Finding Them In This Mood, Narvaez Ordered Them To Be
Plentifully Supplied With Wine, To Make Them More Communicative.
Cervantes
the jester, who was one of these soldiers, under pretence of facetiousness,
exposed to him all the discontents of our soldiers respecting the
distribution of the treasure we had obtained, and informed him also of the
bad state of the garrison in Villa Rica under Sandoval.
The arrival of
this new armament was soon communicated to Montezuma, who concealed the
intelligence for some time from Cortes, and opened a private
correspondence with Narvaez, to whom he sent many rich presents. Narvaez,
in his correspondence with Montezuma, said every thing that was bad
against Cortes and his troops, representing the whole of us as outcasts
and robbers, and that the emperor, hearing of our evil conduct, and that
we detained the great Montezuma in custody, had sent the present
expedition for the express purpose of liberating him and putting us all to
death. This intelligence gave great satisfaction to Montezuma, who thought
we must necessarily be all destroyed, as he had got an exact account of
their force represented to him in paintings: He accordingly transmitted
very magnificent presents to Narvaez, and could ill conceal the
satisfaction he had derived from the intelligence. Montezuma concealed the
news of this armament from Cortes, who observed and was astonished at the
alteration which it had produced on the kings manners and behaviour. At
length however, from the circumstance of Cortes making him two visits in
one day, Montezuma became apprehensive of the general procuring
intelligence from any other quarter, and told him the news, pretending
only to have just heard of it himself.
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