III
After two days upon that plateau, Mexico City was a shock.
The train roared into a crowded station. Vociferous hotel runners burst into the car and fought up and down the aisles. Cargadores clamored outside the windows. Mexican friends met Mexican friends with loud cries of joy. All screamed noisily to make themselves heard above the din of claxons from riotous streets outside.
Some runner, having driven rivals away from Eustace and myself, handed our suit-cases through the window to a waiting desperado, and we chased him frantically through the mob. Some chauffeur, having driven rivals away from the suit-cases, packed them inside a taxi, shoved us in after them, and shot away at full speed the moment his assistant cranked the car, leaving the assistant to dodge aside and jump aboard as best he could, zigzagging madly through a fleet of other taxis, all of which were shrieking their claxons and roaring past with wide open cut-out, avoiding a dozen clanging trolley cars and scraping along the side of a thirteenth, pausing momentarily while a rabid policeman waved his arms and screamed abuse in voluble Spanish, then tearing onward as wildly as before through a world of leaping pedestrians.
We drew up with a grinding of brakes before a modern hotel, the chauffeur collected a modern fare, a hotel clerk grunted at us with modern incivility, a bell-hop conducted us with modern condescension to a modern room, and left us to spend a night of modern wakefulness listening to the nerve-wracking din of a thoroughly modern city outside.
After the plateau, it seemed profane. One had the illusion that in the midst of a grand cathedral service the bishop had given a college yell, the organ had burst into jazz, and the choir had danced an Irish jig.