Von H. cut the Gordian knot, rather informally, by putting him next N. "so that they could have a talk," which they did!
Handsome young De Weede turned up yesterday, having made the ascent of Orizaba, a great feat. He came down in a dreadfully burned condition, however, and spent some days in bed attended by a physician. He is the son of our friend, the Dutch minister in Vienna.
He returns there as first secretary with his father, regretting Washington very much.
He had seen the Hitts in Guatemala, and showed me photographs he had taken of their house with its lovely patio, fountained and flower-planted. The roughly paved street gave the outside a desolate look which it doubtless has not really got under that sky, as blue as this. It was so nice to see De W. again, and the "welkin rang" with reminiscences of the Kaiserstadt and the happenings of our mutual friends.
July 12th.
Von H. has been criticized for having had Madero at a formal dinner, where he could not have the first place at table, being the Liberatador and more than all the others put together. However, I imagine it is those who were not at it who felt critical. I inclose the menu. Apart from the huachinango, the wonderful Mexican redsnapper, the fish that Indian runners used to bring up on their backs from Vera Cruz for Montezuma's delectation, it might have been a handsomely presented dinner anywhere in the world.
This morning I took De W. to the museum to look over the treasures, pre- and post-Cortesiana. The building forms part of the Palacio Nacional, some of which dates back to the great captain, and it was the celebrated Casa del Estado during the viceregal period. The old colonnaded patio is a beautiful receptacle for a flooding sun, as well as the altars and carvings of a bygone civilization. In the middle are the Sacrificial Stone, and the great Calendar Stone, which has contributed more than anything else to give the Aztecs their reputation for scientific achievements. They adjusted their festivals by the movements of the heavenly bodies, fixed the true length of the tropical year, etc.
For some generations after the discovery of the Calendar Stone in the subsoil of the Plaza it was cemented onto one of the towers of the cathedral, and only in the eighties was removed to the museum. The Piedra de Sacrificios is appalling when one thinks of its origin and use; but with an extremely handsome young man leaning against it, under that warm sun, in that mellow old courtyard, it was not, for the moment, so dreadful to contemplate. Its true home was the top of the great temple, and there Cortés found it.
During the siege of the city the conquerors, watching from afar, are said to have sometimes seen their own captured comrades led up the great stairway to the stone on which they were placed, their chests opened with a special razor-like knife made of obsidian, the palpitating heart torn out, held for an instant toward the sun, this sun, and then flung at the feet of the god of war. Huitzilopochtli, the aforesaid god, is a huge block of basalt, half man, half woman, who was "born" just as one sees him now, with the addition of a spear in the right hand, a shield in the left, and on his head a crest of green plumes, going Minerva one better. Thousands were sacrificed to him yearly under this wondrous sky, enfolded by this softly penetrating, vivifying sun.
Afterward we went up and saw the "Maximiliana" for "Auld Lang Syne," not much nor very interesting—a huge amount of cristofle silverware and the saddle used by the unfortunate emperor when he was captured at Querétaro (May 15, 1867). The pictures of Maximilian, one on a dashing white charger, show him a full-lipped, blond-bearded, blue-eyed Austrian obviously unable to cope with the Mexican political situation. Carlota, in pale blue and pearls, hangs by him. These portraits are by Graefle, the Viennese court painter of the period. Napoleon the Third, the cause of all their troubles, hangs near with Eugénie—a copy of the Winterhalter portrait of her, I think.