BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

320 BARBAROUS MEXICO
yet he was a party to her forced marriage. The marriage
did give him the more active support of the church,
it won Don Romero Rubio, but as for Lerdo, he was
obdurate. In his memoirs Lerdo prints some letters
from the unhappy Carmen, his god-child, to show how
her youth and innocence were employed as merchandise
in Diaz's mad barter for political security. One of these
letters, which also gives an interesting side-light on the
times, is as follows:
"Mexico City, Jan. 1, 1885.
"Sr. Lie. Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada.
"My Very Dear God-Father:—If you continue to be displeased
with Papa, that is no reason why you should persist in being
so with me; you know better than anyone that my marriage
with General Diaz was the exclusive work of my parents, for
whom, for the sake of pleasing them, I have sacrificed my heart,
if it can be called a sacrifice to have given my hand to a man
who adores me and to whom I respond only with filial affection.
To unite myself with an enemy of yours has not been to curse
you; on the contrary, I have desired to be the dove that with the
olive branch calms the political torments of my country. I do
not fear that God will punish me for having taken this step,
as the greatest punishment will be to have children by a man
whom I do not love; nevertheless, I shall respect him and be
faithful to him all my life. You have nothing, God-father, with
which to reproach me. I have conducted myself with perfect
correctness inside the social, moral and religious laws. Can
you blame the Archduchess Marie of Austria for uniting herself
with Napoleon? Since my marriage I am constantly surrounded
by a crowd of flatterers, so much the more contemptible
since I do not encourage them. They do not fail in anything
except in falling down on their knees and kissing my feet, as
happened with the golden princesses of Perrault. From the
deputation of beggars with whom I became acquainted yesterday
to the minister who begged a peseta in order to dine, on the
staircase ascending or descending, all mix together and trample
eah other under foot, entreating for a salute, a smile, a glance.
The same who in a time not so very remote would have refused