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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Grandissimes
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12280]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRANDISSIMES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+BY GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+ALBERT HERTER
+
+MDCCCXCIX
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. Masked Batteries.
+     II. The Fate of the Immigrant.
+    III. "And who is my Neighbor?"
+     IV. Family Trees.
+      V. A Maiden who will not Marry.
+     VI. Lost Opportunities.
+    VII. Was it Honoré Grandissime?
+   VIII. Signed--Honoré Grandissime.
+     IX. Illustrating the Tractive Power of Basil.
+      X. "Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+     XI. Sudden Flashes of Light.
+    XII. The Philosophe.
+   XIII. A Call from the Rent-Spectre.
+    XIV. Before Sunset.
+     XV. Rolled in the Dust.
+    XVI. Starlight in the rue Chartres.
+   XVII. That Night.
+  XVIII. New Light upon Dark Places.
+    XIX. Art and Commerce.
+     XX. A very Natural Mistake.
+    XXI. Doctor Keene Recovers his Bullet.
+   XXII. Wars within the Breast.
+  XXIII. Frowenfeld Keeps his Appointment.
+   XXIV. Frowenfeld Makes an Argument.
+    XXV. Aurora as a Historian.
+   XXVI. A Ride and a Rescue.
+  XXVII. The Fête de Grandpère.
+ XXVIII. The Story of Bras-Coupé.
+   XXIX. The Story of Bras-Coupé, Continued.
+    XXX. Paralysis.
+   XXXI. Another Wound in a New Place.
+  XXXII. Interrupted Preliminaries.
+ XXXIII. Unkindest Cut of All.
+  XXXIV. Clotilde as a Surgeon.
+   XXXV. "Fo' wad you Cryne?"
+  XXXVI. Aurora's Last Picayune.
+ XXXVII. Honoré Makes some Confessions.
+XXXVIII. Tests of Friendship.
+  XXXIX. Louisiana States her Wants.
+     XL. Frowenfeld Finds Sylvestre.
+    XLI. To Come to the Point.
+   XLII. An Inheritance of Wrong.
+  XLIII. The Eagle Visits the Doves in their Nest.
+   XLIV. Bad for Charlie Keene.
+    XLV. More Reparation.
+   XLVI. The Pique-en-terre Loses One of her Crew.
+  XLVII. The News.
+ XLVIII. An Indignant Family and a Smashed Shop.
+   XLIX. Over the New Store.
+      L. A Proposal of Marriage.
+     LI. Business Changes.
+    LII. Love Lies-a-Bleeding.
+   LIII. Frowenfeld at the Grandissime Mansion.
+    LIV. "Cauldron Bubble".
+     LV. Caught.
+    LVI. Blood for a Blow.
+   LVII. Voudou Cured.
+  LVIII. Dying Words.
+    LIX. Where some Creole Money Goes.
+     LX. "All Right".
+    LXI. "No!".
+
+
+
+
+PHOTOGRAVURES
+
+"They paused a little within the obscurity of the corridor, and just to
+reassure themselves that everything _was_ 'all right'" _Frontispiece_.
+
+"She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted her own mask a
+little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly".
+
+"The daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in many-colored
+robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with girdles of
+serpent-skins and of wampum".
+
+"Aurora,--alas! alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon
+the candle's flame".
+
+"The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
+counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting".
+
+"Silently regarding the intruder with a pair of eyes that sent an icy
+chill through him and fastened him where he stood, lay Palmyre
+Philosophe".
+
+"On their part, they would sit in deep attention, shielding their faces
+from the fire, and responding to enunciations directly contrary to their
+convictions with an occasional 'yes-seh,' or 'ceddenly,' or 'of coze,'
+or,--prettier affirmation still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids".
+
+"Bras-Coupé was practically declaring his independence on a slight rise
+of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and lifted scarce above the
+water in the inmost depths of the swamp".
+
+"'Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me wad dad
+mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma _second word of honor_'--she
+rolled up her fist--'juz wad I thing about dad 'Sieur Frowenfel!'".
+
+"His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his dark,
+frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the other his
+knee, and both trembled violently".
+
+"The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her
+eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost
+all knowledge of place or of human presence".
+
+"They turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in
+a cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where the hospitality
+of Clemence had placed glasses of lemonade".
+
+_In addition to the foregoing, the stories are illustrated with eight
+smaller photogravures from drawings by Mr. Herter_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MASKED BATTERIES
+
+
+It was in the Théatre St. Philippe (they had laid a temporary floor over
+the parquette seats) in the city we now call New Orleans, in the month
+of September, and in the year 1803. Under the twinkle of numberless
+candles, and in a perfumed air thrilled with the wailing ecstasy of
+violins, the little Creole capital's proudest and best were offering up
+the first cool night of the languidly departing summer to the divine
+Terpsichore. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that
+only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. It was like
+hustling her out, it is true, to give a select _bal masqué_ at such a
+very early--such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting that
+something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and why not
+this? Everybody knows the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.
+
+And so, to repeat, it was in the Théatre St. Philippe (the oldest, the
+first one), and, as may have been noticed, in the year in which the
+First Consul of France gave away Louisiana. Some might call it "sold."
+Old Agricola Fusilier in the rumbling pomp of his natural voice--for he
+had an hour ago forgotten that he was in mask and domino--called it
+"gave away." Not that he believed it had been done; for, look you, how
+could it be? The pretended treaty contained, for instance, no provision
+relative to the great family of Brahmin Mandarin Fusilier de
+Grandissime. It was evidently spurious.
+
+Being bumped against, he moved a step or two aside, and was going on to
+denounce further the detestable rumor, when a masker--one of four who
+had just finished the contra-dance and were moving away in the column of
+promenaders--brought him smartly around with the salutation:
+
+"_Comment to yé, Citoyen Agricola!_"
+
+"H-you young kitten!" said the old man in a growling voice, and with the
+teased, half laugh of aged vanity as he bent a baffled scrutiny at the
+back-turned face of an ideal Indian Queen. It was not merely the
+_tutoiement_ that struck him as saucy, but the further familiarity of
+using the slave dialect. His French was unprovincial.
+
+"H-the cool rascal!" he added laughingly, and, only half to himself;
+"get into the garb of your true sex, sir, h-and I will guess who
+you are!"
+
+But the Queen, in the same feigned voice as before, retorted:
+
+"_Ah! mo piti fils, to pas connais to zancestres?_ Don't you know your
+ancestors, my little son!"
+
+"H-the g-hods preserve us!" said Agricola, with a pompous laugh muffled
+under his mask, "the queen of the Tchoupitoulas I proudly acknowledge,
+and my great-grandfather, Epaminondas Fusilier, lieutenant of dragoons
+under Bienville; but,"--he laid his hand upon his heart, and bowed to
+the other two figures, whose smaller stature betrayed the gentler
+sex--"pardon me, ladies, neither Monks nor _Filles à la Cassette_ grow
+on our family tree."
+
+The four maskers at once turned their glance upon the old man in the
+domino; but if any retort was intended it gave way as the violins burst
+into an agony of laughter. The floor was immediately filled with
+waltzers and the four figures disappeared.
+
+"I wonder," murmured Agricola to himself, "if that Dragoon can possibly
+be Honoré Grandissime."
+
+Wherever those four maskers went there were cries of delight: "Ho, ho,
+ho! see there! here! there! a group of first colonists! One of
+Iberville's Dragoons! don't you remember great-great grandfather
+Fusilier's portrait--the gilded casque and heron plumes? And that one
+behind in the fawn-skin leggings and shirt of birds' skins is an Indian
+Queen. As sure as sure can be, they are intended for Epaminondas and his
+wife, Lufki-Humma!" All, of course, in Louisiana French.
+
+"But why, then, does he not walk with her?"
+
+"Why, because, Simplicity, both of them are men, while the little Monk
+on his arm is a lady, as you can see, and so is the masque that has the
+arm of the Indian Queen; look at their little hands."
+
+In another part of the room the four were greeted with, "Ha, ha, ha!
+well, that is magnificent! But see that Huguenotte Girl on the Indian
+Queen's arm! Isn't that fine! Ha, ha! she carries a little trunk. She is
+a _Fille à la Cassette!_"
+
+Two partners in a cotillion were speaking in an undertone, behind a fan.
+
+"And you think you know who it is?" asked one.
+
+"Know?" replied the other. "Do I know I have a head on my shoulders? If
+that Dragoon is not our cousin Honoré Grandissime--well--"
+
+"Honoré in mask? he is too sober-sided to do such a thing."
+
+"I tell you it is he! Listen. Yesterday I heard Doctor Charlie Keene
+begging him to go, and telling him there were two ladies, strangers,
+newly arrived in the city, who would be there, and whom he wished him to
+meet. Depend upon it the Dragoon is Honoré, Lufki-Humma is Charlie
+Keene, and the Monk and the Huguenotte are those two ladies."
+
+But all this is an outside view; let us draw nearer and see what chance
+may discover to us behind those four masks.
+
+An hour has passed by. The dance goes on; hearts are beating, wit is
+flashing, eyes encounter eyes with the leveled lances of their beams,
+merriment and joy and sudden bright surprises thrill the breast, voices
+are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear is bending with a
+venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there deceived, yonder takes
+prisoners and here surrenders. The very air seems to breathe, to sigh,
+to laugh, while the musicians, with disheveled locks, streaming brows
+and furious bows, strike, draw, drive, scatter from the anguished
+violins a never-ending rout of screaming harmonies. But the Monk and the
+Huguenotte are not on the floor. They are sitting where they have been
+left by their two companions, in one of the boxes of the theater,
+looking out upon the unwearied whirl and flash of gauze and light
+and color.
+
+"Oh, _chérie, chérie!_" murmured the little lady in the Monk's disguise
+to her quieter companion, and speaking in the soft dialect of old
+Louisiana, "now you get a good idea of heaven!"
+
+The _Fille à la Cassette_ replied with a sudden turn of her masked face
+and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry
+laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink
+a little in her chair with a gentle sigh.
+
+"Ah, for shame, tired!" softly laughed the other; then suddenly, with
+her eyes fixed across the room, she seized her companion's hand and
+pressed it tightly. "Do you not see it?" she whispered eagerly, "just by
+the door--the casque with the heron feathers. Ah, Clotilde, I _cannot_
+believe he is one of those Grandissimes!"
+
+"Well," replied the Huguenotte, "Doctor Keene says he is not."
+
+Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the Indian
+Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we understand
+to be particular about those things, had immediately made a memorandum
+of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account.
+
+"If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I would
+have turned about and left him in the midst of the contra-dance!"
+
+Behind them sat unmasked a well-aged pair, "_bredouillé_," as they used
+to say of the wall-flowers, with that look of blissful repose which
+marks the married and established Creole. The lady in monk's attire
+turned about in her chair and leaned back to laugh with these. The
+passing maskers looked that way, with a certain instinct that there was
+beauty under those two costumes. As they did so, they saw the _Fille à
+la Cassette_ join in this over-shoulder conversation. A moment later,
+they saw the old gentleman protector and the _Fille à la Cassette_
+rising to the dance. And when presently the distant passers took a final
+backward glance, that same Lieutenant of Dragoons had returned and he
+and the little Monk were once more upon the floor, waiting for
+the music.
+
+"But your late companion?" said the voice in the cowl.
+
+"My Indian Queen?" asked the Creole Epaminondas.
+
+"Say, rather, your Medicine-Man," archly replied the Monk.
+
+"In these times," responded the Cavalier, "a medicine-man cannot dance
+long without professional interruption, even when he dances for a
+charitable object. He has been called to two relapsed patients." The
+music struck up; the speaker addressed himself to the dance; but the
+lady did not respond.
+
+"Do dragoons ever moralize?" she asked.
+
+"They do more," replied her partner; "sometimes, when beauty's enjoyment
+of the ball is drawing toward its twilight, they catch its pleasant
+melancholy, and confess; will the good father sit in the confessional?"
+
+The pair turned slowly about and moved toward the box from which they
+had come, the lady remaining silent; but just as they were entering she
+half withdrew her arm from his, and, confronting him with a rich sparkle
+of the eyes within the immobile mask of the monk, said:
+
+"Why should the conscience of one poor little monk carry all the
+frivolity of this ball? I have a right to dance, if I wish. I give you
+my word, Monsieur Dragoon, I dance only for the benefit of the sick and
+the destitute. It is you men--you dragoons and others--who will not help
+them without a compensation in this sort of nonsense. Why should we
+shrive you when you ought to burn?"
+
+"Then lead us to the altar," said the Dragoon.
+
+"Pardon, sir," she retorted, her words entangled with a musical,
+open-hearted laugh, "I am not going in that direction." She cast her
+glance around the ball-room. "As you say, it is the twilight of the
+ball; I am looking for the evening star,--that is, my little
+Huguenotte."
+
+"Then you are well mated."
+
+"How?"
+
+"For you are Aurora."
+
+The lady gave a displeased start.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Pardon," said the Cavalier, "if by accident I have hit upon your real
+name--"
+
+She laughed again--a laugh which was as exultantly joyous as it was
+high-bred.
+
+"Ah, my name? Oh no, indeed!" (More work for the Recording Angel.)
+
+She turned to her protectress.
+
+"Madame, I know you think we should be going home."
+
+The senior lady replied in amiable speech, but with sleepy eyes, and the
+Monk began to lift and unfold a wrapping. As the Cavalier' drew it into
+his own possession, and, agreeably to his gesture, the Monk and he sat
+down side by side, he said, in a low tone:
+
+"One more laugh before we part."
+
+"A monk cannot laugh for nothing."
+
+"I will pay for it."
+
+"But with nothing to laugh at?" The thought of laughing at nothing made
+her laugh a little on the spot.
+
+"We will make something to laugh at," said the Cavalier; "we will unmask
+to each other, and when we find each other first cousins, the laugh will
+come of itself."
+
+"Ah! we will unmask?--no! I have no cousins. I am certain we are
+strangers."
+
+"Then we will laugh to think that I paid for the disappointment."
+
+Much more of this childlike badinage followed, and by and by they came
+around again to the same last statement. Another little laugh escaped
+from the cowl.
+
+"You will pay? Let us see; how much will you give to the sick and
+destitute?"
+
+"To see who it is I am laughing with, I will give whatever you ask."
+
+"Two hundred and fifty dollars, cash, into the hands of the managers!"
+
+"A bargain!"
+
+The Monk laughed, and her chaperon opened her eyes and smiled
+apologetically. The Cavalier laughed, too, and said:
+
+"Good! That was the laugh; now the unmasking."
+
+"And you positively will give the money to the managers not later than
+to-morrow evening?"
+
+"Not later. It shall be done without fail."
+
+"Well, wait till I put on my wrappings; I must be ready to run."
+
+This delightful nonsense was interrupted by the return of the _Fille à
+la Cassette_ and her aged, but sprightly, escort, from a circuit of the
+floor. Madame again opened her eyes, and the four prepared to depart.
+The Dragoon helped the Monk to fortify herself against the outer air.
+She was ready before the others. There was a pause, a low laugh, a
+whispered "Now!" She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted
+her own mask a little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly
+down again upon a face whose beauty was more than even those fascinating
+graces had promised which Honoré Grandissime had fitly named the
+Morning; but it was a face he had never seen before.
+
+"Hush!" she said, "the enemies of religion are watching us; the
+Huguenotte saw me. Adieu"--and they were gone.
+
+M. Honoré Grandissime turned on his heel and very soon left the ball.
+
+"Now, sir," thought he to himself, "we'll return to our senses."
+
+"Now I'll put my feathers on again," says the plucked bird.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE FATE OF THE IMMIGRANT
+
+
+It was just a fortnight after the ball, that one Joseph Frowenfeld
+opened his eyes upon Louisiana. He was an American by birth, rearing and
+sentiment, yet German enough through his parents, and the only son in a
+family consisting of father, mother, self, and two sisters, new-blown
+flowers of womanhood. It was an October dawn, when, long wearied of the
+ocean, and with bright anticipations of verdure, and fragrance, and
+tropical gorgeousness, this simple-hearted family awoke to find the bark
+that had borne them from their far northern home already entering upon
+the ascent of the Mississippi.
+
+We may easily imagine the grave group, as they came up one by one from
+below, that morning of first disappointment, and stood (with a whirligig
+of jubilant mosquitoes spinning about each head) looking out across the
+waste, seeing the sky and the marsh meet in the east, the north, and the
+west, and receiving with patient silence the father's suggestion that
+the hills would, no doubt, rise into view after a while.
+
+"My children, we may turn this disappointment into a lesson; if the good
+people of this country could speak to us now, they might well ask us not
+to judge them or their land upon one or two hasty glances, or by the
+experiences of a few short days or weeks."
+
+But no hills rose. However, by and by they found solace in the
+appearance of distant forest, and in the afternoon they entered a
+land--but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic
+cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay.
+
+"The captain told father, when we went to engage passage, that New
+Orleans was on high land," said the younger daughter, with a tremor in
+the voice, and ignoring the remonstrative touch of her sister.
+
+"On high land?" said the captain, turning from the pilot; "well, so it
+is--higher than the swamp, but not higher than the river," and he
+checked a broadening smile.
+
+But the Frowenfelds were not a family to complain. It was characteristic
+of them to recognize the bright as well as the solemn virtues, and to
+keep each other reminded of the duty of cheerfulness. A smile, starting
+from the quiet elder sister, went around the group, directed against the
+abstracted and somewhat rueful countenance of Joseph, whereat he turned
+with a better face and said that what the Creator had pronounced very
+good they could hardly feel free to condemn. The old father was still
+more stout of heart.
+
+"These mosquitoes, children, are thought by some to keep the air pure,"
+he said.
+
+"Better keep out of it after sunset," put in the captain.
+
+After that day and night, the prospect grew less repellent. A gradually
+matured conviction that New Orleans would not be found standing on
+stilts in the quagmire enabled the eye to become educated to a better
+appreciation of the solemn landscape. Nor was the landscape always
+solemn. There were long openings, now and then, to right and left, of
+emerald-green savannah, with the dazzling blue of the Gulf far beyond,
+waving a thousand white-handed good-byes as the funereal swamps slowly
+shut out again the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist
+prairies! How weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and
+yellow sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river!
+The profound stillness and breath reminded the old German, so he said,
+of that early time when the evenings and mornings were the first days of
+the half-built world. The barking of a dog in Fort Plaquemines seemed to
+come before its turn in the panorama of creation--before the earth was
+ready for the dog's master.
+
+But he was assured that to live in those swamps was not entirely
+impossible to man--"if one may call a negro a man." Runaway slaves were
+not so rare in them as one--a lost hunter, for example--might wish. His
+informant was a new passenger, taken aboard at the fort. He
+spoke English.
+
+"Yes, sir! Didn' I had to run from Bras-Coupé in de haidge of de swamp
+be'ine de 'abitation of my cousin Honoré, one time? You can hask 'oo you
+like!" (A Creole always provides against incredulity.) At this point he
+digressed a moment: "You know my cousin, Honoré Grandissime, w'at give
+two hund' fifty dolla' to de 'ospill laz mont'? An' juz because my
+cousin Honoré give it, somebody helse give de semm. Fo' w'y don't he
+give his nemm?"
+
+The reason (which this person did not know) was that the second donor
+was the first one over again, resolved that the little unknown Monk
+should not know whom she had baffled.
+
+"Who was Bras-Coupé?" the good German asked in French.
+
+The stranger sat upon the capstan, and, in the shadow of the cypress
+forest, where the vessel lay moored for a change of wind, told in a
+_patois_ difficult, but not impossible, to understand, the story of a
+man who chose rather to be hunted like a wild beast among those awful
+labyrinths, than to be yoked and beaten like a tame one. Joseph, drawing
+near as the story was coming to a close, overheard the following
+English:
+
+"Friend, if you dislike heated discussion, do not tell that to my son."
+
+The nights were strangely beautiful. The immigrants almost consumed them
+on deck, the mother and daughters attending in silent delight while the
+father and son, facing south, rejoiced in learned recognition of stars
+and constellations hitherto known to them only on globes and charts.
+
+"Yes, my dear son," said the father, in a moment of ecstatic admiration,
+"wherever man may go, around this globe--however uninviting his lateral
+surroundings may be, the heavens are ever over his head, and I am glad
+to find the stars your favorite objects of study."
+
+So passed the time as the vessel, hour by hour, now slowly pushed by the
+wind against the turbid current, now warping along the fragrant
+precincts of orange or magnolia groves or fields of sugar-cane, or
+moored by night in the deep shade of mighty willow-jungles, patiently
+crept toward the end of their pilgrimage; and in the length of time
+which would at present be consumed in making the whole journey from
+their Northern home to their Southern goal, accomplished the distance of
+ninety-eight miles, and found themselves before the little, hybrid city
+of "Nouvelle Orléans." There was the cathedral, and standing beside it,
+like Sancho beside Don Quixote, the squat hall of the Cabildo with the
+calabozo in the rear. There were the forts, the military bakery, the
+hospitals, the plaza, the Almonaster stores, and the busy rue Toulouse;
+and, for the rest of the town, a pleasant confusion of green tree-tops,
+red and gray roofs, and glimpses of white or yellow wall, spreading back
+a few hundred yards behind the cathedral, and tapering into a single
+rank of gardened and belvedered villas, that studded either horn of the
+river's crescent with a style of home than which there is probably
+nothing in the world more maternally homelike.
+
+"And now," said the "captain," bidding the immigrants good-by, "keep out
+of the sun and stay in after dark; you're not 'acclimated,' as they
+call it, you know, and the city is full of the fever."
+
+Such were the Frowenfelds. Out of such a mold and into such a place came
+the young Américain, whom even Agricola Fusilier, as we shall see, by
+and by thought worthy to be made an exception of, and honored with his
+recognition.
+
+The family rented a two-story brick house in the rue Bienville, No. 17,
+it seems. The third day after, at daybreak, Joseph called his father to
+his bedside to say that he had had a chill, and was suffering such pains
+in his head and back that he would like to lie quiet until they passed
+off. The gentle father replied that it was undoubtedly best to do so,
+and preserved an outward calm. He looked at his son's eyes; their pupils
+were contracted to tiny beads. He felt his pulse and his brow; there was
+no room for doubt; it was the dreaded scourge--the fever. We say,
+sometimes, of hearts that they sink like lead; it does not express
+the agony.
+
+On the second day, while the unsated fever was running through every
+vein and artery, like soldiery through the streets of a burning city,
+and far down in the caverns of the body the poison was ransacking every
+palpitating corner, the poor immigrant fell into a moment's sleep. But
+what of that? The enemy that moment had mounted to the brain. And then
+there happened to Joseph an experience rare to the sufferer by this
+disease, but not entirely unknown,--a delirium of mingled pleasures and
+distresses. He seemed to awake somewhere between heaven and earth,
+reclining in a gorgeous barge, which was draped in curtains of
+interwoven silver and silk, cushioned with rich stuffs of every
+beautiful dye, and perfumed _ad nauseam_ with orange-leaf tea. The crew
+was a single old negress, whose head was wound about with a blue Madras
+handkerchief, and who stood at the prow, and by a singular rotary
+motion, rowed the barge with a teaspoon. He could not get his head out
+of the hot sun; and the barge went continually round and round with a
+heavy, throbbing motion, in the regular beat of which certain spirits of
+the air--one of whom appeared to be a beautiful girl and another a
+small, red-haired man,--confronted each other with the continual call
+and response:
+
+"Keep the bedclothes on him and the room shut tight, keep the bedclothes
+on him and the room shut tight,"--"An' don' give 'im some watta, an'
+don' give 'im some watta."
+
+During what lapse of time--whether moments or days--this lasted, Joseph
+could not then know; but at last these things faded away, and there came
+to him a positive knowledge that he was on a sick-bed, where unless
+something could be done for him he should be dead in an hour. Then a
+spoon touched his lips, and a taste of brandy and water went all through
+him; and when he fell into sweet slumber and awoke, and found the
+teaspoon ready at his lips again, he had to lift a little the two hands
+lying before him on the coverlet to know that they were his--they were
+so wasted and yellow. He turned his eyes, and through the white gauze of
+the mosquito-bar saw, for an instant, a strange and beautiful young
+face; but the lids fell over his eyes, and when he raised them again the
+blue-turbaned black nurse was tucking the covering about his feet.
+
+"Sister!"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Where is my mother?"
+
+The negress shook her head.
+
+He was too weak to speak again, but asked with his eyes so persistently,
+and so pleadingly, that by and by she gave him an audible answer. He
+tried hard to understand it, but could not, it being in these words:
+
+"_Li pa' oulé vini 'ci--li pas capabe_."
+
+Thrice a day, for three days more, came a little man with a large head
+surrounded by short, red curls and with small freckles in a fine skin,
+and sat down by the bed with a word of good cheer and the air of a
+commander. At length they had something like an extended conversation.
+
+"So you concluded not to die, eh? Yes, I'm the doctor--Doctor Keene. A
+young lady? What young lady? No, sir, there has been no young lady here.
+You're mistaken. Vagary of your fever. There has been no one here but
+this black girl and me. No, my dear fellow, your father and mother can't
+see you yet; you don't want them to catch the fever, do you? Good-bye.
+Do as your nurse tells you, and next week you may raise your head and
+shoulders a little; but if you don't mind her you'll have a backset, and
+the devil himself wouldn't engage to cure you."
+
+The patient had been sitting up a little at a time for several days,
+when at length the doctor came to pay a final call, "as a matter of
+form;" but, after a few pleasantries, he drew his chair up gravely, and,
+in a tender tone--need we say it? He had come to tell Joseph that his
+father, mother, sisters, all, were gone on a second--a longer--voyage,
+to shores where there could be no disappointments and no
+fevers, forever.
+
+"And, Frowenfeld," he said, at the end of their long and painful talk,
+"if there is any blame attached to not letting you go with them, I think
+I can take part of it; but if you ever want a friend,--one who is
+courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to those he likes,--you can
+call for Charlie Keene. I'll drop in to see you, anyhow, from time to
+time, till you get stronger. I have taken a heap of trouble to keep you
+alive, and if you should relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a
+deal of good physic wasted; so keep in the house."
+
+The polite neighbors who lifted their cocked hats to Joseph, as he spent
+a slow convalescence just within his open door, were not bound to know
+how or when he might have suffered. There were no "Howards" or
+"Y.M.C.A.'s" in those days; no "Peabody Reliefs." Even had the neighbors
+chosen to take cognizance of those bereavements, they were not so
+unusual as to fix upon him any extraordinary interests an object of
+sight; and he was beginning most distressfully to realize that "great
+solitude" which the philosopher attributes to towns, when matters took a
+decided turn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"
+
+
+We say matters took a turn; or, better, that Frowenfeld's interest in
+affairs received a new life. This had its beginning in Doctor Keene's
+making himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with
+a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had
+conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon,
+would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess--a game, by the way,
+for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned
+its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor--the truth is, the
+doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who
+cannot easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for one, least of
+all one of their own sex. It may safely be supposed, then, that the
+board often displayed an arrangement of pieces that would have
+bewildered Morphy himself.
+
+"By the by, Frowenfeld," he said one evening, after the one preliminary
+move with which he invariably opened his game, "you haven't made the
+acquaintance of your pretty neighbors next door."
+
+Frowenfeld knew of no specially pretty neighbors next door on either
+side--had noticed no ladies.
+
+"Well, I will take you in to see them some time." The doctor laughed a
+little, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one hand, as
+he laughed.
+
+The convalescent wondered what there could be to laugh at.
+
+"Who are they?" he inquired.
+
+"Their name is De Grapion--oh, De Grapion, says I! their name is
+Nancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women--the brightest,
+the best, and the bravest--that I know in New Orleans." The doctor
+resumed a cigar which lay against the edge of the chess-board, found it
+extinguished, and proceeded to relight it. "Best blood of the province;
+good as the Grandissimes. Blood is a great thing here, in certain odd
+ways," he went on. "Very curious sometimes." He stooped to the floor
+where his coat had fallen, and took his handkerchief from a
+breast-pocket. "At a grand mask ball about two months ago, where I had a
+bewilderingly fine time with those ladies, the proudest old turkey in
+the theater was an old fellow whose Indian blood shows in his very
+behavior, and yet--ha, ha! I saw that same old man, at a quadroon ball a
+few years ago, walk up to the handsomest, best dressed man in the
+house, a man with a skin whiter than his own,--a perfect gentleman as to
+looks and manners,--and without a word slap him in the face."
+
+"You laugh?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+"Laugh? Why shouldn't I? The fellow had no business there. Those balls
+are not given to quadroon _males_, my friend. He was lucky to get out
+alive, and that was about all he did.
+
+"They are right!" the doctor persisted, in response to Frowenfeld's
+puzzled look. "The people here have got to be particular. However, that
+is not what we were talking about. Quadroon balls are not to be
+mentioned in connection. Those ladies--" He addressed himself to the
+resuscitation of his cigar. "Singular people in this country," he
+resumed; but his cigar would not revive. He was a poor story-teller. To
+Frowenfeld--as it would have been to any one, except a Creole or the
+most thoroughly Creoleized Américain--his narrative, when it was done,
+was little more than a thick mist of strange names, places and events;
+yet there shone a light of romance upon it that filled it with color and
+populated it with phantoms. Frowenfeld's interest rose--was allured into
+this mist--and there was left befogged. As a physician, Doctor Keene
+thus accomplished his end,--the mental diversion of his late
+patient,--for in the midst of the mist Frowenfeld encountered and
+grappled a problem of human life in Creole type, the possible
+correlations of whose quantities we shall presently find him revolving
+in a studious and sympathetic mind, as the poet of to-day ponders the
+
+     "Flower in the crannied wall."
+
+The quantities in that problem were the ancestral--the maternal--roots
+of those two rival and hostile families whose descendants--some brave,
+others fair--we find unwittingly thrown together at the ball, and with
+whom we are shortly to have the honor of an unmasked acquaintance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FAMILY TREES
+
+
+In the year 1673, and in the royal hovel of a Tchoupitoulas village not
+far removed from that "Buffalo's Grazing-ground," now better known as
+New Orleans, was born Lufki-Humma, otherwise Red Clay. The mother of Red
+Clay was a princess by birth as well as by marriage. For the father,
+with that devotion to his people's interests presumably common to
+rulers, had ten moons before ventured northward into the territory of
+the proud and exclusive Natchez nation, and had so prevailed with--so
+outsmoked--their "Great Sun," as to find himself, as he finally knocked
+the ashes from his successful calumet, possessor of a wife whose
+pedigree included a long line of royal mothers--fathers being of little
+account in Natchez heraldry--extending back beyond the Mexican origin
+of her nation, and disappearing only in the effulgence of her great
+original, the orb of day himself. As to Red Clay's paternal ancestry, we
+must content ourselves with the fact that the father was not only the
+diplomate we have already found him, but a chief of considerable
+eminence; that is to say, of seven feet stature.
+
+It scarce need be said that when Lufki-Humma was born, the mother arose
+at once from her couch of skins, herself bore the infant to the
+neighboring bayou and bathed it--not for singularity, nor for
+independence, nor for vainglory, but only as one of the heart-curdling
+conventionalities which made up the experience of that most pitiful of
+holy things, an Indian mother.
+
+Outside the lodge door sat and continued to sit, as she passed out, her
+master or husband. His interest in the trivialities of the moment may be
+summed up in this, that he was as fully prepared as some men are in more
+civilized times and places to hold his queen to strict account for the
+sex of her offspring. Girls for the Natchez, if they preferred them, but
+the chief of the Tchoupitoulas wanted a son. She returned from the
+water, came near, sank upon her knees, laid the infant at his feet, and
+lo! a daughter.
+
+Then she fell forward heavily upon her face. It may have been muscular
+exhaustion, it may have been the mere wind of her hasty-tempered
+matrimonial master's stone hatchet as it whiffed by her skull; an
+inquest now would be too great an irony; but something blew out her
+"vile candle."
+
+Among the squaws who came to offer the accustomed funeral howlings, and
+seize mementoes from the deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had
+in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a
+necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the
+unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to
+be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the
+hands of wild nature with _carte blanche_ as to the disposal of it. And
+now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor--since it appears
+the darkness of her cheek had no effect to make him less white, or
+qualify his right to smite the fairest and most distant descendant of an
+African on the face, and since this proud station and right could not
+have sprung from the squalid surroundings of her birth, let us for a
+moment contemplate these crude materials.
+
+As for the flesh, it was indeed only some of that "one flesh" of which
+we all are made; but the blood--to go into finer distinctions--the
+blood, as distinguished from the milk of her Alibamon foster-mother, was
+the blood of the royal caste of the great Toltec mother-race, which,
+before it yielded its Mexican splendors to the conquering Aztec, throned
+the jeweled and gold-laden Inca in the South, and sent the sacred fire
+of its temples into the North by the hand of the Natchez. For it is a
+short way of expressing the truth concerning Red Clay's tissues to say
+she had the blood of her mother and the nerve of her father, the nerve
+of the true North American Indian, and had it in its finest strength.
+
+As to her infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail of
+straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands
+and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly
+between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an
+Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good fortune her
+impressible little cranium should escape the cradle-straps, the
+shapeliness that nature loves would soon appear. And this very fortune
+befell her. Her father's detestation of an infant that had not consulted
+his wishes as to sex prompted a verbal decree which, among other
+prohibitions, forbade her skull the distortions that ambitious and
+fashionable Indian mothers delighted to produce upon their offspring.
+
+And as to her brain: what can we say? The casket in which Nature sealed
+that brain, and in which Nature's great step-sister, Death, finally laid
+it away, has never fallen into the delighted fingers--and the remarkable
+fineness of its texture will never kindle admiration in the triumphant
+eyes--of those whose scientific hunger drives them to dig for _crania
+Americana_; nor yet will all their learned excavatings ever draw forth
+one of those pale souvenirs of mortality with walls of shapelier contour
+or more delicate fineness, or an interior of more admirable
+spaciousness, than the fair council-chamber under whose dome the mind
+of Lufki-Humma used, about two centuries ago, to sit in frequent
+conclave with high thoughts.
+
+"I have these facts," it was Agricola Fusilier's habit to say, "by
+family tradition; but you know, sir, h-tradition is much more authentic
+than history!"
+
+Listening Crane, the tribal medicine-man, one day stepped softly into
+the lodge of the giant chief, sat down opposite him on a mat of plaited
+rushes, accepted a lighted calumet, and, after the silence of a decent
+hour, broken at length by the warrior's intimation that "the ear of
+Raging Buffalo listened for the voice of his brother," said, in effect,
+that if that ear would turn toward the village play-ground, it would
+catch a murmur like the pleasing sound of bees among the blossoms of the
+catalpa, albeit the catalpa was now dropping her leaves, for it was the
+moon of turkeys. No, it was the repressed laughter of squaws, wallowing
+with their young ones about the village pole, wondering at the
+Natchez-Tchoupitoulas child, whose eye was the eye of the panther, and
+whose words were the words of an aged chief in council.
+
+There was more added; we record only enough to indicate the direction of
+Listening Crane's aim. The eye of Raging Buffalo was opened to see a
+vision: the daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in
+many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with
+girdles of serpent-skins and of wampum, her feet in quilled and painted
+moccasins, her head under a glory of plumes, the carpet of
+buffalo-robes about her throne covered with the trophies of conquest,
+and the atmosphere of her lodge blue with the smoke of embassadors'
+calumets; and this extravagant dream the capricious chief at once
+resolved should eventually become reality. "Let her be taken to the
+village temple," he said to his prime-minister, "and be fed by warriors
+on the flesh of wolves."
+
+The Listening Crane was a patient man; he was the "man that waits" of
+the old French proverb; all things came to him. He had waited for an
+opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had come. Again, he
+waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and others, he died. He had
+heard of a race more powerful than the Natchez--a white race; he waited
+for them; and when the year 1682 saw a humble "black gown" dragging and
+splashing his way, with La Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of
+Louisiana, holding forth the crucifix and backed by French carbines and
+Mohican tomahawks, among the marvels of that wilderness was found this:
+a child of nine sitting, and--with some unostentatious aid from her
+medicine-man--ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of their
+temple. Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition of Listening
+Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's Manitou through
+the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her father's
+fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom, sometimes a
+decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian counselor of
+warriors, and at all times--year after year, until she had reached the
+perfect womanhood of twenty-six--a virgin queen.
+
+On the 11th of March, 1699, two overbold young Frenchmen of M.
+D'Iberville's little exploring party tossed guns on shoulder, and
+ventured away from their canoes on the bank of the Mississippi into the
+wilderness. Two men they were whom an explorer would have been justified
+in hoarding up, rather than in letting out at such risks; a pair to lean
+on, noble and strong. They hunted, killed nothing, were overtaken by
+rain, then by night, hunger, alarm, despair.
+
+And when they had lain down to die, and had only succeeded in falling
+asleep, the Diana of the Tchoupitoulas, ranging the magnolia groves with
+bow and quiver, came upon them in all the poetry of their hope-forsaken
+strength and beauty, and fell sick of love. We say not whether with
+Zephyr Grandissime or Epaminondas Fusilier; that, for the time being,
+was her secret.
+
+The two captives were made guests. Listening Crane rejoiced in them as
+representatives of the great gift-making race, and indulged himself in a
+dream of pipe-smoking, orations, treaties, presents and alliances,
+finding its climax in the marriage of his virgin queen to the king of
+France, and unvaryingly tending to the swiftly increasing aggrandizement
+of Listening Crane. They sat down to bear's meat, sagamite and beans.
+The queen sat down with them, clothed in her entire wardrobe: vest of
+swan's skin, with facings of purple and green from the neck of the
+mallard; petticoat of plaited hair, with embroideries of quills;
+leggings of fawn-skin; garters of wampum; black and green serpent-skin
+moccasins, that rested on pelts of tiger-cat and buffalo; armlets of
+gars' scales, necklaces of bears' claws and alligators' teeth, plaited
+tresses, plumes of raven and flamingo, wing of the pink curlew, and
+odors of bay and sassafras. Young men danced before them, blowing upon
+reeds, hooting, yelling, rattling beans in gourds and touching hands and
+feet. One day was like another, and the nights were made brilliant with
+flambeau dances and processions.
+
+Some days later M. D'Iberville's canoe fleet, returning down the river,
+found and took from the shore the two men, whom they had given up for
+dead, and with them, by her own request, the abdicating queen, who left
+behind her a crowd of weeping and howling squaws and warriors. Three
+canoes that put off in their wake, at a word from her, turned back; but
+one old man leaped into the water, swam after them a little way, and
+then unexpectedly sank. It was that cautious wader but inexperienced
+swimmer, the Listening Crane.
+
+When the expedition reached Biloxi, there were two suitors for the hand
+of Agricola's great ancestress. Neither of them was Zephyr Grandissime.
+(Ah! the strong heads of those Grandissimes.)
+
+They threw dice for her. Demosthenes De Grapion--he who, tradition
+says, first hoisted the flag of France over the little fort--seemed to
+think he ought to have a chance, and being accorded it, cast an
+astonishingly high number; but Epaminondas cast a number higher by one
+(which Demosthenes never could quite understand), and got a wife who had
+loved him from first sight.
+
+Thus, while the pilgrim fathers of the Mississippi Delta with Gallic
+recklessness were taking wives and moot-wives from the ill specimens of
+three races, arose, with the church's benediction, the royal house of
+the Fusiliers in Louisiana. But the true, main Grandissime stock, on
+which the Fusiliers did early, ever, and yet do, love to marry, has kept
+itself lily-white ever since France has loved lilies--as to marriage,
+that is; as to less responsible entanglements, why, of course--
+
+After a little, the disappointed Demosthenes, with due ecclesiastical
+sanction, also took a most excellent wife, from the first cargo of House
+of Correction girls. Her biography, too, is as short as Methuselah's, or
+shorter; she died. Zephyr Grandissime married, still later, a lady of
+rank, a widow without children, sent from France to Biloxi under a
+_lettre de cachet_. Demosthenes De Grapion, himself an only son, left
+but one son, who also left but one. Yet they were prone to early
+marriages.
+
+So also were the Grandissimes, or, as the name is signed in all the old
+notarial papers, the Brahmin Mandarin de Grandissimes. That was one
+thing that kept their many-stranded family line so free from knots and
+kinks. Once the leisurely Zephyr gave them a start, generation followed
+generation with a rapidity that kept the competing De Grapions
+incessantly exasperated, and new-made Grandissime fathers continually
+throwing themselves into the fond arms and upon the proud necks of
+congratulatory grandsires. Verily it seemed as though their family tree
+was a fig-tree; you could not look for blossoms on it, but there,
+instead, was the fruit full of seed. And with all their speed they were
+for the most part fine of stature, strong of limb and fair of face. The
+old nobility of their stock, including particularly the unnamed blood of
+her of the _lettre de cachet_, showed forth in a gracefulness of
+carriage, that almost identified a De Grandissime wherever you saw him,
+and in a transparency of flesh and classic beauty of feature, that made
+their daughters extra-marriageable in a land and day which was bearing a
+wide reproach for a male celibacy not of the pious sort.
+
+In a flock of Grandissimes might always be seen a Fusilier or two;
+fierce-eyed, strong-beaked, dark, heavy-taloned birds, who, if they
+could not sing, were of rich plumage, and could talk, and bite, and
+strike, and keep up a ruffled crest and a self-exalting bad humor. They
+early learned one favorite cry, with which they greeted all strangers,
+crying the louder the more the endeavor was made to appease them:
+"Invaders! Invaders!"
