Part 11

The "commerce" consisted more than usual, it seemed to me, of the refuse of ages, collected under irregular rows of booths, canvas- or board-covered, or simply piled on spaces marked out on the uncomfortable, hot cobblestones. It all covers what once was the site of the new Palace of Montezuma, and is named _volador_ after a sort of Aztec gymnastic game. For a long time it belonged to the heirs of Cortés, from whom the city finally bought it, and it is close behind the Palacio.

As I entered the gate there was the usual collection of Indians of all sizes and colors, but with the same destinies. Many were passing by with their _huacales_ (crates) filled with bananas and oranges and various green things, for near by is the great fruit-market of the city. Some women were selling long plaited strings of onions, and by the gate was standing a superior-looking individual with a stick twice as high as himself, on which were stuck white, pink, and blue toy birds.

Instead of abandoning hope as one goes through these portals, one finds oneself immensely expectant, one's eyes darting hither and thither in search of treasure, the eternal something for nothing!

Mexico is called the land of the _sombrero_ (hat), but when I go to the _volador_ I feel it should be called the land of the candlestick. There are so many candlesticks in every variety of shape and kind, and occasionally of great beauty.

I was made "perfectly" happy by the discovery of two tiny bronze _braseros_, somewhat in the form of Roman lamps--such as were filled with coals and placed on tables to light cigarettes from in the old days. I also got a large engraved pulque-glass, most lovely for flowers.

At one booth an experienced _vendeuse_ pulled from her rebozoed bosom a small velvet case, containing a brooch of flat, uncut diamonds; but as, at the same time, I distinctly saw spring from that abode of treasure a very large specimen of the flea family, I came home without investigating further.

I have some beautiful books on Mexico which have been given me by various people--mostly large, heavy books,--Lumholz's _Unknown Mexico_, and Starr's _Indian Mexico_ are the last,--or I would send them, that you might share more completely my Mexican _étape_. It has been a strange summer, taking it all in all.

Madero probably comes in on the 10th of November. It makes one's head swim to think of the mighty changes that are taking place all over the world. Haughty old China a republic!--and Mexico to be governed solely by brotherly love! And a free press and nobody to desire to continue in office! In other words, _all_ to resign and many to die.

In church to-day the beautiful blue bag you gave me was stolen. I remember two women in deep mourning, black rebozos twisted about their heads, kneeling devoutly in the pew just behind me. The theft must have occurred at the moment of the "elevation," because when I rose from my knees both the bag and the black-robed devotees had disappeared. I had, fortunately, just left the Louis XV. watch at the jewelers', or that, too, would have gone.

Madame Lefaivre returned several days ago after a _mouvementé_ trip, as the _Espagne_ went on the rocks at Santander. Mr. Seeger gave a little _déjeuner_ for her at the Auto Club. The day was heavenly, and the sky as clean as if it had been pounded between the stones the washerwomen use on my roof. Everything was at its greenest.

After the season of rains the flowers, the grass, the trees, emerge as if new-born. I felt, sitting on the terrace of the club, on the border of the little artificial lake, as if I were in a loge at the theater, as if the scene might at any moment be shifted, the black and white swans be removed, the water turned off, ourselves go off the stage, leaving only the changeless background of beautiful hills and diamond-powdered volcanoes.

I like Madame Lefaivre so much, _très dame du monde_. The usual banalities of the _carrière_ having gone through with, I feel sure we'll soon begin the regular business of friendship. She had on a pale-gray dress, which toned in with her gray hair and fresh complexion. She and Mr. Lefaivre were engaged for nearly fifteen years before life cleared itself sufficiently of obstacles, of one kind or another, for them to marry.

De la Barra sails the 23d of next month for Italy. I think it illustrative of his tact and good will to subtract himself completely from the very complicated situation, and to let his intention be known beforehand and reckoned with. Madame de la B. receives for the last time on Thursday next. In the evening there is a dinner at the Embassy, and on Saturday the German minister gives one of his big dinners. This seems all very simple, even banal, but few things are simple and nothing banal when played out against a Mexican background.

_October 29th._

The political mills here are grinding fast, and not particularly fine. The Minister of War has been impeached, and President de la B. is resigning, not even waiting till the legal term of office (November 30th) expires.

Nightly, crowds continue to parade the streets, singing, "Pino-no-no-no," though "Pino" has been duly elected Vice-President according to the "angelical returns from that temple of liberty and love, the polling-box," as one of the unconvinced deputies called the process.

Zapata has been at the gates of the city and, with eight hundred men, allowed to pillage near-by towns.

Indeed, there has been a public outcry against the suspicious vitality of the Zapata movement. There are those who say that the "Attila of the South" and the President-elect are _muy amigo_, and that if that General Huerta I wrote of had a really free hand he would, with his energetic methods, have long since solved that special problem.

The Minister of War, Gonzalez Salas, has stirred up a hornet's nest by saying that in three days after becoming President Madero would strangle the Zapata movement. Of course the clever deputies--and there are many of them--are clamoring to know what is the divine word, the _sesamo supremo_, that he can pronounce to suddenly put an end to the horrors of banditry, and if there is such a word, why it wasn't pronounced earlier.

The inauguration is now set for the 6th. It has been whispered that it wouldn't be wise to wait. One of the deputies, in his harangue against Zapata and the possible high protection he enjoys, winds up a decidedly disenchanted speech, as far as Madero is concerned, by crying, "Robespierre" (meaning the "Apostle"), "remember that Danton also was popular!" Maderistas and Pinistas, Reyistas, Vazquistas, Zapatistas say what they like about one another, and it certainly gives the foreigner an idea of the riches of Spanish epithet.

Those two children of democracy, "freedom of the press" and "no re-election," have seen the light of day with infinite difficulty in various parts of South America. To be present at their first struggling breaths in Mexico is most instructing. I must say they seem to be babies of the noisy, wakeful sort, and don't care who or what they disturb.

A diplomatic dinner is announced at the Foreign Office for Sunday, the fifth of November.

Elim is waiting to blot _bonne maman's_ letter, so I must close. He is clasping the famous cow Mrs. Townsend gave him two years ago. It has resisted all assaults, all displacements, and is still the best beloved. Three hoofs, a horn, and all its trappings are gone, but it is still a "fine animal." He has just said, "I am so glad on my mama," so you see his English is progressing. We have come from a morning walk in beautiful Chapultepec park with Baroness R. He loves to pick the wild flowers or run over the grass with his butterfly-net. The whole park is a garden of children as well as green things.

Yesterday a considerable portion of the festive _Corps Diplomatique_, in its European branches, was poisoned with mushrooms at the ---- Legation. Reports began to come in, disquieting at first; but it became a screaming farce when it was discovered that no one was going to die, except probably the _galopina_ at the aforesaid Legation.

I am sending a post-card to-day of the Hotel del Jardin. As you will see, it is a place for a lot of "local color." Unfortunately they are building over half the old garden with newfangled high constructions. Sir Fairfax Cartwright[18] stopped there ten years ago. With its big rooms opening on the veranda facing the garden, it was, in the old days, the favorite resting-spot of travelers and arriving diplomats, and a vast improvement on the colorless, uncomfortable, "modern" hotels which spring up like mushrooms, and are about as permanent. At the Hotel del Jardin the cozy fashion still prevails of having the partitions between the bedrooms reach up only half-way.

But the old order is certainly changing. In what was once the vast area of the Franciscan church and monastery, built by Fray Pedro de Gante, where schools flourished, and councils took place during several hundred years, now arise great, steel-framed office-buildings on the "American plan."

