Evening
I have had a stone for a heart all day, thinking of the horrors that are to be multiplied. Nelson went to see Gamboa this afternoon. Incidentally the raising of the embargo was mentioned, and Gamboa said he thought Huerta might declare war. Like all the rest, he is doubtless ready to desert the old man. Après moi le déluge and “the devil take the hindmost” are the sentiments governing people here. Mr. Jennings just rang up to ask if we had heard that the letter-bag of the Zapatistas had been seized. In it was a letter to President Wilson from Zapata, saying he upheld and was in perfect accord with his (Wilson’s) policy toward Huerta. A smile on the face of every one!
I went to the Garcia Pimentels’ at four o’clock, where we sewed till seven for the Red Cross. The women there were all wives or daughters of wealthy hacendados. They asked me if there was any news, and as usual, I answered, “Nothing new,” but I felt my eyes grow dim. This measure will strike them hard. The hacendados in this part of the country have made great sacrifices to co-operate with the Federal government (it is the only visible thing in the shape of government) in the hope of preserving their properties and helping toward peace.
There were crowds before the Church of the Profesa in “Plateros” as I drove home. The church had been gutted by fire the night before, its second misfortune since we arrived. Its great dome was rent during the terrific earthquake of the 7th of June, 1911—that unforgetable day on which I saw Madero make his triumphant entry into Mexico. At half past four in the morning the town was rocked like a ship in a gale, with a strange sound of great wind.
The Profesa, which has only just been repaired, was built late in the sixteenth century, and was a center of Jesuit activity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all the great marriages, baptisms, and functions took place in it. One can see in one’s mind the array of proud viceroys and their jewel-decked spouses and all the glittering functionaries, and last, but not least, the inevitable accompaniment of the Indian population, wandering in and out. Yesterday, at San Felipe, Mass was celebrated by a priest with a pronounced Spanish eighteenth-century ascetic face of the Merry del Val type. As he turned to give the blessing, I thought of the many elect and beautiful priests of Spain who had in bygone days turned with that same gesture and expression to give the same blessing to like throngs of uplifted Indian faces. The Indians crowd the churches and I am thankful that Heaven can be foreshown to them, somewhere, somehow. They are but beasts of burden here below.