These priests were gathered together in great establishments, where a most rigorous discipline was maintained, much after the fashion of Roman Catholic institutions. And as with the empire itself, so was it, in a lesser degree, with the empire's tributaries. In those also chiefs and people endeavoured to make their peace with heaven, as in the old world, by such immense endowments of lands and riches as tended naturally to swell the ranks of a race so well provided for, and regarded with such supreme reverence.
The smiling territory of Cempoalla was as well provided as its neighbours, with these numerous ministers of a religion that so strangely blended bloodthirsty superstition with exalted faith and enlightenment.
Juan de Cabrera fondly supposed that in slaying a man whom he honestly looked upon as a murderer of the blackest die, deserving death, he had rid that city, at any rate, of its one hideously-skilful executioner, and, as he put it, "that no more of that sort of work could go on for the present, either in their presence or their absence." But he made a most tremendous mistake.
"The king is dead. Long live the king."
The priest-executioner-in-chief had fallen, before the altar of the god he had served with such dreadful fidelity. He had died yesterday, to-day he had a successor burning with ardour to avenge him by increased sacrifices, to atone for those deferred, and to prove his own consummate skill in the detestable work.
"If only," was his fierce wild prayer—"if only the one invisible, supreme God would grant that some of the sacrilegious, infidel white faces might fall into the hands of the Cempoallan warriors, that they themselves might be offered up as peace-offerings to the insulted Huitzilopotchli!"
Were his prayer granted there was no doubt that the morose and gloomy-natured priest would not spare also to inflict upon the prisoners some prior tortures, ingenious enough in their barbarous cruelty to have excited the admiring envy of the most savage of Inquisitors.
But meantime he had other business on hand—sacrifices truly, but sacrifices drawn from the families of his own nation; and, moreover, sacrifices of such a nature that, had he been as wise as he was ruthless, he would have delayed their attempted offering until those white-faces had left his land. They were just the last drops needed to fill the Spaniards' cup of boiling indignation full to overflowing.
Exquisitely fertile and luxuriant as the whole district of Cempoalla looked to the Spanish eyes, so wearied with the barren tracts of sand, and marshy swamps of their recent station, there had in reality been a considerable time of drought lately, and the Indians were beginning to have fears for some of their harvests. Tlaloc, the god of rain, whose symbol of a cross had so disconcerted Cabrera and Father Olmedo, had to be propitiated.
For some days past a solemn festival had been decreed in his honour. The victims were bought for the altar, the invitation to the faithful was announced, and, although a priest had been slain in the night, the imperious god of rain must not be deprived of his offerings in the morning. Thence the sounds which had so suddenly arrested all speech and movement of the two armies, Christian and heathen, met together in the great square of the city.