December 19th
Mexican calls all the afternoon. Mme. Bernal has a really lovely house, just done over, full of choice things. She herself is young and beautiful, in a dark-eyed, white-teethed, pallid way. Then I went to see Mercedes del Campo, whom I found, with her baby and an Indian nurse, in the palm- and eucalyptus-planted garden. She, like all the others, is young and handsome. Her husband was in the diplomatic service under Diaz, but since then has fought shy of the administration set. It’s a pity, as he would be an ornament to any service. Such beautiful English—such perfect French!
They are living in the house of their aunt, Madame Escandon, in the Puente de Alvarado, the street named after this most dashing of Cortés’ captains. It was near by that he made his famous leap in the retreat of the Noche Triste; the “dismal night,” when the Indians, witnessing his apparently miraculous escape, thought him a god. A little farther up from the Escandon house is the celebrated Palacio Bazaine or Casa de la Media Luna. It was presented, with all its luxurious furnishings, by the Emperor to Marshal Bazaine, on the day of his splendid nuptials with a beautiful Mexican. Here the Emperor and Carlota were often received, and it became the center of the fashionable life of the time. There are many stories of the extravagant and almost regal entertaining that went on there. Now all these splendors are, indeed, gone up in smoke; the stately mansion is a cigarette-factory. I never pass it without a thought of Maximilian and the “Ya es hora” of the guard who threw open the prison door of the Capuchin Convent in Querétaro on that fatal morning, and of Bazaine’s saddest of all sad ends.
The luncheon for Colonel Gage, who returns to Washington next week, went off very snappily. When I got to Chapultepec I found all my guests assembled on the veranda. I excused my lateness by saying that I had been waiting for N., who was with the President. “But the President is here!” they all cried. I said, “I wonder if he would lunch with us.” They all looked aghast, but delighted at my boldness.
I then saw Huerta approaching us through the large hall toward the veranda, with the governor of the Federal district, Corona, and a pale, dissipated, clever man—for the moment (which I imagine he is making golden) Minister of Communicaciones. I went forward with some élan, as to a charge, and invited the President to the fiesta. That small Indian hand of his waved very cordially. It is literally the velvet hand, whatever violent deeds it may have done. But he said that he had a junta of much importance; he would be delighted to accept another time, and so on. There was more shaking of velvet hands, and we went back to our expectant guests, who were decidedly disappointed. It was very pleasant, as always, on the broad veranda, looking toward the Castle, visible above the great branches of the century-old ahuehuetes.
N. had been driving with the President for an hour before lunch, and had asked him for the release of three Americans, long imprisoned here. Huerta assured him that they should all be set free, whether guilty or not, just to please him; and at six o’clock this evening the first instalment arrived at the Embassy, delivered into N.’s hands by two Federal officers. And so the work goes on. Huerta is very prime-sautier. Once before when N. had asked for the punishment of some soldiers, convicted of deeds of violence against some Americans, he responded promptly: “Who are they? Where are they? They shall all be killed!” N. protested, aghast at the possibly innocent untried sheep suffering with the guilty goats. Anything, however, to please N. in particular and the United States in general. There is really nothing that the United States couldn’t do with Huerta if they would. All concessions, all claims, pending through decades, could be satisfactorily adjusted. As it is, Huerta keeps on at his own gait, not allowing himself to be rushed or hustled by the more definite energy of the Republica del Norte, playing the game of masterly inaction and scoring, for the time being, on Washington. After all, you don’t get any “forwarder” by waving copies of the constitution in a dictator’s face. He ignores his relations with the United States, never mentioned us in his speech to Congress, and probably put the ultimatum into the waste-paper basket. I am beginning to think that, in the elegant phrasing of my native land, he is “some” dictator! The New York Sun speaks admiringly of the way in which he continues to treat Mr. O’Shaughnessy with a friendly and delicate consideration.