Note 3 — III

I had three glimpses of the "King in Exile." First in Rome, the Easter Sunday of 1913, after the Madero tragedy. As I went across the Piazza Barberini I saw flying from the middle window of the piano nobile of the Hotel Bristol, the Mexican colors, floating there by what strange chance, the eagle holding in its claws the antique serpent against the green, white, and red. As I went up the stairway there were numberless and unmistakable Mexicans on the landings, and several priests were waiting in the antechamber.

Doña Carmen came in almost immediately with the "grand air" I had heard about, handsome and composed, a veritable queen in exile. She was dressed with extreme elegance and simplicity, in a perfectly plain, dark-blue gown; around her throat was a pearl necklace. After the greetings she seated me on the gaudy, gold-and-blue sofa, and took her place beside me. Once or twice her eyes filled as we spoke of Mexico, but mostly there was a remote look in them.

When Don Porfirio entered the room I knew him for a leader of men. Anno Domini had weakened his will, perhaps, but had not bowed his proud figure nor dulled the piercing look in his eye, which I remember as hazel with a very large, light iris, the pupil dark and fiery. We could not but speak of the Madero tragedy, Don Porfirio talking in Spanish, I in French. I found myself slightly trembling. He repeated several times, "I foresaw it all—my method was the only one," and once he added, "How shall one judge men other than by results?" I saw in his eye that same remoteness which I think an observer would have found in mine also; for instead of the gaudy hotel room I saw Chapultepec high up, swung in a strange transparency and Don Porfirio's destiny blocked out against it.

In Paris, that same summer of 1913, at the Hotel Astoria, I witnessed another étape of the painful, unfit Odyssey from hotel to hotel. The antechamber was filled with their luggage, plastered with endless hotel tabs. Don Porfirio's mien was not quite so majestic, his heart was more broken, his hope less, his years seemed heavier, and they were uncertain where next to turn their steps, to San Sebastian or to some "cure" in Switzerland.

On my way back to Mexico on the Espagne, September, 1913, I was sitting idly watching the Spanish shores off Santander. There were some Syrians on board suspected of quién sabe what disease, and we were not allowed to go ashore to visit the old town. About four o'clock a small launch was seen approaching. In it were Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen and Don Porfirio's daughter, Doña Amada (Madame de la Torre), whom they were bringing to the ship, which was crowded with returning Mexicans, anticipating the pacification of the country by Huerta. At the news that the "grand old man" was in the launch there was a rush for the railing. Don Porfirio could not come on board on account of the quarantine. It was a tragic moment when he took his daughter in his arms, and many eyes filled with tears as she tore herself from him and came hurriedly up the gangway. Farewells were waved as the launch turned toward the land. Don Porfirio, upright, majestic, motionless, had his eyes fixed on the ship with its prow toward Mexico. Who would, if he could, have searched his heart or said of what he was thinking, the old, the illustrious, the once powerful, in "the fell clutch of circumstance"?

As long as I live his figure will be to me the sign and symbol of nostalgia, as he stood in the small launch, his head bared under the brilliant sky, the bright spot of his red necktie accenting the whiteness of his hair, watching with longing eyes the ship turned toward the land which had given him birth, and which he in return had made great and honorable among nations.