CHAPTER VIII.
The morning broke over the beautiful Anahuac in loveliness and splendor. Nature, in all her forms, sent forth anthems of praise to the Almighty Creator. The forests rang with a medley of happy sounds, which rose from myriads of living things—the warbling of the inimitable mockingbird, and the trill and coo of its less melodious neighbors; the chirp and bark of the frisking little animals, together with the incessant whir and hum of the insect hosts—a grand chorus of thanksgiving, spontaneously rendered by an indiscriminate multitude of God's inferior creatures, all filled with the unalloyed happiness of an unconsciousness of evil, an unconsciousness which is denied to man, who is created in the image of his Maker, and endowed with that supreme attribute, the power to reason.
Such was the morning, and the waking it brought, of the day which followed the arrival of Hualcoyotl at Zelmonco villa.
The summons of a servant awoke the prince to a realization of his surroundings. Sounds of joy and life fell upon his ear from without, and stirred his soul with an emotion of sadness.
"Why should I be so environed," he soliloquized, "while all the rest of the world are happy and free? No, not all; my people are neither," he quickly added, as they rose up before his mind's eye in reproval. "Yet," he further added, "their lot is preferable to mine."
Shaking off his unhappy feelings, he performed his morning ablutions and clothed himself preparatory to going into the presence of his hostess.
When he appeared at the door of his apartment he found a servant there, who had been sent to conduct him to the eating-room, where breakfast was waiting, and, better still, the little girl, now grown to woman's stature, with whom he had romped and raced the hillsides over a hundred times in the years of his happy boyhood, also waiting to receive him. But how different were their positions and circumstances at this meeting. Not children, but man and woman, stood face to face.
"Itlza!" exclaimed he, with surprise and admiration depicted on his countenance and expressed in his voice, advancing toward her at the same time.
A momentary confusion came over the maiden, and she stood undecided how to act. The last time she saw him he was only a youth and she scarcely more than a child. Now he was a great, strong man, with intellectual superiority stamped on every feature, and dignity in every motion, while she had bloomed into a coy and blushing young woman, a sufficient cause for confusion in one so little acquainted with the world as she. He saw her embarrassment, and coming close to her, said: