THE AMBASSADOR
"Receive then this young hero with all becoming state;
'Twere ill advis'd to merit so fierce a champion's hate."
--_Nibelungenlied._
In his bedroom at Buena Vista, the marshal's residence, Driscoll the
next day received a personage, and offered him a cigar. Declined, with
bow from shoulder. Hoped he would have a nip of peach brandy? Declined,
with sweep from hips. He _was_ a personage. Driscoll noted regalia,
medals, cordon; and apologized for the temerity of Missouri hospitality.
"Especially," he said, "as you're a Grand Divinity."
"Dignity, senor," the hidalgo corrected him, "Grand Dignity."
"You'll have to pardon me again," said Driscoll, "but I really didn't
intend any short measure at all."
It was the Imperial Grand Chamberlain himself. There were no
incomunicado doors before _him_; he came from the Emperor. The
Empress had spoken to His Majesty, having just had her discussion
aforementioned with Madame la Marechale, so that Monsieur le Marechal
had had to lift from his prisoner the ban of the incomunicado. But
monsieur had been extremely reluctant about it.
The Chamberlain's name went well with his exalted fourth degree of
proximity to the throne. It was Velasquez de Leon, a very bristling of
Castilian pride. He looked over the battered American in homespun gray,
and wondered where the mistake was. For, as arbiter of precedence,
appraiser of inequality between men, and supervisor over court functions
generally, he had been sent in the way of business. Driscoll felt sorry
for him.
"Just tell them to let me out of here," said the prisoner, "then I'll
call in on the Emperor whenever it's convenient for him."
"But, senor," the don objected testily, "with what status, pray? Has
your country a representative here? You must obtain a letter from your
ambassador, or have him present you."
Driscoll shook his head. "Can't," he said, "haven't any country."
The minion of etiquette despaired.
"But," Driscoll added, "I've got as good as credentials from what used
to be my country."
Velasquez de Leon grasped at the straw. "Then," he cried, "we can
register you as an ambassador."
"Bringing my country with me," Driscoll suggested.
So it was all straightened out pleasantly, and quite in the orthodox
manner, too. The American's status was defined. His reception would fall
under the rubric: "Private Audience." There remained only one grave
drawback. The protocol allowed no hints as to the un-protocol aspect of
an ambassador's wardrobe. The hidalgo could only finger nervously the
Imperial Crown in his Grand Uniform, and with stiff dignity take his
leave.
The ambassador who was his own country rode in the marshal's landau to
court, with a retinue of Lancers that was also his guard. Soon they
entered the Paseo, which Maximilian was making beautiful at inordinate
cost as a link between the City and his summer palace, the alcazar of
Chapultepec. Turning into the wide, stately boulevard, Driscoll was that
moment plunged into an eddying splendor of Europe transplanted, and he
blinked his eyes, half humorously. There were mettlesome steeds, and
coaches with a high polish, and silver weighted harness, and the
insolence of livery, and armorial bearings, and the gilt of coronets on
carriage panels. There were silk hats and peaked sombreros, lace
mantillas and Parisian bonnets. A lavish use of French money was doing
these things, and the Mexicans, believing in their aristocracy since the
revival of titles never heard of in Gotha, believed also that such
brilliancy of display made their capital the peer of Vienna, or of the
Quartier St. Germain. The Mexicans were very happy and arrogant over it.
"I wonder how they can fight and yet keep their clothes so pretty,"
thought the Missourian.
The gallant carpet-knighthood of uniforms was bothering him again. They
were dashing, militant, these paladins, a bal masque of luxurious oddity
and color. They twisted waxed moustaches, and their coursers cantered to
and fro in the gay parade, and among them only the charro cavaliers with
a glitter of spangle let one guess that this could be Mexico. There was
the Austrian dragoon with his Tyrolean feather, and the Polish uhlan,
fur fringed, and the Hungarian hussar, whose pelisse dangled
romantically, and there were some fellows in low boots and tights and
high busbies, who were cross-braided on the chest and scroll-embroidered
on the front of the leg, and looked exactly like Tzigane bandmasters or
lion tamers. The Slav, the Magyar, the Czech, and yet others of the
Emperor's score of native races, all were here out of the nearer Orient,
with curved swords and ferocious bearing. There were the countrymen of
the Empress, too; the Belgians, who were as bedecked of sleeve as a drum
corps. And as to the French, there they were in green and silver, in sky
blue, in cuirassier helmets, in the zouave fez, or in any of the other
ways in which they bore _their_ chips on the shoulder.