+
+There was a real pathos in the contrast offered to this family line by
+that other which sprang up, as slenderly as a stalk of wild oats, from
+the loins of Demosthenes De Grapion. A lone son following a lone son,
+and he another--it was sad to contemplate, in that colonial beginning of
+days, three generations of good, Gallic blood tripping jocundly along in
+attenuated Indian file. It made it no less pathetic to see that they
+were brilliant, gallant, much-loved, early epauletted fellows, who did
+not let twenty-one catch them without wives sealed with the authentic
+wedding kiss, nor allow twenty-two to find them without an heir. But
+they had a sad aptness for dying young. It was altogether supposable
+that they would have spread out broadly in the land; but they were such
+inveterate duelists, such brave Indian-fighters, such adventurous
+swamp-rangers, and such lively free-livers, that, however numerously
+their half-kin may have been scattered about in an unacknowledged way,
+the avowed name of De Grapion had become less and less frequent in lists
+where leading citizens subscribed their signatures, and was not to be
+seen in the list of managers of the late ball.
+
+It is not at all certain that so hot a blood would not have boiled away
+entirely before the night of the _bal masqué_, but for an event which
+led to the union of that blood with a stream equally clear and ruddy,
+but of a milder vintage. This event fell out some fifty-two years after
+that cast of the dice which made the princess Lufki-Humma the mother of
+all the Fusiliers and of none of the De Grapions. Clotilde, the
+Casket-Girl, the little maid who would not marry, was one of an heroic
+sort, worth--the De Grapions maintained--whole swampfuls of Indian
+queens. And yet the portrait of this great ancestress, which served as a
+pattern to one who, at the ball, personated the long-deceased heroine
+_en masque_, is hopelessly lost in some garret. Those Creoles have such
+a shocking way of filing their family relics and records in rat-holes.
+
+One fact alone remains to be stated: that the De Grapions, try to spurn
+it as they would, never could quite suppress a hard feeling in the face
+of the record, that from the two young men, who, when lost in the
+horrors of Louisiana's swamps, had been esteemed as good as dead, and
+particularly from him who married at his leisure,--from Zephyr de
+Grandissime,--sprang there so many as the sands of the Mississippi
+innumerable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A MAIDEN WHO WILL NOT MARRY
+
+
+Midway between the times of Lufki-Humma and those of her proud
+descendant, Agricola Fusilier, fifty-two years lying on either side,
+were the days of Pierre Rigaut, the magnificent, the "Grand Marquis,"
+the Governor, De Vaudreuil. He was the Solomon of Louisiana. For
+splendor, however, not for wisdom. Those were the gala days of license,
+extravagance and pomp. He made paper money to be as the leaves of the
+forest for multitude; it was nothing accounted of in the days of the
+Grand Marquis. For Louis Quinze was king.
+
+Clotilde, orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was one of sixty, the last
+royal allotment to Louisiana, of imported wives. The king's agents had
+inveigled her away from France with fair stories: "They will give you a
+quiet home with some lady of the colony. Have to marry?--not unless it
+pleases you. The king himself pays your passage and gives you a casket
+of clothes. Think of that these times, fillette; and passage free,
+withal, to--the garden of Eden, as you may call it--what more, say you,
+can a poor girl want? Without doubt, too, like a model colonist, you
+will accept a good husband and have a great many beautiful children, who
+will say with pride, 'Me, I am no House-of-Correction-girl stock; my
+mother'--or 'grandmother,' as the case may be--'was a _fille à la
+cassette!_'"
+
+The sixty were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of the
+Ursuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine soldiers of
+the king were well wived and ready to settle upon their riparian
+land-grants. The residuum in the nuns' hands was one stiff-necked little
+heretic, named, in part, Clotilde. They bore with her for sixty days,
+and then complained to the Grand Marquis. But the Grand Marquis, with
+all his pomp, was gracious and kind-hearted, and loved his ease almost
+as much as his marchioness loved money. He bade them try her another
+month. They did so, and then returned with her; she would neither marry
+nor pray to Mary.
+
+Here is the way they talked in New Orleans in those days. If you care to
+understand why Louisiana has grown up so out of joint, note the tone of
+those who governed her in the middle of the last century:
+
+"What, my child," the Grand Marquis said, "you a _fille à la cassette?_
+France, for shame! Come here by my side. Will you take a little advice
+from an old soldier? It is in one word--submit. Whatever is inevitable,
+submit to it. If you want to live easy and sleep easy, do as other
+people do--submit. Consider submission in the present case; how easy,
+how comfortable, and how little it amounts to! A little hearing of mass,
+a little telling of beads, a little crossing of one's self--what is
+that? One need not believe in them. Don't shake your head. Take my
+example; look at me; all these things go in at this ear and out at this.
+Do king or clergy trouble me? Not at all. For how does the king in these
+matters of religion? I shall not even tell you, he is such a bad boy. Do
+you not know that all the _noblesse_, and all the _savants_, and
+especially all the archbishops and cardinals,--all, in a word, but such
+silly little chicks as yourself,--have found out that this religious
+business is a joke? Actually a joke, every whit; except, to be sure,
+this heresy phase; that is a joke they cannot take. Now, I wish you
+well, pretty child; so if you--eh?--truly, my pet, I fear we shall have
+to call you unreasonable. Stop; they can spare me here a moment; I will
+take you to the Marquise: she is in the next room.... Behold," said he,
+as he entered the presence of his marchioness, "the little maid who will
+not marry!"
+
+The Marquise was as cold and hard-hearted as the Marquis was loose and
+kind; but we need not recount the slow tortures of the _fille à la
+cassette's_ second verbal temptation. The colony had to have soldiers,
+she was given to understand, and the soldiers must have wives. "Why, I
+am a soldier's wife, myself!" said the gorgeously attired lady, laying
+her hand upon the governor-general's epaulet. She explained, further,
+that he was rather softhearted, while she was a business woman; also
+that the royal commissary's rolls did not comprehend such a thing as a
+spinster, and--incidentally--that living by principle was rather out of
+fashion in the province just then.
+
+After she had offered much torment of this sort, a definite notion
+seemed to take her; she turned her lord by a touch of the elbow, and
+exchanged two or three business-like whispers with him at a window
+overlooking the Levee.
+
+"Fillette," she said, returning, "you are going to live on the
+sea-coast. I am sending an aged lady there to gather the wax of the wild
+myrtle. This good soldier of mine buys it for our king at twelve livres
+the pound. Do you not know that women can make money? The place is not
+safe; but there are no safe places in Louisiana. There are no nuns to
+trouble you there; only a few Indians and soldiers. You and Madame will
+live together, quite to yourselves, and can pray as you like."
+
+"And not marry a soldier," said the Grand Marquis.
+
+"No," said the lady, "not if you can gather enough myrtle-berries to
+afford me a profit and you a living."
+
+It was some thirty leagues or more eastward to the country of the
+Biloxis, a beautiful land of low, evergreen hills looking out across the
+pine-covered sand-keys of Mississippi Sound to the Gulf of Mexico. The
+northern shore of Biloxi Bay was rich in candleberry-myrtle. In
+Clotilde's day, though Biloxi was no longer the capital of the
+Mississippi Valley, the fort which D'Iberville had built in 1699, and
+the first timber of which is said to have been lifted by Zephyr
+Grandissime at one end and Epaminondas Fusilier at the other, was still
+there, making brave against the possible advent of corsairs, with a few
+old culverines and one wooden mortar.
+
+And did the orphan, in despite of Indians and soldiers and wilderness,
+settle down here and make a moderate fortune? Alas, she never gathered a
+berry! When she--with the aged lady, her appointed companion in exile,
+the young commandant of the fort, in whose pinnace they had come, and
+two or three French sailors and Canadians--stepped out upon the white
+sand of Biloxi beach, she was bound with invisible fetters hand and
+foot, by that Olympian rogue of a boy, who likes no better prey than a
+little maiden who thinks she will never marry.
+
+The officer's name was De Grapion--Georges De Grapion. The Marquis gave
+him a choice grant of land on that part of the Mississippi river "coast"
+known as the Cannes Brulées.
+
+"Of course you know where Cannes Brulées is, don't you?" asked Doctor
+Keene of Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+"Yes," said Joseph, with a twinge of reminiscence that recalled the
+study of Louisiana on paper with his father and sisters.
+
+There Georges De Grapion settled, with the laudable determination to
+make a fresh start against the mortifyingly numerous Grandissimes.
+
+"My father's policy was every way bad," he said to his spouse; "it is
+useless, and probably wrong, this trying to thin them out by duels; we
+will try another plan. Thank you," he added, as she handed his coat back
+to him, with the shoulder-straps cut off. In pursuance of the new plan,
+Madame De Grapion,--the precious little heroine!--before the myrtles
+offered another crop of berries, bore him a boy not much smaller (saith
+tradition) than herself.
+
+Only one thing qualified the father's elation. On that very day Numa
+Grandissime (Brahmin-Mandarin de Grandissime), a mere child, received
+from Governor de Vaudreuil a cadetship.
+
+"Never mind, Messieurs Grandissime, go on with your tricks; we shall
+see! Ha! we shall see!"
+
+"We shall see what?" asked a remote relative of that family. "Will
+Monsieur be so good as to explain himself?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bang! bang!
+
+Alas, Madame De Grapion!
+
+It may be recorded that no affair of honor in Louisiana ever left a
+braver little widow. When Joseph and his doctor pretended to play chess
+together, but little more than a half-century had elapsed since the
+_fille à la cassette_ stood before the Grand Marquis and refused to wed.
+Yet she had been long gone into the skies, leaving a worthy example
+behind her in twenty years of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir and
+resident of the plantation at Cannes Brulées, at the age of--they do
+say--eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of Franco-Spanish
+extraction, and, after a fair length of life divided between campaigning
+under the brilliant young Galvez and raising unremunerative
+indigo crops, had lately lain down to sleep, leaving only two
+descendants--females--how shall we describe them?--a Monk and a _Fille à
+la Cassette_. It was very hard to have to go leaving his family name
+snuffed out and certain Grandissime-ward grievances burning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are so many Grandissimes," said the weary-eyed Frowenfeld, "I
+cannot distinguish between--I can scarcely count them."
+
+"Well, now," said the doctor, "let me tell you, don't try. They can't
+do it themselves. Take them in the mass--as you would shrimps."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LOST OPPORTUNITIES
+
+
+The little doctor tipped his chair back against the wall, drew up his
+knees, and laughed whimperingly in his freckled hands.
+
+"I had to do some prodigious lying at that ball. I didn't dare let the
+De Grapion ladies know they were in company with a Grandissime."
+
+"I thought you said their name was Nancanou."
+
+"Well, certainly--De Grapion-Nancanou. You see, that is one of their
+charms: one is a widow, the other is her daughter, and both as young and
+beautiful as Hebe. Ask Honoré Grandissime; he has seen the little widow;
+but then he don't know who she is. He will not ask me, and I will not
+tell him. Oh, yes; it is about eighteen years now since old De
+Grapion--elegant, high-stepping old fellow--married her, then only
+sixteen years of age, to young Nancanou, an indigo-planter on the Fausse
+Rivière--the old bend, you know, behind Pointe Coupée. The young couple
+went there to live. I have been told they had one of the prettiest
+places in Louisiana. He was a man of cultivated tastes, educated in
+Paris, spoke English, was handsome (convivial, of course), and of
+perfectly pure blood. But there was one thing old De Grapion overlooked:
+he and his son-in-law were the last of their names. In Louisiana a man
+needs kinsfolk. He ought to have married his daughter into a strong
+house. They say that Numa Grandissime (Honoré's father) and he had
+patched up a peace between the two families that included even old
+Agricola, and that he could have married her to a Grandissime. However,
+he is supposed to have known what he was about.
+
+"A matter of business called young Nancanou to New Orleans. He had no
+friends here; he was a Creole, but what part of his life had not been
+spent on his plantation he had passed in Europe. He could not leave his
+young girl of a wife alone in that exiled sort of plantation life, so he
+brought her and the child (a girl) down with him as far as to her
+father's place, left them there, and came on to the city alone.
+
+"Now, what does the old man do but give him a letter of introduction to
+old Agricole Fusilier! (His name is Agricola, but we shorten it to
+Agricole.) It seems that old De Grapion and Agricole had had the
+indiscretion to scrape up a mutually complimentary correspondence. And
+to Agricole the young man went.
+
+"They became intimate at once, drank together, danced with the quadroons
+together, and got into as much mischief in three days as I ever did in a
+fortnight. So affairs went on until by and by they were gambling
+together. One night they were at the Piety Club, playing hard, and the
+planter lost his last quarti. He became desperate, and did a thing I
+have known more than one planter to do: wrote his pledge for every
+arpent of his land and every slave on it, and staked that. Agricole
+refused to play. 'You shall play,' said Nancanou, and when the game was
+ended he said: 'Monsieur Agricola Fusilier, you cheated.' You see? Just
+as I have frequently been tempted to remark to my friend, Mr.
+Frowenfeld.
+
+"But, Frowenfeld, you must know, withal the Creoles are such gamblers,
+they never cheat; they play absolutely fair. So Agricole had to
+challenge the planter. He could not be blamed for that; there was no
+choice--oh, now, Frowenfeld, keep quiet! I tell you there was no choice.
+And the fellow was no coward. He sent Agricole a clear title to the real
+estate and slaves,--lacking only the wife's signature,--accepted the
+challenge and fell dead at the first fire.
+
+"Stop, now, and let me finish. Agricole sat down and wrote to the widow
+that he did not wish to deprive her of her home, and that if she would
+state in writing her belief that the stakes had been won fairly, he
+would give back the whole estate, slaves and all; but that if she would
+not, he should feel compelled to retain it in vindication of his honor.
+Now wasn't that drawing a fine point?" The doctor laughed according to
+his habit, with his face down in his hands. "You see, he wanted to
+stand before all creation--the Creator did not make so much
+difference--in the most exquisitely proper light; so he puts the laws of
+humanity under his feet, and anoints himself from head to foot with
+Creole punctilio."
+
+"Did she sign the paper?" asked Joseph.
+
+"She? Wait till you know her! No, indeed; she had the true scorn. She
+and her father sent down another and a better title. Creole-like, they
+managed to bestir themselves to that extent and there they stopped.
+
+"And the airs with which they did it! They kept all their rage to
+themselves, and sent the polite word, that they were not acquainted with
+the merits of the case, that they were not disposed to make the long and
+arduous trip to the city and back, and that if M. Fusilier de
+Grandissime thought he could find any pleasure or profit in owning the
+place, he was welcome; that the widow of _his late friend_ was not
+disposed to live on it, but would remain with her father at the paternal
+home at Cannes Brulées.
+
+"Did you ever hear of a more perfect specimen of Creole pride? That is
+the way with all of them. Show me any Creole, or any number of Creoles,
+in any sort of contest, and right down at the foundation of it all, I
+will find you this same preposterous, apathetic, fantastic, suicidal
+pride. It is as lethargic and ferocious as an alligator. That is why the
+Creole almost always is (or thinks he is) on the defensive. See these De
+Grapions' haughty good manners to old Agricole; yet there wasn't a
+Grandissime in Louisiana who could have set foot on the De Grapion lands
+but at the risk of his life.
+
+"But I will finish the story: and here is the really sad part. Not many
+months ago old De Grapion--'old,' said I; they don't grow old; I call
+him old--a few months ago he died. He must have left everything
+smothered in debt; for, like his race, he had stuck to indigo because
+his father planted it, and it is a crop that has lost money steadily for
+years and years. His daughter and granddaughter were left like babes in
+the wood; and, to crown their disasters, have now made the grave mistake
+of coming to the city, where they find they haven't a friend--not one,
+sir! They called me in to prescribe for a trivial indisposition, shortly
+after their arrival; and I tell you, Frowenfeld, it made me shiver to
+see two such beautiful women in such a town as this without a male
+protector, and even"--the doctor lowered his voice--"without adequate
+support. The mother says they are perfectly comfortable; tells the old
+couple so who took them to the ball, and whose little girl is their
+embroidery scholar; but you cannot believe a Creole on that subject, and
+I don't believe her. Would you like to make their acquaintance?"
+
+Frowenfeld hesitated, disliking to say no to his friend, and then shook
+his head.
+
+"After a while--at least not now, sir, if you please."
+
+The doctor made a gesture of disappointment.
+
+"Um-hum," he said grumly--"the only man in New Orleans I would honor
+with an invitation!--but all right; I'll go alone."
+
+He laughed a little at himself, and left Frowenfeld, if ever he should
+desire it, to make the acquaintance of his pretty neighbors as best
+he could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WAS IT HONORÉ GRANDISSIME?
+
+
+A Creole gentleman, on horseback one morning with some practical object
+in view,--drainage, possibly,--had got what he sought,--the evidence of
+his own eyes on certain points,--and now moved quietly across some old
+fields toward the town, where more absorbing interests awaited him in
+the Rue Toulouse; for this Creole gentleman was a merchant, and because
+he would presently find himself among the appointments and restraints of
+the counting-room, he heartily gave himself up, for the moment, to the
+surrounding influences of nature.
+
+It was late in November; but the air was mild and the grass and foliage
+green and dewy. Wild flowers bloomed plentifully and in all directions;
+the bushes were hung, and often covered, with vines of sprightly green,
+sprinkled thickly with smart-looking little worthless berries, whose
+sparkling complacency the combined contempt of man, beast and bird
+could not dim. The call of the field-lark came continually out of the
+grass, where now and then could be seen his yellow breast; the orchard
+oriole was executing his fantasias in every tree; a covey of partridges
+ran across the path close under the horse's feet, and stopped to look
+back almost within reach of the riding-whip; clouds of starlings, in
+their odd, irresolute way, rose from the high bulrushes and settled
+again, without discernible cause; little wandering companies of sparrows
+undulated from hedge to hedge; a great rabbit-hawk sat alone in the top
+of a lofty pecan-tree; that petted rowdy, the mocking-bird, dropped down
+into the path to offer fight to the horse, and, failing in that, flew up
+again and drove a crow into ignominious retirement beyond the plain;
+from a place of flags and reeds a white crane shot upward, turned, and
+then, with the slow and stately beat peculiar to her wing, sped away
+until, against the tallest cypress of the distant forest, she became a
+tiny white speck on its black, and suddenly disappeared, like one
+flake of snow.
+
+The scene was altogether such as to fill any hearty soul with impulses
+of genial friendliness and gentle candor; such a scene as will sometimes
+prepare a man of the world, upon the least direct incentive, to throw
+open the windows of his private thought with a freedom which the
+atmosphere of no counting-room or drawing-room tends to induce.
+
+The young merchant--he was young--felt this. Moreover, the matter of
+business which had brought him out had responded to his inquiring eye
+with a somewhat golden radiance; and your true man of business--he who
+has reached that elevated pitch of serene, good-natured reserve which is
+of the high art of his calling--is never so generous with his
+pennyworths of thought as when newly in possession of some little secret
+worth many pounds.
+
+By and by the behavior of the horse indicated the near presence of a
+stranger; and the next moment the rider drew rein under an immense
+live-oak where there was a bit of paling about some graves, and
+raised his hat.
+
+"Good-morning, sir." But for the silent r's, his pronunciation was
+exact, yet evidently an acquired one. While he spoke his salutation in
+English, he was thinking in French: "Without doubt, this rather
+oversized, bareheaded, interrupted-looking convalescent who stands
+before me, wondering how I should know in what language to address him,
+is Joseph Frowenfeld, of whom Doctor Keene has had so much to say to me.
+A good face--unsophisticated, but intelligent, mettlesome and honest. He
+will make his mark; it will probably be a white one; I will subscribe to
+the adventure.
+
+"You will excuse me, sir?" he asked after a pause, dismounting, and
+noticing, as he did so, that Frowenfeld's knees showed recent contact
+with the turf; "I have, myself, some interest in two of these graves,
+sir, as I suppose--you will pardon my freedom--you have in the
+other four."
+
+He approached the old but newly whitened paling, which encircled the
+tree's trunk as well as the six graves about it. There was in his face
+and manner a sort of impersonal human kindness, well calculated to
+engage a diffident and sensitive stranger, standing in dread of
+gratuitous benevolence or pity.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the convalescent, and ceased; but the other leaned
+against the palings in an attitude of attention, and he felt induced to
+add: "I have buried here my father, mother, and two sisters,"--he had
+expected to continue in an unemotional tone; but a deep respiration
+usurped the place of speech. He stooped quickly to pick up his hat, and,
+as he rose again and looked into his listener's face, the respectful,
+unobtrusive sympathy there expressed went directly to his heart.
+
+"Victims of the fever," said the Creole with great gravity. "How did
+that happen?"
+
+As Frowenfeld, after a moment's hesitation, began to speak, the stranger
+let go the bridle of his horse and sat down upon the turf. Joseph
+appreciated the courtesy and sat down, too; and thus the ice was broken.
+
+The immigrant told his story; he was young--often younger than his
+years--and his listener several years his senior; but the Creole, true
+to his blood, was able at any time to make himself as young as need be,
+and possessed the rare magic of drawing one's confidence without seeming
+to do more than merely pay attention. It followed that the story was
+told in full detail, including grateful acknowledgment of the goodness
+of an unknown friend, who had granted this burial-place on condition
+that he should not be sought out for the purpose of thanking him.
+
+So a considerable time passed by, in which acquaintance grew with
+delightful rapidity.
+
+"What will you do now?" asked the stranger, when a short silence had
+followed the conclusion of the story.
+
+"I hardly know. I am taken somewhat by surprise. I have not chosen a
+definite course in life--as yet. I have been a general student, but have
+not prepared myself for any profession; I am not sure what I shall be."
+
+A certain energy in the immigrant's face half redeemed this childlike
+speech. Yet the Creole's lips, as he opened them to reply, betrayed
+amusement; so he hastened to say:
+
+"I appreciate your position, Mr. Frowenfeld,--excuse me, I believe you
+said that was your father's name. And yet,"--the shadow of an amused
+smile lurked another instant about a corner of his mouth,--"if you would
+understand me kindly I would say, take care--"
+
+What little blood the convalescent had rushed violently to his face, and
+the Creole added:
+
+"I do not insinuate you would willingly be idle. I think I know what you
+want. You want to make up your mind _now_ what you will _do_, and at
+your leisure what you will _be_; eh? To be, it seems to me," he said in
+summing up,--"that to be is not so necessary as to do, eh? or am
+I wrong?"
+
+"No, sir," replied Joseph, still red, "I was feeling that just now. I
+will do the first thing that offers; I can dig."
+
+The Creole shrugged and pouted.
+
+"And be called a _dos brile_--a 'burnt-back.'"
+
+"But"--began the immigrant, with overmuch warmth.
+
+The other interrupted him, shaking his head slowly and smiling as he
+spoke.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, it is of no use to talk; you may hold in contempt the
+Creole scorn of toil--just as I do, myself, but in theory, my-de'-seh,
+not too much in practice. You cannot afford to be _entirely_ different
+from the community in which you live; is that not so?"
+
+"A friend of mine," said Frowenfeld, "has told me I must 'compromise.'"
+
+"You must get acclimated," responded the Creole; "not in body only, that
+you have done; but in mind--in taste--in conversation--and in
+convictions too, yes, ha, ha! They all do it--all who come. They hold
+out a little while--a very little; then they open their stores on
+Sunday, they import cargoes of Africans, they bribe the officials, they
+smuggle goods, they have colored housekeepers. My-de'-seh, the water
+must expect to take the shape of the bucket; eh?"
+
+"One need not be water!" said the immigrant.
+
+"Ah!" said the Creole, with another amiable shrug, and a wave of his
+hand; "certainly you do not suppose that is my advice--that those things
+have my approval."
+
+Must we repeat already that Frowenfeld was abnormally young? "Why have
+they not your condemnation?" cried he with an earnestness that made the
+Creole's horse drop the grass from his teeth and wheel half around.
+
+The answer came slowly and gently.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, my habit is to buy cheap and sell at a profit. My
+condemnation? My-de'-seh, there is no sa-a-ale for it! it spoils the
+sale of other goods my-de'-seh. It is not to condemn that you want; you
+want to suc-_ceed_. Ha, ha, ha! you see I am a merchant, eh? My-de'-seh,
+can _you_ afford not to succeed?"
+
+The speaker had grown very much in earnest in the course of these few
+words, and as he asked the closing question, arose, arranged his horse's
+bridle and, with his elbow in the saddle, leaned his handsome head on
+his equally beautiful hand. His whole appearance was a dazzling
+contradiction of the notion that a Creole is a person of mixed blood.
+
+"I think I can!" replied the convalescent, with much spirit, rising with
+more haste than was good, and staggering a moment.
+
+The horseman laughed outright.
+
+"Your principle is the best, I cannot dispute that; but whether you can
+act it out--reformers do not make money, you know." He examined his
+saddle-girth and began to tighten it. "One can condemn--too
+cautiously--by a kind of--elevated cowardice (I have that fault); but
+one can also condemn too rashly; I remember when I did so. One of the
+occupants of those two graves you see yonder side by side--I think might
+have lived longer if I had not spoken so rashly for his rights. Did you
+ever hear of Bras-Coupé, Mr. Frowenfeld?"
+
+"I have heard only the name."
+
+"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld, _there_ was a bold man's chance to denounce wrong
+and oppression! Why, that negro's death changed the whole channel of my
+convictions."
+
+The speaker had turned and thrown up his arm with frowning earnestness;
+he dropped it and smiled at himself.
+
+"Do not mistake me for one of your new-fashioned Philadelphia
+'_negrophiles_'; I am a merchant, my-de'-seh, a good subject of His
+Catholic Majesty, a Creole of the Creoles, and so forth, and so
+forth. Come!"
+
+He slapped the saddle.
+
+To have seen and heard them a little later as they moved toward the
+city, the Creole walking before the horse, and Frowenfeld sitting in the
+saddle, you might have supposed them old acquaintances. Yet the
+immigrant was wondering who his companion might be. He had not
+introduced himself--seemed to think that even an immigrant might know
+his name without asking. Was it Honoré Grandissime? Joseph was tempted
+to guess so; but the initials inscribed on the silver-mounted pommel of
+the fine old Spanish saddle did not bear out that conjecture.
+
+The stranger talked freely. The sun's rays seemed to set all the
+sweetness in him a-working, and his pleasant worldly wisdom foamed up
+and out like fermenting honey.
+
+By and by the way led through a broad, grassy lane where the path turned
+alternately to right and left among some wild acacias. The Creole waved
+his hand toward one of them and said:
+
+"Now, Mr. Frowenfeld, you see? one man walks where he sees another's
+track; that is what makes a path; but you want a man, instead of passing
+around this prickly bush, to lay hold of it with his naked hands and
+pull it up by the roots."
+
+"But a man armed with the truth is far from being barehanded," replied
+the convalescent, and they went on, more and more interested at every
+step,--one in this very raw imported material for an excellent man, the
+other in so striking an exponent of a unique land and people.
+
+They came at length to the crossing of two streets, and the Creole,
+pausing in his speech, laid his hand upon the bridle.
+
+Frowenfeld dismounted.
+
+"Do we part here?" asked the Creole. "Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I hope to
+meet you soon again."
+
+"Indeed, I thank you, sir," said Joseph, "and I hope we shall,
+although--"
+
+The Creole paused with a foot in the stirrup and interrupted him with a
+playful gesture; then as the horse stirred, he mounted and drew in
+the rein.
+
+"I know; you want to say you cannot accept my philosophy and I cannot
+appreciate yours; but I appreciate it more than you think, my-de'-seh."
+
+The convalescent's smile showed much fatigue.
+
+The Creole extended his hand; the immigrant seized it, wished to ask his
+name, but did not; and the next moment he was gone.
+
+The convalescent walked meditatively toward his quarters, with a faint
+feeling of having been found asleep on duty and awakened by a passing
+stranger. It was an unpleasant feeling, and he caught himself more than
+once shaking his head. He stopped, at length, and looked back; but the
+Creole was long since out of sight. The mortified self-accuser little
+knew how very similar a feeling that vanished person was carrying away
+with him. He turned and resumed his walk, wondering who Monsieur might
+be, and a little impatient with himself that he had not asked.
+
+"It is Honoré Grandissime; it must be he!" he said.
+
+Yet see how soon he felt obliged to change his mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SIGNED--HONORÉ GRANDISSIME
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, having decided what he would "do," he
+started out in search of new quarters. He found nothing then, but next
+morning came upon a small, single-story building in the rue
+Royale,--corner of Conti,--which he thought would suit his plans. There
+were a door and show-window in the rue Royale, two doors in the
+intersecting street, and a small apartment in the rear which would
+answer for sleeping, eating, and studying purposes, and which connected
+with the front apartment by a door in the left-hand corner. This
+connection he would partially conceal by a prescription-desk. A counter
+would run lengthwise toward the rue Royale, along the wall opposite the
+side-doors. Such was the spot that soon became known as
+"Frowenfeld's Corner."
+
+The notice "À Louer" directed him to inquire at numero--rue Condé. Here
+he was ushered through the wicket of a _porte cochère_ into a broad,
+paved corridor, and up a stair into a large, cool room, and into the
+presence of a man who seemed, in some respects, the most remarkable
+figure he had yet seen in this little city of strange people. A strong,
+clear, olive complexion; features that were faultless (unless a
+woman-like delicacy, that was yet not effeminate, was a fault); hair _en
+queue_, the handsomer for its premature streakings of gray; a tall, well
+knit form, attired in cloth, linen and leather of the utmost fineness;
+manners Castilian, with a gravity almost oriental,--made him one of
+those rare masculine figures which, on the public promenade, men look
+back at and ladies inquire about.
+
+Now, who might _this_ be? The rent poster had given no name. Even the
+incurious Frowenfeld would fain guess a little. For a man to be just of
+this sort, it seemed plain that he must live in an isolated ease upon
+the unceasing droppings of coupons, rents, and like receivables. Such
+was the immigrant's first conjecture; and, as with slow, scant questions
+and answers they made their bargain, every new glance strengthened it;
+he was evidently a _rentier_. What, then, was his astonishment when
+Monsieur bent down and made himself Frowenfeld's landlord, by writing
+what the universal mind esteemed the synonym of enterprise and
+activity--the name of Honoré Grandissime. The landlord did not see, or
+ignored, his tenant's glance of surprise, and the tenant asked no
+questions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may add here an incident which seemed, when it took place, as
+unimportant as a single fact well could be.
+
+The little sum that Frowenfeld had inherited from his father had been
+sadly depleted by the expenses of four funerals; yet he was still able
+to pay a month's rent in advance, to supply his shop with a scant stock
+of drugs, to purchase a celestial globe and some scientific apparatus,
+and to buy a dinner or two of sausages and crackers; but after this
+there was no necessity of hiding his purse.
+
+His landlord early contracted a fondness for dropping in upon him, and
+conversing with him, as best the few and labored English phrases at his
+command would allow. Frowenfeld soon noticed that he never entered the
+shop unless its proprietor was alone, never sat down, and always, with
+the same perfection of dignity that characterized all his movements,
+departed immediately upon the arrival of any third person. One day, when
+the landlord was making one of these standing calls,--he always stood'
+beside a high glass case, on the side of the shop opposite the
+counter,--he noticed in Joseph's hand a sprig of basil, and spoke of it.
+
+"You ligue?"
+
+The tenant did not understand. "You--find--dad--nize?"
+
+Frowenfeld replied that it had been left by the oversight of a customer,
+and expressed a liking for its odor.
+
+"I sand you," said the landlord,--a speech whose meaning Frowenfeld was
+not sure of until the next morning, when a small, nearly naked black
+boy, who could not speak a word of English, brought to the apothecary a
+luxuriant bunch of this basil, growing in a rough box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ILLUSTRATING THE TRACTIVE POWER OF BASIL
+
+
+On the twenty-fourth day of December, 1803, at two o'clock, P.M., the
+thermometer standing at 79, hygrometer 17, barometer 29.880, sky partly
+clouded, wind west, light, the apothecary of the rue Royale, now
+something more than a month established in his calling, might have been
+seen standing behind his counter and beginning to show embarrassment in
+the presence of a lady, who, since she had got her prescription filled
+and had paid for it, ought in the conventional course of things to have
+hurried out, followed by the pathetically ugly black woman who tarried
+at the door as her attendant; for to be in an apothecary's shop at all
+was unconventional. She was heavily veiled; but the sparkle of her eyes,
+which no multiplication of veils could quite extinguish, her symmetrical
+and well-fitted figure, just escaping smallness, her grace of movement,
+and a soft, joyous voice, had several days before led Frowenfeld to the
+confident conclusion that she was young and beautiful.
+
+For this was now the third time she had come to buy; and, though the
+purchases were unaccountably trivial, the purchaser seemed not so. On
+the two previous occasions she had been accompanied by a slender girl,
+somewhat taller than she, veiled also, of graver movement, a bearing
+that seemed to Joseph almost too regal, and a discernible unwillingness
+to enter or tarry. There seemed a certain family resemblance between her
+voice and that of the other, which proclaimed them--he incautiously
+assumed--sisters. This time, as we see, the smaller, and probably elder,
+came alone.
+
+She still held in her hand the small silver which Frowenfeld had given
+her in change, and sighed after the laugh they had just enjoyed together
+over a slip in her English. A very grateful sip of sweet the laugh was
+to the all but friendless apothecary, and the embarrassment that rushed
+in after it may have arisen in part from a conscious casting about in
+his mind for something--anything--that might prolong her stay an
+instant. He opened his lips to speak; but she was quicker than he, and
+said, in a stealthy way that seemed oddly unnecessary:
+
+"You 'ave some basilic?"
+
+She accompanied her words with a little peeping movement, directing his
+attention, through the open door, to his box of basil, on the floor in
+the rear room.
+
+Frowenfeld stepped back to it, cut half the bunch and returned, with the
+bold intention of making her a present of it; but as he hastened back to
+the spot he had left, he was astonished to see the lady disappearing
+from his farthest front door, followed by her negress.
+
+"Did she change her mind, or did she misunderstand me?" he asked
+himself; and, in the hope that she might return for the basil, he put it
+in water in his back room.
+
+The day being, as the figures have already shown, an unusually mild one,
+even for a Louisiana December, and the finger of the clock drawing by
+and by toward the last hour of sunlight, some half dozen of Frowenfeld's
+townsmen had gathered, inside and out, some standing, some sitting,
+about his front door, and all discussing the popular topics of the day.
+For it might have been anticipated that, in a city where so very little
+English was spoken and no newspaper published except that beneficiary
+of eighty subscribers, the "Moniteur de la Louisiane," the apothecary's
+shop in the rue Royale would be the rendezvous for a select company of
+English-speaking gentlemen, with a smart majority of physicians.
+
+The Cession had become an accomplished fact. With due drum-beatings and
+act-reading, flag-raising, cannonading and galloping of aides-de-camp,
+Nouvelle Orléans had become New Orleans, and Louisiane was Louisiana.
+This afternoon, the first week of American jurisdiction was only
+something over half gone, and the main topic of public debate was still
+the Cession. Was it genuine? and, if so, would it stand?
+
+"Mark my words," said one, "the British flag will be floating over this
+town within ninety days!" and he went on whittling the back of
+his chair.
+
+From this main question, the conversation branched out to the subject of
+land titles. Would that great majority of Spanish titles, derived from
+the concessions of post-commandants and others of minor authority,
+hold good?
+
+"I suppose you know what ---- thinks about it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he has quietly purchased the grant made by Carondelet to the
+Marquis of ----, thirty thousand acres, and now says the grant is two
+hundred _and_ thirty thousand. That is one style of men Governor
+Claiborne is going to have on his hands. The town will presently be as
+full of them as my pocket is of tobacco crumbs,--every one of them with
+a Spanish grant as long as Clark's ropewalk and made up since the rumor
+of the Cession."
+
+"I hear that some of Honoré Grandissime's titles are likely to turn out
+bad,--some of the old Brahmin properties and some of the
+Mandarin lands."
+
+"Fudge!" said Dr. Keene.
+
+There was also the subject of rotation in office. Would this provisional
+governor-general himself be able to stand fast? Had not a man better
+temporize a while, and see what Ex-Governor-general Casa Calvo and
+Trudeau were going to do? Would not men who sacrificed old prejudices,
+braved the popular contumely, and came forward and gave in their
+allegiance to the President's appointee, have to take the chances of
+losing their official positions at last? Men like Camille Brahmin, for
+instance, or Charlie Mandarin: suppose Spain or France should get the
+province back, then where would they be?
+
+"One of the things I pity most in this vain world," drawled Doctor
+Keene, "is a hive of patriots who don't know where to swarm."
+
+The apothecary was drawn into the discussion--at least he thought he
+was. Inexperience is apt to think that Truth will be knocked down and
+murdered unless she comes to the rescue. Somehow, Frowenfeld's really
+excellent arguments seemed to give out more heat than light. They were
+merciless; their principles were not only lofty to dizziness, but
+precipitous, and their heights unoccupied, and--to the common
+sight--unattainable. In consequence, they provoked hostility and even
+resentment. With the kindest, the most honest, and even the most modest,
+intentions, he found himself--to his bewilderment and surprise--sniffed
+at by the ungenerous, frowned upon by the impatient, and smiled down by
+the good-natured in a manner that brought sudden blushes of exasperation
+to his face, and often made him ashamed to find himself going over these
+sham battles again in much savageness of spirit, when alone with his
+books; or, in moments of weakness, casting about for such unworthy
+weapons as irony and satire. In the present debate, he had just provoked
+a sneer that made his blood leap and his friends laugh, when Doctor
+Keene, suddenly rising and beckoning across the street, exclaimed:
+
+"Oh! Agricole! Agricole! _venez ici_; we want you."
+
+A murmur of vexed protest arose from two or three.
+
+"He's coming," said the whittler, who had also beckoned.
+
+"Good evening, Citizen Fusilier," said Doctor Keene. "Citizen Fusilier,
+allow me to present my friend, Professor Frowenfeld--yes, you are a
+professor--yes, you are. He is one of your sort, Citizen Fusilier, a man
+of thorough scientific education. I believe on my soul, sir, he knows
+nearly as much as you do!"
+
+The person who confronted the apothecary was a large, heavily built, but
+well-molded and vigorous man, of whom one might say that he was adorned
+with old age. His brow was dark, and furrowed partly by time and partly
+by a persistent, ostentatious frown. His eyes were large, black and
+bold, and the gray locks above them curled short and harsh like the
+front of a bull. His nose was fine and strong, and if there was any
+deficiency in mouth or chin, it was hidden by a beard that swept down
+over his broad breast like the beard of a prophet. In his dress, which
+was noticeably soiled, the fashions of three decades were hinted at; he
+seemed to have donned whatever he thought his friends would most have
+liked him to leave off.
+
+"Professor," said the old man, extending something like the paw of a
+lion, and giving Frowenfeld plenty of time to become thoroughly awed,
+"this is a pleasure as magnificent as unexpected! A scientific man?--in
+Louisiana?" He looked around upon the doctors as upon a
+graduating class.
+
+"Professor, I am rejoiced!" He paused again, shaking the apothecary's
+hand with great ceremony. "I do assure you, sir, I dislike to relinquish
+your grasp. Do me the honor to allow me to become your friend! I
+congratulate my downtrodden country on the acquisition of such a
+citizen! I hope, sir,--at least I might have hoped, had not Louisiana
+just passed into the hands of the most clap-trap government in the
+universe, notwithstanding it pretends to be a republic,--I might have
+hoped that you had come among us to fasten the lie direct upon a late
+author, who writes of us that 'the air of this region is deadly to
+the Muses.'"
+
+"He didn't say that?" asked one of the debaters, with pretended
+indignation.
+
+"He did, sir, after eating our bread!"
+
+"And sucking our sugar-cane, too, no doubt!" said the wag; but the old
+man took no notice.
+
+Frowenfeld, naturally, was not anxious to reply, and was greatly
+relieved to be touched on the elbow by a child with a picayune in one
+hand and a tumbler in the other. He escaped behind the counter and
+gladly remained there.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," asked one of the gossips, "what has the new
+government to do with the health of the Muses?"
+
+"It introduces the English tongue," said the old man, scowling.
+
+"Oh, well," replied the questioner, "the Creoles will soon learn the
+language."
+
+"English is not a language, sir; it is a jargon! And when this young
+simpleton, Claiborne, attempts to cram it down the public windpipe in
+the courts, as I understand he intends, he will fail! Hah! sir, I know
+men in this city who would rather eat a dog than speak English! I speak
+it, but I also speak Choctaw."
+
+"The new land titles will be in English."
+
+"They will spurn his rotten titles. And if he attempts to invalidate
+their old ones, why, let him do it! Napoleon Buonaparte" (Italian
+pronounciation) "will make good every arpent within the next two years.
+_Think so?_ I know it! _How?_ H-I perceive it! H-I hope the yellow fever
+may spare you to witness it."
+
+A sullen grunt from the circle showed the "citizen" that he had presumed
+too much upon the license commonly accorded his advanced age, and by way
+of a diversion he looked around for Frowenfeld to pour new flatteries
+upon. But Joseph, behind his counter, unaware of either the offense or
+the resentment, was blushing with pleasure before a visitor who had
+entered by the side door farthest from the company.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Agricola, "h-my dear friends, you must not expect an
+old Creole to like anything in comparison with _la belle langue_."
+
+"Which language do you call _la belle?_" asked Doctor Keene, with
+pretended simplicity.
+
+The old man bent upon him a look of unspeakable contempt, which nobody
+noticed. The gossips were one by one stealing a glance toward that which
+ever was, is and must be an irresistible lodestone to the eyes of all
+the sons of Adam, to wit, a chaste and graceful complement of--skirts.
+Then in a lower tone they resumed their desultory conversation.
+
+It was the seeker after basil who stood before the counter, holding in
+her hand, with her purse, the heavy veil whose folds had before
+concealed her features.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"OO DAD IS, 'SIEUR FROWENFEL'?"
