Part 7

For some generations after the discovery of the Calendar Stone in the subsoil of the Plaza it was cemented onto one of the towers of the cathedral, and only in the eighties was removed to the museum. The Piedra de Sacrificios is appalling when one thinks of its origin and use; but with an extremely handsome young man leaning against it, under that warm sun, in that mellow old courtyard, it was not, for the moment, so dreadful to contemplate. Its true home was the top of the great temple, and there Cortés found it.

During the siege of the city the conquerors, watching from afar, are said to have sometimes seen their own captured comrades led up the great stairway to the stone on which they were placed, their chests opened with a special razor-like knife made of obsidian, the palpitating heart torn out, held for an instant toward the sun, _this_ sun, and then flung at the feet of the god of war. Huitzilopochtli, the aforesaid god, is a huge block of basalt, half man, half woman, who was "born" just as one sees him now, with the addition of a spear in the right hand, a shield in the left, and on his head a crest of green plumes, going Minerva one better. Thousands were sacrificed to him yearly under this wondrous sky, enfolded by this softly penetrating, vivifying sun.

Afterward we went up and saw the "Maximiliana" for "Auld Lang Syne," not much nor very interesting--a huge amount of cristofle silverware and the saddle used by the unfortunate emperor when he was captured at Querétaro (May 15, 1867). The pictures of Maximilian, one on a dashing white charger, show him a full-lipped, blond-bearded, blue-eyed Austrian obviously unable to cope with the Mexican political situation. Carlota, in pale blue and pearls, hangs by him. These portraits are by Graefle, the Viennese court painter of the period. Napoleon the Third, the cause of all their troubles, hangs near with Eugénie--a copy of the Winterhalter portrait of her, I think.

We took a look at the relics of Juarez, the "man in the black coat," as the only Mexican ruler that didn't wear uniform is called. The plainest of civilian garb of the late sixties was in the _vitrine_, and near by was the bed in which he actually managed to die. This last, as far as I can see, is unique among Mexican relics, Mexican public men not having the habit of dying in bed.

Dearing has gone away, on three months' leave, and N. is at his desk.

I must stop and take my baby on my lap. He has been standing by my side, saying, "Dy will be done." He is being taught various prayers, and repeats them on all occasions. He is waiting with a bit of blotting-paper to blot my letter, which I am sure he will do, and wants to know if you got the last thousand kisses.

_Evening._

These past two days I have lunched at Coyoacan. Yesterday at the house of some American friends of the ambassador's--the Becks--who are charmingly situated in a huge old house surrounded by a great, tall-treed garden, and filled with lovely old things. Mr. Potter, who is down here to watch over large interests of his own and other people's, is most witty and entertaining, and with his friend, Mr. Butler, went with us. The day before Mrs. Laughton, who had met De Weede, asked us all for lunch at the Casa de Alvarado. I was glad to show him some more "local color," and that beautiful old house is simply oozing with it.

After lunch we went into the garden for our coffee, while Elim played with Mrs. Laughton's two little children; but, even with young voices sounding, a soft sun shining upon lovely flowers, and sipping coffee under the pleasant shade of the rose-grown arbor, the garden is eery and melancholy-inducing.

On our way back we stopped at the Zócalo, and went to the Academia San Carlos, the national picture-gallery, _Academia de las Nobles Artes de Mexico_, as it was called under the viceroys. It has a huge collection of plaster casts which cost the king several hundred thousand _pesos_. Do you see the "Laocoön," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Young Hercules," etc., being brought up on Indian backs from Vera Cruz? The _patio_ and corridors were full of scaffolding and plaster scrapings as we passed in.

Humboldt speaks of seeing great halls lighted with Argand lamps, evidently then the _dernier cri_ of illumination, and the Indian, the Mestizo, and the son of the "grand seigneur" side by side, drawing and modeling from the antique molds. Tolsa, the celebrated artist of the "Iron Horse," taught here.

