All these things terrified me greatly, and yet, to tell the truth, I took a secret pleasure in them. It was an unhealthy excitement, but even men sometimes find, like children, a strange pleasure in what is alarming and mysterious. Much good may it do them!

Montézuma would have been wicked to put all these ideas in my head if he had known the harm they did me. But he had no idea of it, poor fellow! He must, however, have been rather ashamed of these inventions of his, because he never said a word about them before my father or mother. And I, without his bidding me keep silence, said not one word either, about the matter, except to him. It was a secret between us. One discovers when one is very young, I am afraid, the charm of forbidden pleasure, or at least, of mysteries, and it was certainly a great pleasure to me to have this secret of the white horse’s powers between Montézuma and myself.

Still it was a great misfortune for............