Part 3

The house is open day and night--we live a practically outdoor life. To get to the really charming dining-room with its yellow walls, rare old engravings in old dark, inlaid frames, its cabinets with bits of Napoleon, Maximilian, and other old china, we have to go out under "the inverted bowl" of an unimagined shining blueness and around the corridor. It certainly poetizes the hour of refreshment. The climate is indescribably beautiful to _look at_, but it is all too high. Few foreigners can stand it _à la longue_. The _patio_ was flooded with moonlight when I went to bed, and flooded with sun when I woke up. I praised Allah.

The dinner of twelve at the Embassy last night was very pleasant. President Taft's announcement that there would be no intervention made every one feel easy again. Rumors had been rife in town as to possible decisions in Washington. I sat between the ambassador and an American, Mr. McLaren, an _intime_ of Madero, in whose house he lay concealed last autumn when he was in danger of arrest.

I was most interested in hearing, at first hand, about Madero. Mr. McLaren, a clever lawyer with a long experience of Mexico, says he is inspired, illuminated, selfless, with but one idea, the regeneration of Mexico. He seems to have no doubt of Madero's being able to work out the Mexican situation along high, broad lines, and thinks he will surely be here, in the city, through force or the abdication of Diaz, within a month or two.

Mr. Wilson, on the contrary, told me again he saw with dread the overthrow of the Diaz régime. Though the President is eighty-three, with many of the infirmities and obstinacies of old age, he also preserves many of the qualities that made him great, and Mr. Wilson said that he personally, in all his dealings with him, never found him lacking in understanding or energy.

I reminded myself of La Fontaine's fable, _Entre deux Âges_, with the difference, however, that instead of having no hair left, I had no opinions left, when we rose from dinner. We drove home in an open motor under a thickly starred and gorgeous heaven; but the unfamiliar constellations gave me sudden nostalgia.

_Later._

Last night the Ward Line _Merida_ sank. The wife and daughter of Mr. Seeger were on her. After five hours of anguish and uncertainty, in complete darkness, bereft of every personal belonging, the passengers were transferred to the United Fruit Company steamer that ran into them. The news has just come in. It makes 42 Calle Humboldt seem very safe. To think that as we were returning to its security from the pleasant dinner at the Embassy the disaster was taking place!

I look about this comfortable home and think how sheltered a spot had been forsaken but a short week ago, of the treasures chosen from walls and cabinets to be out of possible revolutionary harm, and now all is lying at the bottom of the sea, off Cape Hatteras, and we, strangers, are safe in the shelter of this home. "Who shall escape his fate?" I keep saying to myself.

_May 13th._

On the 10th Juarez was captured with its commanding officer, General Navarro, by Orozco and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who is down here following out the family traditions. I am writing in the comfortable little library, doors opening everywhere on to the flower-planted corridor. I have been reading Creelman's _Life of Diaz_, and three volumes of Prescott are waiting on my little table. Suddenly I find I am hungry with a great hunger for the printed page and the old objective and impersonal habits of thought. In Vienna the personal, with its "grand seigneur" contour, seemed to replace quite sufficiently for the time any objective views of life. A woman who reads there is likely to be _mal vue_, which for some reason does not at all do away with the insistent seductions of Viennese life.

Yours from the Dolder received, and the sight of the envelope showing the familiar Zürich lake and hills made me realize the mountains and seas that separate us. Elim went to sleep with the envelope under his pillow. The beautiful park nearest us, the "Alameda," of which I inclose a post-card, is unfortunately haunted by Indians, picturesque, hungry, dirty. If it is true, as transcendental souls say, that beauty is food, I need not worry about _them_, but it does not make the place very tempting for Elim's airings. He will have to be driven up to Chapultepec Park.

We are to be presented to the President and his wife this week, and are looking forward to meeting the maker of modern Mexico and his charming consort. They are in their large house near the Palacio, but generally at this season have moved to Chapultepec.