We took a glance only at some of the boresome, well-painted academic modern canvases, which made us feel like dashing into the street to get some _real_ pictures. The rooms where the early Mexican painters, the Echave brothers, Cabrera, etc., hang were closed for repairs or cleaning. Indeed, the whole place was at sixes and sevens, each object plastered with from two to five numbers. As we had "met" most of the casts in European museums, it didn't matter. We walked up the gay Avenida San Francisco and stopped in at "El Globo," a café much frequented from this hour on. On coming out De W. took photographs of the Jockey Club, its blue and yellow tiles particularly brilliant against some threatening rain-clouds, and some others of the charming entrance to the old Church of San Francisco opposite; he said they could be hung as "Sacred and Profane Love." We got back to Calle Humboldt as the heavens opened and deluged the town.

General Crozier, just arrived from Washington, came in the darkest and wettest hour. Such an unexpected pleasure! There are not many Americans to visit Mexico this summer. All the people who used to come in their private cars and bring a note of home and gaiety are conspicuous by their absence. There is no way of heating the houses, and sometimes during the rainy hours there is a cold dampness which is very penetrating. Stirring the embers of old acquaintance and talking of "home" happenings was a very pleasant way of alleviating the temperature this afternoon.

_July 17th._

Don't fear that I shall do anything rash about going to Tehuantepec in the present state of things. I have even given up the trip to Puebla. They are fighting and killing there again, and in Calle Humboldt they are not.

Notwithstanding the press, which has its liberties and the smiles of the government, things are not really very stable. Aunt L. writes that San Gerónimo has been filled to overflowing with refugees from Juchitan, the county-seat, twelve miles away. The feeling there between the Maderistas and Porfiristas is very bitter, and has just culminated in an uprising of the Indians against the new Federal authorities, who had to fly for their lives from a howling mob of two thousand Indians armed with rifles, clubs, and machetes. The Federal General Merodia made no resistance, but came with the civil authorities of the government to San Gerónimo, giving the mob no excuse for sacking and robbing Juchitan. Every house in San G. is full, and furniture piled in the street. It seems to me no one but the Mexicans will be surprised that the overthrow of Diaz has not brought about the millennium.

De Weede,[6] who departs this evening for Vienna _via_ the Grand Cañon and the Yellowstone Park, has just been squeezed into N.'s frock-coat and top-hat (not carrying such _impedimenta_ himself) to call on the President. The Dutch minister lives in Washington.

General Crozier comes for dinner on Wednesday. We have just lunched at Stalewski's (the Russian minister's), and he served the delicious _blinis_ with caviar that all expect when lunching there. He often takes remote journeys into the interior, coming back with a silver ingot and curious bits of carving. The diplomatic species always dream dreams, and his is to tread again the streets of Berne. In the evening Captain Sturtevant, our military attaché, gives a dinner at the American Club for General Crozier.

_Later._

I have spent a last delightful evening with Prescott, and Humboldt is waiting in five attractive, clearly printed old volumes, Paris, 1811, that Mr. de S. brought me yesterday. Now, just a century after, I am to turn the pages. I have also some volumes of Alaman, who brings things down to 1846.

I forgot to speak about my Spanish teacher, with whom I have been studying as well as "Castellano." Her mind is about as mobile and receptive as a tin saucepan upside down, and she is always late. Sometimes her watch stops, sometimes the tramcar won't stop, sometimes she forgets her purse or her keys, and has to go back, etc.

She is still young, heavily powdered, insistently perfumed, big-busted, tightly laced, tightly skirted, and keeps a very short foot in a tight, high-heeled slipper in front of her. She hates the sun, as I discovered when I tried to have the first lessons in the sunny corridor.

This morning she told me in a lackadaisical, dreamy way that the noise of the typewriter (she has some sort of afternoon office work, for which she is doubtless totally unfitted) was not good for her; that she had been thinking over things, and had concluded that, if I would arrange it, introducer of foreign ladies to the President's wife was what she was fitted for. She said I probably did not realize what temptations the _despacho_ office offered.

