I have said that the history of Quetzalcoatl in Tollan is but a continuation of the conflict of the two primal brother gods.  It is still the implacable Tezcatlipoca who pursues and finally conquers him.  But there is this significant difference, that whereas in the elemental warfare portrayed in the older myth mutual violence and alternate destruction prevail, in all these later myths Quetzalcoatl makes no effort at defence, scarcely remonstrates, but accepts his defeat as a decree of Fate which it is vain to resist.  He sees his people fall about him, and the beautiful city sink into destruction, but he knows it is the hand of Destiny, and prepares himself to meet the inevitable with what stoicism and dignity he may.

The one is the quenching of the light by the darkness of the tempest and the night, represented as a struggle; in the other it is the gradual and calm but certain and unavoidable extinction of the sun as it noiselessly sinks to the western horizon.

The story of the subtlety of Tezcatlipoca is variously told.  In what may well be its oldest and simplest version it is said that in his form as Camaxtli he caught a deer with two heads, which, so long as he kept it, secured him luck in war; but falling in with one of five goddesses he had created, he begat a son, and through this act he lost his good fortune.  The son was Quetzalcoatl, surnamed Ce Acatl, and he became Lord of Tollan, and a famous warrior.  For many years he ruled the city, and at last began to build a very great temple.  While engaged in its construction Tezcatlipoca came to him one day and told him that toward Honduras, in a place called Tlapallan, a house was ready for him, and he must quit Tollan and go there to live and die.  Quetzalcoatl replied that the heavens and stars had already warned him that after four years he must go hence, and that he would obey.  The time past, he took with him all the inhabitants of Tula, and some he left in Cholula, from whom its inhabitants are descended, and some he placed in the province of Cuzcatan, and others in Cempoal, and at last he reached Tlapallan, and on the very day he arrived there, he fell sick and died.  As for Tula, it remained without an inhabitant for nine years.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ramirez de Fuen-leal, Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas, cap. viii.]

A more minute account is given by the author of the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, a work written at an early date, in the Aztec tongue.  He assures his readers that his narrative of these particular events is minutely and accurately recorded from the oldest and most authentic traditions.  It is this:—­

When those opposed to Quetzalcoatl did not succeed in their designs, they summoned to their aid a demon or sorcerer, by name Tezcatlipoca, and his assistants.  He said:  “We will give him a drink to dull his reason, and will show him his own face in a mirror, and surely he will be lost.”  Then Tezcatlipoca brewed an intoxicating beverage, the pulque, from the maguey, and taking a mirror he wrapped it in a rabbit skin, and went to the house of Quetzalcoatl.