Prince Philippe didn’t agree with the extreme measures they were subjecting his sister to.
“Carlota’s no danger to herself,” he said. “She’s just tired, overwhelmed by recent events.”
“It’s likely, yes. The trigger for her insanity was probably the pressure of the journey to Paris and Rome.”
“Forgive me, Doctor, but don’t you think those causes too feeble to make a healthy twenty-six-year-old woman lose her mind?”
“You’d be surprised, Count. Women are especially prone to madness; all that’s needed is for the right trigger to be pulled.”
Riedel was the kind of physician who preferred to amputate rather than clean the wound. He imposed discipline more suited to a prisoner. Carlota, who was perfectly aware of everything, said to him one day, “I shut myself in here because it’s what Max wants. Not because of you.”
She woke at seven o’clock in the morning and went to sleep at nine o’clock at night, like an infant. She had bread and butter for breakfast with a white coffee. They gave her very little to eat, almost starving her, to see whether extreme hunger would stop her fear of being poisoned. She wasn’t permitted to read. She was allowed to write letters, paint, play the piano, and stroll a little in the afternoon, always escorted by Bombelles. She was also forced to take long baths in warm water to relax her.
Philippe, exasperated, saw how her imprisonment, far from making her better, plunged Carlota into a state of utter desperation. One day, consumed with guilt, he took it up with Bombelles.
“There’s no doubt that her husband’s impotence has impacted my sister’s health.”
Bombelles, halfway through pouring himself a glass of cognac, froze.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Count.”
Philippe stood directly in front of him. He didn’t want to give him the opportunity to evade his gaze.
“You understand very well, Charles. Maximilian has never touched her.”
Bombelles ran one of his hands through his bangs.
“Idle talk from ill-meaning people, my lord. I know on good authority that the emperor is perfectly capable.”
Philippe scrutinized him.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, my lord, the emperor has been with Mexican women. And, well, it seems he even has a son, a bastard.”
The Count of Flanders served himself a drink.
“And where is this boy?”
“Apparently the emperor entrusted him to a family in Orizaba.”
Philippe was speechless. If it was true, why in hell’s name hadn’t Maximilian procreated with his sister? She wasn’t infertile, as people said; that was clear now.
Bombelles, taking advantage of the situation, ventured to ask, “Forgive my forwardness, but why the doubt? If not Maximilian, to whom does the child that the empress is expecting belong?”
Philippe remained silent for a moment, as did Bombelles. Then the count spoke.
“That is precisely the doubt that plagues me. Carlota won’t dare say. You, on the other hand, seem to watch her very closely.”
“Are you asking me to betray her?”
“I’m asking you to help her.”
Bombelles held his glass to his lips and took a good swig. Then he added, “I’ll do what I can, my lord.”
Philippe stayed with her for a few days, but for some time now Carlota’s behavior toward him had been different. She was hard and cold. As much as he tried to behave normally, the truth was he had to make an enormous effort to endure Carlota’s gaze, scrutinizing him from the other side of the table. He tried to talk about banal things, and she tormented him.
“You must be happy, having locked me in here to turn me into a puppet you can move at will,” she said to him in all seriousness.
“You’ve barely eaten a thing,” Philippe said, changing the subject.
“Are you worried I won’t ingest all the poison?”
Philippe despaired.
“For the love of God, Carlota. Nobody’s trying to poison you!”
And unperturbed, she replied, “I know exactly what Leopold and you intend to do with me. You want to drive me out of my mind. What have I done to deserve your resentment? Is it my money?”
Every day they had the same conversation. Sometimes Philippe was hopeful that the paranoia wouldn’t manifest as they were having a normal meal together; then suddenly, something happened, and Carlota began to accuse him, to tell him to leave her in peace, to free her, that she wanted to return to Mexico to die by Maximilian’s side.
On occasion, Philippe wondered whether Carlota was right, and everyone was mad except her. He was constantly plagued by doubt: he’d seen what Leopold intended to do to her and thought that, if he were in her shoes, perhaps he would see things, too. One afternoon, anxious and tormented, he kissed Carlota on the forehead, embraced her for a long time, not saying a word in case he woke her demons, and then, almost breaking down in tears, he left and never returned.
Carlota never imagined that Leopold II, her Machiavellian brother, was plotting meticulously to declare her marriage void on suspicion of failing to consummate; that way, Carlota’s entire fortune, in the event of mental derangement, would go to her brothers and not her husband. Everything would remain in the house. The marital bond had to be broken urgently. Under these circumstances, a child couldn’t come into the world: nobody could witness Carlota becoming a mother.
One by one, the members of the Mexican delegation were sent away from Miramare. At first they believed the dismissal was due to some passing malaise; they’d followed her all the way from Mexico, and they weren’t going to turn their backs on her now. But weeks passed, and whenever someone asked to see the empress, the door was closed in their face. Manuelita del Barrio insisted in every way possible on seeing her sovereign. With her requests denied, she stayed with her husband in a village near Trieste, in case her presence was required.
“It’s very strange,” Manuelita said to her husband. “Why won’t they let us see her? Why won’t she write?” Her anguish grew. “Do you really think she’s mad?”
