ch
of the material of the later writers of the history of Mexico and the
Conquest is founded.

In the construction of his palaces and buildings Nezahualcoyotl
employed vast bodies of natives, after the manner of an Egyptian
potentate of old. Baths, hanging-gardens, groves of cedar, harems,
villas, temples formed the beautiful and luxurious Texcotzinco, the
prince's residence, as described by its historian. To-day the mounds
and _debris_ of sculptured stone which formed the place scarcely arrest
the traveller's attention. In the midst of his luxury the emperor fell
a prey to a passion for the betrothed of one of his subjects, a
beautiful maiden. The unhappy individual who had thus become his
monarch's rival--he was a veteran chief in the army--was needlessly
sent on a military expedition, where he fell, and the hand of his
promised bride was free for the monarch's taking. So was enacted upon
these high regions of Anahuac a tragic episode, as of David and Uriah,
to the blemish of an otherwise noble name and of a mind above the
superstitions of his time.

"Truly, the gods which I adore; idols of stone and wood: speak not, nor
feel, neither could they fashion the beauty of the heavens--the sun,
the moon, and the stars ... nor yet the earth and the streams, the
trees and the plants which beautify it. Some powerful, hidden, and
unknown God must be the Creator of the universe, and he alone can
console me in my affliction or still the bitter anguish of this
heart."[6] So spake Nezahualcoyotl.

[Footnote 6: I have translated this from the Spanish of Ixtlilxochitl
as quoted by Prescott.--C. R. E.]

Urged probably by the feelings of the philosopher (whose ponderings on
the infinite may occasion him more anguish perhaps than the ordinary
vicissitudes of life), the monarch raised up a temple to the "Unknown
God," in which neither images nor sacrifices were permitted.

After somewhat more than half a century of his reign, and at a time
calculated as the beginning of the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, this remarkable philosopher-king died, and was succeeded by
his son Nezahualpilli, who in a measure followed in his father's
footsteps. But he also passed away, his life having been overshadowed
to some extent by the singular belief or prediction of the fall of his
people in the coming of the white man from the East--a belief which
influenced both the Texcocans and the Aztecs. His son Ixtlilxochitl,
the historian above nam