it very necessary, my friend?"
"Indispensable, Dolores."
"Hang it! He is familiar," the count said.
"I will obey then," the young lady continued,
"Now we must part: I have remained here too long as it is."
The stranger pulled his hat down over his eyes, muttered the word farewell, for the last time and went off at a quick pace.
The count had remained motionless at the same spot, a prey to a profound stupefaction. The stranger passed close enough to touch him, though without seeing him: at this moment a branch knocked off his hat, a moon ray fell full on his face and the count then recognized him.
"Oliver!" he muttered, "It is he then, that she loves."
He returned to his apartments tottering like a drunken man. This last discovery had upset him.
The young man went to bed, but could not sleep: he passed the whole night in forming the most extravagant projects. However, toward morning, his agitation appeared to give way to lassitude.
Before forming any resolution, he said, "I wish to have an explanation with her, very certainly I do not love her, but for my honour's sake, it is necessary that she should be thoroughly convinced that I am not a fool and that I know everything. That is settled: tomorrow I shall request an interview with her."
Feeling calmer, after he had formed a definitive resolution, the count closed his eyes and fell asleep. On waking, he saw Raimbaut standing at his bed side, with a paper in his hand.
"What is it? What do you want?" he said to him.
"It is a letter for Monsieur le Comte," the valet answered.
"Ah!" he exclaimed; "Can it be news from France?"
"I do not think so; this letter was given to Lanca by one of the waiting women of doña Dolores de la Cruz, with a request to deliver it to M. le Comte, as soon as he woke."
"This is strange," the young man muttered, as he took the note and examined it attentively; "it is certainly addressed to me," he muttered, at length deciding on opening it.
The note was from doña Dolores de la Cruz, and only contained these few words, written in a delicate though rather tremulous hand.
"Doña Dolores de la Cruz earnestly requests señor don Ludovic de la Saulay to grant her a private interview for a very important affair at three o'clock in the afternoon of today. Doña Dolores will await the ount in her own apartments."
"This time I cannot make head or tail of it," the count exclaimed. "But stuff," he added, after a moment's reflection; "perhaps it is better that it should be so, and the proposition come from her."
CHAPTER VII.
THE RANCHO.
The state of Puebla is composed of a plateau mountain, more than five and twenty leagues in circumference, crossed by the lofty Cordilleras of Anahuac.
The plains which surround the town are very diversified, cut up by ravines, studded with hills, and closed on the horizon by mountains covered by eternal snows.
Immense fields of aloes, the real vineyards of the country, as pulque, that beverage so dear to the Mexicans, is made from this plant, extend beyond the range of vision.
There is no sight so imposing as these commanding aloes, whose leaves, armed with formidable points, are thick, hard, lustrous, and from six to eight feet in length.
On leaving Puebla by the Mexico road, about two leagues further on, you come to the city of Cholula, formerly very important, but which, now fallen from its past splendour, only contains from twelve to fifteen thousand souls.
In the days of the Aztecs, the territory, which now forms the State of Puebla, was considered by the inhabitants a privileged Holy Land, and the sanctuary of the religion. Considerable ruins, very remarkable from an archaeological point of view, still bear witness to the truth of our statement; three principal pyramids exist in a very limited space, without mentioning the ruins on which travellers tread at every step.
Of these three pyramids, one is justly celebrated; it is the one to which the inhabitants of the country give the name of Monte hecho a mano, the mountain built by human hands, or the great teocali of Cholula.
This pyramid, crowned with cypresses, and on the top of which now stands a chapel dedicated to "Nuestra Señora de los remedios," is entirely constructed of bricks, its height is one hundred and seventy feet, and its base, according to the calculations of Humboldt, is 1355 feet in length, or a little more than double the base of the pyramids of Cheops.
Monsieur Ampère remarks, with considerable tact and cleverness, that the imagination of the Arabs has surrounded with prodigies, the, to them, unknown cradle of the Egyptian pyramids, whose construction they refer to the deluge; and the same was the case in Mexico. On this subject he relates a tradition picked up in 1566, by Pedro del Río, about the pyramids of Cholula, and preserved in his MSS., which are now in the Vatican.
We will in our turn, make a loan from the celebrated savant, and relate here this tradition, such as he gives it in his Promenades en Amérique.
"During the last great inundation, the country of Anahuac (the plateau of Mexico), was inhabited by giants. All those who did not perish in this disaster, were changed into fishes, except seven giants who took refuge in the caverns. When the waters began to subside, one of these giants, of the name of Xelhua, who was an architect, erected near Cholula, in memory of the mountain of Tlaloc, which had served as a refuge to him and his brothers, an artificial column of a pyramidal form. The gods, seeing with jealousy, this edifice, whose peak was intended to touch the clouds, and irritated by the audacity of Xelhua, hurled the heavenly fires against the pyramid, whence it happened, that many of the builders perished, and the work could not be completed. It was dedicated to the god of the air, 'Qualzalcoatl.'"
Might we not fancy ourselves reading the Biblical account of the building of the Tower of Babel?
There is in this narrative an error, which must not be imputed to the celebrated professor, but which we, in spite of our humble quality of romance writer, believe it useful to rectify.
Quetzalcoatl—the serpent covered with feathers, the root of which is quetzalli feathers, and coatl serpent, and not qualzalcoatl, which means nothing, and is not even a Mexican name—is the god of the air, the god legislator par excellence; he was white and bearded, his black cloak was studded with red crosses, he appeared at Tula, of which place he was high priest; the men who accompanied him wore black garments, in the shape of a cassock, and like him, were white.
He was passing through Cholula, on his way to the mysterious country whence his ancestors sprang, when the Cholulans implored him to govern them and give them laws; he consented, and remained for twenty years among them. After which, considering his mission temporarily terminated, he went to the mouth of the river Huasacoalco, when he suddenly disappeared, after solemnly promising the Cholulans that he would return one day to govern them.
Hardly a century ago the Indians, when carrying their offspring to the Chapel of the Virgin erected on the pyramid, still prayed to Quetzalcoatl, whose return among them they piously awaited, we will not venture to assert that this belief is completely extinct at the present day.
The pyramid of Cholula in no way resembles those to be seen in Egypt, covered with earth on all sides; it is a thoroughly wooded mount, the top of which can be easily reached, not only on horseback, but in a carriage.
At certain spots landslips had laid bare the sun-dried bricks employed in the construction.
A Christian chapel stands on the top of the pyramid at the very spot where the temple dedicated to Quetzalcoatl was built.
We cannot agree with certain authors who have asserted that a religion of love has been substituted for a barbarous and cruel faith; it would have been more logical to say