by C. M. Mayo
This black thought has followed me everywhere, since my child was no longer at my side, and I have nothing either in my heart or in my head to render me tranquil; each passing hour increases my grief; and if your Majesty is convinced of the sincerity of my words, it is not possible that your Majesty would prolong any longer my sufferings.
No longer to see my child! To separate myself from him, perhaps forever! To abandon him when he most needs my care! There is no agony comparable to this sad thought. Your Majesty cannot insist on a separation that puts in danger my existence, and I hope that, doingjustice to my feelings, your Majesty will accept my gratitude for your affectionate treatment toward my child, and will order that he return to the side of a mother who ought not for one moment to abandon him, no matter what might be the expectations of his future.
I am confident that her Majesty the Empress, who has shown herself so kind to my son, will support my prayer. The good heart of Your Majesties cannot permit that the profound affliction of your servant be prolonged.
Alice G. de Iturbide
Bigelow’s heart has softened like a pat of butter left in the sun, but he does not reveal this. He passes the letter to his secretary. “Make a copy of this also.”
“Yes sir.”
Bigelow removes his spectacles, folds them into their case, and tucks it inside his breast pocket. Heavily, he leans back in his chair and again makes a tent with his fingers.
“And what, precisely, was the archduke’s reply?”
“He did not reply. The empress sent a messenger with my own letter, the one I had written to her commending my child to her care, and a note saying that it would take some time for Their Majesties to reflect on whether either of my letters required a reply. After two days, an officer of the Palatine Guard arrived and said that Their Majesties wished to confer with me about my child in person, rather than by correspondence. The officer said that he had seen my child, that he was—” Her chin trembles, and she has to stop for a moment and dab her eyes.
After a deep breath, she resumes. “This officer told me that he had seen my child and he was well. He spoke so kindly, he seemed such a gentleman! I went with him downstairs and there, waiting, was a palace carriage. I stepped in and we drove off. When we should have turned to go to the Imperial Palace, we went straight on, and I said to the officer, ‘Oh, I suppose the court is at Chapultepec Castle?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, but he wouldn’t look at me, and I knew then it was a trick! On the outskirts of the city a coach with another Palatine Guard and two soldiers were waiting for me. Their idea was to take me to the city of Puebla.”
“Pueblo?”
She nodded. “I refused to get in, I was not going to abandon my child! On the side of the road, I sat down on a stone. Well, they picked me up and with no more ceremony than if I were a sack of potatoes, they shoved me into the coach! We rode all that day and all that night. I was dressed for an audience with the emperor. I had no coat, only a mantilla to cover my head, no food, or water to drink, not a peso to buy any! We were told to take the first steamer out of Veracruz. An armed escort made certain that we did.”
“By Jove.”
For a moment more the scribbling continues. When the secretary looks up, his eyes behind his spectacles are as wide as silver dollars.
“What I so hope with all my heart,” Madame de Iturbide says, “is that you, sir, might be so kind as to recommend to Monsieur Drouyn de Lhuys that he receive us, because if we could make Louis Napoleon understand, then he might persuade Maximilian—”
“Madam,” Bigelow cuts her off (he is afraid, perhaps too severely). “I am sorry for your misfortune. And, personally, I assure you that I should like nothing better than to help you, but understand, the United States do not recognize Maximilian’s government.”
“Oh, please, sir—” Her eyes well with tears.
“As the minister representing the government of the United States, it is awkward. In any event, I must speak with your husband and his older brother.”
He ends the interview here, because considered caution are his personal watchwords. And, of course, he reminds himself, there are limits to what a woman can be made to understand.
That evening, after the children have all been tucked into bed, Bigelow tells his wife everything. For a long while she gazes into the crackling grate. This is her way, silently, carefully to stitch her thoughts together. She holds her cup of anise tea with both hands. Her round, double-chinned face, lit by the fire, reminds him of a Flemish madonna’s.
He reminds her of the Saint Paul by Michelangelo.
