Her healing powers were then unrivaled, and the list of cures which she is claimed to have effected surpasses that of all the patent medicines of our day. She was an infallible healer, alike of the diseases of the mind and of the body. A glimpse of her broken nose and battered face instantaneously cured men of democracy and unbelief. Heretics stood confounded in her presence, while the halt, the lame, and the leprous hung up their crutches, their bandages, and their filthy rags, as trophies of her healing power, among the flags and other trophies of her victories over the rebels. Nothing was beyond her skill; from mending a leaky boat to securing a prize in the lottery; from giving eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, mending a broken or a paralyzed limb, or a broken heart, to putting the baby to sleep. Her votaries esteemed her omnipotent, and carried her in procession in times of drought, as the goddess of rain; and when pestilence raged in the city, she was borne through the infected streets. Such was she in the times of her glory.
Now all is changed. She is still a goddess, but her glory is eclipsed. She, like many a virgin in social life, neglected to make her market while all knees were bowing to her, and now, in the sear and yellow leaf, she is a virgin still. Her temple is dilapidated, her garlands are faded, her gilding is tarnished, the buildings about her Court are falling to decay, while the bleak hill which her temple crowns looks tenfold more uninviting than if it never had been occupied. When I entered this neglected temple of a neglected image, an old, superannuated priest was saying mass, and three or four old crones were kneeling before her altar. Such are the effects that followed the revolution of Iguala. Not only was her hated rival of Guadalupe elevated from her long obscurity to be the national saint, but the animosity against this dilapidated image of Remedies was carried to that extreme of cruelty that, when the Spaniards were expelled from Mexico, the passports of the "Lady of Remedios" were made out, and she was ordered to leave the country. Poor thing!
The porter's eye glistened at the now unwonted sight of a silver dollar, and he soon had me through the most secret recesses of the sanctuary. The only things I saw worthy of admiration were some pictures, made from down or the feathers of the humming-bird, by which a richness of color was imparted to the pictures that could not be obtained from paints.
At last we came to the back of the great altar, and the curtain of damask silk being drawn up by a little string, we saw sitting in a metallic maguey plant a bright new Paris doll, dressed in the gaudy odds and ends of silk that make such a thing an attractive Christmas present for the nursery. Paste supplied the place of jewels, and a constellation of false pearls were at the back of her shoulders. The man kept his gravity, and did reverence to the poor doll, while I burned with indignation at being imposed upon by a counterfeit "universal remedy for all diseases." I had often read in the apothecaries' advertisements cautions against counterfeits, and rewards for their detection, and I always noticed, from these printed evidences, that the counterfeits were exactly in proportion to the worthlessness of the genuine article, and that medicine which was utterly valueless itself suffered most from the abundance of counterfeits. So it was with the Lady of Remedios; after she had fallen below the dignity of a humbug, and no man was found so poor as to do her reverence, she was spirited away to the Cathedral of the city of Mexico, in order to save her three jeweled petticoats from being stolen, and a child's doll, covered with paste jewels, now personified the great patron saint of the vice-kingdom of New Spain.
AZTEC AND ROMISH IMAGES.
I again mounted my horse, angry at being cheated. Though the day was a most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of paganism which Cortéz introduced with the more poetical system which preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were the profundity of wisdom. And yet this allegorical worship, defective as it may have been, was forcibly superseded by the adoration of a child's doll—one that had very possibly been worn out and thrown from a nursery, and perhaps picked up by some passing monk, was made the goddess of New Spain, and clothed with three petticoats, one adorned with pearls, one with rubies, and one with diamonds, at an estimated cost of $3,000,000. Which was the least objectionable superstition?
We have been taught to look upon the worship of the Aztecs as monstrous; but the witnesses against them were themselves monsters, who were seeking for a pretense to excuse their own brutality in reducing the Indians to the most debasing slavery, while they appropriated to their own use the best looking of the squaws, and kept such swarms of supernumerary wives that each Spaniard had to brand them with a red-hot iron in order to know his own family. The fathers of the present mixed-breed population of Mexico tell us that the Aztecs offered human sacrifices, and feasted upon human flesh. They hope, by dwelling upon the enormities of the Indians, to excuse their own still more detestable crimes. For three centuries their stories were uncontradicted, and they have been received as historical verities. But the character of the witnesses warrants us in receiving their statements with some incredulity.
CHAPTER XX.
The Paséo at Evening.—Ride to Chapultepec.—The old Cypresses of Chapultepec.—The Capture of Chapultepec.—Molina del Rey.—Tacubaya.—Don Manuel Escandon.—The Tobacco Monopoly.—The Palace of Escandon.—The "Desierto."—Hermits.—Monks in the Conflict with Satan.—Our Lady of Carmel.