Part 17

What remains of the old atrium is rather spoiled by being inclosed with a high iron railing; but in it stands a statue of my friend Humboldt, whose soul perceived the "splendors of this Indian world." It is a most charming building to come upon in those busy, modern streets, where bankers raise and lower the exchange, and the "interests" have their visible habitats. One is thankful for every good old stone that has been left upon another good old stone in Mexico, and the old building has a beautiful tiled dome in the Mudejar style (Moorish-Christian), with arabesque designs and a charming façade. The modern iron railing is decorated with busts of the Mexican great, in early-Victorian style, from the days of Nezahualcoyotl down to Alaman. But the beautiful old _basso rilievo_ of San Agustin over the main door tells you unmistakably that the ages of faith were also the ages of art.

I wrestled with the catalogues, and found they always referred me to others of various dates, like 1872 and 1881. I spoke with several very vague and exceedingly polite officials. I dare say my Spanish contributed to the vagueness. The library is very rich in books relating to the labors of the Church in New Spain, and in general of the history of the post-Conquest period. The huge reading-room was once the great central nave of the church, and a flood of white light pours in through high octagonal windows. Any time any one moved or walked there was the sound as of an army. It was the wooden floor acting in unison with the unsurpassed acoustic qualities of the nave.

Over all was a still, deathly cold that froze the gray matter stiff. Some students, looking a lead color under their rich, natural tone, were noisily turning over the pages of their books, and an old man with a green shade and a magnifying glass was looking at a manuscript. Otherwise empty space. The reading Mexicans are, I fancy, mostly engaged in trying to sustain or destroy Madero.

In 1867 Benito Juarez issued the decree which established the Biblioteca Nacional, and they got the books from the university, and various monasteries and colleges were also emptied of their treasures. The night library was formerly a chapel of the third order of San Agustin, and I was told by some sort of attendant only remotely interested in the world of books that there was once a celebrated old walnut choir, with the richest carvings, which I could now find in the Escuela Preparatoria. It reminded me of the catalogues and _he_ looked like what in "The Isles" Humboldt says they call _un monsieur passable_. He thinks he's white--you know he isn't; but one leaves it at that.

Life is short, even here, and art is long, and I think I will send to New York for anything they have in it that I might want.

_February 7th._

Orozco denies any disloyalty to Madero, or that Chihuahua is about to secede, but he does say in Spanish, probably still less elegant, something to the effect that Madero can't do the "Mexican trick."

When Madame Madero called yesterday her rather halting remark that _Orozco es muy leal_ (Orozco is very loyal) was unconvincing, but of course they _must_ hope. She was in dark, rich garments, somewhat too heavy in cut and texture for her size, with a very imposing plume-loaded hat over her pale, tired face. She now wears a beautiful string of pearls. All the life is in her vigilant eyes, and if there is an iron hand in the family, it is hers. Madame Ernesto Madero, very pretty in the dark, flashing-eyed, color-coming-and-going-way, also called and said, as a charming girl might have said it, that she was _muy paseadora_.

Vasquez Gómez, a day or two since, proclaimed himself provisional President, and has quite a tidy following, with the "seat" of government in Juarez. It would seem the presidential bee buzzes under any hat! More and more I ask myself, Why try government according to our pattern? I can't see that ours is just the cut for them.

There is another cold wave, or _onda fria_, as they call the dreadful things. This one timed itself for a little dinner I was giving for Mr. Potter and Mr. Butler. The dining-room, into which I cast a glance before going to the drawing-room, looked very conducive with its flowers and shaded lights. The stove appeared a model of heat-giving. Well, we had just got to the fish when it not only emitted a column of smoke, but it blew up!

It was removed, and after a disturbed interval the dinner proceeded to the accompaniment of polite suggestions as to the removal of "blacks" that descended, from time to time, on the faces and shoulders of the diners. As we were leaving the dining-room somebody remarked that there was a smell of burning, and in the drawing-room the oil-stove's mate was found to be doing the most awful things in the line of Popocatepetl, when Cortés passed by the first time. It was also removed.

Madame Lefaivre suggested at this point that we had better frankly accept _le temps comme le bon Dieu l'avait envoyé_, so scarfs and shawls were brought, with suggestions of overcoats. Everybody began to smoke and we got out the bridge-tables. They refused to play bridge, however, with my nice Vienna packs of cards, which are innocent of numbers at the corners. After a while, with the smoking, the process of digestion, the jokes, the companionship in misery, things got better, and the little party broke up at only one o'clock, very late for Mexico. They said they were too cold to go home. It was a fine sample of the "tropics."

At Von H.'s dinner for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the other night, it was even worse. His large drawing-rooms are to the north, though _his_ stoves were working _auf commando_. After the long and elaborate dinner, during which the fair sex were visibly "all goose-flesh," we had our wraps brought and turned up our fur collars, which put a different complexion on events and ladies.

