Taking his drum, he began to beat upon it, accompanying the music with a song.

As his listeners heard the magic music, they became intoxicated with the strains, and yielding themselves to its seductive influence, they lost all thought for the future or care for the present.

The locality to which the crafty Tezcatlipoca had invited them was called, The Rock upon the Water.[1] It was the summit of a lofty rock at the base of which flowed the river called, By the Rock of Light.[2] When the day had departed and midnight approached, the magician, still singing and dancing, led the intoxicated crowd to the brink of the river, over which was a stone bridge.

This he had secretly destroyed, and as they came to the spot where it should have been and sought to cross, the innumerable crowd pressing one upon the other, they all fell into the water far below, where they sank out of sight and were changed into stones.
[Footnote 1: _Texcalapan_, from _texcalli_, rock, and _apan_, upon or over the water.] [Footnote 2: _Texcaltlauhco_, from _texcalli_, rock, _tlaulli_, light, and the locative ending _co_, by, in or at.] Is it pushing symbolism too far to attempt an interpretation of this fable, recounted with all the simplicity of the antique world, with greater directness, indeed, than I have thought wise to follow?
I am strongly inclined to regard it as a true myth, which, in materialistic language, sets forth the close of the day and the extinction of the light.

May we not construe the maiden as the Evening Twilight, the child of the Day at the close of its life?
The black lover with whom she is fatally enamored, is he not the Darkness, in which the twilight fades away?
The countless crowds of Toltecs that come to the wedding festivities, and are drowned before midnight in the waters of the strangely named river, are they not the infinitely numerous light-rays which are quenched in the world-stream, when the sun has sunk, and the gloaming is lost in the night?
May we not go farther, and in this Rock of Light which stands hard by the river, recognize the Heavenly Hill which rises beside the World Stream?
The bright light of one day cannot extend to the next.