The first time, it may be remembered, was when we came as envoys from Cuitlahua, Montezuma her father's successor, to pray the aid of the children of the mountain against Cortes and the Teules.

The second time was when, some fourteen years ago, we had returned to the City of Pines as fugitives after the fall of Tenoctitlan, and the populace, moved to fury by the destruction of nearly twenty thousand of their soldiers, would have delivered us as a peace offering into the hands of the Spaniards.
On each of these occasions Otomie had triumphed by her eloquence, by the greatness of her name and the majesty of her presence.

Now things were far otherwise, and even had she not scorned to use them, such arts would have availed us nothing in this extremity.

Now her great name was but a shadow, one of many waning shadows cast by an empire whose glory had gone for ever; now she used no passionate appeal to the pride and traditions of a doomed race, now she was no longer young and the first splendour of her womanhood had departed from her.

And yet, as with her son and mine at her side, she rose to address those seven councillors, who, haggard with fear and hopeless in the grasp of fate, crouched in silence before her, their faces buried in their hands, I thought that Otomie had never seemed more beautiful, and that her words, simple as they were, had never been more eloquent.
'Friends,' she said, 'you know the disaster that has overtaken us.