receive him in his own palace. And although doubts soon asserted themselves in his mind, yet he long retained, perhaps even to the last, a superstitious dread of Cortes, that enabled the latter to secure a complete ascendancy over him. This, I repeat, was the secret of the bold Spaniard's success; nor can we ever understand the matter rightly unless we take into consideration the significance of this worship of Quetzalcoatl that the Aztecs had continued to respect, though all the while flattering themselves that their own god, Tezcatlipoca, would be able once more to protect them against his ancient adversary. Years after the conquest, Father Sahagun had still to answer the question of the natives, who asked him what he knew of the country of Quetzalcoatl.[14] What, then, was the fundamental significance of this feathered Serpent that so pre-occupied the religious consciousness of the Aztecs? He was not the Sun. The Sun does not disappear in the East. He was a god of the wind, as Father Sahagun perfectly well understood, but of that wind in particular that brings over the parched land of Mexico the tepid and fertilizing exhalations of the Atlantic. And this is why Tezcatlipoca, the god of the cold and dry season, rather than Uitzilopochtli, is his personal enemy. It is towards the end of the dry season that the fertilizing showers begin to fall on the eastern shores, and little by little to reach the higher lands of the interior. The flying Serpent, then, the wind that comes like a huge bird upon the air, bringing life and abundance with it, is a benevolent deity who spreads prosperity wherever he goes. But he does not always breathe over the land, and does not carry his blessed moisture everywhere. Tezcatlipoca appears. The lofty plateaux of Tulla, of Mexico and of Cholula, are the first victims of his desolating force. Quetzalcoatl withdraws ever further and further to the East, and at last disappears in the great ocean.