Now when I heard this dreadful doom I groaned aloud and my knees trembled so that I almost fell to the ground.  Then a great fury seized me and, forgetting my father’s counsel, I blasphemed the gods of that country and the people who worshipped them, first in the Aztec and Maya languages, then when my knowledge of these tongues failed me, in Spanish and good English.  But Otomie, who heard some of my words and guessed more, was seized with fear and lifted her hands, saying: 

’Curse not the awful gods, I beseech you, lest some terrible thing befall you at once.  If you are overheard it will be thought that you have an evil spirit and not a good one, and then you must die now and by torment.  At the least the gods, who are everywhere, will hear you.’

‘Let them hear,’ I answered.  ’They are false gods and that country is accursed which worships them.  They are doomed I say, and all their worshippers are doomed.  Nay, I care not if I am heard—­as well die now by torment as live a year in the torment of approaching death.  But I shall not die alone, all the sea of blood that your priests have shed cries out for vengeance to the true God, and He will avenge.’

Thus I raved on, being mad with fear and impotent anger, while the princess Otomie stood terrified and amazed at my blasphemies, and the flutes piped and the dancers danced behind us.  And as I raved I saw that the mind of Otomie wandered from my words, for she was staring towards the east like one who sees a vision.  Then I looked also towards the east and saw that the sky was alight there.  For from the edge of the horizon to the highest parts of heaven spread a fan of pale and fearful light powdered over with sparks of fire, the handle of the fan resting on the earth as it were, while its wings covered the eastern sky.  Now I ceased my cursing and stood transfixed, and as I stood, a cry of terror arose from all the precincts of the palace and people poured from every door to gaze upon the portent that flared and blazed in the east.  Presently Montezuma himself came out, attended by his great lords, and in that ghastly light I saw that his lips worked and his hands writhed over each other.  Nor was the miracle done with, for anon from the clear sky that hung over the city, descended a ball of fire, which seemed to rest upon the points of the lofty temple in the great square, lighting up the teocalli as with the glare of day.  It vanished, but where it had been another light now burned, for the temple of Quetzal was afire.

Now cries of fear and lamentation arose from all who beheld these wonders on the hill of Chapoltepec and also from the city below.  Even I was frightened, I do not know why, for it may well be that the blaze of light which we saw on that and after nights was nothing but the brightness of a comet, and that the fire in the temple was caused by a thunderbolt.  But to these people, and more especially to Montezuma, whose mind was filled already with rumours of the coming