The domes and spires of the city shone in the afternoon light. Where one once saw the great aqueducts, and the still more ancient canals, now rise the slender steel frames bearing the wires of the light-and-power company, charged in Necaxa, a hundred miles away, down in the Hot Country. The lakes were yellowish-silver mirrors, the eternal hills swam in their strange translucence, the great volcanoes pierced a lovely sky; all quite relatable, except just what it is that pulls your soul out of you as you look upon the deathless beauty and think of the dark, restless, passionate races whose heritage it is.
As we turned to descend the old stone way, the shining city afar was as if suddenly dipped in purple, but the sky above was of such pure and delicate tints—lemon, saffron, and pale pink—that we wondered whence the "Tyrian" purple could have come. We drove silently home in a many-colored twilight.
July 23d.
Yesterday I found a curious book, "par un citoyen de l'Amérique méridionale" ("by a citizen of South America") (vague enough not to get him into trouble), called Esquisse de la Révolution de l'Amérique Espagnole, Paris, 1817.
It is a saddening, mighty spectacle, the presentation of that immense area in the throes of revolution. A few enlightened viceroys at Mexico, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, might have saved the day. They were not ready for self-government, but for Spain the hour had sounded when she was to lose her great colonies; and Mexico, the dearest, the richest, the most accessible, the most beautiful, was to enter on her century of horrors, heroisms, sacrifices—and the end is not yet.
I feel at times as if I were behind the scenes of a mighty drama. I have read so much that I know many of the répliques; have sorted some of the red threads of the century-old plot, and, if I am not behind the scenes really, I am in a sort of avant-scène, where some of what goes on behind the curtain can be surmised.
This is the second summer of books read to the pouring of tropical rains. Mr. S. has brought me several volumes of Jean Christophe—l'Aube, La Révolte—unread before and deeply relished. With all his other gifts, Romain Rolland[57] has the international mind and keeps his seat extremely well, à cheval as he is, between France and Germany. To-day I finished Le Buisson Ardent. During two strange, restless afternoons, I followed Anna's story in the darkness of the tropical downpour, an earthy freshness coming up from the flowers in the patio, and a sound of heavy water falling from rain-spout and roof.
July 27th.
A lovely morning on the roof with E., drying our hair in matchless sun, looking at the volcanoes and talking.
She said I reminded her of the art nouveau inkstand, that for my sins I won at bridge the other day, which has the hair drawn down to the feet of the figure for the pen to rest on. She looked as if she had stepped out of some lovely old Persian tile with her masses of dark hair standing out about her handsome head. There is a poet brother, whose portrait of some years ago hangs in one of the rooms, a large-eyed, straight-featured boy, with a speculative forehead and remote eyes.