“You have known and encouraged the love I bear the princess Tula, and counted on it as the means of some great fortune in store for me. Yet, in part at least, I am banished on that account. O Mualox, the banquet which the king holds to-night is to make public the betrothal of Tula to Iztlil’, the Tezcucan!”
“Well, what do you intend?”
“Nothing. Had the trouble been a friend’s, I might have advised him; but being my own, I have no confidence in myself. I repose on your discretion and friendship.”
Mualox softened his manner, and said, pleasantly at first, “O ’tzin, is humanity all frailty? Must chief and philosopher bow to the passion, like a slave or a dealer in wares?” Suddenly he became serious; his eyes shone full of the magnetism he used so often and so well. “Can Guatamozin find nothing higher to occupy his mind than a trouble born of a silly love? Unmanned by such a trifle? Arouse! Ponder the mightier interests in peril! What is a woman, with all a lover’s gild about her, to the nation?”
“The nation?” repeated the ’tzin, slowly.
The paba looked reverently up to the idol. “I have withdrawn from the world, I live but for Quetzal’ and Anahuac. O, generously has the god repaid me! He has given me to look out upon the future; all that is to come affecting my country he has shown me.” Turning to the ’tzin again, he said with emphasis, “I could tell marvels,—let this content you: words cannot paint the danger impending over our country, over Anahuac, the beautiful and beloved; her existence, and the glory and power that make her so worthy love like ours, are linked to your action. Your fate, O ’tzin, and hers, and that of the many nations, are one and the same. Accept the words as a prophecy; wear them in memory; and when, as now, you are moved by a trifling fear or anger, they should and will keep you from shame and folly.”
Both then became silent. The paba might have been observing the events of the future, as, one by one, they rose and passed before his abstracted vision. Certain it was, with the thoughts of the warrior there mixed an ambition no longer selfish, but all his country’s.
Mualox finally concluded. “The future belongs to the gods; only the present is ours. Of that let us think. Admit your troubles worthy vengeance: dare you tell me what you thought of doing? My son, why are you here?”
“Does my father seek to mortify me?”
“Would the ’tzin have me encourage folly, if not worse? And that in the presence of my god and his?”