_May 16th._

Yesterday Madero and Carbajal, who is the peace envoy of Diaz, whatever that may mean, went into conference at Juarez to consider the proposals of the Diaz government. Everything here is in a melting condition, and how it will crystallize the fates alone know.

Various "innocent" bystanders were killed or injured at Douglas in the early days of the revolution. Some still more innocent, looking neither to the right nor to the left, also got hurt, as, for instance, the lady leaning over the wash-tub with her back to the land of the cactus. They have put in a nice little bundle of claims, and one flippant newspaper at home suggests putting the town of Douglas on wheels and moving it to a place of safety, rather than going to the expense of invading Mexico for the recovery of claims past and future.

Last night we dined at the handsome French Legation in the Calle Roma. The minister and his wife are away, and in their absence the _chargé d'affaires_, De Vaux, is living there with two friends, a Mr. de Vilaine, very _au courant_ with Mexican matters, and who has large mining interests in Taxco and Colima. He showed us some interesting silver ingots from a little mill at Miramar on the Pacific coast, made up after the manner of the early Spaniards.

A young man, D'Aubigny,[1] in business here, completes a pleasant trio, and we had a very agreeable dinner. The retiring Spanish secretary, Romero, just appointed to Teheran, and his Viennese wife were also there. Romero bears testimony to race, and his long and elegant silhouette fitted into the charming rooms most harmoniously; but a tall, distinguished-looking man, whose name I did not get, ought to have been hanging, clad in a ruff and velvet doublet, in a gilt frame among the Velasquez in the Madrid museum.

The Belgian minister, Allart, who has been here during the last several years of Don Porfirio's glory, took me out. The conversation everywhere turns on the political situation, suppositions as to the abdication of Diaz, prophecies as to how and when Madero will arrive, if the city will offer resistance, and each one's little plan of campaign in case of siege.

There is a temporary narrow-gauge railroad running from the arsenal to the Buena Vista station, across the beautiful Paseo, for the expedition of men and munitions if necessary, which Allart told me appeared last March in the night soon after Limantour's return. Nobody seems to know exactly what forces are at the disposition of the Federal government. The newspapers get rich on the situation, however, and certainly it enlivens the dinners.

_May 20, 1911._

The Madero forces are in possession of the ports of entry at Juarez and Agua Prieta, and can collect the customs which, as one minister said, would be spent in fancy by all, but in reality by the usual nearest few.

I saw some Mexican suffragettes the other day whom I wish their American sisters could have gazed upon. They were armed with bandoliers full of ammunition crossed over their breasts, and it did look like bullets rather than ballots among the sisterhood here.

N. has photographed the _patio_ and corridor, and I will send you some copies as soon as possible.

Yesterday I called with Mrs. Wilson at the house of Mrs. Nuttall, of philological and archæological fame, who is away. It is the celebrated but ill-omened house[2] that Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés's beloved, hot-blooded, dashing lieutenant, built just after the Conquest, when Coyoacan was the favorite spot of the high-born and high-handed survivors. It has a most artistic façade, pink, with the pink of ages, and decorated with a lovely lozenge-shaped design.

One enters through a great carved wooden door, with an old shrine above it, into a beautiful courtyard with patches of sun and dark corners, and going up a broad flight of outside stairs one finds oneself on a wide Bougainvillea-hung veranda.

Mrs. Laughton, Mrs. Nuttall's daughter, gave us tea in a high-ceilinged, thick-walled room, filled with flowers and bric-à-brac, with a beautiful, very large, couple-of-centuries-old portrait of a nun Mrs. Nuttall had found in some convent looking down on us. As the poetry and beauty of that old civilization invaded me I thought, "This is what all of Mexico might be, and is not." Beautiful shell designs are over each door leading into rooms of romantic and unexpected proportions. Afterward we went down-stairs and passed through the courtyard, in one corner of which is an old well, overgrown with flowers, which has a history as dark as its depths. The body of Doña Catalina, the first wife of Cortés, is said by evilly disposed historians to have been thrown into it after a quarrel between herself and Cortés in the old near-by Palacio.