“I don’t know,” her husband replied. “You saw her in Rome. She was erratic, absent-minded.”
“Yes, a little,” she said. “But mad? No one thought she had any kind of problem with her mind before. And what if . . . ?”
“What if what?”
“What if they really are conspiring against her? Doesn’t it seem strange that they won’t let us see her? A few days ago, nobody cared whether she stayed or returned to Mexico, and now they’re suddenly keeping her under guard, hiding her from us. Why?”
The Barrios waited longer than others. A few returned to Mexico, anxious about the uncertainty into which the empire had been plunged. But the Barrios knew that, if they went back, they would be signing their death sentence. Without the French troops, the road would be clear for Benito Juárez, and there was only one possible punishment for those who had collaborated with the foreign enemy.
“We can’t return,” Manuelita said to her husband one day. “They’ll execute us, and we can’t stay here and wait forever.”
“Spain,” her husband suggested.
With anguish and uncertainty in their hearts, they packed their shattered dreams and left for the Iberian Peninsula. No Mexican saw the empress again after Rome. Carlota disappeared as if by magic, imprisoned in the little garden house like a fairy-tale princess. Only Charles de Bombelles, Dr. Riedel, Mathilde Döblinger, and a chambermaid named Amalia Stöger remained with her. Until one day, months later, the empress gave birth in isolation from the world.
39
Since her arrival in Mexico, one of the matters that concerned Carlota most was the condition of the natives. They weren’t slaves, but they were tied to the haciendas with chains as strong as those of the blacks in the United States. The empress thought the reports must have been exaggerated by impassioned minds, but when all the French emissaries she sent to the haciendas returned with the same storie
s, her heart, accustomed to severity, trembled with rage. They told her that the men were flogged until they bled, the wounds so deep that fingers could be inserted in them, just as Saint Thomas did with the wound in Christ’s side. They told her entire families died of starvation, and that they were subjected to forced labor until they dropped—or died—from exhaustion. And once dead, they weren’t given Christian burials, but cast into holes in the ground like stray dogs. They wore rags because they bought the cloth at extortionate prices from the landowners. As if that weren’t enough, they were forced to buy food at higher-than-market prices.
“How much did you say they are paid?”
“For fourteen hours’ work, they receive less than a peso, Your Majesty.”
“And there’s no priest who protects these people from this treatment?”
“They’re made to pay exorbitant prices for the sacraments, Your Majesty. Only the landowner can afford to pay for them.”
“But that is outrageous!”
“The priests exploit the natives’ superstitious credulity, my lady.”
“This won’t be tolerated. Not in the empire,” said Carlota.
And she set to work. In August 1865, taking advantage of one of Maximilian’s many periods of absence, Carlota sought the approval of the ministers on the matter. The men were faced with a determined woman with much less patience than the emperor. At first, they believed it would be easy to persuade her: the Conservatives weren’t interested in changing a situation that benefited them. Why change something that worked well? Someone had to work the land; they needed labor, whatever the cost. Maximilian would assemble his ministers, make them set out the pros and cons of every proposal one by one, and the meetings were endless. They went over the matter until agreements were reached, often more out of exhaustion than persuasion. The ministers thought that Carlota would be the same. A pushover.
Carlota asked Constanza and Manuelita, her most trusted ladies of the court, to remain at the back of the room in case they were needed. Finally, Constanza thought, finally the moment she’d been waiting for had arrived. Carlota was beginning to let her in. Manuelita, on the other hand, complained.
“I don’t see why we have to be present for matters of state.”
“Ay, Doña Manuelita, this is the first time I’ve seen you unhappy with an instruction from the empress,” Constanza said to her.
“And why wouldn’t I be! These are men’s things. They’re nothing to do with us. This is not what ladies are for.”
For a moment, Constanza was reminded of her brother Joaquín; she was used to hearing men look down on women in matters outside the domestic sphere, but to hear a woman putting herself down was something else, and she didn’t like it. Still, she tried to act natural.
“Cheer up, Doña Manuelita. We’ll have some hot chocolate afterward.”
“And we shall need it! The empress has summoned us for six in the morning! Let’s pray she doesn’t make it a habit, or it’ll take years off me!”
“I hope she doesn’t make us stand behind her,” Constanza said to needle her, and Manuelita crossed herself to ward off the demon of aching legs.
Carlota appeared before the council of ministers the next morning at six sharp, bringing all the relevant documents that she’d already studied. She had archives, maps, statutes . . . everything necessary, learned in detail with the help of the people in the palace she considered most competent. Constanza sharpened her senses so she wouldn’t miss a detail. She even memorized the outfit the empress had chosen, a dark, sober dress that made the ladies feel ashamed of their own bright and ostentatious dresses. She memorized the names of the ministers and tried to record each of their faces: the one with the white moustache, the one with thick sideburns, the one with round spectacles. She checked the time when the meeting began and registered what was on the table. Everything. Anything she could use later to give a detailed account of what would be said there.
“Gentlemen, this is what we’re going to do,” the empress said without even saying good morning. “We’re going to sign a decree to improve the natives’ working conditions.”
