Although
to all appearance secure in the dictatorial chair, with a likelihood of
his soon converting it into a real throne, he had his misgivings about
this security. By imprisonments, executions, banishments, and
confiscations, he had done all in his power to annihilate the Liberal
party. But though crushed and feeble now, its strength was but in
abeyance, its spirit still lived, and might again successfully assert
itself. No man knew this better than he himself; and no better teacher
could he have had than his own life's history, with its alternating
chapters of triumph and defeat. Even then there was report of a
_pronunciamento_ in one of the northern cities of the Republic--the
State, by a polite euphemism, being still so designated. Only a faint
"gritto" it was, but with a tone that resembled the rumbling of distant
thunder, which might yet be heard louder and nearer.

Little, however, of matters either revolutionary or political was he
thinking now. The subject uppermost in his mind was that latent on his
lips--woman. Not in a general way, but with thoughts specially bent
upon one of them, or both, with whose names he had just been making
free. As his soliloquy told, a certain "Condesa" had first place in his
reflections, she being no other than the Condesa Almonte. In his wicked
way he had made love to this young lady, as to many others; but, unlike
as with many others, he had met repulse. Firm, though without
indignation, his advances not yet having gone so far, nor been so bold,
as to call for this. He had only commenced skirmishing with her; a
preliminary stroke of his tactics being that invitation to ride in the
State carriage extended to Dona Luisita Valverde, while withheld from
the Countess--an astute manoeuvre on his part, and, as he supposed,
likely to serve him. In short, the old sinner was playing the old game
of "piques." Nor did he think himself so ancient as to despair of
winning at it. In such contests he had too often come off victorious,
and success might attend upon him still. Vain was he of his personal
appearance, and in his earlier days not without some show of reason. In
his youth Santa Anna would claim to be called, if not handsome, a fairly
good-looking man. Though a native Mexican, a _Vera-cruzano_, he was of
pure Spanish race and good blood--the boasted _sangre-azul_. His
features were well formed, oval, and slightly aquiline, his complexion
dark, yet clear, his hair an