Like all of Cortés’s descendants, they found it inexplicable that infinite New Spain was dependent on this dim-witted country where men wore tights and screamed at each other even when they were in good humor. More languages were spoken in my father’s garden than in all Old Spain, Juana would say by way of ungracious explanation of the little interest she took in Europe, where she had in fact been splendidly received. She didn’t become a wallflower like her mother, who accepted every invitation and then was silent at the soirées, but nor was she notable for her devotion to the class to which she belonged by fortune and by marriage. The decorous madness of the conquistador’s widow made sense, in a way: she was already a grown woman when she left a kingdom of exceptional riches, where her orders were obeyed even before they occurred to her, but she had left it behind so that her daughter could be where one had to be if one was a woman. Her cool and at times even graceful distaste for her peninsular confinement was understandable.