[33] "If thou goest to dwell in the Indies let it be where thou seest the volcanoes."

[34] Maurice Raoul Duval, + fallen on the field of honor, Verdun, May 5, 1916.

[35] Count du Boisrouvray, 14th Hussards, promu chef de bataillon pour faits de guerre. Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, croix de guerre, many citations; the first to enter Thiaumont when it was retaken.

[36] "For the king infinite lands, and for God infinite souls."

XIX

A tragic dance in the moonlight--Unveiling George Washington's statue--The _Corps Diplomatique_ visits the Pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan--Orozco in full revolt

_February 10th._

We were all awakened last night by a terrible, inhuman, mewing sound coming from the _patio_. It reminded us of "The White Leper" of Kipling. The moon was chiseling every stone and plant in the courtyard; a small light was in the porter's room, where a struggle seemed to be going on. All of a sudden a tall, stark-naked Indian, with his arms held stiff above his head, burst out and began to dance about in the moonlight, making strange passes and dippings of the body before something imaginary; there was a sort of sacrificial gesturing to his madness.

N. got his revolver and started down-stairs, fearing homicidal mania, when suddenly he threw himself in a corner, huddled up, and became unconscious. After a long delay the men came from the _manicomio_ (mad-house) and his body was picked up like a loose bundle; but I felt as if I never needed to read about prehistoric, sacrificial rites--I had seen them in the moonlight, in the person of that poor Indian, gone insane.

I went down to see Magdalena, his mother, later on. She was sitting with her head in her hands in the little porter's lodge, surrounded by two or three of his children. _He_ is a "widower." When she saw me she suddenly cried out, "_Señora, mi hijo! mi hijo!_" and her old eyes looked at me with the mother-look of helpless compassion for suffering sons through the ages--tearless, personal, tortured. I was troubled and saddened as I came up the stairway into the sunny veranda. But at the potent hour of pulque I heard sounds which, though not of mirth, seemed consoling.

_February 13th._

Pleasant luncheon here today--the Raoul Duvals, and De Chambrun, who is returning to Washington to-morrow, after which we all predict a total eclipse of the sun. The more I see of him the more I appreciate that French imaginative, speculative, analytical, yet constructive type of mind, with its flashing play of wit, its easy intellectuality, always ready to look at the most personal thing impersonally; this last so precious in the interchange of thought; and it's all very much in relief against this Latin-American background, where everything is always passionately personal.

De C. told us of his visit to the prison of San Juan Ulua, when he was last in Mexico. Evidently it is a horror. Madero had sworn that one of his first acts would be to do away with it, but there it is still. Nobody really trusts the situation here. Some one remarked that the quiet before something dreadful is going to happen is what is known as peace in Mexico. De C. had been off for a few days with the army, in the adjacent scenes of action. A general showed him his school medals by the camp-fire. One was for French, of which he did not know a word; the other was for geography, and he seemed to hear of Morocco for the first time by that same firelight. However, all he really needs to know is where the Zapatistas are.

The R. D.'s have taken a furnished house in Calle Dinamarca. Everybody flies, as soon as possible, from the evident evils of the hotels to any kind of unknown. They came in, looking so smart, she in a dark-blue tailor and a chic, flower-covered purple hat.

The plateau is thawed out again, and we will have no more cold this year. They tell me March and April are the warmest months here, before the rains begin to announce themselves.

_February 19th._

This morning, in a flood of sun, but with a "tang" in the early air, we went to meet Aunt L., and now she is comfortably resting with a book, _not_ about Mexico.

_February 22d._

This auspicious day was celebrated here by the unveiling of the large monument in white marble of George Washington in the Glorieta Dinamarca. The official Mexican world was out in force, also the diplomats. All the Americans in town, in whose hearts he was, indeed, first that day, watched the falling of the cloth from the face and form of the immortal George. Platforms had been built around the circle, the police kept beautiful order, and it might have been an "unveiling" anywhere, except for the outer fringe of peaked-hatted _pelados_ (skinned ones), who gather wherever any are gathered in any name.

I was deeply thrilled as the well-known features showed themselves, and our national air, beautifully played, rose to the shining heavens. The figure is standing, clad in a long cloak, and can be seen from the four streets leading into the circle.[37] The President gave a short address, and Mr. Wilson made one of his finished speeches--a happy combination of Stars and Stripes and Eagle and Cactus. I saw Aunt L.'s eyes fill as our looks met. They do stir one, these commemorations in foreign lands, where one feels to its fullest the privilege and pride of participation in a great citizenship.

