General Crozier comes for dinner on Wednesday. We have just lunched at Stalewski's (the Russian minister's), and he served the delicious _blinis_ with caviar that all expect when lunching there. He often takes remote journeys into the interior, coming back with a silver ingot and curious bits of carving. The diplomatic species always dream dreams, and his is to tread again the streets of Berne. In the evening Captain Sturtevant, our military attaché, gives a dinner at the American Club for General Crozier. _Later._ I have spent a last delightful evening with Prescott, and Humboldt is waiting in five attractive, clearly printed old volumes, Paris, 1811, that Mr. de S. brought me yesterday. Now, just a century after, I am to turn the pages. I have also some volumes of Alaman, who brings things down to 1846. I forgot to speak about my Spanish teacher, with whom I have been studying as well as "Castellano." Her mind is about as mobile and receptive as a tin saucepan upside down, and she is always late. Sometimes her watch stops, sometimes the tramcar won't stop, sometimes she forgets her purse or her keys, and has to go back, etc. She is still young, heavily powdered, insistently perfumed, big-busted, tightly laced, tightly skirted, and keeps a very short foot in a tight, high-heeled slipper in front of her. She hates the sun, as I discovered when I tried to have the first lessons in the sunny corridor. This morning she told me in a lackadaisical, dreamy way that the noise of the typewriter (she has some sort of afternoon office work, for which she is doubtless totally unfitted) was not good for her; that she had been thinking over things, and had concluded that, if I would arrange it, introducer of foreign ladies to the President's wife was what she was fitted for. She said I probably did not realize what temptations the _despacho_ office offered. I dare say she has met a few devils in her day. She wound up by saying that the society of ladies would be less of a strain. It was all done quietly; she has evidently dreamed dreams. She did not streak her face when she wept, dabbing her large black eyes carefully with a coarse lace handkerchief drenched with cheap scent. I explained as gently as I could that the position she was thinking of was filled by the _chef du protocole_. Though, without doubt, her life is completely commonplace, she gave me the feeling of really not understanding anything at all about her, and that is one of the charms of Mexico. An illusion of elusiveness is continually presented that keeps one on the chase for the pleasure of the chase. You never get anything or anywhere, but your interest is kept up--which, after all, is the great thing.