He was right.  Within a week Montezuma was treacherously seized by the Spaniards and kept a prisoner in their quarters, watched day and night by their soldiers.  Then came event upon event.  Certain lords in the coast lands having killed some Spaniards, were summoned to Mexico by the instigation of Cortes.  They came and were burned alive in the courtyard of the palace.  Nor was this all, for Montezuma, their monarch, was forced to witness the execution with fetters on his ankles.  So low had the emperor of the Aztecs fallen, that he must bear chains like a common felon.  After this insult he swore allegiance to the King of Spain, and even contrived to capture Cacama, the lord of Tezcuco, by treachery and to deliver him into the hands of the Spaniards on whom he would have made war.  To them also he gave up all the hoarded gold and treasure of the empire, to the value of hundreds of thousands of English pounds.  All this the nation bore, for it was stupefied and still obeyed the commands of its captive king.  But when he suffered the Spaniards to worship the true God in one of the sanctuaries of the great temple, a murmur of discontent and sullen fury rose among the thousands of the Aztecs.  It filled the air, it could be heard wherever men were gathered, and its sound was like that of a distant angry sea.  The hour of the breaking of the tempest was at hand.

Now all this while my life went on as before, save that I was not allowed to go outside the walls of the palace, for it was feared lest I should find some means of intercourse with the Spaniards, who did not know that a man of white blood was confined there and doomed to sacrifice.  Also in these days I saw little of the princess Otomie, the chief of my destined brides, who since our strange love scene had avoided me, and when we met at feasts or in the gardens spoke to me only on indifferent matters, or of the affairs of state.  At length came the day of my marriage.  It was, I remember, the night before the massacre of the six hundred Aztec nobles on the occasion of the festival of Huitzel.

On this my wedding day I was treated with great circumstance and worshipped like a god by the highest in the city, who came in to do me reverence and burned incense before me, till I was weary of the smell of it, for though such sorrow was on the land, the priests would abate no jot of their ceremonies or cruelties, and great hopes were held that I being of the race of Teules, my sacrifice would avert the anger of the gods.  At sunset I was entertained with a splendid feast that lasted two hours or more, and at its end all the company rose and shouted as with one voice: 

’Glory to thee, O Tezcat!  Happy art thou here on earth, happy mayst thou be in the Houses of the Sun.  When thou comest thither, remember that we dealt well by thee, giving thee of our best, and intercede for us that our sins may be forgiven.  Glory to thee, O Tezcat!’