In the old days the Church of San Francisco was entered from the street of San Juan de Letran, in which the Hotel del Jardin is. The monastery, seminaries, etc., were suppressed, in 1856, by Comonfort. Since then the ground has been steadily cut up into streets and for city buildings, until only the Church of San Francisco itself remains, with its perfectly charming façade, entered immediately from the busy Avenida San Francisco, through a little palm-planted garden with a broad, flagstoned walk. It was once the most important church in Mexico, but now its large spaces are empty of treasures and worshipers, and the strong light coming through the lantern of the dome shines in on bare walls. The tide of worship of our day sets to San Felipe next door. Cortés heard mass in San Francisco, it is said, and there his bones were laid in 1629, the date of the splendid interment of his last descendant, Don Pedro Cortés.

This was the occasion of a gorgeous military and religious procession headed by the Archbishop of Mexico. The coffin containing the Conqueror's body was enveloped in a great black-velvet pall, borne by the judges of the royal tribunal. On either side was a man in a suit of mail. One bore a banner of sable velvet, on which was blazoned the escutcheon of Cortés. The other carried a standard of shining white, with the arms of Castile in gold. The viceroy and the members of his court followed, in splendid array, with an escort of soldiers, their arms reversed and banners trailing, all moving to the beat of muffled drums.

In 1794, the body of Cortés was removed to the hospital of Jesus Nazareno, one of his foundations, in a crystal case with crossbars and rivetings of silver, also in solemn state, under the greatest of the viceroys, Revillagigedo.

In Cortés's most interesting and very human will he had ordered that wherever he might die, his body was to be laid to final rest in the convent at his beloved Coyoacan. His bare bones, however, seem as restless as when clothed with living flesh, and after his death in Spain, when his remains were brought back to Mexico, the authorities placed them first in the Church of San Francisco at Texcoco, where his mother and one of his daughters lay. Now there is no certain record of their resting-place. Does not romance and tragedy hang about it all?

A long letter comes from Marget Oberndorff. Her husband has just been appointed to Norway, and they are thankful to be in Europe for their first ministry.

[16] Gulf of California.

[17] The final fate of Don Alberto García Granados, also Minister of Gobernación in Madero's Cabinet, was to be taken by Carranzistas to the Escuela de Tir and there shot. He was ill in bed when the summons came, and it is recorded that he was given salt injections and tied to a post to make it possible for him to stand before the firing-squad, which achieved the death of the aged statesman only after _several_ volleys.

[18] British ambassador to Vienna at the time of writing.

XII

Dia de Muertos--Indian booths--President de la Barra relinquishes his high office--Dinner at the Foreign Office--Historic Mexican streets--Madero takes the oath

Dia de Muertos, _November 2d_.

The black-hung churches and the streets are full of those mindful of their dead. I, too, of my "dead in life" as well, thinking how of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.

I went to the little Church of Corpus Cristi, opposite the Alameda, walking through the booths the Indians have spread there since generations, during three days at this season. It's all as picturesque and busy as possible, and of an informality as regards family life.

I bought some really lovely baskets, and a bright-eyed little Indian boy, belonging to some dull-eyed parents, took home for me a lot of the fragile pottery. Some of it is very decorative--soft grays with red and black designs, polished greens with flowers in two tints, and a black-lustered ware with ornamentations of scrolls and figures. I selected quite a menagerie of tiny animals, very perfectly modeled in clay and brittle to a degree, as passing as the hands that made them.

There were "toys" in the shape of small coffins, black or white, skeletons, devils of various frightfulness, even funeral cars in miniature. At one corner, as a last touch of _memento mori_, an Indian was offering candy coffins, which seemed to have quite a run.

I am writing at the Country Club, which is a most lovely spot at all times, but now is wrapped in a continual, superlative Indian summer. Elim said to me the first thing this morning, "Oh, I do love dat gontry clove," so here I am with him. He met me with Gabrielle, outside of the Church of Corpus Cristi, on the Alameda.

That church has a curious history. Though now shrunken and tawdry, it was one of the most important and gorgeous in the viceregal days, and had a convent attached to it for Indian maidens of patrician birth. There is an old memorial over the door recording that it was inaugurated under the 36th viceroy, Don Baltazar de Zuñiga, for the daughters of Christian caciques alone. For the ceremonial of the taking of the veil the most gorgeous of Indian costumes were worn--feather-work mantles, aigrettes sewn with pearls and emeralds, and underneath-wrappings of fine cotton.

