Part 22
The reception at the Casasuses last night was a most gorgeous affair. He is one of the few _científicos_ still visible in Mexico City, a man of much cultivation and erudition. He has preserved his relations with the Madero family, also his money, but there is that in his eye which makes one feel that he has not preserved his illusions.
The reception was to open his splendid new house in the Calle de los Heroes, which has been building since some years, and also for the _contrat de mariage_ of his eldest daughter. A fine band was sounding as we went in through the _zaguán_. The great _patio_ was covered with a sort of light-blue velum, and behind it were myriads of star-like lights. The great fountain was ablaze, too, and everything was decorated with wreaths of marguerites, recalling the name of the fiancée, who is to marry a son of the famous Justo Sierra, Minister of Public Instruction under Diaz.
Madame C., large and impressive and a blaze of diamonds, was flanked by her two pretty, slim daughters, very _jeune fille_ as to dress, but rather sophisticated as to expression. The _novia_ was in white, and the younger girl in a similar costume of blue.
All strata of society were there, even the "pillars," holding up things for this single occasion; charming-looking and beautifully dressed women I had not seen before--some of that invisible _chicheria_ I suppose; the official set, the military, etc., etc. There were some fine jewels--great plaques of emeralds much in evidence--and one lady wore a strange necklace of very large, very lustrous, almost square pearls.
The rooms are elaborately furnished in the modern French style. The brocade-covered walls hung with expensive modern French paintings. Portraits of Monsieur and Madame Casasus, by one of the great French artists, I forget which, were in the large pink-and-gold salon. The magnificent library, with thousands of volumes, the collection of a lifetime, was furnished from London by Waring and had long tables bearing atlases and big in-quarto volumes, deep leather chairs, and reading lamps, most inviting.
The supper was lavish to a degree; it was whispered about that the cost of the entertainment was fifty thousand dollars. Madame C. presided over the huge square table of the diplomats, loaded with great candelabra, beautiful imported fruits in massive silver dishes and rare flowers in tall silver vases. I was taken down by a general whose name I didn't get, in the fullest of regimentals, who had lost an arm in some one of the interior campaigns--I think Madero's.
The champagne flowed; French _pâtés_, asparagus, all sorts of things which had come from long distances, were passed by liveried servants. Don Sebastian Camacho, sighting his ninetieth year, was the beau of the occasion, carrying his years lightly and gallantly, _entouré de dames_. We came away at one o'clock, leaving things in full swing, the music and the pounding of the dancing feet echoing through the great _patio_.[52] Now I am off to the Red Cross.
_June 8th._
Yesterday Red Cross all the morning, and the reception at the Lascurains' in the afternoon. The heavens opened punctually at five, and an unusually bountiful supply of water fell upon the sons and daughters of the nations _en route_ to the function. We descended with the Chermonts at the door during a baby cloudburst.
The house is a big, handsome dwelling consisting of one very high-ceilinged floor of rooms, with a charming urned railing, lifted up against the sky, and hung with Bougainvillea, wistaria, and honeysuckle, blooming in their turn. Inside it reminded me of the Carlton Hotel in London, but must be most comfortable to live in, though the _Honorable Cuerpo_ seemed to spread out rather thin over its large spaces.
Its great feature is the wonderful aviary, on the side away from the street, where dozens of the rarest and most gorgeous birds live together in peace and apparent happiness. Don Pedro, whose special hobby they are, showed them to me, but I only remember the names of a few, and a mass of flying, singing color. "Mexican caciques," the lovely yellow-and-black oriole of the tropics, most beautiful bluejays, much more gorgeous than ours, for to their brilliant coat of blue-and-white are added crests and plume-like tails--and _huacamaias_ and parrokeets, who made their part of the inclosure look like carnival time.
Mr. Lefaivre took me out to the very elaborate tea, spread in an immense dining-room. The baby cloudburst, which in his victoria he got the full advantage of, and the continual destruction of French property in one part or another of the republic made him rather pessimistic. He says they always give him the fullest promises, when he lodges his complaints, and then nothing further happens any more than if he had lodged them _outre tombe_.
