The speech of men, the lowing of beasts, the loud-sounding music are just as inaudible to him as the amatory whispers of snails, or the philosophic discourses of the tiny ants are, perhaps, to us. He only understands the voices of the primæval beasts which stand on the same level of creation as himself.
The torpid monster owes all his power to his voice and his terrific shape. He would be incapable of killing even a child that dared to tell him it had no fear of him, and, nevertheless, the whole city trembles before him; feeds his vassals, the plant-eating mammoths, megatheriums, and iguanodons, with the first-fruits of its fields and the monster himself with the blood of its best men and its loveliest damsels; lays at his feet the gold of its mines, the pearls of its seas and the spices of its heaths, and invokes as lord and god what is nothing but a belated, primæval monster, which has survived the centuries allotted to it by Nature and abdicated its impotent, vegetating existence in favour of another and a later world, whose generations are renewed every half century, the world of short-lived, swiftly changing, greedily enjoying man.
The ghastly feast is at an end. Tetzkatlepoka and his elect are led into Triton's temple. The heavy copper doors close behind the three hundred and sixty-five priests.
What happened within the temple no one ever knew. The roar of the monster lasted for a few minutes, and then all was still again; the doors were re-opened, and the high priest, stepping forth, informed the assembled multitude that, at the potent command of Triton, a gold-edged cloud had descended from heaven, taken up the god Tetzkatlepoka and his chosen bride, and transported them to an eternity as full of deliciousness as the last year of their earthly life had been. Let him who doubted count those who quitted the temple, and he would find there were only three hundred and sixty-five persons, or two less than the number which had entered in.
In the temple itself there was no one but the tranquil stony-eyed monster which had now closed its huge mouth and goblin eyes, like one who has eaten his fill and would fain repose.
CHAPTER IX
THE CHOICE OF A GOD
And now for the election of a new god.
A vast amphitheatre-like space accommodates all the inhabitants of the city. There are four tiers of seats, supported by silvered copper columns, the capital of each column ending in a bird's head, from which an intoxicating liquid flows through a silver pipe into a circumambient basin below. The myriad of glistening jets, which descend in spray from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, give the whole interior space an enchanting appearance. The people, as they make their way into the galleries, hold up their heads and imbibe this intoxicating rain with abandoned good humour, while the hideous half-human, half-bestial monsters wallow in the basin below and take in the heady draught that way. Whoever cannot drink any more holds his head under the downward trickling juice till it soaks him through and through. Not unfrequently, the injurious liquid sets some of these creatures on fire by spontaneous combustion, and, roaring and bellowing, they plunge madly through the mob vomiting forth flames of fire.