The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

by C. M. Mayo

  “I do not know.”

  “You know very little, Manuelita.”

  Madame del Barrio blushed and stared at her gloves.

  Upstairs, in the hallway, they encountered no one. At the door to her suite, Charlotte waited for Madame del Barrio to open it with the key. As if pulled by some unseen hand on the other side, the door creaked in. The room, hot, gloom-soaked, was agitated by the sounds of traffic. One of the windows overlooking the Corso had been left ajar.

  After the sumptuousness of the Vatican, this “royal suite” looked so mean. The upholstery should have been replaced; the arms on some of the chairs had been rubbed bald. The furnishings seemed sparse and overwrought. In what was left of the sunlight, every stain and scuff stood out. Beneath a bulls-eye mirror, a torn thumb of wallpaper shivered.

  Madame del Barrio lit the lamp on the mantel.

  From the threshold Charlotte said, “Shut the window.”

  Madame del Barrio pulled the window in.

  “I won’t come in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone is hiding behind the drapes!”

  “No, ma’am.” Madame del Barrio gathered the drapes in her arms, and turned them inside out. “You see?”

  “Look behind the sofa.”

  “No one is there, Your Majesty.”

  “The divan!”

  “No, ma’am. It is safe.”

  Carlota put a foot inside, but at once she withdrew it. From the hallway, she said: “Check the bedrooms.”

  In a moment, Madame del Barrio came back to the door. “Your Majesty . . .” There was no need to whisper, but she whispered: “It is quite safe.”

  Charlotte stepped over the threshold and immediately, she knew—her arms turned to gooseflesh—something was wrong.

  “Where is Mathilde?”

  “Your Majesty wanted her arrested.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You take my hat, then.”

  “Perhaps Your Majesty might lie down and rest?”

  “Yes, Manuelita, I would like to rest.”

  “Take my arm.”

  “Thank you . . .” Before the door to her bedroom, Charlotte shrank back and screamed, “The key!”

  “The key?” There was no key in the door to the bedroom.

  “They have taken it! They plan to lock me inside! Then they can murder me!” She tore the hat out of her lady’s hands and flung it back on her head.

  “Where is Your Majesty going?” Madame del Barrio cried, running after her. The answer came when they were both, breathless, on the sidewalk once again. Carlota flagged a passing hack.

  “Il Vaticano. È urgente!”

  In a matter of minutes the empress’s retinue emerged from their rooms— new rooms on higher floors—and swarmed down into her salon, where the same lamp Madame del Barrio had just lit, flickered weakly on the mantel.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich, first to arrive, lit another lamp; out of sheer nerves she went about plumping the sofa cushions. Then, as she feared she would faint, she sank, despondent, into the sofa. José Louis Blasio took the edge of that sofa and sat hunched with his hands between his knees. Count del Valle commandeered the mantel, but the chamberlain, del Barrio, Madame del Barrio’s husband, ousted him, and he in turn was interrupted by the Mexico’s acting consul in Rome, Velázquez de Leon, and he by Herr Jakob von Kuhacsevich who allowed, he may have only been the Purser of the Imperial Household, but he’d known Maximilian and Charlotte since before their marriage, and—

  Someone said they’d heard her screaming about a key.

  Ein Schlüssel!

  Una llave.

  Where is it?

  Who took it?

  What key?

  Dr. Bohuslavek moved into the circle. He dangled the key from his fingers. “The one to her bedroom.”

  By Jove.

  Caray!

  What possessed you?

  Upon whose authority?

  “Upon my honor,” Dr. Bohuslavek said stiffly, but he was so very young and he looked as if he were about to cry. “I took the key in case, in the night, she should go into a rage.”

  Now you’ve done it!

  Wooden-headed!

  Said nothing to me—a mi no me dijo—

  Die Dringlichkeit der Situation steht auβer Frage—

  Fresh out of medical school, thinks he knows everything.

  From the sofa Frau von Kuhasevich wailed, “Now she’ll never trust any of us!”

  Frightened her out of her wits—

  Already out of her wits—

  Hysterischer Anfall—

  The bromide in her coffee, someone gave her cannabis, all the symptoms—

  Blunder after blunder—

  The voices barraged him; the men crowded into him. The doctor, so as not to fall into the chair, had to take a step back. The chair’s leg made a squeak on the floor. Dr. Bohuslavek took out his handkerchief and disguised his emotion with noisy coughing.

