Life goes on here quietly, as far as I am personally concerned, but underneath it all there is the unmistakable beat and throb of changing governments, the passing of the old order, the beginning of the new, with all its potentialities. It is a many-colored background. I am sending an illustrated paper of the shooting done by the mob in my street, _La Semana Ilustrada_, which is printed at the other end of Calle Humboldt, as is also _La Prensa_, a newspaper belonging to Francisco Bulnes, the cleverest of the publicists here, and a star among the intellectuals. I am between the making of history and its annals. The _Courrier du Mexique_ and the _Mexican Herald_ I read daily. The _Courrier du Mexique et de l'Europe_ (_Ancien Trait d'Union_) was founded in 1849, and has survived many vicissitudes and many governments. Its files would make strange reading, with their succession of political hails and farewells--or rather farewells and hails. Gabrielle is doing very well, though she is suffering from _Heimweh_ for Vienna. The Austrian chargé sends me accumulations of the _Neue Freie Presse_ to sweeten what she calls "diese Mexico." The Indian maids are almost too good to be true. There's a dusting and a sweeping going on that would satisfy a better housewife than myself. I am quite in love with my street--it has so much for the eye, so much to intrigue the imagination. As I told you, just opposite is the Finance Ministry. Endless motors belonging to the old and new régime and the intermediate, the _Trait d'Union_ régime, fraternize in front of it. Diagonally across is the home of Diaz's son, Porfirio, who seems to have neither the talents nor the ambitions of his father. The house is a very Mexican-looking affair, though not after the good old models. It is a reddish pink, with superfluous cupolas and bay windows, all lined with pale blue. Great vines of the magenta-colored Bougainvillea, "the glory of Mexico," hanging everywhere, further enliven it. The tiny triangular garden also has various obstreperous and violent-colored botanical specimens. A little farther down the street, however, is the real gem, for there I perceived, in passing, storied Spanish-American life being enacted. It's a low one-storied house with heavily grated windows, only a couple of feet up from the street. Behind that grating I actually saw a pink-robed señorita sitting, with a flower in her hair and a letter, which I knew must have been a love letter, in her hand, all just as it ought to be, as far as local color is concerned.