“Your–Your Excellency sees?” Murguía stammered hungrily.
“H’m, what, for example?”
“Why, that–that Maximilian would not have pardoned?”
“On the contrary, señor mio, that is precisely what the generous Maximilian did intend. Listen–Miramon was ‘to delay execution until His Majesty should pass upon it.’”
“No–no, Your Excellency, he would not have––”
“O ho, so you think you’ve missed your last stroke! You think that there is no memory for me in this dispatch! But don’t whine so, because, man, there is, there is! It may not be the memory of my intended death, but it is the memory of–intended insult. Oh, what a patriot he must have thought me, this good, regenerating prince! He had already offered to make me chief justice. But this time he would have saved me from his own Black Decree. And I would have been touched by his clemency? I would have accepted, the grateful tears streaming from my eyes? And thus I would be regenerated? It sounds beautiful. It sounds like the chivalrous Middle Ages, when there were Black Princes along with the Black Decrees. My liege lord he would have been, but my liege Patria, what of her?–Well, well, well, he has three days in 457 which to understand me better, and to think of his own regeneration a little.”
“Then,” cried Murgía, limping gleefully toward him, “then there will be no pardon?”
“I see,” said Juarez, suddenly cold and very calm, “I am now corrupted. I am now safe, like the others. Take that chair, wait!”
Saying which the Presidente left his desk, clapped his hands for the orderly, and seated himself near the window. To the orderly he said, “Go to the diligence office across the Plaza. Ask for Colonel Driscoll, the American officer who commands the escort of the two lawyers. Say that I wish to see him here at once.”
When Driscoll appeared, Juarez put to him this question, “Colonel–I’ll say ‘General’ whenever you decide to be a citizen among us–Colonel, can you reach Querétaro early to-morrow morning by riding all night?”