"Is there no favoring omen in any quarter, venerable father?" inquired the agitated messenger from the palace, when the prayer was ended--"is there no one of those bright spheres above us, that will deign to smile on the destiny of the young princess?" "It is full of mysterious, portentous contradictions," replied the astrologer. "Good and evil influences contend for the mastery. The evil prevail, but the good are not wholly extinguished. The life of the princess will be a life of sorrow, but there will be a peculiar brightness in its end. Yet the aspect of every sign in the heavens is wo, and only wo, to the imperial House of Montezuma." Faith in the revelations of astrology was a deeply rooted superstition with the Aztecs. It pervaded the whole structure of society, affecting the most intelligent and well-informed, as well as the humblest and most ignorant individual. In this case, the prophetic wailings of the priestly oracle rolled, like a long funereal knell, through the magnificent halls of the imperial palace, and fell upon the ear of the monarch, as if it had been a voice from the unseen world. Montezuma was reclining on a splendidly embroidered couch, in his private apartment, anxiously awaiting the response of the celestial oracle. He was magnificently arrayed in his royal robes of green, richly ornamented with variegated feather-work, and elaborately inwrought with gold and silver. His sandals were of pure gold, with ties and anklets of gold and silver thread, curiously interwoven with a variegated cotton cord. On his head was a rich fillet of gold, with a beautiful plume bending gracefully over one side, casting a melancholy shade over his handsome but naturally pensive features. A few of the royal princes sat, in respectful silence, at the farther end of the chamber, waiting, with an anxiety almost equal to that of the monarch, the return of the royal messenger. The apartments of the emperor were richly hung with tapestry of ornamental feather-work, rivalling, in the brilliancy of its dyes, and the beautiful harmony of its arrangement, the celebrated Gobelin tapestry. The floor was a tesselated pavement of porphyry and other beautiful stones. Numerous torches, supported in massive silver stands, delicately carved with fanciful figures of various kinds, blazed through the apartment, lighting up, with an almost noonday brilliancy, the gorgeous folds of the plumed hangings, and filling the whole palace with the sweet breath of the odoriferous gums of which they were composed.