There are rumors of a student demonstration to-morrow—it is Constitution Day—when they propose to march the streets crying, “Death to Wilson!” Everybody was not only polite, but even affectionate in their greetings to me. Whatever they thought of yesterday’s raising of the embargo they kept to themselves or expressed when I was absent. Even Rincon Gaillardo, who is giving his all—time, money, brain—to the pacifying of the country under Huerta, maintained his exquisite calm.
XIV
A “neat little haul” for brigands—Tea at San Angel—A picnic and a burning village—The lesson of “Two Fools”—Austria-Hungary’s new minister—Cigarettes in the making—Zapata’s message.
February 6th.
There was no disturbance of any kind yesterday. Never were the streets more peaceful, nor the heavens more calmly beautiful. Madame Simon had a luncheon for the new Austro-Hungarian minister, and afterward we all motored out the Toluca road, driving on till from a high mountain place we could see the setting sun filling the stretches of the Toluca Valley with translucent flame colors, mauves, reds, and browns. It was like some new Jerusalem or any other promised glory. Every time we saw a group on horseback we wondered if it were the redoubtable Zapatistas who make that part of the world so unquiet. It was all carefully patrolled, however, with armed men at intervals, cartridge-belts full, and guns across their saddles.
Our party would have been a neat little haul for brigands: the Austro-Hungarian minister, the Italian minister, Joaquin Garcia Pimentel, Señor and Señora Ösi, Madame Simon, and myself. Señora Ösi had on a magnificent string of pearls, likewise a huge diamond pin that blazed in the setting sun. I left my jewels at home, and Madame Simon kept hers well covered. I wonder that we did get back as we went. It was marvelous, dropping down from the heights to the glistening town, in the mysterious Mexican half-light.
I wonder what President Wilson is going to do about the revolution in Peru? I see they have deported Billinghurst from Callao, and Augusto Durand, the revolutionary chief, has assumed the Presidency. There was a price on his head a day or two before. It will take more than one administration to cure the Latin-Americans of their taste for revolutions. Have sent you a Cosmopolitan, with a story, “Two Fools,” by Frederick Palmer; it deals with a certain burning side of the Mexican situation, and has excited much comment.
February 8th. Evening.
Yesterday we went out to the beautiful San Angel Inn for tea, six of us in one motor, two empty motors following. Motoring about this marvelous plateau is one of the joys of Mexican life. We watched the sunset over the volcanoes until the rose-tinted “White Lady,” Iztaccihuatl, was only a gigantic form lying against a purple sky, covered with a blue-white shroud; then we raced in to dine with Clarence Hay and the Tozzers, who had a box for a mild circus performance in the evening. The night before last, so von Hintze told N. (and he is always thoroughly informed), forty men and officers in the Guadalupe Hidalgo barracks were shot. They were accused, probably justly, of a plot against Huerta. For days there have been persistent rumors of a military uprising—cuartelazo, as they call it. Perhaps at the predestined hour one such rising will succeed. If Huerta is forced into bankruptcy and can’t pay his troops, what will become of us, the foreigners? He stated the full truth about elections here when he said that conditions were such that the government of the nation must necessarily be in the hands of the few. A thoroughgoing dictatorship is what he doubtless thinks the best solution—from a close acquaintance with his own people.
