Part 21

Madero's idea was to "democratize" the national railways--_i.e._, to load the system with as many employees as possible. At the end of the Diaz régime there were a few dozen competent inspectors; under the Madero régime they had been increased tenfold.

The green parrot I brought from San G. is chirping in the next room--quite a member of the family, but dreadfully backward as to languages.

[44] Died in New York, August 23, 1916, of a _maladie de langueur_. How could she resist a winter exiled in Harlem, after the flight from Mexico in 1915--the world, her world, in ruins? As well put an orchid in a cellar in the autumn and expect to find it blooming in the spring.

[45] This house was burned and sacked during the _Decena Trágica_, February, 1913, by what the newspapers called _la furia popular_, and remains to this day a mass of crumbling and charred walls, roofless and windowless, _sic transit_.

[46] The American interests are chiefly situated in the district of El Ebano, on the frontier of the states of Vera Cruz and San Luis Potosí. The English are in the district of Tuxpam in the state of Vera Cruz, and the total of the interests represented is about a hundred million dollars for the American, seventy-five millions for the English, and between two and three millions for the Mexican. The figures do rather sustain the adage that "Mexico is the mother of foreigners, but the stepmother of Mexicans."

XXIII

The "Apostle" begins to feel the need of armed forces--A statesman "who is always revealing something to somebody"--Nursing the wounded at Red Cross headquarters

_May 4th._

As you will see from the inclosed clipping, posters all over town containing the same, Madero is in a bad condition. Reports from Huerta's army are that disease, typhus, and black smallpox are rife. Burnside is up there now watching operations.

Huerta states that he will not lead his three thousand troops to certain death against Orozco's myriads, strongly intrenched, until his preparations are complete. Some kind of end is perhaps in sight. The only diplomat at Madame Madero's reception Thursday was the Belgian wife of the Japanese chargé. I intended to go, but was trying to mend a broken night with a siesta, and it slipped my mind till too late.

Battle of Puebla, _May 5th_. (A year ago to-day we landed in Vera Cruz.)

The town is flagged and there has been a big military parade, with the beautiful Mexican brass echoing through the streets. It is the most popular of the lay festivals, commemorating the victory of General Diaz and General Zaragoza over the French at Puebla (1862).[47]

There is a hint of "Prætorian Guard" creeping into the presidential surroundings, and other signs that the "Apostle" is beginning to feel the need of armed forces at his back. Appeals to virtue are not proving any more sufficient for government here than they would be elsewhere. It's the uselessness of governments trying to change the formulas of the human heart that strikes me most; and the Mexican heart, undisciplined, passionate, multiform, illustrates it so completely.

_May 7th._

Your letter with the _Impressions d'Italie_ program has come. I, too, long for the beautiful land. So much reminds me of it here, and yet there is really not the remotest likeness between Mexican and Italian atmosphere.

They are expecting a battle, a big one, within twenty-four hours. Every one and everything is hanging on the turn of that event.

Madero is as simple as a child in many ways, and as impulsive, but simplicity isn't the first requirement for manipulating government in the land of the cactus. A Spanish proverb took my attention the other day to the effect that "an official who cannot lie may as well be out of the world," and Madero is as honest as the day. If language is given to conceal our thoughts, he makes little use of the covering. It is complained of him that he is always revealing something to somebody.

Of course all business enterprises are deadlocked, and many dark, as well as light, complexioned ones, having "things to put through," doubtless long for intervention.

_May 10th._

Things social have "slumped" since some weeks. Nobody in the face of all the uncertainties feels convivial or has any courage about planning for something that may not materialize in the very precarious future.

Our bucolic and innocent picnic at the Desierto, where the only harm took the shape of mules, has been turned into a sort of orgy by some of the San Antonio and El Paso papers, in which champagne, Spanish dancers, frisky foreign diplomats, cold-eyed and depraved American "interests," are in the foreground, while the background is occupied by a faithful but scandalized Mexican guard. Of such is the kingdom of history.

