Benito Juarez, president of the Mexican Republic.


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“Jacqueline”
“She was the spirit of the enigma, the very personification of the Napoleonic sphinx”
[Frontispiece]
Facing page
“Murguía”
“He had evidently passed through salty spray, had braved the deep, this shrinking old man in frayed black”
[16]
“Rodrigo Galán”
“The fierce stranger, however, seemed undecided. His brow furrowed, and for the moment he only stared”
[18]
“John Dinwiddie Driscoll, the Missourian”
“His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and brown from the weathering of sun and blizzard”
[38]
“Colonel Dupin”
“The Tiger of the Tropics ... the chief of Contra Guerrillas”
[94]
The Emperor Maximilian[134]
“María de la Luz”
“The tapestry behind them parted and fell”
[146]
“Berthe”
“... brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation”
[220]

PART FIRST
THE THORN IN THE LAND OF ROSES

“Array you, lordyngs, one and all,
For here begins no peace.”
The Ballad of the Battle of Otterburn

3CHAPTER I
A Wilful Maid Arrives from France

“I’ll tell thee, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France, full of ambition.”