Now the treasures of the convent are dissipated to the four winds, and as for the patrician maidens, _oú sont les roses d'Antan?_ The only thing of interest remaining in the church is an old copy of a picture of Nuestra Señora del Sagrario, from the Toledo Cathedral, supposed to have been taken to the Rio Grande by the venturesome _hidalgo_, Juan de Oñate, being brought back to Mexico City only after a couple of centuries of travel and vicissitude.

The veranda of the club-house looks toward the shining volcanoes and the blue, blue hills, their beauty indescribably enhanced, seen through the brilliant glass-like air. The house itself, in the Spanish-mission style, is very fine, and the links the most beautiful of many I have watched and waited on. There are eighteen holes, with a favorite "nineteenth" in the _cantina_. Some of the mounds over which the golfers play are the graves of those who fell in 1847. General Scott approached the capital from Vera Cruz by way of Puebla, and there was a big battle on what is now the golf links, then the Hacienda de la Natividad, and the near-by church and monastery of Churubusco. There is, facing the very colorful and interesting old monastery, built by the Franciscans in the seventeenth century, a colorless, uninteresting monument, put up by President Comonfort in memory of the Mexicans who lost their lives here, and there are occasional ceremonies "in memoriam" by a grateful country.

_November 3d._

Yesterday I ended by staying at the club all day and having dinner there. Elim was taken home, and N. came out after chancery hours. It was a beautiful and peaceful day, and we drove back about nine o'clock, under a young moon. As we got into town, there seemed more than the usual number of little booths, dimly lighted by small hanging lanterns, the owners and their progeny sitting about.

How large families can live on the proceeds of these small stands is a mystery. Everything is dust-covered, handled and rehandled, cut into small bits and then into still smaller ones. I always marvel at the self-restraint that prevents the Indians from falling on their own goods and devouring them.

One drives over what was once an Aztec causeway, through a squalid suburb, San Antonio de Abad, to get back into town, where the day of the dead was celebrated by an unusually lively attendance at the pulque-shops. That _licor divino_ had so incapacitated an Indian lying on the road that we nearly lost our lives in the sudden swerve the chauffeur made to avoid running over him.

There are numberless accidents to Indians, falling on the third rail of the tramways running out the Tlalpan road, though it is wired off. When you look into the awful pink and blue dens, and smell the still more awful smell of the _licor divino_, and see the Indians saddened and melancholy, or suddenly wild and completely irresponsible, coming out of _La Encantadora_, _Las Emociones_, or _El Hombre Perdido_,[19] you realize that the maguey is, indeed, bound up with the destiny of the Mexican nation.

As we passed through the Calle de Flamencos, the celebrated palace of the Conde de Santiago seemed once more splendid, rising above the squalor of the pulque-shops. It was built by a cousin of Cortés, immediately after the Conquest, in what was then a noble quarter of the town. Later, when the Conde de Santiago bought it, he surrounded it by a beautiful park, known as the Parque del Conde. Now in the great courtyard, alas! only merchandise of a tenth-rate quality is stored and old trucks encumber and disfigure it. There is a majestic stairway, seen through a wide, carved entrance still possessing its antique wooden doors of some wonderful resisting wood from the Hot Country. The roof-line is just as good as the rest, for great stone gargoyles, representing half-cannon, show themselves against the sky. There is a huge Aztec corner-stone of a single piece, representing a tiger, which tradition says was placed there by Cortés himself. It is the sort of house the government ought to buy; in this dry climate, properly preserved, it would be good for a thousand years.[20]

_November 5th._

Yesterday an event unique in the troubled political history of Mexico took place. President de la Barra calmly read the report of his incumbency before the Chamber of Deputies and as calmly relinquished his high office.

