The three lords of distant provinces, Huehuetzin, Xiuhtenancaltzin, and Cohuanacotzin, who had once before rebelled against the king of Tollan, now refused their allegiance to Acxitl; but at first they for some reason, perhaps their own difficulties with the wild tribes about them, engaged in no open hostilities. The new monarch, then about forty years of age, justified the high promise of his youth, and guided by the sage counsels of his reformed father, ruled most wisely for several years, gradually gaining the confidence of his subjects. But the decrees of the gods were infallible, and Acxitl, like his father before him, yielded to temptation and plunged into all manner of lasciviousness and riotous living. So low did he fall as to make use of his position of high-priest to gratify his evil passions. His inciters and agents were still Tezcatlipoca and his crafty partisans, who persuaded ladies of every rank that by yielding to the king's embraces they would merit divine favor. The royal example was followed by both nobles and priests. High church dignitaries and priestesses of the temples consecrated to life-long chastity forgot all their vows; force was employed where persuasion failed. So openly were the requirements of morality disregarded, that the high-priestess of the Goddess of the Water, a princess of royal blood, on a pilgrimage to the temple of Quetzalcoatl at Cholula, lived openly with the chief pontiff of that city and bore him a son, who afterwards succeeded to the highest ecclesiastical rank. Vice took complete possession of society in all its classes, spreading to cities and provinces not under the immediate authority of Tollan. Public affairs were left to be managed by unscrupulous royal favorites; the prayers of the aged Huemac and Xochitl to the gods, like their remonstrances with Acxitl, were unavailing; crimes of all kinds remained unpunished; robbery and murder were of frequent occurrence; and the king was justly held responsible for all.
But Acxitl was at last brought to his senses, and his fears if not his conscience were thoroughly aroused. Walking in his garden one morning, he saw a small animal of peculiar appearance, with horns like a deer, which, having been killed, proved to be a rabbit. Shortly after he saw a _huitzilin_, or humming-bird, with spurs, a most extraordinary thing. Topiltzin Acxitl was familiar with the Teoamoxtli, or 'divine book,' and with Huemac's predictions; well he knew, and was confirmed in his opinion by the sages and priests who were consulted, that the phenomena observed were the tokens of final disaster. The king's reformation was sudden and complete; the priests held out hopes that the prodigies were warnings, and that their consequences might possibly be averted by prayer, sacrifice, and reform. The Spanish writers introduce at this period the series of plagues, which I have given under Huemac's reign; and Brasseur adds to the appearance of the rabbit and the humming-bird two or three of the wonderful events attributed by Sahagun to the necromancer Titlacaâon, without any reason that I know of for ascribing these occurrences to this particular time. Such were the appearance of a bird bearing an arrow in its claws and menacingly soaring over the doomed capital; the falling of a great stone of sacrifice near the present locality of Chapultepec; and the coming of an old woman selling paper flags which proved fatal to every purchaser.[IV-66] These events occurred in 1036 and the following years. The king was wholly unable to check the torrent of vice which was flowing over the land; indeed, in his desire to atone for his past faults, he seems to have resorted to such severe measures as to have defeated his own aims, converting his former friends and flatterers into bitter foes.