I dare say she has met a few devils in her day. She wound up by saying that the society of ladies would be less of a strain. It was all done quietly; she has evidently dreamed dreams. She did not streak her face when she wept, dabbing her large black eyes carefully with a coarse lace handkerchief drenched with cheap scent. I explained as gently as I could that the position she was thinking of was filled by the _chef du protocole_. Though, without doubt, her life is completely commonplace, she gave me the feeling of really not understanding anything at all about her, and that is one of the charms of Mexico. An illusion of elusiveness is continually presented that keeps one on the chase for the pleasure of the chase. You never get anything or anywhere, but your interest is kept up--which, after all, is the great thing.

[5] This was a time-honored calumny told to all new-comers in Mexico, and believed by many chiefly because it would have been so easy for Don Porfirio to enrich himself to any extent he pleased. The facts are that his ambitions lay rather in the direction of power for himself and peace and progress for his country than in that of the amassing of riches. He was a man of the simplest personal habits, though he always maintained a state dignified and befitting his high office.

During his years of exile he and his beautiful wife lived in the quietest manner on an income sufficient only for the ordinary comforts of life. The last will and testament of "the Greatest Mexican" further proved that he could be called to no such accounting by the Final Judge.

As for Señor Limantour, he inherited a large fortune from his father, principally in real estate, that increased in value during those years of prosperity which his long and able administration of the finances of Mexico did so much to bring about.

[6] In the autumn of 1911 Maurice de Weede was accidentally killed at a shooting-party in Austria.

VII

The old monastery of Tepozotlan--Lively times on the Isthmus--The Covadonga murders--The Chapultepec reception--Sidelights on Mexican housekeeping--Monte de Piedad

_July 21st._

Yesterday General Crozier, Mr. de Soto, and myself motored out to the old church and monastery of Tepozotlan. The morning was indescribably white, with a dash of diamond-powder on its lovely face, and from the very door every turn of the wheel took us over historic ground.

We turned down the celebrated Puente de Alvarado, where the dashing captain for whom it is named is supposed to have made his great leap on July 1st, the date of the retreat of the _Noche Triste_, when the Spaniards were fighting their way out of this same road, the Tacuba causeway, to the hill where the Church of the Virgin of the Remedies stands. We passed the famous _Noche Triste_ tree, which those who live here view with composure and indifference, but which still excites the new-comer. And what's the use of an imagination if one can't be stirred by the picture of Cortés sitting under the great cypress and weeping as he took note of gap after gap in the ranks of the companions of his great adventure?

There is an old romantic verse that I picked out the other day, instead of preparing verbs, picturing Cortés sitting under the great tree, one hand against his cheek, the other at his side:

_En Tacuba está Cortés Con su escuadron esforzado. Triste estaba y muy penoso, Triste y con grande cuidado, Una mano en la mejilla Y la otra en el costado_, etc.

In Tacuba was Cortés With his most valiant squadron. Very sad and much distressed, Very sad and greatly anxious, One hand against his cheek The other at his side.

As we got out of the city a white sun, the glory of these windless mornings of the rainy season, was shining on what seemed a world of crystal objects set in blue and green and lilac. I was so proud of my Mexico that the general said I acted as if I had "taken over" the country. The little grayish, yellowish adobe huts reminded him of Chinese vistas in color and outline; but to me it was Mexico only, unique, endlessly beautiful.

The road was once the great highway to the north; but the deep ruts, almost morasses, made us suspect that many a _jefe político_ has sent his wife to Paris or gone there himself instead of repairing it. All along were milestones bearing half-obliterated inscriptions and arms of forgotten viceroys, who used to keep the road up for the crown or themselves--rather a contrast to the deep ruts of the now neglected highway. Since the railway was built even Cuautitlan, the once famous _primera posta_ from Mexico City to the north, has been abandoned, and our motor was the only vehicle in the broad, deserted streets, which, however, filled with Indians, as if by magic, at the sound of our horn.