Don Pedro has a bright-eyed, agreeable, clever daughter who helped her mother receive. She brought out a fine linen square on which we wrote our names to be embroidered by her nimble fingers later on.
I feel about Lascurain a note of sincerity and a lack of personal aims and ambitions. Certainly nothing save patriotism could have led him to accept a place in the Cabinet. He has wealth and position, and only fatigues and uncertainties, storms and dangers, await him in the ship of state.
Legation d'Autriche-Hongrie, _Sunday, June 9th_.
Am writing this, as you see by the letter-head, at the Riedls', waiting for the picnic party to assemble. I am, unfortunately, always on time, a bad habit, and not cured by over a year of _mañana_.
The R.s have a sun-flooded house on the corner of Havre and Marsella in the new part of town, and I am scribbling this at the desk in the drawing-room, done up in yellow brocade, flower-filled and comfortable, and with its reminiscences of other posts in the way of signed photographs and bric-à-brac.
The chiffon scarfs arrived yesterday, having survived the temptations of the customs, the pink, blue, purple, and petunia, just as you had done them up. This is the land of scarfs. No lady is complete without one or many and I will baptize the "pink 'un" at Mr. Potter's to-morrow night at dinner. I never go anywhere Sunday evening, as after the all-day bouts in the country my sofa and my books are my best friends. We are to go out to Xochimilco and the clans are now approaching to the sound of motor-horns, etc. There will be a repacking in of merrymakers and baskets when all are assembled.
_June 10th._
I have just come from taking Aunt L. up to Chapultepec. The view from the castle was entrancing, the volcanoes touched with rose and all the other mountains swimming, blue and purple, in the sunset light. I stopped at the British Legation on the way back to see Mrs. Stronge, who is much better. Now I must dress to go to Mr. Potter's for dinner.
_June 11th._
I wore the petunia-colored scarf last night at dinner. Mr. Potter was in great form and quite outdid the champagne in sparkle, and we quipped and quirked till a late hour. My last sight was Don Benjamin Butler giving a few steps of the _jota_ in the hallway. Am now sending Elim and Laurita with Gabrielle up to Chapultepec Park. A beautiful, cloudless, dustless morning. Josefina, a little paler, a little thinner, and, if possible, more deft, is here concocting me a tea-gown out of a pink satin evening dress and a white lace one. Nothing can be cleaned here. There is a place calling itself _Teinturerie Française et Belge_--but I bade an immediate and regretless farewell to the things that returned.
_June 18th._
Am waiting for my Tuesday callers in a really lovely tea-gown, constructed of the two evening dresses. Josefina may soon, however, be making robes for angels instead of mere mortals.
There has been a little political upheaval. One of our best friends, the governor of the Federal District--_i.e._, Mexico City and suburbs--had a tilt with the Minister of Gobernación, Flores Magon, with the result that he is no longer governor. During all the troubles Mexico City has been as peaceful under Rivero's régime as Zürich, all due to his sagacity and energy, and now the usual earthly reward of virtue, somewhat Mexicanized, is his. He was a rich _hacendádo_ before coming into the political arena, and his friendship for N. has been most useful to all.
_June 19th._
One of the loveliest of morns--a true "bridal of the earth and sky," and it is the date on which, nearly fifty years ago, Maximilian, Miramon, and Mejía were led out to be shot.
History records that as the guard opened the heavy door of the prison, saying, "_Ya es hora_" ("The hour has come"), the three men stepped out into a world of surpassing loveliness; no cloud was in the faultless sky, no wind disturbed the shining air.
They embraced, taking a last look at the blue and lovely dome above. At the foot of the Hill of the Bells the firing-squad awaited them. They fell dead at the first volley. Maximilian had begged to be shot in the body, that his mother, in cruel suspense in far Vienna, might look again upon his face. His last words were, "_Viva Mexico!_" Mejía was silent. What Miramon said I know not, but their hearts were open to God.
