The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  Pepita could be Marie’s twin—the dimple on her chin, her graceful arms; above all, her fearless, head-high personality. It was at a Mexico City ball that he first saw her, whirling past in the embrace of some Mexican lieutenant, and for a gut-wrenching moment, there at the edge of the parquet, a glass of champagne gone warm in his hand, he thought his Marie had come back to life. He had to have this woman—he did not care who she was! But it turned out, wasn’t he the lucky bastard? Pepita is a de la Peña, not the richest but one of the most prominent and respected families of Mexico. General and Madame Almonte went into raptures over the idea of a match. The shrimp that sleeps gets carried off by the current, that is Madame Almonte’s personal motto—he liked her for that. Not two days passed, but she had done her round of visits, and voilà! Pepita’s aunt, the widow of a president, was commissioned to play chaperone. Maximilian and Charlotte warmly encouraged it. Louis Napoleon and Eugénie gave enthusiastic approval. And Pepita had, she truly had, fallen in love with him. Bazaine may have conquered Mexico, but the conquest of this señorita’s heart was his proudest accomplishment.

  Yesterday afternoon, he came up behind his little wife, massaging her shoulders. His voice was gruff from years of barking orders, but to Pepita he spoke softly.

  “What are you reading, hmm? A little book?”

  “Poetry,” she said.

  “A ver . . . Let me see.” He lifted the book from her hands. With his thumb, as on a pack of cards, he rifled the gilt-edged pages. Latin on the left, Spanish on the facing pages. He recognized a few names: Virgil, Ovid, Dante. On the flyleaf, an inscription had been was made in Spanish.

  To Madame Bazaine,

  dear tocaya,

  Your affectionate friend,

  Pepa

  Bazaine’s Spanish was fluent but it was not his native tongue. “What is a tocaya?”

  “We share the same Christian name.”

  “Who is Pepa?”

  “Princess Iturbide.”

  He raised one bushy eyebrow. “I did not imagine Princess Iturbide to be your friend.”

  Pepita turned around in her chair as far as she could, given her girth; she rested her pretty chin on the back of her hand. “Why not?”

  He did not answer with what came directly to mind, that, to begin with, there was a gulf of difference in their ages (in fact, Princess Iturbide was the same age as himself). A pretentious flatterer and self-important schemer, that was his opinion of that old prune. But he left this all unsaid. “It was my impression you had taken Doña Alicia’s side in the family quarrel over the little boy.”

  “I did. And I do, but Mexico is a—”

  “Pañuelo . . . a handkerchief.”

  “Mon amour,” Pepita said with a little laugh, pinching her fingers together. “I tell you, it is a pañuelitito.” Deftly, she took the book back. “Shall I read some to you?”

  “This old man would like nothing better. But there is not enough light here for your delicate eyes.”

  Pepita opened her mouth to disagree, for her eyes were not in the least delicate—but, looking around, she realized that the dusk had come upon them quite suddenly.

  She took his hand and led him into the drawing room. The use of this palace, one of the most beautiful in all of Mexico, had been granted to them by Maximilian upon their marriage, last June. Though they came into their drawing room for one reason or another almost every day, these nine months later, it had not ceased to amaze them: its cavernous size, the masses of flowers, heaps of fruit, gilt furnishings for an entertainment of two hundred people, and screens, and two lustrous pianos, and landscape paintings with herds of sheep in them, and all multiplied in the gilt-framed mirrors. Outside the western window, the sun’s rim had nearly slipped behind the mountains; chandeliers threw diamonds of rainbow light on rosy walls. In the stretches between the many carpets, parquet floors gleamed slicks of gold. Like two children, they sat down on their sofa—not close enough that, were a servant to happen by, Madame Bazaine would have been in any way embarrassed, but his knee pressed into her hoopskirt. He could smell the sweetness of her breath.

  She said, opening the book, “I am no good at Latin.”

  He patted her belly. “Spanish,” he commanded.