+
+
+Whether the removal of the veil was because of the milder light of the
+evening, or the result of accident, or of haste, or both, or whether, by
+reason of some exciting or absorbing course of thought, the wearer had
+withdrawn it unconsciously, was a matter that occupied the apothecary as
+little as did Agricola's continued harangue. As he looked upon the fair
+face through the light gauze which still overhung but not obscured it,
+he readily perceived, despite the sprightly smile, something like
+distress, and as she spoke this became still more evident in her hurried
+undertone.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', I want you to sell me doze _basilic_."
+
+As she slipped the rings of her purse apart her fingers trembled.
+
+"It is waiting for you," said Frowenfeld; but the lady did not hear him;
+she was giving her attention to the loud voice of Agricola saying in the
+course of discussion:
+
+"The Louisiana Creole is the noblest variety of enlightened man!"
+
+"Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked, softly, but with an excited
+eye.
+
+"That is Mr. Agricola Fusilier," answered Joseph in the same tone, his
+heart leaping inexplicably as he met her glance. With an angry flush
+she looked quickly around, scrutinized the old man in an instantaneous,
+thorough way, and then glanced back at the apothecary again, as if
+asking him to fulfil her request the quicker.
+
+He hesitated, in doubt as to her meaning.
+
+"Wrap it yonder," she almost whispered.
+
+He went, and in a moment returned, with the basil only partially hid in
+a paper covering.
+
+But the lady, muffled again in her manifold veil, had once more lost her
+eagerness for it; at least, instead of taking it, she moved aside,
+offering room for a masculine figure just entering. She did not look to
+see who it might be--plenty of time to do that by accident, by and by.
+There she made a mistake; for the new-comer, with a silent bow of
+thanks, declined the place made for him, moved across the shop, and
+occupied his eyes with the contents of the glass case, his back being
+turned to the lady and Frowenfeld. The apothecary recognized the Creole
+whom he had met under the live-oak.
+
+The lady put forth her hand suddenly to receive the package. As she took
+it and turned to depart, another small hand was laid upon it and it was
+returned to the counter. Something was said in a low-pitched undertone,
+and the two sisters--if Frowenfeld's guess was right--confronted each
+other. For a single instant only they stood so; an earnest and hurried
+murmur of French words passed between them, and they turned together,
+bowed with great suavity, and were gone.
+
+"The Cession is a mere temporary political manoeuvre!" growled M.
+Fusilier.
+
+Frowenfeld's merchant friend came from his place of waiting, and spoke
+twice before he attracted the attention of the bewildered apothecary.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I have been told that--"
+
+Joseph gazed after the two ladies crossing the street, and felt
+uncomfortable that the group of gossips did the same. So did the black
+attendant who glanced furtively back.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I--"
+
+"Oh! how do you do, sir?" exclaimed the apothecary, with great
+pleasantness, of face. It seemed the most natural thing that they should
+resume their late conversation just where they had left off, and that
+would certainly be pleasant. But the man of more experience showed an
+unresponsive expression, that was as if he remembered no conversation
+of any note.
+
+"I have been told that you might be able to replace the glass in this
+thing out of your private stock."
+
+He presented a small, leather-covered case, evidently containing some
+optical instrument. "It will give me a pretext for going," he had said
+to himself, as he put it into his pocket in his counting-room. He was
+not going to let the apothecary know he had taken such a fancy to him.
+
+"I do not know," replied Frowenfeld, as he touched the spring of the
+case; "I will see what I have."
+
+He passed into the back room, more than willing to get out of sight
+till he might better collect himself.
+
+"I do not keep these things for sale," said he as he went.
+
+"Sir?" asked the Creole, as if he had not understood, and followed
+through the open door.
+
+"Is this what that lady was getting?" he asked, touching the remnant of
+the basil in the box.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the apothecary, with his face in the drawer of a table.
+
+"They had no carriage with them." The Creole spoke with his back turned,
+at the same time running his eyes along a shelf of books. Frowenfeld
+made only the sound of rejecting bits of crystal and taking up others.
+"I do not know who they are," ventured the merchant.
+
+Joseph still gave no answer, but a moment after approached, with the
+instrument in his extended hand.
+
+"You had it? I am glad," said the owner, receiving it, but keeping one
+hand still on the books.
+
+Frowenfeld put up his materials.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, are these your books? I mean do you use these books?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Creole stepped back to the door.
+
+"Agricola!"
+
+"_Quoi_!"
+
+"_Vien ici_."
+
+Citizen Fusilier entered, followed by a small volley of retorts from
+those with whom he had been disputing, and who rose as he did. The
+stranger said something very sprightly in French, running the back of
+one finger down the rank of books, and a lively dialogue followed.
+
+"You must be a great scholar," said the unknown by and by, addressing
+the apothecary.
+
+"He is a professor of chimistry," said the old man.
+
+"I am nothing, as yet, but a student," said Joseph, as the three
+returned into the shop; "certainly not a scholar, and still less a
+professor." He spoke with a new quietness of manner that made the
+younger Creole turn upon him a pleasant look.
+
+"H-my young friend," said the patriarch, turning toward Joseph with a
+tremendous frown, "when I, Agricola Fusilier, pronounce you a professor,
+you are a professor. Louisiana will not look to _you_ for your
+credentials; she will look to me!"
+
+He stumbled upon some slight impediment under foot. There were times
+when it took but little to make Agricola stumble.
+
+Looking to see what it was, Joseph picked up a silken purse. There was a
+name embroidered on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUDDEN FLASHES OF LIGHT
+
+
+The day was nearly gone. The company that had been chatting at the front
+door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried until bedtime, had
+wandered off; however, by stepping toward the light the young merchant
+could decipher the letters on the purse. Citizen Fusilier drew out a
+pair of spectacles, looked over his junior's shoulder, read aloud,
+"_Aurore De G. Nanca_--," and uttered an imprecation.
+
+"Do not speak to me!" he thundered; "do not approach me! she did it
+maliciously!"
+
+"Sir!" began Frowenfeld.
+
+But the old man uttered another tremendous malediction and hurried into
+the street and away.
+
+"Let him pass," said the other Creole calmly.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+"He is getting old." The Creole extended the purse carelessly to the
+apothecary. "Has it anything inside?"
+
+"But a single pistareen."
+
+"That is why she wanted the _basilic_, eh?"
+
+"I do not understand you, sir."
+
+"Do you not know what she was going to do with it?"
+
+"With the basil? No sir."
+
+"May be she was going to make a little tisane, eh?" said the Creole,
+forcing down a smile.
+
+But a portion of the smile would come when Frowenfeld answered, with
+unnecessary resentment:
+
+"She was going to make some proper use of it, which need not concern
+me."
+
+"Without doubt."
+
+The Creole quietly walked a step or two forward and back and looked idly
+into the glass case. "Is this young man in love with her?" he asked
+himself. He turned around.
+
+"Do you know those ladies, Mr. Frowenfeld? Do you visit them at home?"
+
+He drew out his porte-monnaie.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I will pay you for the repair of this instrument; have you change
+for--"
+
+"I will see," said the apothecary.
+
+As he spoke he laid the purse on a stool, till he should light his shop,
+and then went to his till without again taking it.
+
+The Creole sauntered across to the counter and nipped the herb which
+still lay there.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know what some very excellent people do with this?
+They rub it on the sill of the door to make the money come into
+the house."
+
+Joseph stopped aghast with the drawer half drawn.
+
+"Not persons of intelligence and--"
+
+"All kinds. It is only some of the foolishness which they take from the
+slaves. Many of your best people consult the voudou horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Priestesses, you might call them," explained the Creole, "like Momselle
+Marcelline or 'Zabeth Philosophe."
+
+"Witches!" whispered Frowenfeld.
+
+"Oh no," said the other with a shrug; "that is too hard a name; say
+fortune-tellers. But Mr. Frowenfeld, I wish you to lend me your good
+offices. Just supposing the possi_bil_ity that that lady may be in need
+of money, you know, and will send back or come back for the purse, you
+know, knowing that she most likely lost it here, I ask you the favor
+that you will not let her know I have filled it with gold. In fact, if
+she mentions my name--"
+
+"To confess the truth, sir, I am not acquainted with your name."
+
+The Creole smiled a genuine surprise.
+
+"I thought you knew it." He laughed a little at himself. "We have
+nevertheless become very good friends--I believe? Well, in fact then,
+Mr. Frowenfeld, you might say you do not know who put the money in." He
+extended his open palm with the purse hanging across it. Joseph was
+about to object to this statement, but the Creole, putting on an
+expression of anxious desire, said: "I mean, not by name. It is somewhat
+important to me, Mr. Frowenfeld, that that lady should not know my
+present action. If you want to do those two ladies a favor, you may
+rest assured the way to do it is to say you do not know who put this
+gold." The Creole in his earnestness slipped in his idiom. "You will
+excuse me if I do not tell you my name; you can find it out at any time
+from Agricola. Ah! I am glad she did not see me! You must not tell
+anybody about this little event, eh?"
+
+"No, sir," said Joseph, as he finally accepted the purse. "I shall say
+nothing to any one else, and only what I cannot avoid saying to the lady
+and her sister."
+
+"_'Tis not her sister_" responded the Creole, "_'tis her daughter_."
+
+The italics signify, not how the words were said, but how they sounded
+to Joseph. As if a dark lantern were suddenly turned full upon it, he
+saw the significance of Citizen Fusilier's transport. The fair strangers
+were the widow and daughter of the man whom Agricola had killed in
+duel--the ladies with whom Doctor Keene had desired to make him
+acquainted.
+
+"Well, good evening, Mr. Frowenfeld." The Creole extended his hand (his
+people are great hand-shakers). "Ah--" and then, for the first time, he
+came to the true object of his visit. "The conversation we had some
+weeks ago, Mr. Frowenfeld, has started a train of thought in my
+mind"--he began to smile as if to convey the idea that Joseph would find
+the subject a trivial one--"which has almost brought me to the--"
+
+A light footfall accompanied with the soft sweep of robes cut short his
+words. There had been two or three entrances and exits during the time
+the Creole had tarried, but he had not allowed them to disturb him. Now,
+however, he had no sooner turned and fixed his glance upon this last
+comer, than without so much as the invariable Creole leave-taking of
+"Well, good evening, sir," he hurried out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PHILOSOPHE
+
+
+The apothecary felt an inward nervous start as there advanced into the
+light of his hanging lamp and toward the spot where he had halted, just
+outside the counter, a woman of the quadroon caste, of superb stature
+and poise, severely handsome features, clear, tawny skin and large,
+passionate black eyes.
+
+"_Bon soi', Miché_." [Monsieur.] A rather hard, yet not repellent smile
+showed her faultless teeth.
+
+Frowenfeld bowed.
+
+"_Mo vien c'erc'er la bourse de Madame_."
+
+She spoke the best French at her command, but it was not understood.
+
+The apothecary could only shake his head.
+
+"_La bourse_" she repeated, softly smiling, but with a scintillation of
+the eyes in resentment of his scrutiny. "_La bourse_" she reiterated.
+
+"Purse?"
+
+"_Oui, Miché_."
+
+"You are sent for it?"
+
+"_Oui, Miché_."
+
+He drew it from his breast pocket and marked the sudden glisten of her
+eyes, reflecting the glisten of the gold in the silken mesh.
+
+"_Oui, c'est ça_," said she, putting her hand out eagerly.
+
+"I am afraid to give you this to-night," said Joseph.
+
+"_Oui_," ventured she, dubiously, the lightning playing deep back in her
+eyes.
+
+"You might be robbed," said Frowenfeld. "It is very dangerous for you to
+be out alone. It will not be long, now, until gun-fire." (Eight o'clock
+P.M.--the gun to warn slaves to be in-doors, under pain of arrest and
+imprisonment.)
+
+The object of this solicitude shook her head with a smile at its
+gratuitousness. The smile showed determination also.
+
+"_Mo pas compren_'," she said.
+
+"Tell the lady to send for it to-morrow."
+
+She smiled helplessly and somewhat vexedly, shrugged and again shook her
+head. As she did so she heard footsteps and voices in the door at
+her back.
+
+"_C'est ça_" she said again with a hurried attempt at extreme
+amiability; "Dat it; _oui_;" and lifting her hand with some rapidity
+made a sudden eager reach for the purse, but failed.
+
+"No!" said Frowenfeld, indignantly.
+
+"Hello!" said Charlie Keene amusedly, as he approached from the door.
+
+The woman turned, and in one or two rapid sentences in the Creole
+dialect offered her explanation.
+
+"Give her the purse, Joe; I will answer for its being all right."
+
+Frowenfeld handed it to her. She started to pass through the door in the
+rue Royale by which Doctor Keene had entered; but on seeing on its
+threshold Agricola frowning upon her, she turned quickly with evident
+trepidation, and hurried out into the darkness of the other street.
+
+Agricola entered. Doctor Keene looked about the shop.
+
+"I tell you, Agricole, you didn't have it with you; Frowenfeld, you
+haven't seen a big knotted walking-stick?"
+
+Frowenfeld was sure no walking-stick had been left there.
+
+"Oh, yes, Frowenfeld," said Doctor Keene, with a little laugh, as the
+three sat down, "I'd a'most as soon trust that woman as if she
+was white."
+
+The apothecary said nothing.
+
+"How free," said Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at the sky
+without, and ending with a philosopher's smile upon his two
+companions,--"how free we people are from prejudice against the negro!"
+
+"The white people," said Frowenfeld, half abstractedly, half
+inquiringly.
+
+"H-my young friend, when we say, 'we people,' we _always_ mean we white
+people. The non-mention of color always implies pure white; and whatever
+is not pure white is to all intents and purposes pure black. When I say
+the 'whole community,' I mean the whole white portion; when I speak of
+the 'undivided public sentiment,' I mean the sentiment of the white
+population. What else could I mean? Could you suppose, sir, the
+expression which you may have heard me use--'my downtrodden
+country'--includes blacks and mulattoes? What is that up yonder in the
+sky? The moon. The new moon, or the old moon, or the moon in her third
+quarter, but always the moon! Which part of it? Why, the shining
+part--the white part, always and only! Not that there is a prejudice
+against the negro. By no means. Wherever he can be of any service in a
+strictly menial capacity we kindly and generously tolerate his
+presence."
+
+Was the immigrant growing wise, or weak, that he remained silent?
+
+Agricola rose as he concluded and said he would go home. Doctor Keene
+gave him his hand lazily, without rising.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he said, with a smile and in an undertone, as Agricola's
+footsteps died away, "don't you know who that woman is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you."
+
+He told him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On that lonely plantation at the Cannes Brulées, where Aurore Nancanou's
+childhood had been passed without brothers or sisters, there had been
+given her, according to the well-known custom of plantation life, a
+little quadroon slave-maid as her constant and only playmate. This maid
+began early to show herself in many ways remarkable. While yet a child
+she grew tall, lithe, agile; her eyes were large and black, and rolled
+and sparkled if she but turned to answer to her name. Her pale yellow
+forehead, low and shapely, with the jet hair above it, the heavily
+pencilled eyebrows and long lashes below, the faint red tinge that
+blushed with a kind of cold passion through the clear yellow skin of the
+cheek, the fulness of the red, voluptuous lips and the roundness of her
+perfect neck, gave her, even at fourteen, a barbaric and magnetic
+beauty, that startled the beholder like an unexpected drawing out of a
+jewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only from high Latin
+ancestry on the one side and--we might venture--Jaloff African on the
+other. To these charms of person she added mental acuteness,
+conversational adroitness, concealed cunning, and noiseless but visible
+strength of will; and to these, that rarest of gifts in one of her
+tincture, the purity of true womanhood.
+
+At fourteen a necessity which had been parleyed with for two years or
+more became imperative, and Aurore's maid was taken from her.
+Explanation is almost superfluous. Aurore was to become a lady and her
+playmate a lady's maid; but not _her_ maid, because the maid had become,
+of the two, the ruling spirit. It was a question of grave debate in the
+mind of M. De Grapion what disposition to make of her.
+
+About this time the Grandissimes and De Grapions, through certain
+efforts of Honoré's father (since dead) were making some feeble
+pretences of mutual good feeling, and one of those Kentuckian dealers in
+corn and tobacco whose flatboat fleets were always drifting down the
+Mississippi, becoming one day M. De Grapion's transient guest,
+accidentally mentioned a wish of Agricola Fusilier. Agricola, it
+appeared, had commissioned him to buy the most beautiful lady's maid
+that in his extended journeyings he might be able to find; he wanted to
+make her a gift to his niece, Honoré's sister. The Kentuckian saw the
+demand met in Aurore's playmate. M. De Grapion would not sell her.
+(Trade with a Grandissime? Let them suspect he needed money?) No; but he
+would ask Agricola to accept the services of the waiting-maid for, say,
+ten years. The Kentuckian accepted the proposition on the spot and it
+was by and by carried out. She was never recalled to the Cannes Brulées,
+but in subsequent years received her freedom from her master, and in New
+Orleans became Palmyre la Philosophe, as they say in the corrupt French
+of the old Creoles, or Palmyre Philosophe, noted for her taste and skill
+as a hair-dresser, for the efficiency of her spells and the sagacity of
+her divinations, but most of all for the chaste austerity with which she
+practised the less baleful rites of the voudous.
+
+"That's the woman," said Doctor Keene, rising to go, as he concluded
+the narrative,--"that's she, Palmyre Philosophe. Now you get a view of
+the vastness of Agricole's generosity; he tolerates her even though she
+does not present herself in the 'strictly menial capacity.' Reason
+why--_he's afraid of her_."
+
+Time passed, if that may be called time which we have to measure with a
+clock. The apothecary of the rue Royale found better ways of
+measurement. As quietly as a spider he was spinning information into
+knowledge and knowledge into what is supposed to be wisdom; whether it
+was or not we shall see. His unidentified merchant friend who had
+adjured him to become acclimated as "they all did" had also exhorted him
+to study the human mass of which he had become a unit; but whether that
+study, if pursued, was sweetening and ripening, or whether it was
+corrupting him, that friend did not come to see; it was the busy time of
+year. Certainly so young a solitary, coming among a people whose
+conventionalities were so at variance with his own door-yard ethics, was
+in sad danger of being unduly--as we might say--Timonized. His
+acquaintances continued to be few in number.
+
+During this fermenting period he chronicled much wet and some cold
+weather. This may in part account for the uneventfulness of its passage;
+events do not happen rapidly among the Creoles in bad weather. However,
+trade was good.
+
+But the weather cleared; and when it was getting well on into the
+Creole spring and approaching the spring of the almanacs, something did
+occur that extended Frowenfeld's acquaintance without Doctor Keene's
+assistance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A CALL FROM THE RENT-SPECTRE
+
+
+It is nearly noon of a balmy morning late in February. Aurore Nancanou
+and her daughter have only this moment ceased sewing, in the small front
+room of No. 19 rue Bienville. Number 19 is the right-hand half of a
+single-story, low-roofed tenement, washed with yellow ochre, which it
+shares generously with whoever leans against it. It sits as fast on the
+ground as a toad. There is a kitchen belonging to it somewhere among the
+weeds in the back yard, and besides this room where the ladies are,
+there is, directly behind it, a sleeping apartment. Somewhere back of
+this there is a little nook where in pleasant weather they eat. Their
+cook and housemaid is the plain person who attends them on the street.
+Her bedchamber is the kitchen and her bed the floor. The house's only
+other protector is a hound, the aim of whose life is to get thrust out
+of the ladies' apartments every fifteen minutes.
+
+Yet if you hastily picture to yourself a forlorn-looking establishment,
+you will be moving straight away from the fact. Neatness, order,
+excellence, are prevalent qualities in all the details of the main
+house's inward garniture. The furniture is old-fashioned, rich, French,
+imported. The carpets, if not new, are not cheap, either. Bits of
+crystal and silver, visible here and there, are as bright as they are
+antiquated; and one or two portraits, and the picture of Our Lady of
+Many Sorrows, are passably good productions. The brass work, of which
+there is much, is brilliantly burnished, and the front room is bright
+and cheery.
+
+At the street door of this room somebody has just knocked. Aurore has
+risen from her seat. The other still sits on a low chair with her hands
+and sewing dropped into her lap, looking up steadfastly into her
+mother's face with a mingled expression of fondness and dismayed
+expectation. Aurore hesitates beside her chair, desirous of resuming her
+seat, even lifts her sewing from it; but tarries a moment, her alert
+suspense showing in her eyes. Her daughter still looks up into them. It
+is not strange that the dwellers round about dispute as to which is the
+fairer, nor that in the six months during which the two have occupied
+Number 19 the neighbors have reached no conclusion on this subject. If
+some young enthusiast compares the daughter--in her eighteenth year--to
+a bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediately
+retorts that the other--in her thirty-fifth--is the red, red,
+full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. If one says the maiden has the
+dew of youth,--"But!" cry two or three mothers in a breath, "that other
+one, child, will never grow old. With her it will always be morning.
+That woman is going to last forever; ha-a-a-a!--even longer!"
+
+There was one direction in which the widow evidently had the advantage;
+you could see from the street or the opposite windows that she was a
+wise householder. On the day they moved into Number 19 she had been seen
+to enter in advance of all her other movables, carrying into the empty
+house a new broom, a looking-glass, and a silver coin. Every morning
+since, a little watching would have discovered her at the hour of
+sunrise sprinkling water from her side casement, and her opposite
+neighbors often had occasion to notice that, sitting at her sewing by
+the front window, she never pricked her finger but she quickly ran it up
+behind her ear, and then went on with her work. Would anybody but Joseph
+Frowenfeld ever have lived in and moved away from the two-story brick
+next them on the right and not have known of the existence of such
+a marvel?
+
+"Ha!" they said, "she knows how to keep off bad luck, that Madame
+yonder. And the younger one seems not to like it. Girls think themselves
+so smart these days."
+
+Ah, there was the knock again, right there on the street-door, as loud
+as if it had been given with a joint of sugar-cane!
+
+The daughter's hand, which had just resumed the needle, stood still in
+mid-course with the white thread half-drawn. Aurore tiptoed slowly over
+the carpeted floor. There came a shuffling sound, and the corner of a
+folded white paper commenced appearing and disappearing under the door.
+She mounted a chair and peeped through that odd little _jalousie_ which
+formerly was in almost all New Orleans street-doors; but the missive had
+meantime found its way across the sill, and she saw only the
+unpicturesque back of a departing errand-boy. But that was well. She had
+a pride, to maintain which--and a poverty, to conceal which--she felt to
+be necessary to her self-respect; and this made her of necessity a
+trifle unsocial in her own castle. Do you suppose she was going to put
+on the face of having been born or married to this degraded condition
+of things?
+
+Who knows?--the knock might have been from 'Sieur Frowenfel'--ha, ha! He
+might be just silly enough to call so early; or it might have been from
+that _polisson_ of a Grandissime,--which one didn't matter, they were
+all detestable,--coming to collect the rent. That was her original fear;
+or, worse still, it might have been, had it been softer, the knock of
+some possible lady visitor. She had no intention of admitting any
+feminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up indigence. Besides, it
+was Monday. There is no sense in trifling with bad luck. The reception
+of Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save in
+rare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing the
+front walk or the banquette with Venetian red.
+
+Before the daughter could dart up and disengage herself from her work
+her mother had pounced upon the paper. She was standing and reading, her
+rich black lashes curtaining their downcast eyes, her infant waist and
+round, close-fitted, childish arms harmonizing prettily with her mock
+frown of infantile perplexity, and her long, limp robe heightening the
+grace of her posture, when the younger started from her seat with the
+air of determining not to be left at a disadvantage.
+
+But what is that on the dark eyelash? With a sudden additional energy
+the daughter dashes the sewing and chair to right and left, bounds up,
+and in a moment has Aurore weeping in her embrace and has snatched the
+note from her hand.
+
+"_Ah! maman! Ah! ma chère mère_!"
+
+The mother forced a laugh. She was not to be mothered by her daughter;
+so she made a dash at Clotilde's uplifted hand to recover the note,
+which was unavailing. Immediately there arose in colonial French the
+loveliest of contentions, the issue of which was that the pair sat down
+side by side, like two sisters over one love-letter, and undertook to
+decipher the paper. It read as follows:
+
+     "NEW ORLEANS, 20 Feb're, 1804.
+
+     "MADAME NANCANOU: I muss oblige to ass you for rent of that
+     house whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville street
+     whare I do not received thos rent from you not since tree
+     mons and I demand you this is mabe thirteen time. And I give
+     to you notice of 19 das writen in Anglish as the new law
+     requi. That witch the law make necessare only for 15 das, and
+     when you not pay me those rent in 19 das till the tense of
+     Marh I will rekes you to move out. That witch make me to be
+     verry sorry. I have the honor to remain, Madam,
+
+     "Your humble servant,
+     "H. Grandissime.
+     "_per_ Z.F."
+
+There was a short French postscript on the opposite page signed only by
+M. Zénon François, explaining that he, who had allowed them in the past
+to address him as their landlord and by his name, was but the landlord's
+agent; that the landlord was a far better-dressed man than he could
+afford to be; that the writing opposite was a notice for them to quit
+the premises they had rented (not leased), or pay up; that it gave the
+writer great pain to send it, although it was but the necessary legal
+form and he only an irresponsible drawer of an inadequate salary, with
+thirteen children to support; and that he implored them to tear off and
+burn up this postscript immediately they had read it.
+
+"Ah, the miserable!" was all the comment made upon it as the two ladies
+addressed their energies to the previous English. They had never
+suspected him of being M. Grandissime.
+
+Their eyes dragged slowly and ineffectually along the lines to the
+signature.
+
+"H. Grandissime! Loog ad 'im!" cried the widow, with a sudden short
+laugh, that brought the tears after it like a wind-gust in a rose-tree.
+She held the letter out before them as if she was lifting something
+alive by the back of the neck, and to intensify her scorn spoke in the
+hated tongue prescribed by the new courts. "Loog ad 'im! dad ridge
+gen'leman oo give so mudge money to de 'ozpill!"
+
+"Bud, _maman_," said the daughter, laying her hand appeasingly upon her
+mother's knee, "_ee_ do nod know 'ow we is poor."
+
+"Ah!" retorted Aurore, "_par example! Non?_ Ee thingue we is ridge, eh?
+Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She cast upon her daughter
+the look of burning scorn intended for Agricola Fusilier. "You wan' to
+tague the pard of dose Grandissime'?"
+
+The daughter returned a look of agony.
+
+"No," she said, "bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee nod
+boun' to ged 'is rend?"
+
+"Boun' to ged--ah! yez ee muz do 'is possible to ged 'is rend. Oh!
+certain_lee_. Ee is ridge, bud ee need a lill money, bad, bad. Fo'
+w'at?" The excited speaker rose to her feet under a sudden inspiration.
+"_Tenez, Mademoiselle!_" She began to make great show of unfastening
+her dress.
+
+"_Mais, comment?_" demanded the suffering daughter.
+
+"Yez!" continued Aurore, keeping up the demonstration, "you wand 'im to
+'ave 'is rend so bad! An' I godd honely my cloze; so you juz tague diz
+to you' fine gen'lemen, 'Sieur Honoré Grandissime."
+
+"Ah-h-h-h!" cried the martyr.
+
+"An' you is righd," persisted the tormentor, still unfastening; but the
+daughter's tears gushed forth, and the repentant tease threw herself
+upon her knees, drew her child's head into her bosom and wept afresh.
+
+Half an hour was passed in council; at the end of which they stood
+beneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen fire-dog,
+and no conclusion reached.
+
+"Ah, my child!"--they had come to themselves now and were speaking in
+their peculiar French--"if we had here in these hands but the tenth part
+of what your papa often played away in one night without once getting
+angry! But we have not. Ah! but your father was a fine fellow; if he
+could have lived for you to know him! So accomplished! Ha, ha, ha! I can
+never avoid laughing, when I remember him teaching me to speak English;
+I used to enrage him so!"
+
+The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of discussion.
+There were nineteen days yet allowed them. God knows--by the expiration
+of that time they might be able to pay. With the two music scholars whom
+she then had and three more whom she had some hope to get, she made bold
+to say they could pay the rent.
+
+"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden brightness, "you
+don't need a mask and costume to resemble your great-grandmother, the
+casket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part, that with the one
+embroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and the three others who had
+declined to take lessons, they could easily pay the rent--and how kind
+it was of Monsieur, the aged father of that one embroidery scholar, to
+procure those invitations to the ball! The dear old man! He said he must
+see one more ball before he should die.
+
+Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that her
+daughter was content to admire her silently.
+
+"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you remember the
+evening you treated me so ill?"
+
+The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.
+
+"I did not treat you ill."
+
+"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my purse?"
+
+"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the andiron; her
+eyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse blame yourself. For
+the way you found it again--which was far worse--thank Palmyre. If you
+had not asked her to find it and shared the gold with her we could have
+returned with it to 'Sieur Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let him
+see us. I do not doubt he filled the purse."
+
+"He? He never knew it was empty. It was Nobody who filled it. Palmyre
+says that Papa Lébat--"
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superstitious mention.
+
+The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing the
+unendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the cloud
+hung over but a moment.
+
+"Clotilde," she said, a minute after, turning with a look of sun-bright
+resolve, "I am going to see him."
+
+"To see whom?" asked the other, looking back from the window, whither
+she had gone to recover from a reactionary trembling.
+
+"To whom, my child? Why--"
+
+"You do not expect mercy from Honoré Grandissime? You would not ask it?"
+
+"No. There is no mercy in the Grandissime blood; but cannot I demand
+justice? Ha! it is justice that I shall demand!"
+
+"And you will really go and see him?"
+
+"You will see, Mademoiselle," replied Aurore, dropping a broom with
+which she had begun to sweep up some spilled buttons.
+
+"And I with you?"
+
+"No! To a counting-room? To the presence of the chief of that detestable
+race? No!"
+
+"But you don't know where his office is."
+
+"Anybody can tell me."
+
+Preparation began at once. By and by--
+
+"Clotilde."
+
+Clotilde was stooping behind her mother, with a ribbon between her lips,
+arranging a flounce.
+
+"M-m-m."
+
+"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it _is_
+dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go out of his
+sight and she never came back!"
+
+"Hold still!" said Clotilde.
+
+"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key, "haven't I got
+to put it instantly into my pocket if I want the money to come there?
+Well, then!"
+
+The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina to put on
+her shoes.
+
+"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina to be
+seized for the rent?"
+
+"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"
+
+"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you have none?
+Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I cannot pay the
+rent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything happens to me it is M.
+Grandissime who is responsible."
+
+Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the mirror.
+The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels half around and
+looks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and loose ribbons gave her a
+more girlish look than ever.
+
+"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and smites her
+daughter's cheek softly with her palm.
+
+"And you are not afraid to go alone?"
+
+"No; but remember! look at that dog!"
+
+The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the street
+door, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon her lips,
+pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes back,
+and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the buttons and take
+away the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of it, gathers the
+hound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out together--Aurore
+sallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her sewing and await the
+coming of a guitar scholar.
+
+"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from imagining
+that Aurore had set about a little private business which she proposed
+to herself to accomplish before she even started in the direction of M.
+Grandissime's counting-rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BEFORE SUNSET
+
+
+In old times, most of the sidewalks of New Orleans not in the heart of
+town were only a rough, rank turf, lined on the side next the ditch with
+the gunwales of broken-up flatboats--ugly, narrow, slippery objects. As
+Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to anglicize her name--as Aurora
+gained a corner where two of these gunwales met, she stopped and looked
+back to make sure that Clotilde was not watching her. That others had
+noticed her here and there she did not care; that was something beauty
+would have to endure, and it only made her smile to herself.
+
+"Everybody sees I am from the country--walking on the street without a
+waiting-maid."
+
+A boy passed, hushing his whistle, and gazing at the lone lady until his
+turning neck could twist no farther. She was so dewy fresh! After he had
+got across the street he turned to look again. Where could she have
+disappeared?
+
+The only object to be seen on the corner from which she had vanished was
+a small, yellow-washed house much like the one Aurora occupied, as it
+was like hundreds that then characterized and still characterize the
+town, only that now they are of brick instead of adobe. They showed in
+those days, even more than now, the wide contrast between their homely
+exteriors and the often elegant apartments within. However, in this
+house the front room was merely neat. The furniture was of rude, heavy
+pattern, Creole-made, and the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap
+pictures had not come. The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was
+spread and hung with a blue stuff showing through a web of white
+needlework. The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as
+were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass globes on the
+cold andirons. Curtains of blue and white hung at the single window. The
+floor, from habitual scrubbing with the common weed which politeness
+has to call _Helenium autumnale_, was stained a bright, clean yellow.
+On it were, here and there in places, white mats woven of bleached
+palmetto-leaf. Such were the room's appointments; there was but one
+thing more, a singular bit of fantastic carving,--a small table of dark
+mahogany supported on the upward-writhing images of three
+scaly serpents.
+
+Aurora sat down beside this table. A dwarf Congo woman, as black as
+soot, had ushered her in, and, having barred the door, had disappeared,
+and now the mistress of the house entered.
+
+February though it was, she was dressed--and looked comfortable--in
+white. That barbaric beauty which had begun to bud twenty years before
+was now in perfect bloom. The united grace and pride of her movement was
+inspiring but--what shall we say?--feline? It was a femininity without
+humanity,--something that made her, with all her superbness, a creature
+that one would want to find chained. It was the woman who had received
+the gold from Frowenfeld--Palmyre Philosophe.
+
+The moment her eyes fell upon Aurora her whole appearance changed. A
+girlish smile lighted up her face, and as Aurora rose up reflecting it
+back, they simultaneously clapped hands, laughed and advanced joyously
+toward each other, talking rapidly without regard to each other's words.
+
+"Sit down," said Palmyre, in the plantation French of their childhood,
+as they shook hands.
+
+They took chairs and drew up face to face as close as they could come,
+then sighed and smiled a moment, and then looked grave and were silent.
+For in the nature of things, and notwithstanding the amusing familiarity
+common between Creole ladies and the menial class, the unprotected
+little widow should have had a very serious errand to bring her to the
+voudou's house.
+
+"Palmyre," began the lady, in a sad tone.
+
+"Momselle Aurore."
+
+"I want you to help me." The former mistress not only cast her hands
+into her lap, lifted her eyes supplicatingly and dropped them again, but
+actually locked her fingers to keep them from trembling.
+
+"Momselle Aurore--" began Palmyre, solemnly.
+
+"Now, I know what you are going to say--but it is of no use to say it;
+do this much for me this one time and then I will let voudou alone as
+much as you wish--forever!"
+
+"You have not lost your purse _again?_"
+
+"Ah! foolishness, no."
+
+Both laughed a little, the philosophe feebly, and Aurora with an excited
+tremor.
+
+"Well?" demanded the quadroon, looking grave again.
+
+Aurora did not answer.
+
+"Do you wish me to work a spell for you?"
+
+The widow nodded, with her eyes cast down.
+
+Both sat quite still for some time; then the philosophe gently drew the
+landlord's letter from between Aurora's hands.
+
+"What is this?" She could not read in any language.
+
+"I must pay my rent within nineteen days."
+
+"Have you not paid it?"
+
+The delinquent shook her head.
+
+"Where is the gold that came into your purse? All gone?"
+
+"For rice and potatoes," said Aurora, and for the first time she uttered
+a genuine laugh, under that condition of mind which Latins usually
+substitute for fortitude. Palmyre laughed too, very properly.
+
+Another silence followed. The lady could not return the quadroon's
+searching gaze.
+
+"Momselle Aurore," suddenly said Palmyre, "you want me to work a spell
+for something else."
+
+Aurora started, looked up for an instant in a frightened way, and then
+dropped her eyes and let her head droop, murmuring:
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+Palmyre fixed a long look upon her former mistress. She saw that though
+Aurora might be distressed about the rent, there was something else,--a
+deeper feeling,--impelling her upon a course the very thought of which
+drove the color from her lips and made her tremble.
+
+"You are wearing red," said the philosophe.
+
+Aurora's hand went nervously to the red ribbon about her neck.
+
+"It is an accident; I had nothing else convenient."
+
+"Miché Agoussou loves red," persisted Palmyre. (Monsieur Agoussou is
+the demon upon whom the voudous call in matters of love.)
+
+The color that came into Aurora's cheek ought to have suited Monsieur
+precisely.
+
+"It is an accident," she feebly insisted.
+
+"Well," presently said Palmyre, with a pretence of abandoning her
+impression, "then you want me to work you a spell for money, do you?"
+
+Aurora nodded, while she still avoided the quadroon's glance.
+
+"I know better," thought the philosophe. "You shall have the sort you
+want."
+
+The widow stole an upward glance.
+
+"Oh!" said Palmyre, with the manner of one making a decided digression,
+"I have been wanting to ask you something. That evening at the
+pharmacy--was there a tall, handsome gentleman standing by the counter?"
+
+"He was standing on the other side."
+
+"Did you see his face?"
+
+"No; his back was turned."
+
+"Momselle Aurore," said Palmyre, dropping her elbows upon her knees and
+taking the lady's hand as if the better to secure the truth, "was that
+the gentleman you met at the ball?"
+
+"My faith!" said Aurora, stretching her eyebrows upward. "I did not
+think to look. Who was it?"
+
+But Palmyre Philosophe was not going to give more than she got, even to
+her old-time Momselle; she merely straightened back into her chair with
+an amiable face.
+
+"Who do you think he is?" persisted Aurora, after a pause, smiling
+downward and toying with her rings.
+
+The quadroon shrugged.
+
+They both sat in reverie for a moment--a long moment for such sprightly
+natures--and Palmyre's mien took on a professional gravity. She
+presently pushed the landlord's letter under the lady's hands as they
+lay clasped in her lap, and a moment after drew Aurora's glance with her
+large, strong eyes and asked:
+
+"What shall we do?"
+
+The lady immediately looked startled and alarmed and again dropped her
+eyes in silence. The quadroon had to speak again.
+
+"We will burn a candle."
+
+Aurora trembled.
+
+"No," she succeeded in saying.
+
+"Yes," said Palmyre, "you must get your rent money." But the charm which
+she was meditating had no reference to rent money. "She knows that,"
+thought the voudou.
+
+As she rose and called her Congo slave-woman, Aurora made as if to
+protest further; but utterance failed her. She clenched her hands and
+prayed to fate for Clotilde to come and lead her away as she had done at
+the apothecary's. And well she might.
+
+The articles brought in by the servant were simply a little pound-cake
+and cordial, a tumbler half-filled with the _sirop naturelle_ of the
+sugar-cane, and a small piece of candle of the kind made from the
+fragrant green wax of the candleberry myrtle. These were set upon the
+small table, the bit of candle standing, lighted, in the tumbler of
+sirup, the cake on a plate, the cordial in a wine-glass. This feeble
+child's play was all; except that as Palmyre closed out all daylight
+from the room and received the offering of silver that "paid the floor"
+and averted _guillons_ (interferences of outside imps), Aurora,--alas!
+alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon the candle's
+flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp of good fortune) to
+cast his snare in her behalf around the mind and heart of--she knew
+not whom.
+
+By and by her lips, which had moved at first, were still and she only
+watched the burning wax. When the flame rose clear and long it was a
+sign that Assonquer was enlisted in the coveted endeavor. When the wick
+sputtered, the devotee trembled in fear of failure. Its charred end
+curled down and twisted away from her and her heart sank; but the tall
+figure of Palmyre for a moment came between, the wick was snuffed, the
+flame tapered up again, and for a long time burned, a bright, tremulous
+cone. Again the wick turned down, but this time toward her,--a
+propitious omen,--and suddenly fell through the expended wax and went
+out in the sirup.
+
+The daylight, as Palmyre let it once more into the apartment, showed
+Aurora sadly agitated. In evidence of the innocence of her fluttering
+heart, guilt, at least for the moment, lay on it, an appalling burden.
+
+"That is all, Palmyre, is it not? I am sure that is all--it must be all.
+I cannot stay any longer. I wish I was with Clotilde; I have stayed
+too long."
+
+"Yes; all for the present," replied the quadroon. "Here, here is some
+charmed basil; hold it between your lips as you walk--"
+
+"But I am going to my landlord's office!"
+
+"Office? Nobody is at his office now; it is too late. You would find
+that your landlord had gone to dinner. I will tell you, though, where
+you _must_ go. First go home; eat your dinner; and this evening [the
+Creoles never say afternoon], about a half-hour before sunset, walk down
+Royale to the lower corner of the Place d'Armes, pass entirely around
+the square and return up Royale. Never look behind until you get into
+your house again."
+
+Aurora blushed with shame.
+
+"Alone?" she exclaimed, quite unnerved and tremulous.
+
+"You will seem to be alone; but I will follow behind you when you pass
+here. Nothing shall hurt you. If you do that, the charm will certainly
+work; if you do not--"
+
+The quadroon's intentions were good. She was determined to see who it
+was that could so infatuate her dear little Momselle; and, as on such an
+evening as the present afternoon promised to merge into all New Orleans
+promenaded on the Place d'Armes and the levee, her charm was a very
+practical one.
+
+"And that will bring the money, will it?" asked Aurora.
+
+"It will bring anything you want."
+
+"Possible?"
+
+"These things that _you_ want, Momselle Aurore, are easy to bring. You
+have no charms working against you. But, oh, I wish to God I could work
+the _curse_ I want to work!" The woman's eyes blazed, her bosom heaved,
+she lifted her clenched hand above her head and looked upward, crying:
+"I would give this right hand off at the wrist to catch Agricola
+Fusilier where I could work him a curse! But I shall; I shall some day
+be revenged!" She pitched her voice still higher. "I cannot die till I
+have been! There is nothing that could kill me, I want my revenge so
+bad!" As suddenly as she had broken out, she hushed, unbarred the door,
+and with a stern farewell smile saw Aurora turn homeward.
