I must get ready for my luncheon to-day. I love to do the flowers myself, and a great solid bunch of forget-me-nots, a foot and a half across, in the big blue bowl, has been lifted onto the table by Elena and Cecilia. Bouquets of deepest purple pansies are at each place. The sun is flooding the patio, the flowers are blooming and shining—enfin all the delights of the tropics! It is not without reason that they have a lure. The luncheon is for the Riedls. The Lefaivres, von Hintze, Leclerq, and others are coming.
We tried the theater again last night. I had expected to go for the Spanish whenever N. had a free evening; but, really, I have not the physical strength, and last night we were thankful to get out of the boredom of the interminable entr'actes and the unbreathable devitalized air, which at this altitude has an exhausting effect unknown at sea level.
The apuntador read all the parts so loudly, now sometimes ahead, now sometimes behind the actors, that one couldn't decide which to follow, him or the artists, and we gave a sigh of relief as we sped out of the city toward Tlalpan, beloved of the viceroys.
An immense white moon, that seemed to lose its shape in its own flooding light, was rising over the valley. Not only the heavens, but the earth irradiated light, and we seemed to be motoring through a dully brilliant blue-whiteness. The night was dry, with no hint of mist, but still a milky ambience that gave an effect of gleaming wetness was over all.
Out of the earth came what seemed to me the psychic miasms of nameless but potent and persistent races. The Ajusco hills, for reasons known to themselves, were dead-black masses as they jetted into the sky, but their outlines were scalloped with an indescribable embroidery of the same fluid whiteness. I felt a chill sort of magic envelop me, penetrating through the thickness of that long Viennese motor coat; I was even a little afraid with that nameless fear one sometimes has here. I think it is the unknown quantities. Everything seems to equal X.
November 20th.
Reyes has been arrested at San Antonio by a United States marshal, charged with violating the neutrality laws. He was doing only what Madero did, but what is sauce for the gander isn't sauce for the goose. Diaz had his Madero, Madero his Reyes. How easy it would have been to have made a friend of Reyes, who was the idol of the army!
Madero now talks about crushing all revolutionary movements with an iron hand; but his hand, alas! has no likeness to iron or anything that can crush. It appears that Madero and Reyes made a pact according to which each was to have a free hand at the presidential nomination. But the Maderistas either got nervous or impatient, or did not want to take chances, and Reyes was persecuted and threatened until he resigned his commission in the army and left the country. The military element might have been conciliated with Reyes as Minister of War or in some other capacity after being defeated at the polls; but that would have been by far too reasonable a modus operandi for these climes.
Reyes found himself obliged to withdraw his candidature a few days before the election of Madero, and left the country as speedily as he could, among other things giving the New York Sun a chance for a gorgeous alliterative sentence, "Rebellion, riot, and Reyes mar the calm of Madero's Mexico."
The Simons are very handsomely installed in a house on the Paseo, and have sent out cards for a series of dinners. We dined there last night. Simon, it appears, is a banking genius of incorruptible probity—a second Limantour. They have what few here possess, a French chef, imported specially. Besides several diplomats, there were some Frenchmen whom I had not met, Armand Delille,[23] a banker, and an agreeable man, Parmentier.[24] In the drawing-room are many photographs relating to the Simons' Belgrade étape, an interesting one of Pasitch's clever old face, the Serbian Crown Prince, the old King, Countess Forgasch, and others, who struck the Balkan note.