Last night there was a big dinner at Von H.'s, at which I did the maîtresse de maison. I wore the pastel-blue satin with the silver embroidery and the dull-pink bows. I thought I had ruined it forever in Vienna, at the French Embassy, when the French ambassador had his ball of twenty couples only, for the Princesse de Parme, and I gaily swept the floor with it during some hours. Gabrielle, however, who realizes that the source of gowns is far, has resurrected it.
There was much talk of the great reliance Madero places on the spirits. It is said that Madame M. goes into spiritualistic trances, and when in that condition answers doubtful questions, and that the planchette is fated to play a rôle in the destiny of the state.
However that may be, there is a most authentic story of Madero's having consulted the spirits through the medium of the planchette some years ago. When he asked what the future had in store for him he was told that he would one day be President of Mexico. He is supposed to have arranged his life in conformity to this prophecy, which put him in a condition of mind where everything that happened of happy or unhappy augury bore on the fulfilment of this destiny. It is certainly one way of coercing fate.
There was an amusing but watery garden-party at Madame Bonilla's. We found ourselves at one time sitting under a dripping arbor of white musk-roses in a rain resembling a cloudburst. A large lizard fell from the arbor on to the ambassador's head, and thence into my lap, and various other zoölogical specimens were washed down from time to time. The ambassador, immaculately garbed in newly arrived London clothes, suggested, but rather feebly, the impossible feat of going home. After everybody's clothes were spoiled, we made a two-hundred-yard dash to the uninhabited, picturesque house, where it speedily got dark. There were no means of lighting, of course, as the house had not been lived in since the dear old candle days. The French minister, so handsome and most carefully dressed in gray, was also perfectly miserable under the arbor, with the elements at work, though he repeated at intervals, "Faisons bonne mine à mauvais temps," and recklessly took what had once been my black tulle hat, now turned into a formless thing of gummy consistency, under his immaculate gray "wing."
The Latins in general, and the French in particular, don't care about unsuccessful al fresco entertainments. The volcanoes, as I stood at one of the wide windows, showed themselves from time to time, in strange rendings of the heavens by narrow threads of lightning, with something frightening and portentous in the aspect of their red-brown peaks. Above them were great, shifting masses of blue-black clouds.
Finally the violence of the storm passed and a chastened group of picnickers groped their way down the broad old stairway into the little patio, where the autos were waiting, and we were infolded in some of those strange shadows that seem to creep up from the earth rather than descend from the heavens.
I have a lovely photograph of the volcanoes, with a pine-tree in the foreground, taken from the Bonillas' place. I am sending it.[14]
I have just come back from looking up at my starry square. Unknown constellations are near, but you are far. Good night.
September 25th.
We notice there is a coldness in Maderista quarters at any praise of President de la B. He is too popular. He could unite in his person too many factions, old and new. Even that invisible "smart set" might re-emerge from Paris or the country. Up to now I have not laid eyes on a member of what would be known in Vienna as the erste Gesellschaft, with the exception of young Manuel Martínez del Campo, who began his diplomatic career under Diaz and is now Third Introducer of Ambassadors.