+
+"Give me something to eat, _chérie_," cried the exhausted lady, dropping
+into Clotilde's chair and trying to die.
+
+"Ah! _maman_, what makes you look so sick?"
+
+Aurora waved her hand contemptuously and gasped.
+
+"Did you see him? What kept you so long--so long?"
+
+"Ask me nothing; I am so enraged with disappointment. He was gone to
+dinner!"
+
+"Ah! my poor mother!"
+
+"And I must go back as soon as I can take a little _sieste_. I am
+determined to see him this very day."
+
+"Ah! my poor mother!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ROLLED IN THE DUST
+
+
+"No, Frowenfeld," said little Doctor Keene, speaking for the
+after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get the
+air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you like
+and come home in any condition you think best." And Joseph, tormented
+into this course, put on his hat and went out.
+
+"Hard to move as a cow in the moonlight," continued Doctor Keene, "and
+knows just about as much of the world. He wasn't aware, until I told him
+to-day, that there are two Honoré Grandissimes." [Laughter.]
+
+"Why did you tell him?"
+
+"I didn't give him anything but the bare fact. I want to see how long it
+will take him to find out the rest."
+
+The Place d'Armes offered amusement to every one else rather than to the
+immigrant. The family relation, the most noticeable feature of its'
+well-pleased groups, was to him too painful a reminder of his late
+losses, and, after an honest endeavor to flutter out of the inner
+twilight of himself into the outer glare of a moving world, he had given
+up the effort and had passed beyond the square and seated himself upon a
+rude bench which encircled the trunk of a willow on the levee.
+
+The negress, who, resting near by with a tray of cakes before her, has
+been for some time contemplating the three-quarter face of her
+unconscious neighbor, drops her head at last with a small, Ethiopian,
+feminine laugh. It is a self-confession that, pleasant as the study of
+his countenance is, to resolve that study into knowledge is beyond her
+powers; and very pardonably so it is, she being but a _marchande des
+gâteaux_ (an itinerant cake-vender), and he, she concludes, a man of
+parts. There is a purpose, too, as well as an admission, in the laugh.
+She would like to engage him in conversation. But he does not notice.
+Little supposing he is the object of even a cake-merchant's attention,
+he is lost in idle meditation.
+
+One would guess his age to be as much as twenty-six. His face is
+beardless, of course, like almost everybody's around him, and of a
+German kind of seriousness. A certain diffidence in his look may tend to
+render him unattractive to careless eyes, the more so since he has a
+slight appearance of self-neglect. On a second glance, his refinement
+shows out more distinctly, and one also sees that he is not shabby. The
+little that seems lacking is woman's care, the brush of attentive
+fingers here and there, the turning of a fold in the high-collared coat,
+and a mere touch on the neckerchief and shirt-frill. He has a decidedly
+good forehead. His blue eyes, while they are both strong and modest, are
+noticeable, too, as betraying fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them
+is deepened by a certain worn look of excess--in books; a most unusual
+look in New Orleans in those days, and pointedly out of keeping with the
+scene which was absorbing his attention.
+
+You might mistake the time for mid-May. Before the view lies the Place
+d'Armes in its green-breasted uniform of new spring grass crossed
+diagonally with white shell walks for facings, and dotted with the
+_élite_ of the city for decorations. Over the line of shade-trees which
+marks its farther boundary, the white-topped twin turrets of St. Louis
+Cathedral look across it and beyond the bared site of the removed
+battery (built by the busy Carondelet to protect Louisiana from herself
+and Kentucky, and razed by his immediate successors) and out upon the
+Mississippi, the color of whose surface is beginning to change with the
+changing sky of this beautiful and now departing day. A breeze, which is
+almost early June, and which has been hovering over the bosom of the
+great river and above the turf-covered levee, ceases, as if it sank
+exhausted under its burden of spring odors, and in the profound calm the
+cathedral bell strikes the sunset hour. From its neighboring garden, the
+convent of the Ursulines responds in a tone of devoutness, while from
+the parapet of the less pious little Fort St. Charles, the evening gun
+sends a solemn ejaculation rumbling down the "coast;" a drum rolls, the
+air rises again from the water like a flock of birds, and many in the
+square and on the levee's crown turn and accept its gentle blowing.
+Rising over the levee willows, and sinking into the streets,--which are
+lower than the water,--it flutters among the balconies and in and out of
+dim Spanish arcades, and finally drifts away toward that part of the sky
+where the sun is sinking behind the low, unbroken line of forest. There
+is such seduction in the evening air, such sweetness of flowers on its
+every motion, such lack of cold, or heat, or dust, or wet, that the
+people have no heart to stay in-doors; nor is there any reason why they
+should. The levee road is dotted with horsemen, and the willow avenue on
+the levee's crown, the whole short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate on
+the right and Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright with
+promenaders, although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight;
+for, so far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of which
+we have already spoken,--the nineteenth of Louisiana's delicious
+February.
+
+Among the throng were many whose names were going to be written large in
+history. There was Casa Calvo,--Sebastian de Casa Calvo de la Puerta y
+O'Farril, Marquis of Casa Calvo,--a man then at the fine age of
+fifty-three, elegant, fascinating, perfect in Spanish courtesy and
+Spanish diplomacy, rolling by in a showy equipage surrounded by a
+clanking body-guard of the Catholic king's cavalry. There was young
+Daniel Clark, already beginning to amass those riches which an age of
+litigation has not to this day consumed; it was he whom the French
+colonial prefect, Laussat, in a late letter to France, had extolled as a
+man whose "talents for intrigue were carried to a rare degree of
+excellence." There was Laussat himself, in the flower of his years, sour
+with pride, conscious of great official insignificance and full of petty
+spites--he yet tarried in a land where his beautiful wife was the "model
+of taste." There was that convivial old fox, Wilkinson, who had plotted
+for years with Miro and did not sell himself and his country to Spain
+because--as we now say--"he found he could do better;" who modestly
+confessed himself in a traitor's letter to the Spanish king as a man
+"whose head may err, but whose heart cannot deceive!" and who brought
+Governor Gayoso to an early death-bed by simply out-drinking him. There
+also was Edward Livingston, attorney-at-law, inseparably joined to the
+mention of the famous Batture cases--though that was later. There also
+was that terror of colonial peculators, the old ex-Intendant Morales,
+who, having quarrelled with every governor of Louisiana he ever saw, was
+now snarling at Casa Calvo from force of habit.
+
+And the Creoles--the Knickerbockers of Louisiana--but time would fail
+us. The Villeres and Destrehans--patriots and patriots' sons; the De La
+Chaise family in mourning for young Auguste La Chaise of
+Kentuckian-Louisianian-San Domingan history; the Livaudaises, _père et
+fils_, of Haunted House fame, descendants of the first pilot of the
+Belize; the pirate brothers Lafitte, moving among the best; Marigny de
+Mandeville, afterwards the marquis member of Congress; the Davezacs, the
+Mossys, the Boulignys, the Labatuts, the Bringiers, the De Trudeaus, the
+De Macartys, the De la Houssayes, the De Lavilleboeuvres, the Grandprés,
+the Forstalls; and the proselyted Creoles: Étienne de Boré (he was the
+father of all such as handle the sugar-kettle); old man Pitot, who
+became mayor; Madame Pontalba and her unsuccessful suitor, John
+McDonough; the three Girods, the two Graviers, or the lone Julian
+Poydras, godfather of orphan girls. Besides these, and among them as
+shining fractions of the community, the numerous representatives of the
+not only noble, but noticeable and ubiquitous, family of Grandissime:
+Grandissimes simple and Grandissimes compound; Brahmins, Mandarins and
+Fusiliers. One, 'Polyte by name, a light, gay fellow, with classic
+features, hair turning gray, is standing and conversing with this group
+here by the mock-cannon inclosure of the grounds. Another, his cousin,
+Charlie Mandarin, a tall, very slender, bronzed gentleman in a flannel
+hunting-shirt and buckskin leggings, is walking, in moccasins, with a
+sweet lady in whose tasteful attire feminine scrutiny, but such only,
+might detect economy, but whose marked beauty of yesterday is retreating
+and reappearing in the flock of children who are noisily running round
+and round them, nominally in the care of three fat and venerable black
+nurses. Another, yonder, Théophile Grandissime, is whipping his
+stockings with his cane, a lithe youngster in the height of the fashion
+(be it understood the fashion in New Orleans was five years or so behind
+Paris), with a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and giddy laugh, and a
+confession of experiences which these pages, fortunately for their moral
+tone, need not recount. All these were there and many others.
+
+This throng, shifting like the fragments of colored glass in the
+kaleidoscope, had its far-away interest to the contemplative Joseph. To
+them he was of little interest, or none. Of the many passers, scarcely
+an occasional one greeted him, and such only with an extremely polite
+and silent dignity which seemed to him like saying something of this
+sort: "Most noble alien, give you good-day--stay where you are.
+Profoundly yours--"
+
+Two men came through the Place d'Armes on conspicuously fine horses. One
+it is not necessary to describe. The other, a man of perhaps
+thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, was extremely handsome and
+well dressed, the martial fashion of the day showing his tall and finely
+knit figure to much advantage. He sat his horse with an uncommon grace,
+and, as he rode beside his companion, spoke and gave ear by turns with
+an easy dignity sufficient of itself to have attracted popular
+observation. It was the apothecary's unknown friend. Frowenfeld noticed
+them while they were yet in the middle of the grounds. He could hardly
+have failed to do so, for some one close beside his bench in undoubted
+allusion to one of the approaching figures exclaimed:
+
+"Here comes Honoré Grandissime."
+
+Moreover, at that moment there was a slight unwonted stir on the Place
+d'Armes. It began at the farther corner of the square, hard by the
+Principal, and spread so quickly through the groups near about, that in
+a minute the entire company were quietly made aware of something going
+notably wrong in their immediate presence. There was no running to see
+it. There seemed to be not so much as any verbal communication of the
+matter from mouth to mouth. Rather a consciousness appeared to catch
+noiselessly from one to another as the knowledge of human intrusion
+comes to groups of deer in a park. There was the same elevating of the
+head here and there, the same rounding of beautiful eyes. Some stared,
+others slowly approached, while others turned and moved away; but a
+common indignation was in the breast of that thing dreadful everywhere,
+but terrible in Louisiana, the Majority. For there, in the presence of
+those good citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers
+and daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole
+whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honoré Grandissime, the
+uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree ever
+transplanted from France to Louisiana, Honoré,--the worshiped, the
+magnificent,--in the broad light of the sun's going down, rode side by
+side with the Yankee governor and was not ashamed!
+
+Joseph, on his bench, sat contemplating the two parties to this scandal
+as they came toward him. Their horses' flanks were damp from some
+pleasant gallop, but their present gait was the soft, mettlesome
+movement of animals who will even submit to walk if their masters
+insist. As they wheeled out of the broad diagonal path that crossed the
+square, and turned toward him in the highway, he fancied that the Creole
+observed him. He was not mistaken. As they seemed about to pass the spot
+where he sat, M. Grandissime interrupted the governor with a word and,
+turning his horse's head, rode up to the bench, lifting his hat as
+he came.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+Joseph, looking brighter than when he sat unaccosted, rose and blushed.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know my uncle very well, I believe--Agricole
+Fusilier--long beard?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."
+
+"Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I shall be much obliged if you will tell
+him--that is, should you meet him this evening--that I wish to see him.
+If you will be so kind?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."
+
+Frowenfeld's diffidence made itself evident in this reiterated phrase.
+
+"I do not know that you will see him, but if you should, you know--"
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir!"
+
+The two paused a single instant, exchanging a smile of amiable reminder
+from the horseman and of bashful but pleased acknowledgment from the one
+who saw his precepts being reduced to practice.
+
+"Well, good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+M. Grandissime lifted his hat and turned. Frowenfeld sat down.
+
+"_Bou zou, Miché Honoré!_" called the _marchande_.
+
+"_Comment to yé, Clemence?_"
+
+The merchant waved his hand as he rode away with his companion.
+
+"_Beau Miché, là_," said the _marchande_, catching Joseph's eye.
+
+He smiled his ignorance and shook his head.
+
+"Dass one fine gen'leman," she repeated. "_Mo pa'lé Anglé_," she added
+with a chuckle.
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"Oh! yass, sah; Mawse Honoré knows me, yass. All de gen'lemens knows me.
+I sell de _calas;_ mawnin's sell _calas_, evenin's sell zinzer-cake.
+_You_ know me" (a fact which Joseph had all along been aware of). "Dat
+me w'at pass in rue Royale ev'y mawnin' holl'in' '_Bé calas touts
+chauds_,' an' singin'; don't you know?"
+
+The enthusiasm of an artist overcame any timidity she might have been
+supposed to possess, and, waiving the formality of an invitation, she
+began, to Frowenfeld's consternation, to sing, in a loud, nasal voice.
+
+But the performance, long familiar, attracted no public attention, and
+he for whose special delight it was intended had taken an attitude of
+disclaimer and was again contemplating the quiet groups of the Place
+d'Armes and the pleasant hurry of the levee road.
+
+"Don't you know?" persisted the woman. "Yass, sah, dass me; I's
+Clemence."
+
+But Frowenfeld was looking another way.
+
+"You know my boy," suddenly said she.
+
+Frowenfeld looked at her.
+
+"Yass, sah. Dat boy w'at bring you de box of _basilic_ lass Chrismus;
+dass my boy."
+
+She straightened her cakes on the tray and made some changes in their
+arrangement that possibly were important.
+
+"I learned to speak English in Fijinny. Bawn dah."
+
+She looked steadily into the apothecary's absorbed countenance for a
+full minute, then let her eyes wander down the highway. The human tide
+was turning cityward. Presently she spoke again.
+
+"Folks comin' home a'ready, yass."
+
+Her hearer looked down the road.
+
+Suddenly a voice that, once heard, was always known,--deep and pompous,
+as if a lion roared,--sounded so close behind him as to startle him half
+from his seat.
+
+"Is this a corporeal man, or must I doubt my eyes? Hah! Professor
+Frowenfeld!" it said.
+
+"Mr. Fusilier!" exclaimed Frowenfeld in a subdued voice, while he
+blushed again and looked at the new-comer with that sort of awe which
+children experience in a menagerie.
+
+"_Citizen_ Fusilier," said the lion.
+
+Agricola indulged to excess the grim hypocrisy of brandishing the
+catchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a breath that
+was strong with the praise of the "superior liberties of Europe,"--those
+old, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of which America was settled.
+
+Frowenfeld smiled amusedly and apologetically at the same moment.
+
+"I am glad to meet you. I--"
+
+He was going on to give Honoré Grandissime's message, but was
+interrupted.
+
+"My young friend," rumbled the old man in his deepest key, smiling
+emotionally and holding and solemning continuing to shake Joseph's hand,
+"I am sure you are. You ought to thank God that you have my
+acquaintance."
+
+Frowenfeld colored to the temples.
+
+"I must acknowledge--" he began.
+
+"Ah!" growled the lion, "your beautiful modesty leads you to misconstrue
+me, sir. You pay my judgment no compliment. I know your worth, sir; I
+merely meant, sir, that in me--poor, humble me--you have secured a
+sympathizer in your tastes and plans. Agricola Fusilier, sir, is not a
+cock on a dunghill, to find a jewel and then scratch it aside."
+
+The smile of diffidence, but not the flush, passed from the young man's
+face, and he sat down forcibly.
+
+"You jest," he said.
+
+The reply was a majestic growl.
+
+"I _never_ jest!" The speaker half sat down, then straightened up again.
+"Ah, the Marquis of Caso Calvo!--I must bow to him, though an honest
+man's bow is more than he deserves."
+
+"More than he deserves?" was Frowenfeld's query.
+
+"More than he deserves!" was the response.
+
+"What has he done? I have never heard--"
+
+The denunciator turned upon Frowenfeld his most royal frown, and
+retorted with a question which still grows wild in Louisiana:
+
+"What"--he seemed to shake his mane--"what has he _not_ done, sir?" and
+then he withdrew his frown slowly, as if to add, "You'll be careful next
+time how you cast doubt upon a public official's guilt."
+
+The marquis's cavalcade came briskly jingling by. Frowenfeld saw within
+the carriage two men, one in citizen's dress, the other in a brilliant
+uniform. The latter leaned forward, and, with a cordiality which struck
+the young spectator as delightful, bowed. The immigrant glanced at
+Citizen Fusilier, expecting to see the greeting returned with great
+haughtiness; instead of which that person uncovered his leonine head,
+and, with a solemn sweep of his cocked hat, bowed half his length. Nay,
+he more than bowed, he bowed down--so that the action hurt Frowenfeld
+from head to foot.
+
+"What large gentlemen was that sitting on the other side?" asked the
+young man, as his companion sat down with the air of having finished
+an oration.
+
+"No gentleman at all!" thundered the citizen. "That fellow" (beetling
+frown), "that _fellow_ is Edward Livingston."
+
+"The great lawyer?"
+
+"The great villain!"
+
+Frowenfeld himself frowned.
+
+The old man laid a hand upon his junior's shoulder and growled
+benignantly:
+
+"My young friend, your displeasure delights me!"
+
+The patience with which Frowenfeld was bearing all this forced a chuckle
+and shake of the head from the _marchande_.
+
+Citizen Fusilier went on speaking in a manner that might be construed
+either as address or soliloquy, gesticulating much and occasionally
+letting out a fervent word that made passers look around and Joseph
+inwardly wince. With eyes closed and hands folded on the top of the
+knotted staff which he carried but never used, he delivered an
+apostrophe to the "spotless soul of youth," enticed by the "spirit of
+adventure" to "launch away upon the unploughed sea of the future!" He
+lifted one hand and smote the back of the other solemnly, once, twice,
+and again, nodding his head faintly several times without opening his
+eyes, as who should say, "Very impressive; go on," and so resumed; spoke
+of this spotless soul of youth searching under unknown latitudes for the
+"sunken treasures of experience"; indulged, as the reporters of our day
+would say, in "many beautiful nights of rhetoric," and finally depicted
+the loathing with which the spotless soul of youth "recoils!"--suiting
+the action to the word so emphatically as to make a pretty little boy
+who stood gaping at him start back--"on encountering in the holy
+chambers of public office the vultures hatched in the nests of ambition
+and avarice!"
+
+Three or four persons lingered carelessly near by with ears wide open.
+Frowenfeld felt that he must bring this to an end, and, like any young
+person who has learned neither deceit nor disrespect to seniors, he
+attempted to reason it down.
+
+"You do not think many of our public men are dishonest!"
+
+"Sir!" replied the rhetorician, with a patronizing smile, "h-you must be
+thinking of France!"
+
+"No, sir; of Louisiana."
+
+"Louisiana! Dishonest? All, sir, all. They are all as corrupt as
+Olympus, sir!"
+
+"Well," said Frowenfeld, with more feeling than was called for, "there
+is one who, I feel sure, is pure. I know it by his face!"
+
+The old man gave a look of stern interrogation.
+
+"Governor Claiborne."
+
+"Ye-e-e g-hods! Claiborne! _Claiborne!_ Why, he is a Yankee!"
+
+The lion glowered over the lamb like a thundercloud.
+
+"He is a Virginian," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"He is an American, and no American can be honest."
+
+"You are prejudiced," exclaimed the young man.
+
+Citizen Fusilier made himself larger.
+
+"What is prejudice? I do not know."
+
+"I am an American myself," said Frowenfeld, rising up with his face
+burning.
+
+The citizen rose up also, but unruffled.
+
+"My beloved young friend," laying his hand heavily upon the other's
+shoulder, "you are not. You were merely born in America."
+
+But Frowenfeld was not appeased.
+
+"Hear me through," persisted the flatterer. "You were merely born in
+America. I, too, was born in America--but will any man responsible for
+his opinion mistake me--Agricola Fusilier--for an American?"
+
+He clutched his cane in the middle and glared around, but no person
+seemed to be making the mistake to which he so scornfully alluded, and
+he was about to speak again when an outcry of alarm coming
+simultaneously from Joseph and the _marchande_ directed his attention to
+a lady in danger.
+
+The scene, as afterward recalled to the mind of the un-American citizen,
+included the figures of his nephew and the new governor returning up
+the road at a canter; but, at the time, he knew only that a lady of
+unmistakable gentility, her back toward him, had just gathered her robes
+and started to cross the road, when there was a general cry of warning,
+and the _marchande_ cried, "_Garde choual!_" while the lady leaped
+directly into the danger and his nephew's horse knocked her to
+the earth!
+
+Though there was a rush to the rescue from every direction, she was on
+her feet before any one could reach her, her lips compressed, nostrils
+dilated, cheek burning, and eyes flashing a lady's wrath upon a
+dismounted horseman. It was the governor. As the crowd had rushed in,
+the startled horses, from whom the two riders had instantly leaped, drew
+violently back, jerking their masters with them and leaving only the
+governor in range of the lady's angry eye.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" he cried, striving to reach her.
+
+She pointed him in gasping indignation to his empty saddle, and, as the
+crowd farther separated them, waved away all permission to apologize and
+turned her back.
+
+"Hah!" cried the crowd, echoing her humor.
+
+"Lady," interposed the governor, "do not drive us to the rudeness of
+leaving--"
+
+"_Animal, vous!_" cried half a dozen, and the lady gave him such a look
+of scorn that he did not finish his sentence.
+
+"Open the way, there," called a voice in French.
+
+It was Honoré Grandissime. But just then he saw that the lady had found
+the best of protectors, and the two horsemen, having no choice,
+remounted and rode away. As they did so, M. Grandissime called something
+hurriedly to Frowenfeld, on whose arm the lady hung, concerning the care
+of her; but his words were lost in the short yell of derision sent after
+himself and his companion by the crowd.
+
+Old Agricola, meanwhile, was having a trouble of his own. He had
+followed Joseph's wake as he pushed through the throng; but as the lady
+turned her face he wheeled abruptly away. This brought again into view
+the bench he had just left, whereupon he, in turn, cried out, and,
+dashing through all obstructions, rushed back to it, lifting his ugly
+staff as he went and flourishing it in the face of Palmyre Philosophe.
+
+She stood beside the seat with the smile of one foiled and intensely
+conscious of peril, but neither frightened nor suppliant, holding back
+with her eyes the execution of Agricola's threat against her life.
+
+Presently she drew a short step backward, then another, then a third,
+and then turned and moved away down the avenue of willows, followed for
+a few steps by the lion and by the laughing comment of the _marchande_,
+who stood looking after them with her tray balanced on her head.
+
+"_Ya, ya! ye connais voudou bien!_[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: "They're up in the voudou arts."]
+
+The old man turned to rejoin his companion. The day was rapidly giving
+place to night and the people were withdrawing to their homes. He
+crossed the levee, passed through the Place d'Armes and on into the
+city without meeting the object of his search. For Joseph and the lady
+had hurried off together.
+
+As the populace floated away in knots of three, four and five, those who
+had witnessed mademoiselle's (?) mishap told it to those who had not;
+explaining that it was the accursed Yankee governor who had designedly
+driven his horse at his utmost speed against the fair victim (some of
+them butted against their hearers by way of illustration); that the
+fiend had then maliciously laughed; that this was all the Yankees came
+to New Orleans for, and that there was an understanding among
+them--"Understanding, indeed!" exclaimed one, "They have instructions
+from the President!"--that unprotected ladies should be run down
+wherever overtaken. If you didn't believe it you could ask the tyrant,
+Claiborne, himself; he made no secret of it. One or two--but they were
+considered by others extravagant--testified that, as the lady fell, they
+had seen his face distorted with a horrid delight, and had heard him
+cry: "Daz de way to knog them!"
+
+"But how came a lady to be out on the levee, at sunset, on foot and
+alone?" asked a citizen, and another replied--both using the French of
+the late province:
+
+"As for being on foot"--a shrug. "But she was not alone; she had a
+_milatraisse_ behind her."
+
+"Ah! so; that was well."
+
+"But--ha, ha!--the _milatraisse_, seeing her mistress out of danger,
+takes the opportunity to try to bring the curse upon Agricola Fusilier
+by sitting down where he had just risen up, and had to get away from him
+as quickly as possible to save her own skull."
+
+"And left the lady?"
+
+"Yes; and who took her to her home at last, but Frowenfeld, the
+apothecary!"
+
+"Ho, ho! the astrologer! We ought to hang that fellow."
+
+"With his books tied to his feet," suggested a third citizen. "It is no
+more than we owe to the community to go and smash his show-window. He
+had better behave himself. Come, gentlemen, a little _taffia_ will do us
+good. When shall we ever get through these exciting times?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+STARLIGHT IN THE RUE CHARTRES
+
+
+"Oh! M'sieur Frowenfel', tague me ad home!"
+
+It was Aurora, who caught the apothecary's arm vehemently in both her
+hands with a look of beautiful terror. And whatever Joseph's astronomy
+might have previously taught him to the contrary, he knew by his senses
+that the earth thereupon turned entirely over three times in
+two seconds.
+
+His confused response, though unintelligible, answered all purposes, as
+the lady found herself the next moment hurrying across the Place d'Armes
+close to his side, and as they by-and-by passed its farther limits she
+began to be conscious that she was clinging to her protector as though
+she would climb up and hide under his elbow. As they turned up the rue
+Chartres she broke the silence.
+
+"Oh!-h!"--breathlessly,--"'h!--M'sieur Frowenf'--you walkin' so faz!"
+
+"Oh!" echoed Frowenfeld, "I did not know what I was doing."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the lady, "me, too, juz de sem lag you!
+_attendez_; wait."
+
+They halted; a moment's deft manipulation of a veil turned it into a
+wrapping for her neck.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', oo dad man was? You know 'im?"
+
+She returned her hand to Frowenfeld's arm and they moved on.
+
+"The one who spoke to you, or--you know the one who got near enough to
+apologize is not the one whose horse struck you!"
+
+"I din know. But oo dad odder one? I saw h-only 'is back, bud I thing it
+is de sem--"
+
+She identified it with the back that was turned to her during her last
+visit to Frowenfeld's shop; but finding herself about to mention a
+matter so nearly connected with the purse of gold, she checked herself;
+but Frowenfeld, eager to say a good word for his acquaintance, ventured
+to extol his character while he concealed his name.
+
+"While I have never been introduced to him, I have some acquaintance
+with him, and esteem him a noble gentleman."
+
+"W'ere you meet him?"
+
+"I met him first," he said, "at the graves of my parents and sisters."
+
+There was a kind of hush after the mention, and the lady made no reply.
+
+"It was some weeks after my loss," resumed Frowenfeld.
+
+"In wad _cimetière_ dad was?"
+
+"In no cemetery--being Protestants, you know--"
+
+"Ah, yes, sir?" with a gentle sigh.
+
+"The physician who attended me procured permission to bury them on some
+private land below the city."
+
+"Not in de groun'[2]?"
+
+[Footnote 2: Only Jews and paupers are buried in the ground in New
+Orleans.]
+
+"Yes; that was my father's expressed wish when he died."
+
+"You 'ad de fivver? Oo nurse you w'en you was sick?"
+
+"An old hired negress."
+
+"Dad was all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" she said piteously, and laughed in her sleeve.
+
+Who could hope to catch and reproduce the continuous lively thrill which
+traversed the frame of the escaped book-worm as every moment there was
+repeated to his consciousness the knowledge that he was walking across
+the vault of heaven with the evening star on his arm--at least, that he
+was, at her instigation, killing time along the dim, ill-lighted
+_trottoirs_ of the rue Chartres, with Aurora listening sympathetically
+at his side. But let it go; also the sweet broken English with which she
+now and then interrupted him; also the inward, hidden sparkle of her
+dancing Gallic blood; her low, merry laugh; the roguish mental
+reservation that lurked behind her graver speeches; the droll bravados
+she uttered against the powers that be, as with timid fingers he brushed
+from her shoulder a little remaining dust of the late encounter--these
+things, we say, we let go,--as we let butterflies go rather than pin
+them to paper.
+
+They had turned into the rue Bienville, and were walking toward the
+river, Frowenfeld in the midst of a long sentence, when a low cry of
+tearful delight sounded in front of them, some one in long robes glided
+forward, and he found his arm relieved of its burden and that burden
+transferred to the bosom and passionate embrace of another--we had
+almost said a fairer--Creole, amid a bewildering interchange of kisses
+and a pelting shower of Creole French.
+
+A moment after, Frowenfeld found himself introduced to "my dotter,
+Clotilde," who all at once ceased her demonstrations of affection and
+bowed to him with a majestic sweetness, that seemed one instant grateful
+and the next, distant.
+
+"I can hardly understand that you are not sisters," said Frowenfeld, a
+little awkwardly.
+
+"Ah! _ecoutez!_" exclaimed the younger.
+
+"Ah! _par exemple!_" cried the elder, and they laughed down each other's
+throats, while the immigrant blushed.
+
+This encounter was presently followed by a silent surprise when they
+stopped and turned before the door of Number 19, and Frowenfeld
+contrasted the women with their painfully humble dwelling. But therein
+is where your true Creole was, and still continues to be, properly, yea,
+delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as
+the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds;
+and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open
+the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and
+happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of
+snowy lace, as its bright-eyed tenants.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', if you pliz to come in," said Aurora, and the timid
+apothecary would have bravely accepted the invitation, but for a quick
+look which he saw the daughter give the mother; whereupon he asked,
+instead, permission to call at some future day, and received the cordial
+leave of Aurora and another bow from Clotilde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THAT NIGHT
+
+
+Do we not fail to accord to our nights their true value? We are ever
+giving to our days the credit and blame of all we do and mis-do,
+forgetting those silent, glimmering hours when plans--and sometimes
+plots--are laid; when resolutions are formed or changed; when heaven,
+and sometimes heaven's enemies, are invoked; when anger and evil
+thoughts are recalled, and sometimes hate made to inflame and fester;
+when problems are solved, riddles guessed, and things made apparent in
+the dark, which day refused to reveal. Our nights are the keys to our
+days. They explain them. They are also the day's correctors. Night's
+leisure untangles the mistakes of day's haste. We should not attempt to
+comprise our pasts in the phrase, "in those days;" we should rather say
+"in those days and nights."
+
+That night was a long-remembered one to the apothecary of the rue
+Royale. But it was after he had closed his shop, and in his back room
+sat pondering the unusual experiences of the evening, that it began to
+be, in a higher degree, a night of events to most of those persons who
+had a part in its earlier incidents.
+
+That Honoré Grandissime whom Frowenfeld had only this day learned to
+know as _the_ Honoré Grandissime and the young governor-general were
+closeted together.
+
+"What can you expect, my-de'-seh?" the Creole was asking, as they
+confronted each other in the smoke of their choice tobacco. "Remember,
+they are citizens by compulsion. You say your best and wisest law is
+that one prohibiting the slave-trade; my-de'-seh, I assure you,
+privately, I agree with you; but they abhor your law!
+
+"Your principal danger--at least, I mean difficulty--is this: that the
+Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some through loss of
+office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things,
+will not only hold off from all participation in your government, but
+will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and
+especially all office-holding under it, odious--disreputable--infamous.
+You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can
+face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men
+generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero--the ninety-nine
+will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown
+out early in the day.
+
+"Count O'Reilly, when he established the Spanish power here thirty-five
+years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner's sword; but,
+my-de'-seh, you are here to establish a _free_ government; and how can
+you make it freer than the people wish it? There is your riddle! They
+hold off and say, 'Make your government as free as you can, but do not
+ask us to help you;' and before you know it you have no retainers but a
+gang of shameless mercenaries, who will desert you whenever the
+indignation of this people overbalances their indolence; and you will
+fall the victim of what you may call our mutinous patriotism."
+
+The governor made a very quiet, unappreciative remark about a
+"patriotism that lets its government get choked up with corruption and
+then blows it out with gunpowder!"
+
+The Creole shrugged.
+
+"And repeats the operation indefinitely," he said.
+
+The governor said something often heard, before and since, to the effect
+that communities will not sacrifice themselves for mere ideas.
+
+"My-de'-seh," replied the Creole, "you speak like a true Anglo-Saxon;
+but, sir! how many communities have _committed_ suicide. And this
+one?--why, it is _just_ the kind to do it!"
+
+"Well," said the governor, smilingly, "you have pointed out what you
+consider to be the breakers, now can you point out the channel?"
+
+"Channel? There is none! And you, nor I, cannot dig one. Two great
+forces _may_ ultimately do it, Religion and Education--as I was telling
+you I said to my young friend, the apothecary,--but still I am free to
+say what would be my first and principal step, if I was in your
+place--as I thank God I am not."
+
+The listener asked him what that was.
+
+"Wherever I could find a Creole that I could venture to trust,
+my-de'-seh, I would put him in office. Never mind a little political
+heterodoxy, you know; almost any man can be trusted to shoot away from
+the uniform he has on. And then--"
+
+"But," said the other, "I have offered you--"
+
+"Oh!" replied the Creole, like a true merchant, "me, I am too busy; it
+is impossible! But, I say, I would _compel_, my-de'-seh, this people to
+govern themselves!"
+
+"And pray, how would you give a people a free government and then compel
+them to administer it?"
+
+"My-de'-seh, you should not give one poor Creole the puzzle which
+belongs to your whole Congress; but you may depend on this, that the
+worst thing for all parties--and I say it only because it is worst for
+all--would be a feeble and dilatory punishment of bad faith."
+
+When this interview finally drew to a close the governor had made a
+memorandum of some fifteen or twenty Grandissimes, scattered through
+different cantons of Louisiana, who, their kinsman Honoré thought, would
+not decline appointments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain of the Muses were abroad that night. Faintly audible to the
+apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness which is
+yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by night, came from a
+neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and machine-like tune-beat
+of an African dance. There our lately met _marchande_ (albeit she was
+but a guest, fortified against the street-watch with her master's
+written "pass") led the ancient Calinda dance with that well-known song
+of derision, in whose ever multiplying stanzas the helpless satire of a
+feeble race still continues to celebrate the personal failings of each
+newly prominent figure among the dominant caste. There was a new distich
+to the song to-night, signifying that the pride of the Grandissimes must
+find his friends now among the Yankees:
+
+      "Miché Hon'ré, allé! h-allé!
+      Trouvé to zamis parmi les Yankis.
+     Dancé calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!
+     Dancé calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!
+
+Frowenfeld, as we have already said, had closed his shop, and was
+sitting in the room behind it with one arm on his table and the other on
+his celestial globe, watching the flicker of his small fire and musing
+upon the unusual experiences of the evening. Upon every side there
+seemed to start away from his turning glance the multiplied shadows of
+something wrong. The melancholy face of that Honoré Grandissime, his
+landlord, at whose mention Dr. Keene had thought it fair to laugh
+without explaining; the tall, bright-eyed _milatraisse_; old Agricola;
+the lady of the basil; the newly identified merchant friend, now the
+more satisfactory Honoré,--they all came before him in his meditation,
+provoking among themselves a certain discord, faint but persistent, to
+which he strove to close his ear. For he was brain-weary. Even in the
+bright recollection of the lady and her talk he became involved among
+shadows, and going from bad to worse, seemed at length almost to gasp in
+an atmosphere of hints, allusions, faint unspoken admissions,
+ill-concealed antipathies, unfinished speeches, mistaken identities and
+whisperings of hidden strife. The cathedral clock struck twelve and was
+answered again from the convent belfry; and as the notes died away he
+suddenly became aware that the weird, drowsy throb of the African song
+and dance had been swinging drowsily in his brain for an unknown
+lapse of time.
+
+The apothecary nodded once or twice, and thereupon rose up and prepared
+for bed, thinking to sleep till morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aurora and her daughter had long ago put out their chamber light. Early
+in the evening the younger had made favorable mention of retiring, to
+which the elder replied by asking to be left awhile to her own thoughts.
+Clotilde, after some tender protestations, consented, and passed through
+the open door that showed, beyond it, their couch. The air had grown
+just cool and humid enough to make the warmth of one small brand on the
+hearth acceptable, and before this the fair widow settled herself to
+gaze beyond her tiny, slippered feet into its wavering flame, and think.
+Her thoughts were such as to bestow upon her face that enhancement of
+beauty that comes of pleasant reverie, and to make it certain that that
+little city afforded no fairer sight,--unless, indeed, it was the figure
+of Clotilde just beyond the open door, as in her white nightdress,
+enriched with the work of a diligent needle, she knelt upon the low
+_prie-Dieu_ before the little family altar, and committed her pure soul
+to the Divine keeping.
+
+Clotilde could not have been many minutes asleep when Aurora changed her
+mind and decided to follow. The shade upon her face had deepened for a
+moment into a look of trouble; but a bright philosophy, which was part
+of her paternal birthright, quickly chased it away, and she passed to
+her room, disrobed, lay softly down beside the beauty already there and
+smiled herself to sleep,--
+
+     "Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
+     As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."
+
+But she also wakened again, and lay beside her unconscious bedmate,
+occupied with the company of her own thoughts. "Why should these little
+concealments ruffle my bosom? Does not even Nature herself practise
+wiles? Look at the innocent birds; do they build where everybody can
+count their eggs? And shall a poor human creature try to be better than
+a bird? Didn't I say my prayers under the blanket just now?"
+
+Her companion stirred in her sleep, and she rose upon one elbow to bend
+upon the sleeper a gaze of ardent admiration. "Ah, beautiful little
+chick! how guileless! indeed, how deficient in that respect!" She sat
+up in the bed and hearkened; the bell struck for midnight. Was that the
+hour? The fates were smiling! Surely M. Assonquer himself must have
+wakened her to so choice an opportunity. She ought not to despise it.
+Now, by the application of another and easily wrought charm, that
+darkened hour lately spent with Palmyre would have, as it were, its
+colors set.
+
+The night had grown much cooler. Stealthily, by degrees, she rose and
+left the couch. The openings of the room were a window and two doors,
+and these, with much caution, she contrived to open without noise. None
+of them exposed her to the possibility of public view. One door looked
+into the dim front room; the window let in only a flood of moonlight
+over the top of a high house which was without openings on that side;
+the other door revealed a weed-grown back yard, and that invaluable
+protector, the cook's hound, lying fast asleep.
+
+In her night-clothes as she was, she stood a moment in the centre of the
+chamber, then sank upon one knee, rapped the floor gently but audibly
+thrice, rose, drew a step backward, sank upon the other knee, rapped
+thrice, rose again, stepped backward, knelt the third time, the third
+time rapped, and then, rising, murmured a vow to pour upon the ground
+next day an oblation of champagne--then closed the doors and window and
+crept back to bed. Then she knew how cold she had become. It seemed as
+though her very marrow was frozen. She was seized with such an
+uncontrollable shivering that Clotilde presently opened her eyes, threw
+her arm about her mother's neck, and said:
+
+"Ah! my sweet mother, are you so cold?"
+
+"The blanket was all off of me," said the mother, returning the embrace,
+and the two sank into unconsciousness together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Into slumber sank almost at the same moment Joseph Frowenfeld. He awoke,
+not a great while later, to find himself standing in the middle of the
+floor. Three or four men had shouted at once, and three pistol-shots,
+almost in one instant, had resounded just outside his shop. He had
+barely time to throw himself into half his garments when the knocker
+sounded on his street door, and when he opened it Agricola Fusilier
+entered, supported by his nephew Honoré on one side and Doctor Keene on
+the other. The latter's right hand was pressed hard against a bloody
+place in Agricola's side.
+
+"Give us plenty of light, Frowenfeld," said the doctor, "and a chair and
+some lint, and some Castile soap, and some towels and sticking-plaster,
+and anything else you can think of. Agricola's about scared to death--"
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld," groaned the aged citizen, "I am basely and
+mortally stabbed!"
+
+"Right on, Frowenfeld," continued the doctor, "right on into the back
+room. Fasten that front door. Here, Agricola, sit down here. That's
+right, Frow., stir up a little fire. Give me--never mind, I'll just cut
+the cloth open."
+
+There was a moment of silent suspense while the wound was being
+reached, and then the doctor spoke again.
+
+"Just as I thought; only a safe and comfortable gash that will keep you
+in-doors a while with your arm in a sling. You are more scared than
+hurt, I think, old gentleman."
+
+"You think an infernal falsehood, sir!"
+
+"See here, sir," said the doctor, without ceasing to ply his dexterous
+hands in his art, "I'll jab these scissors into your back if you say
+that again."
+
+"I suppose," growled the "citizen," "it is just the thing your
+professional researches have qualified you for, sir!"
+
+"Just stand here, Mr. Frowenfeld," said the little doctor, settling down
+to a professional tone, "and hand me things as I ask for them. Honoré,
+please hold this arm; so." And so, after a moderate lapse of time, the
+treatment that medical science of those days dictated was
+applied--whatever that was. Let those who do not know give thanks.
+
+M. Grandissime explained to Frowenfeld what had occurred.
+
+"You see, I succeeded in meeting my uncle, and we went together to my
+office. My uncle keeps his accounts with me. Sometimes we look them
+over. We stayed until midnight; I dismissed my carriage. As we walked
+homeward we met some friends coming out of the rooms of the Bagatelle
+Club; five or six of my uncles and cousins, and also Doctor Keene. We
+all fell a-talking of my grandfather's _fête de grandpère_ of next
+month, and went to have some coffee. When we separated, and my uncle and
+my cousin Achille Grandissime and Doctor Keene and myself came down
+Royal street, out from that dark alley behind your shop jumped a little
+man and stuck my uncle with a knife. If I had not caught his arm he
+would have killed my uncle."
+
+"And he escaped," said the apothecary.
+
+"No, sir!" said Agricola, with his back turned.
