We now found another source of apprehension. The apartment we had rented, at the corner of the Calle de San Francisco, opposite the Iglesia de la Profesa, was larger than necessary for our small family, and a very spacious room looking upon Mexico's fashionable thoroughfare had been left unfurnished and unoccupied by us. It was obvious that we should be required to give it over for the use of some officer of the invading army, and the matter was naturally not without interest.
Early in the morning of June 5, a carriage drove up, and some middle-aged officers of the administration, in green-and-silver uniforms, applied for quarters. One of them was the paymaster-in-chief of the army, M. Ernest Louet. He was a worthy man, who afterward became a frequent visitor, although his general appearance and peculiar, peak-shaped skull, undisguised by any hirsute covering, were not likely favorably to impress frivolous feminine minds.*
* M. Louet, after the Franco-Prussian war, visited Marshal Bazaine in his Spanish retreat, and obtained from him all the documents relating to the intervention and the empire of Maximilian then in his possession. It was his intention to use them as the basis for an authentic history, which, however, he did not live to publish. The task thus begun by M. Louet was subsequently completed by M. Paul Gaulot, in 1889, under the title, "La Verite sur l'Expedition du Mexique, d'apres les Documents Inedits d'Ernest Louet, Payeur-en-Chef du Corps Expeditionnaire," and divided into three parts: "Un Reve d'Empire," "L'Empire de Maximilien," and "Fin d'Empire."
We drew a forlorn picture of the rooms, which, as a fact, were utterly unsuited to his purpose. He left without even looking at them, and we had a reprieve.
The unfinished condition of the apartments, as well as an abundant expenditure of tact and diplomacy on our part, saved us from other applicants, and we were beginning to flatter ourselves that we should escape this much-dreaded imposition when, late in the afternoon, two young naval officers called, accompanied by orderlies and pack-mules. They presented billets de logement, requesting to be given possession. We tried to discourage them, assuring them that the rooms contained no conveniences of any kind, not even furniture: but the young men were evidently easily satisfied; they politely but firmly insisted—their only wish, they said, being to camp under cover.
This annoyed us, and we showed them scant courtesy, not even attempting to disguise the fact that they were most unwelcome. Fate was, however, kind to us when it sent us these men. They turned out to be perfect gentlemen, and completely won us over by their unvarying good breeding under shabby treatment. Before long we were, and remained, the best of friends. As for their orderlies, they soon made love to our Indian maidens, and there is every reason to believe that the interlopers obtained all necessary comforts, after all. So all went well enough in the two menages.
Indeed, an entente cordiale between the population of Mexico and the French army was rapidly established. In a few days the place assumed an unwonted aspect of cheerfulness and festivity. The French officers, who for over a year past had led a life of hardship, were now bent upon pleasure. They fell gracefully into the Mexican mode of life, and took kindly to the havanera, the bull-fights, the Paseo, and the style of flirtation preferred by the Mexican women. For this they soon coined a French word, noviotage,* and thus expressed the semi-Platonic love-making of indefinite duration and undefined limits which with the natives usually culminates in marriage, after a prolonged term of years, but which with foreigners seldom culminated at all, for lack of time. They "played the bear,"** and ogled their chosen one from the street or at the Alameda, or followed her carriage on horseback at the Paseo, according to the most approved Mexican methods; and in exchange for small favors received, they cast a glow of sparkling cheerfulness upon the dull city of Montezuma.
* Derived from novio, "betrothed lover."
** The Mexicans call hacer l'oso the mode of courtship by which the lover, on horseback, passes under his chosen one's window, up and down, casting longing glances at her—the worse the weather the more ardent the love.
General Forey made his triumphant entrance on June 10. It was a magnificent sight, and one not easily forgotten. As the victorious veteran troops,—many of whom had seen the Crimea, Syria, and Italy,—in their battered though scrupulously neat uniforms, marched through the Calle de San Francisco, laden with their cumbersome campaign outfit, the whole population turned out to see them, and the balconies and windows on the line of march were lined with eager and interested faces.