–Romeo and Juliet.
A few days later Jacqueline and Berthe attended a performance at the Teatro de Iturbide. It was the first held there since the beginning of the siege, and to the place late foes were thronging eagerly in what seemed a most inordinate thirst for amusement. The playhouse was without a roof. Its metal covering had been widely sown in the shape of bullets, and only a canvas overhead kept out the sun. But the broiling pit was filled, as well as circling tier over tier of loges, and in the street a great crowd jostled and surged, like people who stare at the dead walls of a jail because a man is being hanged inside. If the curious cannot have both Time and Space to their liking, then the more ghoulish will gorge themselves on the coincidence of Time alone. “Now,” they whisper awesomely, “his hands and feet are being strapped! What must he be thinking this very instant, and we standing here?” So those outside the Teatro de Iturbide sweated patiently. In all evidence it was not an ordinary performance scheduled for that day.
“Buzzards?” said Jacqueline, looking up and seeing their outspread wings shadowed on the canvas roof, “Fi donc, that effect is long since shabby!” But it chilled her, nevertheless.
The curtain was up. A drop, showing fields in green and a receding road in brown, filled the back. The actors seemed actors solely, and this idea persisted with the Frenchwoman, 444as with many another, throughout. Seven military characters arranged themselves in a kind of state on the unpainted, slanting stage. They might have been supernumeraries, like the “senators” in “Othello.” At least their severe demeanor became them awkwardly. They wore uniforms, but not of appalling rank. He who presided was only a lieutenant colonel, the other six were captains. Before them, each on a square stool, sat two generals, one with a bandaged cheek. There were legal gentlemen in plain black, while guards at stiff attention here and there completed the grouping. Beyond any doubt, it was a trial scene. And to confirm the surmise, one of the legal gentlemen, a very peaceable appearing youth, arose and in the Republic’s name demanded the lives of Miguel Miramon and Tomas Mejía–here he indicated the two generals–and with impressive cadence, also in the Republic’s name, demanded likewise the life of Fernando Maximiliano de Hapsburgo. The lieutenant colonel and the captains knitted their seven tawny brows portentously, but they were not in the least astounded at such a very extraordinary request.
There was no need of a theatrical production at all. Other Imperialists had not been so unnecessarily distinguished, as for instance, General Mendez, that ancient enemy of Régules and executioner of Republicans under the Black Decree. Caught the day Querétaro fell, he was shot in the back as a traitor. Yet he met a legal death. Taken in armed defiance of the Republic, identity established, the hollow square and shooting squad, such was the routine prescribed. But the lesser official relics of the Empire, six hundred in all, escaped generally with a few months of prison. The rank and file of the betrayed army had already melted away. But for the three arch-culprits a trial was deemed requisite, and President Juarez, in San Luis Potosi, so ordered. Hence the stage setting as above described.
Maximilian was at first surprised. He had said to Escobedo, 445“I am ready to go whenever you can favor me with an escort to the coast, but first I require assurance that my loyal followers shall not suffer.” But the Republican chief had smiled oddly, and locked him up. Later, however, Maximilian had seemed content. A trial for his life, that would add the last needed glamour to the prestige of his return to Europe. So he affably humored his captors, and was rewarded with humiliation–his judges could hardly be more obscure. So as he was genuinely sick abed, he got himself excused from playing his part in the Teatro Iturbide.
The soi-disant Emperor had four conscientious defenders, chosen from Republican jurists, two of whom were then in San Luis to do what they might before Juarez. The other two spent eloquence and acumen on the court’s seven tawny brows. Their first point came from Maximilian himself. It was complacent, this point. The naïveté of it was superb.
“I am no longer Emperor,” so the defense ran, “nor was I during the siege; because, before leaving the capital, I drew up my abdication, which was then countersigned by my ministers. However, it was not to take effect until I should fall prisoner.”
When the Republic recovered her breath, she felt in her amusement a wounded pride. This prince must think her very simple. So, she was to recognize the usurper’s abdication after she had fought and suffered to take the usurper? A captured thief draws from his pockets a quit-claim deed to the plunder he has stolen, and giving it to the court, would therefore go free! The tragedy changed for a spell to comic opera. And matters were not helped greatly when next were invoked “the immunities and privileges which pertain under any and all circumstances to an archduke of Austria.”
Though handicapped by their client’s arrogance, counsel yet did their utmost. They argued law and humanity, with tremulo effects. They prayed that “the greatest of victories 446be crowned by the greatest of pardons.” But it was of no use. The bloodthirsty stripling persisted in the Republic’s name. This Maximiliano was a Mexican. In many beautiful speeches the said Maximiliano had said so. Hence he could not evade responsibility to the laws of his adopted country. And there was, for instance, the law of 1862 concerning treason.