“Will the king trust his servant, and go with him down into the Cû again?”
“To talk with the Morning, this is the place,” said the monarch, too well remembering the former introduction to the mysteries of the ancient house.
“My master mistakes me for a juggling soothsayer; he thinks I will look into the halls of the Sun through burning drugs, and the magic of unmeaning words. I have nothing to do with the Morning; I have no incantations. I am but the dutiful slave of Quetzal’, the god, and Montezuma, the king.”
The royal listener looked away again, debating with his fears, which, it is but just to say, were not of harm from the paba. Men unfamiliar with the custom do not think lightly of encountering things unnatural; in this instance, moreover, favor was not to be hoped from the god through whom the forbidden knowledge was to come. But curiosity and an uncontrollable interest in the result of the affair in Cholula overcame his apprehensions.
“I will go with you. I am ready,” he said.
The old man stooped, and touched the roof, and, rising, said, “I have a little world of my own, O king; and though without sun and stars, and the grand harmony which only the gods can give, it has its wonders and beauty, and is to me a place of perpetual delight. Bide my return a little while. I will go and prepare the way for you.”
Resuming his mantle, he departed, leaving the king to study the new-born day. When he came back, the valley and the sky were full of the glory of the sun full risen. And they descended to the azoteas, thence to the court-yard. Taking a lamp hanging in a passage-door, the holy man, with the utmost reverence, conducted his guest into the labyrinth. At first, the latter tried to recollect the course taken, the halls and stairs passed, and the stories descended; but the thread was too often broken, the light too dim, the way too intricate. Soon he yielded himself entirely to his guide, and followed, wondering much at the massiveness of the building, and the courage necessary to live there alone. Ignorant of the zeal which had become the motive of the paba’s life, inspiring him with incredible cunning and industry, and equally without a conception of the power there is in one idea long awake in the soul and nursed into mania, it was not singular that, as they went, the monarch should turn the very walls into witnesses corroborant of the traditions of the temple and the weird claims of its keeper.
Passing the kitchen, and descending the last flight of steps, they came to the trap-door in the passage, beside which lay the ladder of ropes.
“Be of courage a little longer, O king,” said Mualox, flinging the ladder through the doorway. “We are almost there.”
And the paba, leaving the lamp above, committed himself confidently to the ropes and darkness below. A suspicion of his madness occurred to the king, whose situation called for consideration; in fact, he hesitated to follow farther; twice he was called to; and when, finally, he did go down, the secret of his courage was an idea that they were about to emerge from the dusty caverns into the freer air of day; for, while yet in the passage, he heard the whistle of a bird, and fancied he detected a fragrance as of flowers.