CHAPTER VIII
A KINGDOM DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF
THE coming of Quetzalcoatl, so longed for by the people, was awaited by their emperor Montezuma with dread unspeakable. The very thought of losing rank and power, though to a god, made the days of the mighty monarch a nightmare, and the courtiers whispered as they watched his sombre face—"He is well named Montezuma, the man of gloom." By ceaseless sacrifice he strove to propitiate the gods and to avert his doom, but portent after portent seemed to presage coming evil.
On a calm and windless day the great salt lake encircling Tenochtitlan was troubled, and its waters raging in wild unrest o'er wall and causeway swept down the very streets of the city, while the emperor trembled in his palace. On one of the towers of the great teocalli descended a ball of fire which no man could extinguish until the turret crashed in ruin. At night a comet streamed across the sky and Montezuma grew sick with foreboding fear. Most terrible portent of all, there appeared in the east on several nights in succession "a flood of fire thickly powdered with stars." And while this baleful light
