January 21st
Yesterday was a busy day. To show you how difficult it often is to get hold of Huerta,—N. was up and out at seven-thirty, looking for him. He went to his house—gone. He went to Popotla, a place Huerta has in the suburbs near the Noche Triste8 tree. Not there. N. came home. I was just starting down-town, so I drove him to the Palace, where one of the aides said the President might be found at Chapultepec—the restaurant, not the castle, which he does not affect. We again went the length of the city, from the Zocalo, through Plateros, up the beautiful, broad Paseo. Huerta was just passing through the entrance to the Park in a big limousine, followed by two other automobiles containing secretaries and aides. N. got out of our auto and went into that of the President, the others keeping their distance. There is always more or less “waiting around” on royalty. They sat there for an hour, I remaining in our auto, during which time N. procured the release of Vera Estañol, one of the most brilliant of the Deputies, imprisoned since the coup d’état of October 10th. Huerta also sent one of his aides with a note to the Supreme Court, written and signed by him, telling the judges to render a just decision in a case affecting American interests, which is now before the court. This case has been in the Embassy nearly twenty years, and four of our administrations have tried, without result, to get justice done through the Embassy, using every form of diplomatic representation. Though N. saw him write the order, and the auto which took the note started off in the direction of the Supreme Court, and returned, having delivered it, no one can tell what wink may later be given the judges.
I came home and ordered a room to be prepared for Vera Estañol, as, of course, he must remain with us until he can be shipped to the States or to Europe. I imagine that the clean bed and the hot water and the reading-lamp and desk will look very pleasant, after three months in jail. N. wrote and signed a letter to Huerta, in which he guarantees that Vera Estañol will not mix in politics and will immediately leave the country with his family. He is one of the most prominent and gifted lawyers in the republic, liberal and enlightened, and head of the Evolucionista party. N. was out until midnight trying to find the President, to get the final order for his release, but was, in the end, obliged to give it up. The old man has ways of disappearing when no one can track him to ground. This morning, N. is after him again, and, I suppose, will bring Vera Estañol to the house, whence he will take the well-worn route of hastily departing patriots to Vera Cruz.
Yesterday afternoon Mrs. Tozzer, Mr. Seeger, and I motored out beyond Azcapotzalco, where Tozzer and Hay are excavating. Anywhere one digs in these suburbs may be found countless relics of Aztec civilization. Azcapotzalco was once a teeming center, a great capital, and there were then, as now, many cypress groves. One of them is still supposed to be haunted by Marina, Cortés’ Indian love.
Built on the site of the temple, teocalli, is an interesting old Dominican church of the sixteenth century; its great patio, planted with olive and cypress trees is inclosed by a pink scalloped wall, marvelously patiné. Here the Indians came in masses, were baptized, had their wounds bound up, their ailments treated, their strifes allayed, by the patient friars. As we went slowly over the broken, neglected road little boys offered us beads and idols and bits of pottery, which are so abundant in the fields that it is scarcely necessary to dig for them. T. and C. H., for their work, simply chose a likely-looking sun-baked mound, planted with maguey, like dozens of others, and with twenty-five or thirty picturesque and untrustworthy descendants of Montezuma (one skips back six or seven hundred years with the greatest ease when one looks at them) they dug out an old palace. When we demanded regalitos (presents), our friends drew, unwillingly, from their dusty pockets some hideous heads and grotesque forms, caressed them lovingly, and then put them back, unable, when it came to the scratch, to part with them.
It is a heavenly spot. Here and there a pink belfry showed itself, its outline broken by a dead black cypress; the marvelous, indescribable hills, both near and far, swam in a strange transparency.
We sat long among the grubby, mixed Toltec and Aztec ruins, and made tea, and, in what may have been some patrician’s parlor, watched the sun go down in a blaze of colors, reappearing, as it were, to fling a last, unexpected glory over the snow-covered volcanoes and the violet hills. Every shaft of maguey was outlined with light, the whole universe a soft spectrum. A mysterious, blue-lined darkness fell upon us as we drove toward the city.