About five o'clock I drove down the Avenida San Francisco, already brilliantly illuminated, though great bands of red still hung in the sky behind Chapultepec. The crowd was immense, the streets flagged, and there were squads of mounted police keeping order, and sounds of drum and clarion. Shouts of, "_Viva de la Barra_," "_Viva el Presidente Blanco_," mingled with various expressions of satisfaction, not unmixed, I imagine, with surprise, that the high power could be relinquished in so orderly a manner, and that a President could or would give accounting of his office. A hint of the millennium.

_November 5th, 10.30._

We are just home from the big dinner offered to-night by Carbajal y Rosas to the members of the _Corps Diplomatique_ and contiguous Mexican officials. The Foreign Office is, as you know, in the Plaza at the head of our street, and it was a blaze of light as we approached.

The music of a magnificent military band in gala uniform--the Mexican brass is most inspiring--was echoing through the _patio_ and halls as we went up the broad stairs, flower- and palm-banked and covered with a thick, red carpet, into the big rooms on the first floor overlooking the Plaza.

Here the various officials, according to their rank, have their offices--handsome rooms, with large pieces of Louis XV. furniture done up in blue and gold, and some paintings of Juarez, Diaz, and others. It was almost too brilliantly illuminated, with great festoons of green and white and red electric bulbs, in addition to the usual lighting. All were out in their bravest. Mrs. Wilson had on a white-and-gold satin gown, that she had worn at court in Brussels, and I wore the pink-velvet brocade I had for the Buda-Pesth court ball.

This sounds very magnificent, but when the time came to move into the banqueting-room and a personage much more richly gowned than any of us dream of being approached to give me his arm, a grin overspread the faces of the _chers collègues_ near by. It was the Chinese minister, in the most beautiful lavender-and-gold costume I have ever seen. Useless to compete with the Celestials, when they are really in form. On his gorgeous arm, feeling decidedly diminished, I went to the great front hall where a long, narrow banquet-table was spread. Some official, a small, dark, youngish man, who did not speak English, or French, or German, or anything in which I could lightly communicate, was on the other side.

I had a chance to "choose" between Spanish or Chinese, and, being under the necessity of saying something, began with my Mexican friend about the weather, which you get through with quickly here at this season when it is always fine. Then the conversation got onto the usual subject of _niños_ (children). He said, with the air of one not having yet abandoned hope, that he had _only_ nine. I asked, thoughtlessly, what was the distance between their ages, and he answered, quite simply: "_El tiempo regular_"--ten months.

After the repast, which began with _bouchées Romanoff_ and finished with _coupés à la Brésilienne_, touching delicately at other international points, there was more or less talking, with presentations to various persons of the incoming régime--surprised-looking ladies in high-necked gowns, and eager-looking men. We disbanded about ten o'clock to the sound of more really gorgeous martial music echoing through the big _patio_, stepping across the plaza to our house in a great flood of moonlight. The "Iron Horse," the bronze equestrian statue of Charles IV., giving the note of other times and other rulers, was shining with a dim radiance. Humboldt found it in the Plaza Mayor in 1803, _vis-à-vis_ the cathedral and the palace of the viceroys, set in a large space paved in squares of porphyry, inclosed by a richly ornamented, bronze-gilt railing and placed on a pedestal of Mexican marble. Thirty-five years afterward Madame Calderon de la Barca, in 1838, found it in the courtyard of the university. Now I find it in the Plaza de la Reforma, and an excellent spot it is, if they will only leave it there, instead of trotting it about the town. It is placed where one can see Chapultepec Castle at the end of the Paseo, where one can look down the broad Calle Bucareli--still named after that enlightened viceroy (they periodically change the names of the streets here), and which in its day was one of the most beautiful avenues in the city, having a large fountain, with a gilt statue, where now we have a very ugly clock-tower on artificial stucco stones. The whole street was planted with beautiful trees, which modern claptrappy houses have crowded out. It now ends in the dusty, trolley-laid, modern avenue of Chapultepec.