Another reception is to be held at Chapultepec this afternoon. I keep thinking of the four incumbents who have lived and breathed and had their being there since we arrived—Diaz, de la Barra, Madero, and Huerta. With the exception of the first two, each lived in a separate society. The members of one don’t spill over into the other. At Señora Huerta’s reception there was not a face, except those of the chers collègues, that I had ever seen there before—no homogeneity, no esprit de corps. “No me gusta” (“I don’t like it”) seems a sufficient reason for not standing by the administration, whatever it may be.
It is strange how little trace is left of those who have lived there, suffered, and grown great. There is scarcely a Maximilian souvenir or a Diaz recuerdo, not a thing of de la Barra, nor any vestige of Madero, except his planchette and his library, consisting of vegetarian and spiritualistic literature, which confronts Doña Carmen Diaz’s collection of works of piety. Of course there is nothing of Huerta; his shadow has scarcely even darkened it. It was planned in a most extravagant way in 1783 by one of the viceroys, Galvez, who had the beautiful, white-skinned, red-haired bride. It was unoccupied during many revolutionary years, then refitted for Maximilian. Later Diaz used it as his summer residence. Poor Madero lived there during the sixteen months of his incumbency, and I remember him pacing up and down the terrace in that robin-egg-blue vest of his, with a visionary but indestructible smile on his honest face; really mentally, as well as bodily, lifted above all the realities of life.
The “Hill of the Grasshopper” has always had a habitation on it. Montezuma lived there, “king and gentleman,” and many of the old ahuehuetes[7] are supposed to be contemporaneous with him. At any rate, the view that entrances my eyes is the same that his looked on. The whole valley stretches out before one, fringed by those lovely mountains. Sunsets, sometimes in golden tones and sometimes in silver, flood the valley, giving the white points of the volcanoes the most dazzling effects of light imaginable; and then there are luminous enchantments, dissolving distances, an intermingling crystalline blue and rose. How can I express its beauty! People say the light is more wonderful in Greece, but this is my “high light.” Even in the afternoons of the rainy season, when the clouds are banked high, there is always an iridescence to the grays—gray with red or blue or yellow or violet in it—never the dull tones of our rain-clouds.
December 18th.
Just back from a gira in the city. Immense crowds around the Banco Central. This is the clearing-house for all the state banks, and each person waiting outside had state bank-notes to exchange against those more attractive ones of the Banco Nacional.
I see Cardinal Rampolla is dead. I thought of his magnificent appearances in St. Peter’s, that tall and slender form, that proud and beautiful profile, the head held high—a fit frame on which to hang the gorgeous vestments. I remember the disappointment of our various friends when Austria vetoed his election at the last conclave. I wish he might have had it; but now that he has passed through the door I would not call him (nor any one) back. The old Roman days came so vividly to my mind—and many besides Rampolla who are no more.
Elim is sitting by me, writing in two colors all the words he knows—Gott, kuss, bonnemaman, papa, mama. He has just asked “Who handed me down from the clouds when I was born?”
I am giving a luncheon at the Chapultepec restaurant on Friday for Colonel Gage and the Cardens.
The Mexican papers take great pleasure in likening Woodrow Wilson to Napoleon III., with comparisons of the Mexican policy and Sedan!
The reception yesterday did not have the snap and go of the first. We got there about six, going in almost immediately to tea, spread, as usual, in the long gallery. I stood at the table between von Hintze and Hedry, the Austrian chargé.