Mr. S. and his daughter, a beautiful girl, arrived early this morning. As we are probably soon to leave Mexico, they are good enough to let us stay on in our present quarters for the remaining time, and will occupy the small apartment down-stairs. I had a great bunch of pale sweet-peas put in her room.
Going to Chapultepec this afternoon with Aunt L., also taking Miss S. and Mrs. Parraga, a Mexican friend of Aunt L.'s, to be presented, after which we go to Madame Lefaivre's.
_June 20th._
Administration faces were wreathed in smiles at the reception; the Orozco revolution is not only dying the usual unnatural death, but it seems likely to be interred. General Huerta knows the value of a few well-placed blows, but nothing seems to stay "put" here. Nearly every shade of Mexican has fitted himself out with one or more grievances, and underlying it all is that quite peculiar organization of Latin-American society whereby one set of opinions may be uniformly expressed in public, while the intellectual classes, in secret, hold entirely opposing ones.
A terrible downpour during the reception. From the windows of _la vitrina_, as the long, glass-inclosed balcony leading out of the "Salon of the Ambassadors" is called, Mexico City was a damp, dull thing, buildings and streets showing as great dark scratchings. There was no light in the sky and the hills were obscured by curtain-like, formless clouds with coppery linings.
When we got home it was still raining in torrents, and we descended in the adjacent garage. In doing so I caught my skirts, hung in air, and finally fell to the ground, my dress torn to bits and myself shaken to the same. When I looked at my hands to see if they were still hanging to my wrists, I saw that my big emerald was missing from its setting.
It was not simply raining. The sky was opening and letting the water out, and it was quite dark in the garage. About a dozen Indians and several employees stood about. I cried, "_Mi esmeralda!_" and we all proceeded to look. I was passing my hand over the floor near various Indian hands when suddenly _I_ felt the smoothness of the stone. An Indian said to me, "_Dios es con usted_" ("God is with you"). Well, it was not fated to be lost that time. I have just left it at _La Perla_ to be well reclamped into the setting, thankful that that companion of my wanderings is still with me.
The sweet, full letter from Rankweil is received. I long to smell the sunset meadows with you.
_June 23d, evening._
After a day of skimming over the valley with Aunt L., the Seegers, Mr. Butler, and Mr. de Soto.
I had long wanted to go out to Huehuetoca to see the famous _tajo de Nochistongo_, the great cut in the mountains, the most interesting point of the wonderful system of draining the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. It was a problem to Aztec rulers, viceroys, and presidents, finally solved, like a good many other things, in the Diaz epoch--and always bound up with the joys and sorrows of the valley. The Lake of Texcoco, the largest of the six lakes, hospitably receives the waters of the other lakes to such an extent that once it was considered to have a "leaky bottom," draining down to the Gulf of Mexico.
There were immense floodings of the city in old days, and in 1607 one so great that for several years the streets were traversed in canoes, and the saintly Archbishop of Mexico used to be poled and rowed about, distributing food to the starving.
The Huehuetoca road runs out through Azcapotzalco, once a teeming Toltec and Aztec center, now only the haunt of Indians and an infrequent archæologist. Any and every turn of the soil there reveals traces of lost races. At the next town, Tlalnepantla, though we were all feeling more in the mood for general effects than detailed inspections, we did our duty and went into the interesting old church, finding it full not only of sacred relics, but of profane, in the shape of carved Indian stones and various sorts of monoliths. In the cold, ancient baptistry is a strange prehistoric cylindrical vase.
There are still traces of the earthquake of several years ago, whose rendings revealed a wealth of buried objects. Several Indians, gathered about the motor as we came out, furtively drew from their knotted shirts some objects which properly belonged to the government--obsidian knives and a few masks, like those in the museum at San Juan Teotihuacan. We bought them out, and proceeded to Cuautitlan, the old posting-town I have written you about.
