THE FAIR GOD (Illustrated Edition). Lew Wallace

steps, went in where the image is, laid my gift on the altar, and turned to depart, when a man came and stood by the door, wearing a surplice, and with long, flowing white beard. He looked at me, then bowed, and kissed the pavement at my feet. I shrank away. ‘Fear not, O Tula!’ he said. ‘I bow to you, not for what you are, but for what you shall be. You shall be queen in your father’s palace!’ With that he arose, and left me to descend.”

      “Said he so? How did he know you were Tula, the king’s daughter?”

      “That is part of the mystery. I never saw him before; nor, until I told the story to the ’tzin, did I know the paba. Now, O sister, can the believer of a dream refuse to believe a priest and prophet?”

      “A queen! You a queen! I will kiss you now, and pray for you then.” And they threw their arms lovingly around each other.

      Then the bird above them awoke, and, with a fluttering of its scarlet wings, cried, “Guatamo! Guatamo!”—taught it by the patient love of Tula.

      “O, what a time that will be!” Nenetzin went on, with sparkling eyes. “What a garden we will make of Anahuac! How happy we shall be! None but the brave and beautiful shall come around us; for you will be queen, my Tula.”

      “Yes; and Nenetzin shall have a lord, he whom she loves best, for she will be as peerless as I am powerful,” answered Tula, humoring the mood. “Whom will she take? Let us decide now,—there are so many to choose from. What says she to Cacama, lord of Tezcuco?”

      The girl made no answer.

      “There is the lord of Chinantla, once a king, who has already asked our father for a wife.”

      Still Nenetzin was silent.

      “Neither of them! Then there are left but the lord of Tlacopan, and Iztlil’, the Tezcucan.”

      At the mention of the last name, a strong expression of disgust burst from Nenetzin.

      “A tiger from the museum first! It could be taught to love me. No, none of them for me; none, Tula, if you let me have my way, but the white face and blue eyes I saw in my dream.”

      “You are mad, Nenetzin. That was a god, not a man.”

      “All the better, Tula! The god will forgive me for loving him.”

      Before Tula spoke again, Guatamozin stepped within the pavilion. Nenetzin was noisy in expressing her gladness, while the elder sister betrayed no feeling by words; only her smile and the glow of her eyes intensified.

      The ’tzin sat down by the hammock, and with his strong hand staying its oscillation, talked lightly. As yet Tula knew nothing of the proposal of the Tezcucan, or of the favor the king had given it; but the ken of love is as acute as an angel’s; sorrow of the cherished heart cannot be hidden from it; so in his very jests she detected a trouble; but, thinking it had relation to the condition of the Empire, she asked nothing, while he, loath to disturb her happiness, counselled darkly of his own soul.

      After a while, as Nenetzin prayed to return to the city, they left the pavilion; and, following a little path through the teeming shrubbery, and under the boughs of orange-trees, overarched like an arbor, they came to the ’tzin’s canoe. The keeper of the chinampa was there with great bundles of flowers. Tula and Nenetzin entered the vessel; then was the time for the slave; so he threw in the bundles until they were nearly buried under them,—his gifts of love and allegiance. When the rowers pushed off, he knelt with his face to the earth.

      Gliding homeward through the dusk, Guatamozin told the story of Yeteve; and Tula, moved by the girl’s devotion, consented to take her into service,—at least, until the temple claimed its own.

      Chapter VII.

       Court Gossip

       Table of Contents

      “A pinch of your snuff, Xoli! To be out thus early dulls a nice brain, which nothing clarifies like snuff. By the way, it is very strange that when one wants a good article of any kind, he can only get it at the palace or of you. So, a pinch, my fat fellow!”

      “I can commend my snuff,” said the Chalcan, bowing very low, “only a little less than the good taste of the most noble Maxtla.”

      While speaking,—the scene being in his pulque room,—he uncovered a gilded jar sitting upon the counter.

      “Help yourself; it is good to sneeze.”

      Maxtla snuffed the scented drug freely, then rushed to the door, and through eyes misty with tears of pleasure looked at the sun rising over the mountains. A fit of sneezing seized him, at the end of which, a slave stood by his elbow with a ewer of water and a napkin. He bathed his face. Altogether, it was apparent that sneezing had been reduced to an Aztec science.

      “Elegant! By the Sun, I feel inspired!”

      “No doubt,” responded the Chalcan. “Such ought to be the effect of tobacco and rose-leaves, moistened with dew. But tell me; that tilmatli you are wearing is quite royal,—is it from the king?”

      The young chief raised the folds of the mantle of plumaje, which he was sporting for the first time. “From the king? No; my tailor has just finished it.”

      “Certainly, my lord. How dull I was! You are preparing for the banquet at the palace to-morrow night.”

      “You recollect the two thousand quills of gold I bid for your priestess the other evening,” said Maxtla, paying no attention to the remark. “I concluded to change the investment; they are all in that collar and loop.”

      Xoli examined the loop.

      “A chalchuite! What jeweller in the city could sell you one so rich?”

      “Not one. I bought it of Cacama. It is a crown jewel of Tezcuco.”

      “You were lucky, my lord. But, if you will allow me, what became of the priestess? Saw you ever such dancing?”

      “You are late inquiring, Chalcan. The beggar was fast by starvation that night; but you were nearer death. The story was told the king,—ah! you turn pale. Well you may,—and he swore, by the fires of the temple, if the girl had been sold he would have flayed alive both buyer and seller. Hereafter we had both better look more closely to the law.”

      “But she moved my pity as it was never moved before; moreover, she told me they had discharged her from the temple.”

      “No matter; the peril is over, and our hearts are our own. Yesterday I saw her in the train of the princess Tula. The ’tzin cared for her. But speaking of the princess,—the banquet to-morrow night will be spicy.”

      The Chalcan dropped the precious loop. Gossip that concerned the court was one of his special weaknesses.

      “You know,” continued Maxtla, “that the ’tzin has always been a favorite of the king’s—”

      “As he always deserved to be.”

      “Not so fast, Chalcan! Keep your praise. You ought to know that nothing is so fickle as fortune; that what was most popular yesterday may be most unpopular to-day. Hear me out. You also know that Iztlil’, the Tezcucan, was down in the royal estimation quite as much as the ’tzin was up; on which account, more than anything else, he lost his father’s city.”

      Xoli rested his elbow on the counter, and listened eagerly.

      “It has been agreed on all sides for years,” continued Maxtla, in his modulated voice, “that the ’tzin and Tula were to be married upon her coming of age. No one else has presumed to pay her court, lest it might be an interference. Now, the whole thing is at an end. Iztlil’, not the ’tzin, is the fortunate man.”

      “Iztlil’! And to-morrow night!”

      “The palace was alive last evening as with a swarming