CHAPTER XIX

I again mounted my horse, angry at being cheated. Though the day was a most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of paganism which Cortéz introduced with the more poetical system which preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were the profundity of wisdom. And yet this allegorical worship, defective as it may have been, was forcibly superseded by the adoration of a child's doll—one that had very possibly been worn out and thrown from a nursery, and perhaps picked up