As we walked in the garden I felt some strange magic exhaling from it all, something possessing and almost imploring. There were such lights and shadows, such contours of cypress and eucalyptus, mingling with quince and pear trees. The old arbor in the _carrefour_ is overgrown with white roses, and the rest of the garden is a mass of lilies of various kinds, heliotrope, and great tangles of trailing pink geranium and honeysuckle. Blue-flowered papyri were clustered about a microscopic, water-lilied lake, quite black in the late afternoon light. Around all was an old pink, vine-grown wall. It was the _hortus inclusus_ of poets, and I perceived then in its fullness the dark, lovely imprint of Spain upon the lands she conquered. The English, German, French stamp on their colonies that I have seen is pale, effaceable, and doubtless would be lost immediately once the power is withdrawn. But this Spanish stamp has a deathless beauty, and in all the washings of all the generations it does not seem to come out or off.

I stay at home a good deal. It is so pleasant--and after so many years of the concurrences, of the displacements, the hastes and excitements of the great world, how I love this full leisure! After all, what is needed to make life interesting, I am discovering, is not action, but atmosphere, and that I have here.

The President is very ill. I am deeply disappointed that our audience has to be put off. I want to see the old régime, now decidedly tottering, in its accustomed setting. It appears he has an ulcerated tooth, and there can be no receptions, formal or informal, in the present state of affairs. Indeed, I have not seen "hide or hair" of any of the actual government. Doña Carmen, of whom I hear so many tales of goodness and tact, combined with the charming elegance of a woman of the world, seems adored by high and low, and is very Catholic. The not too drastic enforcement of the famous "Laws of Reform" is said to be due to her influence.

I have been looking into the history of Mexico since the "Independence"--to try to get some sort of a "line" on governmental psychology. So much bloodshed has always attended a change of government here.

First came men like the priest Hidalgo and Morelos, his disciple, men of burning hearts and flaming souls. Then appeared a set of what to-day we would call intellectuals: Comonfort, Lerdo, Juarez are types. The long reign of Diaz was preceded by all sorts of upheavals, in which any one who had anything to do with government lost his life.

However, all this concerned the Mexicans alone. But now, with disorders menacing huge foreign interests, a new element of discord and complication comes in. As the generations renew themselves with certainty and promptness, in the end the blow to things industrial is the most serious; and don't think me heartless for stating this simple, cruel truth. Diaz seems at last pushed to the wall, and, of course, with him many foreign interests, which I understand are vital to the life of the country. He has had much wisdom, but the gods seem to have withheld knowledge of the very practical recommendation of one of the old philosophers about succumbing in time. He is supposed, however, to have promised his resignation, if his conscience lets him. He fears anarchy, and, of course, he knows his people very, very well.

Even I, stranger and alien, have a sort of feeling that if this revolution proves successful the "liberties" of the Mexican people will, as usual, get lost in the mêlée. Giuseppe Garibaldi is said to have received the sword from old General Navarro, when he gave it up at Juarez. Can courtesy to foreigners be carried further? The Boston _Evening Transcript_ had an amusing bit, particularly so to me, saying the difficulty of finding out what is happening in Mexico is that of telling which are the names of the generals and which those of the towns.

_May 22d._

I am at home to-morrow, Tuesday, for the first time, to whomever it may concern, taking the day every other week, as seems the custom here. Besides getting settled I have begun laying siege to the Spanish language with my dictionary and my special system; I must learn to read it immediately. An old copy of De Solis is what I am "at" now, _Historia de la Conquista de Mexico_, printed in Amsterdam, beautifully bound in red leather with gold tooling, dedicated _al Serenísimo Señor Maximiliano Emanuel Duque de las Dos Bavieras_. I gloated over its title-page, and its "chaste and elegant style" makes easy reading.

