him was neither because of the prince, nor because
of the woman. It was much more hopeless than that. It was because a man
could be born a prince at all. Something was out of harmony in the
world. The irony of it made him grim, and to his sense of humor that
such things could be came the smile. A prince in the New World and in
the Nineteenth Century!--Now here was as incongruous a juxtaposition as
a bull in a crockery shop. And the result?--A people robbed of their
dignity as men; a spike among the cogs, and the machinery everywhere
grinding discordantly. For the pilfered people, however, the matter
could be righted, and Driscoll felt his vague wrath as one with theirs.
Together they would drive the bull from the shop. The Mexicans could
later repair _their_ crockery. But as to his own precious little
bit of bric-a-brac, that was shattered beyond hope. His only balm was to
help the other sufferers. His only resentment was against fatality. But
to pout at fatality is such a foolish business that he smiled, in a
gentlemanly, sardonic way. Lucifer himself would be obsequious before
fatality. And as for presuming to chastise it, that does indeed require
the devil's own mood.

CHAPTER XII

THE RENDEZVOUS OF THE REPUBLIC

"It may be short, it may be long,
'Tis reckoning-day!' sneers unpaid Wrong."
--_Lowell._

It was a long column that undulated over the cacti plain with the
turnings of the national highway. Men and horses bent like whitened
spectres under a cloud of saltpetre dust. They burned with thirst, and
had burned during fifteen days of forced marching over bad roads. They
kept their ranks after the manner of soldiers, else they would have
seemed a hurrying mob, for there was scant boast of uniforms. The
officers wore shoulder straps of green or yellow, and some of the men
had old military caps, high and black, with manta flaps protecting the
neck.

Except for an occasional pair of guaraches, or sandals, the infantry
trudged barefoot, little leather-heeled Mercuries who cared nothing for
thorns. Their olive faces, running with sweat, were for the most part
typically humble, patient under fatigue, lethargic before peril. Here
and there one held the hand of his soldadera, like him a stoic brown
creature, who shared his hardships that she might be near to grind his
ration of corn into tortillas. Veterans were there who had fought the
French at Puebla, and on coa