Its great feature is the wonderful aviary, on the side away from the street, where dozens of the rarest and most gorgeous birds live together in peace and apparent happiness. Don Pedro, whose special hobby they are, showed them to me, but I only remember the names of a few, and a mass of flying, singing color. "Mexican caciques," the lovely yellow-and-black oriole of the tropics, most beautiful bluejays, much more gorgeous than ours, for to their brilliant coat of blue-and-white are added crests and plume-like tails--and _huacamaias_ and parrokeets, who made their part of the inclosure look like carnival time. Mr. Lefaivre took me out to the very elaborate tea, spread in an immense dining-room. The baby cloudburst, which in his victoria he got the full advantage of, and the continual destruction of French property in one part or another of the republic made him rather pessimistic. He says they always give him the fullest promises, when he lodges his complaints, and then nothing further happens any more than if he had lodged them _outre tombe_. Don Pedro has a bright-eyed, agreeable, clever daughter who helped her mother receive. She brought out a fine linen square on which we wrote our names to be embroidered by her nimble fingers later on. I feel about Lascurain a note of sincerity and a lack of personal aims and ambitions. Certainly nothing save patriotism could have led him to accept a place in the Cabinet. He has wealth and position, and only fatigues and uncertainties, storms and dangers, await him in the ship of state. Legation d'Autriche-Hongrie, _Sunday, June 9th_. Am writing this, as you see by the letter-head, at the Riedls', waiting for the picnic party to assemble. I am, unfortunately, always on time, a bad habit, and not cured by over a year of _mañana_. The R.s have a sun-flooded house on the corner of Havre and Marsella in the new part of town, and I am scribbling this at the desk in the drawing-room, done up in yellow brocade, flower-filled and comfortable, and with its reminiscences of other posts in the way of signed photographs and bric-à-brac. The chiffon scarfs arrived yesterday, having survived the temptations of the customs, the pink, blue, purple, and petunia, just as you had done them up. This is the land of scarfs. No lady is complete without one or many and I will baptize the "pink 'un" at Mr. Potter's to-morrow night at dinner. I never go anywhere Sunday evening, as after the all-day bouts in the country my sofa and my books are my best friends. We are to go out to Xochimilco and the clans are now approaching to the sound of motor-horns, etc. There will be a repacking in of merrymakers and baskets when all are assembled. _June 10th._