The natural changes are so beautiful here. The day gives way to night without any twilight, but instead there is a sort of richly colored lining to the first darkness that has a suggestive, indescribable charm and mystery. When Mrs. Wilson and I drove home from the Casa de Alvarado yesterday a mass of amethystine shadows closed about us and all the world, and then in a moment it seemed to be night; but as I got out of the motor I found the darkness was rich in the same way some very old, glinting brocade would be rich.

[1] Killed during the battle of the Somme, 1916.

[2] The Casa de Alvarado was once the home of the American consul-general, Mr. Parsons, of regretted and appreciated memory, who was killed stepping out of a street-car in Mexico City. Mr. Laughton subsequently was murdered while at his mining-camp. Of course this has nothing to do with the house, but its history, nevertheless, is bound up with such decrees of fate.

III

Mexico in full revolution--Diaz's resignation wrung from him--Memories of the "King in Exile"--President de la Barra sworn in--Social happenings--Plan de San Luis Potosí.

_May 23d._

My first "Tuesday" was accompanied by a drenching rain, but the colleagues mostly showed up, _noblesse oblige_, each giving some rather disquieting items about the political situation, according to his special angle.

Mrs. Wilson, who always does what it is "up" to her to do, of course came. We are the only nation here having an embassy. All the others have legations or agencies of some sort, or have turned their affairs over to the most related friendly nation on the spot. It puts the Embassy in a position of continual supremacy as far as rank and importance go.

Mr. de Soto, the "Velasquez" of the French Legation dinner, came in late. He had spent last winter in Rome with the Duke and Duchess d'Arcos. The duke was Spanish minister here years ago. We talked of distant Roman friends. He has often been to Marie K.'s beautiful house. I shall enjoy seeing something of him. He knows Mexico in all its phases, and I find myself eager to turn the pages of this wonderful new chapter, which I feel should be written on maguey, not on mere paper.

_May 24th, midnight._

Mexico is in full revolution, or, rather, in what seems the normal act of getting rid of the executive. At five-thirty I walked back to the Embassy with Mrs. Wilson, from the Japanese Legation near by, where we had been dallying with the German and Belgian ministers on Madame Horigutchi's day.

The butler, watching at the door, rushed out to the gate when he saw us, in the greatest excitement, passing old Francisco, the Embassy gendarme, to say that five thousand people were making a demonstration in front of the Diaz house in the Calle de Cadena just back of the palace, and that there was going to be trouble.

My one and instant thought was to get back to Calle Humboldt, to Elim, the falling of an empire being quite a side issue. Just then the ambassador drove up in his motor, having come by a roundabout way from Diaz's house, where he had been making inquiries as to the President's health. He had just escaped being caught up in the mob.

I jumped into the motor, and he told Alonzo to take me home as quickly as possible. The growling, rumbling sound of a far-off mob is a disquieting thing, and I was trembling for my boy as I drove along. We had the thick doors of the courtyard entrance (the vestibule, or _zaguán_, as they call it) closed and barred, all the front shutters fastened, and soon were as snug as possible. Too snug to suit me, for, once my infant was safely barricaded, I felt the spirit of adventure rising.

N., who had been on an errand at the Foreign Office, where he heard the news, came running across the Paseo, thankful to find us all safely housed, with the further information that mitrailleuses had been placed on the palace roof, and that the police had fired on the crowd in the great square, who were shouting, "Death to Diaz!" many being killed and wounded.

Later on, about nine o'clock, with Dearing and Arnold, who were dining with us, we sallied forth to go to the theater as we had planned. A drenching, torrential rain had come on. The streets along our route were completely deserted, the rain having dispersed the mob more efficaciously than the cannon. There were not more than a dozen people in the whole theater, "El Principal." The only inconvenience I had on that eventful night was being seated in front of three of our own compatriots, whose peculiar form of blasphemy got so on my nerves that I had us all change our seats before we could even try to listen to a farce on the order of "Pagliacci," without the killing.