_February 25th._

Yesterday I had a luncheon for Aunt L. Baroness Riedl, Madame Chermont, Mrs. Cummings and Mrs. Chemidlin (these latter friends of many years), Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Kilvert, and Mrs. Hudson came. In the evening we dined at the Embassy. I thought it warm and spring-like, but Aunt L., though piled with furs, nearly froze. It evidently isn't with impunity that one comes up from the tropics to visit a niece on the plateau.

_February 28th._

I am feeling a bit fagged this morning after the interesting, but quite exhausting, official "picnic" yesterday, to the celebrated pyramids of San Juan Teotihuacan, offered to the _Corps Diplomatique_ by the _Gobierno_.

We met at the Buena Vista station for an 8.30 special train--a rather motley assemblage of some fifty or sixty persons, those who had the habit of jaunts in their blood, and those who had not.

The weather was the usual lustrous thing, only to be matched in beauty by what we had had the day before, and what we will have to-morrow. I looked about the various groups of señoras and wondered would they hold out, their garbs not being for such occasions.

One of the ladies asked me and Baroness Riedl if we were sisters. We look more unlike than Thorwaldsen's "Night and Morning," but we decided afterward that, as we had on tailored suits, white blouses with lace-trimmed jabots, small hats, neat veils, tan shoes, and parasols, we must have presented a certain superficial likeness of origin and atmosphere.

The Mexican women were mostly dressed in semi-evening gowns, spangles, paillettes, passementerie, presenting all sorts of touches, as they caught the light, not connected in the Anglo-Saxon mind with picnics. They also wore small, high-heeled, patent-leather slippers, and were accompanied by _niños_ of various ages.

You go out of the city by the hill of Tepeyac, where the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe is. All along the road are still to be seen dilapidated "Stations of the Cross," relics of the viceregal days, among the shunting tracks and railway-supply buildings.

There was a settling down of the elements of the party, foreign and domestic naturally gravitating to their kind, as we rolled out. The President and his wife, his mother and father, his two sisters, Madame Gustavo Madero, and various other members of the family were with us. Also the Vice-President and his family. After about an hour we got to the little village of San Juan Teotihuacan, where all sorts of venders of all sorts of antiquities, little clay pots, masks, bits of obsidian, charms of bloodstone, were ready for us. We climbed down the steep embankment and got into various "buckboards," I suppose they would call themselves, without any "buck," however, which were waiting to take us across a sandy stretch to the pyramids, which had seemed only insignificant mounds as we steamed over the glittering plain.

Our first destination was the Pyramid of the Sun, gigantic, impressive, as we neared it, and one of the few things giving a feeling of stability that I have seen in Mexico. The Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, as we started out over the Path of the Dead, (Micoatl), was the cock of that special walk, almost putting Madero in the shade, figuratively, however, as there was not a tree within miles. The two principal pyramids, dwellings of the gods, were dedicated to Tonatiuh, the sun, and Miztli, the moon, but there are many smaller pyramids, supposed to be dedicated to various stars, and which once served as burial-places for remote, illustrious dead.

As we climbed up the great hewn steps, grass-grown, with all sorts of cacti making unexpected appearances, I could but think of the small mark the generations make in passing, and "Why so hot, my little man?"

When N. started up with Baroness R., one of the ladies said to her: "Why are you going up, and what will you do when you get up?" Baroness R. said, "We are going to take a look about, and come down." She glanced rather desperately at the pyramid and then at her tiny, patent-leather-slippered feet, which must have been in a condition fit for sacrifice in that broiling sun. She finished by sitting down on the first step with some other high-heeled ladies, with the same feelings and the same clothes.

It was a magnificent sight, once up there; the solitary eminence on which we stood put every thing in a wonderful perspective. Formerly on the apex of the pyramid there had been a splendid temple, containing a gigantic statue of the sun, made of a single block of porphyry, and ornamented with a heavy breastplate of gold. But I was more interested in Madero, once, at least, a _demi_-god, viewing from this great height kingdoms and principalities given into his keeping.

His expression was soft and speculative as he gazed about him, not of one who is tempted to gather things _to_ himself, _for_ himself; and I must say that, as I looked, I entirely acquitted him of personal ambitions. He seemed strangely removed from the difficulties of his situation, as materially and spiritually lifted above them as he was above the shining plain; but in the city, glistening in the distance, intrigues and dissolving forces of all kinds were at work against him. The far and splendid hills to which he perhaps may some day flee showed horizons of cobalt and verde antique, and they, as well as we, were folded in a dazzling ambience.

However, you have little time for dreams on official picnics--for just as I was, so to speak, _partie_--polite yet firm-willed photographers began to shove the living units into their proper places, with a special rounding up of the high-lights of the assembly, domestic and foreign, after which we descended.

