Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/324

312 In one room there is a pile of boxes filled with patents of nobility, diplomas of orders of military merit, and certificates, conferring the order of Guadaloupe of Mexico, on hundreds of persons, already signed and sealed by Maximilian and his ministers. I was permitted to carry away some of these, as curiosities, and the whole will doubtless be eventually scattered over the world in the same manner. Who wants an imperial decoration cheap as dirt?

In another room I counted eighty-five large, brass-bound, oaken chests, some of them of immense size, all of which bore the imperial arms and cypher, and now contain, or once contained, the silver and golden plate which was manufactured in Europe for the imperial table. In the scenes of wild confusion which followed the downfall of the empire, much of this plate was stolen by servants, or otherwise disappeared; but a great quantity still remains, and I cannot but wonder that the Government of the Republic does not, in its present exigencies, melt it all up at once, and make an end of it. Every piece of this plate bears the royal monogram, and much of it appears never to have been used.



In another room I saw the English china dinner-service, in white and gold, which adorned the tables at Chapultepec and the palace in the city, each piece of which bears the monogram of