  Pepita read a few poems, but not well; she stumbled over the longer words. But what did this matter to a devoted husband? Soothed by the ministrations of his own angel, the weary warrior’s chin fell to his chest. He squeezed her hand and closed his eyes.

  Since his marriage General Bazaine has become obtuse, so the young officers who work most closely with him remark with bewilderment and concern. The situation is deteriorating by the day. One says to the other, and the other to the next one, The only thing organized in this country seems to be thievery. In their stunning incompetence, those Austrian volunteers allowed General Porfirio Díaz to escape—now the insurgents are on the verge of free reign, bombing, shooting, kidnapping, terrorizing innocent citizens. And the Yankees, still parked at the Rio Grande, have been egging the Juaristas on, with more money, more weapons. Maximilian, off in his Petit Trianon in Cuer-navaca, has the temerity to blame France for the consequences of his own blunders. France is extricating herself from this imbroglio but with what shreds of honor left to her? Does General Bazaine not see the damage being done to morale?

  Captain Charles Blanchot, his aide-de-camp, is so consternated that often, sighing deeply, he stops in midsentence and presses his fingertips to his forehead.

  Twenty years the general’s junior, Captain Blanchot has an imperious nose, ill-disguised by an impeccably groomed rectangle of a mustache, and a small mouth set in a permanent expression Mexicans recognize as contempt. His brass buttons polished to candle-shine, whip-sharp and ambitious Captain Blanchot is proud to serve the supreme commander, this legend of the French Foreign Legion, the lowly sergeant who evidenced such courage under fire, such coup d’oeil, he had moved up through the ranks like a rocket. But Captain Blanchot was proud to begin with, proud above all to have been born French, which is, bien sûr, to be superior to the entire world.

  Captain Blanchot’s wife, an American from Louisiana, though still in the bloom of youth, is a few years older than Madame Bazaine—which is to say, more alert to the hazards of the present moment. It was she who had brought to her husband’s attention the rumors that are spreading, very dangerous ones, for they are being repeated by none other than Princess Iturbide, whom his mother-in-law, Mrs. Yorke, had happened to find herself seated next to at the widow de Gómez Pedraza’s.

  The walls have ears.

  Ever since his days running the Bureau Arabe, it has been General Bazaine’s custom to invite his aide for a morning ride (he escort being ordered to maintain a distance of no more than fifty and no less than thirty meters, that is, just out of earshot). To his credit, the general has cultivated the habit of listening; he keeps his cigar clamped in his teeth. This morning, as they came upon the first field, Captain Blanchot brought his mount alongside and opened with this salvo:

  “Sir, there has been a serious attack on your personal dignity. They say you are importing French dressmaking supplies through the army’s supply lines.”

  Bazaine pulled the cigar from his mouth. “What?”

  “Dressmaking supplies. They say you are selling them through a dressmaker here.”

  Captain Blanchot could not discern the general’s reaction; the visor of his kepi threw the grizzled profile into shadow. Bazaine shifted slightly in his saddle and slowed, but merely to steer his mount around a pothole. Beyond Chapultepec Castle, the twin snowcaps of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl floated in the hazy distance. The haze was from the sweet-smelling fires to the south; the season for burning cane has begun. The sky directly above, however, was a dome of the profoundest blue.

  With the sangfroid that had made him famous, the general put his cigar back in his mouth. “What’s her name?”

  “Mademoiselle Louise.”

  “Never heard of her.”


  “All the officers know her.”

  Bazaine laughed heartily. “One of those, eh?”

  “Sir, it is being generally repeated.”

  “Oof! Ridiculous.”

  Blanchot, brittle with indignation: “Infamous, sir.”

  They rode on, pulling to the side to allow a donkey cart to squeeze past.