For nearly an hour we could see the delicate belfry of Tepozotlan flattened against a gray-green background of hill, while the sun was touching everything near us with a sort of white incandescence, the maguey-fields seeming like rows of stacked silver spears. One thing about the Mexican vistas--they do not lose their charm as you approach; and as we got into the square of the little village we found a beautiful old church, inclosed with its _patio_ by a luscious pink, low-scalloped wall. These _patios_ are a feature of every old Spanish church. The friars used them as school-rooms, as courts of judgment, as medical dispensaries. Indeed, all that had to do with the temporal and spiritual needs of the Indians was transacted in them.

The Tepozotlan _patio_ is grass-grown, shaded with pepper and palm trees, paved with sunken grave-slabs, bits of cactus growing about them, and there is a lovely cypress alley leading to the door of the small _parroquía_. From this we passed into the great church, built with the adjoining seminary by the Jesuits toward the end of the sixteenth century, and restored nearly a hundred years ago, in Iturbide's time. As reminder of his brief imperial career we found the Mexican eagle painted in profile on the old wooden benches.

The church is a triumph of the Churrigueresque school (I have learned to spell this word, but never, never, will it casually trip from my tongue). The vault is simply a madness of gilt carving, and there is a beautiful high altar and many side altars of the richest and most varied designs, all the gold having a lovely reddish patine. We investigated the organ loft, but found only a broken organ with yellowing ivory stops and keys, and a few dusty missals with all the engravings and title-pages gone.

The general is not ecclesiastically inclined, and the visit to the old monastery, so bare, so stripped of all belongings, was most cursory. We soon betook ourselves to the cypress alley and the warm sun outside, lunching in the auto in the village square, with children and old women clustering about and waiting for the crumbs from the banquet. The latter was somewhat marred for us by the discovery that the mineral-water opener had been forgotten. The motor was drawn up near a little pink-and-blue pulque-shop called _El Recreo del Antiguo Gato_,[7] but it contained no help for us; neither did a search at a still smaller one rejoicing in the name of _El Templo de Venus_,[8] on the other side of the Plaza, prove successful. However, the general pointed out hopefully that it would soon begin to rain.

On the way back we did get caught in one of the usual infant cloudbursts, which left the difficult roads of the morning almost impassable, and several times we had to get squads of Indians, who rose up apparently from the solid earth, to help pull the car out of various huge morasses. I thought at one time we could not get back for the dinner I was giving for General C.; but having the guest of honor with me, I felt fairly philosophic.

The ditches in some places were thickly carpeted with a long-stemmed, yellow, lily-like flower, and though warned that nobody would pick me out if I slipped into the black water underneath, I gathered great, heavy scented bunches, while the gentlemen and the Indians wrestled with the conveyance. Mr. de S. said the unfailing remark on the part of the Indians was, "_No quiere andar_" ("It does not wish to go")--a favorite and sometimes final phrase here about machinery that is out of order.

_Later._

There have been lively times on the Isthmus. The former Federals against Maderistas. Aunt L.'s big house has been taken by the government for a hospital. A cruel uncertainty about affairs Mexican presses heavily everywhere.

The dinner for General C., after the long day at Tepozotlan, went off very pleasantly. He says he is here only _en touriste_, but he has the recording eye. The German minister returned from investigating the horrid Covadonga murders just in time to get into his evening things. Dearing, De Soto, Sturtevant, Mr. and Mrs. McLaren, _et al._, made up the dinner guests. The McL.'s are strong supporters of the Madero movement, and hope more than it seems reasonable to hope from such a movement in such a country.