The dinner that the governor of the Federal District gave last night for the ambassador is the only official thing for some time. It was the usual conventional Mexican _dîner de cérémonie_ with its French menu, many courses, and appropriate wines for each. It does not give the effect of having the least resemblance to what they do when _en famille_, but presents rather a set, very expensive, restaurant effect. I sat between the governor and De la Barra, who took me out.

To his refreshment, I think, the talk revolved about the Eternal City rather than the eternal Mexican situation. As ex-President of the republic he received many honors in Italy, decorations from the king and the Holy Father, and is _plus catholique que jamais_. Any one like De la B., who has practical experience of government, however, knows that all is not quiet on the plateau, let alone the situation in the north. Madame de la B., looking very pretty but pale, wore a handsome blue _pailletée_ dress, so good that it was doubtless got in Paris, _en route_ to Rome.

Ernesto Madero and his wife were also there. She loves going out, and always has a pleased, not at all _blasé_ look on her handsome face, which is most attractive. I imagine Don Ernesto is _très-fin_ with real gifts. We always say the Madero government reminds us of the Medici, with the fine arts and the strong hand cut out. One of them is President, one of them almost more than President, Don Ernesto is Minister of the Treasury, Rafaél Hernandez, his cousin, Minister of Fomento. Another brother, Emilio, is with the army, etc., etc., etc., down through the generally computed two hundred and thirty-two members. It's the most complete system of nepotism since the aforementioned Florentine days.

Huerta is reported to be making good progress driving Orozco back north of Bermejillo, where Captain Burnside now is.

_May 14th._

To-night deep nostalgia possesses my heart; the seasons have swung round again. At four o'clock the first rain drenched the city.

This morning to the Red Cross, where a solid three hours' work awaited Madame Lefaivre and myself, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A larger number than usual waiting to be attended to, the wounded coming in, not only from the real seat of battle, but as the results of skirmishes all round, and, of course, the usual casualties of the city.

We will have a lot in next week from the battle of Tuesday; it takes about six days for the wounded to get in from the north.

The doctors are very gentle, and the patients so very patient--scarcely a whimper or a groan. Sometimes only a contraction of the features when suffering agony. True Indian stoicism. The Spanish flows, and my "medical" Spanish is now in competition with my "kitchen" Spanish.

Madame Lefaivre and I are the only ones who keep to our schedule days. The Mexican ladies can't; either the rooms are filled to overflowing with them, picture-hats coming and going, darkening the horizon, or they don't appear at all.

Aliotti, the new Italian minister, has arrived, and was among my callers this afternoon. His beautiful wife is not with him, as she could not stand the altitude. He is just from Rome, from the Foreign Office, and is extremely clever. He finds Mexico somewhat far from his special "madding crowd."

A letter from Aunt L. says a man from Istlaltepec had come dashing in a few minutes before to tell the general that the rebels were sacking the hacienda of Don Panfilo Ruiz near Istlaltepec, the banker I met at Juchitan. Various inhabitants of a town beyond had been killed, and people were arriving at San Gerónimo on foot or on horseback, fleeing for their lives under a broiling sun.

The mounted troops and the infantry were got out and departed for the scene of trouble, and the band played as usual at four o'clock on Sunday, the music tending to calm the people, though all were wondering what was going on on the other side of the Istlaltepec hill. Five miles, it seems to me, is a little too near for comfort. Aunt L.'s house was surrounded by soldiers ready to surrender _or_ attack. "_Viva Mexico!_"

Several days ago a pastoral letter from the Archbishop of Morelia was published. In it he gives his flock the salutary advice to keep out of politics altogether. I think every one realizes that Diaz enforced protection for all and everybody, and it will take years for things to settle down.

