Huasteca miser!
Well, well, well, and so you are that rich old hacendado who never gave
even a fanega of corn to Republic or French either, unless frightened
into it? But hombre, we've had _big_ sums from the Chaparrito, and
all unasked!"

And yet must it still be true, yet must even this contrast accord. El
Chaparrito had indeed given munificently. But in each case it was to
bridge a crisis. As the shrewdest general he knew a vital campaign, and
aided, if need be. But on a useless one the Republic's soldiers might
starve, might freeze, might bleed and die, without ever the most
niggardly solace ever reaching them from El Chaparrito. Economy was
applied to vengeance, and made it unspeakably grim.

"Once though," Juarez pursued, "you all but lost your Maximilian? I mean
last fall when he started for the coast. He could have escaped to
Europe."

"I know," said Murguia quietly, "but I was near him. If he had not
turned back, I would have done it myself."

"It?"

"The justice which Your Excellency has just postponed three days."

"Dios mio, but our Chaparrito is a dangerous person! He'd have to be
locked up if Maximilian were pardoned."

"But--but Your Excellency will not pardon him!"

"To be sure, I had forgotten. I am to be given a memory. Well?"

"Your Excellency remembers, he remembers Zacatecas?"

"Last February? Certainly I do. Miramon came, but a warning from El
Chaparrito, from you, came first, and a last time I escaped. As it was,
I was reported captured, and I sometimes wonder what Maximilian would
have done had that report been true."

"If I should tell you, senor?"

"Ah, that is beyond even you, since Maximilian has never had the chance
to decide my fate."

"But he did decide, senor. He got word that you were taken at Zacatecas,
and at once he sent orders to Miramon as to your treatment. But Miramon
was already defeated, already fleeing to Queretaro."

"And the orders, the orders from Maximilian?"

"They never arrived. They were intercepted. They--yes, here they are,
but before reading them, will Your Excellency promise to imagine himself
in Miramon's power?"

"I would, naturally. Come, senor, hand them over."

It made curious reading, that weather-blotched dispatch. For Don Benito
Juarez it was reading as curious as a man may ever expect to come by. In
the handwriting of his prisoner, he read his own death sentence.

"Your--Your Excellency sees?" Murguia stammered hungrily.

"H'm, what