  But these were delicate people with delicate manners; soon, like a summer shower, their angry words had passed.

  “Dr. Bohuslavek,” Frau von Kuhacsevich began in her most generous and careful Spanish, “I know that you were only doing what you thought best.”

  Yes, perhaps the only thing that could be done.

  Count Bombelles and Dr. Jilek—

  Be here soon enough.

  And her brother, the Count of Flanders.

  “Ach, Matty,” Frau von Kuhacsevich said, turning to the maid who had been hovering in the doorway. “What is to become of us?” She said this in German, but it needed no translation.

  Mathilde Doblinger knit her hands together. She looked at Count del Valle. They all, the whole circle of them, looked at Count del Valle.

  Count del Valle held his hand to his cheek as if, in this way, he could keep his teeth inside his head. He was a shining specimen of New World aristocrat from his shoes to his cravat, from his manicured nails to his waxed mustache. Slowly, the be-ringed fingers came down to his chin. He gave his chin a scratch.

  Pigeons had gathered on the ledge.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich thought, if only Father Fischer were here. He could dispense that healing balm of spiritual solace. Poor Charlotte; she has no family, no friend of her own rank to confide in. Perhaps Princess Iturbide— perhaps. Pointless conjecture.

  It was all pointless.

  Frau von Kuhacsevich began to weep.

  October 25, 1866

  THE ROAD TO ORIZABA

  In Mexico City’s axe-bright morning, Mrs. Yorke’s parlor has all the ambiance of a cave of gloom. Princess Iturbide, the visitor around whom Mrs. Yorke and the others form a rapt circle, lowers her teacup to her lap and her voice to the gruffness, if not the chocolately smoothness, of Father Fischer’s:

  “Do not doubt it! The Mexican Empire will endure for a thousand years!”

  “Father Fischer said that?” Astounded, Doña Juliana de Gómez Pedraza fastens her lorgnette to her eye. Has Princess Iturbide lost her senses? For the word, directly from her niece, Madame Bazaine, is that Maximilian has received a stern letter from Louis Napoleon (“not an ecu or one man more”) and has been convinced, finally, to abdicate. Carlota is said to be too ill, no one knows of what, to return to Mexico. What to believe? What does it matter? Maximilian’s goose is cooked, and only by a miracle of Lazarus will it rise from its pan and waddle out of the oven! As all of Mexico City knows, three days ago, at three in the morning, from Chapultepec Castle, Maximilian, a wagon-train of luggage and an escort of three hundred Austrian Hussars up and fled—what other word is there? By now, the highway may have brought Maximilian past Río Frío and perhaps as far as Puebla.

  “Yes,” Princess Iturbide says, “Father Fischer said exactly that, and I will tell you what’s more.” She fixes Madame Bazaine, who perches on the divan to her left, with an “I-dare-you” but not altogether unfriendly look. Princess Iturbide—abandoned without income, without a bodyguard (Weissbrunn took off, whether with his regiment or what, she kn
ows not), and with an innocent child in her care, and fewer “friends” by the day—walks a tightrope, and she knows it. She needs General Bazaine’s protection, if all fails, and she and Prince Agustín are to escape with their lives. She has been mortified— to her core—by Maximilian’s abrupt departure—“me voy a mi pueblo,” like a servant!—but! Princess Iturbide is not one to set aside so hastily her sacred duty to serve her country. Is she not her father’s daughter? She has had to sell her diamond bracelet (and at a price that constituted robbery!) that she might stock her pantry, feed her horses, and continue to have her coiffure arranged by a professional, rather than be seen in an anonymous old-lady’s lace cap, as Doña Juliana has been reduced to doing. On the lapel of her jacket she wears a brooch rimmed in pearls, with a miniature portrait of Prince Agustín, her message to all: Make no mistake where my loyalties lie.

  Thank Heaven for Father Fischer!

  It was Father Fischer who convinced the cabinet not to resign en bloc should Maximilian abandon the capital, and he who engineered the synod. Prelates from every corner of the empire are arriving. The Holy Church, reaffirmed, will help Maximilian raise a new army and vanquish the Juaristas.

  Princess Iturbide continues, “It is a grave miscalculation to imagine that, being a gentleman and a Habsburg, Maximilian would ever entertain the idea of ‘abdication.’ He will only go so far as Orizaba, for purely practical motives of being closer to whatever news may come from the empress, and, on the advice of his doctor.”

