majority of Creoles, who believed only a monarchy could both restore civic stability and preserve their economic advantage. Backed by these two powerful Mexican blocs, France sent more soldiers and the war was on. The Juarez republicans achieved some early victories, the most noteworthy in Puebla—where a firebrand young officer and devoted Juarista named Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz gained renown for his battlefield valor. But only a year later the French were ensconced in the capital and Juarez was in refuge in Texas and Diaz was a prisoner of war— though he would soon escape and resume the fight. The year after that, the provisional government of conservatives and French interventionists declared Mexico a Catholic empire and persuaded Erzherzog Maximilian of Austria to accept the Mexican crown.
John Roger and Elizabeth Anne were among the witnesses on the fine day in May when Maximilian arrived in Veracruz on the SMS
Came the news of Appomattox. Shortly after which the reunited States of America warned the French to get out of Mexico. By then the tide had anyway turned against the monarchists in their war with Juarez, and the French—who had been losing battles to the forces of Porfirio Diaz—were swift to disengage, leaving Maximilian on his own. The abandoned emperor fled to Queretaro with the remnant of his imperial army and withstood siege by the Juaristas for one hundred days before surrendering. On a bright June morning in 1867, and notwithstanding the pleas of a number of European heads of state for Benito Juarez to spare him, Maximilian was stood before a firing squad and shouted “Viva Mexico!” before the rifles discharged into his heart. The following day, Porfirio Diaz liberated Mexico City from the last holdouts of the imperial army.
Thus was the Mexican republic restored. And thus did Porfirio Diaz become a national hero. In the course of the war he had twice been badly wounded and twice been captured and twice escaped. He had subsequently led his army in a series of spectacular victories, most of them against superior numbers. When he was told that Juarez, his estimable mentor, was jealous of his growing fame, Diaz dismissed such talk as foolish rumor. But when he congratulated Juarez on his triumphant return to Mexico City to resume his presidency, the little Indian snubbed him. The insult pained Diaz as much as it angered him, and the two men were evermore estranged.
In the autumn of that year, Diaz unsuccessfully challenged Juarez for the presidency. He was publicly gracious about the defeat, but his pride seethed.
A few months earlier, Amos Bentley had begun courting a comely eighteen-year-old Creole named Teresa Serafina Nevada Marichal, whom he had met at the wedding of a mutual friend. She was the only child of Victor Mordecai Nevada Oquendo, who owned a number of silver mines in western Veracruz state as well as the most lucrative gold mine in eastern Mexico. In addition to his high-country hacienda called Las Nevadas, that overlooked the mines, Don Victor owned a house in Jalapa and another in the heart of Mexico City.
At first, the don gave little import to young Bentley’s formal visits to his daughter in Jalapa. Teresa had been receiving suitors since the age of fifteen—the visits always conducted in the parlor and of course always overseen by her trio of duenas, the watchful old women Teresa referred to as the Three Black Crows. Thus far no aspirant beau had managed even slight purchase on the girl’s affections, and that had been fine with Don Victor. None of his sons had survived infancy and he was relying on his daughter to bear him a grandson to whom he would by one means or another bequeath legal title to the Nevada properties. But it was crucial that she choose her husband wisely, and he assumed that she shared his standards for a proper mate. As the beautiful and sole heir of an immensely rich man, she was an outstanding prize, and it was Don Victor’s ambition to see her wed into a family no less wealthy than her own and with no heirs but her husband. The first criterion did much to narrow the field of possible candidates, and the second reduced it to a very rare few. Yet Don Victor was optimistic that the right suitor would soon enough present himself. That she entertained so many admirers who stood no chance of gaining her hand was not so much a puzzle to him as an irritation. She had always been a quirksome girl and he supposed it gratified her vanity to receive even the most hopeless of wooers. Whatever the case, she had been motherless since the age of seven and had grown up under his guidance and so could be as headstrong as himself. He knew better than to argue with her if he could help it.
But as the months passed and Amos Bentley’s visits persisted, it became clear to Don Victor that Teresa was taking uncommon pleasure in the young gringo’s company and he began to sense the seriousness of things. But he had kenned to it too late. Before he could decide what to do, Teresa announced at breakfast one day that Amos had asked her to marry him and she was giving the question serious thought. Don Victor masked his apprehension with a fatherly smile and said, Of course. You are too kind to break a heart in any way but with gentleness. To know that you have given serious thought to his proposal will soften his disappointment at least a little.
Actually, she said, I think I love him.
Don Victor’s shock was exceeded only by his barely suppressed alarm. He did business with Yankees, yes, but business was a thing apart from personal emotions. He had in truth felt a great bitterness toward Americans ever since their invasion of his country. The only imaginable thing worse than an impoverished son-in-law was an impoverished gringo son-in-law. Over the next days he tried with calm logic to dissuade Teresa from accepting Amos’s proposal. He said it would be the gravest of mistakes to marry any man beneath her social station, and worse still one from another culture. But the more he argued against the marriage the more he could see by the set of her face that he was losing ground.
Then one morning she was decided. She told Don Victor she was going to say yes to Amos. There followed a loud and heated argument in which Don Victor only just did manage to restrain himself from forbidding the marriage outright, fearing she would make good on her threat to elope—a threat that did not waver even in the face of his counterthreat to disinherit her if she should marry without his permission.
She confided the entire argument to Amos, who in turn confided it to John Roger, admitting to him that he had gone weak in the knees when Teresa told him of the don’s warning of disinheritance. “I’m sure you can understand my concern, John,” he said. “I mean, of course I love her very much and admire her passionate nature and willingness to place love above all and so on and so forth, but one should not permit one’s emotions to supersede practical consideration entirely, should one?” John Roger smiled and said, “Not entirely, I shouldn’t think.” He understood the practical consideration Amos had in mind was the young lady’s birthright, which through marriage would of course also become his.
Don Victor at last offered his daughter a compromise. He would consent to the marriage on condition that she agree to a courtship period of one year to be followed by a formal engagement of yet another year. If she still wanted to marry Mr Bentley after the year of betrothal, they would have his full blessing.
Teresa insisted to Amos that they should refuse her father’s conditions. We must not permit him to make the rules for any part of our lives, she argued. If we do, we are no different from his peons, we are only better dressed and better fed. Please, my love, we don’t need anything from him.
Amos gently but with equal insistence entreated her to agree to the don’s terms. Her father was only trying to assure his only child’s happiness, Amos told her in his most earnest manner. By agreeing to Don Victor’s conditions, they would prove to him what she already knew—that he, Amos Bentley, loved her so much that he was willing to meet any stipulation to satisfy her father of the sincerity of his affection. Believe me, my love, said Amos, who had told her of his orphan childhood, I have long known the pain and loneliness of being without a family. You do not want to be estranged from the only family left to you. How much better if we can live in harmony with your father and preserve the family. Don’t you see? Don’t you agree? Isn’t that more reasonable?
She finally gave in. But not without a woeful suspicion that, in some vital aspect, Amos might not be so different from her father. A suspicion that, like her father—perhaps like all men—Amos was not averse to using any tactic necessary, with anyone, in order to have his own way.
In addition to the certainty that young Bentley would persuade Teresa to accept his conditions for their marriage, Don Victor fully expected that, at some point before the elapse of the two years, his daughter’s infatuation—he was certain it was no more than that—would come to an end and she would send the gringo
