“Where?”
“Only into the Cû.”
The monarch faltered.
“Dread be from you!” said Mualox. “Think you it is as hard to be faithful to a king as to a god whom even he has abandoned?”
Montezuma was touched. “Let us go,” he said to the ’tzin.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PROPHECY ON THE WALL.
Mualox led them into the tower. The light of purpled lamps filled the sacred place, and played softly around the idol, before which they bowed. Then he took a light from the altar, and conducted them to the azoteas, and down into the court-yard, from whence they entered a hall leading on into the Cû.
The way was labyrinthine, and both the king and the ’tzin became bewildered; they only knew that they descended several stairways, and walked a considerable distance; nevertheless, they submitted themselves entirely to their guide, who went forward without hesitancy. At last he stopped; and, by the light which he held up for the purpose, they saw in a wall an aperture roughly excavated, and large enough to admit them singly.
“You have read the Holy Book, wise king,” said Mualox. “Can you not recall its saying that, before the founding of Tenochtitlan, a Cû was begun, with chambers to lie under the bed of the lake? Especially, do you not remember the declaration that, in some of those chambers, besides a store of wealth so vast as to be beyond the calculation of men, there were prophecies to be read, written on the walls by a god?”