All these things terrified me greatly, and yet, to tell the truth, I took a secret pleasure in them. It was an unhealthy excitement, but even men sometimes find, like children, a strange pleasure in what is alarming and mysterious. Much good may it do them!

MontÉzuma would have been wicked to put all these ideas in my head if he had known the harm they did me. But he had no idea of it, poor fellow! He must, however, have been rather ashamed of these inventions of his, because he never said a word about them before my father or mother. And I, without his bidding me keep silence, said not one word either, about the matter, except to him. It was a secret between us. One discovers when one is very young, I am afraid, the charm of forbidden pleasure, or at least, of mysteries, and it was certainly a great pleasure to me to have this secret of the white horse’s powers between MontÉzuma and myself.

Still it was a great misfortune for me that I did not tell all to my father and mother; they would have put a stop to these foolish fancies and mad terrors, which little by little destroyed my spirit, and turned me into the unfortunate coward I became.

People who have children entrusted to them, or who are constantly with them, should make a rule that they shall never be frightened by stories of giants and ogres, or supernatural beings, or in the foolish yet terrible way in which MontÉzuma used to terrify me.

One cannot tell the effect these fears may have upon children: can never guess the mischief that may be done. When once my father had retired from the army I was no longer under the influence of MontÉzuma. I no longer believed in Croquemitaine, and had even lost faith in the colonel’s horse; but though the actual belief was gone, the pernicious influence remained, and I was always building up fresh terrors on the ashes of the old ones.