The Missourian Part 70

He wrapped the garment about him, took his pistols, and led the way. In the dark corridor down stairs a Republican sentry mistook the cool, commanding figure for one of his own generals, and presented arms.

Maximilian gravely saluted, and with his three companions pa.s.sed out.

The Plaza was a blurred scene of confusion. Men were awakening to find their arms gone, and themselves covered by muskets. Shots had been fired. Curses abounded. Entire companies were being marched away as prisoners. Republican officers either thought that Maximilian was Lopez, from his cloak and height, or were too distracted to notice. It is possible, too, that the victors would have had him escape, that they might not have the trouble of his disposal, and that they preferred that he should not thrust it on them. At any rate, he and the three behind pushed their way undisturbed through cannon and brown stolid men in gray, and reached the spot where the Plaza narrows into a street that gently slopes down into the town. But here a guard was posted.

"Pues, hombre, they're civilians, let them pa.s.s."

Maximilian turned on him who spoke, and beheld the blackmailer, scout, deserter, Don Tiburcio. He wore now the uniform of a Republican explorador. His crossed eye gleamed so humorously up at the Emperor, it might have been insolence, but it was only the proffered sharing of a jest. His matter-of-fact tone prevailed, and the guard stood aside. The four pa.s.sed on down the street. In comical melancholy Don Tiburcio looked after them, and then he perceived that a fifth had slipped by the guard and was following closely behind.

"The saints help us--help _him_, it's Murguia!" Tiburcio muttered in horror. He recalled the night when Maria de la Luz was found dead.

The old man, coatless, barefoot, in his pantaloons of Imperial green, limped desperately to keep pace with the great strides of the four ahead. The broad crimson stripe down each pant leg would break, straighten, break again, in bizarre accord, with every painful step. It was a lope, and he more like a starved wolf, a lean, persistent shadow, ever ready for the chance to spring.

By hastening down into the town, Maximilian thought to rally what forces were there for a last stand; or, to be more exact, for a last tableau.

The end of his empire must have eclat. He found the town panic-stricken, since all could see the Republic's standard over the towers of La Cruz.

Dumfounded officers had gotten to housetops, and were using their gla.s.ses. They beheld the enemy as busy as scurrying ants on the surrounding hills. Clouds of men from every point were sweeping across the llano toward the town. The advance were already in the narrow streets. Killing, looting, had begun. Clanging bells, hoof beats, yells, musketry, and in the distance deep-voiced cannon! The Emperor and his three companions, with the malignant shadow hovering ever near, quickened their course through the town. They paused only to dispatch couriers. Miramon, when found, was to come at all speed with every possible man to the Cerro de las Campanas. They gained the adobe suburbs on the western edge, leaving behind the fearsome rising tide of human sound. An officer forced the Emperor to mount his horse. Many joined their flight. They crossed broken fields, and reached the summit of the wedge-shaped rock called las Campanas. Close behind, emerging from the town, were the first pursuers, who quickly grew to a thick black fringe around the hill. Sh.e.l.ls were falling. The heavens seemed to flower vengefully, with the Campanas knoll as the one focus. The adobe stockade crowning the top was soon packed with fugitives, until those within, like s.h.i.+pwrecked creatures on a raft, barred out those still coming. The whisper spread that in the town Miramon had been taken shot through the cheek after shooting many others. The panic grew. Men knew themselves at bay. They recognized the deathtrap. On the outlying heights the cannon had their range. Grenades, bombs, grape, and canister, fell as hail.

The Emperor turned to General Mejia.

"Could we cut our way out?" he asked.

Mejia put down his gla.s.ses. He paused, then shook his head.

Straightway an orderly with a white flag was sent down the hill. But the firing did not cease for that. Maximilian, seeing that he could make no terms for those around him, seeing them fall by scores instead, himself followed the orderly; and following him, was the ever faithful shadow.

From out the dark fringe a man on a white horse, a black bearded man with monstrous flapping ears, General Escobedo, rode forth to meet the Hapsburg. Then Maximilian forgot the eyes of the world, and thought of her who had suffered with him, who had suffered more than he, to hazard this, their dream.

"It is our throne, Charlotte," he murmured, and gave up his sword.

CHAPTER XVIII

EL CHAPARRITO

"Meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones."

