All in the room sprang to their feet; and I asked the lieutenant, by a motion of my eye, what I should do.
"Do you still wish to leave?"
It was evident that I was witnessing the first act of some new revolution which was about to take place, and that I was a spectator of some of those little scenes which serve as the prelude to some grand event.
Among the numerous causes which have tended to exhaust the public exchequer in Mexico, and contributed to isolate the country from European progress, the most deplorable and the most striking are, without contradiction, those which prevail in the military executive. In a country whose geographical position effectually preserves it from all rivalry with neighboring nations, the army was, it may be said, disbanded at the declaration of independence, but in a short time afterward it sprang again into existence. Unhappily, the heads of the new republic only looked to that power as an instrument for executing its own ambitious designs. Since then, a warlike mania has seized a people that had been pacifically disposed for three hundred years, and gradually the army had become accustomed to decide upon and settle all political questions. The result of this warlike transformation is well known. To-day the pettiest Mexican officer fancies himself called on, not by a political conviction, but only by his own ambition, to protect or to overturn the established government. It would seem, as one might say, that an article of the Constitution gives to every one the right of becoming a colonel.
Accustomed since infancy to trample under foot all civil institutions, the cadet, transformed into an officer almost before the age of reason, and the soldier of fortune, to whom a long series of pronunciamentos, in which he has taken part, has given a commission, have both in view the same design, a rapid promotion by the same way, that of insurrection. Liable to be broken at every instant by a sudden change in the government, the officers have no hope of obtaining a higher grade but by their swords. Then, according to the fortunes of civil war, the officer who has fought his way to a higher rank, or who has seen the banner under which he fought leveled with the dust, has no more chance of getting his pay from the new government than he had from the old. He thus constitutes himself a creditor of the state till some stray bullet closes his account forever, or till the time when he can dip his fingers into the public purse, and become a permanent debtor of those who have outstripped him in his career. However, although the vicissitudes to which the country has been subjected are numberless, it is the exception, and not the rule, if the officer arrive at the head of affairs; his life, in such a case, becomes only a continual series of annoyances. Then, a revolutionist by ambition—a gambler by nature—a contrabandist on occasion—a knave by necessity—a remendon de voluntades[42] when in want, the officer practices every trade, deals in all sorts of merchandise, and becomes at last more an object of pity than blame; for he knows nothing of business, and his country never has paid him for any service he has rendered her, not even though he may have shed his best blood in her behalf.
The news of an approaching insurrection was doubtless soon communicated to the men in the other room, for a deafening din drowned the general hurrah, in which cries of Santa Anna forever! Death to Bustamente! Down with Congress, and fifteen per cent.! and others, of a like import, were shouted, and which will always find an echo in the hearts of people still too young to know what true liberty is. When silence had been re-established, I questioned my friend the lieutenant about the political movement; but in a hurried tone, "Tut!" he replied; "here you must seem to know nothing. I shall make you acquainted with every thing afterward. For the moment, I have nothing more pressing than to pay my score and go away. You must know that the country is as much your debtor as if the debt had been committed to writing, for its safety is concerned in the liberty of my person."
"About two such debtors I need have no fear," I said, gravely; "but how comes it that a mere civilian has dared to place an embargo on a military man?"
"Alas!" replied Don Blas, in a melancholy tone, "one must borrow wherever one can. The misfortune is, that this inn is kept by an officer, and I only learned that when, enchanted with the credit I received here, I had used the place as if the owner had been a civilian."
That the inn was kept by an officer was not at all astonishing to one, like me, well acquainted with Mexican manners, but that an officer had ventured to give credit to a comrade appeared a piece of the most inexplicable rashness.
"Halloo! Juanito," cried the lieutenant to his asistente. The man soon made his appearance in a costume still more picturesque than the one I had seen him wear an hour before. His peakless shako still trembled on the top of his frightful mop of hair, but he had donned the horseman's jacket instead of the foot-soldier's coat; and it being too short for him, a large portion of his copper skin was exposed to view above the waistband of his trowsers. The fellow was evidently in a bad humor.