As we came out there were no cabs to be had, not even a disreputable _coche rojo_, and we walked home down the Avenida San Francisco and the broad Avenida Juarez under umbrellas. The town had a general look and feeling of having been through something. All was barred and silent except a few broken shop-windows, whose owners had not been quick enough about their shutters. In the windows of one of the tea-rooms were piles of untouched cakes and candies. One had only to put one's hand out to get them.

Farther along, huddled up on the steps of the gaudy Spanish exhibition building, were two tiny Indian boys not more than five or six years old, so sound asleep that their little hands refused to close over the pennies we tried to give them. We finally put the money, not in their pockets (they did not have enough clothes on to have pockets), but behind their little backs. They have probably been cold every night of their lives, so damp stone steps and a rainy street could not prevent their slumbers.

Well, Madero is coming to change it all, to heal the antique sores of Mexico. "_Ojalá_" (God grant), as I have discovered they are always saying when they aren't saying, "_Quién sabe?_" I must put out my light. It has been an exciting day. Even if you have not been fired on yourself, it's nervously disturbing to know that near-by people have been.

_Ascension Day._

This morning the mob was shot down at the top of our street in the broad Plaza de la Reforma, between the Foreign Office and the statue of the Iron Horse. I felt myself not an innocent bystander, but a foolish one, as to the sound of quick-firing guns and screams I stepped out on the balcony and saw the mob running in all directions, some dropping as the guns placed by the statue turned with a horrible, regular slowness across the street.

N. had rushed home from the Embassy by a side way, hearing that our street was the scene of action. I felt we ought to do something besides remaining behind closed doors when that agony was being enacted; but I was told by N. and Mr. Seeger, who came up from his office below to see how things were going, that Americans in general and the Embassy in particular should keep out of the trouble. In fact, it wasn't our funeral. Police-attended stretcher-bearers appeared on the scene a little later, and the streets were cleared of dead and wounded.

N. sent a note to Limantour, to the Ministry of Finance, when things were at their hottest, thinking it might possibly suit his needs to be within our extra-territorial walls for a few hours. He sent back the most appreciative of notes, saying, however, that he had no alarm.

A day or two ago, standing at the window, I saw him come out of the ministry. There is a clean-cutness about him and his Gallic origin is written all over him in an unmistakable elegance. He is considered by friend and foe alike to be absolutely incorruptible, and the only thing I have ever heard even whispered against him is that he is _rich_. However, the Romans that made the roads doubtless got rich, but they made the roads, which is what mattered to the Romans. On all sides are evidences of his taste as well as of his ability, for, besides creating modern financial Mexico and placing her on her golden feet, he laid out the park, he designed the uniforms of the mounted guards there, beautified many of the streets, and in a hundred ways helped to make Mexico City what it now is. The Paseo, the beautiful avenue leading for several kilometers from the "Iron Horse" to the park, was laid out during Maximilian's time, and was known as the Calzada del Emperador; and the beautiful eucalyptus-trees that adorn it were planted by order of Carlota--_tempi passati_.

_May 25th, later._

All quiet again in the shade of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. To-day at 4.30 Diaz's resignation was finally wrung from him.

There are picturesque tales of Doña Carmen standing, black-robed, by his side as he signed away his glory and power, and perhaps that of Mexico as well. A vast throng waited all day for the news before the closed doors of the Chamber of Deputies; but the mob is again simply a peaceful-appearing crowd, singing the national anthem and crying, "_Viva Madero!_" interspersed with an occasional "_Viva De la Barra!_"

I must dress for dinner at Hye de Glunek's, the Austrian chargé--the only invitation any one has accepted or given since some days. Mrs. W., who is always very kind, lends us the Embassy auto. One of the incidents yesterday was the looting of the pawnshops. I am afraid the Paris _Herald_ will have blood-curdling accounts of the goings-on, and I will send a cable to you, hoping it will get through. In the midst of life we are no more in death here than elsewhere, and it is all extraordinarily interesting.

_May 26th._