“Quite a little comedy!” soliloquised Santa Anna, as the door closed on his subordinate, “in which, before it’s played out, I may myself take a part. She’s a charming creature, this Señorita Valverde. But, ah! nothing to the Condesa. That woman—witch, devil, or whatever I may call her—bids fair to do what woman never did—make a fool of Lopez de Santa Anna.”
Chapter Nineteen.
A Wooden-Legged Lothario.
For some time the Dictator remained in his seat lighting cigarrito after cigarrito, and puffing away at them furiously. The look of light frivolity had forsaken his face, which was now overcast with gloom.
At this time, as said, he wielded supreme unlimited power over the Mexican people—even to life and death. For although he might not recklessly or openly decree this, he could bring it about secretly—by means which, if rumour spoke true, he had more than once made use of. Indeed, there stood against his name more than one well-confirmed record of assassination.
Thought of this may have had something to do with the cloud that had come over his features; though not for any qualms of conscience for the murders he may have committed or hired others to commit. More likely a fear that he himself might some day meet a similar fate; like all despots he dreaded the steel of the assassin. By his corrupt administration, he had encouraged bravoism till it had become a dangerous element in the social life of his country—almost an institution—and it was but natural he should fear the bravo’s blade turned against himself.
Another apprehension may at this time have been troubling him. Although to all appearance secure in the dictatorial chair, with a likelihood of his soon converting it into a real throne, he had his misgivings about this security. By imprisonments, executions, banishments, and confiscations, he had done all in his power to annihilate the Liberal party. But though crushed and feeble now, its strength was but in abeyance, its spirit still lived, and might again successfully assert itself. No man knew this better than he himself; and no better teacher could he have had than his own life’s history, with its alternating chapters of triumph and defeat. Even then there was report of a pronunciamento in one of the northern cities of the Republic—the State, by a polite euphemism, being still so designated. Only a faint “gritto” it was, but with a tone that resembled the rumbling of distant thunder, which might yet be heard louder and nearer.
Little, however, of matters either revolutionary or political was he thinking now. The subject uppermost in his mind was that latent on his lips—woman. Not in a general way, but with thoughts specially bent upon one of them, or both, with whose names he had just been making free. As his soliloquy told, a certain “Condesa” had first place in his reflections, she being no other than the Condesa Almonté. In his wicked way he had made love to this young lady, as to many others; but, unlike as with many others, he had met repulse. Firm, though without indignation, his advances not yet having gone so far, nor been so bold, as to call for this. He had only commenced skirmishing with her; a preliminary stroke of his tactics being that invitation to ride in the State carriage extended to Doña Luisita Valverde, while withheld from the Countess—an astute manoeuvre on his part, and, as he supposed, likely to serve him. In short, the old sinner was playing the old game of “piques.” Nor did he think himself so ancient as to despair of winning at it. In such contests he had too often come off victorious, and success might attend upon him still. Vain was he of his personal appearance, and in his earlier days not without some show of reason. In his youth Santa Anna would claim to be called, if not handsome, a fairly good-looking man. Though a native Mexican, a Vera-cruzano, he was of pure Spanish race and good blood—the boasted sangre-azul. His features were well formed, oval, and slightly aquiline, his complexion dark, yet clear, his hair and moustaches black, lustrous, and profuse. But for a sinister cast in his eyes, not always observable, his countenance would have been pleasing enough. As it was he prided himself upon it even now that he was well up in years, and his hair becoming silvered. As for the moustaches, black pomatum kept them to their original colour.