of Heaven
Might comfort the soul of the Dona;
Yet she held not her hand from the Chieftain,
Though she chid with the love of the turtle;
Yet her heart could not harrow its fallow
Though a hundred-fold lay in the effort.

The ill-fated Chief Guatamozin
(Who succeeded the great Moctheuzoma,
And so stubbornly fought for his people)
Had fared the same fate of the Monarch,
Except that he gazed on the ashes,
And saw the cold ghost of his nation
Pass out through the gates of the sunset,
And all just a little before him.
He attended Cortez on his journey,
With other great men of his people;
Never man was more loyal to master
Than the throneless King to his Chieftain--
To the cavalcade came a rumor,
That the life of Cortez was endangered
By a plot of the Aztec attendants
(Cortez was the stoniest master,
To the Knights as well as the natives,
And no wonder his life should be threatened.

The scar of a crime on our nature,
With remembrance of wrong we inflicted,
Puts a double watch on our victim;
We are prone to measure in manner,
Each soul in the pitiful bushel
That holds the shrunk grains of _our_ manhood.)
And Cortez turned his eyes for an answer,
To the plot that was laid for his footsteps,
On the staunch Aztec King, Guatamozin;
He had fought a brave battle for Aztlan,
And the Spaniards had felt his prowess
In the hardly wrenched sword of their triumph;
But when the despair of his nation
Settled down on his heart as a mountain,
No treachery lingered to poison
The flow of his deeply drawn sadness.

Yet, the wrongs he had laid on the people,
Stalked out as a ghost on the Chieftain.
And the sad eyes of poor Guatamozin,
Were his guilty conscience' accuser;
And though not a stain was upon him,
Yet the Chief was condemned by Cortez.
Then Malinche's warm heart overflowing,
When she saw how unjust was the sentence,
Gave its plea with the beautiful pathos
Of the life that is simple and loving.
Though she was baptized as a Christian,
And was charmed with the life of the God-Son,
Yet the water the priest sprinkled on her
Purged not from her veins the warm Aztec
Which, charged with a just indignation,
Poured out on her Chieftain its measure:

"As a faithful God is my witness--
Not a throb of my heart has wasted
Its pulse on the suit of another,
Since you glittered my life with its purchase,
I have loved you too well for my worship,
Which has hardly a God, but my Chieftain;
But I plead for my country and people--
You showed me a Christ that was loving,
Whose life was a psalm of forgiveness,
Who touched the hot lips of our anger
With the tender finger of patience.
I was won by his great example,
It warmed the cold stone of the Aztec
With the radiant beams of the morning;
It loosened the chains from the ankles
That were swift on errands of mercy;
It tore off the scales from the eyelids
That were blinded with superstition;
Gave freedom to innocent victims,
From the fearful death of the itztli;
And winged back the soul to its manor,
From the desert and dust of the ages.

"But where is the Christ you were pleading--
The merciful God of your banner?
The nails of the cross are your sword points,
And his pleadings the parent of carnage.
His merciful words are but margods,
To hurl on your host to the slaughter.
As I pleaded for Moctheuzoma
That you spare him the shame of his prison,
So I plead for the brave Guatamozin,
Though he fought so hard for the Aztecs,
I would balance my life on his honor.
The traitor is not of such metal,
At your front--in your face--he may strike you;
But he takes not the night for his helmlet,
Nor is treachery ever his weapon.
Then spare him, my noble Hernando!"
But her prayers were in vain for the victim,
The heart of Cortez was relentless;
And another brave soul winged its passage,
To try if the gates of the city
Still turn for the broken in spirit.

In time they drew near to Painnalla,
And the tale of her childhood confronts her,
Though she hardly can call up one feature
To gaze on the face of another,
And each say to each, "We are brothers";
Yet the story has lived with her living,
And been fanned by the fervor of gossip;
And Malinche's warm heart has been shaken,
O'er the bitterest brink of a trial.

Her Chieftain, grown great with his conquest,
Thrusts the knife of his pride to her heartstrings,
In search of some noble alliance;
And she must be weaned from his wooing.
As only _one_ God lighteth Heaven,
She has held the _one_ place in his household,
Than which has the earth none more sacred.
Yet the shade of the poor Catalina
Has shown her how weak is the Chieftain,
And the bolt is thus broken in falling;
Still her whole heart presses the balance,
And a sacred thing was her loving,
For love is the latch-key to Heaven.

