Later
A military revolt is brewing here—Felicista. N. got wind of it. If it comes, they must give us Huerta, and have so promised. We have had comparative, very comparative, quiet for a few weeks, and now things are seething again.
There is a room here always ready, which we call nacht asyl, and various uneasy heads have rested there in the famous “bed of the murderess.” Yesterday I bought a lot of lovely dull blue-and-white serapes for the floor and couch.
On returning from bridge at Madame Lefaivre’s, where I left de Soto losing with more than his usual melancholy distinction, I found the Japanese minister with the captain of the Idzuma, in full regimentals, come to call—but N. was out. The captain said he wanted to express especially and officially to N. his appreciation of all the courtesies he had received from Admiral Cowles, and the other officers of our ships at Manzanillo. He spoke French and English only fairly well, as they do. I was very cordial, of course, and said that in these difficult moments all must be friends, must stand by one another, and show mutual understanding of difficulties. As I looked at him I thought, for some reason, of the horrors suffered and the deeds of valor performed by his race in the Russo-Japanese War, without question or thought of individuals. He espied Iswolsky’s photograph and Adatchi showed him Demidoff’s picture, saying that Elim was his namesake. They never forget anything.
The officers had all been out to the celebrated pyramid of San Juan Teotihuacan to-day, with the Minister of Public Instruction. It is a fatiguing trip, but an excursion always arranged for strangers of distinction. (I made it with Madero, mounting those last great steps, exhausted and dripping, on his arm.) They, the Japanese, were going to the Jockey Club, where Moheno, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, is to give them a dinner. The government is so in debt to the various restaurants here that they couldn’t get credit for the dinner at Silvain’s, as first planned.
I met Lady Carden at bridge this afternoon. She feels badly at the way things have developed for her husband. He has been called to London “to report”; à la Henry Lane Wilson to Washington, I suppose. Hohler, who was chargé when we first came to Mexico, is already en route from England to take over the Legation during Sir Lionel’s absence—but I suppose Sir L. will never return. I told Lady Carden to give Sir Lionel my best regards, and added that it wasn’t, by any means, all beer and skittles at the Embassy.
Sir L. shouldn’t have tried, however, to “buck” the United States. All the representatives have become a bit more cautious as to how they approach “the policy,” since the unpleasant newspaper notoriety Sir Lionel and Paul May received. Lady Carden is not going, I am glad to say, and we are all making plans to console her for Sir L.’s absence.