Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/151

 durable, he committed suicide, leaving to the faithless one the poem, a part of which may be thus rendered: "Well, then, I have to say that I love you still, that I worship you with all my being. I comprehend that your kisses are never to be mine, that into your dear eyes I am never to look. . . . Sometimes I try to sink you into oblivion, to execrate you....But alas, how vain it is! my soul will not forget you. What will you, then, that I should do, oh, part of my life? What will you that I should do with such a heart?.... Oh, figure to yourself how beautiful might have been our existence together!... But now that to the entrancing dream succeeds the black gulf that has opened between us farewell! love of my loves, light of my darkness, perfume of all flowers that bloomed for me! my poet's lyre, my youth, farewell!"

If one try to select the most obvious trait in the native fiction it is undoubtedly patriotism. This patriotism is rampant in the press, and in the forms of official life. The authorities are Citizen President, Citizen General, and the like, as in the first French Republic, and they conclude their official documents with the formula: "Liberty In The Constitution." The usurpation of Maximilian served to bind the country into a certain unity and awake this feeling to its utmost. Two romancers, General Riva Palacio, and Juan Mateos, have made use of the events of the French invasion in a curious class of bulky novels, to call them so, which have scored a popular success. "The Hill of Las Campañas," and "The Sun of May," of Mateos, are respectively more or less authentic accounts of the final defeat and execution of Maximilian, and the defence of