She knows, in her secret heart, that she is not the paragon of moral virtue her husband believes her to be. Nonetheless, she aspires to that—though, what she really feels, listening to him talk about Madame de Iturbide’s tiny son, is a curl of envy. Her own darling, four-year-old Ernst, is lost. And their first child, also, not yet two years old, shortly after a ghastly fall from the top of a book cabinet. One day, on the other side of the veil, they shall all be reunited. But that takes away none of the pain.
Having composed her feelings, Mrs. Bigelow takes a sip of her tea. “Pity,” she says, finally, setting down the cup. “Pity is what I feel for those poor parents.”
Bigelow is tempted to take her hand, but he does not, yet.
Shaking her head, Mrs. Bigelow says, “What a propaganda gift for Juárez.”
“Yes, isn’t it.”
“If—“she raises her face to him—“if, and only if, the father’s story matches the mother’s, in each and every particular, I think you should skate out, though it be thin ice, to the very verge of official propriety to assist her.”
“You think so.”
“She is our countrywoman.”
“Yes.”
“You must speak privately with Drouyn de Lhuys.”
“Exactly.”
“You must urge him to help her.”
“As soon as possible.”
Mrs. Bigelow’s expression has turned fierce. “It is the only Christian course of action.”
“Of course.”
A wise and compassionate wife, is there any greater blessing? This is Bigelow’s favorite time of day, by the quiet, gentle, soothing crackle in the grate. His wife leans into his shoulder, and slowly, he strokes the mane of her loosened hair.
Bigelow says, “Maximilian has shown himself a cruel tyrant.”
Mrs. Bigelow says, “And quite the bumbler.”
“Quite.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Bigelow agrees, closing her eyes. Her head is heavy on his shoulder, and it smells of flowers. “That is how they will make it out in the newspapers.”
“Things fall of their own weight.”
“They do,” Mrs. Bigelow says, taking his hand.
Bigelow says, “That ridiculous monarchy, just as soon as Louis Napoleon withdraws his troops, it will fall—”
“A rotten apple from the tree.”
November 25, 1865
PAS POSSIBLE
In the office of the French minister of foreign affairs, Bigelow wonders, was it so much, was it so very much, to have hoped he could prick his French counterpart’s conscience? As was his own, as would be that of any father, indeed, that of any honorable gentleman. Bigelow had imagined his message a shuttlecock batted over a series of nets: to Drouyn de Lhuys, to Louis Napoleon, then to Maximilian—and Maximilian, mortified. Et voilà! the boy reunited with his mother and father. But smack into the first net: from Drouyn de Lhuys, not a flinch of compassion!
And, as Bigelow knows full well, it is no given that this conversation will go beyond these four walls. Drouyn de Lhuys holds his cards close to his vest, which is one of the reasons, Bigelow supposes, Louis Napoleon has kept him in his cabinet as long as he has. Drouyn de Lhuys knows too much. Louis Napoleon should have dismissed him long ago. In fact, Mrs. Bigelow pointed it out, how very telling that Louis Napoleon did not cut Drouyn de Lhuys back in 1851, when he threatened to resign should the emperor marry the countess of Mon
tijo. Shortly thereafter, Louis Napoleon had a second opportunity to ask for his resignation: at a ball here, Madame Drouyn de Lhuys snubbed the countess of Montijo, who, though not yet formally engaged to the emperor, was attending as His Majesty’s personal guest. As all the world knows, the countess of Montijo, “a little Spanish nobody,” as Madame Drouyn de Lhuys went about saying, is today the Empress Eugénie, mother of the Child of France.
Bigelow can scarcely endure the Tuileries’ frou-frou decor, though he has warmed, personally, to Louis Napoleon. For all the emperor’s vices (impetuosity, womanizing, mirror-gazing), Bigelow cannot help but feel fond of him. After their mutual dentist, Dr. Evans, Bigelow would be the first to admit that he has joined the legions of Americans who have succumbed to the charisma that big-hearted adventurer. Nonetheless, Bigelow’s years in Paris have by no means changed his republican proclivities. Son of Connecticut Presbyterians, Bigelow is a strict abolitionist who has strived his whole life to be the sort of man who, as he puts it to his children, does not eat his pie first. And that would be plain apple pie, thank ye.
