For there is a lesson in it and in the things that I have seen, and it is that no wrong can ever bring about a right, that wrong will breed wrong at last, and be it in man or people, will fall upon the brain that thought it and the hand that wrought it.
Look now at the fate of Cortes--that great man whom I have known clothed with power like a god.

Nearly forty years ago, so I have heard, he died poor and disgraced in Spain; he, the conqueror--yes, and I have learned also that his son Don Martin has been put to the torture in that city which the father won with so great cruelties for Spain.

Malinche, she whom the Spaniards named Marina, the chief and best beloved of all the women of this same Cortes, foretold it to him in her anguish when after all that had been, after she had so many times preserved him and his soldiers to look upon the sun, at the last he deserted her, giving her in marriage to Don Juan Xaramillo.

Look again at the fate of Marina herself.

Because she loved this man Cortes, or Malinche, as the Indians named him after her, she brought evil on her native land; for without her aid Tenoctitlan, or Mexico, as they call it now, had never bowed beneath the yoke of Spain--yes, she forgot her honour in her passion.
And what was her reward, what right came to her of her wrongdoing?
This was her reward at last: to be given away in marriage to another and a lesser man when her beauty waned, as a worn-out beast is sold to a poorer master.
Consider also the fate of those great peoples of the land of Anahuac.
They did evil that good might come.