She said she longed to see Mexico City, if only once, and asked me about the tight skirts—hers were long and flowing. Enfin, she is ready for life, but the functionary seemed to have a proprietary eye on her.
They were all as nice and pleasant as possible, and so hospitable. After lunch we made the rounds of the hacienda buildings. The family to whom the vast estate belongs must have been absent not only one, but two generations—from the look of the rooms. It was the quintessence of "absentee landlordship."
We went through what seemed acres of corridors and half-dismantled rooms, with an occasional piece of good furniture or an old, faded brocade curtain. The library had rows upon rows of yellowing books and countless volumes of accounts of bygone administradores of the estate, the same thing that one finds piled up in every bookshop in Mexico City. In the days before it was easy to get away, some one, however, had loved the classics, for one case was full of richly bound Latin books.
There were numberless fascinating little courtyards. One had a cypress-tree pressed against an oval, barred window; another, only half-inclosed, had a fig-tree growing higher than the top, and out beyond was the great Apam plain, light and cloud rapidly passing over the green, maguey-planted stretches. There was something sad and lovely about it all, and Guadalupe seemed a sort of "Mariana in the moated grange." There were vast granaries, too; wheat growing easily at this altitude, in addition to the pulque.
We went at last into the little chapel where there were some old, carved prie-Dieu, covered with faded brocade, and the altar was a charming example of Churrigueresque, with small, gilded saints in elaborately carved and gilded niches, surrounding a large, central figure of Saint Christopher. It was all, somehow, melancholy-inducing, and made us remember that the "whole round world is but a sepulchre," as Nezahualcoyotl put it.
We took a photograph of Guadalupe, standing on a little outer stairway leading to the entresol, where the family sleep and the girl dreams her dreams. I was only sorry some Prince Charming had not been with us. She had a distinctly yearning expression as we drove away into the great world; there was, probably, far back, some venturesome blood, but she will doubtless get the functionary.
September 29th.
Last night, one of Von Hintze's big dinners. He has been such a good friend from the first, and we have been a part of all his dinners, which have been many. Paso á paso se va llegando, and this is likely to be the last. I felt as if I were back in Vienna, as Auersperg sat on one side of me and Riedl took me out. A handsome Captain Bazaine was also there. That name found in Mexico awakens historical thoughts, and now that I am to leave it all, perhaps forever, the least tap on memory and a thousand things spring into consciousness.
Mrs. Stronge presided; Hohler was there, the Hugo Scherers, Mr. Carlos de Landa, Mr. Hewitt, the Von Hillers, and we played bridge till late. Conditions are going from bad to worse here, and I feel an increasing sadness at leaving all this touching, appealing beauty of Mexico to the powers of darkness, or if not of darkness, of such uncertainty that evil only can come.
The "Apostle" has become the mono de Coahuila. The favor of republics is more short-lived than that of princes. How true a word La Rochefoucauld spoke when he said, "On loue et on blâme la plupart des gens parce que c'est la mode de les louer ou de les blâmer."