ple fall about him, and
the beautiful city sink into destruction, but he knows it is the hand of
Destiny, and prepares himself to meet the inevitable with what stoicism
and dignity he may.

The one is the quenching of the light by the darkness of the tempest and
the night, represented as a struggle; in the other it is the gradual and
calm but certain and unavoidable extinction of the sun as it noiselessly
sinks to the western horizon.

The story of the subtlety of Tezcatlipoca is variously told. In what may
well be its oldest and simplest version it is said that in his form as
Camaxtli he caught a deer with two heads, which, so long as he kept it,
secured him luck in war; but falling in with one of five goddesses he had
created, he begat a son, and through this act he lost his good fortune.
The son was Quetzalcoatl, surnamed Ce Acatl, and he became Lord of Tollan,
and a famous warrior. For many years he ruled the city, and at last began
to build a very great temple. While engaged in its construction
Tezcatlipoca came to him one day and told him that toward Honduras, in a
place called Tlapallan, a house was ready for him, and he must quit Tollan
and go there to live and die. Quetzalcoatl replied that the heavens and
stars had already warned him that after four years he must go hence, and
that he would obey. The time past, he took with him all the inhabitants of
Tula, and some he left in Cholula, from whom its inhabitants are
descended, and some he placed in the province of Cuzcatan, and others in
Cempoal, and at last he reached Tlapallan, and on the very day he arrived
there, he fell sick and died. As for Tula, it remained without an
inhabitant for nine years.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ramirez de Fuen-leal, _Historia de los Mexicanos por sus
Pinturas_, cap. viii.]

A more minute account is given by the author of the _Annals of
Cuauhtitlan_, a work written at an early date, in the Aztec tongue. He
assures his readers that his narrative of these particular events is
minutely and accurately recorded from the oldest and most authentic
traditions. It is this:--

When those opposed to Quetzalcoatl did not succeed in their designs, they
summoned to their aid a demon or sorcerer, by name Tezcatlipoca, and his
assistants. He said: "We will give him a drink to dull his reason, and
will show him his own face in a mirror, and surely he will be lost." Then
Tezcatlipoca brewed an intoxicating beverage, the _pulque_, from the
maguey, and