"Give me thy hand," cried Don Amador, "and I will pull thee out of this rabble to the back of Fogoso."
But the page, though he seized upon the hand of his patron, and covered it with kisses, held back, greatly to the surprise of Don Amador, who was made sensible that hot tears were falling with the kisses.
"I swear to thee, my boy! that I will discover thy father for thee, if it be possible for man to find him," said the cavalier, diving at once, as he thought, to the cause of this emotion.
But before he had well done speaking, the press thickening around him, drew the boy from his side; and when he had, a moment after, disengaged himself, Jacinto was no longer to be seen. Not doubting, however, that he was entangled in the mass, and would immediately appear, he called out to him to follow; and riding slowly up to Cortes, he had his whole attention immediately absorbed by the spectacle of the Indian emperor.
Issuing from the door of the palace, surrounded as well by Spanish cavaliers as by the nobles, both male and female, of his own household, who stood by him,--the latter, at least,--with countenances of the deepest veneration,--he advanced a step to do honour to the dismounting general.
In the light of many torches, held by the people about him, Don Amador, as he flung himself from his horse, could plainly perceive the person and habiliments of the pagan king. He was of good stature, clad in white robes, over which was a huge mantle of crimson, studded with emeralds and drops of gold, knotted on his breast, or rather on his shoulder, so as to fall, when he raised his arm, in careless but very graceful folds; his legs were buskined with gilded leather; his head covered with the _copilli_, or crown, (a sort of mitre of plate-gold, graved and chased with certain idolatrous devices,) from beneath which fell to his shoulders long and thick locks of the blackest hair. He did not yet seem to have passed beyond the autumn of life. His countenance, though of the darkest hue known among his people, was good, somewhat long and hollow, but the features well sculptured; and a gentle melancholy, a characteristic expression of his race, deepened, perhaps, in gloom, by a sense of his degradation, gave it a something that interested the beholder.