One enters Texcoco by a broad, broken street leading into the Plaza. Interspersed too liberally between the once handsome low dwellings are the pink-and-blue pulque-shops, with their fringes of colored tissue-paper. The names of these depositories of the _licor divino_ are often curiously bound up with the history of Mexico, and make you feel you have got hold of the "real thing." _La Hija del Emperador_[4] and _La Reina Xochitl_, a beauteous patrician, married to a Toltec king, go back to prehistoric days. _El Gran Napoleon_, with cocked hat and hand in his breast, painted almost life-size on a corner shop, was more picturesque than the one that had a hand in the making of their history. _La Mujer del Moro_ gives the Moorish touch, and _La Estrella del Mar_ recalls the buccaneers as well as the ages of faith. There was a very good one near the little viceregal bridge, with its battered coat of arms, just before we got into Texcoco, called _Las Bergantinas_, in memory of the spot where Cortés launched his brigantines in his attempt to take Mexico City, which then was only reached from Texcoco by water. I feel on quite intimate terms with the conqueror. It is Cortés here, and Cortés there, and Cortés everywhere. He put his seal on the whole country, and one walks quite intimately and enthusiastically with him. He was such a human sort of person, and with all his adventurous spirit very _grand seigneur_. Bernal Diaz tells how well and smartly he dressed, being very particular about his linen, under dark, rich garments, and inclining to a fine gem somewhere on his person, and how pleasantly he played cards, with little jokes running through it all. It reminds me of bridge evenings with the _chers collègues_. But all is historic on this lovely plateau. They can pull down everything and wash it in the most modern of blood, and the scent of ancient and adventurous deeds will hang round it still. The valley was swimming in a sort of gauzy luminosity, not just light; the volcanoes, well washed yesterday afternoon, were at their most beautiful. We could not bear to turn homeward and went out through the old town, which had also enjoyed a viceregal popularity, as fine old doors and glimpses of vistas into large courtyards showed.