I like Madame Lefaivre so much, très dame du monde. The usual banalities of the carrière having gone through with, I feel sure we'll soon begin the regular business of friendship. She had on a pale-gray dress, which toned in with her gray hair and fresh complexion. She and Mr. Lefaivre were engaged for nearly fifteen years before life cleared itself sufficiently of obstacles, of one kind or another, for them to marry.
De la Barra sails the 23d of next month for Italy. I think it illustrative of his tact and good will to subtract himself completely from the very complicated situation, and to let his intention be known beforehand and reckoned with. Madame de la B. receives for the last time on Thursday next. In the evening there is a dinner at the Embassy, and on Saturday the German minister gives one of his big dinners. This seems all very simple, even banal, but few things are simple and nothing banal when played out against a Mexican background.
October 29th.
The political mills here are grinding fast, and not particularly fine. The Minister of War has been impeached, and President de la B. is resigning, not even waiting till the legal term of office (November 30th) expires.
Nightly, crowds continue to parade the streets, singing, "Pino-no-no-no," though "Pino" has been duly elected Vice-President according to the "angelical returns from that temple of liberty and love, the polling-box," as one of the unconvinced deputies called the process.
Zapata has been at the gates of the city and, with eight hundred men, allowed to pillage near-by towns.
Indeed, there has been a public outcry against the suspicious vitality of the Zapata movement. There are those who say that the "Attila of the South" and the President-elect are muy amigo, and that if that General Huerta I wrote of had a really free hand he would, with his energetic methods, have long since solved that special problem.
The Minister of War, Gonzalez Salas, has stirred up a hornet's nest by saying that in three days after becoming President Madero would strangle the Zapata movement. Of course the clever deputies—and there are many of them—are clamoring to know what is the divine word, the sesamo supremo, that he can pronounce to suddenly put an end to the horrors of banditry, and if there is such a word, why it wasn't pronounced earlier.
The inauguration is now set for the 6th. It has been whispered that it wouldn't be wise to wait. One of the deputies, in his harangue against Zapata and the possible high protection he enjoys, winds up a decidedly disenchanted speech, as far as Madero is concerned, by crying, "Robespierre" (meaning the "Apostle"), "remember that Danton also was popular!" Maderistas and Pinistas, Reyistas, Vazquistas, Zapatistas say what they like about one another, and it certainly gives the foreigner an idea of the riches of Spanish epithet.
Those two children of democracy, "freedom of the press" and "no re-election," have seen the light of day with infinite difficulty in various parts of South America. To be present at their first struggling breaths in Mexico is most instructing. I must say they seem to be babies of the noisy, wakeful sort, and don't care who or what they disturb.