Shelby's ragged Missourians had tossed on straw for the lack of quinine,
and yet were presuming to save this gorgeous empire of golden spurred
gentlemen. The thought of his mission gave Driscoll an ironic twinge.
But there was the pantalon rouge, the little soldier boy of France who
did the work, and the sight of him put the American into a friendly
humor. He was everywhere, the little pantalon rouge, streaming the
walks, dotting the cafes with red, and every wee piou-piou under the
great big epaulettes of a great big comic opera generalissimo. His huge
military coat fitted him awkwardly, and the crimson pompon cocked on his
little fighting kepi was more often awry, and he could not by any effort
achieve a strut. He was only bon enfant, this unconquered soldier lad;
so he gave over trying to be martial, and left to his officers the role
of the Gallic rooster, taking it all as a droll joke on himself, while
his vivacious eyes danced with fun.
The ambassador's coach passed under the cypresses and wound round the
Aztec hill of the Grasshopper, and came at last to the castle on the
summit. And as Guatemotzin had once ventured to this place to plead with
Moctezuma to save his empire, and to show him how to do it, so Driscoll
now entered the portals of Chapultepec on a very similar errand.
The superb Indian lord was never so hedged in with barbaric ceremony as
was his Teuton successor of three centuries later. But Driscoll was
patient. He advanced as the red tape gave way, humming under his breath
"Green Grows the Grass," a schottische which the American invaders of
'48 had sung in taking this same fortress, which also had given all
Americans the name of "Gringo."
Guardias Palatinas saluted the Missourian at the entrance. Two
Secretaries of Ceremony, Grand Uniform, with cordon and the Imperial
eagle, bowed before him in the Gran Patio. One stepped to his right, the
other to his left, with all the ceremony of which they were secretaries,
and the three walked abreast the length of the Galeria de Iturbide,
where they were joined by the Lesser Service of Honor. Thus, swelling by
cumulative degrees of impressiveness, Trooper Driscoll came at last into
the Sala de Audiencias, and gazed with admiration at its beautiful
Gobelin suite.
The Emperor was there, tall, white browed, refined. He bowed. Driscoll
bowed, and started toward him, for they were scarcely in speaking
distance. But His Imperial Highness bowed again. He was absent-minded,
evidently, but Driscoll bowed also, and pretended not to notice. Then
yet a third time the monarch bowed. And with true courtesy the American
overlooked what was growing ridiculous, and did likewise. Thus the
ritualistic three obeisances were accomplished.
Maximilian dismissed the Lesser Service, and he and his guest were
alone. Now Driscoll supposed, considering the discommoding interest his
mission had awakened in everybody except in the Emperor, that the
Emperor himself would this time be concerned enough to "get down to
business." But not so. There were yet the formalities.
"I understand, Senor Embajador," Maximilian began in the language of his
court, "that Your Excellency----"
"Thank you, sir, but my name is Driscoll."
"That Your Excellency comes accredited from a government that no longer
exists. But We will waive that, since the said power existed at the
moment of Your Excellency's departure."
This was to harmonize the absurdity with the Ritual. Maximilian liked to
play at receiving an American representative. It grieved him sorely that
the United States had never recognized his dignity, but that it had
consistently rated him as merely "the Prince Maximilian."
Driscoll's first words cut short the make-believe.
"You'd hardly call them credentials," he said. "Our president, it is
true, helped me on my way, but I have nothing from him to you. And yet I
bring more than Mr. Jefferson Davis could send. Here," and he produced
the memorandum from the Confederate generals of the Trans-Mississippi
department, which in his belt Jacqueline had had restored to him with
his other effects.
Maximilian took the note handed him, but stared at the emissary.
Charlotte had induced the monarch to grant the audience. She had hinted
at its importance, but not until now did Maximilian recognize his guest.