Von H. is up to his eyes in the complications of the Covadonga murders where four Germans, one of them the wife of a manufacturer, were literally hacked to death in their factory. They were caught in a large room with one frightened Spaniard, the others having fought and shot their way out. Sixty-eight in all were killed and some two hundred wounded, nearly all Spaniards. Whether this is to be laid at the doors of the "Liberating Army" or is simply a little independent fling of a bandit chief called Zapata is not yet known.

Von H. has sent out a circular to his nationals, urging caution. He intends to bring the guilty ones to justice himself if the government does not; there was a light in his eye as he announced it, and a click of the teeth.

Emilio Madero, brother of Madero, is chief of the also troubled zone of Torreon. Circulars are being distributed by his orders begging the people to respect foreign lives and property, and explaining the necessity of the continuance of foreign capital, intelligence, and method in the country. They also state that any one voicing sentiments hostile to Spaniards, or other foreigners, Americans included, will find no place in the _Ejército Libertador_ (Liberating Army).

The servants seem such nice human beings. All their defects are small, and they are so honest. I feel myself more and more fortunate to have got this nice, practical arrangement with the _je ne sais quoi_ of culture and breeding added.

The whole machinery runs comfortably, economically, and agreeably. I never scorn the _pesos_, or even the _centavitos_ they return to me from the kitchen when we have been out, or things were _less_ expensive than they expected in the market. Is it not all of a touching honesty?

Some grim fatality attended my first waving back of the _centavitos_ with a grand air. Either the bells were not answered, the food was not carefully prepared, the dinner was late, or some such thing. Now I accept the _centavitos_ and life takes its normally smooth course. I had been warned not to refuse these offerings of simple hearts; and these same fatalities were foretold me by others more experienced in Mexican domestic psychology than I.

_July 27th._

Home from another reception at Chapultepec. I always enjoy them, the setting is so perfect and the elements so diverse. The iron circle is not as tight as formerly, and this afternoon a sunset so gorgeous was going on that it made us all ashamed to sit between four mere brocade-covered walls, so there was much walking about the terraces.

There is a single great pine growing near the castle, where you look over the terrace toward the volcanoes, like the umbrella pines of the Borghese Gardens. It was black to-day with scallopings of bronze against the sky, and as I stood there, looking at the beauty of it all, talking with one of the President's handsome brothers (the one that is shortly going on a financial mission to London), I realized, suddenly, the obvious and persistent compensations of life.

Afterward we went down the little winding stairway leading from _la vitrina_, the glass-inclosed balcony looking over the side toward the city, to the large east terrace, where an elaborate and abundant tea was served at small tables. Hohler took me down. I felt quite mellowed by all the beauty, and he, in spite of a certain matter-of-factness, is always appreciative. There is generally among the _Corps Diplomatique_ a note of _nil admirari_. Mostly they _have_ seen a lot, and it's in the note not to show surprise; but no one could look without a stirring of the soul on the marvelous vistas from the terraces.

Hohler was about to set out on one of his periodical journeys when he uses "wheeled things," as Belloc expresses it,[9] as little as possible, and he showed me a tiny edition of Ovid, _ars amatoria_, that he was taking with him.

A long letter came from General Crozier this morning, from Puebla. He had found Madero at Tehuacan, and had had an interesting hour with him. The day before he had had an interview with the Minister of War, who sent an officer with him to visit various military establishments, the college at Chapultepec, the cartridge-factory at Molino del Rey, the powder-factory at Santa Fé, etc.

What he thought of it all I know not; he is one of the discreetest of mortals. He says he is taking a regretful departure from Mexico, where he found so much of interest and friendly courtesy. Certainly good wishes and regrets follow him.

_July 28th, afternoon._

The Agadir incident bids fair to become more than an incident. Asquith has just said that England, to the last man, the last ship, the last shilling, will stand by France. We won't talk of the little panthers to-night at dinner.

As I was walking home from the Embassy this morning I found myself wedged in by some motors, near the trolley line, and had to wait, while a black funeral car, familiar but unhygienic, passed under my nose.