Many a time Bigelow has told his children that it was when, as a child, he had the task of driving the cows from the milking shed to pasture, because the beasts were very slow and he was small, he learnt his first lessons in patience. As the cows would stop to pull at the weeds by the roadside or simply stand, working their cuds, he would notice the shape of a cloud—how like a giraffe it was, or a hippopotamus, or a castle turret. He would notice that the clover was just beginning to come in, that the dandelions had sprouted their first gossamer globes, that the oak leaves had been kissed with autumn flame. As now, standing in the office of Drouyn de Lhuys, he notices that on the Aubusson carpet in front of the ormolued méridienne’s left leg, there is what appears to be a coffee stain. It was not there yesterday.
Everywhere in this office there is some trivial thing in want of repair: a hairline crack in the window glass, a chip in the crown molding. Outside, the fountain is misfiring. The mulberry trees have been indifferently pruned, and one appears to have a rag, or is that a scrap of paper caught in its twigs?
Bigelow’s mind does tend to wander when Drouyn de Lhuys rants, for this rant, he has heard it before, indeed he knows it almost word for word. How many times has Bigelow been obliged to endure it? And, right on cue:
“You apparently believe, that the whole of the Americas are your property, and that the institutions and forms of government must conform to your philosophies and your designs. These enormous pretensions—”
As if France’s sending an army into Mexico were a work of holy charity! Bigelow has been in Paris for too many years; he is beginning to feel like an actor in an opéra bouffe with an over-long run. Stage left, the U.S. minister looking grim as an undertaker; stage right, exuberantly gesticulating, his counterpart, a soaped trout of an aristocrat with curls over his ears and ruffles on his cuffs.
They are bons amis, good friends, so they insist to one another in front of others. Tomorrow evening, as he did last Tuesday, Bigelow might well find himself seated to the left of Madame Drouyn de Lhuys, who would be sparkling with sapphires and in prodigious (so terribly distracting) décolletage. Over the carré d’agneau auxfleurs de lavande, they might converse about the weather.
Bigelow has, at least, eased his conscience by mentioning (and he did stress that this was in a purely private capacity) the plight of his countrywoman, Madame de Iturbide. He has presented Drouyn de Lhuys with copies of the transcript of her interview, her letter to Maximilian duly translated into French, and his notes from his subsequent interview at the Grand-Hôtel with her husband, Don Angel, and his older brother, Don Agustín Gerónimo. We do reap as we sow. This tirade is the consequence.
“Vous venez en France avec vosplaintes . . . You come to France with your complaints against a government that you—” with a wounded sigh, Drouyn de Lhuys puts the heel of his palm to his forehead—“refuse to recognize! And now!” Drouyn de Lhuys gives his most Gallic, eye-rolling shrug. “Now you come to tell me about an American child!”
Arms across his chest, Bigelow rocks back on his heels.
Drouyn de Lhuys says, “Why do you not take the matter to President Juárez, the Mexican authority that you do recognize?”
Bigelow finds himself staring at that wretched coffee stain.
“Ah . . .” Drouyn de Lhuys makes a malicious smirk. “Perhaps you cannot find President Juárez? Perhaps he has sought refuge in your republic, and perhaps you have given it to him. But surely you would know much more about his whereabouts than I would.”
Maximilian is claiming that Juárez has abandoned Mexican territory, and therefore, the republic’s sympathizers, if found armed, can be considered not enemy combatants but criminals, who may be shot.
Bigelow clears his throat. “Our intelligence is that President Juárez is at the Texas border, but he remains resolutely within Mexican territory.”
“Ah, oui?” Drouyn de Lhuys moves his jaw, as if chewing this choice morsel of information, his tongue delicately disjoining flesh from seeds. He cricks his neck. “Bien súr, we are not and we have no pretensions to be the government of Mexico, you do France too much honor to treat us as such.”
“I take it then that you will not receive Madame de Iturbide.”