+
+"I think he did. I do not think he was struck."
+
+"And Mr. ----, your cousin?"
+
+"Achille? I have sent him for a carriage."
+
+"Why, Agricola," said the doctor, snipping the loose ravellings from his
+patient's bandages, "an old man like you should not have enemies."
+
+"I am _not_ an old man, sir!"
+
+"I said _young_ man."
+
+"I am not a _young_ man, sir!"
+
+"I wonder who the fellow was," continued Doctor Keene, as he readjusted
+the ripped sleeve.
+
+"That is _my_ affair, sir; I know who it was."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And yet she insists," M. Grandissime was asking Frowenfeld, standing
+with his leg thrown across the celestial globe, "that I knocked her down
+intentionally?"
+
+Frowenfeld, about to answer, was interrupted by a rap on the door.
+
+"That is my cousin, with the carriage," said M. Grandissime, following
+the apothecary into the shop.
+
+Frowenfeld opened to a young man,--a rather poor specimen of the
+Grandissime type, deficient in stature but not in stage manner.
+
+"_Est il mort_?" he cried at the threshold.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, let me make you acquainted with my cousin, Achille
+Grandissime."
+
+Mr. Achille Grandissime gave Frowenfeld such a bow as we see now only in
+pictures.
+
+"Ve'y 'appe to meck, yo' acquaintenz!"
+
+Agricola entered, followed by the doctor, and demanded in indignant
+thunder-tones, as he entered:
+
+"Who--ordered--that--carriage?"
+
+"I did," said Honoré. "Will you please get into it at once."
+
+"Ah! dear Honoré!" exclaimed the old man, "always too kind! I go in it
+purely to please you."
+
+Good-night was exchanged; Honoré entered the vehicle and Agricola was
+helped in. Achille touched his hat, bowed and waved his hand to Joseph,
+and shook hands with the doctor, and saying, "Well, good-night. Doctor
+Keene," he shut himself out of the shop with another low bow. "Think I
+am going to shake hands with an apothecary?" thought M. Achille.
+
+Doctor Keene had refused Honoré's invitation to go with them.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he said, as he stood in the middle of the shop wiping a
+ring with a towel and looking at his delicate, freckled hand, "I
+propose, before going to bed with you, to eat some of your bread and
+cheese. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"I shall be, Doctor," replied the apothecary, "if you will tell me what
+all this means."
+
+"Indeed I will not,--that is, not to-night. What? Why, it would take
+until breakfast to tell what 'all this means,'--the story of that
+pestiferous darky Bras Coupé, with the rest? Oh, no, sir. I would sooner
+not have any bread and cheese. What on earth has waked your curiosity so
+suddenly, anyhow?"
+
+"Have you any idea who stabbed Citizen Fusilier?" was Joseph's response.
+
+"Why, at first I thought it was the other Honoré Grandissime; but when I
+saw how small the fellow was, I was at a loss, completely. But, whoever
+it is, he has my bullet in him, whatever Honoré may think."
+
+"Will Mr. Fusilier's wound give him much trouble?" asked Joseph, as they
+sat down to a luncheon at the fire.
+
+"Hardly; he has too much of the blood of Lufki-Humma in him. But I need
+not say that; for the Grandissime blood is just as strong. A wonderful
+family, those Grandissimes! They are an old, illustrious line, and the
+strength that was once in the intellect and will is going down into the
+muscles. I have an idea that their greatness began, hundreds of years
+ago, in ponderosity of arm,--of frame, say,--and developed from
+generation to generation, in a rising scale, first into fineness of
+sinew, then, we will say, into force of will, then into power of mind,
+then into subtleties of genius. Now they are going back down the
+incline. Look at Honoré; he is high up on the scale, intellectual and
+sagacious. But look at him physically, too. What an exquisite mold! What
+compact strength! I should not wonder if he gets that from the Indian
+Queen. What endurance he has! He will probably go to his business by and
+by and not see his bed for seventeen or eighteen hours. He is the flower
+of the family, and possibly the last one. Now, old Agricola shows the
+downward grade better. Seventy-five, if he is a day, with, maybe,
+one-fourth the attainments he pretends to have, and still less good
+sense; but strong--as an orang-outang. Shall we go to bed?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NEW LIGHT UPON DARK PLACES
+
+
+When the long, wakeful night was over, and the doctor gone, Frowenfeld
+seated himself to record his usual observations of the weather; but his
+mind was elsewhere--here, there, yonder. There are understandings that
+expand, not imperceptibly hour by hour, but as certain flowers do, by
+little explosive ruptures, with periods of quiescence between. After
+this night of experiences it was natural that Frowenfeld should find the
+circumference of his perceptions consciously enlarged. The daylight
+shone, not into his shop alone, but into his heart as well. The face of
+Aurora, which had been the dawn to him before, was now a perfect
+sunrise, while in pleasant timeliness had come in this Apollo of a
+Honoré Grandissime. The young immigrant was dazzled. He felt a longing
+to rise up and run forward in this flood of beams. He was unconscious of
+fatigue, or nearly so--would, have been wholly so but for the return by
+and by of that same dim shadow, or shadows, still rising and darting
+across every motion of the fancy that grouped again the actors in last
+night's scenes; not such shadows as naturally go with sunlight to make
+it seem brighter, but a something which qualified the light's perfection
+and the air's freshness.
+
+Wherefore, resolved: that he would compound his life, from this time
+forward, by a new formula: books, so much; observation, so much; social
+intercourse, so much; love--as to that, time enough for that in the
+future (if he was in love with anybody, he certainly did not know it);
+of love, therefore, amount not yet necessary to state, but probably
+(when it should be introduced), in the generous proportion in which
+physicians prescribe _aqua_. Resolved, in other words, without ceasing
+to be Frowenfeld the studious, to begin at once the perusal of this
+newly found book, the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should
+find it a difficult task--not only that much of it was in a strange
+tongue, but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be
+lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn
+fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the
+purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence at
+was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies Nancanou.
+
+As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose
+temperature had just been recorded as 50° F., the apothecary stepped
+half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came blowing upon
+his tired forehead from the north. As he did so, he said to himself:
+
+"How are these two Honoré Grandissimes related to each other, and why
+should one be thought capable of attempting the life of Agricola?"
+
+The answer was on its way to him.
+
+There is left to our eyes but a poor vestige of the picturesque view
+presented to those who looked down the rue Royale before the garish day
+that changed the rue Enghien into Ingine street, and dropped the 'e'
+from Royale. It was a long, narrowing perspective of arcades, lattices,
+balconies, _zaguans_, dormer windows, and blue sky--of low, tiled roofs,
+red and wrinkled, huddled down into their own shadows; of canvas awnings
+with fluttering borders, and of grimy lamp-posts twenty feet in height,
+each reaching out a gaunt iron arm over the narrow street and dangling a
+lamp from its end. The human life which dotted the view displayed a
+variety of tints and costumes such as a painter would be glad to take
+just as he found them: the gayly feathered Indian, the slashed and
+tinselled Mexican, the leather-breeched raftsmen, the blue-or
+yellow-turbaned _négresse_, the sugar-planter in white flannel and
+moccasins, the average townsman in the last suit of clothes of the
+lately deceased century, and now and then a fashionable man in that
+costume whose union of tight-buttoned martial severity, swathed throat,
+and effeminate superabundance of fine linen seemed to offer a sort of
+state's evidence against the pompous tyrannies and frivolities of
+the times.
+
+The _marchande des calas_ was out. She came toward Joseph's shop,
+singing in a high-pitched nasal tone this new song:
+
+     "Dé'tit zozos--yé té assis--
+     Dé'tit zozos--si la barrier.
+     Dé'tit zozos, qui zabotté;
+     Qui ça yé di' mo pas conné.
+
+     "Manzeur-poulet vini simin,
+     Croupé si yé et croqué yé;
+     Personn' pli' 'tend' yé zabotté--
+     Dé'tit zozos si la barrier."
+
+"You lak dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down from her
+turbaned head a flat Indian basket of warm rice cakes.
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+She laughed again--more than the questioner could see occasion for.
+
+"Dat mean--two lill birds; dey was sittin' on de fence an' gabblin'
+togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime', an' you can't
+mek out w'at dey sayin', even ef dey know demself? H-ya! Chicken-hawk
+come 'long dat road an' jes' set down an' munch 'em, an' nobody can't no
+mo' hea' deir lill gabblin' on de fence, you know."
+
+Here she laughed again.
+
+Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in
+benevolence.
+
+"Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been
+a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes' _calas_ I's got
+for you."
+
+As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then, lower
+and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop behind
+him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed. She followed the
+new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of the cakes,
+whispered, "Dat's my mawstah," lifted her basket to her head and went
+away. Her master was Frowenfeld's landlord.
+
+Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"--m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low bow.
+
+Frowenfeld waited in silence.
+
+The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak,
+smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by
+word through the unfamiliar language:
+
+"Ah lag to teg you apar'."
+
+"See me alone?"
+
+The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.
+
+"Alone," said he.
+
+"Shall we go into my room?"
+
+"_S'il vous plait, m'sieu'_."
+
+Frowenfeld's breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring
+kitchen, stood on the table. It was a frugal one, but more comfortable
+than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of just pride in Creole
+cookery. Joseph deposited his _calas_ with these things and made haste
+to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined.
+
+"Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'."
+
+"I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted
+and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely
+as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.
+
+Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the landlord
+turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before seen the
+common likeness.
+
+"Dez stog," said the sombre man.
+
+"What, sir? Oh!--dead stock? But how can the materials of an education
+be dead stock?"
+
+The landlord shrugged. He would not argue the point. One American trait
+which the Creole is never entirely ready to encounter is this gratuitous
+Yankee way of going straight to the root of things.
+
+"Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean," continued the apothecary;
+"but are men right in measuring such things only by their present
+market value?"
+
+The landlord had no reply. It was little to him, his manner intimated;
+his contemplation dwelt on deeper flaws in human right and wrong;
+yet--but it was needless to discuss it. However, he did speak.
+
+"Ah was elevade in Pariz."
+
+"Educated in Paris," exclaimed Joseph, admiringly. "Then you certainly
+cannot find your education dead stock."
+
+The grave, not amused, smile which was the landlord's only rejoinder,
+though perfectly courteous, intimated that his tenant was sailing over
+depths of the question that he was little aware of. But the smile in a
+moment gave way for the look of one who was engrossed with
+another subject.
+
+"M'sieu'," he began; but just then Joseph made an apologetic gesture and
+went forward to wait upon an inquirer after "Godfrey's Cordial;" for
+that comforter was known to be obtainable at "Frowenfeld's." The
+business of the American drug-store was daily increasing. When
+Frowenfeld returned his landlord stood ready to address him, with the
+air of having decided to make short of a matter.
+
+"M'sieu' ----"
+
+"Have a seat, sir," urged the apothecary.
+
+His visitor again declined, with his uniform melancholy grace. He drew
+close to Frowenfeld.
+
+"Ah wand you mague me one _ouangan_," he said.
+
+Joseph shook his head. He remembered Doctor Keene's expressed suspicion
+concerning the assault of the night before.
+
+"I do not understand you, sir; what is that?"
+
+"You know."
+
+The landlord offered a heavy, persuading smile.
+
+"An unguent? Is that what you mean--an ointment?"
+
+"M'sieu'," said the applicant, with a not-to-be-deceived expression,
+"_vous êtes astrologue--magicien--"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+The landlord was grossly incredulous.
+
+"You godd one 'P'tit Albert.'"
+
+He dropped his forefinger upon an iron-clasped book on the table, whose
+title much use had effaced.
+
+"That is the Bible. I do not know what the Tee Albare is!"
+
+Frowenfeld darted an aroused glance into the ever-courteous eyes of his
+visitor, who said without a motion:
+
+"You di'n't gave Agricola Fusilier _une ouangan, la nuit passé_?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Ee was yeh?--laz nighd?"
+
+"Mr. Fusilier was here last night--yes. He had been attacked by an
+assassin and slightly wounded. He was accompanied by his nephew, who, I
+suppose, is your cousin: he has the same name."
+
+Frowenfeld, hoping he had changed the subject, concluded with a
+propitiatory smile, which, however, was not reflected.
+
+"Ma bruzzah," said the visitor.
+
+"Your brother!"
+
+"Ma whide bruzzah; ah ham nod whide, m'sieu'."
+
+Joseph said nothing. He was too much awed to speak; the ejaculation
+that started toward his lips turned back and rushed into his heart, and
+it was the quadroon who, after a moment, broke the silence:
+
+"Ah ham de holdez son of Numa Grandissime."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Frowenfeld, as if he would wave away something
+terrible.
+
+"Nod sell me--_ouangan_?" asked the landlord, again.
+
+"Sir," exclaimed Frowenfeld, taking a step backward, "pardon me if I
+offend you; that mixture of blood which draws upon you the scorn of this
+community is to me nothing--nothing! And every invidious distinction
+made against you on that account I despise! But, sir, whatever may be
+either your private wrongs, or the wrongs you suffer in common with your
+class, if you have it in your mind to employ any manner of secret art
+against the interests or person of any one--"
+
+The landlord was making silent protestations, and his tenant, lost in a
+wilderness of indignant emotions, stopped.
+
+"M'sieu'," began the quadroon, but ceased and stood with an expression
+of annoyance every moment deepening on his face, until he finally shook
+his head slowly, and said with a baffled smile: "Ah can nod
+spig Engliss."
+
+"Write it," said Frowenfeld, lifting forward a chair.
+
+The landlord, for the first time in their acquaintance, accepted a
+seat, bowing low as he did so, with a demonstration of profound
+gratitude that just perceptibly heightened his even dignity. Paper,
+quills, and ink were handed down from a shelf and Joseph retired
+into the shop.
+
+Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c. (these initials could hardly have come into
+use until some months later, but the convenience covers the sin of the
+slight anachronism), Honoré Grandissime, free man of color, entered from
+the rear room so silently that Joseph was first made aware of his
+presence by feeling him at his elbow. He handed the apothecary--but a
+few words in time, lest we misjudge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father of the two Honorés was that Numa Grandissime--that mere
+child--whom the Grand Marquis, to the great chagrin of the De Grapions,
+had so early cadetted. The commission seems not to have been thrown
+away. While the province was still in first hands, Numa's was a shining
+name in the annals of Kerlerec's unsatisfactory Indian wars; and in 1768
+(when the colonists, ill-informed, inflammable, and long ill-governed,
+resisted the transfer of Louisiana to Spain), at a time of life when
+most young men absorb all the political extravagances of their day, he
+had stood by the side of law and government, though the popular cry was
+a frenzied one for "liberty." Moreover, he had held back his whole
+chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had secured
+valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities from that
+really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act of summary
+vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has branded him in
+history as Cruel O'Reilly. But the experience of those days turned Numa
+gray, and withal he was not satisfied with their outcome. In the midst
+of the struggle he had weakened in one manly resolve--against his will
+he married. The lady was a Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare
+intelligence and beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels
+of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would
+never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe
+conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but--as between his
+Maker and himself--he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how.
+But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about
+to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan
+through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly sacrificed a little
+sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with
+the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who
+was then a little toddling boy. It was necessary to save the party--nay,
+that was a slip; we should say, to save the family; this is not a
+parable. Yet Numa loved his wife. She bore him a boy and a girl, twins;
+and as her son grew in physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he
+indulged the hope that--the ambition and pride of all the various
+Grandissimes now centering in this lawful son, and all strife being
+lulled--he should yet see this Honoré right the wrongs which he had not
+quite dared to uproot. And Honoré inherited the hope and began to make
+it an intention and aim even before his departure (with his half-brother
+the other Honoré) for school in Paris, at the early age of fifteen. Numa
+soon after died, and Honoré, after various fortunes in Paris, London,
+and elsewhere, in the care, or at least company, of a pious uncle in
+holy orders, returned to the ancestral mansion. The father's will--by
+the law they might have set it aside, but that was not their way--left
+the darker Honoré the bulk of his fortune, the younger a competency. The
+latter--instead of taking office, as an ancient Grandissime should have
+done--to the dismay and mortification of his kindred, established
+himself in a prosperous commercial business. The elder bought houses and
+became a _rentier_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The landlord handed the apothecary the following writing:
+
+     MR. JOSEPH FROWENFELD:
+
+     Think not that anybody is to be either poisoned by me nor yet
+     to be made a sufferer by the exercise of anything by me of
+     the character of what is generally known as grigri, otherwise
+     magique. This, sir, I do beg your permission to offer my
+     assurance to you of the same. Ah, no! it is not for that! I
+     am the victim of another entirely and a far differente and
+     dissimilar passion, _i.e._, Love. Esteemed sir, speaking or
+     writing to you as unto the only man of exclusively white
+     blood whom I believe is in Louisiana willing to do my dumb,
+     suffering race the real justice, I love Palmyre la Philosophe
+     with a madness which is by the human lips or tongues not
+     possible to be exclaimed (as, I may add, that I have in the
+     same like manner since exactley nine years and seven months
+     and some days). Alas! heavens! I can't help it in the least
+     particles at all! What, what shall I do, for ah! it is
+     pitiful! She loves me not at all, but, on the other hand, is
+     (if I suspicion not wrongfully) wrapped up head and ears in
+     devotion of one who does not love her, either, so cold and
+     incapable of appreciation is he. I allude to Honoré
+     Grandissime.
+
+     Ah! well do I remember the day when we returned--he and
+     me--from the France. She was there when we landed on that
+     levee, she was among that throng of kindreds and domestiques,
+     she shind like the evening star as she stood there (it was
+     the first time I saw her, but she was known to him when at
+     fifteen he left his home, but I resided not under my own
+     white father's roof--not at all--far from that). She cried
+     out "A la fin to vini!" and leap herself with both
+     resplendant arm around his neck and kist him twice on the one
+     cheek and the other, and her resplendant eyes shining with a
+     so great beauty.
+
+     If you will give me a _poudre d'amour_ such as I doubt not
+     your great knowledge enable you to make of a power that
+     cannot to be resist, while still at the same time of a
+     harmless character toward the life or the health of such that
+     I shall succeed in its use to gain the affections of that
+     emperice of my soul, I hesitate not to give you such price as
+     it may please you to nominate up as high as to $l,000--nay,
+     more. Sir, will you do that?
+
+     I have the honor to remain, sir,
+
+     Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
+
+     H. Grandissime.
+
+Frowenfeld slowly transferred his gaze from the paper to his landlord's
+face. Dejection and hope struggled with each other in the gaze that was
+returned; but when Joseph said, with a countenance full of pity, "I have
+no power to help you," the disappointed lover merely looked fixedly for
+a moment in the direction of the street, then lifted his hat toward his
+head, bowed, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ART AND COMMERCE
+
+
+It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the
+apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit
+in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a short errand. He was
+kept away somewhat longer than he had intended to stay, for, as they
+were coming out of the cathedral, he met Aurora and Clotilde. Both the
+ladies greeted him with a cordiality which was almost inebriating,
+Aurora even extending her hand. He stood but a moment, responding
+blushingly to two or three trivial questions from her; yet even in so
+short a time, and although Clotilde gave ear with the sweetest smiles
+and loveliest changes of countenance, he experienced a lively renewal of
+a conviction that this young lady was most unjustly harboring toward him
+a vague disrelish, if not a positive distrust. That she had some mental
+reservation was certain.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, as he raised his hat for good-day,
+"you din come home yet."
+
+He did not understand until he had crimsoned and answered he knew not
+what--something about having intended every day. He felt lifted he knew
+not where, Paradise opened, there was a flood of glory, and then he was
+alone; the ladies, leaving adieus sweeter than the perfume they carried
+away with them, floated into the south and were gone. Why was it that
+the elder, though plainly regarded by the younger with admiration,
+dependence, and overflowing affection, seemed sometimes to be, one might
+almost say, watched by her? He liked Aurora the better.
+
+On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he received many
+such visitors as the one who had called during his absence, he might be
+permitted to be vain. It was Honoré Grandissime, and he had left
+no message.
+
+"Frowenfeld," said his friend, "it would pay you to employ a regular
+assistant."
+
+Joseph was in an abstracted mood.
+
+"I have some thought of doing so."
+
+Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was his
+dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of them leaped
+up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the edge of the
+_trottoir_, brushed that part of their wearing-apparel which always fits
+with great neatness on a Creole, and trooped into the shop. The
+apothecary fell behind his defences, that is to say, his prescription
+desk, and explained to them in a short and spirited address that he did
+not wish to employ any of them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them
+understood not a word of English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They
+bowed gratefully, and said good-day.
+
+Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and though they were
+far from letting him know it, some of them felt it and interchanged
+expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they stopped on the next
+corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had treated them as if they
+all wanted situations. Was this so? Far from it. Only twenty men were
+applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get
+the place. And again, though, as the apothecary had said, none of them
+knew anything about the drug business--no, nor about any other business
+under the heavens--they were all willing that he should teach
+them--except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel
+tarried a moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on
+Frowenfeld's account it was probably as well that he could not qualify,
+since he was expecting from France an important government appointment
+as soon as these troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to
+her former happy condition. But he had a friend--a cousin--whom he would
+recommend, just the man for the position; a splendid fellow; popular,
+accomplished--what? the best trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might
+ever hope to look upon; a "so good fisherman as I never saw! "--the
+marvel of the ball-room--could handle a partner of twice his weight; the
+speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to
+her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left--this way! and
+then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to
+right--"so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and knew
+more comig song!"--the speaker would hasten to secure him before he
+should take some other situation.
+
+The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph made
+shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially met his
+requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger in a book
+which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop floor in deep
+thought. There were two loose threads hanging from the web of incident
+weaving around him which ought to connect somewhere; but where? They
+were the two visits made to his shop by the young merchant, Honoré
+Grandissime. He stopped still to think; what "train of thought" could he
+have started in the mind of such a man?
+
+He was about to resume his walk, when there came in, or more strictly
+speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose
+adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and
+clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure Creole. His name, when
+it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a
+Franco-Celtic origin.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in after
+recess, "I 'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window."
+
+He wheeled half around as he spoke and seized from a naked black boy,
+who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper.
+
+Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A
+pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a
+pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols--the property of some ancient
+gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep
+up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation--went
+into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of
+by _tombola_. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral
+education of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any
+sort of evil, that in this drivelling species of gambling he saw nothing
+hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" appeared also articles
+for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for instance, the
+wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little
+bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the
+bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of
+which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild
+waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively
+of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines'
+convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years,
+the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in
+ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by
+"a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come
+to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics
+were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and,
+fortunately, we have a few still left.
+
+The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
+counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting.
+
+He said nothing--with his mouth; but stood at arm's length balancing the
+painting and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph Frowenfeld a look
+more replete with triumph than Caesar's three-worded dispatch.
+
+The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a
+somnambulist. At length he spoke:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union!" replied the Creole, with an
+ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs.
+
+Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy.
+
+"Gran' subjec'!" said the Creole.
+
+"Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary.
+
+"Allegoricon? No, sir! Allegoricon never saw dat pigshoe. If you insist
+to know who make dat pigshoe--de hartis' stan' bif-ore you!"
+
+"It is your work?"
+
+"'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de disting-wish Honoré
+Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible' as 'igh as
+yo' head!"
+
+He smote his breast.
+
+"Do you wish to put it in the window?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+"For sale?"
+
+M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying:
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to be too proud, eh? I
+want you to say, 'My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell
+anything; 'tis for egs-hibby-shun'; _mais_--when somebody
+look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of languishing
+covetousness, "'you say, _foudre tonnerre!_ what de dev'!--I take dat
+ris-pon-sibble-ty--you can have her for two hun'red fifty dollah!'
+Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window, his new
+friend following him about spanielwise; "but you had better let me say
+plainly that it is for sale."
+
+"Oh--I don't care--_mais_--my rillation' will never forgive me!
+_Mais_--go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'T is for sale."
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the window, "one
+week ago"--he held up one finger--"what I was doing? Makin' bill of
+ladin', my faith!--for my cousin Honoré! an' now, I ham a hartis'! So
+soon I foun' dat, I say, 'Cousin Honoré,'"--the eloquent speaker lifted
+his foot and administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick--"I never
+goin' to do anoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu!"
+
+He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of his
+cousin's office.
+
+"Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are making a
+great mistake."
+
+"You tink I hass too much?"
+
+"Well, sir, to be candid, I do; but that is not your greatest mistake."
+
+"What she's worse?"
+
+The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed.
+
+"I would rather not say; it is a passably good example of Creole art;
+there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you ask for it."
+
+"What dat is?"
+
+The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld replied:
+
+"If it could become the means of reminding this community that crude
+ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing else in this
+world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth thousands
+of dollars!"
+
+"You tink she is worse a t'ousand dollah?" asked the Creole, shadow and
+sunshine chasing each other across his face.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The unwilling critic strove unnecessarily against his smile.
+
+"Ow much you tink?"
+
+"Mr. Innerarity, as an exercise it is worth whatever truth or skill it
+has taught you; to a judge of paintings it is ten dollars' worth of
+paint thrown away; but as an article of sale it is worth what it will
+bring without misrepresentation."
+
+"Two--hun-rade an'--fifty--dollahs or--not'in'!" said the indignant
+Creole, clenching one fist, and with the other hand lifting his hat by
+the front corner and slapping it down upon the counter. "Ha, ha, ha! a
+pase of waint--a wase of paint! 'Sieur Frowenfel', you don' know not'in'
+'bout it! You har a jedge of painting?" he added cautiously.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"_Eh, bien! foudre tonnerre_!--look yeh! you know? 'Sieur Frowenfel'?
+Dat de way de publique halways talk about a hartis's firs' pigshoe. But,
+I hass you to pardon me, Monsieur Frowenfel', if I 'ave speak a lill
+too warm."
+
+"Then you must forgive me if, in my desire to set you right, I have
+spoken with too much liberty. I probably should have said only what I
+first intended to say, that unless you are a person of independent
+means--"
+
+"You t'ink I would make bill of ladin'? Ah! Hm-m!"
+
+"--that you had made a mistake in throwing up your means of support--"
+
+"But 'e 'as fill de place an' don' want me no mo'. You want a
+clerk?--one what can speak fo' lang-widge--French, Eng-lish, Spanish,
+_an'_ Italienne? Come! I work for you in de mawnin' an' paint in de
+evenin'; come!"
+
+Joseph was taken unaware. He smiled, frowned, passed his hand across his
+brow, noticed, for the first time since his delivery of the picture, the
+naked little boy standing against the edge of a door, said, "Why--," and
+smiled again.
+
+"I riffer you to my cousin Honoré," said Innerarity.
+
+"Have you any knowledge of this business?"
+
+"I 'ave.'
+
+"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may
+require?"
+
+"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.
+
+"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy,
+took off his coat and fell to work decanting something, with the
+understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date
+if his cousin should recommend him.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day,
+"you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a niggah?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupé!"
+
+We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE
+
+
+MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a few
+hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, a
+microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory,
+a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a
+diving bell, a Creole _veritas_. Before the day had had time to cool,
+his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries
+in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the
+apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to
+carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew
+forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier,
+Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the _lettre de cachet_, Demosthenes
+De Grapion and the _fille à l'hôpital_, Georges De Grapion and the
+_fille à la cassette_, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honorés,
+young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them
+
+     "Knit hands and beat the ground
+     In a light, fantastic round,"
+
+would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.
+
+"Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny 'istory of
+France an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about de Boulignys,
+de Sauvés, de Grandprès, de Lemoynes, de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! De
+Grandissimes is as hole as de dev'! What? De mose of de Creole families
+is not so hold as plenty of my yallah kinfolks!"
+
+The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M. Raoul's
+statements.
+
+But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing before his
+illimitable talking power in order to digest in seclusion the ancestral
+episodes of the Grandissimes and De Grapions, laid pleasant plans for
+the immediate future. To-morrow morning he would leave the shop in
+Raoul's care and call on M. Honoré Grandissime to advise with him
+concerning the retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrow
+evening he would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet up
+to the doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening he
+would go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who had
+looked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged in
+Frowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours were
+to be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his "dead stock."
+
+And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly planned,
+there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which, now on this
+side, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous whisper to make
+haste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed, and was gliding
+about, the expectation of a crisis.
+
+Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of Number
+19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen days of grace
+allowed them in which to save their little fortress. For Palmyre's
+assurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-money
+to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it was
+poor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree of
+impracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was,
+nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of any
+really brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps
+they had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing all
+possible ways and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fast
+bearing down upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad
+managers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay;
+could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger;
+could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult their
+convenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soul
+weep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills-payable in their
+orbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs. Their economy knew how to
+avoid what the Creole-African apothegm calls _commerce Man Lizon--qui
+asseté pou' trois picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin_ (bought for
+three picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that made
+their very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as
+it was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook's
+leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.
+
+On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime,
+on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an old
+Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop,--this blacksmith's
+shop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied and
+dormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, had
+halted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman
+the whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honoré Grandissime.
+
+Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase within
+the archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have thanked a
+prince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm rusks, coming
+from a bakery in the paved court below, rushed through the archway and
+up the stair and accompanied her into the cemetery-like silence of the
+counting-room. There were in the department some fourteen clerks. It was
+a den of Grandissimes. More than half of them were men beyond middle
+life, and some were yet older. One or two were so handsome, under their
+noble silvery locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, for
+instance,--would have thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is the
+head of the house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in the
+silent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the
+room. There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with
+very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a
+privileged loudness.
+
+"H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.
+
+A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silent
+bow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather than care or
+years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.
+
+"Madame,"--in an undertone.
+
+"Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in French.
+
+But the young man responded in English.
+
+"You har one tenant, ent it?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+"Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."
+
+"No, seh; M. Grandissime."
+
+"M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."
+
+"I muz see M. Grandissime."
+
+Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.
+
+The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The quill
+of the sore-eyed man scratched louder--scratch, scratch--as though it
+were trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue Bienville--for a
+moment, and then ceased. The clerk, with one hand behind him and one
+touching the desk, murmured a few words, to which the other, after
+glancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a short, low reply and resumed
+his pen. The clerk returned, came through a gateway in the railing, led
+the way into a rich inner room, and turning with another courtly bow,
+handed her a cushioned armchair and retired.
+
+"After eighteen years," thought Aurora, as she found herself alone. It
+had been eighteen years since any representative of the De Grapion line
+had met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she knew; even that
+representative was only her deceased husband, a mere connection by
+marriage. How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges De
+Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarin
+de Grandissime, she did not remember. There, opposite her on the wall,
+was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M.
+Mandarin himself. She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in her
+veins. "Insolent tribe," she said, without speaking, "we have no more
+men left to fight you; but now wait. See what a woman can do."
+
+These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one object to
+another. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingled
+defiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the apothecary, she
+indulged in a quiet smile. The smile was still there as her glance in
+its gradual sweep reached a small mirror.
+
+She almost leaped from her seat.
+
+Not because that mirror revealed a recess which she had not previously
+noticed; not because behind a costly desk therein sat a youngish man,
+reading a letter; not because he might have been observing her, for it
+was altogether likely that, to avoid premature interruption, he had
+avoided looking up; nor because this was evidently Honoré Grandissime;
+but because Honoré Grandissime, if this were he, was the same person
+whom she had seen only with his back turned in the pharmacy--the rider
+whose horse ten days ago had knocked her down, the Lieutenant of
+Dragoons who had unmasked and to whom she had unmasked at the ball! Fly!
+But where? How? It was too late; she had not even time to lower her
+veil. M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter with a
+slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For an
+instant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling blush and a
+distressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she rose, all
+a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the
+inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.
+
+He spoke in Parisian French:
+
+"Please be seated, madame."
+
+She sank down.
+
+"Do you wish to see me?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+She did not see her way out of this falsehood, but--she couldn't say
+yes.
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"Whom do--"
+
+"I wish to see M. Honoré Grandissime."
+
+"That is my name, madame."
+
+"Ah!"--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now, and was
+ready for war. "You are not one of his clerks?"
+
+M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: "You little
+honey-bee, you want to sting me, eh?" and then he answered her question.
+
+"No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for."
+
+"The gentleman she was look--" her pride resented the fact.
+"Me!"--thought she--"I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you have
+been longing to meet ever since the ball;" but her look was unmoved
+gravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and handed him the
+rent notice.
+
+"I received that from your office the Monday before last."
+
+There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it was the
+day of the run-over.
+
+Honoré Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only half unfolded,
+saw the advisability of calling up all the resources of his sagacity and
+wit in order to answer wisely; and as they answered his call a brighter
+nobility so overspread face and person that Aurora inwardly exclaimed at
+it even while she exulted in her thrust.
+
+"Monday before last?"
+
+She slightly bowed.
+
+"A serious misfortune befell me that day," said M. Grandissime.
+
+"Ah?" replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress, "but
+you have entirely recovered, I suppose."
+
+"It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification for which
+I fear you will accept no apology."
+
+"On the contrary," said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation,
+"it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse."
+
+M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped his
+glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:
+
+"My horse is very well, I thank you."
+
+But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he seemed
+to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.
+
+"He is trying to think how he will get rid of me," thought Aurora; "he
+is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenth
+of March comes we shall be put into the street."
+
+M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift her
+hands.
+
+"I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this notice
+to reach you from my office; I am not the Honoré Grandissime for whom
+this is signed."
+
+Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the
+subterfuge she had been anticipating. Had she been at home she would
+have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiled
+meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made an
+unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.
+
+"There are, you know,"--began Honoré, with a smile which changed the
+meaning to "You know very well there are"--"two Honoré Grandissimes.
+This one who sent you this letter is a man of color--"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.
+
+"If you will entrust this paper to me," said Honoré, quietly, "I will
+see him and do now engage that you shall have no further trouble about
+it. Of course, I do not mean that I will pay it, myself; I dare not
+offer to take such a liberty."
+
+Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too far.
+
+Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She neither
+smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiable
+practicality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice as
+she spoke:
+
+"I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his notice
+in the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the matter. I
+shall have to attend to it myself."
+
+"Ah! little enchantress," thought her grave-faced listener, as he gave
+attention, "this, after all--ball and all--is the mood in which you look
+your very, very best"--a fact which nobody knew better than the
+enchantress herself.
+
+He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into the
+counting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some ingenuity
+of his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could not fail to feel
+that they had never before seen quite so fair a couple. But she dropped
+her veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite "No farther," and passed out.
+
+M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave the door
+a soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.
+
+The clerk who had before acted as usher came in and handed him a slip of
+paper with a name written on it. M. Grandissime folded it twice, gazed
+out the window, and finally nodded. The clerk disappeared, and Joseph
+Frowenfeld paused an instant in the door and then advanced, with a
+buoyant good-morning.
+
+"Good-morning," responded M. Grandissime.
+
+He smiled and extended his hand, yet there was a mechanical and
+preoccupied air that was not what Joseph felt justified in expecting.
+
+"How can I serve you, Mr. Frhowenfeld?" asked the merchant, glancing
+through into the counting-room. His coldness was almost all in Joseph's
+imagination, but to the apothecary it seemed such that he was nearly
+induced to walk away without answering. However, he replied:
+
+"A young man whom I have employed refers to you to recommend him."
+
+"Yes, sir? Prhay, who is that?"
+
+"Your cousin, I believe, Mr. Raoul Innerarity."
+
+M. Grandissime gave a low, short laugh, and took two steps toward his
+desk.
+
+"Rhaoul? Oh yes, I rhecommend Rhaoul to you. As an assistant in yo'
+sto'?--the best man you could find."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Joseph, coldly. "Good-morning!" he added turning
+to go.
+
+"Mr. Frhowenfeld," said the other, "do you evva rhide?"
+
+"I used to ride," replied the apothecary, turning, hat in hand, and
+wondering what such a question could mean.
+
+"If I send a saddle-hoss to yo' do' on day aftah to-morrhow evening at
+fo' o'clock, will you rhide out with me for-h about a hour-h and a
+half--just for a little pleasu'e?"
+
+Joseph was yet more astonished than before. He hesitated, accepted the
+invitation, and once more said good-morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+DOCTOR KEENE RECOVERS HIS BULLET
+
+
+It early attracted the apothecary's notice, in observing the
+civilization around him, that it kept the flimsy false bottoms in its
+social errors only by incessant reiteration. As he re-entered the shop,
+dissatisfied with himself for accepting M. Grandissime's invitation to
+ride, he knew by the fervent words which he overheard from the lips of
+his employee that the f.m.c. had been making one of his reconnoisances,
+and possibly had ventured in to inquire for his tenant.
+
+"I t'ink, me, dat hanny w'ite man is a gen'leman; but I don't care if a
+man are good like a h-angel, if 'e har not pu'e w'ite '_ow can_ 'e be a
+gen'leman?"
+
+Raoul's words were addressed to a man who, as he rose up and handed
+Frowenfeld a note, ratified the Creole's sentiment by a spurt of tobacco
+juice and an affirmative "Hm-m."
+
+The note was a lead-pencil scrawl, without date.
+
+     DEAR JOE: Come and see me some time this evening.
+     I am on my back in bed. Want your help in a little
+     matter.   Yours,   Keene.
+
+     I have found out who ---- ----"
+
+Frowenfeld pondered: "I have found out who ---- ----" Ah! Doctor Keene
+had found out who stabbed Agricola.
+
+Some delays occurred in the afternoon, but toward sunset the apothecary
+dressed and went out. From the doctor's bedside in the rue St. Louis, if
+not delayed beyond all expectation, he would proceed to visit the ladies
+at Number 19 rue Bienville. The air was growing cold and threatening
+bad weather.
+
+He found the Doctor prostrate, wasted, hoarse, cross and almost too weak
+for speech. He could only whisper, as his friend approached his pillow:
+
+"These vile lungs!"
+
+"Hemorrhage?"
+
+The invalid held up three small, freckled fingers.
+
+Joseph dared not show pity in his gaze, but it seemed savage not to
+express some feeling, so after standing a moment he began to say:
+
+"I am very sorry--"
+
+"You needn't bother yourself!" whispered the doctor, who lay frowning
+upward. By and by he whispered again.
+
+Frowenfeld bent his ear, and the little man, so merry when well,
+repeated, in a savage hiss:
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+It was some time before he again broke the silence.
+
+"Tell you what I want--you to do--for me."
+
+"Well, sir--"
+
+"Hold on!" gasped the invalid, shutting his eyes with impatience,--"till
+I get through."
+
+He lay a little while motionless, and then drew from under his pillow a
+wallet, and from the wallet a pistol-ball.
+
+"Took that out--a badly neglected wound--last day I saw you." Here a
+pause, an appalling cough, and by and by a whisper: "Knew the bullet in
+an instant." He smiled wearily. "Peculiar size." He made a feeble
+motion. Frowenfeld guessed the meaning of it and handed him a pistol
+from a small table. The ball slipped softly home. "Refused two hundred
+dollars--those pistols"--with a sigh and closed eyes. By and by
+again--"Patient had smart fever--but it will be gone--time you
+get--there. Want you to--take care--t' I get up."
+
+"But, Doctor--"
+
+The sick man turned away his face with a petulant frown; but presently,
+with an effort at self-control, brought it back and whispered:
+
+"You mean you--not physician?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No. No more are half--doc's. You can do it. Simple gun-shot wound in
+the shoulder." A rest. "Pretty wound; ranges"--he gave up the effort to
+describe it. "You'll see it." Another rest. "You see--this matter has
+been kept quiet so far. I don't want any one--else to know--anything
+about it." He sighed audibly and looked as though he had gone to sleep,
+but whispered again, with his eyes closed--"'specially on culprit's
+own account."
+
+Frowenfeld was silent: but the invalid was waiting for an answer, and,
+not getting it, stirred peevishly.
+
+"Do you wish me to go to-night?" asked the apothecary.
+
+"To-morrow morning. Will you--?"
+
+"Certainly, Doctor."
+
+The invalid lay quite still for several minutes, looking steadily at his
+friend, and finally let a faint smile play about his mouth,--a wan
+reminder of his habitual roguery.
+
+"Good boy," he whispered.
+
+Frowenfeld rose and straightened the bedclothes, took a few steps about
+the room, and finally returned. The Doctor's restless eye had followed
+him at every movement.
+
+"You'll go?"
+
+"Yes," replied the apothecary, hat in hand; "where is it?"
+
+"Corner Bienville and Bourbon,--upper river corner,--yellow one-story
+house, doorsteps on street. You know the house?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Good-night. Here!--I wish you would send that black girl in here--as
+you go out--make me better fire--Joe!" the call was a ghostly whisper.
+
+Frowenfeld paused in the door.
+
+"You don't mind my--bad manners, Joe?"
+
+The apothecary gave one of his infrequent smiles.
+
+"No, Doctor."
+
+He started toward Number 19 rue Bienville, but a light, cold sprinkle
+set in, and he turned back toward his shop. No sooner had the rain got
+him there than it stopped, as rain sometimes will do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+WARS WITHIN THE BREAST
+
+
+The next morning came in frigid and gray. The unseasonable numerals
+which the meteorologist recorded in his tables might have provoked a
+superstitious lover of better weather to suppose that Monsieur Danny,
+the head imp of discord, had been among the aërial currents. The
+passionate southern sky, looking down and seeing some six thousand to
+seventy-five hundred of her favorite children disconcerted and
+shivering, tried in vain, for two hours, to smile upon them with a
+little frozen sunshine, and finally burst into tears.
