293CHAPTER III
As Between Women
“A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.”
–Lamb.
Jacqueline had wrought close to success during that May twilight on the edge of the Cuernavaca pond. She had won a promise of abdication. Yet in the end it was not the Emperor that left Mexico, but the Empress. And Jacqueline was to accompany her, to leave despite herself the scene of her labors. Such was the case precisely, and it all came to pass in this wise.
Maddened by the distance which his temptress kept, also goaded to it by the sorry state of his empire, Maximilian thought only of abdication. Napoleon responded to Jacqueline’s cipher dispatch with orders to Bazaine. But Bazaine, urged thereto by Empress and maréchale, ignored the orders, and advanced Maximilian more money. And Maximilian, having no longer his excuse to quit, stayed on to spend the money. Jacqueline sighed, and–began all over again. Consequently Bazaine, hearing once more from Napoleon, found himself a defaulter, and virtually recalled. Consequently, Napoleon set dates for evacuation. Consequently the rebellion sprang into new life, and the Empire lost armies and cities, and thousands of men by desertion. But the darkest cloud was formed by one hundred thousand Yankees massed along the Rio Grande. Napoleon took heed. He ordered that the French troops should leave at once, unless half the Mexican customs were turned over to the French administrator. This 294was during the summer of 1866, only six months after the bright hopes embodied in the Black Decree of general amnesty. Utterly appalled, Maximilian took up his pen again to sign his abdication.
But there was Charlotte. Even yet she pettishly clung to her crown. The Mexican agents in Paris had availed nothing with Napoleon. Bien, she would herself go to Paris. She would get the ultimatum recalled, and Bazaine as well, because Bazaine no longer advanced money. The imperial favorites, among them the sleek-jowled padre recommended by Éloin, seconded her intention. And as they all talked so well, Maximilian quaffed of hope. With a spite hardly noble though entirely royal, he predicted that soon the marshal would find himself in a sadder fix than himself, the Emperor.
Suddenly, secretly, a little after midnight, Charlotte left the capital. Maximilian bade her good-bye with a solemn promise to rejoin her in Europe if she failed. Three days later Dupin and his Contra Guerrillas met her in the Tierra Caliente, and offered to join her French cavalry escort. The Empress took his presence as an affront. Of late small things excited her to a feverish agitation which she was unable to control. The Tiger bowed over his saddle, and kept his gray hair bared to a torrential downpour while her carriage passed on. It was the tropical rainy season. The clouds hung low around the mountain base and truncated the more distant peaks, while the valley below was a bright contrast in wet, tender green. The wheels sank deep, and mired in the black, soggy earth. Men tugged constantly at the spokes, and the steaming mules reared and plunged under the angry crack of whips.
The Tiger of the Tropics waited as carriage after carriage toiled past him and creaked and was forced on its way. Behind the dripping windowpane of the very last he saw a face he knew, a beautiful, saddened face, puckered just now by some 295immediate ill-humor. She frowned on recognizing the French barbarian, but unlike Charlotte, she did not jerk down the shutter. Instead, she lowered the glass by the length of her pretty nose.
“Is it dotage already, monsieur? Then put on your hat!”