Driscoll was attired in the full uniform of a lieutenant colonel of
cavalry, which, by the way, was what he had carried so jealously in the
bundle behind his saddle. From the dignified young officer in gray back
to the desperado young giant in homespun proved considerable of a reach
for the Hapsburg; but at last, by virtue of much caressing of his silky
beard with delicate finger tips, he arrived.
"So, it was you the marshal saved!" he exclaimed. "Yes, yes, I should
have remembered sooner. Colonel Lopez told me. A capable, faithful
officer, is Lopez! I could not but approve the finding of his court
martial. And yet, against his urgent advice, I have decided to pardon
you."
"To apologize, you mean?"
The Emperor looked hurt. As a foil for his royal clemency, there should
be humble gratitude. Maximilian often mistook fawning for such.
"Isn't it a bit odd," Driscoll queried whimsically, "that an ambassador
should be arrested?"
"Jove, that's a fact! I hadn't thought."
"Certainly. But if it don't occur again, we'll just let the apology go."
"No, no," protested the monarch. "You must have your apology. You will
receive it from the Grand Chamberlain to-morrow, and it will appear in
the Journal Officiel."
"Oh, all right," said Driscoll, "anything to clear the way." Whereupon
he plunged and stated his business.
With debonair Prince Max it was not a question of even who talked best.
It was who talked last. And Driscoll, being for the moment an exhorter
of both descriptions, drove home conviction as a sabre point. He spoke
bluntly, earnestly; and, at the scent of opposition, he spoke fiercely.
The South was defeated, he said, and the North would now make good its
threat to drive out the French. And the French would go, too. Suppose
they were even willing to undertake a great war for Maximilian, yet they
would go just the same. And why? Because they had fought the Russians.
They had fought the Austrians. And they were keeping the Italians out of
Rome to help the Pope. So they had not a friend left, not one, to help
them against the enemy they must soon fight, which was Prussia.
Consequently they would draw every bayonet out of Mexico, and Maximilian
would be left alone to face his rebels. But Maximilian could not face
the rebels alone. They had been dominant before the French came. To
replace thirty thousand French, Driscoll offered fifty thousand
Southerners, fifty thousand well-equipped, splendid veterans.
Twenty-five thousand were already on the frontier, he meaning those
under General Slaughter at Brownsville, and Shelby and the others were
not far behind.
"But," said Maximilian, smiling bitterly, "you forget that the United
States would still object to my poor Empire."
"Not when the French leave, they wouldn't. We would become citizens. We
would not be a foreign intervention. You would be backed up by Mexicans
against Mexicans, and the North could not interfere. But, suppose that
the French remain, wouldn't they have to fight? And they would need our
aid to do it, too. Don't you see, sir, that in any case you should make
us very welcome?"
"There is assuredly no other way to look at it!" admitted the prince
uneasily.
Dreaming himself a monarch of chivalry days, Maximilian was subtly
enthralled by the idea of a band of heroes flocking to his standard,
their swords on high. Stouter than those warriors who had helped
Siegfried to his bride, they would hold for him a treasure greater than
that under the Rhine. Themselves and their children forever, they would
be the real mainstay of the dynasty founded by Maximilian the Great.
They were Anglo-Saxons, Germanic, his own kindred, and to him they came
for new homes and a new country. They would be his landed gentry, his
barons, his hidalgos. It was a prospect for an emperor; above all, for a
poet emperor. As he looked now on the young Confederate officer, on him
who had seemed a desperado, Maximilian thought that here stood one who
was the instrument of Destiny.
"Can--can they really come?" he demanded breathlessly.
Driscoll smiled. "Of course, there's no time to lose," he replied. "For
instance, if I'd had your answer there at Murguia's ranch, I'd have
gotten back in time to head off whole regiments who've probably given up
their arms since then. But you can still count on an army west of the
Mississippi that hasn't surrendered yet. At least _my_ general
hasn't, not Old Joe, and he won't either. But you must say 'yes' pretty
quick. We're restless, and might conclude to run the French out of here.
We haven't forgotten how Napoleon forgot to help us."
It was a cunning stroke. Maximilian would have asked nothing better than
independence from his "dear imperial brother," and just this was the
bribe so temptingly held out by the instrument of Destiny. But the
Hapsburg of the heavy, trembling underlip credited wavering as
statesmanlike prudence.