I had my usual horrid sensation of falling as I looked from that great height down those huge steps between me and the not less solid earth. Mr. Madero gave me his arm and, somehow, I got down. A fierce sun was shining on us and reverberating from the dry plain as we made our way to the newly opened museum, where a very complete collection of objects, found around the pyramids, was carefully arranged in handsome glass cases; for some years, so _el Señor Ministro_ told me, the government had been excavating, and countless terra-cotta masks, similar to those which abounded on the Isla de las Mugeres, off the coast of Yucatan, had been unearthed. There was also a beautiful collection of jade objects, effigies, and masks of dead rulers; on the brow of one of the finest specimens was a diadem, or _copilla_, as the ancient Mexican crown was called.

If I hadn't been simply done up by the heat I would have been most interested in going over the collection, for the endless terra-cotta heads and masks, with entirely different features, mark the different races who have inhabited the plateau. My friend Humboldt, with whom I spent the evening, also the early night hours, and who had done the same thing just a hundred years ago, says the teocalli were _orientés_ as exactly as the Egyptian and Asiatic pyramids, and that the race the Spaniards found there attributed them to a still more ancient race, which would place them in the eighth or ninth century. They are composed of clay mixed with gravel, and covered with a wall of amygdaloid. What seems to be a system of pyramids is disposed in very large streets, following exactly the meridians, and which end at the four faces of the two great pyramids.

After an hour in the museum, which seemed _quite_ an hour, I must say, there was a welcome announcement of lunch, and we walked along a path called "Camino de Muertos,"[38] "walk of the _half_-dead," one of the exhausted foreigners called it, and descended into the cool dimness of a great and beautiful grotto, where long tables, flower-decorated and elaborately spread, awaited us.

The _Corps Diplomatique_ sat at the President's table; Von Hintze was between Baroness Riedl and myself, and an unidentified Mexican official or member of the dynasty was on my other side. The lunch was sent out from town by Sylvain and was most excellent. We could look out at a great patch of blue sky, and fringing the brilliant edges of the grotto were various cacti and rows of peaked hats and a single graceful pepper-tree. The Indians always spring up, as if by magic, from any place where there is a gathering.

N. and Riedl, instead of taking seats at the President's table, sat at a small table back of us, and we knew from their unseemly mirth that they weren't talking about the antiquities or improving their minds in any way.

After luncheon we all repaired to the Pyramid of the Moon, which nobody had the energy to ascend, going over a sidewalk made of ancient cement still bearing traces of red color. One of the smaller mounds had been opened by Señor Batres a few years before, and he found around and over it a building now called the "House of the Priests."

At this special place even the most enterprising of the foreigners began to wilt, and some polychrome frescoes are the last definite impression I received before we started back to the buckboards. The ---- minister, sitting too near the wheel, to politely make room, got jolted out, but we picked him up and soothed him by singing his national anthem as we went toward the train.

It was a long day, but one to be kept in memory with its background of obsidian, red clay masks, idols of jade, and works of a past race against which Mexican history continues to unfold itself.

_February 29th._

It is not leap-year which is occupying our thoughts down here. Orozco is openly in full revolt. With him are some thousands of troops and the whole state of Chihuahua.

[37] This statue was thrown down and dragged through the city the night of the breaking off of relations between the United States and Mexico (April 23, 1914).

[38] Pathway of the dead.

XX

Madero shows indications of nervous tension--Why one guest of Mexico's President did not sit down--A novena with Madame Madero--Picture-writing on maguey--Picnic at El Desierto--San Fernando

_March 3d._

Yesterday Mr. Taft issued a wise proclamation directing citizens of the United States to comply strictly with the neutrality laws between our country and Mexico till there is a change in conditions, which gave rise to various expressions of satisfaction at a large luncheon at Madame Simon's.

I sat by Mr. Chevrillon, a French mining expert since many years in Mexico, and also having a wide experience of our own southwest. He told strange mining stories; one about an ancient whip he once found in a remote chamber in an old mine, with a lash so long that it was a mystery how it could have been used in the small spaces. A detail, but it gave me a sudden, shivering glimpse into the sufferings of subject peoples. However, it's no use throwing stones at Spain for not having practised political liberty in those centuries. As we know it to-day, it was nowhere existent. It had not even begun to glimmer on any horizon, and certainly Mexico has lived through a terrible century since its light dawned on _her_.

_March 7th._

At the Chapultepec reception to-day one felt the tension.

Madero was walking up and down the terrace with his new private secretary, Gonzales Garza, clad in some sort of a dark suit, with a conspicuous peacock-blue vest, doubtless a family offering. His glance was more than usually visionary and introverted, his unacquisitive hands were behind his back; but can Mexico be governed by a well-disposed President from Chapultepec terrace? He has a way of avoiding facts, which, in the end, are sure to hit somebody as the national destinies take their course. One can only hope his sterling honesty will see him safely through the snares that are spread everywhere.