another occasion, a soldier purloined some trinkets of gold from the treasure kept in the chamber, which, since Montezuma’s arrival in the Spanish quarters, had been reopened. Cortés would have punished the man for the theft, but the emperor, interfering, said to him, “Your countrymen are welcome to the gold and other articles, if you will but spare those belonging to the gods.” Some of the soldiers, making the most of his permission, carried off several hundred loads of fine cotton to their quarters. When this was represented to Montezuma, he only replied, “What I have once given I never take back again.”3
While thus indifferent to his treasures, he was keenly sensitive to personal slight or insult. When a common soldier once spoke to him angrily, the tears came into the monarch’s eyes, as it made him feel the true character of his impotent condition. Cortés, on becoming acquainted with it, was so much incensed that he ordered the soldier to be hanged, but, on Montezuma’s intercession, commuted this severe sentence for a flogging. The general was not willing that any one but himself should treat his royal captive with indignity. Montezuma was desired to procure a further mitigation of the punishment. But he refused, saying “that, if a similar insult had been offered by any one of his subjects to Malinche, he would have resented it in like manner.”4