All this I could have borne, for I had borne the like before, but the cruel end of my last surviving son, the one true joy of my desolate life, I could not bear.

The love of those children had become the passion of my middle age, and as I loved them so they had loved me.

I had trained them from babyhood till their hearts were English and not Aztec, as were their speech and faith, and thus they were not only my dear children, but companions of my own race, the only ones I had.

And now by accident, by sickness, and by the sword, they were dead the three of them, and I was desolate.
Ah! we think much of the sorrows of our youth, and should a sweetheart give us the go by we fill the world with moans and swear that it holds no comfort for us.

But when we bend our heads before the shrouded shape of some lost child, then it is that for the first time we learn how terrible grief can be.