Only the middle balcony—the historical one with a bronze railing—although open—remains dark. A clock above it gives the hour, a quarter to eleven o'clock, and above the clock, high in the air, the flag pole and the national flag of Mexico flapping in the breeze under the stars. Beneath the middle balcony, a clearing in the crowd, several rows of seating occupied by ladies and gentlemen, and a pavilion for the gigantic military band, with more drummers and trumpeters lined up offstage to the left.

“Wow,” declares el Jarameño, hanging half his body out the coach window, “this is really something.”

Behind their coach is the old row of portals called Mercaderes, the historic venue of buying and selling, now interrupted by a new construction, the almost finished Mercantile Center, which has decorated its two completed floors with incandescent lights for tonight. To the right, the ancient city hall, massive, harsh, anachronistic, like the palace showing curtains at its balconies and extremely lit up without escaping the wrinkled and somber appearance of great age. Across from the city hall, defining the north side of the great square at the heart of Mexico City, the metropolitan cathedral: monumental, eternal, imposing, with its high towers, gray walls, and bold dome, a colossus of stone, which time and human passions cannot budge. The cathedral, too, is draped with colored fabric and hung with decorative lanterns, all of an old-fashioned, even antique variety, the lamps fueled by oil, the hangings faded, venerable, smelling of incense, who knows how many years old! To one side, the sacrarium, full of sacred relics and studded outrageously with architectural ornamentation of a century long past.

And everywhere around the Plaza de Armas, where temporary stalls have been erected to sell food and wine, there is the sound of frying and the smell of many fruits and the mass of bodies. One hears fragments of conversation, guitar arpeggios, babies crying, free-floating laughter, occasionally, a sinister outbreak of oaths and threats, finally, fights and reconciliations. There are no holes in this wall of sound, only the human herd, packed together, stamping its feet, explosively eager for the moment when it will shout its tribute to national independence.

Suddenly, a vibration runs through the restless multitude, agitating it even more. Then, a silence, frightening and exciting because it is so universal, the sort of silence that precedes something extraordinary. Inanimate objects seem to withdraw into themselves at this moment. One would say that the hundred thousand souls that fill the Plaza de Armas have fused into a single soul. Everyone, everything, is hushed—the musicians, the privileged guests in the balconies, the herd that floods the square. The crowd holds its breath watching the clock on the palace façade, eyes glued to the moving gears, hearts beating impatiently …

And, together, the clocks of the palace and the cathedral break that silence, first with bells indicating the four quarters of the hour, and then, with mechanical ponderousness, each clock tolls eleven o'clock. This process has hardly begun, however, when all at once the historical balcony with the bronze railings lights up and the president of the republic steps onto the balcony in a blaze of illumination, wearing across his chest the tricolor presidential sash, symbol of his anointment by the people. With noble gesture, he takes hold of a hanging bell cord and pulls it once, twice, producing a marvelous ringing, just like the bells of Dolores village must have sounded in days of yore when calling our forefathers to die so that our nation might live.