, which, in
materialistic language, sets forth the close of the day and the extinction
of the light. May we not construe the maiden as the Evening Twilight, the
child of the Day at the close of its life? The black lover with whom she
is fatally enamored, is he not the Darkness, in which the twilight fades
away? The countless crowds of Toltecs that come to the wedding
festivities, and are drowned before midnight in the waters of the
strangely named river, are they not the infinitely numerous light-rays
which are quenched in the world-stream, when the sun has sunk, and the
gloaming is lost in the night?

May we not go farther, and in this Rock of Light which stands hard by the
river, recognize the Heavenly Hill which rises beside the World Stream?
The bright light of one day cannot extend to the next. The bridge is
broken by the intervening night, and the rays are lost in the dark waters.

But whether this interpretation is too venturesome or not, we cannot deny
the deep human interest in the story, and its poetic capacities. The
overmastering passion of love was evidently as present to the Indian mind
as to that of the mediaeval Italian. In New as well as in Old Spain it
could break the barriers of rank and overcome the hesitations of maidenly
modesty. Love clouding the soul, as night obscures the day, is a figure of
speech, used, I remember, by the most pathetic of Ireland's modern
bards:--

"Love, the tyrant, evinces,
Alas! an omnipotent might;
He treads on the necks of princes,
He darkens the mind, like night."[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarence Mangan, _Poems_, "The Mariner's Bride."]

I shall not detail the many other wiles with which Tezcatlipoca led the
Toltecs to their destruction. A mere reference to them must suffice. He
summoned thousands to come to labor in the rose-garden of Quetzalcoatl,
and when they had gathered together, he fell upon them and slew them with
a hoe. Disguised with Huitzilopochtli, he irritated the people until they
stoned the brother gods to death, and from the corrupting bodies spread a
pestilential odor, to which crowds of the Toltecs fell victims. He turned
the thought of thousands into madness, so that they voluntarily offered
themselves to be sacrificed. By his spells all articles of food soured,
and many perished of famine.

At length Quetzalcoatl, wearied with misfortune, gave orders to burn the
beautiful houses of Tollan, to bury his treasures, and to begin the
journey to Tlapal