Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/156

154 even the look of the page has that abrupt brevity of sentence which is so characteristic of the French novelist. In "El Cerro de las Campanas" he gives intense and dramatic expression again to the story of the "Usurpation." With only a thread of narrative to sustain interest, he places before us a careful résumé of the "episode of Maximilian." It is pleasant to note, that, in spite of evident and deep sympathy with the republic and the leaders of the people, he speaks of the hapless emperor more with sorrow than anger, and gives a touching pathos to the death-scene on the lonely "Hill of the Bells," which has so often moved the sympathy of strangers. His hatred and scorn are reserved for the Cæsar of the Tuileries, "who sacrificed on the altar of ambition an unfortunate and lovely princess, as well as the young Archduke of Austria, whose ensanguined corpse cries yet for vengeance from the imperial tomb at Vienna, wherein it waits the vivifying breath of the resurrection." Dramatist as well as artist, his actors naturally group themselves upon the stage of history or fiction; and each succession of scenes culminates in a tableau. The rush and power of his expression