944 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
it did not occur to Herrera that Diaz may, at the outset, have quadrupled 
the actual number. The ‘‘three or four hundred youths” who brought in 
the dinner, according to Cortes, settle down under Herrera to “four hun- 
dred pages, all gentlemen, sons of lords”; and here we must recognize the 
discrimination of the historian in that he found the highest number stated 
by Cortes fully adequate to the occasion. ‘Two other things may be noticed: 
shoes have disappeared from all Indian feet in the face of a terrific penalty, 
and three thousand hungry Indians stand in peaceful quietude, while their 
dinner grows cold upon the floor, as Montezuma eats alone in solitary 
grandeur. No American Indian could be made to comprehend this picture. 
It lacks the realism of Indian life, and embodies an amount of puerility of 
which the Indian nature is not susceptible. Europeans and Americans may 
rise to the height of the occasion because their mental range is wider, and 
their imaginations have fed more deeply upon nursery tales. Diaz had 
contented himself with saying that Montezuma ‘‘had two hundred of his 
nobility on guard in apartments adjoining his own,”* in whom may be recog- 
nized his fellow-householders; but Cortes generously increased the number 
to “six hundred nobles and men of rank,” who appeared at daylight and 
remained in attendance during the day. Neither number, however, was 
quite sufficient to meet the conceptions of the historiographer of Spain, and 
accordingly three thousand, all guards, were adopted by Herrera as a suit- 
able number to give éclat to Montezuma’s dinner. If any man conversant 
with Indian character could show by what instrumentality five hundred 
Indians could be kept together twelve hours in attendance upon any human 
being from a sense of duty, he would add something to our knowledge of 
the Red Race; and could he prove further that they had actually waited, 
in the presence of as many earthen bowls, smoking with their several diu- 
ners, while their war-chief in the same room was making his repast alone, 
the verifier would thereby endow the Indian character with an element of 
forbearance he has never since been known to display. The block of wood 
hollowed out for a stool or seat may be accepted, for it savors of the sim- 
plicity of Indian art. That the Aztecs had napkins of coarse texture, woven 
by hand, is probable; as also that they were white, because cotton is white. 
' History of the Conquest of Mexico, I, 198. 
