The captive Inca was miserably dejected in spirit, though Pizarro affected to treat him with kindness and respect. Gradually becoming acquainted with the ruling passion of the invaders, he offered, on condition of his being liberated, to fill the room in which he was confined, which was twenty-two feet long and sixteen broad, with vessels of gold, as high as he could reach. Pizarro agreed to the proposal, and marked out the requisite height by a line on the walls. The Inca, accordingly, sent out orders for the ransom to be gathered from Quito and Cuzco, where the greatest quantities of gold and silver were amassed in the temples. The commands of the monarch were respected and obeyed, and persons were instantly employed in bringing together the needed treasure. While this was going on, Pizarro received information of the approach of a reinforcement. This was a new source of alarm to the captive sovereign, especially as he also learned that some Spaniards had visited his brother Huascar in his prison, who had promised them, if they would take his part, far greater wealth than Atahualpa had done. To prevent this, he determined to have his brother put to death, and his commands to that effect were executed accordingly.
The promised treasure was now collected, but Pizarro, with unexampled treachery, not only refused to release his prisoner, but determined to put him to death. To this he was instigated not only by the newly arrived Spaniards, but by an Indian, his interpreter, whom he had carried off some years before from beyond Panama, and who had conceived a passion for one of the wives of Atahualpa. He also alarmed the Spaniard with accounts of forces assembling in various parts of the empire, and imputed these preparations for war, to the commands of the captive monarch. Atahualpa himself, by his own imprudence, brought about the fatal result. Attaching himself especially to Ferdinand Pizarro and De Soto, persons superior, both in birth and education, to Pizarro himself, and who treated him with kindness and attention, he began gradually to regard Pizarro with contempt. He appears to have been a prince of no mean talents, and, observing the mode by which the Spaniards communicated their thoughts to each other by writing, he greatly admired the art, but was at a loss to determine whether it was a natural or an acquired one.