  The general had many matters on his mind this morning, among them, the military situation in Tlaxcala and the financing for the payrolls, which had become a white-knuckled trapeze act. As per the Treaty of Miramar, the costs of the occupation were to be borne by the Mexican treasury; however, that treasury has been bled dry by interest payments to the House of Jecker, the English debts, and Maximilian’s unmitigated profligacy. The silver mines have not been bringing in anywhere near the projected revenues, and with the loss of cities and ports to the insurgents, and no small dose of corruption, the customhouses’ receipts have plummeted. Late last month, while Maximilian was enjoying the fauna and flora of Cuernavaca, Monsieur Langlais, having sifted through the ledgers in preparation of a long overdue budget, was found dead in his bed. A heart attack? Or had he been deliberately poisoned? Bazaine suspects the latter, because, when moving at speed, he sent Captain Blanchot to retrieve Langlais’s papers, lest they fall into improvident hands, an aide to the French ambassador barred the door. That quickly, all of Langlai’s papers had disappeared into Ambassador Dano’s custody!

  Dano and his cronies: they may have been the source of this fresh slander against himself—a ruse to divert attention from their profiteering! Isn’t this some basket of crabs, Bazaine thought, and he was about to change the subject, when, noticing his aide’s wounded expression, he thought better of it.

  “There is more you want to tell me?”

  “Sir, you always told me that I should feel free to tell you anything.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Princess Iturbide repeats this slander.”

  “Ah, ça.” Bazaine dipped his head to avoid a low-hanging branch. Straightening, he hacked up a gob of spit into a bank of nopal cactus.

  “Sir, the princess claims that her information comes straight from the empress’s wardrobe maid.”

  “Well now.” He laughed again. “I cannot worry my old gray head with a wardrobe maid’s tattle.”

  “But sir, if Princess Iturbide is repeating it, I believe it comes from the highest levels.”

  Bazaine swatted some flies. “Bah.”

  “That Austrian Machiavelli, he’s capable—”

  “Heard the latest?” Bazaine interrupted. “You’ve heard it from your wife already, I’ll wager. In Cuernavaca, Maximilian’s taken the Indian gardener’s daughter for his lover.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Most do.”

  “I’d sooner believe it, if it was the gardener.” Bazaine laughed.

  “But sir—”

  Bazaine interrupted, “When things become difficult, rumors crop up. It is inevitable.”

  “But sir, they are saying you have taken one million dollars.”

  A jolt of electricity passed between them. They had come to the edge of a steep slope carpeted with jagged, soot-black lava rocks; here, the sun full on his face, General Bazaine halted.

  Breeze disturbed the fur on their horses’ necks. With a loud splattering, Captain Blanchot’s horse urinated.

  “They are saying, sir, that you have received one million dollars in exchange for rendering the Mexican Empire with the least possible resistance.”

  “Son, I swear to you, and I swear before my Maker, I do not have a sou to my name other than my salary.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you know that my residence, and everything in it, the furniture, the paintings, it all belongs to the government.”

  “Yes, but you could defend yourself! You could open the books, gather the evidence, show—”

  Bazaine put his hand up. He shook his head, no, no. “Son, you did right by telling me. Always, you should feel free to tell me. But understand, it is impossible to disprove what is not true.”

  The captain’s mouth had become extremely small. “But sir—”

  “Alors,” the General said gruffly. “A cock does not play hens’ games.”

  A year ago, Bazaine told Almonte, “The Arabs have a saying. He sleeps, but his feet are baking in the sun.”

  “I have told Maximilian as much.”

  But where, really, do Almonte’s loyalties lie? How long until he jumps horse? In January, the U.S. secretary of state met with Santa Anna on the island of Saint Thomas. Seward on a pleasure cruise, bah! Almonte must have known about the meeting, or maybe not, but he knows it now.

  A Mexican empire? Well, that’s pasting some feathers together and calling it a duck!

  So much money, so many opportunities squandered. How different things could have been.

  “It breaks my heart,” Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza said. The other morning, she’d come to pay an early morning visit to her niece; Bazaine, still in his babouches, found the women knitting. He had the Mexican mozo bring tea—as he liked it, steeped with a fistful of mint and plenty of sugar. (A Mexican mozo: another thing his men grumbled over.) He had told Pepita she could bring any and all of her family when they evacuated. He could protect them, he could get them out. Again, he extended the invitation to the widow de Gómez Pedraza. Doña Juliana thanked him profusely, but she was too old, she said. In France, what would she do? She’d have to improve her French. There wasn’t much of it to improve. She tapped her temple. “It’s full up with memories.”

