22.Toveyo Dances
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TOVEYO’S first official act was to send ambassadors to the kings in that neighborhood—to Cocox and Napaltzin and Acolhua, the second of that name,—but none of these could give him any news of Dom Manuel. Meanwhile Coth cherished his wife and dealt with other persons also according to his nature.
Of his somewhat remarkable behavior in the war with Cacat and Coät, of how in one of his rages he destroyed a bridge with all the people on it, and of how he killed ten of his subjects with a gardener’s hoe, there is in this place no need to speak. But it came about unavoidably that, before Coth’s honeymoon was over, a deputation from the Taoltecs was beseeching Vemac to have this son-in-law of his unostentatiously assassinated.
“For there is really,” they said, “no standing him and his tantrums.”
“Such,” Vemac replied, “has been my own experience. I am afraid, though, that if we kill him my daughter will be put out, for she seems to have discoveredabout him some feature or another feature of great and unfailing attractiveness.”
“It is better, majesty, that she should weep than that we all be driven mad. The man’s pride and self-conceit are unbearable.”
“Nobody knows that better than I do. He hectors me in my own palace, where I am not accustomed to be overrun by anybody except my daughter. In such a position we must be politic. We must first see that this Toveyo is belittled in my daughter’s eyes. Afterward, if I know her as well as I think I do, she will consent to let us get rid of him.”
One of the darker Taoltecs, who called himself Tal-Cavêpan, said then: “This all-overbearing Toveyo is now in the market-place. Follow me, and you shall see him belittled in his wife’s eyes and in the eyes of everybody!”
They followed, inquiring among themselves who might be this huge Tal-Cavêpan, that he spoke so boldly. Nobody remembered having seen him before. Meanwhile Tal-Cavêpan went up to where Coth and his royal wife Utsumé were chaffering with a Yopi huckster over some melons. Tal-Cavêpan clapped his hand to Coth’s shoulder and bore down with this hand. Coth became smaller and smaller, so that presently Tal-Cavêpan stooped and picked up the nuisance whom they called Toveyo, and thus displayed to the Taoltecs their blustering oppressor as a pink midget not morethan four inches high, standing there in the palm of Tal-Cavêpan’s black hand.
“Dance, majesty! dance, dreadful potentate!” said Tal-Cavêpan. And Coth danced for them. All the while that he danced, he swore very horribly, and his little voice was like the cheeping of a young bird.
The people crowded about him, because no such wonder-working had ever before been seen in Porutsa. Tal-Cavêpan cried merrily to Vemac the Emperor, “Is not this capering son-in-law of yours belittled in his wife’s eyes and in the eyes of everybody?”
Vemac called out to his guards, “Kill this sorcerer!”
His soldiers obeyed the Emperor. But the Princess Utsumé caught up her tiny husband and thrust him into the bosom of her purple gown, out of harm’s way, the while that Tal-Cavêpan was being enthusiastically despatched.