There is a fair amount of politics in these letters, but if one happens to be so inclined one finds oneself taking politics in with the air. They are everywhere, yet it seems to me, of the threads of destiny that are being spun, I get only a few loose ends. Great foreign interests, oil, ore, and transport, play themselves out with many a shift and twist, against the Mexican political film, shaking, unstable, distorted, now too big, now too small, out of proportion as they come down the stage or go off. But always of breathless interest.

_May 20th._

The King of Denmark is called into another kingdom, where he is not king. How suddenly the summons came, when he was strolling about Hamburg in the evening, unattended! The end of mortality, kingly or otherwise; but I have lost an irreplaceable friend.... Peace to his soul! I am so sorry you did not see him on the Riviera. Do you know that ---- too has gone? I remember that luncheon she gave for him in ---- and didn't ask me, and how surprised and displeased he was when he came in for a moment in the morning and said, "I will see you at lunch," and I answered, "Not asked." We had to laugh, it was so ridiculous.

How tragic, too, the death of the young Cumberland prince with Von Grote, his aide-de-camp![48] We used to see them both so often in Vienna.

The Mexican episode may be drawing to a close, but _quién sabe?_ All life down here assumes a mysteriousness, even in its simplest manifestation. The natural phenomena, the things we consider quite impersonal in New York or Paris or Berlin, seem to perform their operations here in an astoundingly intimate way. A sunset is a more than daily occurrence, due to the cold fact that the earth revolves on its axis just so often; that moonlight experience of last autumn remains in memory, and a consciousness is always with one of an intimacy with natural decrees.

The faultfinding Americans who come here, and really love it, though they talk loudly about the national failings and sigh for "honest Americans," are under the spell of this intimacy with the natural world, though they don't often analyze it; this delicious, satisfying sensation of being included in the operations of destiny, not being hung solitarily between birth and death.

I never look up at the Southern Cross without my heart, too, leaping up--and thinking, with Humboldt, of the lines he quotes from Dante, "_Io mi volsi a man destra e posi mente all' altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle_."[49]

The rainy season is full upon us, for which all are thankful. There has been a great deal of illness in the town, the dust-storms were unusually severe, and the collection of microbes carried hither and thither would break a microscope. The mornings seem made in heaven, and, after weeks of being dust-veiled, the volcanoes are out again in all their splendor.

_Tuesday, 22d._

Many people calling to-day; among others charming Manuelito del Campo, just married to the handsome niece of Madame Escandon, of the Puente de Alvarado. They are making bridal visits. She wore a regardless beige gown, with Paris written all over it, and beautifully put on over a lovely, small-hipped figure. I wish them well.

Mr. de S. stayed after all had gone. He is very sad at the disintegration of government, and in fact why should any Mexican be cheerful? The past is destroyed, the present tottering, and the future hidden. He is always most understanding and _simpático_.

A short, terrific thunder-storm came on as we sat talking and afterward everything was drenched and dripping in the corridor and _patio_. As I stood at the door with him we were led to talk of destinies. I said that, for my part, I had no hunger, all glories and all miseries were known to me, and I was learning to feed upon myself. But he remained silent, stroked Elim's hair, called him _buen mozo_, and went out. As always, it is each one to his own path, and one is lucky to meet, even for a second of time, some one going the same way.

To-day I closed forever the covers of Strindborg's hideous, haunting _Froken Julie_, that horrid conflict of souls in a kitchen. But once read, can I ever wipe it out of memory?

_May 23d._

The ambassador says we will all go home on a war-ship if "the break," as the possible event is colloquially known, does come. Can't you see us all stowed away, according to the protocol, on one of the war-ships, and various dissatisfactions, however carefully things are arranged, as to rank and previous condition of servitude?

_May 25th._

Orozco acknowledges defeat in the north, laying it at the doors of the United States. The neutrality laws prevented him from getting in the required arms and munitions.

The government is very cheerful, full of smiles at the progress of the Federal troops under General Huerta, who have wiped out, in much blood, the blot on the Federal escutcheon; for Rellano, lost by Gonzalez Sala, is now retaken by Huerta. Orozco, in his retreat, is destroying railways and bridges, and there will be big bills for some one to foot. Huerta, it appears, has shown generalship of a high order.

