Evening
We have had such a day of agitation. Telegrams from New York tell us that Nelson’s father has received the last sacraments. We have telegraphed to Vera Cruz to know if one of the smaller fast ships is in the harbor. I might go in it to New Orleans and thence by rail to New York—in all seventy-eight or eighty hours from Vera Cruz. Berthe has been packing my things. I know lives must end, but my heart is very sad.
I kept my engagement to take the Russian and Austrian ministers out to Tozzer’s Aztec diggings. Their governments have subscribed money for archæological work in Mexico (I have never quite understood why), and Tozzer was most anxious to have them see what he had done. We had tea, and regalitos of heads of idols, dug up on the spot—spontaneously offered, this time. There was a dust-storm blowing—the volcanoes were invisible—and things were generally gritty. All the time my thoughts were turning toward the life-and-death issue, and I was so anxious to get home.
The Lefaivres leave definitely on the 12th. The Legation is dismantled, and Madame Lefaivre is still lying with her knee in plaster. Their secretary and his wife naturally see them leave with mixed feelings. We all know how that is, for what greater benefit can a chief bestow than absence? Madame Lefaivre said to the secretary: “What if the ship doesn’t sail on the 12th?” He made the most polite of disclaimers, but she answered, smilingly, “Oh, I know the hearts of secretaries!”