As long as I live his figure will be to me the sign and symbol of nostalgia, as he stood in the small launch, his head bared under the brilliant sky, the bright spot of his red necktie accenting the whiteness of his hair, watching with longing eyes the ship turned toward the land which had given him birth, and which he in return had made great and honorable among nations. IV First reception at Chapultepec Castle--First bull-fight--A typical Mexican earthquake--Madero's triumphal march through Mexico City--Three days of adoration _June 4th._ Yesterday we went to the De la Barras' first reception, a tea neither formal nor informal, at beautiful Chapultepec, lifted high up on the historic hill overlooking the city and the beauteous valley, in its gorgeous setting of mountains and volcanoes. There is a pretty grotto-like modern entrance at the foot of the hill which takes visitors to the elevator, a shaft pierced in the rock, and from the darkness one steps suddenly on to the enchantment of the terraces with their matchless view. There is a winding road which takes longer, ending at the great iron gateway of the military school, and one must cross the broad terrace, where the cadets are walking about or drilling. Madame de la Barra, herself a widow, the sister of the President's first wife, has only been married a few months, and is smiling, fair, and un-Mexican-looking, of Swiss descent. She was daintily dressed in some sort of beige chiffon with pearls about her neck, and had easy, pleasant manners. There was no chance for conversation. The whole Diaz set, with very few exceptions, has vanished, not into thin air, but into retirement or Europe, and society will have to be reorganized from new elements. These new elements did not seem at first view to be very malleable. A circle of iron, in the shape of ladies--old, middle-aged, and young--kept formed about Madame de la B., and I was wedged in, for quite a while, between a granddaughter of Juarez wearing, among other things, a huge and, it appears, historic emerald pendant, and a young, inquiring-looking woman. I mean inquiring for these climes, where external phenomena only remotely give rise to speculation. She was in a décolleté mauve passementerie-trimmed gown, with a train--what we would call an evening dress. The experienced foreign diplomats mostly kept outside the circle. Mr. de la B. was moving about the beautiful flower-planted terraces, smiling, suave, _homme du monde_, as well as President of Mexico, but the skein from which he is to knit the national destinies is somewhat tangled. He and Mr. Wilson were colleagues in Brussels. Now the turn of the wheel has made him President, and Mr. Wilson ambassador.