--_Romeo and Juliet._

A few days later Jacqueline and Berthe attended a performance at the Teatro de Iturbide. It was the first held there since the beginning of the siege, and to the place late foes were thronging eagerly in what seemed a most inordinate thirst for amus.e.m.e.nt. The playhouse was without a roof. Its metal covering had been widely sown in the shape of bullets, and only a canvas overhead kept out the sun. But the broiling pit was filled, as well as circling tier over tier of loges, and in the street a great crowd jostled and surged, like people who stare at the dead walls of a jail because a man is being hanged inside. If the curious cannot have both Time and s.p.a.ce to their liking, then the more ghoulish will gorge themselves on the coincidence of Time alone. "Now," they whisper awesomely, "his hands and feet are being strapped! What _must_ he be thinking this very instant, and we standing here?" So those outside the Teatro de Iturbide sweated patiently. In all evidence it was not an ordinary performance scheduled for that day.

"Buzzards?" said Jacqueline, looking up and seeing their outspread wings shadowed on the canvas roof, "Fi donc, _that_ effect is long since shabby!" But it chilled her, nevertheless.

The curtain was up. A drop, showing fields in green and a receding road in brown, filled the back. The actors seemed actors solely, and this idea persisted with the Frenchwoman, as with many another, throughout.

Seven military characters arranged themselves in a kind of state on the unpainted, slanting stage. They might have been supernumeraries, like the "senators" in "Oth.e.l.lo." At least their severe demeanor became them awkwardly. They wore uniforms, but not of appalling rank. He who presided was only a lieutenant colonel, the other six were captains.

Before them, each on a square stool, sat two generals, one with a bandaged cheek. There were legal gentlemen in plain black, while guards at stiff attention here and there completed the grouping. Beyond any doubt, it was a trial scene. And to confirm the surmise, one of the legal gentlemen, a very peaceable appearing youth, arose and in the Republic's name demanded the lives of Miguel Miramon and Tomas Mejia--here he indicated the two generals--and with impressive cadence, also in the Republic's name, demanded likewise the life of Fernando Maximiliano de Hapsburgo. The lieutenant colonel and the captains knitted their seven tawny brows portentously, but they were not in the least astounded at such a very extraordinary request.

There was no need of a theatrical production at all. Other Imperialists had not been so unnecessarily distinguished, as for instance, General Mendez, that ancient enemy of Regules and executioner of Republicans under the Black Decree. Caught the day Queretaro fell, he was shot in the back as a traitor. Yet he met a legal death. Taken in armed defiance of the Republic, ident.i.ty established, the hollow square and shooting squad, such was the routine prescribed. But the lesser official relics of the Empire, six hundred in all, escaped generally with a few months of prison. The rank and file of the betrayed army had already melted away. But for the three arch-culprits a trial was deemed requisite, and President Juarez, in San Luis Potosi, so ordered. Hence the stage setting as above described.

Maximilian was at first surprised. He had said to Escobedo, "I am ready to go whenever you can favor me with an escort to the coast, but first I require a.s.surance that my loyal followers shall not suffer." But the Republican chief had smiled oddly, and locked him up. Later, however, Maximilian had seemed content. A trial for his life, that would add the last needed glamour to the prestige of his return to Europe. So he affably humored his captors, and was rewarded with humiliation--his judges could hardly be more obscure. So as he was genuinely sick abed, he got himself excused from playing his part in the Teatro Iturbide.

The soi-disant Emperor had four conscientious defenders, chosen from Republican jurists, two of whom were then in San Luis to do what they might before Juarez. The other two spent eloquence and ac.u.men on the court's seven tawny brows. Their first point came from Maximilian himself. It was complacent, this point. The navete of it was superb.

"I am no longer Emperor," so the defense ran, "nor was I during the siege; because, before leaving the capital, I drew up my abdication, which was then countersigned by my ministers. However, it was not to take effect until I should fall prisoner."

When the Republic recovered her breath, she felt in her amus.e.m.e.nt a wounded pride. This prince must think her very simple. So, she was to recognize the usurper's abdication after she had fought and suffered to take the usurper? A captured thief draws from his pockets a quit-claim deed to the plunder he has stolen, and giving it to the court, would therefore go free! The tragedy changed for a spell to comic opera. And matters were not helped greatly when next were invoked "the immunities and privileges which pertain under any and all circ.u.mstances to an archduke of Austria."

