Everywhere the tortilleras were busy patting up their tortillas, sitting squatted on their heels, occasionally on a petate made from tules (reeds), but they seem to prefer Mother Earth with their children tumbling about. We got through the crowd to the door of the church where clouds of incense, smoke from numberless candles held in pious hands, and a persistent, almost visible, odor of Aztec, la race cuivrée, further thickened the air.
No one noticed us. When you may have come fifty kilometers on foot to worship a Dios Todopoderoso a stranger or two doesn't count. They were kneeling thickly pressed around the high altar, bending, with their sombreros or their burdens laid in front of them, with their arms extended, heads raised, a grave, strange-eyed race, at the oldest of all occupations, communion with its Maker.
Peons almost never sing, but a wheezy organ was playing, and the priest, whom I could just see, was giving the blessing after Mass. The Ite missa est did not, however, empty the church as it does the temples of more sophisticated races, and it remained tightly packed. There are some old pictures, De Soto told me, of authentic date of the first period after the Conquest, but the church was somber, and they were so darkened by time that one couldn't tell.
As for the Vírgen de los Remedios herself I could only dimly perceive her over the heads of Indians kneeling before the little chapel of the shrine, where a few bunches of red-berried branches mingled with the paper and tinsel flowers. It is a small, wooden figure rudely carved, holding an Infant Jesus. Tradition has it that on the several occasions when it was decided to render it more artistic the artist appointed straightway sickened and died. The figure is supposed to have belonged to one of Cortés's captains, who brought it from Spain and who clung to it through all the horrors and dangers of the "Melancholy Night." He afterward placed it for safe-keeping in a huge maguey plant, where it was found a generation later by a baptized Indian.
For centuries a great silver maguey, which Madame C. de la B. (also that unflagging but amusing rejecter of all things Romish, R. A. Wilson) spoke of seeing, was inclosed in her shrine.
At the time of the struggle for independence startling anecdotes were recorded in connection with her. She was the patroness of the Spaniards, who had her dressed in the full regimentals of a general, in competition with the celebrated Virgin of Guadalupe, the great patroness of independent Mexico and the Indians. The Mexicans defeated the Spaniards at the battle of Las Cruces, 1810, and then the Virgin was summarily stripped of her general's uniform, her sash and various insignia being torn from her and her passports given her—a touch of the party spirit which continues to be the curse of Mexico.
The Virgin of the Remedies was, among other things, the great rain-maker, and in the viceregal days was often carried in gorgeous processions through the city (of course the naturally rainy months were tout indiqués for the procession). De Soto tells me there is still an old proverb, Hasta el agua nos debe venir de la Gachupina.[12]
After the Laws of Reform were adopted the silver railing which inclosed the altar, the great silver maguey, and all the treasures of jewels and votive offerings, went into the national exchequer, with the unfortunate result that now there is nothing in the church and nothing in the treasury. The aforesaid Mr. Wilson, who demolishes every Aztec dream of Prescott and almost routs Humboldt from the scene, was particularly wrathy at the idea of the three petticoats she wore, one embroidered in pearls, one in rubies, and one in diamonds.
Perhaps it was because he only found what he calls a "brand-new Paris doll" when he was there in 1859, after the Laws of Reform.
I wanted to linger, but pangs of hunger, as well as great banks of clouds, every possible shade of gray, rolling up high, with here and there a patchwork of dazzling blue, reminded us that there are various ways of getting rain. By the time we reached Calle Humboldt it was nearly three o'clock, and as we lunched great cracks of thunder sounded, the heavens opened, and then came the rattling of hail. I thought with pity of the shelterless Indians on the hill, whose whole life is some simple yet mysterious pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave, and stupidly wished them all sorts of things they can't have.