The men were astounded at the empress’s determination, which gave no occasion for objections. Some of them adjusted their shirt collars, as if suddenly feeling stifled. She went on.
“To prevent the workers from falling into debt, landowners won’t be permitted to lend more than thirty francs.”
“Your Majesty—”
“I haven’t finished, Minister. Children will be freed from their parents’ debts.”
“Your Majesty, if you will allow me—”
“I haven’t finished, Minister. A decent wage will be guaranteed.”
“But, Your Majesty—”
“The next person to interrupt me will be relieved of his duties,” Carlota said in all seriousness.
The room was silent.
Constanza also held her breath. She’d never seen a woman, not even her mother, speak with such authority. For a moment, she forgot her hostility toward the empire and thought that, had she not already been on her feet, she would have stood to applaud her.
Carlota continued.
“Working hours will be reduced, and, under penalty of imprisonment, corporal punishment will be prohibited.”
The silence that gripped the room for a few seconds was thicker than jelly. Carlota observed her ministers one at a time. Some looked down, unable to endure the severity of her gaze. Others thought they were facing some kind of witch capable of reading their minds, and fought to keep out any impure or scornful thoughts.
Then, the empress said, “After close examination, I believe we must bring these provisions into law. What do you say?”
The most senior minister ventured to speak.
“Perhaps we should wait for the emperor to return to address an issue of such magnitude.”
Carlota burned inside, but on the outside it did not show.
“Delaying will not help; either the provisions are viable, or they are not.”
“Your Majesty, what you’re proposing is impossible.”
“‘The word impossible is not French,’ Napoleon used to say.”
“Perhaps we could try another way, negotiate with the land-owners . . .”
“I will not countenance that. If we can’t fit something through the door, we will certainly not force it through the window.”
Nobody dared contradict her and, after a moment’s hesitation, they began to nod their heads with some enthusiasm.
To Manuelita’s delight, the meeting didn’t take even fifteen minutes, and she thought she would soon be able to drink the hot chocolate she’d been thinking about since she opened her eyes. She was sorely mistaken, for that was just one of the matters Carlota intended to deal with that morning.
Constanza, on the other hand, would have liked to prolong each minute. Something stirred inside her. What had just happened? What could the empress know about the suffering of the native Mexicans, bled dry for so many years? The empress was deciding matters that didn’t belong to her, without knowing, without being acquainted with the reality of Mexico, and it was with this conviction that Constanza was there, to help from the little trench she could dig for herself inside Chapultepec. In fact, the night before, she had barely slept, devising ways to get the information she obtained out of the palace. She couldn’t write letters, because if they were intercepted for any reason, it would be the end of her. She remained unsure how to do it, and was awaiting instructions from the Liberales, while she wove a shroud that she undid each night like Penelope. And then suddenly this: what she’d just witnessed had left her on tenterhooks. No Liberal could have done it better.
Weren’t the Conservatives there to maintain the status quo? Weren’t Catholics, apostolic and Roman? But Carlota, who was steering the ship, was neither fragile nor tractable in the slightest. Could her father be right that what Mexico needed was to be governed by a foreign monarch? But Carlota wasn’t the emperor: she was the emp
ress consort, though she was clear thinking and had courage in her heart. Betrayed by these thoughts, Constanza suddenly felt something resembling pride. And without knowing for certain what to expect, she decided to observe Carlota from a different angle.
When Carlota reigned, she took an interest in all matters of government. A commander had to provide her with a daily report, and she could summon him if she considered it necessary. She was convinced that strict administrative efficiency was needed to govern Mexico, and she would use all the tools she had: the symbolism of her position, as well as contact with her subjects.
Constanza looked on in astonishment as laws were adopted that scandalized many people, including Doña Manuelita, who prayed in secret for the emperor to return before everything got out of hand. Carlota legalized prostitution because, she said, it was a public health issue. She created the San Juan de Dios Hospital, where women who sold their bodies underwent periodic medical examinations. Constanza accompanied her there and was surprised to see the empress sit and talk with the prostitutes. She cared about them, about the dangers of their profession. Listening carefully, Constanza saw that Carlota treated them all with dignity, paying no heed to their rank or their sins. The empress calmly explained that to practice, they had to have a photograph taken, which would be placed on an identity card with their name, age, previous occupation, address, and whether they worked in a brothel or were self-employed. Constanza recalled the day she went with her mother to the civil registry. There are two Mexicos, Constanza, she had said.
“The other Mexico,” she repeated through clenched teeth.
She returned to the palace with her mind spinning after spending the day visiting hospices, schools—for which a decree had been issued making primary education free and compulsory—and music academies. Every evening she had to endure Manuelita’s volley of complaints. She was beginning to grow weary of the woman’s two faces: she agreed to everything in front of the empress, but once her back was turned, she criticized even the clothes she wore.
“Can you believe how many young girls there were at that hospital for fallen women? The shamelessness! The empress shouldn’t lower herself to helping those girls. It’s a disgrace. A member of the royalty shouldn’t assist women in that condition. She will undermine the empire’s cause. The empress is too obliging. Shameful, it’s shameful having to set foot in those places, to talk to those women. What a disgrace!”
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