"To-morrow," he said, "no, the day after, you shall have my decision."
Jacqueline witnessed the ambassador's departure. Hidden among the roses
of the fortress rock, where she sat with a book, she peeped out as he
came down the steps to the marshal's landau. The glacial Secretaries of
Ceremony flanked him on either side, and the statuesque Palatine Guards
saluted. She could not be mistaken, the corners of his mouth were
twitching. It was such an inimitable commentary on the Ritual that she
had much to do not to dart out and laugh with him in gleeful mischief.
Then, she noted his uniform. After the ornate regimentals of all Europe,
what a relief was the simple gray! There was the long coat, the belt,
the dragoon sabre, the unobtrusive insignia on the collar, and she
murmured her verdict advisedly. It was beautiful! Next she noted the
man--as though she had not in the first place. His easy frame still had
that charm of gaucherie, and the rollicking daredeviltry lurked
quiescent in the brown eyes, but enough to recall the rider of fury, her
chevalier de Missour-_i_, plunging through a wall and cloud of dust
on a big-boned yellow charger. And though now he was in this beautiful
simplicity of gray, she looked in vain for some hint of martial stride
or pompous chest.
She wondered for a moment why he had worn the uniform. It signified
nothing, since the Confederacy had fallen. Then she understood.
_He_ had not surrendered. Nor had those he represented. The gray,
for him, still had its reason, and was a power yet; the power to decide
an empire's fate. It was the grave dignity of a lost cause; striving,
before being doffed forever, to leave behind a new cause. Or, if
failing, to accept the lot of surrender. In either case, her chevalier
de Missour-_i_ was wearing the dear uniform for the last time. With
her keenness for intuition and sympathy, Jacqueline _knew_. She
knew what it must mean. And he looked so strong, so splendid! Her eyes
unexpectedly dimmed in tenderness for him.
Driscoll, being now a free man, established himself at a hotel near the
diligencia office in the busy Plateros street. He drilled through the
following day with tedious waiting for the day after, when he was to
have the promised reply. Used to men who knew their own minds, he hoped
for strength in this emperor fellow. Then, his mission successful, he
would be in the saddle by the next night, perhaps by noon, and hastening
toward the border with tidings of homes and more fighting for his
comrades of the Old Brigade. But the next morning, even as he was
mounting Demijohn to go to Chapultepec, a thin man in riding breeches
entered the hotel patio and accosted him.
"I am Monsieur Eloin," the stranger announced in English that could be
understood, "of Her Majesty's household. Also aide and secretary in
private to the Emperor. I see, you go to horse. It is well, sir. Mine is
outside."
"What's the answer?" asked Driscoll. "I'm not up on conundrums."
"It is that we go to Cuernavaca."
"You don't say! Now where's that, and what for?"
"Cuernavaca is His Majesty's country sit-down, about a douzaine of
leagues from here. You have not read of this morning the Journal
Officiel? Here it is. The court went there yesterday. His Majesty has to
need rest."
"But he was to see me to-day! What's the matter with him?"
M. Eloin's brow contracted narrowly, and he shrugged his shoulders. "His
Imperial Highness is much worked. He is worse of good health. Her
Majesty sought at having him stay, to give you that same-self answer he
had promised already. And the Marshal Bazaine, sensible this once, did
talk yesterday night before last, after you were there, and beseeched
him to accept your offer. And they all beseeched, Her Majesty and Madame
la Marechale, and I.--But, what would you?"
"I'm sure I don't know. What the devil----"
"No, not him! But her, sir, her!"
"Her, who?"
"Why, her. We all talk, argue, beseech; and she, in one little whisper,
she only tell His Majesty he has to need that rest--and, poof! off they
all go to Cuernavaca, and I know nothing. Her Majesty leave me a note. I
bring you it here."
"But who is the 'she?' You don't mean----"
"Yes, we others call her Jacqueline. She did it, against everybody who
beseech. But we--how you say?--we fool her, you and me. Come, we are
there to-night, at Cuernavaca."
"Just that little girl----" Driscoll murmured wonderingly.