Who could this woman be but Malinche, or Marianna, the Indian mistress of Cortéz—a fit patroness of the women of Puebla. She was the first convert that Cortéz ever made to Christianity; and her sort of Christianity is not unusual in Mexico. That beautiful cone that rises so majestically out of the plain between Puebla and Tlascala bears the name of Malinche; but as this name was applied to her paramour as well as to herself, an additional testimonial, in the form of a bronze statue, was deemed requisite; for she is considered here as almost a saint, and would be altogether such if she had not been the mother of children, and ended her career by getting married. That act of getting married—not her former life—rendered her unfit for a saint; for how could an honest housewife be a saint? She might have been the best of mothers and the best of wives, and have performed scrupulously the duties that God had assigned to her upon earth; but she was lacking in romance, in those aerial materials from which saints are made. Saints are made in damp, cold prison-cells, where, in the midst of self-inflicted misery, they see visions, dream dreams, and perform cures upon crowds as deluded as themselves.
It was a delightful afternoon when I mounted my horse for a ride to Cholula. The wind of the day before had driven away every vapor from this exceedingly transparent atmosphere, excepting only the cloud that was resting upon Popocatapetl, a little below its snow-covered summit. It was such weather as we have at "harvest home," and it was truly a "harvest home" throughout the whole Vega. Men were working in gangs in the different fields, gathering stalks, or husking corn, or cutting grain, or plowing with a dozen plows in company, or harrowing, or putting in seed. It was harvest-time and seed-time together. The full green blade and the ripened grain stood in adjoining fields in this region of perpetual sunshine. As I rode along between carefully cultivated estates, I did not fail to catch the enthusiasm which groups of cheerful field-laborers