But I have been under gray skies, following the great procession that carried Frederick the Seventh to his last resting-place. The three Scandinavian kings, Gustavus of Sweden, Haakon of Norway, and the new ruler and son, all so tall, like vikings of old, walked side by side, heading the procession, the first meeting of the three since the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden in 1905.

Queen Alexandra, the Dowager Empress of Russia, and King George of Greece,[50] always so agreeable, were there to mourn their brother, and many another of the familiar figures on the Copenhagen screen of memory. It was a breaking up of family ties to them--to the world, only a new king of Denmark.

You remember that cold, bright December day, with its sparkling snow, and frosty, glistening trees, when we went to Roskilde to see the ancient church where the kings of Denmark sleep their last sleep? And now, on a May morning, to the strains of the great organ, that captain and that king departs whose friendship I had. Again, peace to his soul!...

Several days ago I discovered at an old bookshop at the Calle del Reloj, off the Zócalo, a first edition of Madame Calderón de la Barca's book, 1843, Boston, decidedly worn as to its leather binding, but in excellent condition otherwise--unfaded print on unyellowed paper. I wish she could cast that pleasant objective eye of hers on my Mexico; I believe she would recognize the political housekeeping!

Around about the Zócalo are many second-hand shops; also in the Volador old books are to be found. But they are mostly yellowed manuscript--copies of the accounts of the _administradores_ on the old Spanish estates, books on medicines and herbs, records of lawyers' fees, and the like. Generally the title-pages are missing, and always all the engravings.

I have a copy of _Periquillo Sarniento_, the "Gil Blas" of Mexico, but it is difficult reading for a foreigner, full of satiric allusions to political events of the period and to purely local conditions. It was published in Havana in 1816, when the author, De Lizardi, _El Pensador Mexicano_, was there to escape the consequences of his satiric jibes. He wrote, curiously enough, another book (_La Quijotita_) dealing with the higher education of women, which, in Mexico, has scarcely been repeated in the hundred years.

_May 28th._

I wonder, as I write, if you are walking the green fields of Rankweil; my heart accompanies you.

Things are going on very pleasantly from day to day, as far as we, personally, are concerned, but the national machine seems clogged and creaking, in spite of the victories in the north.

Oaxaca is in a state of complete revolution. Six thousand Indians have risen, and the whole country is seething with brigandage, flourishing greenly under the weak central rule. It will take years for things to settle down.

On Sunday another picnic is being got up. The ambassador, of course, J. B. P., Mr. Butler, the Bonillas, Professor Baldwin, who is giving a course at the university here, Aliotti and Mr. Brown, president of the National Railways. I always take Elim for the _dias de campo_. He is quite a feature of the gatherings and good as gold, playing by himself.

[47] In the palace in the Salón Rojo is a large picture of the battle of Puebla, with Diaz prominently figured. The picturesque dress of the Puebla mountain Indians gives it a familiar note. There is nothing wanting to show the prowess of Mexicans, and it portrays the French retreating down-hill in terrible disorder--chasseurs d'Afrique and chasseurs de Vincennes giving it a European touch not in keeping with the bits of maguey in the landscape.

[48] The heir to the Hanoverian throne killed in a motor accident.

[49] _Io mi volsi a man destra e posi mente All' altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle, Non viste mai fuor ch'alla prima gente. Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle; O settentrional vedovo sito Poi che privato se' di mirar quelle!_

"PURGATORIO" I

This is the passage that commentators take to mean the Southern Cross, the knowledge of which Dante got from Marco Polo.

[50] Assassinated at Salonica, 1913.

