FRANCISCO I. MADERO
(From a photograph taken in 1911)
I look about this comfortable home and think how sheltered a spot had been forsaken but a short week ago, of the treasures chosen from walls and cabinets to be out of possible revolutionary harm, and now all is lying at the bottom of the sea, off Cape Hatteras, and we, strangers, are safe in the shelter of this home. "Who shall escape his fate?" I keep saying to myself.
May 13th.
On the 10th Juarez was captured with its commanding officer, General Navarro, by Orozco and Giuseppe Garibaldi, who is down here following out the family traditions. I am writing in the comfortable little library, doors opening everywhere on to the flower-planted corridor. I have been reading Creelman's Life of Diaz, and three volumes of Prescott are waiting on my little table. Suddenly I find I am hungry with a great hunger for the printed page and the old objective and impersonal habits of thought. In Vienna the personal, with its "grand seigneur" contour, seemed to replace quite sufficiently for the time any objective views of life. A woman who reads there is likely to be mal vue, which for some reason does not at all do away with the insistent seductions of Viennese life.
Yours from the Dolder received, and the sight of the envelope showing the familiar Zürich lake and hills made me realize the mountains and seas that separate us. Elim went to sleep with the envelope under his pillow. The beautiful park nearest us, the "Alameda," of which I inclose a post-card, is unfortunately haunted by Indians, picturesque, hungry, dirty. If it is true, as transcendental souls say, that beauty is food, I need not worry about them, but it does not make the place very tempting for Elim's airings. He will have to be driven up to Chapultepec Park.
We are to be presented to the President and his wife this week, and are looking forward to meeting the maker of modern Mexico and his charming consort. They are in their large house near the Palacio, but generally at this season have moved to Chapultepec.
May 16th.
Yesterday Madero and Carbajal, who is the peace envoy of Diaz, whatever that may mean, went into conference at Juarez to consider the proposals of the Diaz government. Everything here is in a melting condition, and how it will crystallize the fates alone know.
Various "innocent" bystanders were killed or injured at Douglas in the early days of the revolution. Some still more innocent, looking neither to the right nor to the left, also got hurt, as, for instance, the lady leaning over the wash-tub with her back to the land of the cactus. They have put in a nice little bundle of claims, and one flippant newspaper at home suggests putting the town of Douglas on wheels and moving it to a place of safety, rather than going to the expense of invading Mexico for the recovery of claims past and future.