253CHAPTER XXXI
Carlota
“Der sicherste Weg nicht sehr unglücklich zu sein ist das Glück nicht erwarten.”
–Schopenhauer.
Everybody he met seemed to twist Driscoll’s business into a vital personal issue, and it did not take him long to place M. Éloin. The supercilious Belgian of the rancid brow, as Driscoll mentally described him, wanted the perpetuation of the empire, and he wanted it for the very simple reason that the favorite of a realmless prince does not amount to much. Hence he intrigued for the acceptance of Driscoll’s offer and for the confusion of Jacqueline.
A small escort of Belgians joined him and Driscoll at the garita, or little customs house, on the edge of the City. Accompanying them was a burly priest with a head shaped like a pear. The padre had very small eyes for so large a man, but they were exceedingly bright and roved adventurously. They would settle with crafty calculation on Éloin time and again, though his manner toward the favorite was always a thing of humble deference.
“His Dutch Holiness from Murgie’s!” Driscoll observed to himself.
But there might be an ecclesiastical college along, for all the Missourian cared. His own thoughts were battalions. “When it’s over, one way or another,” he kept deciding, “I’ll speak to her, yes I will! What’s there to be afraid of? W’y, she’s–only a girl.” It might be an unfair advantage, his not dying after the confession in her farewell letter to him, 254but he would have her, he would have her! The Lord be good to him, he had to have her!
Late in the afternoon they arrived at the quaint old Aztec village of Cuernavaca, which had been the country seat of Cortez, and was now that of a second fair god and a second Hernando. After dismounting at the hotel near the conquistador’s palace, Éloin hurried Driscoll across the plaza into the beautiful Italian gardens where Maximilian made his home. At the villa, Charlotte’s own residence in the gardens, Éloin had himself announced to Her Majesty. The American reflected that women seemed to have a great deal to do with the reigning business. In the drawing room, the Empress received them.
She was a slender young woman whose lips were thin and proud, whose eyes were dark and lustrous. Her hair was black and very heavy, coiled in the old fashioned style away from a high forehead that was beautifully white. She could not be older than twenty-five, and there was even a girlishness in her bearing. But she had a steadiness of gaze–one eye seemed the least heavy lidded–and there was a firmness to the slightly large mouth, which gave an impression of strong lines to what was really a soft, oval face. Yet the temperament could not be mistaken. She was a woman of acute nerves. She was tensely strung, inordinately sensitive.