  “Bah,” Bazaine said, though in truth, Doña Juliana was old. Her moist, sagging eyes reminded him of his mother’s.

  “Besides,” she said, “you won’t allow me to take my harpsichord.”

  “You can play the accordion, why not?”

  She laughed at him.

  Affectionately, he teased Doña Juliana, whom he had grown to know so well when he had courted her niece. In a way, he’d had to court her also. He looked out for her as best he could. After that vicious robbery last December, when her old cook was murdered, he assigned a pair of Zouaves to guard her house. She’d insisted she was going to quit Mexico City for Querétaro, where she had some relations, but when she tried to sell her house, there were no buyers, and she gave up the idea.

  “Ay, Doña Juliana, you think you won’t have your hot chocolate in Paris?”

  “Not the good chocolate.”

  He bowed his head, the way a waiter would. “Un chocolat chaud, madame?”

  Doña Juliana clicked her tongue. In Spanish she said, “Impossible!”

  “Madame. À coeur vaillant, rien d’impossible.”

  But she did not understand him. Pepita, meanwhile, went on knitting, the needles clacking softly over her belly. The ball of yarn trembled at her feet. Doña Juliana picked up her work again, a sweater for Pepita’s baby. All that was left to be knitted was a cuff. She would have finished this one last week, she said, had her arthritis not been bothering her. Because of her cataracts, she often dropped a stitch, and then she had to unravel her work and begin anew. Nonetheless, the cedar trunk was nearly to its brim with sweaters, blankets, bibs, booties, a christening gown and bonnet, each item enfolded in muslin.

  Lorgnette to her eye, Doña Juliana said, “Now tell me, General, in complete confidence . . . What will become of little Agustín?”

  Bazaine pursed his lips and blew across the top of his tea. They all knew the boy’s arm had been broken. The court had been a long time in Cuer-navaca, and when in Mexico City, Princess Iturbide kept her nephew sequestered. Maximilian’s personal physician, Dr. Semeleder, was attending the child. The arm would be, he assured the princess, “good as new.” In the meantime, however, as the princess confided to Mrs. Yorke, she did not intend to demoralize Mexicans by letting the Heir Presumptive be seen in a plaster and sling.

  There were other reasons, however, that the child
had turned into an embarrassment for Maximilian. Last month, a New York Times dated January 9, arrived on the steamer—La Sociedad had not reported it, of course, but, within a matter of days anyone who was anyone in Mexico City knew that, in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Kentucky congressman had called for a presidential investigation of the “so-called” emperor of Mexico’s “kidnapping an American child.”

  Doña Juliana said, “You seem to think we all need to leave with you or be slaughtered by the Juaristas. Well, what about this innocent?”

  Bazaine turned up his palms. “Unless Maximilian decides—”

  Doña Juliana interrupted. “I should think Carlota would have some influence.

  “Charlotte?” Out of habit, Bazaine used her French name. He scratched at the back of his neck. His sentiments about the empress, whom he and his men had initially revered as their own countrywoman, had become less than respectful. Many things had brought down his estimation of Charlotte; in fact, the final straw had been her refusal, last September, to receive Doña Alicia de Iturbide. Charlotte may have been young, but not young enough to excuse this heartless and cowardly refusal to look at the consequences. Bazaine had gone to the palace to see her personally and he had beseeched her to reconsider. But the empress of Mexico, in her diamond earrings, had simply stared back at him with the eyes of an inanimate object.

  This week a delegation from her brother, the king of the Belgians, is visiting Mexico City. Reports from the secret police are that Maximilian has not bothered to remove himself from Cuernavaca, and the things Charlotte has been telling these Belgians are so fantastic! It seems she is losing her grip on reality.

  Finally, Bazaine spoke. “Have you asked Princess Iturbide what she plans to do?”