To my friend and fellow-lover of things ancient and marvellous, Gilberto Cano, I am under signal obligations. In addition to his nice appreciation and his wide knowledge of such matters, this excellent man--twenty-four years ago, and later--was the best waiter at the Hôtel del Café Anglais. (It is gone, now, that admirable little hotel over which the brave Monsieur Gatillon so admirably presided--and the City of Mexico distinctly is the worse for its loss.) Our acquaintance, that had its beginning in my encounters with him in his professional capacity, soon ripened into a real friendship--still enduring--along the line of similarity of tastes. His intelligent answers to my questions about one or another of the many old buildings which attracted our attention in the course of our walks about the city--then all new to us--early impressed upon me a serious respect for his antiquarian attainments; and this respect was increased when, after making a hesitant offer of them that I accepted eagerly, he lent to us several excellent books treating of the ancient matters in which we were interested: explaining, modestly, that these books were his own; and that he had bought them in order that he might acquire an accurate knowledge of the city in which he had been born and in which for all his life he had lived. As my own knowledge grew, I found that in every instance he had answered my questions correctly; and the books which he had lent to me were certified to, later, by my erudite friend Don José María Vigil, Director of the Biblioteca Nacional, as standard authorities--and I bought copies of all of them to add to the collection of Mexicana that I then was beginning to form.
Gilberto was so obliging as to spend several afternoons in our quarters--coming to us in the dull time between luncheon and dinner when his professional duties were in abeyance--that I might write at his dictation some of the many folk-traditions with which his mind was stored. Like our dear Joséfa, he was an absolute authority on the current popular versions, and he seemed to share her faith in them; but he told them--because of his substantial knowledge of Mexican history--more precisely than she told them, and with an appreciative understanding of their antiquarian interest that was quite beyond her grasp.