I got home just in time to have a short rest, and then Mr. Malbran fetched me in his car and took me to Chapultepec Castle, which, by the way, is much prettier at night, lit up. We drove straight up to the front door,--no sentries attempted to stop us. It was like a deserted country house, and even with the front door wide open, there was no one about, and Mr. Malbran had to walk outside, to a guard or someone, and request that our arrival be announced. We waited for about ten minutes in a small Council Chamber on the right of the entrance, and then voices were heard. Mr. Malbran said “Here he is”--and I recognized at once, coming towards us, the one-armed General, whose face the newspapers have made familiar. He invited us to go upstairs to one of the reception rooms, and he led the way to a room where the chairs were covered with overalls, and stood all in a solemn row, except a tapestry sofa and centrepiece presented by Napoleon III, I suppose to Maximilian, and set in light yellow wood, and perfectly hideous. We three sat in this formal unlived-in room, and Mr. Malbran proceeded to be our interpreter for about an hour. Whenever I was being interpreted to the President, I had the chance of watching his face. His hair is thick and black, his rather flowing moustache tinged with grey. His face is round and fresh complexioned, he is powerfully built, but too stout. His right arm is cut off above the elbow, and every now and then he moves the stump, which gives the impression of a bird trying to use a broken wing. We had a fine battle of wits, which through an interpreter became so clear and acute that we all of us had finally to laugh over it. Talking through an interpreter is as bad as talking to a deaf person through an ear trumpet. I said I had come with the hopes of doing his portrait, that I regarded myself as an historian, and it was my idea to try and represent the people of my own day,--whatever country they belong to, so long as they have accomplished something. The President replied that he had not yet accomplished the things for which he represented the Mexican people, and that he felt too modest at present to allow himself to be done. There was only one thing he minded, and that was ridicule. “My people will think I am competing with the Venus of Milo!” he said, shaking his stump. He would not refuse me, however, and suggested merely a postponement of three years, to enable him in that space of time to “make good.”...