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.