The proposals of the ambassadors produced different effects on
their audience. Xicotencatl was for embracing them at once. Far better
was it, he said, to unite with their kindred, with those who held
their own language, their faith and usages, than to throw themselves
into the arms of the fierce strangers, who, however they might talk of
religion, worshipped no god but gold. This opinion was followed by
that of the younger warriors, who readily caught the fire of his
enthusiasm. But the elder chiefs, especially his blind old father, one
of the four rulers of the state, who seem to have been all heartily in
the interests of the Spaniards, and one of them, Maxixca, their
staunch friend, strongly expressed their aversion to the proposed
alliance with the Aztecs. They were always the same, said the latter,-
fair in speech, and false in heart. They now proffered friendship to
the Tlascalans. But it was fear which drove them to it, and, when that
fear was removed, they would return to their old hostility. Who was
it, but these insidious foes, that had so long deprived the country of
the very necessaries of life, of which they were now so lavish in
their offers? Was it not owing to the white men that the nation at
length possessed them? Yet they were called on to sacrifice the
white men to the gods!- the warriors who, after fighting the battles
of the Tlascalans, now threw themselves on their hospitality.
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