o shrank from his brutal proclamation demanding
submission. "Mexicans, you know me!" so ended the snarl. He gathered
forced loans. He drafted peons, though they were exempt. He emptied the
prisons, and convicts he sent in chains as recruits for the Imperial
garrisons. In such a fashion Leonardo Marquez began his duties as
generalisimo of the Empire.

"Your Excellency is most kind," said Jacqueline, for no other reason
than to annoy him by changing from French into his own language.

"On the contrary," returned Marquez, "I am flattered that you will be
here to observe how we, alone, shall crush the rebels. Your countrymen,
senorita, happily leave plenty of them. But I cannot believe that this
is why you remain."

"Make her tell you, then," interposed the helpless Ney. He was utterly
at sea. There was a trial of strength on between these two, but how or
for what was quite beyond him.

Jacqueline pushed back the Persian shawl she wore--this fifth day of
February was the Mexican springtime--and settled herself to the contest
in earnest. "I fear," she began slowly, "that my motive in staying can
hardly be intelligible, unless, perhaps, Your Excellency knows why I
came to Mexico in the first place. No senor, that blank smile of yours
will not serve. Your Excellency cannot feign ignorance of public
gossip."

"Of course, I have heard that----"

"To be sure you have," she returned dryly, "and you might add that I
failed, since Maximilian has not yet abdicated. But Your Excellency is
not one to imagine that the end can be long delayed."

She, too, was searching for a motive, his motive in the interview.

"The Mexicans alone will sustain our patriotic ruler," stoutly declared
the generalisimo. "But let us suppose, merely for pastime, that His
Majesty does abdicate. What then? What profit to France, since at this
moment, before our eyes, her army is leaving?"

Jacqueline smoothed the ruffled pleats on her full gray skirt. They
looked like an exaggerated railroad on a map, and doubtless needed
smoothing.

"And remotely supposing," she said, "that our army _might_ come
back again?"

Then, in a flash, she raised her eyes, and surprised the start he gave.
But she laughed at once, and at him, for taking her nonsense as serious.

"No," she exclaimed, "Your Excellency can more easily recall Santa Anna
from his island exile."

This, too, was nonsense, or so he was forced to consider it. But knowing
that the Empire could no