Though handicapped by their client's arrogance, counsel yet did their utmost. They argued law and humanity, with tremulo effects. They prayed that "the greatest of victories be crowned by the greatest of pardons."

But it was of no use. The bloodthirsty stripling persisted in the Republic's name. This Maximiliano was a Mexican. In many beautiful speeches the said Maximiliano had said so. Hence he could not evade responsibility to the laws of his adopted country. And there was, for instance, the law of 1862 concerning treason.

Well, in a word, the three accused were straightway sentenced to death; and Escobedo, approving, named Sunday, June 16th, for the execution. It might be mentioned of this Escobedo that on two former occasions, when the circ.u.mstances were exactly reversed, Mejia had each time saved his life. Since Queretaro, there have been comments on the vigor of Escobedo's memory.

"Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to San Luis and see the Presidente."

In the long hall of the Palacio Munic.i.p.al at San Luis Potosi, before the old-fas.h.i.+oned desk there, sat an Indian. He was low and squat and pock-marked, and there was an ugly scar, livid against yellow, across the upper lip. He had a large mouth, high cheek-bones, and swarthy skin with a copperish tinge. He was a pure-blooded Indian. At twelve he did not know a word of Spanish. His race, the Zapotecas of Oaxaca, had all but been extinguished by the Conquest. Except for the ungainly black he wore--excepting, too, his character--he might have been a peon, or still the servant he once had been. But the homely, heavy features of his round head did not, in any sense, repel. On the contrary, the countenance was frank, though yet inscrutable. The piercing black eyes were good eyes, and indomitable, like his muscled jaw. The flat, square forehead made one aware of intellect, and of force. So short and thick, he looked a sluggish man, but it was the phlegm of a rock, the calm of strength, and whatever the peril, almost inanimate. His country called him Benemerito de America, a t.i.tle the n.o.blest and rarest in its Spartan hint of civic virtue.

The Indian's desk was littered with messages from the princes of the earth. Like his expiring race, he had fought their order, and they had made of him a wandering fugitive. But now they were imploring him for one of their number, whose surrendered sword that moment lay across their pet.i.tions. Two of the letters, but not from princes, he had read with deep consideration. One was from the President of the United States, the other from Victor Hugo. But these also he shoved from him, though regretfully, and now he was gazing out over the Plaza, the line of his jaw as inflexible as ever.

But they were not many, the moments this man had to himself, and it was not long before a gendarme in coa.r.s.e blue, serving as an orderly, disturbed him.

"Well, show her in then," he said, frowning at the card laid on his desk, nor did he rise when an unusually beautiful but very grave young woman entered the room.

"At your orders, Senorita de--d'Aumerle. You come, I suppose, to save him?--But," he added with the austerity of a parent, "it is not difficult to imagine why _you_ are interested."

"No, Senor Presidente," he heard himself quietly contradicted, "Your Excellency can not imagine."

He looked up, into a pair of honest gray eyes. But her tone had already told him enough. He rose to his feet in rugged courtesy. The Indian was a wise man, and he knew now that other men had whispered falsely about one exquisite Parisienne.

"Pardon me, child," he said gently. "No, I cannot imagine."

Impulsively Jacqueline leaned over the desk and gave him her hand.

"Thank you," she said, in a voice that trembled unexpectedly. From that moment, too, she abandoned tactics. The wiles of courts would avail nothing against the primitive straightforwardness of the man before her.

It seemed, moreover, good and homely, to cast them aside. She took a seat near the window, since he remained standing until she did, and waited. He should speak first, and afterward, she would accept. For there was nothing, she felt, that she could say. O rare tongue of woman, to so respect the leash of intuitions!

As for Don Benito Juarez, he had not meant to speak at all. But knowing her now to be not what he had thought, he spoke as he had not to any plenipotentiary of any crowned head.

"You are a Frenchwoman, senorita," he began. "Tell me, your coming must be explained by that?"

"Now," said Jacqueline, smiling on him cordially, "Your Excellency's imagination is getting better."

"And you wish to save Maximilian," the Presidente stated, rather than questioned, "because he is a victim of France."

"Because he will be considered so."

The old Roman smiled. "My dear young lady," he said, "an answer to France is the least of my obligations. Yet you expect it, and ask for clemency, though I deny all the great nations?"