Mr. de Soto says that tradition has it that here was born Juan Diego, the Indian to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared. You see how interesting it is along these roads. Each step is always historic or legendary, as well as beautiful. The next village is Teoloyucan, where one branches off to go to Tepozotlan.
Since leaving the posting-town we could see the belfry of the church looking pink and lovely against especially blue and lovely hills. The foreground was of maguey and maize fields stretching away to the mountains. Hedges of nopal, graceful willows and pepper-trees, and Indian life, mysterious, yet simple, living itself out on road and field. We were held up for quite a while by a dozen burros laden with fresh, shining skins bulging with pulque. A great deal of unnecessary prodding of the unfortunate animals went on, the usual audience appearing from the hedges at the noise.
The hacienda of the former governor of the Federal District, Landa y Escandon, now in Europe, is out here. It contains most beautiful works of art, Spanish and viceregal, and many priceless Chinese and French porcelains, these last presentations when various ancestors were at various French courts.[53]
We thought for a moment of asking the administrator to show us over it, but succumbed instead to the invading magic of the road and the pleasant inertia of the automobile. As you will see, it wasn't a day to improve one's mind, but rather to bathe one's soul. As we got into the mountains near the famous "cut of Nochistongo," we spoke the name of the grand old Indian now a-wandering in exile, and talked of the solemn dedication ceremonies when the engineering marvel was completed in 1900 under his auspices.
In connection with the making of the "cut" and the canals winding through and between the lakes are ancient, sad tales of forced Indian labor, drivings, exposures, and deaths; a sort of _mita_ where each had to lend not only a hand, but often give a life. In the old days the viceroys made annual visits to Huehuetoca, lasting several days, conducted with regal splendor.
Nature seemed inconceivably gentle and beautiful there, with its vistas of translucent hills, all gradations of green and gray and blue softly rolling, meeting the eye and falling away. The volcanoes were of clearest white in the pure air, and the shining valley was a gem set within it all. We stopped by a delightful old bridge with its battered viceregal coat of arms, a relic of the ancient post-road to Zacatecas, over which a silver stream flowed into the Casa de Moneda (Mint) in Mexico City, to flow again in shining piastres across the ocean to Spain.
I suppose I will be sorry I didn't examine the "cut" a little more carefully, but the day was such a flood of soft light that details were quite swept away, so _tant pis_ for Huehuetoca. As it was, we didn't get back to town till nearly three o'clock, when we repaired to the Automobile Club where "Martinis," sandwiches and fruits, partaken of on the veranda, restored us, and we started out again to San Angel.
A perfect afternoon, no sign of rain, and anything as opaque as a house seemed unspeakably repugnant to our souls. At San Angel we wandered about in a deserted garden-like orchard. Roses, heliotrope, and lilies mingled with fig, quince, apricot, peach, apple, and pear trees, and soft crumbling pink walls inclosed them all. Beyond were more beautiful blue hills linked to those of the morning, and now swimming in the afternoon haze the volcanoes towering above in a splendor of mother-of-pearl.
These old Mexican gardens are beautiful beyond words, but I think one must feel the magic of them in the flesh--not out of it--to know the full enchantment. Later we went into the inn, once a great monastery, now transformed into a "hotel with all modern conveniences," as the prospectus says, and where, for a moment, I thought of going when we first arrived.
Some of its ancient beauty is left; old chests and ecclesiastical chairs, and long, carved refectory tables fill the corridors, and pictures of saints and priors hang on the thick walls. There is a charming _patio_ surrounded by cloisters, where monks once walked, saying their breviaries and their beads, and where now tables are placed from which tourists renew and strengthen the flesh.
Above is a terrace bounded by a lacy, intertwining design of grayish-pink balcony. In the center of the court is an oval double-basined fountain, with a little palm planted in the middle of the top one, and water-lilies in the lower one. Masses of crimson rambler were in their last luxuriance, and shining lemon and orange trees, with fruit thick upon them, grew in the little flower-beds. There is a large, new, glass-inclosed room where the proprietor, quite a character, likes to have his patrons go. A corner of the old refectory was sacrificed to do this modernizing, but we had the tea served at a table in the _patio_, and watched the patch of blue sky get pink and the colors of the flowers darken. When we finally turned homeward in an indigo-colored world it was to find the volcanoes like two great flaming torches, casting strange lights upon the dark-blue earth over which we sped. Nothing but night could have induced us to leave the beauty of it all for brick-and-plaster man-made dwellings.
