be exact the schedule prepared in his business office in the Mexican capital on January 1, 1913, showed a total of $4,791,885.18 (Mexican).

It would appear, therefore, that the story of a violent quarrel with Diaz over the Martinez del Rio affair must be disregarded, and that another explanation must be found for Limantour's absence from Mexico City for more than eight months- July 11, 1910, to March 20, 1911 — in which period the revolution of Francisco Madero became a serious peril to the State, and the attitude of the government at Washington toward that of Diaz underwent so great and significant a change.

Never before during his tenure of office had Limantour absented himself for so long a time, and never had his government so needed his guiding hand. He was in close touch with Mexican affairs during the entire period. Seventy-one neatly labelled letter files standing side by side on the topmost row of shelves in his library with its red leather fittings, its beautiful Gobelin tapestries, and pleasant windows overlooking the Avenue Victor Hugo in Parisare filled with Mexican correspondence, by cable and mail, for those months. It is surely remarkable that thus informed he should have remained abroad, even upon an errand important to his country's credit, while influences were at work on the other side of the ocean to undermine the government on whose stability that credit in a great measure depended.

The truth seems to be that the departure and protracted absence of the ablest financier and statesman that Mexico ever possessed were due to a sense of injury. There is a kind of self esteem which partakes of the nature of vanity without descending to the trivial; and Limantour is full of it. He was influenced thereby to choose the task abroad which would round out his own career, and to abandon

other tasks at home which involved humiliations and the unbearable annoyance of small, daily defeats at the hands of inferiors. Such contention often induces in men of large capacity and fine fiber a nauseating discouragement which causes them to fail by default, while success lies easily within the scope of their powers. There had been no mortal quarrel between Limantour and Diaz, though I scent a graver disagreement than I am able to substantiate by proof; but what certainly had taken place was quite as influential with the Finance Minister as the fabled threats of vengeance and hurling of canes would have been.

Limantour's hold upon the dictator as his one really capable adviser had been weakening for many months, and early in the year 1910 the truth became too plain to be ignored. It was then that he laid his plans for an extended absence. The railway merger was completed; he would undertake a new labor in the refunding of the national debt to a four per cent. basis, putting the credit of his country on a par with that of leading nations, and by the same stroke establishing his own fame- for the bankers with whom he must deal would represent the world's financial judgment, and their acceptance of the refunding plan would be in effect an endorsement of Limantour's life work, his record of sixteen years as Minister of Finance. It was along the lines of his policy that Mexico had advanced to so strong a position in the money market of the world. His three conspicuous achievements, the method by which the parity of the peso was maintained, the system for the issue and control of the circulating medium, and the merger of the railways would all be covered by this certificate of approval. Here was undoubtedly a tempting prospect, with small risk of misadventure.

His position as chief counselor to Diaz had become so difficult that some of his most loyal friends had advised him

to resign from the cabinet and give the dictator a chance to find out who was the strong man in Mexico. By others he had been urged to offer himself as a candidate in the elections of 1910 in opposition to the perennial president. There is no evidence that he considered seriously either of these courses, surely not the latter. More definitely than his friends were aware of he had made up his mind to leave Mexico for a while. Doubtless the weaker part of him ached for rest; he had toiled more than seven years on the merger and its numerous sequels, with plenty of work besides, all the time; but his own unwavering assertion that the need of relaxation and change was the determining factor of his choice to go away must be taken with many grains of salt.

As has already been said he desired to escape from little enemies who had gained the ear of the aged chief of the state. Among the opposing advisers were certain relatives of Madam Diaz, persons newly arisen to appreciable influence, and with them desiccated veterans who had long been impotently jealous of the Finance Minister's power at court. The merger had been a great help to all of them, because it touched upon a weakness in the dictator, to whom all matters pertaining to finance on a large scale were an impenetrable mystery. He had never in all his long life been able to set down ten million pesos in figures that could be depended upon for accuracy and legibility; they would fail in one or the other particular, often in both, if a decision on such a point might be hazarded; and for this reason the discussion of the merger with him had been attended by difficulties. These interminable problems with their prodigious sums rising beyond a billion were sources of infinite irritation to Porfirio Diaz; and if ever he really threw his cane at Limantour it was probably upon some question of arithmetic.

When he gave his consent to placing the government's guarantee on three hundred and twenty million pesos of National Railway bonds, he made a leap into the unknown which startled him, and his misgivings with regard to this act were used by Limantour's malicious critics to lower the Finance Minister in the dictator's esteem. The result of this was made manifest in certain acts of Diaz affecting state governments, executed without consulting Limantour, a slight which the latter felt very keenly.

For these reasons, Limantour, in the beginning of the summer of 1910, was not well disposed toward participating in the Centennial celebrations of September, and no doubt he hurried his departure because of these coming events. In the official etiquette of Mexico the Finance Minister ranks seventh in the order of precedence. There were many banquets and receptions on the centennial program at which special ambassadors and dignitaries from all over the world would be present, and it is said that Limantour was not pleased at the prospect of being constantly on exhibition seven covers distant from the chief. Moreover, there were features of the celebration as planned which did not meet with Limantour's approval, wholly apart from his disinclination to figure in them in a minor rôle.

There is reason to believe that Porfirio Diaz saw his Finance Minister depart on his refunding errand with sentiments akin to those which a man who looms large in business affairs experiences at parting with a mother-in-law who has made his house her home. For a time at least the relief from restraint would be gratifying. Diaz could do as he pleased without speculating on the thought behind the penetrating eyes of José Yves Limantour.

It is beyond doubt that Diaz failed to understand his position. He was in his eightieth year and the thirtieth of his reign. His powers had greatly declined, far

more than he himself was aware, for he was no less deceived than the outside world by the incessant chorus of flattery which had so long sounded in his ears. The spectacle of a ruler surrounded by sycophants is one of the most familiar in history, but the courtiers of Diaz possessed the immense advantage of modern business methods; they were in effect a corporation, a trust, admirably compact as to the central body, and for a long time fortunate in the weakness and incoherence of the opposition. To exalt Porfirio Diaz was a business policy, which had been carried out with such ability and persistence that it deceived all nations including the one which was being exploited, and the man who sat upon its throne.

The truth is that Mexico began to outgrow Diaz in the nineties. Let it be admitted that as a ruler of a monarchy masquerading as a republic he showed distinguished ability; that his system of Diaz-appointed state governors, and governor-appointed jefes politicos resulted in the preservation of order, so that men's lives and property were safe from open violence, and there dawned in due season a new era of commercial progress. By that same token it was not the era of Diaz, for he was no business man. Stories of his wealth are common; only the other day a learned professor at Harvard endorsed them in a newspaper article. But Diaz is not rich and never has been; he did not put away vast sums in Europe, nor carry two millions in gold out of Mexico when he departed. His ambition was for power, not for money; and as for his capacity to understand large pecuniary transactions, it may be inferred from what I have said, in all seriousness, about his childish blundering with figures.

The organization of the Cientifico, though it was never so advanced as its members supposed it to be, was yet so much more modern than Diaz, that he was wholly incapable