+
+In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say, the sky was closely
+imitating the simultaneous behavior of Aurora Nancanou. Never was pretty
+lady in cheerier mood than that in which she had come home from Honoré's
+counting-room. Hard would it be to find the material with which to build
+again the castles-in-air that she founded upon two or three little
+discoveries there made. Should she tell them to Clotilde? Ah! and for
+what? No, Clotilde was a dear daughter--ha! few women were capable of
+having such a daughter as Clotilde; but there were things about which
+she was entirely too scrupulous. So, when she came in from that errand
+profoundly satisfied that she would in future hear no more about the
+rent than she might choose to hear, she had been too shrewd to expose
+herself to her daughter's catechising. She would save her little
+revelations for disclosure when they might be used to advantage. As she
+threw her bonnet upon the bed, she exclaimed, in a tone of gentle and
+wearied reproach:
+
+"Why did you not remind me that M. Honoré Grandissime, that precious
+somebody-great, has the honor to rejoice in a quadroon half-brother of
+the same illustrious name? Why did you not remind me, eh?"
+
+"Ah! and you know it as well as A, B, C," playfully retorted Clotilde.
+
+"Well, guess which one is our landlord?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"_Ma foi_! how do _I_ know? I had to wait a shameful long time to see
+_Monsieur le prince_,--just because I am a De Grapion, I know. When at
+last I saw him, he says, 'Madame, this is the other Honoré Grandissime.'
+There, you see we are the victims of a conspiracy; if I go to the other,
+he will send me back to the first. But, Clotilde, my darling," cried the
+beautiful speaker, beamingly, "dismiss all fear and care; we shall have
+no more trouble about it."
+
+"And how, indeed, do you know that?"
+
+"Something tells it to me in my ear. I feel it! Trust in Providence, my
+child. Look at me, how happy I am; but you--you never trust in
+Providence. That is why we have so much trouble,--because you don't
+trust in Providence. Oh! I am so hungry, let us have dinner."
+
+"What sort of a person is M. Grandissime in his appearance?" asked
+Clotilde, over their feeble excuse for a dinner.
+
+"What sort? Do you imagine I had nothing better to do than notice
+whether a Grandissime is good-looking or not? For all I know to the
+contrary, he is--some more rice, please, my dear."
+
+But this light-heartedness did not last long. It was based on an
+unutterable secret, all her own, about which she still had trembling
+doubts; this, too, notwithstanding her consultation of the dark oracles.
+She was going to stop that. In the long run, these charms and spells
+themselves bring bad luck. Moreover, the practice, indulged in to
+excess, was wicked, and she had promised Clotilde,--that droll little
+saint,--to resort to them no more. Hereafter, she should do nothing of
+the sort, except, to be sure, to take such ordinary precautions against
+misfortune as casting upon the floor a little of whatever she might be
+eating or drinking to propitiate M. Assonquer. She would have liked,
+could she have done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the front
+door-sill an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to Papa
+Lébat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that admit
+suitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would surely have
+licked it up. Ah me! was she forgetting that she was a widow?
+
+She was in poor plight to meet the all but icy gray morning; and, to
+make her misery still greater, she found, on dressing, that an accident
+had overtaken her, which she knew to be a trustworthy sign of love grown
+cold. She had lost--alas! how can we communicate it in English!--a small
+piece of lute-string ribbon, about _so long_, which she used for--not a
+necktie exactly, but--
+
+And she hunted and hunted, and couldn't bear to give up the search, and
+sat down to breakfast and ate nothing, and rose up and searched again
+(not that she cared for the omen), and struck the hound with the broom,
+and broke the broom, and hunted again, and looked out the front window,
+and saw the rain beginning to fall, and dropped into a chair--crying,
+"Oh! Clotilde, my child, my child! the rent collector will be here
+Saturday and turn us into the street!" and so fell a-weeping.
+
+A little tear-letting lightened her unrevealable burden, and she rose,
+rejoicing that Clotilde had happened to be out of eye-and-ear-shot. The
+scanty fire in the fireplace was ample to warm the room; the fire within
+her made it too insufferably hot! Rain or no rain, she parted the
+window-curtains and lifted the sash. What a mark for Love's arrow she
+was, as, at the window, she stretched her two arms upward! And, "right
+so," who should chance to come cantering by, the big drops of rain
+pattering after him, but the knightliest man in that old town, and the
+fittest to perfect the fine old-fashioned poetry of the scene!
+
+"Clotilde," said Aurora, turning from her mirror, whither she had
+hastened to see if her face showed signs of tears (Clotilde was entering
+the room), "we shall never be turned out of this house by Honoré
+Grandissime!"
+
+"Why?" asked Clotilde, stopping short in the floor, forgetting Aurora's
+trust in Providence, and expecting to hear that M. Grandissime had been
+found dead in his bed.
+
+"Because I saw him just now; he rode by on horseback. A man with that
+noble face could never _do such a thing_!"
+
+The astonished Clotilde looked at her mother searchingly. This sort of
+speech about a Grandissime? But Aurora was the picture of innocence.
+
+Clotilde uttered a derisive laugh.
+
+"_Impertinente_!" exclaimed the other, laboring not to join in it.
+
+"Ah-h-h!" cried Clotilde, in the same mood, "and what face had he when
+he wrote that letter?"
+
+"What face?"
+
+"Yes, what face?"
+
+"I do not know what face you mean," said Aurora.
+
+"What face," repeated Clotilde, "had Monsieur Honoré de Grandissime on
+the day that he wrote--"
+
+"Ah, f-fah!" cried Aurora, and turned away, "you don't know what you are
+talking about! You make me wish sometimes that I were dead!"
+
+Clotilde had gone and shut down the sash, as it began to rain hard and
+blow. As she was turning away, her eye was attracted by an object at
+a distance.
+
+"What is it?" asked Aurora, from a seat before the fire.
+
+"Nothing," said Clotilde, weary of the sensational,--"a man in the
+rain."
+
+It was the apothecary of the rue Royale, turning from that street toward
+the rue Bourbon, and bowing his head against the swirling norther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FROWENFELD KEEPS HIS APPOINTMENT
+
+
+Doctor Keene, his ill-humor slept off, lay in bed in a quiescent state
+of great mental enjoyment. At times he would smile and close his eyes,
+open them again and murmur to himself, and turn his head languidly and
+smile again. And when the rain and wind, all tangled together, came
+against the window with a whirl and a slap, his smile broadened almost
+to laughter.
+
+"He's in it," he murmured, "he's just reaching there. I would give fifty
+dollars to see him when he first gets into the house and sees where
+he is."
+
+As this wish was finding expression on the lips of the little sick man,
+Joseph Frowenfeld was making room on a narrow doorstep for the outward
+opening of a pair of small batten doors, upon which he had knocked with
+the vigorous haste of a man in the rain. As they parted, he hurriedly
+helped them open, darted within, heedless of the odd black shape which
+shuffled out of his way, wheeled and clapped them shut again, swung down
+the bar and then turned, and with the good-natured face that properly
+goes with a ducking, looked to see where he was.
+
+One object--around which everything else instantly became nothing--set
+his gaze. On the high bed, whose hangings of blue we have already
+described, silently regarding the intruder with a pair of eyes that sent
+an icy thrill through him and fastened him where he stood, lay Palmyre
+Philosophe. Her dress was a long, snowy morning-gown, wound loosely
+about at the waist with a cord and tassel of scarlet silk; a
+bright-colored woollen shawl covered her from the waist down, and a
+necklace of red coral heightened to its utmost her untamable beauty.
+
+An instantaneous indignation against Doctor Keene set the face of the
+speechless apothecary on fire, and this, being as instantaneously
+comprehended by the philosophe, was the best of introductions. Yet her
+gaze did not change.
+
+The Congo negress broke the spell with a bristling protest, all in
+African b's and k's, but hushed and drew off at a single word of command
+from her mistress.
+
+In Frowenfeld's mind an angry determination was taking shape, to be
+neither trifled with nor contemned. And this again the quadroon
+discerned, before he was himself aware of it.
+
+"Doctor Keene"--he began, but stopped, so uncomfortable were her eyes.
+
+She did not stir or reply.
+
+Then he bethought him with a start, and took off his dripping hat.
+
+At this a perceptible sparkle of imperious approval shot along her
+glance; it gave the apothecary speech.
+
+"The doctor is sick, and he asked me to dress your wound."
+
+She made the slightest discernible motion of the head, remained for a
+moment silent, and then, still with the same eye, motioned her hand
+toward a chair near a comfortable fire.
+
+He sat down. It would be well to dry himself. He drew near the hearth
+and let his gaze fall into the fire. When he presently lifted his eyes
+and looked full upon the woman with a steady, candid glance, she was
+regarding him with apparent coldness, but with secret diligence and
+scrutiny, and a yet more inward and secret surprise and admiration. Hard
+rubbing was bringing out the grain of the apothecary. But she presently
+suppressed the feeling. She hated men.
+
+But Frowenfeld, even while his eyes met hers, could not resent her
+hostility. This monument of the shame of two races--this poisonous
+blossom of crime growing out of crime--this final, unanswerable white
+man's accuser--this would-be murderess--what ranks and companies would
+have to stand up in the Great Day with her and answer as accessory
+before the fact! He looked again into the fire.
+
+The patient spoke:
+
+"_Eh bi'n, Miché_?" Her look was severe, but less aggressive. The
+shuffle of the old negress's feet was heard and she appeared bearing
+warm and cold water and fresh bandages; after depositing them
+she tarried.
+
+"Your fever is gone," said Frowenfeld, standing by the bed. He had laid
+his fingers on her wrist. She brushed them off and once more turned full
+upon him the cold hostility of her passionate eyes.
+
+The apothecary, instead of blushing, turned pale.
+
+"You--" he was going to say, "You insult me;" but his lips came tightly
+together. Two big cords appeared between his brows, and his blue eyes
+spoke for him. Then, as the returning blood rushed even to his forehead,
+he said, speaking his words one by one;
+
+"Please understand that you must trust me."
+
+She may not have understood his English, but she comprehended,
+nevertheless. She looked up fixedly for a moment, then passively closed
+her eyes. Then she turned, and Frowenfeld put out one strong arm, helped
+her to a sitting posture on the side of the bed and drew the shawl
+about her.
+
+"Zizi," she said, and the negress, who had stood perfectly still since
+depositing the water and bandages, came forward and proceeded to bare
+the philosophe's superb shoulder. As Frowenfeld again put forward his
+hand, she lifted her own as if to prevent him, but he kindly and firmly
+put it away and addressed himself with silent diligence to his task; and
+by the time he had finished, his womanly touch, his commanding
+gentleness, his easy despatch, had inspired Palmyre not only with a
+sense of safety, comfort, and repose, but with a pleased wonder.
+
+This woman had stood all her life with dagger drawn, on the defensive
+against what certainly was to her an unmerciful world. With possibly
+one exception, the man now before her was the only one she had ever
+encountered whose speech and gesture were clearly keyed to that profound
+respect which is woman's first, foundation claim on man. And yet, by
+inexorable decree, she belonged to what we used to call "the happiest
+people under the sun." We ought to stop saying that.
+
+So far as Palmyre knew, the entire masculine wing of the mighty and
+exalted race, three-fourths of whose blood bequeathed her none of its
+prerogatives, regarded her as legitimate prey. The man before her did
+not. There lay the fundamental difference that, in her sight, as soon as
+she discovered it, glorified him. Before this assurance the cold
+fierceness of her eyes gave way, and a friendlier light from them
+rewarded the apothecary's final touch. He called for more pillows, made
+a nest of them, and, as she let herself softly into it, directed his
+next consideration toward his hat and the door.
+
+It was many an hour after he had backed out into the trivial remains of
+the rain-storm before he could replace with more tranquillizing images
+the vision of the philosophe reclining among her pillows, in the act of
+making that uneasy movement of her fingers upon the collar button of her
+robe, which women make when they are uncertain about the perfection of
+their dishabille, and giving her inaudible adieu with the majesty of
+an empress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+FROWENFELD MAKES AN ARGUMENT
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day on which Frowenfeld visited the house
+of the philosophe, the weather, which had been so unfavorable to his
+late plans, changed; the rain ceased, the wind drew around to the south,
+and the barometer promised a clear sky. Wherefore he decided to leave
+his business, when he should have made his evening weather notes, to the
+care of M. Raoul Innerarity, and venture to test both Mademoiselle
+Clotilde's repellent attitude and Aurora's seeming cordiality at Number
+19 rue Bienville.
+
+Why he should go was a question which the apothecary felt himself but
+partially prepared to answer. What necessity called him, what good was
+to be effected, what was to happen next, were points he would have liked
+to be clear upon. That he should be going merely because he was invited
+to come--merely for the pleasure of breathing their atmosphere--that he
+should be supinely gravitating toward them--this conclusion he
+positively could not allow; no, no; the love of books and the fear of
+women alike protested.
+
+True, they were a part of that book which is pronounced "the proper
+study of mankind,"--indeed, that was probably the reason which he
+sought: he was going to contemplate them as a frontispiece to that
+unwriteable volume which he had undertaken to con. Also, there was a
+charitable motive. Doctor Keene, months before, had expressed a deep
+concern regarding their lack of protection and even of daily provision;
+he must quietly look into that. Would some unforeseen circumstance shut
+him off this evening again from this very proper use of time and
+opportunity?
+
+As he was sitting at the table in his back room, registering his sunset
+observations, and wondering what would become of him if Aurora should be
+out and that other in, he was startled by a loud, deep voice exclaiming,
+close behind him:
+
+"_Eh, bien! Monsieur le Professeur!_"
+
+Frowenfeld knew by the tone, before he looked behind him, that he would
+find M. Agricola Fusilier very red in the face; and when he looked, the
+only qualification he could make was that the citizen's countenance was
+not so ruddy as the red handkerchief in which his arm was hanging.
+
+"What have you there?" slowly continued the patriarch, taking his free
+hand off his fettered arm and laying it upon the page as Frowenfeld
+hurriedly rose, and endeavored to shut the book.
+
+"Some private memoranda," answered the meteorologist, managing to get
+one page turned backward, reddening with confusion and indignation, and
+noticing that Agricola's spectacles were upside down.
+
+"Private! Eh? No such thing, sir! Professor Frowenfeld, allow me" (a
+classic oath) "to say to your face, sir, that you are the most brilliant
+and the most valuable man--of your years--in afflicted Louisiana! Ha!"
+(reading:) "'Morning observation; Cathedral clock, 7 A.M. Thermometer 70
+degrees.' Ha! 'Hygrometer l5'--but this is not to-day's weather? Ah! no.
+Ha! 'Barometer 30.380.' Ha! 'Sky cloudy, dark; wind, south, light.' Ha!
+'River rising.' Ha! Professor Frowenfeld, when will you give your
+splendid services to your section? You must tell me, my son, for I ask
+you, my son, not from curiosity, but out of impatient interest."
+
+"I cannot say that I shall ever publish my tables," replied the "son,"
+pulling at the book.
+
+"Then, sir, in the name of Louisiana," thundered the old man, clinging
+to the book, "I can! They shall be published! Ah! yes, dear Frowenfeld.
+The book, of course, will be in French, eh? You would not so affront the
+most sacred prejudices of the noble people to whom you owe everything as
+to publish it in English? You--ah! have we torn it?"
+
+"I do not write French," said the apothecary, laying the torn edges
+together.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, men are born for each other. What do I behold
+before me? I behold before me, in the person of my gifted young friend,
+a supplement to myself! Why has Nature strengthened the soul of Agricola
+to hold the crumbling fortress of this body until these eyes--which were
+once, my dear boy, as proud and piercing as the battle-steed's--have
+become dim?"
+
+Joseph's insurmountable respect for gray hairs kept him standing, but
+he did not respond with any conjecture as to Nature's intentions, and
+there was a stern silence.
+
+The crumbling fortress resumed, his voice pitched low like the beginning
+of the long roll. He knew Nature's design.
+
+"It was in order that you, Professor Frowenfeld, might become my vicar!
+Your book shall be in French! We must give it a wide scope! It shall
+contain valuable geographical, topographical, biographical, and
+historical notes. It shall contain complete lists of all the officials
+in the province (I don't say territory, I say province) with their
+salaries and perquisites; ah! we will expose that! And--ha! I will write
+some political essays for it. Raoul shall illustrate it. Honoré shall
+give you money to publish it. Ah! Professor Frowenfeld, the star of your
+fame is rising out of the waves of oblivion! Come--I dropped in
+purposely to ask you--come across the street and take a glass of
+_taffia_ with Agricola Fusilier."
+
+This crowning honor the apothecary was insane enough to decline, and
+Agricola went away with many professions of endearment, but secretly
+offended because Joseph had not asked about his wound.
+
+All the same the apothecary, without loss of time, departed for the
+yellow-washed cottage, Number 19 rue Bienville.
+
+"To-morrow, at four P.M.," he said to himself, "if the weather is
+favorable, I ride with M. Grandissime."
+
+He almost saw his books and instruments look up at him reproachfully.
+
+The ladies were at home. Aurora herself opened the door, and Clotilde
+came forward from the bright fireplace with a cordiality never before so
+unqualified. There was something about these ladies--in their simple,
+but noble grace, in their half-Gallic, half-classic beauty, in a jocund
+buoyancy mated to an amiable dignity--that made them appear to the
+scholar as though they had just bounded into life from the garlanded
+procession of some old fresco. The resemblance was not a little helped
+on by the costume of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and
+belated by the distance from Paris). Their black hair, somewhat heavier
+on Clotilde's head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted _en
+Grecque_, and adorned only with the spoils of a nosegay given to
+Clotilde by a chivalric small boy in the home of her music scholar.
+
+"We was expectin' you since several days," said Clotilde, as the three
+sat down before the fire, Frowenfeld in a cushioned chair whose
+moth-holes had been carefully darned.
+
+Frowenfeld intimated, with tolerable composure, that matters beyond his
+control had delayed his coming, beyond his intention.
+
+"You gedd'n' ridge," said Aurora, dropping her wrists across each other.
+
+Frowenfeld, for once, laughed outright, and it seemed so odd in him to
+do so that both the ladies followed his example. The ambition to be rich
+had never entered his thought, although in an unemotional, German way,
+he was prospering in a little city where wealth was daily pouring in,
+and a man had only to keep step, so to say, to march into possessions.
+
+"You hought to 'ave a mo' larger sto' an' some clerque," pursued Aurora.
+
+The apothecary answered that he was contemplating the enlargement of his
+present place or removal to a roomier, and that he had already employed
+an assistant.
+
+"Oo it is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+Clotilde turned toward the questioner a remonstrative glance.
+
+"His name," replied Frowenfeld, betraying a slight embarrassment,
+"is--Innerarity; Mr. Raoul Innerarity; he is--"
+
+"Ee pain' dad pigtu' w'at 'angin' in yo' window?"
+
+Clotilde's remonstrance rose to a slight movement and a murmur.
+
+Frowenfeld answered in the affirmative, and possibly betrayed the faint
+shadow of a smile. The response was a peal of laughter from both ladies.
+
+"He is an excellent drug clerk," said Frowenfeld defensively.
+
+Whereat Aurora laughed again, leaning over and touching Clotilde's knee
+with one finger.
+
+"An' excellen' drug cl'--ha, ha, ha! oh!"
+
+"You muz podden uz, M'sieu' Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, with forced
+gravity.
+
+Aurora sighed her participation in the apology; and, a few moments
+later, the apothecary and both ladies (the one as fond of the abstract
+as the other two were ignorant of the concrete) were engaged in an
+animated, running discussion on art, society, climate, education,--all
+those large, secondary _desiderata_ which seem of first importance to
+young ambition and secluded beauty, flying to and fro among these
+subjects with all the liveliness and uncertainty of a game of
+pussy-wants-a-corner.
+
+Frowenfeld had never before spent such an hour. At its expiration, he
+had so well held his own against both the others, that the three had
+settled down to this sort of entertainment: Aurora would make an
+assertion, or Clotilde would ask a question; and Frowenfeld, moved by
+that frankness and ardent zeal for truth which had enlisted the early
+friendship of Dr. Keene, amused and attracted Honoré Grandissime, won
+the confidence of the f.m.c., and tamed the fiery distrust and enmity of
+Palmyre, would present his opinions without the thought of a reservation
+either in himself or his hearers. On their part, they would sit in deep
+attention, shielding their faces from the fire, and responding to
+enunciations directly contrary to their convictions with an occasional
+"yes-seh," or "ceddenly," or "of coze," or,--prettier affirmation
+still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids, a slight compression of the
+lips, and a low, slow declination of the head.
+
+"The bane of all Creole art-effort"--(we take up the apothecary's words
+at a point where Clotilde was leaning forward and slightly frowning in
+an honest attempt to comprehend his condensed English)--"the bane of all
+Creole art-effort, so far as I have seen it, is amateurism."
+
+"Amateu--" murmured Clotilde, a little beclouded on the main word and
+distracted by a French difference of meaning, but planting an elbow on
+one knee in the genuineness of her attention, and responding with a bow.
+
+"That is to say," said Frowenfeld, apologizing for the homeliness of his
+further explanation by a smile, "a kind of ambitious indolence that lays
+very large eggs, but can neither see the necessity for building a nest
+beforehand, nor command the patience to hatch the eggs afterward."
+
+"Of coze," said Aurora.
+
+"It is a great pity," said the sermonizer, looking at the face of
+Clotilde, elongated in the brass andiron; and, after a pause: "Nothing
+on earth can take the place of hard and patient labor. But that, in this
+community, is not esteemed; most sorts of it are contemned; the humbler
+sorts are despised, and the higher are regarded with mingled patronage
+and commiseration. Most of those who come to my shop with their efforts
+at art hasten to explain, either that they are merely seeking pastime,
+or else that they are driven to their course by want; and if I advise
+them to take their work back and finish it, they take it back and never
+return. Industry is not only despised, but has been degraded and
+disgraced, handed over into the hands of African savages."
+
+"Doze Creole' is _lezzy_," said Aurora.
+
+"That is a hard word to apply to those who do not _consciously_ deserve
+it," said Frowenfeld; "but if they could only wake up to the fact,--find
+it out themselves--"
+
+"Ceddenly," said Clotilde.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, leaning her head on one side, "some
+pipple thing it is doze climade; 'ow you lag doze climade?"
+
+"I do not suppose," replied the visitor, "there is a more delightful
+climate in the world."
+
+"Ah-h-h!"--both ladies at once, in a low, gracious tone of
+acknowledgment.
+
+"I thing Louisiana is a paradize-me!" said Aurora. "W'ere you goin' fin'
+sudge a h-air?" She respired a sample of it. "W'ere you goin' fin' sudge
+a so ridge groun'? De weed' in my bag yard is twenny-five feet 'igh!"
+
+"Ah! maman!"
+
+"Twenty-six!" said Aurora, correcting herself. "W'ere you fin' sudge a
+reever lag dad Mississippi? _On dit_," she said, turning to Clotilde,
+"_que ses eaux ont la propriété de contribuer même à multiplier l'espèce
+humaine_--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde turned away an unmoved countenance to hear Frowenfeld.
+
+Frowenfeld had contracted a habit of falling into meditation whenever
+the French language left him out of the conversation.
+
+"Yes," he said, breaking a contemplative pause, "the climate is _too_
+comfortable and the soil too rich,--though I do not think it is entirely
+on their account that the people who enjoy them are so sadly in arrears
+to the civilized world." He blushed with the fear that his talk was
+bookish, and felt grateful to Clotilde for seeming to understand
+his speech.
+
+"W'ad you fin' de rizzon is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked.
+
+"I do not wish to philosophize," he answered.
+
+"_Mais_, go hon." "_Mais_, go ahade," said both ladies, settling
+themselves.
+
+"It is largely owing," exclaimed Frowenfeld, with sudden fervor, "to a
+defective organization of society, which keeps this community, and will
+continue to keep it for an indefinite time to come, entirely unprepared
+and disinclined to follow the course of modern thought."
+
+"Of coze," murmured Aurora, who had lost her bearings almost at the
+first word.
+
+"One great general subject of thought now is human rights,--universal
+human rights. The entire literature of the world is becoming tinctured
+with contradictions of the dogmas upon which society in this section is
+built. Human rights is, of all subjects, the one upon which this
+community is most violently determined to hear no discussion. It has
+pronounced that slavery and caste are right, and sealed up the whole
+subject. What, then, will they do with the world's literature? They will
+coldly decline to look at it, and will become, more and more as the
+world moves on, a comparatively illiterate people."
+
+"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, as Frowenfeld paused--Aurora
+was stunned to silence,--"de Unitee State' goin' pud doze nigga'
+free, aind it?"
+
+Frowenfeld pushed his hair hard back. He was in the stream now, and
+might as well go through.
+
+"I have heard that charge made, even by some Americans. I do not know.
+But there is a slavery that no legislation can abolish,--the slavery of
+caste. That, like all the slaveries on earth, is a double bondage. And
+what a bondage it is which compels a community, in order to preserve its
+established tyrannies, to walk behind the rest of the intelligent world!
+What a bondage is that which incites a people to adopt a system of
+social and civil distinctions, possessing all the enormities and none of
+the advantages of those systems which Europe is learning to despise!
+This system, moreover, is only kept up by a flourish of weapons. We have
+here what you may call an armed aristocracy. The class over which these
+instruments of main force are held is chosen for its servility,
+ignorance, and cowardice; hence, indolence in the ruling class. When a
+man's social or civil standing is not dependent on his knowing how to
+read, he is not likely to become a scholar."
+
+"Of coze," said Aurora, with a pensive respiration, "I thing id is doze
+climade," and the apothecary stopped, as a man should who finds himself
+unloading large philosophy in a little parlor.
+
+"I thing, me, dey hought to pud doze quadroon' free?" It was Clotilde
+who spoke, ending with the rising inflection to indicate the tentative
+character of this daringly premature declaration.
+
+Frowenfeld did not answer hastily.
+
+"The quadroons," said he, "want a great deal more than mere free papers
+can secure them. Emancipation before the law, though it may be a right
+which man has no right to withhold, is to them little more than a
+mockery until they achieve emancipation in the minds and good will of
+the people--'the people,' did I say? I mean the ruling class." He
+stopped again. One must inevitably feel a little silly, setting up
+tenpins for ladies who are too polite, even if able, to bowl them down.
+
+Aurora and the visitor began to speak simultaneously; both apologized,
+and Aurora said:
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', w'en I was a lill girl,"--and Frowenfeld knew that
+he was going to hear the story of Palmyre. Clotilde moved, with the
+obvious intention to mend the fire. Aurora asked, in French, why she did
+not call the cook to do it, and Frowenfeld said, "Let me,"--threw on
+some wood, and took a seat nearer Clotilde. Aurora had the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+AURORA AS A HISTORIAN
+
+
+Alas! the phonograph was invented three-quarters of a century too late.
+If type could entrap one-half the pretty oddities of Aurora's
+speech,--the arch, the pathetic, the grave, the earnest, the
+matter-of-fact, the ecstatic tones of her voice,--nay, could it but
+reproduce the movement of her hands, the eloquence of her eyes, or the
+shapings of her mouth,--ah! but type--even the phonograph--is such an
+inadequate thing! Sometimes she laughed; sometimes Clotilde,
+unexpectedly to herself, joined her; and twice or thrice she provoked a
+similar demonstration from the ox-like apothecary,--to her own intense
+amusement. Sometimes she shook her head in solemn scorn; and, when
+Frowenfeld, at a certain point where Palmyre's fate locked hands for a
+time with that of Bras-Coupé, asked a fervid question concerning that
+strange personage, tears leaped into her eyes, as she said:
+
+"Ah! 'Sieur Frowenfel', iv I tra to tell de sto'y of Bras-Coupé, I goin'
+to cry lag a lill bebby."
+
+The account of the childhood days upon the plantation at Cannes Brulées
+may be passed by. It was early in Palmyre's fifteenth year that that
+Kentuckian, 'mutual friend' of her master and Agricola, prevailed with
+M. de Grapion to send her to the paternal Grandissime mansion,--a
+complimentary gift, through Agricola, to Mademoiselle, his
+niece,--returnable ten years after date.
+
+The journey was made in safety; and, by and by, Palmyre was presented to
+her new mistress. The occasion was notable. In a great chair in the
+centre sat the _grandpère_, a Chevalier de Grandissime, whose business
+had narrowed down to sitting on the front veranda and wearing his
+decorations,--the cross of St. Louis being one; on his right, Colonel
+Numa Grandissime, with one arm dropped around Honoré, then a boy of
+Palmyre's age, expecting to be off in sixty days for France; and on the
+left, with Honoré's fair sister nestled against her, "Madame Numa," as
+the Creoles would call her, a stately woman and beautiful, a great
+admirer of her brother Agricola. (Aurora took pains to explain that she
+received these minutiae from Palmyre herself in later years.) One other
+member of the group was a young don of some twenty years' age, not an
+inmate of the house, but only a cousin of Aurora on her deceased
+mother's side. To make the affair complete, and as a seal to this tacit
+Grandissime-de-Grapion treaty, this sole available representative of the
+"other side" was made a guest for the evening. Like the true Spaniard
+that he was, Don José Martinez fell deeply in love with Honoré's sister.
+Then there came Agricola leading in Palmyre. There were others, for the
+Grandissime mansion was always full of Grandissimes; but this was the
+central group.
+
+In this house Palmyre grew to womanhood, retaining without interruption
+the place into which she seemed to enter by right of indisputable
+superiority over all competitors,--the place of favorite attendant to
+the sister of Honoré. Attendant, we say, for servant she never seemed.
+She grew tall, arrowy, lithe, imperial, diligent, neat, thorough,
+silent. Her new mistress, though scarcely at all her senior, was yet
+distinctly her mistress; she had that through her Fusilier blood;
+experience was just then beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime
+was a superb variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey. Palmyre
+loved her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be
+the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brulées.
+
+Honoré went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre entered the
+house. But even that was not soon enough.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, in her recital, "Palmyre, she never
+tole me dad, _mais_ I am shoe, _shoe_ dad she fall in love wid Honoré
+Grandissime. 'Sieur Frowenfel', I thing dad Honoré Grandissime is one
+bad man, ent it? Whad you thing, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the best, as
+I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened gentlemen in
+the city," said the apothecary.
+
+"Ah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'! ha, ha!"
+
+"That is my conviction."
+
+The lady went on with her story.
+
+"Hanny'ow, I know she _con_tinue in love wid 'im all doze ten year'
+w'at 'e been gone. She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to wrad dad ledder
+to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo'."
+
+Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene had
+related to Frowenfeld,--her own marriage and removal to Fausse Rivière,
+the visit of her husband to the city, his unfortunate and finally fatal
+affair with Agricola, and the surrender of all her land and slaves to
+that successful duellist.
+
+M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning
+Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment,
+responded favorably to a letter from Honoré's sister, irresistible for
+its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain
+Palmyre two years longer; but this response came only after the old
+master and his pretty, stricken Aurora had wept over it until they were
+weak and gentle,--and was not a response either, but only a
+silent consent.
+
+Shortly before the return of Honoré--and here it was that Aurora took up
+again the thread of her account--while his mother, long-widowed, reigned
+in the paternal mansion, with Agricola for her manager, Bras-Coupé
+appeared. From that advent, and the long and varied mental sufferings
+which its consequences brought upon her, sprang that second change in
+Palmyre, which made her finally untamable, and ended in a manumission,
+granted her more for fear than for conscience' sake. When Aurora
+attempted to tell those experiences, even leaving Bras-Coupé as much as
+might be out of the recital, she choked with tears at the very start,
+stopped, laughed, and said:
+
+"_C'est tout_--daz all. 'Sieur Frowenfel', oo you fine dad pigtu' to
+loog lag, yonnah, hon de wall?"
+
+She spoke as if he might have overlooked it, though twenty times, at
+least, in the last hour, she had seen him glance at it.
+
+"It is a good likeness," said the apothecary, turning to Clotilde, yet
+showing himself somewhat puzzled in the matter of the costume.
+
+The ladies laughed.
+
+"Daz ma grade-gran'-mamma," said Clotilde.
+
+"Dass one _fille à la cassette_," said Aurora, "my gran'-muzzah; _mais_,
+ad de sem tarn id is Clotilde." She touched her daughter under the chin
+with a ringed finger. "Clotilde is my gran'-mamma."
+
+Frowenfeld rose to go.
+
+"You muz come again, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said both ladies, in a breath.
+
+What could he say?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A RIDE AND A RESCUE
+
+
+"Douane or Bienville?"
+
+Such was the choice presented by Honoré Grandissime to Joseph
+Frowenfeld, as the former on a lively brown colt and the apothecary on a
+nervy chestnut fell into a gentle, preliminary trot while yet in the
+rue Royale, looked after by that great admirer of both, Raoul
+Innerarity.
+
+"Douane?" said Frowenfeld. (It was the street we call Custom-house.)
+
+"It has mud-holes," objected Honoré.
+
+"Well, then, the rue du Canal?"
+
+"The canal--I can smell it from here. Why not rue Bienville?"
+
+Frowenfeld said he did not know. (We give the statement for what it is
+worth.)
+
+Notice their route. A spirit of perversity seems to have entered into
+the very topography of this quarter. They turned up the rue Bienville
+(up is toward the river); reaching the levee, they took their course up
+the shore of the Mississippi (almost due south), and broke into a lively
+gallop on the Tchoupitoulas road, which in those days skirted that
+margin of the river nearest the sunsetting, namely, the _eastern_ bank.
+
+Conversation moved sluggishly for a time, halting upon trite topics or
+swinging easily from polite inquiry to mild affirmation, and back again.
+They were men of thought, these two, and one of them did not fully
+understand why he was in his present position; hence some reticence. It
+was one of those afternoons in early March that make one wonder how the
+rest of the world avoids emigrating to Louisiana in a body.
+
+"Is not the season early?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+M. Grandissime believed it was; but then the Creole spring always seemed
+so, he said.
+
+The land was an inverted firmament of flowers. The birds were an
+innumerable, busy, joy-compelling multitude, darting and fluttering
+hither and thither, as one might imagine the babes do in heaven. The
+orange-groves were in blossom; their dark-green boughs seemed snowed
+upon from a cloud of incense, and a listening ear might catch an
+incessant, whispered trickle of falling petals, dropping "as the
+honey-comb." The magnolia was beginning to add to its dark and shining
+evergreen foliage frequent sprays of pale new leaves and long, slender,
+buff buds of others yet to come. The oaks, both the bare-armed and the
+"green-robed senators," the willows, and the plaqueminiers, were putting
+out their subdued florescence as if they smiled in grave participation
+with the laughing gardens. The homes that gave perfection to this beauty
+were those old, large, belvidered colonial villas, of which you may
+still here and there see one standing, battered into half ruin, high and
+broad, among foundries, cotton-and tobacco-sheds, junk-yards, and
+longshoremen's hovels, like one unconquered elephant in a wreck of
+artillery. In Frowenfeld's day the "smell of their garments was like
+Lebanon." They were seen by glimpses through chance openings in lofty
+hedges of Cherokee-rose or bois-d'arc, under boughs of cedar or
+pride-of-China, above their groves of orange or down their long,
+overarched avenues of oleander; and the lemon and the pomegranate, the
+banana, the fig, the shaddock, and at times even the mango and the
+guava, joined "hands around" and tossed their fragrant locks above the
+lilies and roses. Frowenfeld forgot to ask himself further concerning
+the probable intent of M. Grandissime's invitation to ride; these
+beauties seemed rich enough in good reasons. He felt glad and grateful.
+
+At a certain point the two horses turned of their own impulse, as by
+force of habit, and with a few clambering strides mounted to the top of
+the levee and stood still, facing the broad, dancing, hurrying,
+brimming river.
+
+The Creole stole an amused glance at the elated, self-forgetful look of
+his immigrant friend.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as the delighted apothecary turned with
+unwonted suddenness and saw his smile, "I believe you like this better
+than discussion. You find it easier to be in harmony with Louisiana than
+with Louisianians, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld colored with surprise. Something unpleasant had lately
+occurred in his shop. Was this to signify that M. Grandissime had
+heard of it?
+
+"I am a Louisianian," replied he, as if this were a point assailed.
+
+"I would not insinuate otherwise," said M. Grandissime, with a kindly
+gesture. "I would like you to feel so. We are citizens now of a
+different government from that under which we lived the morning we first
+met. Yet"--the Creole paused and smiled--"you are not, and I am glad you
+are not, what we call a Louisianian."
+
+Frowenfeld's color increased. He turned quickly in his saddle as if to
+say something very positive, but hesitated, restrained himself
+and asked:
+
+"Mr. Grandissime, is not your Creole 'we' a word that does much damage?"
+
+The Creole's response was at first only a smile, followed by a
+thoughtful countenance; but he presently said, with some suddenness:
+
+"My-de'-seh, yes. Yet you see I am, even this moment, forgetting we are
+not a separate people. Yes, our Creole 'we' does damage, and our Creole
+'you' does more. I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my people to
+understand that it is time to stop calling those who come and add
+themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders. That is what
+I hear my cousins, 'Polyte and Sylvestre, in the heat of discussion,
+called you the other evening; is it so?"
+
+"I brought it upon myself," said Frowenfeld. "I brought it upon myself."
+
+"Ah!" interrupted M. Grandissime, with a broad smile, "excuse me--I am
+fully prepared to believe it. But the charge is a false one. I told them
+so. My-de'-seh--I know that a citizen of the United States in the United
+States has a right to become, and to be called, under the laws governing
+the case, a Louisianian, a Vermonter, or a Virginian, as it may suit his
+whim; and even if he should be found dishonest or dangerous, he has a
+right to be treated just exactly as we treat the knaves and ruffians who
+are native born! Every discreet man must admit that."
+
+"But if they do not enforce it, Mr. Grandissime," quickly responded the
+sore apothecary, "if they continually forget it--if one must surrender
+himself to the errors and crimes of the community as he finds it--"
+
+The Creole uttered a low laugh.
+
+"Party differences, Mr. Frowenfeld; they have them in all countries."
+
+"So your cousins said," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"And how did you answer them?"
+
+"Offensively," said the apothecary, with sincere mortification.
+
+"Oh! that was easy," replied the other, amusedly; "but how?"
+
+"I said that, having here only such party differences as are common
+elsewhere, we do not behave as they elsewhere do; that in most civilized
+countries the immigrant is welcome, but here he is not. I am afraid I
+have not learned the art of courteous debate," said Frowenfeld, with a
+smile of apology.
+
+"'Tis a great art," said the Creole, quietly, stroking his horse's neck.
+"I suppose my cousins denied your statement with indignation, eh?"
+
+"Yes; they said the honest immigrant is always welcome."
+
+"Well, do you not find that true?"
+
+"But, Mr. Grandissime, that is requiring the immigrant to prove his
+innocence!" Frowenfeld spoke from the heart. "And even the honest
+immigrant is welcome only when he leaves his peculiar opinions behind
+him. Is that right, sir?"
+
+The Creole smiled at Frowenfeld's heat.
+
+"My-de'-seh, my cousins complain that you advocate measures fatal to the
+prevailing order of society."
+
+"But," replied the unyielding Frowenfeld, turning redder than ever,
+"that is the very thing that American liberty gives me the
+right--peaceably--to do! Here is a structure of society defective,
+dangerous, erected on views of human relations which the world is
+abandoning as false; yet the immigrant's welcome is modified with the
+warning not to touch these false foundations with one of his fingers."
+
+"Did you tell my cousins the foundations of society here are false?"
+
+"I regret to say I did, very abruptly. I told them they were privately
+aware of the fact."
+
+"You may say," said the ever-amiable Creole, "that you allowed debate to
+run into controversy, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld was silent; he compared the gentleness of this Creole's
+rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated.
+But M. Grandissime spoke with a rallying smile.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you never make pills with eight corners eh?"
+
+"No, sir." The apothecary smiled.
+
+"No, you make them round; cannot you make your doctrines the same way?
+My-de'-seh, you will think me impertinent; but the reason I speak is
+because I wish very much that you and my cousins would not be offended
+with each other. To tell you the truth, my-de'-seh, I hoped to use you
+with them--pardon my frankness."
+
+"If Louisiana had more men like you, M. Grandissime," cried the
+untrained Frowenfeld, "society would be less sore to the touch."
+
+"My-de'-seh," said the Creole, laying his hand out toward his companion
+and turning his horse in such a way as to turn the other also, "do me
+one favor; remember that it _is_ sore to the touch."
+
+The animals picked their steps down the inner face of the levee and
+resumed their course up the road at a walk.
+
+"Did you see that man just turn the bend of the road, away yonder?" the
+Creole asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you recognize him?"
+
+"It was--my landlord, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Did he not have a conversation with you lately, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir; why do you ask?"
+
+"It has had a bad effect on him. I wonder why he is out here on foot?"
+
+The horses quickened their paces. The two friends rode along in silence.
+Frowenfeld noticed his companion frequently cast an eye up along the
+distant sunset shadows of the road with a new anxiety. Yet, when M.
+Grandissime broke the silence it was only to say:
+
+"I suppose you find the blemishes in our state of society can all be
+attributed to one main defect, Mr. Frowenfeld?"
+
+Frowenfeld was glad of the chance to answer:
+
+"I have not overlooked that this society has disadvantages as well as
+blemishes; it is distant from enlightened centres; it has a language and
+religion different from that of the great people of which it is now
+called to be a part. That it has also positive blemishes of organism--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted the Creole, smiling at the immigrant's sudden
+magnanimity, "its positive blemishes; do they all spring from one
+main defect?"
+
+"I think not. The climate has its influence, the soil has its
+influence--dwellers in swamps cannot be mountaineers."
+
+"But after all," persisted the Creole, "the greater part of our troubles
+comes from--"
+
+"Slavery," said Frowenfeld, "or rather caste."
+
+"Exactly," said M. Grandissime.