_June 27th._
Professor Mark Baldwin and Mr. Butler came for lunch--and very pleasant. The application of the American mentality to the elusive Mexican equation is always a more or less stimulating process, and one generally feels comfortably, somewhat smugly, superior in spite of the fact that one never gets beyond the X. Professor Baldwin sent me his book, _The Individual and Society_, made up of lectures given at the university here, and dedicated to Ezechiel Chavez, Sub-Secretary of Public Instruction. It is most interesting and I am posting it with this.
_June 29th._
Peter and Paul's Day. After which our beloved friend used to leave Rome.
A sweet letter from Aunt Louise inclosing one of dear Mr. Stedman's poems, "The Undiscovered Country." I have tucked it into my mirror, where I can look at it while having my hair done. It begins:
Could we but know The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel, Where lie those happier hills and meadows low-- Ah, if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil, Aught of that country could we surely know, Who would not go?
Aunt Louise was just back from church, and the text made a sacrilegious smile overspread my face, "Look to the hills whence thy help cometh."
_Trouble_ is what comes from the hills here. However, I will blight no illusions when I answer. She had picked a single, beautiful Carl Bruschi rose in its perfection from her rose-corner, to put upon the Sunday dinner-table, with a bit of feathery green. I can see her doing it and "rescuing seedlings from the clutch of weeds," and dusting the peach-tree, and straightening the hollyhocks, and "feeding much upon her thoughts."
With her letter came a long letter from Senator Smith, and his _Titanic_ speech in full.
[51] Peña Pobre has been occupied and evacuated countless times by Zapatistas, and is now completely laid waste--the great paper-mills, the gardens, the hacienda buildings. Since writing these words a vast and blood-stained scroll has been unfolded, and I think many a one has modified his political creed.--E. O'S., 1917.
[52] Of the Casasus house nothing but the walls remain. Everything has been pillaged and scattered. People have happened on an occasional old volume of the great library, and an occasional piece of the gilt-and-brocade furniture has been seen in the second-hand shops. ---- told me that a matter of importance took him to the house when used as a barracks by Carrancistas. In the great _patio_ were only a filthy cot and an old _brasero_ near which a poor _soldadera_ was sitting. The fountain was dry and full of refuse, and some soldiers were standing about waiting for their officer, who came in violently disputing with a woman of the town. From under the cot, after a few moments, the woman drew out a small, beautiful old chest clamped with silver and inset with coral, with which she departed, "the living symbol of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses," as one of his followers calls Don Venustiano.--E. O'S., 1917.
[53] These treasures were scattered and destroyed during the first Carrancista occupation.
XXV
Orozco and his troops flee toward the American border--A typical conversation with President Madero--Huerta's brilliant campaign in the north--The French fêtes--San Joaquin
_July 4th, 4 p.m._
Home from a motor trip and luncheon with Aunt L. at the Country Club, and now getting ready for a rather inexplicable reception at Chapultepec. In the evening there is to be a big theatrical representation to celebrate the glorious Fourth.
_July 5th._
Orozco[54] and his troops are fleeing to the north toward the American border. When we got up to Chapultepec yesterday we found out that the fact that it was our "Fourth" had been overlooked in the governmental rejoicings. Finally, however, the situation cleared, and there were congratulations all around, everybody free and equal, we congratulating them because of the defeat of Orozco, they congratulating us on general and special principles. Bulletins had been coming in all day about Orozco's flight from the battle-field of Bachimba, with General Huerta in full pursuit. Madero appears still untroubled, but he has grown visibly older. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," even if it is in the clouds.