  Doña Juliana exchanges a grim glance with her niece. Mrs. Yorke, wedged into a corner of her sofa, horrified, covers her mouth.

  Princess Iturbide, an ironclad of calm, surges on: “Dr. Basch has diagnosed His Majesty with a mild case of malaria. Father Fischer suggested Orizaba as having the most salubrious climate for His Majesty to rest and recuperate.”

  “Orizaba, salubrious?” Madame Blanchot scoffs. “All I remember is its ghastly nonstop drizzle, the—what do they call it?”

  Mrs. Yorke answers, in the tone of an undertaker: “The chipichipi.”

  From the opposite end of Princess Iturbide’s sofa, in a curiously accented Spanish, half-Baltimore-half-Cuban, comes the remark: “Ah, but Orizaba’s luscious oranges, kisses from the sun itself!”

  All eyes turn to the newcomer who has interjected this vivacious impertinence. A consensus about this person has not quite gelled. Princess Iturbide’s attitude toward her is one of open-armed indulgence, for Father Fischer befriended this lady and her husband on the ship from New York to Veracruz and has warmly recommended her. A darling out ofWashington—acquainted, so she claims, with President Johnson, many senators, and members of Congress, and what’s more—she is a real princess, married (in a Catholic mass, Saint Patrick’s on F Street) to Prince Felix Salm-Salm, then serving in the U.S. Army. She and her prince have come to Mexico that he might see action in the civilizing cause of his fellow German, for whom, he says, he has always felt a deep sympathy. Princess Salm-Salm has no child, but a black-and-tan terrier named Jimmy, who sits by her skirts on the sofa, alert as a little sphinx, with her dainty hand resting upon his velvet head. (Jimmy’s favorite foods, she has confided to all, are veal, oysters, and the yolks of hard-boiled eggs.)

  What none but Princess Iturbide knows is that, thanks to Father Fischer, overriding the bitter and absurd jealousies of senior Austrian offers who refused to accept a Prussian, and some of whom have gone so far as to assert that “Prince Salm-Salm” is an imposter, the Salm-Salms had been invited to dine in Chapultepec en petit comité with Maximilian. They were to be given a mission more vital, more brilliant, than any military action: to take two million dollars in gold to Washington and there secure U.S. recognition for the Mexican Empire. Thus, the “open sesame” for trade—the trade Mexico so desperately thirsts for! And colonists, crowds of them, the best people! Mexico may have been abandoned by the Old World with its musty prejudices and fossilized rivalries, but it could be embraced by the new, the brash powerhouse of its neighbor to the north—with this, yes, miracles can happen!

  Why, in circumstances far more dire, had not Frederick the Great of Prussia had his last-minute reprieve?

  The Salm-Salms’ dinner was canceled, however, when the news from Rome and Miramar left Maximilian unable to speak. And this was when Princess Iturbide nearly came to blows with Dr. Semeleder’s replacement, another Johnny-come-lately, that presumptuous Viennese Hebrew. Dr. Basch barred Maximilian’s bedroom door and refused to let Princess Iturbide—La Prima!—in to talk sense to Maximilian—it was outrageous!! But Father Fischer is wise to all of these things . . .

  Do not doubt it! For Princess Iturbide, and all those of the conservative party, Father Fischer’s words have been a comfort beyond price.

  As soon as the two princesses have left, Mrs. Yorke, whisking the dog hairs off her sofa, says, “I hardly know what to think.”

  She means, about Maximilian, but Madame Blanchot misunderstands. “They say she performed in a circus.”

  The Viscountess de Noue has arrived, shaking loose her mantilla, and with a toss of her head so that her earrings bobble, and with venomous delight: “In Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore!”

  The Viscountess de Noue slides onto the sofa next to Madame Blanchot. “When she married Salm-Salm in Washington, she told me, she did not speak German and he did not speak English.”

  “Ah ça!”

