CHAPTER III

great diligence in all the arts pertaining to good breeding, such as playing on the flute, deportment, conversation, saluting those he happened to meet, the use of straight cane tobacco-pipes and of flowers. He was attended upon by eight pages, who were clad in the livery of the palace, and had perfect liberty to go where he pleased night and day; while his food was so rich that, to guard against his growing too fat, it was at times necessary to vary the diet by a purge of salt and water. Everywhere honoured and adored as the living image and accredited representative of Tezcatlipocâ, he went about playing on a small shrill clay flute or fife, and adorned with rich and curious raiment furnished by the king, while all he met did him reverence, kissing the earth. All his body and face was painted black, his long hair flowed to the waist; his head was covered with white hens’ feathers stuck on with resin, and covered with a garland of the flowers called izquixochitl,⁴⁶ while two strings of the same flowers crossed his body in the fashion of cross-belts. Earrings of gold, a necklace of precious stones, with a great dependent gem hanging to the breast, a lip-ornament (barbote) of sea-shell, bracelets of gold above the elbow on each arm, and strings of gems called macuextlu winding from wrist almost to elbow, were part of his ornaments. He was covered with a rich, beautifully fringed mantle of netting, and bore on his shoulders something like a purse made of white cloth of a span square, ornamented with tassels and a fringe. A white maxtle of a span broad went about his loins, the two ends, curiously wrought, falling in front almost to the knee. Little bells of gold hung upon his feet, which were shod with painted