Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/231

Rh At this moment the gallop of a horse rang on the stone causeway, and almost at the same moment a young lad, about fifteen years of age, bounced into the room. By his military cap a kind of beret, ornamented with a profusion of gold lace, as well as his uniform I immediately discovered that he was a cadete (cadet).

"Every thing goes on swimmingly, gentlemen," cried he; "the colonel is coming to receive his general's commission. This evening his division reached Cordova. Valencia is advancing. In three days we shall be masters of Mexico, and then I shall be alferez!"

All in the room sprang to their feet; and I asked the lieutenant, by a motion of my eye, what I should do.

"Do you still wish to leave?"

It was evident that I was witnessing the first act of some new revolution which was about to take place, and that I was a spectator of some of those little scenes which serve as the prelude to some grand event.

Among the numerous causes which have tended to exhaust the public exchequer in Mexico, and contributed to isolate the country from European progress, the most deplorable and the most striking are, without contradiction, those which prevail in the military executive. In a country whose geographical position effectually preserves it from all rivalry with neighboring nations, the army was, it may be said, disbanded at the declaration of independence, but in a short time afterward it sprang again into existence. Unhappily, the heads of the new republic only looked to that power as an instrument for executing its own ambitious designs. Since then, a warlike mania has seized a people that had been pacifically disposed for