At that moment a hideous grin, weird offspring of ivory and bronze, rewarded de Sancerre’s straining gaze.
“Follow me, señor,” whispered Noco through the hole which served as a door to the hut. “There’s no one in the city now awake save nodding priests who feed the fire with logs. I’ll show you in the moonlight where Coyocop’s at rest.”
In the white light of a cloudless night the City of the Sun lay disguised in a beauty which the bright glare of its own deity destroyed by day. Grouped around the temple, the houses of the sun-worshippers, rising gracefully from artificial mounds, were softened in their outlines by the moonbeams until they formed a city upon which de Sancerre, accustomed, as he was, to the architectural splendors of the old world, gazed with surprise and pleasure. Choosing the shadows cast by the sun-baked walls for her pathway, Noco led the stranger past the most pretentious building in the town, the sacred temple in which a mystic fire was ever kept alive. Like an earthen oven, one hundred feet in circumference, the stronghold of a cruel priesthood impressed the Frenchman with its grim significance. As he and his withered guide crept noiselessly past the silent, shadow-haunted fane, de Sancerre succumbed to a shudder which he could not readily control. Upon a palisade above his head, surrounding the temple upon all sides, skulls gleamed in the moonlight, bearing sombre witness to the horrors of the cult by which a noble race was brutalized.
“Dios!” he muttered in the old hag’s ear, as he clasped her by the arm. “The shambles of your creed offend my sight! If you love me, señora, we’ll leave this place behind!”
They had not far to go. Beyond the temple and facing the east stood the spacious cabin in which the Brother of the Sun maintained his royal state. It was silent and deserted as they stole by it, to take their stand in the shadow cast by a house proud of its nearness to the home of kings. White and silent, the night recalled to de Sancerre’s mind an evening in the outskirts of Versailles when, having eluded the watchful eyes of his Spanish rival, he had tempted Doña Julia de Aquilar to a stroll beneath the moon. His heart grew sick with the sweetness of his revery. He could see again the dark, liquid eyes, the raven hair, the pale, perfect face of a woman whose splendid beauty mocked him now as he stood there a waif, blown by the cruel winds of misfortune to a land where grinning skulls stared down at him at night, as if they’d heard the story of his lost love and rejoiced at his cruel plight.
“Come! Come, señora,” he murmured, fretfully, turning to retrace his steps, and seemingly forgetful of the object of his perilous pilgrimage. “Come! Let us go back!”
“Hush, señor! Listen!” whispered the old crone, hoarsely, pulling him closer toward the house in the shadow of which they lingered. “Listen! ’Tis Coyocop!”
De Sancerre leaned against the wall of the hut, made dizzy for a moment by the wild beating of his heart. In perfect harmony with the melancholy beauty of the night arose a sad, soft, sweet-toned voice, which came to him at that moment like a caress bestowed upon him in a dream and made real by a miracle. De Sancerre clutched old Noco’s arm with a grasp which made her wince. Gazing at the moon-kissed scene before him with eyes which saw only a picture of the past he listened, white-lipped, breathless, trembling, to an old Spanish song, into which Juan Fernandez Heredia, more than a century before this night, had breathed the passion and the melancholy of a romantic race.
“To part, to lose thee, was so hard,
So sad that all besides is nought;