THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
with provisions and an earnest request for a personal interview.
The messengers soon returned with a gift of cotton cloth, but a curt refusal from their master to meet or treat with the enemy. "Go back," said Cortés, "and urge him to alter his desperate resolve. When he sees that I suffer you to go and come unharmed, you who have been my steady enemies no less than himself throughout the war, he will surely come. He has nothing to fear from me."
The next day came a message that the emperor would meet Malintzin at noon in the market-place, and Cortés at once gave orders to delay the general assault he had been planning. Noon came and the Spaniard waited in vain for many hours. Guatemozin did not appear.
At last the allies, who had been left outside the city, were called in and the whole army marched on the enemy’s quarters. The Aztecs were prepared. In front were the strongest warriors, behind, the weak and wounded, and on the roofs and terraces, women and children armed with stones and arrows. This pitiful resistance was of no avail, and the horrible struggle soon became a mere massacre of the famine-stricken people. Canals and streets ran red with blood, and the Spaniards themselves sickened at the slaughter. "The piteous cries of the women and children in particular," says Cortés, "were enough to break one's heart." But he could not check the ferocity of the allies, who outnumbered his own men by many thousands. "Never," he declared, "did I