But she tries to force back her sorrow
At the sacred shrine of her birthplace;
And the angels are gentle that hover
At the rustic shade of the hearthstone.
All the sorrow comes out of the shadow,
All the bitterness bathes in the sunshine,
The stubbornest pangs of resentment
Are cooled to the calm of forgiveness;
And charity cradles the armor
That was harnessed in bristling anger.

Her mother is summoned with others
At the call of Cortez to assemble,
And Malinche sees mother and brother
Through the soul of an earnest hunger.
She (young in all things but her sorrow,
And with only her nature to prompt her)
Beholds, with the heart of a daughter,
The mother that cruelly spurned her,
In the fading Spring of her lifetime.
The mother, as ready responding
To the tie that her crime would have broken,
Sees her child, like the face of a spectre,
Rising out of the grave to accuse her,
And in terror would fly from her presence;
But Malinche sprang forward to grasp her,
And, forgetting all else but her mother,
Poured out her full heart in caresses,

Saying, "Surely, my mother, you knew not
When you sold me away to the traders;
Surely, not with your voice could you sanction,
Your words would have frozen together,
And not with your heart you consented.
The blood would have whited to marble;
Some artifice surely was practiced.
My mother was _always_ my mother;
And though you unwittingly sold me,
Malinche is free to forgive you.
Take back to your bosom your daughter,
It is all for the best that we parted,
For it gave me my sweet Mary Mother
With her child, the immaculate God-Son;
And better a slave and a Christian,
Than a priest in the pay of the temple.
And, yet, how I longed for a mother,
To show the clear trail for my footsteps,

And to hold the white hand of my childhood!
With no other mother but Mary
(Sweet Mary, the soul of compassion),
I have tried to grow up towards Heaven;
But a mother on earth is the blessing
That can never be held by another.
Our flesh will not float on the pinions
That bear to Elysian our spirits;
Our hearts are too warm for the angels,
To hush with their transparent fingers;
Our lips are too ready for kisses
To be cooled to the calm of devotion;
Our hands are too warm in another's
To be folded in supplication;
Too much of the earth is about us
To be lost in the halo of Heaven--
So we need the cool heart of the mother
That has passed the hot chaos of passion,
To temper the pulse that is wayward.

"Yet I cannot have wandered so greatly,
When love was the only impulsion,
Such a distance away from the Master
Whose name is the essence of loving;
But he sees the bare heart in its throbbing,
And the crystallized faith of my footsteps
That were only too quick in their choosing.
Surely, Love, the benificent Master,
Springing forth from the bosom of Mary,
To smother the earth with caresses,
Will drop a light hand on the shoulder
That shadows a heart that has wandered
By only its warm overflowing."

She loaded her mother with jewels,
And left not the shadow of malice
To stain the fair skirts of her mercy,
But canceled her wrongs with caresses,
And covered the past with forgiveness.
Thus she bore the whole soul of the Gospel
To the hungry hearts of her people;
And the heart is not hard to the sermon
That carries a life for its background
As perfectly pure as the precept.
The heathen is waiting the harvest--
Only hallowed hands for the sickle;
When the life and the lip move together
Millennium waits on the morning.

The trial that sometimes had shadowed
Comes at last in its fullness upon her,
And the pride of Cortez seeks another
For the place that is only Malinche's.
And he offers to Don Xamarillo
The tremulous hand of the maiden,
As if it was his to bestow her
As a chattel--a token of friendship--
On his friend and bosom companion.
The anger of love was upon her,
And all of her beauty shone brightest,
As she flashed on her recreant lover
The flaming scourge of her protest:

"I came as a slave to your camp-ground;
You lifted me out of my bondage,
For you knew I was free in my birthright.
You wooed me, and won me as lover,
And only as wife could have worn it;
I have drawn on your love as a garment.
You first sought me out as a sponsor,
But the language of Spain is a magnet
That drew me all out of Malinche
And made me a part of her Chieftain;
And now you would sunder the tendrils
And force back the vine from the branches
Where they learn't all of life in reclining,
And never can unlearn the lesson.