“Your hand now, O king, and Mualox will lead you into his world.”
The motives that constrained the holy man to this step are not easily divined. Of all the mysteries of the house, that hall was by him the most cherished; and of all men the king was the last whom he would have voluntarily chosen as a participant in its secrets, since he alone had power to break them up. The necessity must have been very great; possibly he felt his influence and peculiar character dependent upon yielding to the pressure; the moment the step was resolved upon, however, nothing remained but to use the mysteries for the protection of the abode; and with that purpose he went to prepare the way.
Much study would most of us have required to know what was essential to the purpose; not so the paba. He merely trimmed the lamps already lighted, and lighted and disposed others. His plan was to overwhelm the visitor by the first glance; without warning, without time to study details, to flash upon him a crowd of impossibilities. In the mass, the generality, the whole together, a god’s hand was to be made apparent to a superstitious fancy.
CHAPTER V
THE MASSACRE IN CHOLULA
Inside the hall, scarcely a step from the curtain, the monarch stopped bewildered; half amazed, half alarmed, he surveyed the chamber, now glowing as with day. Flowers blooming, birds singing, shrubbery, thick and green as in his own garden. Whence came they? how were they nurtured down so far? And the countless subjects painted on the ceiling and walls, and woven in colors on the tapestry,—surely they were the work of the same master who had wrought so marvellously in the golden chamber. The extent of the hall, exaggerated by the light, impressed him. Filled with the presence of what seemed impossibilities, he cried out,—
“The abode of Quetzal’!”
“No,” answered Mualox, “not his abode, only his temple,—the temple of his own building.”
And from that time it was with the king as if the god were actually present.
The paba read the effect in the monarch’s manner,—in his attitude, in the softness of his tread, in the cloudy, saddened expression of his countenance, in the whisper with which he spoke; he read it, and was assured.