“Pas possible. Impossible.”
“Even as a private matter?”
Drouyn de Lhuys shows his long yellow teeth, and, placing one ruffled cuff across his waist, dips his head. “Au revoir, Monsieur Bigelow.”
The Imperial Palace of Mexico: In the office of His Majesty, the desk, an expanse of leather-topped mahogany, is awash with a pinkish cold morning light—and the balance sheet of the Mexican Imperial Treasury, which is to say, an undone sheaf of papers all of them dense with pencil scribblings. The sight of this mickle makes Maximilian sink his head into his hands. As Bonaparte famously quipped, “You need three things to win a war: Money, money, money.” Where is it?
Evaporated.
Would that at this moment he could be in a toasty salon, sprawled on the carpet with the little cousin, building a castle out of blocks—oh, to be a child again, without a care! Instead, one confronts this specimen, in a cravat of the sort a petit bourgeois would have been wearing a decade ago. His head—a phrenologist’s wonder!—is reminiscent of a cantaloupe, and his upturned nose too short. This disproportion plunges one into the despair one feels in a room where the furnishings—
Why is it so damnably hard to focus? One’s thoughts jerk and blur. Enough with this number blather:
“Monsieur Langlais, a final diagnosis. Can one avoid having to take out another loan?”
“Pas possible.”
Pas possible! Those poison words! One should like to solder the letters together, p-a-s-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e, into an iron-tight chain, wrap it around this bean counter’s neck, and strangle him until his eyes bulge. It is over the edge to be informing one at this late a date that, after the payments to the holders of the Jecker Bonds (cronies of the duc de Morny), and now the Iturbides’ excessively generous pensions, never mind this Sisyphean attempt to build a Mexican Imperial Army, there is nothing for one’s civil list. One has sliced, chopped, filed, chipped, grated, pared the budget down, not to the bone but into the bone—and General Bazaine diverts the pathetic trickle of income from the customhouses and rains it over his moronic rabble—oh, with their galling incompetence, their arrogance, senseless brutality, these French are a millstone around one’s neck. But one takes it coolly. One massages the bridge of one’s nose. One speaks through one’s teeth:
“Thank you. That will do for today, Monsieur Langlais.”
“Your Majesty.” Monsieur Langlais bows. He gathers his papers and, from the secretary, takes the copy of the schedule of the debits to be made on the account of the Mexican Imperial Treasury in Paris. This is the fifth wandless Merlin Louis Napoleon has sent over the pond, all with sumptuous salaries paid by the Mexican treasury. Maximilian chews his thumbnail—and
rips it to the quick. A bud of blood appears.
“Bollocks!” Maximilian says under his breath.
“Excuse me?” his secretary asks. A swarthy boy, clean-shaven and wearing spectacles, José Luis Blasio sits to the side of the desk, ankles crossed.
Maximilian places a fist on his hip and regards the stove, a squat iron contraption installed in the far corner. “You are hot?”
José Luis puts a finger in his collar and stretches his neck. “It’s broiling in here, sir.”
“Nonsense! One needs more furs than in Milan in winter.”
“I wouldn’t know, sir. I have never been to Milan.”
Maximilian throws back his head and laughs. But having seen the window ajar, his smile drops. “You opened that window?”
“Er, yes, sir.”
“Be so good as to close it.”
José Luis closes the window.
“Hot-blooded boys cannot understand that old duffers, such as my thirty-two-year-old self, have ice-water running in our veins. Open that window again, and I shall send for a carpenter to nail it shut. Well, what is the next nuisance in the dispatch box?”
José Luis picks up a letter. “A complaint from the mayor of Tampico.”
Maximilian sighs and then lights a fresh cigar. Elbow on his desk, he rests his ear in his hand.
José Luis speaks to His Majesty’s bald spot. “French, um, atrocities, sir.”
Maximilian turns the cigar in his fingers. “Specifically?”
“Er,” José Luis peers closely at the letter. “It says here, six guerrillas were shot, mutilated and, um, left hanging by their feet from the trees in the plaza.