XXIV

One Indian's view of voting--Celebrating the King's birthday at the British Legation--A single occasion when Mexican "pillars of society" appear--Reception at Don Pedro Lascurain's

_Sunday evening, June 2d._

We had a very lively picnic to-day at the Peña Pobre, all gathering at Calle Humboldt, where we waited vainly for Professor Baldwin. At last, after fruitless telephoning, we started through the shining city, out the Tlalpan road, past the Country Club, where the links were black with golfers, through the _très-coquet_ Tlalpan, to the Peña Pobre hacienda.

I drove out with the ambassador, the Italian minister, Mr. Brown, Mr. Potter, and Mr. Butler. We got the necessary permission from the obliging administrator at the door of the hacienda, and then passed on through the lovely rose-garden to a wilder, gorge-like spot, where a long, weather-stained table was built under the shade of some eucalyptus-trees.

The ambassadorial butler took charge of things at this special, strategic point, and we wandered about the lovely spot. The paper-mills are so discreetly hidden that one wouldn't know they existed. The Peña Pobre is near the celebrated Pedregal, or Malpais, a prehistoric lava-stream, which the crater of Ajusco is supposed to have contributed to the landscape, and which has been for centuries, with its caves and retreats, the beloved of bandits and all shades of delinquents. Montezuma is supposed to have hidden there his gold and silver treasure, and Cortés is said to have found it and shipped it to Spain.

As all the picnickers were in good form, we had a particularly cheerful lunch, enlivened by the usual discussion of the perfectly patent truth that self-government is not native to the Mexicans. There were those who knew what they were talking about in the assemblage.... Don Benjamin Butler gave his touching story of one of his peons coming to him with a piece of paper and asking what it said. "It says you have a right to vote." The peon thereupon put the artless question, "For whom shall I vote?" Don Benjamin further explained that Estebán Fernandez was the only candidate in their state (Durango). "I'll vote for him if you want me to, but I'd rather vote for you," was the answer.

It's Indian, charming, but it bears little relation to the simon-pure Anglo-Saxon democracy that they are trying to _try_ down here.

The party was further enlivened by the curious case I discovered in a home newspaper of the old gentleman, found dead, whose body was identified by two sons, of around about fifty years of age, who had never met until the inauspicious occasion. For half a century he had had families in adjoining towns. I thought he must have been a bright old gentleman. Mr. Potter thought he must have had some money, too.

We got as far on the return trip as the Country Club, when it began to pour, the golfers dashing in from all points to take refuge in the celebrated "nineteenth hole," not dry, either. The sun showed itself for a moment before setting, and flung a few lovely flame-covered scarfs about the dazzling heads of the volcanoes; but the world we were in remained damp and dark, and we turned home quite willingly.[51]

I found an invitation, on returning, from the _chef du Protocole_, in the name of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Señora de Lascurain, for a reception at their house on Friday afternoon _en obsequio del Honorable Cuerpo Diplomático_.

_June 4th._

Yesterday a large reception at the British Legation in honor of the King's birthday. The Union Jack was flying high over the entrance as we went in, the house was filled with beautiful flowers, and there was much health-drinking and good wishes. The official world, Mexican and foreign, of course out in full force, and the colony--altogether a very pleasant occasion, with that special English feeling of "empire" behind it all.

Mrs. Stronge has been ill, but she was seeing a few friends up-stairs in the charming corner room, with its view of the volcanoes. The old quotation came, as so often, to my mind, _Si á morar en Indias fueras, que sea donde los volcanes vieres_.

The pet of the Legation, a bright green parrot, or, to be more precise, a green, _bright_ parrot, brought from Bogotá, was helping her receive. I came home with the ambassador, who goes to Washington for two weeks over the northern route, and Schuyler is to "enjoy" his absence. Now I must close; Tuesday visitors are beginning to arrive.

_June 5th, evening._

This morning at 8.30 I heard dear Aunt L.'s voice outside my door. She had arrived from Orizaba with Laurita, who has masses of beautiful red-gold hair. She is now sitting in a big armchair, doing nothing, I am thankful to say, though _The House of Mirth_ is within reach when she feels like reading. So glad to have her here.

_June 7th._