Enter CORTÉS and ALVARADO.

CORTÉS
            Hail, friends, from the Atlantic potentate!
            [of ALVARADO] This wandering star is my bright satellite.

ATTENDANT
             He glitters like a flax-haired god of hell.

TEUHTLILLI    [aside]
             A god? Gaudy, perhaps.

ALVARADO                                  Hail, gentlemen.

TEUHTLILLI    [to Malinalli]
             How like a brilliant sun does he arise!
             Let’s drench them with these superfluities.

                          (Enter SANDOVAL, ESCUDERO, DÍAZ,
                          MARÍA DE ESTRADA, and GARRIDO.
             TEUHTLILLI produces the helmet, filled with gold dust.)

             Your helmet, with its brim-full quarry, sir.
             A drained mine’s monthly yield all ground to dust.
             What fortunes else, I furnish for your eyes.
                                                                              (The gifts are presented.)
CORTÉS
             See, Alvarado, how much more they give,
             When left to give it voluntarily?

TEUHTLILLI
             Will you now, otherworldly men, make march
             To where Motecuhzoma, in your name,
             Still keeps the throne warm for his ancestor?

MALINALLI
             They will enjoy the presence of the king,
             Wherever he might be, to lavish him
             And do all he might order us to do,
             For to this end, they’ve charted seven seas,
             And journeyed distant lands.

TEUHTLILLI                                          Then let them come.
             [Aside]  (Let’s see how far they’ll take their godly fraud.)
             Let us now pierce our tender tongues with thorns,
             For your divine desire, if gods you be,
             That you may taste our blood.

CORTÉS                                                    Certainly not!
             We’re no more gods than you are penitents.
             If this is all you have to offer, go.
             I’ll summon you at leisure, by and by.
                                                       (Exit Mexicans. The Spanish converse.)
SANDOVAL
             [indicating gifts] What do you make of these gratuities?

ALVARADO
             A gesture of submission.

CORTÉS                                            No, not so.
             It was to be a show of dominance:
             Great wealth in unmatched liberality,
             Which their profuse humility in giving
             Makes glorious. But they mistake their man,
             For I might mask this bounty as a meek,
             Submissive yielding, binding legally.
                                                       (Exit Cortés, Alvarado, and Sandoval.)

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
             But oh, to storm so rich a capital!

AGUILAR
             We’re far too insignificant a force.

GARRIDO
             I wish that we already lived with them.
                                                                 (Exit all but Escudero and Díaz.)