+
+"You surprise me, sir," said the simple apothecary. "I supposed you
+were--"
+
+"My-de'-seh," exclaimed M. Grandissime, suddenly becoming very earnest,
+"I am nothing, nothing! There is where you have the advantage of me. I
+am but a _dilettante_, whether in politics, in philosophy, morals, or
+religion. I am afraid to go deeply into anything, lest it should make
+ruin in my name, my family, my property."
+
+He laughed unpleasantly.
+
+The question darted into Frowenfeld's mind, whether this might not be a
+hint of the matter that M. Grandissime had been trying to see him about.
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," he said, "I can hardly believe you would neglect a
+duty either for family, property, or society."
+
+"Well, you mistake," said the Creole, so coldly that Frowenfeld colored.
+
+They galloped on. M. Grandissime brightened again, almost to the degree
+of vivacity. By and by they slackened to a slow trot and were silent.
+The gardens had been long left behind, and they were passing between
+continuous Cherokee-rose hedges on the right and on the left, along that
+bend of the Mississippi where its waters, glancing off three miles above
+from the old De Macarty levee (now Carrollton), at the slightest
+opposition in the breeze go whirling and leaping like a herd of
+dervishes across to the ever-crumbling shore, now marked by the little
+yellow depot-house of Westwego. Miles up the broad flood the sun was
+disappearing gorgeously. From their saddles, the two horsemen feasted on
+the scene without comment.
+
+But presently, M. Grandissime uttered a low ejaculation and spurred his
+horse toward a tree hard by, preparing, as he went, to fasten his rein
+to an overhanging branch. Frowenfeld, agreeable to his beckon, imitated
+the movement.
+
+"I fear he intends to drown himself," whispered M. Grandissime, as they
+hurriedly dismounted.
+
+"Who? Not--"
+
+"Yes, your landlord, as you call him. He is on the flatboat; I saw his
+hat over the levee. When we get on top the levee, we must get right into
+it. But do not follow him into the water in front of the flat; it is
+certain death; no power of man could keep you from going under it."
+
+The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee's crown. Just
+abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo and moored to the
+levee. They leaped into it. A human figure swerved from the onset of the
+Creole and ran toward the bow of the boat, and in an instant more would
+have been in the river.
+
+"Stop!" said Frowenfeld, seizing the unresisting f.m.c. firmly by the
+collar.
+
+Honoré Grandissime smiled, partly at the apothecary's brief speech, but
+much more at his success.
+
+"Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as he came near.
+
+The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.
+
+M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with him, and
+he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the levee, and
+took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.
+
+"He gives his pledge not to try again," said the Creole, as the two
+companions proceeded to resume the saddle. "Do not look after him."
+(Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)
+
+They turned homeward.
+
+"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, suddenly, "if the _immygrant_
+has cause of complaint, how much more has _that_ man! True, it is only
+love for which he would have just now drowned himself; yet what an
+accusation, my-de'-seh, is his whole life against that 'caste' which
+shuts him up within its narrow and almost solitary limits! And yet, Mr.
+Frowenfeld, this people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest
+and most precious of their virtues. My-de'-seh, it never occurs to us
+that in this matter we are interested, and therefore disqualified,
+witnesses. We say we are not understood; that the jury (the civilized
+world) renders its decision without viewing the body; that we are judged
+from a distance. We forget that we ourselves are too _close_ to see
+distinctly, and so continue, a spectacle to civilization, sitting in a
+horrible darkness, my-de'-seh!" He frowned.
+
+"The shadow of the Ethiopian," said the grave apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime's quick gesture implied that Frowenfeld had said the very
+word.
+
+"Ah! my-de'-seh, when I try sometimes to stand outside and look at it, I
+am _ama-aze_ at the length, the blackness of that shadow!" (He was so
+deeply in earnest that he took no care of his English.) "It is the
+_Némésis_ w'ich, instead of coming afteh, glides along by the side of
+this morhal, political, commercial, social mistake! It blanches,
+my-de'-seh, ow whole civilization! It drhags us a centurhy behind the
+rhes' of the world! It rhetahds and poisons everhy industrhy we
+got!--mos' of all our-h immense agrhicultu'e! It brheeds a thousan'
+cusses that nevva leave home but jus' flutter-h up an' rhoost,
+my-de'-seh, on ow _heads_; an' we nevva know it!--yes, sometimes some of
+us know it."
+
+He changed the subject.
+
+They had repassed the ruins of Fort St. Louis, and were well within the
+precincts of the little city, when, as they pulled up from a final
+gallop, mention was made of Doctor Keene. He was improving; Honoré had
+seen him that morning; so, at another hour, had Frowenfeld. Doctor Keene
+had told Honoré about Palmyre's wound.
+
+"You was at her house again this morning?" asked the Creole.
+
+"Yes," said Frowenfeld.
+
+M. Grandissime shook his head warningly.
+
+"'Tis a dangerous business. You are almost sure to become the object of
+slander. You ought to tell Doctor Keene to make some other arrangement,
+or presently you, too, will be under the--" he lowered his voice, for
+Frowenfeld was dismounting at the shop door, and three or four
+acquaintances stood around--"under the 'shadow of the Ethiopian.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FÊTE DE GRANDPÈRE
+
+
+Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down Esplanade
+street will notice, across on the right, between it and that sorry
+streak once fondly known as Champs Élysées, two or three large, old
+houses, rising above the general surroundings and displaying
+architectural features which identify them with an irrevocable past--a
+past when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear of
+contradiction, express his religious belief that the antipathy he felt
+for the Américain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in his
+ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence. There
+is, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred and
+fifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captain
+governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray as
+a pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank added
+or subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into the
+Bastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, when
+the setting sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectacles
+standing up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there and
+will never come back. These houses are the last remaining--if, indeed,
+they were not pulled down yesterday--of a group that once marked from
+afar the direction of the old highway between the city's walls and the
+suburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier aristocracy of the colony;
+all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons,
+etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings' moneys, with an
+_abandon_ which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.
+
+Among these stood the great mother-mansion of the Grandissimes. Do not
+look for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brick
+pillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground and
+rose on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered in
+the cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinous
+glitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the
+immense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk
+abreast; the great front stairs, descending from the veranda to the
+garden, with a lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps forty
+Grandissimes could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere,
+whence you could see the cathedral, the Ursulines', the governor's
+mansion, and the river, far away, shining between the villas of
+Tchoupitoulas Coast--all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall as
+the flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this _fête de
+grandpère_.
+
+Odd to say, it was not the grandpère's birthday that had passed. For
+weeks the happy children of the many Grandissime branches--the
+Mandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins--had been standing with
+their uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to clap hands and jump,
+and still, from week to week, the appointed day had been made to fall
+back, and fall back before--what think you?--an inability to
+understand Honoré.
+
+It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house that her
+best child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long been so. Even in
+Honoré's early youth, a scant two years after she had watched him, over
+the tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away,
+a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissime
+of the Grandissimes--an inflexible of the inflexibles--he was found
+"inciting" (so the stately dames and officials who graced her front
+veranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of
+transatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud,
+rekindled by the Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. The
+main difficulty seemed to be that Honoré could not be satisfied with a
+clean conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships of
+single households; his longing was, and had ever been--he had inherited
+it from his father--to see one unbroken and harmonious Grandissime
+family gathering yearly under this venerated roof without reproach
+before all persons, classes, and races with whom they had ever had to
+do. It was not hard for the old mansion to forgive him once or twice;
+but she had had to do it often. It seems no over-stretch of fancy to
+say she sometimes gazed down upon his erring ways with a look of patient
+sadness in her large and beautiful windows.
+
+And how had that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short instance:
+when, seven years before this present _fête de grandpère_, he came back
+from Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify),
+though in trouble then--a trouble that sent up the old feud flames
+again--opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all her
+gathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor of
+indiscriminate human freedom that for very shame's sake she hushed them
+up, in the fond hope that he would outgrow such heresies. But he? On top
+of all the rest, he declined a military commission and engaged in
+commerce--"shopkeeping, _parbleu!_"
+
+However, therein was developed a grain of consolation. Honoré became--as
+he chose to call it--more prudent. With much tact, Agricola was amiably
+crowded off the dictator's chair, to become, instead, a sort of
+seneschal. For a time the family peace was perfect, and Honoré, by a
+touch here to-day and a word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name,
+and all who bore it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as in
+his father's day--that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his very
+soul, as a sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods--as
+in Numa's day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other cession,
+like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her children's
+slave-schooners and the prostration alike of their slave-made crops and
+their Spanish liberties; and just in the fateful moment where Numa would
+have stood by her, Honoré had let go. Ah, it was bitter!
+
+"See what foreign education does!" cried a Mandarin de Grandissime of
+the Baton Rouge Coast. "I am sorry now"--derisively--"that I never sent
+_my_ boy to France, am I not? No! No-o-o! I would rather my son should
+never know how to read, than that he should come back from Paris
+repudiating the sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Is
+education better than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends with
+Américains and tell me they--that call a negro 'monsieur'--are as good
+as his father? But that is what we get for letting Honoré become a
+merchant. Ha! the degradation! Shaking hands with men who do not believe
+in the slave trade! Shake hands? Yes; associate--fraternize! with
+apothecaries and negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the
+_fête de grandpère_, in the house where he is really the chief--the
+_caçique!_"
+
+No! The family would not come together on the first appointment; no, nor
+on the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his wish; no, nor on
+the third--nor on the fourth.
+
+"_Non, Messieurs_!" cried both youth and reckless age; and, sometimes,
+also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of means, of force and
+of influence, urged on from behind by their proud and beautiful wives
+and daughters.
+
+Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days.
+Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with the
+poetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community recognized
+the supreme domination of "the gentleman" in questions of right and of
+"the ladies" in matters of sentiment. Under such conditions strength
+establishes over weakness a showy protection which is the subtlest of
+tyrannies, yet which, in the very moment of extending its arm over
+woman, confers upon her a power which a truer freedom would only
+diminish; constitutes her in a large degree an autocrat of public
+sentiment and thus accepts her narrowest prejudices and most belated
+errors as veriest need-be's of social life.
+
+The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those who
+boiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a close
+cover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most part, those
+who were holding office under old Spanish commissions, and were daily
+expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. The
+steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family--the timid, the
+apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than
+exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding
+harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so
+much easier--and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying to
+contemplate.
+
+"The Yankee was an inferior animal."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But Honoré had a right to his convictions."
+
+"Yes, that was so, too."
+
+"It looked very traitorous, however."
+
+"Yes, so it did."
+
+"Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honoré was advancing the true
+interests of his people."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"It would not do to accept office under the Yankee government."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Yet it would never do to let the Yankees get the offices, either."
+
+"That was true; nobody could deny that."
+
+"If Spain or France got the country back, they would certainly remember
+and reward those who had held out faithfully."
+
+"Certainly! That was an old habit with France and Spain."
+
+"But if they did not get the country back--"
+
+"Yes, that is so; Honoré is a very good fellow, and--"
+
+And, one after another, under the mild coolness of Honoré's amiable
+disregard, their indignation trickled back from steam to water, and they
+went on drawing their stipends, some in Honoré's counting-room, where
+they held positions, some from the provisional government, which had as
+yet made but few changes, and some, secretly, from the cunning
+Casa-Calvo; for, blow the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinity
+of the average Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.
+
+Then, at the right moment, Honoré made a single happy stroke, and even
+the hot Grandissimes, they of the interior parishes and they of
+Agricola's squadron, slaked and crumbled when he wrote each a letter
+saying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and that
+it would be well, if they wished to _evade_ them, to write the governor
+at once, surrendering their present commissions. Well! Evade? They would
+evade nothing! Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to
+write to the usurper? They would submit to keep the positions first.
+
+But the next move was Honoré's making the whole town aware of his
+apostasy. The great mansion, with the old grandpère sitting out in
+front, shivered. As we have seen, he had ridden through the Place
+d'Armes with the arch-usurper himself. Yet, after all, a Grandissime
+would be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn't
+that glorious--never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? It
+was not everyone who could ride with the governor.
+
+And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that would
+not meet either in January or February, met in the first week of March,
+every constituent one of them.
+
+The feast has been eaten. The garden now is joyous with children and
+the veranda resplendent with ladies. From among the latter the eye
+quickly selects one. She is perceptibly taller than the others; she sits
+in their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you look at her
+there is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make which you would
+not allow. Her hair, once black, now lifted up into a glistening
+snow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful face, while her
+full stature and stately bearing suggest the finer parts of Agricola,
+her brother. It is Madame Grandissime, the mother of Honoré.
+
+One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite cousin. On
+her right is her daughter, the widowed señora of José Martinez; she has
+wonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful. The commanding
+carriage of the mother is tempered in her to a gentle dignity and calm,
+contrasting pointedly with the animated manners of the courtly matrons
+among whom she sits, and whose continuous conversation takes this
+direction or that, at the pleasure of Madame Grandissime.
+
+But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those children
+who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the front
+stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, which
+every few minutes, at an end of the veranda, appears, wheels and
+disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of
+face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the
+new-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there,
+indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that
+one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of
+their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a
+less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As
+Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole
+stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. There
+is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, and a full red-ripeness of the
+lips would hardly be in keeping; but there is plenty of life in their
+eyes, which glance out between the curtains of their long lashes with a
+merry dancing that keeps time to the prattle of tongues. You are not
+able to get a straight look into them, and if you could you would see
+only your own image cast back in pitiful miniature; but you turn away
+and feel, as you fortify yourself with an inward smile, that they know
+you, you man, through and through, like a little song. And in turning,
+your sight is glad to rest again on the face of Honoré's mother. You
+see, this time, that she _is_ his mother, by a charm you had overlooked,
+a candid, serene and lovable smile. It is the wonder of those who see
+that smile that she can ever be harsh.
+
+The playful, mock-martial tread of the delicate Creole feet is all at
+once swallowed up by the sound of many heavier steps in the hall, and
+the fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and nephews of the
+great family come out, not a man of them that cannot, with a little
+care, keep on his feet. Their descendants of the present day sip from
+shallower glasses and with less marked results.
+
+The matrons, rising, offer the chief seat to the first comer, the
+great-grandsire--the oldest living Grandissime--Alcibiade, a shaken but
+unfallen monument of early colonial days, a browned and corrugated
+souvenir of De Vaudreuil's pomps, of O'Reilly's iron rule, of Galvez'
+brilliant wars--a man who had seen Bienville and Zephyr Grandissime.
+With what splendor of manner Madame Fusilier de Grandissime offers, and
+he accepts, the place of honor! Before he sits down he pauses a moment
+to hear out the companion on whose arm he had been leaning. But
+Théophile, a dark, graceful youth of eighteen, though he is recounting
+something with all the oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantly
+silent, bows with grave deference to the ladies, hands the aged
+forefather gracefully to his seat, and turning, recommences the recital
+before one who hears all with the same perfect courtesy--his beloved
+cousin Honoré.
+
+Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out. Gallant crew! These are they who
+have been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor (?) to
+understand the opaque motives of Numa's son.
+
+In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, with
+the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is Colonel Agamemnon
+Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's military pride,
+conservator of its military glory, and, after Honoré, the most admired
+of the name. Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from
+Frowenfeld's shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon in
+conversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman's nether
+limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which
+the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter,
+grapples the subject of boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who
+prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife
+is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a
+step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking
+black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy,
+below. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite down to the
+bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade. He is a large,
+broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar,
+with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with the
+eye of a hunter--or, it may be, of a sailor.
+
+"Valentine will not marry," says one of two ladies who lean over the
+rail of the veranda above. "I wonder why."
+
+The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shoulders
+and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to which
+would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.
+
+Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had retired. Raoul
+was there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way up
+the steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.
+
+"No such thing!" exclaimed his companion.
+
+(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)
+
+"I give you my sacred word of honor!" cried Raoul.
+
+"That Honoré is having all his business carried on in English?" asked
+the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)
+
+"I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on a stack
+of Bibles that high!"
+
+"Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!"
+
+This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic
+flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.
+
+"Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.
+
+"Honoré!" called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three persons passed the
+call around the corner of the veranda.
+
+Honoré came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By the time he
+arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.
+
+"Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written
+in English," said Sylvestre.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It is not true, is it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory "Ah!"
+except Honoré's mother. She turned upon him a look of silent but intense
+and indignant disappointment.
+
+"Honoré!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, "Honoré!"
+
+But Honoré was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of
+girls.
+
+"Honoré!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of
+writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a
+boot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee?'"
+
+There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.
+
+"Ask Valentine," said Honoré.
+
+Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man's only retort was to survey
+the company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to push the ashes
+slowly from his cigar with his little finger. M. Valentine Grandissime,
+of Tchoupitoulas, could not read.
+
+"Show it to Agricola," cried two or three, as that great man came out
+upon the veranda, heavy-eyed, and with tumbled hair.
+
+Sylvestre, spying Agricola's head beyond the ladies, put the question.
+
+"How is it spelled on that paper?" retorted the king of beasts.
+
+"L-a-y--"
+
+"Ignoramus!" growled the old man.
+
+"I did not spell it," cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the paper. But
+Sylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady snatched the paper, two
+or three cried "Give it to Agricola!" and a pretty boy, whom the
+laughter and excitement had lured from the garden, scampered up the
+steps and handed it to the old man.
+
+"Honoré!" cried Raoul, "it must not be read. It is one of your private
+matters."
+
+But Raoul's insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a private
+matter brought another laugh.
+
+Honoré nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who could not
+understand English, as well as those who could, listened. It was a paper
+Sylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the day of Aurore's visit
+to the counting-room. Agricola read:
+
+     "What is that layde want in thare with Honoré?"
+     "Honoré is goin giv her bac that proprety--that is
+     Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband."
+
+That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was reading
+aloud--"that is Aurore De Grap--"
+
+At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a sharp
+flash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of silence
+followed and Agricola's thundering voice rolled down upon Sylvestre in a
+succession of terrible imprecations.
+
+It was painful to see the young man's face as, speechless, he received
+this abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile playing about his
+mouth, half of distress and half of defiance, that said as plain as a
+smile could say, "Uncle Agricola, you will have to pay for
+this mistake."
+
+As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward to
+Valentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and passing with a
+courteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola, went into the
+house. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his shoe-buckles, tossed
+his cigar quietly into the grass and passed around a corner of the house
+to meet Sylvestre in the rear.
+
+Honoré had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with him, and
+Agricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few male figures
+down in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep up their spirits
+on the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or the waning daylight,
+and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not long before Raoul, who had
+come up upon the veranda, was left alone. He seemed to wait for
+something, as, leaning over the rail while the stars came out, he sang
+to himself, in a soft undertone, a snatch of a Creole song:
+
+     "La pluie--la pluie tombait,
+     Crapaud criait,
+     Moustique chantait--"
+
+The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break
+off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of
+his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black
+shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a
+magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the
+whole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.
+
+In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven dark
+forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars to
+be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did not
+listen. In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft,
+mock-startled "Who is that?" and one of that same sparkling group of
+girls that had lately hung upon Honoré came so close to Raoul, in her
+attempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met.
+They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled
+forth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the
+great rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes
+were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire,
+waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each,
+from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.
+
+"But mark," they cried unitedly, "you have got to wind up with the story
+of Bras-Coupé!"
+
+"A song! A song!"
+
+"_Une chanson Créole! Une chanson des nègres!_"
+
+"Sing 'yé tolé dancé la doung y doung doung!'" cried a black-eyed girl.
+
+Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.
+
+"Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on."
+
+But instead he sang them this:
+
+     "_La prémier' fois mo té 'oir li,
+     Li té posé au bord so lit;
+     Mo di', Bouzon, bel n'amourèse!
+     L'aut' fois li té si' so la saise
+     Comme vié Madam dans so fauteil,
+     Quand li vivé cóté soleil.
+
+     So giés yé té plis noir passé la nouitte,
+     So dé la lev' plis doux passe la quitte!
+     Tou' mo la vie, zamein mo oir
+     Ein n' amourèse zoli comme ça!
+          Mo' blié manzé--mo' blié boir'--
+          Mo' blié tout dipi ç' temps-là--
+          Mo' blié parlé--mo' blié dormi,
+          Quand mo pensé aprés zami!_"
+
+"And you have heard Bras-Coupé sing that, yourself?"
+
+"Once upon a time," said Raoul, warming with his subject, "we were
+coming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues. We had been three
+days fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador. Bras-Coupé had one pirogue
+with six paddles--"
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried a youth named Baltazar; "sing that, Raoul!"
+
+And he sang that.
+
+"But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out in the
+bayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!"
+
+"That boat song, do you mean, which they sing as a signal to those on
+shore?" He hummed.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+     "Dé zabs, dé zabs, dé counou ouaïe ouaïe,
+     Dé zabs, dé zabs, dé counou ouaïe ouaïe,
+     Counou ouaïe ouaïe ouaïe ouaïe,
+     Counou ouaïe ouaïe ouaïe ouaïe,
+     Counou ouaïe ouaïe ouaïe, momza;
+     Momza, momza, momza, momza,
+     Roza, roza, roza-et--momza."
+
+This was followed by another and still another, until the hour began to
+grow late. And then they gathered closer around him and heard the
+promised story. At the same hour Honoré Grandissime, wrapping himself in
+a greatcoat and giving himself up to sad and somewhat bitter
+reflections, had wandered from the paternal house, and by and by from
+the grounds, not knowing why or whither, but after a time soliciting, at
+Frowenfeld's closing door, the favor of his company. He had been feeling
+a kind of suffocation. This it was that made him seek and prize the
+presence and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary. He led him out
+to the edge of the river. Here they sat down, and with a laborious
+attempt at a hard and jesting mood, Honoré told the same dark story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPÉ
+
+
+"A very little more than eight years ago," began Honoré--but not only
+Honoré, but Raoul also; and not only they, but another, earlier on the
+same day,--Honoré, the f.m.c. But we shall not exactly follow the words
+of any one of these.
+
+Bras-Coupé, they said, had been, in Africa and under another name, a
+prince among his people. In a certain war of conquest, to which he had
+been driven by _ennui_, he was captured, stripped of his royalty,
+marched down upon the beach of the Atlantic, and, attired as a true son
+of Adam, with two goodly arms intact, became a commodity. Passing out of
+first hands in barter for a looking-glass, he was shipped in good order
+and condition on board the good schooner _Égalité_, whereof Blank was
+master, to be delivered without delay at the port of Nouvelle Orléans
+(the dangers of fire and navigation excepted), unto Blank Blank. In
+witness whereof, He that made men's skins of different colors, but all
+blood of one, hath entered the same upon His book, and sealed it to the
+day of judgment.
+
+Of the voyage little is recorded--here below; the less the better. Part
+of the living merchandise failed to keep; the weather was rough, the
+cargo large, the vessel small. However, the captain discovered there was
+room over the side, and there--all flesh is grass--from time to time
+during the voyage he jettisoned the unmerchantable.
+
+Yet, when the reopened hatches let in the sweet smell of the land,
+Bras-Coupé had come to the upper--the favored--the buttered side of the
+world; the anchor slid with a rumble of relief down through the muddy
+fathoms of the Mississippi, and the prince could hear through the
+schooner's side the savage current of the river, leaping and licking
+about the bows, and whimpering low welcomes home. A splendid picture to
+the eyes of the royal captive, as his head came up out of the hatchway,
+was the little Franco-Spanish-American city that lay on the low,
+brimming bank. There were little forts that showed their whitewashed
+teeth; there was a green parade-ground, and yellow barracks, and
+cabildo, and hospital, and cavalry stables, and custom-house, and a most
+inviting jail, convenient to the cathedral--all of dazzling white and
+yellow, with a black stripe marking the track of the conflagration of
+1794, and here and there among the low roofs a lofty one with
+round-topped dormer windows and a breezy belvidere looking out upon the
+plantations of coffee and indigo beyond the town.
+
+When Bras-Coupé staggered ashore, he stood but a moment among a drove
+of "likely boys," before Agricola Fusilier, managing the business
+adventures of the Grandissime estate, as well as the residents thereon,
+and struck with admiration for the physical beauties of the chieftain (a
+man may even fancy a negro--as a negro), bought the lot, and, both to
+resell him with the rest to some unappreciative 'Cadian, induced Don
+José Martinez' overseer to become his purchaser.
+
+Down in the rich parish of St. Bernard (whose boundary line now touches
+that of the distended city) lay the plantation, known before Bras-Coupé
+passed away as La Renaissance. Here it was that he entered at once upon
+a chapter of agreeable surprises. He was humanely met, presented with a
+clean garment, lifted into a cart drawn by oxen, taken to a whitewashed
+cabin of logs, finer than his palace at home, and made to comprehend
+that it was a free gift. He was also given some clean food, whereupon he
+fell sick. At home it would have been the part of piety for the magnate
+next the throne to launch him heavenward at once; but now, healing doses
+were administered, and to his amazement he recovered. It reminded him
+that he was no longer king.
+
+His name, he replied to an inquiry touching that subject, was --------,
+something in the Jaloff tongue, which he by and by condescended to
+render into Congo: Mioko-Koanga; in French Bras-Coupé; the Arm Cut Off.
+Truly it would have been easy to admit, had this been his meaning, that
+his tribe, in losing him, had lost its strong right arm close off at the
+shoulder; not so easy for his high-paying purchaser to allow, if this
+other was his intent: that the arm which might no longer shake the spear
+or swing the wooden sword was no better than a useless stump never to be
+lifted for aught else. But whether easy to allow or not, that was his
+meaning. He made himself a type of all Slavery, turning into flesh and
+blood the truth that all Slavery is maiming.
+
+He beheld more luxury in a week than all his subjects had seen in a
+century. Here Congo girls were dressed in cottons and flannels worth,
+where he came from, an elephant's tusk apiece. Everybody wore
+clothes--children and lads alone excepted. Not a lion had invaded the
+settlement since his immigration. The serpents were as nothing; an
+occasional one coming up through the floor--that was all. True, there
+was more emaciation than unassisted conjecture could explain--a
+profusion of enlarged joints and diminished muscles, which, thank God,
+was even then confined to a narrow section and disappeared with Spanish
+rule. He had no experimental knowledge of it; nay, regular meals, on the
+contrary, gave him anxious concern, yet had the effect--spite of his
+apprehension that he was being fattened for a purpose--of restoring the
+herculean puissance which formerly in Africa had made him the terror of
+the battle.
+
+When one day he had come to be quite himself, he was invited out into
+the sunshine, and escorted by the driver (a sort of foreman to the
+overseer), went forth dimly wondering. They reached a field where some
+men and women were hoeing. He had seen men and women--subjects of
+his--labor--a little--in Africa. The driver handed him a hoe; he
+examined it with silent interest--until by signs he was requested to
+join the pastime.
+
+"What?"
+
+He spoke, not with his lips, but with the recoil of his splendid frame
+and the ferocious expansion of his eyes. This invitation was a cataract
+of lightning leaping down an ink-black sky. In one instant of
+all-pervading clearness he read his sentence--WORK.
+
+Bras-Coupé was six feet five. With a sweep as quick as instinct the back
+of the hoe smote the driver full in the head. Next, the prince lifted
+the nearest Congo crosswise, brought thirty-two teeth together in his
+wildly kicking leg and cast him away as a bad morsel; then, throwing
+another into the branches of a willow, and a woman over his head into a
+draining-ditch, he made one bound for freedom, and fell to his knees,
+rocking from side to side under the effect of a pistol-ball from the
+overseer. It had struck him in the forehead, and running around the
+skull in search of a penetrable spot, tradition--which sometimes
+jests--says came out despairingly, exactly where it had entered.
+
+It so happened that, except the overseer, the whole company were black.
+Why should the trivial scandal be blabbed? A plaster or two made
+everything even in a short time, except in the driver's case--for the
+driver died. The woman whom Bras-Coupé had thrown over his head lived to
+sell _calas_ to Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+Don José, young and austere, knew nothing about agriculture and cared as
+much about human nature. The overseer often thought this, but never said
+it; he would not trust even himself with the dangerous criticism. When
+he ventured to reveal the foregoing incidents to the señor he laid all
+the blame possible upon the man whom death had removed beyond the reach
+of correction, and brought his account to a climax by hazarding the
+asserting that Bras-Coupé was an animal that could not be whipped.
+
+"Caramba!" exclaimed the master, with gentle emphasis, "how so?"
+
+"Perhaps señor had better ride down to the quarters," replied the
+overseer.
+
+It was a great sacrifice of dignity, but the master made it.
+
+"Bring him out."
+
+They brought him out--chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, an iron
+yoke on his neck. The Spanish Creole master had often seen the bull,
+with his long, keen horns and blazing eye, standing in the arena; but
+this was as though he had come face to face with a rhinoceros.
+
+"This man is not a Congo," he said.
+
+"He is a Jaloff," replied the encouraged overseer. "See his fine,
+straight nose; moreover, he is a _candio_--a prince. If I whip him he
+will die."
+
+The dauntless captive and fearless master stood looking into each
+other's eyes until each recognized in the other his peer in physical
+courage, and each was struck with an admiration for the other which no
+after difference was sufficient entirely to destroy. Had Bras-Coupé's
+eye quailed but once--just for one little instant--he would have got the
+lash; but, as it was--
+
+"Get an interpreter," said Don José; then, more privately, "and come to
+an understanding. I shall require it of you."
+
+Where might one find an interpreter--one not merely able to render a
+Jaloff's meaning into Creole French, or Spanish, but with such a turn
+for diplomatic correspondence as would bring about an "understanding"
+with this African buffalo? The overseer was left standing and thinking,
+and Clemence, who had not forgotten who threw her into the
+draining-ditch, cunningly passed by.
+
+"Ah, Clemence--"
+
+"_Mo pas capabe! Mo pas capabe!_ (I cannot, I cannot!) _Ya, ya, ya! 'oir
+Miché Agricol' Fusilier! ouala yune bon monture, oui!_"--which was to
+signify that Agricola could interpret the very Papa Lébat.
+
+"Agricola Fusilier! The last man on earth to make peace."
+
+But there seemed to be no choice, and to Agricola the overseer went. It
+was but a little ride to the Grandissime place.
+
+"I, Agricola Fusilier, stand as an interpreter to a negro? H-sir!"
+
+"But I thought you might know of some person," said the weakening
+applicant, rubbing his ear with his hand.
+
+"Ah!" replied Agricola, addressing the surrounding scenery, "if I did
+not--who would? You may take Palmyre."
+
+The overseer softly smote his hands together at the happy thought.
+
+"Yes," said Agricola, "take Palmyre; she has picked up as many negro
+dialects as I know European languages."
+
+And she went to the don's plantation as interpreter, followed by
+Agricola's prayer to Fate that she might in some way be overtaken by
+disaster. The two hated each other with all the strength they had. He
+knew not only her pride, but her passion for the absent Honoré. He hated
+her, also, for her intelligence, for the high favor in which she stood
+with her mistress, and for her invincible spirit, which was more
+offensively patent to him than to others, since he was himself the chief
+object of her silent detestation.
+
+It was Palmyre's habit to do nothing without painstaking. "When
+Mademoiselle comes to be Señora," thought she--she knew that her
+mistress and the don were affianced--"it will be well to have a Señor's
+esteem. I shall endeavor to succeed." It was from this motive, then,
+that with the aid of her mistress she attired herself in a resplendence
+of scarlet and beads and feathers that could not fail the double purpose
+of connecting her with the children of Ethiopia and commanding the
+captive's instant admiration.
+
+Alas for those who succeed too well! No sooner did the African turn his
+tiger glance upon her than the fire of his eyes died out; and when she
+spoke to him in the dear accents of his native tongue, the matter of
+strife vanished from his mind. He loved.
+
+He sat down tamely in his irons and listened to Palmyre's argument as a
+wrecked mariner would listen to ghostly church-bells. He would give a
+short assent, feast his eyes, again assent, and feast his ears; but when
+at length she made bold to approach the actual issue, and finally
+uttered the loathed word, _Work_, he rose up, six feet five, a statue of
+indignation in black marble.
+
+And then Palmyre, too, rose up, glorying in him, and went to explain to
+master and overseer. Bras-Coupé understood, she said, that he was a
+slave--it was the fortune of war, and he was a warrior; but, according
+to a generally recognized principle in African international law, he
+could not reasonably be expected to work.
+
+"As Señor will remember I told him," remarked the overseer; "how can a
+man expect to plow with a zebra?"
+
+Here he recalled a fact in his earlier experience. An African of this
+stripe had been found to answer admirably as a "driver" to make others
+work. A second and third parley, extending through two or three days,
+were held with the prince, looking to his appointment to the vacant
+office of driver; yet what was the master's amazement to learn at length
+that his Highness declined the proffered honor.
+
+"Stop!" spoke the overseer again, detecting a look of alarm in Palmyre's
+face as she turned away, "he doesn't do any such thing. If Señor will
+let me take the man to Agricola--"
+
+"No!" cried Palmyre, with an agonized look, "I will tell. He will take
+the place and fill it if you will give me to him for his own--but oh,
+messieurs, for the love of God--I do not want to be his wife!"
+
+The overseer looked at the Señor, ready to approve whatever he should
+decide. Bras-Coupé's intrepid audacity took the Spaniard's heart by
+irresistible assault.
+
+"I leave it entirely with Señor Fusilier," he said.
+
+"But he is not my master; he has no right--"
+
+"Silence!"
+
+And she was silent; and so, sometimes, is fire in the wall.
+
+Agricola's consent was given with malicious promptness, and as
+Bras-Coupé's fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he fill his
+office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear veranda of the
+Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one already appointed to
+take place in the grand hall of the same house six months from that
+present day. In the meanwhile Palmyre should remain with Mademoiselle,
+who had promptly but quietly made up her mind that Palmyre should not be
+wed unless she wished to be. Bras-Coupé made no objection, was royally
+worthless for a time, but learned fast, mastered the "gumbo" dialect in
+a few weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for
+gourde dollars. Nevertheless, there were but three persons within as
+many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.
+
+The first was Palmyre. His bearing in her presence was ever one of
+solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in
+himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth being
+there to see. "It was royal!" said the overseer.
+
+The second was not that official. When Bras-Coupé said--as, at stated
+intervals, he did say--"_Mo courri c'ez Agricole Fusilier pou' 'oir
+'namourouse_ (I go to Agricola Fusilier to see my betrothed,)" the
+overseer would sooner have intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws
+than that one lover. He would look after him and shake a prophetic head.
+"Trouble coming; better not deceive that fellow;" yet that was the very
+thing Palmyre dared do. Her admiration for Bras-Coupé was almost
+boundless. She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the
+contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the gigantic
+embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded realization of
+her lifetime longing for terrible strength. But the single deficiency
+in all this impassioned regard was--what so many fairer loves have found
+impossible to explain to so many gentler lovers--an entire absence of
+preference; her heart she could not give him--she did not have it. Yet
+after her first prayer to the Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance,
+to the secret surprise and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated
+content. It was artifice; she knew Agricola's power, and to seem to
+consent was her one chance with him. He might thus be beguiled into
+withdrawing his own consent. That failing, she had Mademoiselle's
+promise to come to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment;
+and that failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain
+hard breast was not too hard. Another element of safety, of which she
+knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brulée. The word had reached
+there that love had conquered--that, despite all hard words, and rancor,
+and positive injury, the Grandissime hand--the fairest of Grandissime
+hands--was about to be laid into that of one who without much stretch
+might be called a De Grapion; that there was, moreover, positive effort
+being made to induce a restitution of old gaming-table spoils. Honoré
+and Mademoiselle, his sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were
+striving for this end. Don José sent this intelligence to his kinsman as
+glad tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which
+makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre, also,
+was given to the chieftain. The letter that came back to the young
+Spaniard did not blame him so much: _he_ was ignorant of all the facts;
+but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify him that if Palmyre's
+union with Bras-Coupé should be completed, as sure as there was a God in
+heaven, the writer would have the life of the man who knowingly had thus
+endeavored to dishonor one who _shared the blood of the De Grapions_.
+Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to drop
+hints to Don José that the engagement of Bras-Coupé and Palmyre need not
+be considered irreversible; but the don was not desirous of
+disappointing his terrible pet. Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a
+little too deeply. She thought the moment had come for herself to insist
+on the match, and thus provoke Agricola to forbid it. To her
+incalculable dismay she saw him a second time reconsider and
+become silent.
+
+The second person who did not fear Bras-Coupé was Mademoiselle. On one
+of the giant's earliest visits to see Palmyre he obeyed the summons
+which she brought him, to appear before the lady. A more artificial man
+might have objected on the score of dress, his attire being a single
+gaudy garment tightly enveloping the waist and thighs. As his eyes fell
+upon the beautiful white lady he prostrated himself upon the ground, his
+arms outstretched before him. He would not move till she was gone. Then
+he arose like a hermit who has seen a vision. "_Bras-Coupé n' pas oulé
+oir zombis_ (Bras-Coupé dares not look upon a spirit)." From that hour
+he worshipped. He saw her often; every time, after one glance at her
+countenance, he would prostrate his gigantic length with his face in
+the dust.
+
+The third person who did not fear him was--Agricola? Nay, it was the
+Spaniard--a man whose capability to fear anything in nature or beyond
+had never been discovered.
+
+Long before the end of his probation Bras-Coupé would have slipped the
+entanglements of bondage, though as yet he felt them only as one feels a
+spider's web across the face, had not the master, according to a little
+affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day
+did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal
+swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and
+bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican;
+when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the
+other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew
+nigh[3]. A goodly company had assembled. All things were ready. The
+bride was dressed, the bridegroom had come. On the great back piazza,
+which had been inclosed with sail-cloth and lighted with lanterns, was
+Palmyre, full of a new and deep design and playing her deceit to the
+last, robed in costly garments to whose beauty was added the charm of
+their having been worn once, and once only, by her beloved Mademoiselle.
+
+[Footnote 3: An over-zealous Franciscan once complained bitterly to the
+bishop of Havana, that people were being married in Louisiana in their
+own houses after dark and thinking nothing of it. It is not certain that
+he had reference to the Grandissime mansion; at any rate he was tittered
+down by the whole community.]
+
+But where was Bras-Coupé?
+
+The question was asked of Palmyre by Agricola with a gaze that meant in
+English, "No tricks, girl!"
+
+Among the servants who huddled at the windows and door to see the inner
+magnificence a frightened whisper was already going round.
+
+"We have made a sad discovery, Miché Fusilier," said the overseer.
+"Bras-Coupé is here; we have him in a room just yonder. But--the truth
+is, sir, Bras-Coupé is a voudou."
+
+"Well, and suppose he is; what of it? Only hush; do not let his master
+know it. It is nothing; all the blacks are voudous, more or less."
+
+"But he declines to dress himself--has painted himself all rings and
+stripes, antelope fashion."
+
+"Tell him Agricola Fusilier says, 'dress immediately!'"
+
+"Oh, Miché, we have said that five times already, and his answer--you
+will pardon me--his answer is--spitting on the ground--that you are a
+contemptible _dotchian_ (white trash)."
+
+There is nothing to do but privily to call the very bride--the lady
+herself. She comes forth in all her glory, small, but oh, so beautiful!
+Slam! Bras-Coupé is upon his face, his finger-tips touching the tips of
+her snowy slippers. She gently bids him go and dress, and at once
+he goes.
+
+Ah! now the question may be answered without whispering. There is
+Bras-Coupé, towering above all heads, in ridiculous red and blue
+regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every
+one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the
+thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh,
+Bras-Coupé--heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly
+priest say his say--then her cunning should help her _not to be_ his
+wife, yet to show his mighty arm how and when to strike.
+
+"He is looking for Palmyre," said some, and at that moment he saw her.
+
+"Ho-o-o-o-o!"
+
+Agricola's best roar was a penny trumpet to Bras-Coupé's note of joy.
+The whole masculine half of the indoor company flocked out to see what
+the matter was. Bras-Coupé was taking her hand in one of his and laying
+his other upon her head; and as some one made an unnecessary gesture for
+silence, he sang, beating slow and solemn time with his naked foot and
+with the hand that dropped hers to smite his breast:
+
+     "'_En haut la montagne, zami,
+     Mo pé coupé canne, zami,
+     Pou' fé l'a'zen' zami,
+     Pou' mo baille Palmyre.
+     Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre mo c'ere,
+     Mo l'aimé 'ou'--mo l'aimé 'ou'_.'"
+
+"_Montagne?_" asked one slave of another, "_qui est çà, montagne? gnia
+pas quiç 'ose comme çà dans la Louisiana?_ (What's a mountain?" We
+haven't such things in Louisiana.)"
+
+"_Mein ye gagnein plein montagnes dans l'Afrique_, listen!"
+
+     "'_Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre, mo' piti zozo,'
+     Mo l'aimé 'ou'--mo l'aimé, l'aimé 'ou'_.'"
+
+"Bravissimo!--" but just then a counter-attraction drew the white
+company back into the house. An old French priest with sandalled feet
+and a dirty face had arrived. There was a moment of handshaking with the
+good father, then a moment of palpitation and holding of the breath, and
+then--you would have known it by the turning away of two or three
+feminine heads in tears--the lily hand became the don's, to have and to
+hold, by authority of the Church and the Spanish king. And all was
+merry, save that outside there was coming up as villanous a night as
+ever cast black looks in through snug windows.
+
+It was just as the newly-wed Spaniard, with Agricola and all the guests,
+were concluding the byplay of marrying the darker couple, that the
+hurricane struck the dwelling. The holy and jovial father had made faint
+pretence of kissing this second bride; the ladies, colonels, dons,
+etc.,--though the joke struck them as a trifle coarse--were beginning to
+laugh and clap hands again and the gowned jester to bow to right and
+left, when Bras-Coupé, tardily realizing the consummation of his hopes,
+stepped forward to embrace his wife.
