Page:Juarez and Cesar Cantú (1885).djvu/35

, and his unimpeachable honesty, in order to attribute to him even the thought o£ setting a price upon the delivery of the body of Maximilian.

As Governor of the State of Oaxaca, as member of the Congress of the Union, as President of the Supreme Court, Secretary of State, and President of the Republic, JUAREZ was always the representative of Reform, the support of the Constitution, and the leader of the great national party. Throughout the long period of his exciting public life, he was at all times distinguished for his integrity, as for the simplicity of his habits, which won for him the praise of General Prim, who called him the modest President with the black coat, a phrase which the European press so often repeated afterwards. The man through whose hands the millions resulting from the Reform had passed, all of which wealth he viewed with indifference, was incapable of speculating by means of a body, even if this body were that of an Austrian Archduke.

The body of Maximilian, "says Sr Zamacois," was clothed in black, and laid upon cushions of velvet, in a rosewood coffin, so beautifully made that it displayed the fine taste and ingenuity of the constructor."

This was the manner in which the mortal remains of the Archduke were treated by the dishonourable, heartless oligarchy of which Cesar Cantú speaks. The coffin in which the body was deposited is the same in which the Archduke sleeps to-day the sleep of death in the Capuchin Convent in Vienna, which is the burying place of his family, and this fact is