The hour of the breaking of
the tempest was at hand.
Now all this while my life went on as before, save that I was not
allowed to go outside the walls of the palace, for it was feared lest
I should find some means of intercourse with the Spaniards, who did
not know that a man of white blood was confined there and doomed to
sacrifice. Also in these days I saw little of the princess Otomie,
the chief of my destined brides, who since our strange love scene had
avoided me, and when we met at feasts or in the gardens spoke to me only
on indifferent matters, or of the affairs of state. At length came the
day of my marriage. It was, I remember, the night before the massacre of
the six hundred Aztec nobles on the occasion of the festival of Huitzel.
On this my wedding day I was treated with great circumstance and
worshipped like a god by the highest in the city, who came in to do me
reverence and burned incense before me, till I was weary of the smell of
it, for though such sorrow was on the land, the priests would abate no
jot of their ceremonies or cruelties, and great hopes were held that I
being of the race of Teules, my sacrifice would avert the anger of the
gods. At sunset I was entertained with a splendid feast that lasted two
hours or more, and at its end all the company rose and shouted as with
one voice:
'Glory to thee, O Tezcat! Happy art thou here on earth, happy mayst thou
be in the Houses of the Sun.
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