  Laughter all around. Soon Madame Bazaine and her aunt, Doña Juliana, take their leave, and the coterie switches to French, and a freer dissection of Princess Salm-Salm’s hapless groom, très ridicule, wrinkly codger, can’t go back to Europe because he owes money from Paris to Vienna, and so on. To listen to unkind gossip is not really Mrs. Yorke’s style, however. Much as it perturbs her to find herself and her daughters mixed into such uncertain society as with these queer adventurers—who knows, the “Salm-Salms” could be imposters, after all—she is anxious to glean what information she can, for they are all, all of them together, as she likes to say, in the same “tussie-mussie,” the same clutch of herbs and flowers and perhaps, well, some weeds, too. A terrible storm is descending upon them. Her plan: to leave Mexico under the protection of her son-in-law, Captain Blanchot, that is, with General Bazaine’s caravan, the last contingent of the French troops to evacuate, early in the new year.

  By the time her youngest, Sara, has returned from her morning’s excursion to Chapultepec, the small raisin cake, to its last crumb, has been eaten. The tea, though piping hot and served with limes, is so weak it tastes insipid. These days, tea is almost as costly as silver!

  Mrs. Yorke pours her visitors fresh cups.

  Sara, who went up to the castle with a party of French officers and curious friends, recounts what they saw: shirts left hanging in a closet; cupboard doors wide open, a plate of toast on a bedside table. The fine things, the carpets and paintings, tapestries, silver, most of the light fixtures and statuary, have all been removed. Birds were flying about the stairwell.

  They picture this in silence. They had all been invited, at one time or another, to a ball or one of the empress’s Monday tertulias in the palace downtown, but the castle, being the Imperial Residence, was unknown to these ladies, except from a distance. All of Mexico City, all of the entire Valley of Anahuac, in fact, had vantage points from which to see it there, emerging like a ship from its foamy sea of ahuehuete trees in the surrounding park below. Proud Chapultepec Castle, its windows sparkling in the sun, tufa pink at sunset, had always stood like a vault for a sovereign’s secret and beautiful dreams.

  “The thieves worked so fast?” Mrs. Yorke says.

  “Captain Blanchot said it was deliberate, everything had been carefully packed to be sent to Europe.”

  The viscountess says, “Yesterday, my coachman heard it from Princess Iturbide’s, that with his own eyes, he saw crates marked ‘To the Super-Intendant, Miramar Castle.’”

  Outside Mrs. Yorke’s window, a sudden rattle of wheels over the cobbles
tones. Then, the knife-sharpener’s shrill whistle and the fading cries of a vegetable-seller. Yet no one speaks, each communing with her own private reflections, fears, judgments, sympathies, disdains, which is to say, knitting into some semblance of logic a why, a how, and especially, whose fault it is that it has come to this sauve qui peut. The spell is broken, at last, by the hostess, who says something that surprises everyone, most of all herself:

  “Poor Princess Iturbide.”

  No one answers. No one likes Princess Iturbide.

  Mrs. Yorke trembles. An emotion she has not before acknowledged, in regards to the princess, wells up from her heart into her throat, which feels very tight. Four years ago, Mrs. Yorke’s own son, carrying a message for Mr. Thomas Corwin, was waylaid by bandits and murdered on the highway near Perote.

  “You—you have children, or you will, with God’s blessing. You have your whole lives in front of you.”

  The viscountess blinks. Little Sara takes in a sharp breath.

  Mrs. Yorke, embarrassed, looks away. Her eyes, moistly, rest on the piano. It is a handsome piece of furniture and though its innards would not impress a concert-hall maestro, one of the French officers billeted in her spare room keeps it in fine tune. Soon, she will be obliged to sell it, or give it away, and in the days to come, some desperate Mexican may hack it to bits for firewood . . . but for now . . . She pats her youngest’s hand, and, switching to English:

  “Sara, darling—” she gives her a gentle nudge. “Play us some Schubert.”

  In an hacienda outside Puebla, from an unseen corner of the back patio come the labored strains of a march by Chopin. In its dining room, a rustic hall, Maximilian, vaguely, in German:

  “It is the music, more than anything, that I miss.”

  Professor Bilimek, with sympathy, but unusual liberty: “The band, they do their best.”

  Maximilian gazes out the window, where Popocatépetl, but an hour ago, magnificently glistening, had disappeared behind mist. The view has been degraded to a muddy field and a herd of appallingly filthy sheep. He pokes a fork at Tüdos’s amuse-gueule of overripe melon and pickled nopal. Professor Bilimek and Dr. Basch try to buoy his spirits, which have never sunk so low . . . to the very waterline . . . no. . . .