CHAPTER X
MULTIPLICATION OF PLOTS.
June-July, 1519.
Cortés, Diplomate and General — The Municipality of Villa Rica Located — Excitement Throughout Anáhuac — Montezuma Demoralized — Arrival of the Released Collectors at the Mexican Capital — The Order for Troops Countermanded — Montezuma Sends an Embassy to Cortés — Chicomacatl Asks Aid against a Mexican Garrison — A Piece of Pleasantry — The Velazquez Men Refuse to Accompany the Expedition — Opportunity offered Them to Return to Cuba, which They Decline through Shame — The Totonacs Rebuked — The Cempoala Brides — Destruction of the Idols — Arrival at Villa Rica of Salcedo — Efforts of Velazquez with the Emperor — Cortés Sends Messengers to Spain — Velazquez Orders them Pursued — The Letters of Cortés — Audience of the Emperor at Tordesillas.
Palamedes invented the game of chess while watching before the gates of Troy; a tame business, truly, beside the achievements of the heaven-born Achilles, the hero of the war. Yet chess remains, while Achilles and his heaven have melted with the mists. Who shall say, then, which was the greater, Cortés the soldier, or Cortés the diplomate? But these were barbarians, one says, with whom the shrewd Spaniards had to deal; they had neither horses, nor iron, nor gunpowder, to aid them in their wars. Furthermore, they regarded the strangers fully as demi-gods, probably as some of their own wandering deities returned. True; but he makes a great mistake who rates the Mexicans so far beneath Europeans in natural ability and cunning. Montezuma lacked some of the murderous enginery that Cortés had, and his