+
+"Bras-Coupé!"
+
+The voice was that of Palmyre's mistress. She had not been able to
+comprehend her maid's behavior, but now Palmyre had darted upon her an
+appealing look.
+
+The warrior stopped as if a javelin had flashed over his head and stuck
+in the wall.
+
+"Bras-Coupé must wait till I give him his wife."
+
+He sank, with hidden face, slowly to the floor.
+
+"Bras-Coupé hears the voice of zombis; the voice is sweet, but the words
+are very strong; from the same sugar-cane comes _sirop_ and _tafia_;
+Bras-Coupé says to zombis, 'Bras-Coupé will wait; but if the _dotchians_
+deceive Bras-Coupé--" he rose to his feet with his eyes closed and his
+great black fist lifted over his head--"Bras-Coupé will call
+Voudou-Magnan!"
+
+The crowd retreated and the storm fell like a burst of infernal
+applause. A whiff like fifty witches flouted up the canvas curtain of
+the gallery and a fierce black cloud, drawing the moon under its cloak,
+belched forth a stream of fire that seemed to flood the ground; a peal
+of thunder followed as if the sky had fallen in, the house quivered, the
+great oaks groaned, and every lesser thing bowed down before the awful
+blast. Every lip held its breath for a minute--or an hour, no one
+knew--there was a sudden lull of the wind, and the floods came down.
+Have you heard it thunder and rain in those Louisiana lowlands? Every
+clap seems to crack the world. It has rained a moment; you peer through
+the black pane--your house is an island, all the land is sea.
+
+However, the supper was spread in the hall and in due time the guests
+were filled. Then a supper was spread in the big hall in the basement,
+below stairs, the sons and daughters of Ham came down like the fowls of
+the air upon a rice-field, and Bras-Coupé, throwing his heels about with
+the joyous carelessness of a smutted Mercury, for the first time in his
+life tasted the blood of the grape. A second, a fifth, a tenth time he
+tasted it, drinking more deeply each time, and would have taken it ten
+times more had not his bride cunningly concealed it. It was like
+stealing a tiger's kittens.
+
+The moment quickly came when he wanted his eleventh bumper. As he
+presented his request a silent shiver of consternation ran through the
+dark company; and when, in what the prince meant as a remonstrative
+tone, he repeated the petition--splitting the table with his fist by way
+of punctuation--there ensued a hustling up staircases and a cramming
+into dim corners that left him alone at the banquet.
+
+Leaving the table, he strode upstairs and into the chirruping and
+dancing of the grand salon. There was a halt in the cotillion and a hush
+of amazement like the shutting off of steam. Bras-Coupé strode straight
+to his master, laid his paw upon his fellow-bridegroom's shoulder and in
+a thunder-tone demanded:
+
+"More!"
+
+The master swore a Spanish oath, lifted his hand and--fell, beneath the
+terrific fist of his slave, with a bang that jingled the candelabra.
+Dolorous stroke!--for the dealer of it. Given, apparently to him--poor,
+tipsy savage--in self-defence, punishable, in a white offender, by a
+small fine or a few days' imprisonment, it assured Bras-Coupé the death
+of a felon; such was the old _Code Noir_. (We have a _Code Noir_ now,
+but the new one is a mental reservation, not an enactment.)
+
+The guests stood for an instant as if frozen, smitten stiff with the
+instant expectation of insurrection, conflagration and rapine (just as
+we do to-day whenever some poor swaggering Pompey rolls up his fist and
+gets a ball through his body), while, single-handed and naked-fisted in
+a room full of swords, the giant stood over his master, making strange
+signs and passes and rolling out in wrathful words of his mother tongue
+what it needed no interpreter to tell his swarming enemies was a voudou
+malediction.
+
+"_Nous sommes grigis!_" screamed two or three ladies, "we are
+bewitched!"
+
+"Look to your wives and daughters!" shouted a Brahmin-Mandarin.
+
+"Shoot the black devils without mercy!" cried a Mandarin-Fusilier,
+unconsciously putting into a single outflash of words the whole Creole
+treatment of race troubles.
+
+With a single bound Bras-Coupé reached the drawing-room door; his gaudy
+regimentals made a red and blue streak down the hall; there was a rush
+of frilled and powdered gentlemen to the rear veranda, an avalanche of
+lightning with Bras-Coupé in the midst making for the swamp, and then
+all without was blackness of darkness and all within was a wild
+commingled chatter of Creole, French, and Spanish tongues,--in the midst
+of which the reluctant Agricola returned his dresssword to its scabbard.
+
+While the wet lanterns swung on crazily in the trees along the way by
+which the bridegroom was to have borne his bride; while Madame
+Grandissime prepared an impromptu bridalchamber; while the Spaniard
+bathed his eye and the blue gash on his cheek-bone; while Palmyre paced
+her room in a fever and wild tremor of conflicting emotions throughout
+the night, and the guests splashed home after the storm as best they
+could, Bras-Coupé was practically declaring his independence on a slight
+rise of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and lifted scarce
+above the water in the inmost depths of the swamp.
+
+And amid what surroundings! Endless colonnades of cypresses; long,
+motionless drapings of gray moss; broad sheets of noisome waters, pitchy
+black, resting on bottomless ooze; cypress knees studding the surface;
+patches of floating green, gleaming brilliantly here and there; yonder
+where the sunbeams wedge themselves in, constellations of water-lilies,
+the many-hued iris, and a multitude of flowers that no man had named;
+here, too, serpents great and small, of wonderful colorings, and the
+dull and loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer
+recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a century
+old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes and creatures
+of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and scarlet fruit in
+deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic insects, gorgeous
+dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: the blue heron, the snowy crane,
+the red-bird, the moss-bird, the night-hawk and the chuckwill's-widow; a
+solemn stillness and stifled air only now and then disturbed by the call
+or whir of the summer duck, the dismal ventriloquous note of the
+rain-crow, or the splash of a dead branch falling into the clear but
+lifeless bayou.
+
+The pack of Cuban hounds that howl from Don José's kennels cannot snuff
+the trail of the stolen canoe that glides through the sombre blue vapors
+of the African's fastnesses. His arrows send no telltale reverberations
+to the distant clearing. Many a wretch in his native wilderness has
+Bras-Coupé himself, in palmier days, driven to just such an existence,
+to escape the chains and horrors of the barracoons; therefore not a whit
+broods he over man's inhumanity, but, taking the affair as a matter of
+course, casts about him for a future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPÉ, CONTINUED
+
+
+Bras-Coupé let the autumn pass, and wintered in his den.
+
+Don José, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He took his señora
+to his hall, and under her rule it took on for a while a look and
+feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge into a home. Wherever the
+lady's steps turned--or it is as correct to say wherever the proud tread
+of Palmyre turned--the features of bachelor's-hall disappeared; guns,
+dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went their way into proper banishment, and
+the broad halls and lofty chambers--the floors now muffled with mats of
+palmetto-leaf--no longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but
+breathed a redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of
+well-contented song.
+
+But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coupé's "_piti zozo_."
+Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole nights heaping
+reproaches upon herself for the impulse--now to her, because it had
+failed, inexplicable in its folly--which had permitted her hand to lie
+in Bras-Coupé's and the priest to bind them together.
+
+For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have said, in
+the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself consecrate to a
+hopeless love. But now she was a black man's wife! and even he unable
+to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had hoped to teach him. She
+had heard of San Domingo; for months the fierce heart within her silent
+bosom had been leaping and shouting and seeing visions of fire and
+blood, and when she brooded over the nearness of Agricola and the
+remoteness of Honoré these visions got from her a sort of mad consent.
+The lesson she would have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was
+too late. Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined
+belief in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her
+giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and gone
+like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce despair. A wild
+aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her glance in moments of
+anger--moments which had grown more and more infrequent under the
+softening influence of her Mademoiselle's nature--now came back
+intensified, and blazed in her eye perpetually. Whatever her secret love
+may have been in kind, its sinking beyond hope below the horizon had
+left her fifty times the mutineer she had been before--the mutineer who
+has nothing to lose.
+
+"She loves her _candio_" said the negroes.
+
+"Simple creatures!" said the overseer, who prided himself on his
+discernment, "she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it's a case of hate
+at first sight--the strongest kind."
+
+Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to the
+African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola's ruin.
+
+The señor, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but now his heart
+conceived and brought forth its first-born fear, sired by
+superstition--the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes said that
+Bras-Coupé had cursed the land. Morning after morning the master looked
+out with apprehension toward the fields, until one night the worm came
+upon the indigo, and between sunset and sunrise every green leaf had
+been eaten up and there was nothing left for either insect or
+apprehension to feed upon.
+
+And then he said--and the echo came back from the Cannes Brulées--that
+the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes,
+and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the
+hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown
+before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared--but to whom
+strength did not return--wandered about the place like scarecrows,
+looking for shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration,
+"_No' ouanga_ (we are bewitched), _Bras-Coupé fé moi des grigis_ (the
+voudou's spells are on me)." The ripple of song was hushed and the
+flowers fell upon the floor.
+
+"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his
+kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice--'Fight the
+devil with fire.'"
+
+No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.
+
+But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?
+
+No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupé, why, let him
+go. The overseer tried the hounds once more and came home with the best
+one across his saddle-bow, an arrow run half through its side.
+
+Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and nocturnal
+charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the master heard the
+wild monotone of their infernal worship, he stopped it with a word.
+
+Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection of hope
+and courage. It may have been--it certainly was, in part--because young
+Honoré Grandissime had returned. He was like the sun's warmth wherever
+he went; and the other Honoré was like his shadow. The fairer one
+quickly saw the meaning of these things, hastened to cheer the young don
+with hopes of a better future, and to effect, if he could, the
+restoration of Bras-Coupé to his master's favor. But this latter effort
+was an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the
+same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.
+
+His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her. Honoré would
+gladly have solved one or two riddles by effecting their honorable union
+in marriage. The previous ceremony on the Grandissime back piazza need
+be no impediment; all slave-owners understood those things. Following
+Honoré's advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his
+paternal portion, sent to Cannes Brulées a written offer, to buy Palmyre
+at any price that her master might name, stating his intention to free
+her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to
+settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an
+opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung
+over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He
+referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up
+to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the planter of the
+Cannes Brulées.
+
+But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.
+
+"She is already married," said he to M. Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c. "She
+is the lawful wife of Bras-Coupé; and what God has joined together let
+no man put asunder. You know it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to
+make a show of your wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of
+equality. I overlook the impertinence for the sake of the man whose
+white blood you carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian
+airs and self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will
+slap it."
+
+The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give him the
+opportunity, and he did it--at that quadroon ball to which Dr. Keene
+alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.
+
+But Don José, we say, plucked up new spirit..
+
+"Last year's disasters were but fortune's freaks," he said. "See,
+others' crops have failed all about us."
+
+The overseer shook his head.
+
+"_C'est ce maudit cocodri' là bas_ (It is that accursed alligator,
+Bras-Coupé, down yonder in the swamp)."
+
+And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief. He and
+his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned, summer
+passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no harvest smiled.
+"Alas!" cried the planters, "we are all poor men!" The worst among the
+worst were the fields of Bras-Coupé's master--parched and shrivelled.
+"He does not understand planting," said his neighbors; "neither does his
+overseer. Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued."
+
+One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.
+
+The third noon after--the sad wife sitting by the bedside--suddenly,
+right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood
+the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupé. He did not fall down as
+the mistress's eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered. The master
+was lying with his eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three
+days' work.
+
+"_Mioko-Koanga oulé so' femme_ (Bras-Coupé wants his wife)."
+
+The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.
+
+"_Bras-Coupé oulé so' femme_!" repeated the black.
+
+"Seize him!" cried the sick man, trying to rise.
+
+But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened faces, none
+dared molest the giant. The master turned his entreating eyes upon his
+wife, but she seemed stunned, and only covered her face with her hands
+and sat as if paralyzed by a foreknowledge of what was coming.
+
+Bras-Coupé lifted his great black palm and commenced:
+
+"_Mo cé voudrai que la maison ci là, et tout ça qui pas femme' ici,
+s'raient encore maudits_! (May this house, and all in it who are not
+women, be accursed)."
+
+The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless wrath.
+
+The African pointed his finger through the open window.
+
+"May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that overrun
+it."
+
+The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly rushed from
+the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment appeared Palmyre.
+
+"Speak to him," faintly cried the panting invalid.
+
+She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an easy
+motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog, he caught
+her by the arm.
+
+"_Bras-Coupé oulé so' femme_," he said, and just then Palmyre would have
+gone with him to the equator.
+
+"You shall not have her!" gasped the master.
+
+The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife at
+arm's length, resumed his malediction:
+
+"May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor and the
+wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their cover."
+
+With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow and
+extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his brain reeled,
+his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre and her mistress were
+bending over him, the overseer stood awkwardly by, and Bras-Coupé
+was gone.
+
+The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou found
+fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered
+through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones
+and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and
+throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room--rag-weed,
+smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed--until the burning skies of
+midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank
+and dingy flowers.
+
+"Why in the name of--St. Francis," asked the priest of the overseer,
+"didn't the señora use her power over the black scoundrel when he stood
+and cursed, that day?"
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, father," said the overseer, in a discreet
+whisper, "I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coupé had half a right
+to do it."
+
+"Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honoré--looks at both sides of a
+question--a miserable practice; but why couldn't Palmyre use _her_ eyes?
+They would have stopped him."
+
+"Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best _monture_ (Plutonian medium)
+in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is afraid of her. Sir, I think
+sometimes Bras-Coupé is dead and his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She
+would rather add to his curse than take from it."
+
+"Ah!" said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, "castigation would help
+her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it would even make a
+Christian of the inexpugnable Bras-Coupé."
+
+But Bras-Coupé kept beyond the reach alike of the lash and of the Latin
+Bible.
+
+By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to the
+master's sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was
+attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms would
+not annihilate. It was that year of history when the despairing planters
+saw ruin hovering so close over them that they cried to heaven for
+succor. Providence raised up Étienne de Boré. "And if Étienne is
+successful," cried the news-bearer, "and gets the juice of the
+sugar-cane to crystallize, so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet
+save our lands and homes. Oh, Señor, it will make you strong again to
+see these fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses
+cutting it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals,
+counting the canes they cut," and the bearer of good tidings sang them
+for very joy:
+
+[Illustration: music]
+
+     An-o-qué, An-o-bia, Bia-tail-la, Qué-re-qué, Nal-le-oua,
+     Au-mon-dé, Au-tap-o-té, Au-pé-to-té, Au-qué-ré-qué, Bo.
+
+"And Honoré Grandissime is going to introduce it on his lands," said Don
+José.
+
+"That is true," said Agricola Fusilier, coming in. Honoré, the
+indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle and his brother-in-law
+for the moment not only to speaking, but to friendly, terms.
+
+The señor smiled.
+
+"I have some good tidings, too," he said; "my beloved lady has borne me
+a son."
+
+"Another scion of the house of Grand--I mean Martinez!" exclaimed
+Agricola. "And now, Don José, let me say that _I_ have an item of rare
+intelligence!"
+
+The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes with a
+sudden, savage light in them.
+
+"No," said Agricola, "he is not exactly taken yet, but they are on his
+track."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played
+a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to
+end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of
+tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew
+the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo
+Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes. On a
+grassy plain under the ramparts, the performers of these hideous
+discords sat upon the ground facing each other, and in their midst the
+dancers danced. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their
+bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions,
+while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the
+weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed
+in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time
+with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that
+wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the
+unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their
+ejaculatory burdens of "_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_" and "_Aie Calinda!
+Dancé Calinda!_" The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation
+or diminution of the dancers' extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and
+supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers
+and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going,
+gathered all his force at the cry of "_Dancé zisqu'a mort!_" rallied to
+a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at
+the mouth.
+
+The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged
+out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had
+risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of
+black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of "Indienne"--the
+stuff used for slave women's best dresses--jingling with bells, his feet
+in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace
+of alligator's teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined
+about his neck.
+
+It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent
+there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from
+a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside,
+faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with
+which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally
+leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head,
+the multitude howled with rapture.
+
+Ill-starred Bras-Coupé. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible
+condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as
+"drunk again."
+
+By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some
+design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the
+woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had
+interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed
+upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver. Five minutes
+later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a
+quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as
+the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his
+last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt
+tree, face upward upon the turf.
+
+"The runaway slave," said the old French code, continued in force by the
+Spaniards, "the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month
+from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall
+have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on
+the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in
+during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be
+marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third
+offence he shall die." Bras-Coupé had run away only twice. "But," said
+Agricola, "these 'bossals' must be taught their place. Besides, there is
+Article 27 of the same code: 'The slave who, having struck his master,
+shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment'--a very
+necessary law!" He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a
+glance which he never forgot.
+
+The Spaniard showed himself very merciful--for a Spaniard; he spared the
+captive's life. He might have been more merciful still; but Honoré
+Grandissime said some indignant things in the African's favor, and as
+much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he
+would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce
+with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the señora and the hot,
+dry eyes of her maid. Because of these he overlooked the offence against
+his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupé to the law to suffer
+only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by
+attempting to be a free man.
+
+We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupé.
+But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death
+would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us
+not attempt to say.
+
+In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now crumbling away,
+stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and grated cells, its iron
+cages and its whips; and there, soon enough, they strapped Bras-Coupé
+face downward and laid on the lash. And yet not a sound came from the
+mutilated but unconquered African to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.
+
+("And you suffered this thing to take place?" asked Joseph Frowenfeld of
+Honoré Grandissime.
+
+"My-de'-seh!" exclaimed the Creole, "they lied to me--said they would
+not harm him!")
+
+He was brought at sunrise to the plantation. The air was sweet with the
+smell of the weed-grown fields. The long-horned oxen that drew him and
+the naked boy that drove the team stopped before his cabin.
+
+"You cannot put that creature in there," said the thoughtful overseer.
+"He would suffocate under a roof--he has been too long out-of-doors for
+that. Put him on my cottage porch." There, at last, Palmyre burst into
+tears and sank down, while before her, on a soft bed of dry grass,
+rested the helpless form of the captive giant, a cloth thrown over his
+galled back, his ears shorn from his head, and the tendons behind his
+knees severed. His eyes were dry, but there was in them that unspeakable
+despair that fills the eye of the charger when, fallen in battle, he
+gazes with sidewise-bended neck on the ruin wrought upon him. His eye
+turned sometimes slowly to his wife. He need not demand her now--she was
+always by him.
+
+There was much talk over him--much idle talk. He merely lay still under
+it with a fixed frown; but once some incautious tongue dropped the name
+of Agricola. The black man's eyes came so quickly round to Palmyre that
+she thought he would speak; but no; his words were all in his eyes. She
+answered their gleam with a fierce affirmative glance, whereupon he
+slowly bent his head and spat upon the floor.
+
+There was yet one more trial of his wild nature. The mandate came from
+his master's sick-bed that he must lift the curse.
+
+Bras-Coupé merely smiled. God keep thy enemy from such a smile!
+
+The overseer, with a policy less Spanish than his master's, endeavored
+to use persuasion. But the fallen prince would not so much as turn one
+glance from his parted hamstrings. Palmyre was then besought to
+intercede. She made one poor attempt, but her husband was nearer doing
+her an unkindness than ever he had been before; he made a slow sign for
+silence--with his fist; and every mouth was stopped.
+
+At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from the
+mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and
+sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much such
+a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither burning
+brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.
+
+"Bras-Coupé," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in his mangled
+ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried. As he was dying,
+Bras-Coupé, he asked that you would forgive him."
+
+The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken since
+the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear
+eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a
+citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an
+expiring beacon, went out.
+
+"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here?" whispered
+the overseer to Palmyre. "Let her come. Tell her not to fear, but to
+bring the babe--in her own arms, tell her--quickly!"
+
+The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed of
+sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm.
+Bras-Coupé turned his gaze upon it; it smiled, its mother's smile, and
+put its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of
+Bras-Coupé's life, the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his
+eyes and rolled down his cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own
+tenderly upon the babe's forehead, then removing it, waved it abroad,
+inaudibly moved his lips, dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The
+curse was lifted.
+
+"_Le pauv' dgiab'_!" said the overseer, wiping his eyes and looking
+fieldward. "Palmyre, you must get the priest."
+
+The priest came, in the identical gown in which he had appeared the
+night of the two weddings. To the good father's many tender questions
+Bras-Coupé turned a failing eye that gave no answers; until, at length:
+
+"Do you know where you are going?" asked the holy man.
+
+"Yes," answered his eyes, brightening.
+
+"Where?"
+
+He did not reply; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed looking far
+away.
+
+So the question was repeated.
+
+"Do you know where you are going?"
+
+And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.
+
+"Where?"
+
+The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe, and
+Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an eager ear
+to catch the answer.
+
+"To--" the voice failed a moment; the departing hero essayed again;
+again it failed; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and with an
+ecstatic, upward smile, whispered, "To--Africa"--and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+PARALYSIS
+
+
+As we have said, the story of Bras-Coupé was told that day three times:
+to the Grandissime beauties once, to Frowenfeld twice. The fair
+Grandissimes all agreed, at the close; that it was pitiful. Specially,
+that it was a great pity to have hamstrung Bras-Coupé, a man who even in
+his cursing had made an exception in favor of the ladies. True, they
+could suggest no alternative; it was undeniable that he had deserved his
+fate; still, it seemed a pity. They dispersed, retired and went to sleep
+confirmed in this sentiment. In Frowenfeld the story stirred
+deeper feelings.
+
+On this same day, while it was still early morning, Honoré Grandissime,
+f.m.c., with more than even his wonted slowness of step and propriety of
+rich attire, had reappeared in the shop of the rue Royale. He did not
+need to say he desired another private interview. Frowenfeld ushered him
+silently and at once into his rear room, offered him a chair (which he
+accepted), and sat down before him.
+
+In his labored way the quadroon stated his knowledge that Frowenfeld had
+been three times to the dwelling of Palmyre Philosophe. Why, he further
+intimated, he knew not, nor would he ask; but _he_--when _he_ had
+applied for admission--had been refused. He had laid open his heart to
+the apothecary's eyes--"It may have been unwisely--"
+
+Frowenfeld interrupted him; Palmyre had been ill for several days;
+Doctor Keene--who, Mr. Grandissime probably knew, was her physician--
+
+The landlord bowed, and Frowenfeld went on to explain that Doctor Keene,
+while attending her, had also fallen sick and had asked him to take the
+care of this one case until he could himself resume it. So there, in a
+word, was the reason why Joseph had, and others had not, been admitted
+to her presence.
+
+As obviously to the apothecary's eyes as anything intangible could be, a
+load of suffering was lifted from the quadroon's mind, as this
+explanation was concluded. Yet he only sat in meditation before his
+tenant, who regarded him long and sadly. Then, seized with one of his
+energetic impulses, he suddenly said:
+
+"Mr. Grandissime, you are a man of intelligence, accomplishments,
+leisure and wealth; why" (clenchings his fists and frowning),
+"why do you not give yourself--your
+time--wealth--attainments--energies--everything--to the cause of the
+downtrodden race with which this community's scorn unjustly compels you
+to rank yourself?"
+
+The quadroon did not meet Frowenfeld's kindled eyes for a moment, and
+when he did, it was slowly and dejectedly.
+
+"He canno' be," he said, and then, seeing his words were not understood,
+he added: "He 'ave no Cause. Dad peop' 'ave no Cause." He went on from
+this with many pauses and gropings after words and idiom, to tell, with
+a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld almost unmanly, the reasons
+why the people, a little of whose blood had been enough to blast his
+life, would never be free by the force of their own arm. Reduced to the
+meanings which he vainly tried to convey in words, his statement was
+this: that that people was not a people. Their cause--was in Africa.
+They upheld it there--they lost it there--and to those that are here the
+struggle was over; they were, one and all, prisoners of war.
+
+"You speak of them in the third person," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"Ah ham nod a slev."
+
+"Are you certain of that?" asked the tenant.
+
+His landlord looked at him.
+
+"It seems to me," said Frowenfeld, "that you--your class--the free
+quadroons--are the saddest slaves of all. Your men, for a little
+property, and your women, for a little amorous attention, let themselves
+be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a paltry bait of sham
+freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous contumely which flattens
+them into the dirt like grass under a slab. I would rather be a runaway
+in the swamps than content myself with such a freedom. As your class
+stands before the world to-day--free in form but slaves in spirit--you
+are--I do not know but I was almost ready to say--a warning to
+philanthropists!"
+
+The free man of color slowly arose.
+
+"I trust you know," said Frowenfeld, "that I say nothing in offence."
+
+"Havery word is tru'," replied the sad man.
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," said the apothecary, as his landlord sank back again
+into his seat, "I know you are a broken-hearted man."
+
+The quadroon laid his fist upon his heart and looked up.
+
+"And being broken-hearted, you are thus specially fitted for a work of
+patient and sustained self-sacrifice. You have only those things to lose
+which grief has taught you to despise--ease, money, display. Give
+yourself to your people--to those, I mean, who groan, or should groan,
+under the degraded lot which is theirs and yours in common."
+
+The quadroon shook his head, and after a moment's silence, answered:
+
+"Ah cannod be one Toussaint l'Ouverture. Ah cannod trah to be. Hiv I
+trah, I h-only s'all soogceed to be one Bras-Coupé."
+
+"You entirely misunderstand me," said Frowenfeld in quick response. "I
+have no stronger disbelief than my disbelief in insurrection. I believe
+that to every desirable end there are two roads, the way of strife and
+the way of peace. I can imagine a man in your place, going about among
+his people, stirring up their minds to a noble discontent, laying out
+his means, sparingly here and bountifully there, as in each case might
+seem wisest, for their enlightenment, their moral elevation, their
+training in skilled work; going, too, among the men of the prouder
+caste, among such as have a spirit of fairness, and seeking to prevail
+with them for a public recognition of the rights of all; using all his
+cunning to show them the double damage of all oppression, both great and
+petty--"
+
+The quadroon motioned "enough." There was a heat in his eyes which
+Frowenfeld had never seen before.
+
+"M'sieu'," he said, "waid till Agricola Fusilier ees keel."
+
+"Do you mean 'dies'?"
+
+"No," insisted the quadroon; "listen." And with slow, painstaking phrase
+this man of strong feeling and feeble will (the trait of his caste)
+told--as Frowenfeld felt he would do the moment he said "listen"--such
+part of the story of Bras-Coupé as showed how he came by his deadly
+hatred of Agricola.
+
+"Tale me," said the landlord, as he concluded the recital, "w'y deen
+Bras Coupé mague dad curze on Agricola Fusilier? Becoze Agricola ees one
+sorcier! Elz 'e bin dade sinz long tamm."
+
+The speaker's gestures seemed to imply that his own hand, if need be,
+would have brought the event to pass.
+
+As he rose to say adieu, Frowenfeld, without previous intention, laid a
+hand upon his visitor's arm.
+
+"Is there no one who can make peace between you?"
+
+The landlord shook his head.
+
+"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."
+
+"I mean," insisted Frowenfeld, "Is there no man who can stand between
+you and those who wrong you, and effect a peaceful reparation?"
+
+The landlord slowly moved away, neither he nor his tenant speaking, but
+each knowing that the one man in the minds of both, as a possible
+peacemaker, was Honoré Grandissime.
+
+"Should the opportunity offer," continued Joseph, "may I speak a word
+for you myself?"
+
+The quadroon paused a moment, smiled politely though bitterly, and
+departed repeating again:
+
+"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."
+
+"Palsied," murmured Frowenfeld, looking after him, regretfully,--"like
+all of them."
+
+Frowenfeld's thoughts were still on the same theme when, the day having
+passed, the hour was approaching wherein Innerarity was exhorted to tell
+his good-night story in the merry circle at the distant Grandissime
+mansion. As the apothecary was closing his last door for the night, the
+fairer Honoré called him out into the moonlight.
+
+"Withered," the student was saying audibly to himself, "not in the
+shadow of the Ethiopian, but in the glare of the white man."
+
+"Who is withered?" pleasantly demanded Honoré. The apothecary started
+slightly.
+
+"Did I speak? How do you do, sir? I meant the free quadroons."
+
+"Including the gentleman from whom you rent your store?"
+
+"Yes, him especially; he told me this morning the story of Bras-Coupé."
+
+M. Grandissime laughed. Joseph did not see why, nor did the laugh sound
+entirely genuine.
+
+"Do not open the door, Mr Frowenfeld," said the Creole, "Get your
+greatcoat and cane and come take a walk with me; I will tell you the
+same story."
+
+It was two hours before they approached this door again on their return.
+Just before they reached it, Honoré stopped under the huge street-lamp,
+whose light had gone out, where a large stone lay before him on the
+ground in the narrow, moonlit street. There was a tall, unfinished
+building at his back.
+
+"Mr Frowenfeld,"--he struck the stone with his cane,--"this stone is
+Bras-Coupé--we cast it aside because it turns the edge of our tools."
+
+He laughed. He had laughed to-night more than was comfortable to a man
+of Frowenfeld's quiet mind.
+
+As the apothecary thrust his shopkey into the lock and so paused to hear
+his companion, who had begun again to speak, he wondered what it could
+be--for M. Grandissime had not disclosed it--that induced such a man as
+he to roam aimlessly, as it seemed, in deserted streets at such chill
+and dangerous hours. "What does he want with me?" The thought was so
+natural that it was no miracle the Creole read it.
+
+"Well," said he, smiling and taking an attitude, "you are a great man
+for causes, Mr. Frowenfeld; but me, I am for results, ha, ha! You may
+ponder the philosophy of Bras-Coupé in your study, but _I_ have got to
+get rid of his results, me. You know them."
+
+"You tell me it revived a war where you had made a peace," said
+Frowenfeld.
+
+"Yes--yes--that is his results; but good night, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+"Good night, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+ANOTHER WOUND IN A NEW PLACE
+
+
+Each day found Doctor Keene's strength increasing, and on the morning
+following the incidents last recorded he was imprudently projecting an
+outdoor promenade. An announcement from Honoré Grandissime, who had
+paid an early call, had, to that gentleman's no small surprise, produced
+a sudden and violent effect on the little man's temper.
+
+He was sitting alone by his window, looking out upon the levee, when the
+apothecary entered the apartment.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he instantly began, with evident displeasure most
+unaccountable to Joseph, "I hear you have been visiting the Nancanous."
+
+"Yes, I have been there."
+
+"Well, you had no business to go!"
+
+Doctor Keene smote the arm of his chair with his fist.
+
+Frowenfeld reddened with indignation, but suppressed his retort. He
+stood still in the middle of the floor, and Doctor Keene looked out of
+the window.
+
+"Doctor Keene," said the visitor, when his attitude was no longer
+tolerable, "have you anything more to say to me before I leave you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"It is necessary for me, then, to say that in fulfilment of my promise,
+I am going from here to the house of Palmyre, and that she will need no
+further attention after to-day. As to your present manner toward me, I
+shall endeavor to suspend judgment until I have some knowledge of
+its cause."
+
+The doctor made no reply, but went on looking out of the window, and
+Frowenfeld turned and left him.
+
+As he arrived in the philosophe's sick-chamber--where he found her
+sitting in a chair set well back from a small fire--she half-whispered
+"Miché" with a fine, greeting smile, as if to a brother after a week's
+absence. To a person forced to lie abed, shut away from occupation and
+events, a day is ten, three are a month: not merely in the wear and tear
+upon the patience, but also in the amount of thinking and recollecting
+done. It was to be expected, then, that on this, the apothecary's fourth
+visit, Palmyre would have learned to take pleasure in his coming.
+
+But the smile was followed by a faint, momentary frown, as if Frowenfeld
+had hardly returned it in kind. Likely enough, he had not. He was not
+distinctively a man of smiles; and as he engaged in his appointed task
+she presently thought of this.
+
+"This wound is doing so well," said Joseph, still engaged with the
+bandages, "that I shall not need to come again." He was not looking at
+her as he spoke, but he felt her give a sudden start. "What is this?" he
+thought, but presently said very quietly: "With the assistance of your
+slave woman, you can now attend to it yourself."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+When, with a bow, he would have bade her good morning, she held out her
+hand for his. After a barely perceptible hesitation, he gave it,
+whereupon she held it fast, in a way to indicate that there was
+something to be said which he must stay and hear.
+
+She looked up into his face. She may have been merely framing in her
+mind the word or two of English she was about to utter; but an
+excitement shone through her eyes and reddened her lips, and something
+sent out from her countenance a look of wild distress.
+
+"You goin' tell 'im?" she asked.
+
+"Who? Agricola?"
+
+"_Non_!"
+
+He spoke the next name more softly.
+
+"Honoré?"
+
+Her eyes looked deeply into his for a moment, then dropped, and she made
+a sign of assent.
+
+He was about to say that Honoré knew already, but saw no necessity for
+doing so, and changed his answer.
+
+"I will never tell any one."
+
+"You know?" she asked, lifting her eyes for an instant. She meant to ask
+if he knew the motive that had prompted her murderous intent.
+
+"I know your whole sad history."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, fixedly; then, still holding his hand
+with one of hers, she threw the other to her face and turned away her
+head. He thought she moaned.
+
+Thus she remained for a few moments, then suddenly she turned, clasped
+both hands about his, her face flamed up and she opened her lips to
+speak, but speech failed. An expression of pain and supplication came
+upon her countenance, and the cry burst from her:
+
+"Meg 'im to love me!"
+
+He tried to withdraw his hand, but she held it fast, and, looking up
+imploringly with her wide, electric eyes, cried:
+
+"_Vous pouvez le faire, vous pouvez le faire_ (You can do it, you can do
+it); _vous êtes sorcier, mo conné bien vous êtes sorcier_ (you are a
+sorcerer, I know)."
+
+However harmless or healthful Joseph's touch might be to the philosophe,
+he felt now that hers, to him, was poisonous. He dared encounter her
+eyes, her touch, her voice, no longer. The better man in him was
+suffocating. He scarce had power left to liberate his right hand with
+his left, to seize his hat and go.
+
+Instantly she rose from her chair, threw herself on her knees in his
+path, and found command of his language sufficient to cry as she lifted
+her arms, bared of their drapery:
+
+"Oh, my God! don' rif-used me--don' rif-used me!"
+
+There was no time to know whether Frowenfeld wavered or not. The thought
+flashed into his mind that in all probability all the care and skill he
+had spent upon the wound was being brought to naught in this moment of
+wild posturing and excitement; but before it could have effect upon his
+movements, a stunning blow fell upon the back of his head, and Palmyre's
+slave woman, the Congo dwarf, under the impression that it was the most
+timely of strokes, stood brandishing a billet of pine and preparing to
+repeat the blow.
+
+He hurled her, snarling and gnashing like an ape, against the farther
+wall, cast the bar from the street door and plunged out, hatless,
+bleeding and stunned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+INTERRUPTED PRELIMINARIES
+
+
+About the same time of day, three gentlemen (we use the term gentlemen
+in its petrified state) were walking down the rue Royale from the
+direction of the Faubourg Ste. Marie.
+
+They were coming down toward Palmyre's corner. The middle one, tall and
+shapely, might have been mistaken at first glance for Honoré
+Grandissime, but was taller and broader, and wore a cocked hat, which
+Honoré did not. It was Valentine. The short, black-bearded man in
+buckskin breeches on his right was Jean-Baptiste Grandissime, and the
+slight one on the left, who, with the prettiest and most graceful
+gestures and balancings, was leading the conversation, was Hippolyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin, a cousin and counterpart of that sturdy-hearted
+challenger of Agricola, Sylvestre.
+
+"But after all," he was saying in Louisiana French, "there is no spot
+comparable, for comfortable seclusion, to the old orange grove under
+the levee on the Point; twenty minutes in a skiff, five minutes for
+preliminaries--you would not want more, the ground has been measured off
+five hundred times--'are you ready?'--"
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Valentine, tossing his head, "the Yankees would be down
+on us before you could count one."
+
+"Well, then, behind the Jesuits' warehouses, if you insist. I don't
+care. Perdition take such a government! I am almost sorry I went to the
+governor's reception."
+
+"It was quiet, I hear; a sort of quiet ball, all promenading and no
+contra-dances. One quadroon ball is worth five of such."
+
+This was the opinion of Jean-Baptiste.
+
+"No, it was fine, anyhow. There was a contra-dance. The music
+was--tárata joonc, tará, tará--tárata joonc, tarárata joonc, tará--oh!
+it was the finest thing--and composed here. They compose as fine things
+here as they do anywhere in the--look there! That man came out of
+Palmyre's house; see how he staggered just then!"
+
+"Drunk," said Jean-Baptiste.
+
+"No, he seems to be hurt. He has been struck on the head. Oho, I tell
+you, gentlemen, that same Palmyre is a wonderful animal! Do you see? She
+not only defends herself and ejects the wretch, but she puts her mark
+upon him; she identifies him, ha, ha, ha! Look at the high art of the
+thing; she keeps his hat as a small souvenir and gives him a receipt for
+it on the back of his head. Ah! but hasn't she taught him a lesson?
+Why, gentlemen,--it is--if it isn't that sorcerer of an apothecary!"
+
+"What?" exclaimed the other two; "well, well, but this is too good!
+Caught at last, ha, ha, ha, the saintly villain! Ah, ha, ha! Will not
+Honoré be proud of him now? _Ah! voilà un joli Joseph!_ What did I tell
+you? Didn't I _always_ tell you so?"
+
+"But the beauty of it is, he is caught so cleverly. No escape--no
+possible explanation. There he is, gentlemen, as plain as a rat in a
+barrel, and with as plain a case. Ha, ha, ha! Isn't it just glorious?"
+
+And all three laughed in such an ecstasy of glee that Frowenfeld looked
+back, saw them, and knew forthwith that his good name was gone. The
+three gentlemen, with tears of merriment still in their eyes, reached a
+corner and disappeared.
+
+"Mister," said a child, trotting along under Frowenfeld's elbow,--the
+odd English of the New Orleans street-urchin was at that day just
+beginning to be heard--"Mister, dey got some blood on de back of
+you' hade!"
+
+But Frowenfeld hurried on groaning with mental anguish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL
+
+
+It was the year 1804. The world was trembling under the tread of the
+dread Corsican. It was but now that he had tossed away the whole Valley
+of the Mississippi, dropping it overboard as a little sand from a
+balloon, and Christendom in a pale agony of suspense was watching the
+turn of his eye; yet when a gibbering black fool here on the edge of
+civilization merely swings a pine-knot, the swinging of that pine-knot
+becomes to Joseph Frowenfeld, student of man, a matter of greater moment
+than the destination of the Boulogne Flotilla. For it now became for the
+moment the foremost necessity of his life to show, to that minute
+fraction of the earth's population which our terror misnames "the
+world," that a man may leap forth hatless and bleeding from the house of
+a New Orleans quadroon into the open street and yet be pure white
+within. Would it answer to tell the truth? Parts of that truth he was
+pledged not to tell; and even if he could tell it all it was
+incredible--bore all the features of a flimsy lie.
+
+"Mister," repeated the same child who had spoken before, reinforced by
+another under the other elbow, "dey got some _blood_ on de back of
+you' hade."
+
+And the other added the suggestion:
+
+"Dey got one drug-sto', yondah."
+
+Frowenfeld groaned again. The knock had been a hard one, the ground and
+sky went round not a little, but he retained withal a white-hot process
+of thought that kept before him his hopeless inability to explain. He
+was coffined alive. The world (so-called) would bury him in utter
+loathing, and write on his headstone the one word--hypocrite. And he
+should lie there and helplessly contemplate Honoré pushing forward those
+purposes which he had begun to hope he was to have had the honor of
+furthering. But instead of so doing he would now be the by-word of
+the street.
+
+"Mister," interposed the child once more, spokesman this time for a
+dozen blacks and whites of all sizes trailing along before and behind,
+"_dey got some blood_ on de back of you' _hade_."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same morning Clotilde had given a music-scholar her appointed
+lesson, and at its conclusion had borrowed of her patroness (how
+pleasant it must have been to have such things to lend!) a little yellow
+maid, in order that, with more propriety, she might make a business
+call. It was that matter of the rent--one that had of late occasioned
+her great secret distress. "It is plain," she had begun to say to
+herself, unable to comprehend Aurora's peculiar trust in Providence,
+"that if the money is to be got I must get it." A possibility had
+flashed upon her mind; she had nurtured it into a project, had submitted
+it to her father-confessor in the cathedral, and received his
+unqualified approval of it, and was ready this morning to put it into
+execution. A great merit of the plan was its simplicity. It was merely
+to find for her heaviest bracelet a purchaser in time, and a price
+sufficient, to pay to-morrow's "maturities." See there again!--to her,
+her little secret was of greater import than the collision of almost any
+pine-knot with almost any head.
+
+It must not be accepted as evidence either of her unwillingness to sell
+or of the amount of gold in the bracelet, that it took the total of
+Clotilde's moral and physical strength to carry it to the shop where she
+hoped--against hope--to dispose of it.
+
+'Sieur Frowenfeld, M. Innerarity said, was out, but would certainly be
+in in a few minutes, and she was persuaded to take a chair against the
+half-hidden door at the bottom of the shop with the little borrowed maid
+crouched at her feet.
+
+She had twice or thrice felt a regret that she had undertaken to wait,
+and was about to rise and go, when suddenly she saw before her Joseph
+Frowenfeld, wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow and smeared with
+blood from his forehead down. She rose quickly and silently, turned sick
+and blind, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair for support.
+Frowenfeld stood an instant before her, groaned, and disappeared through
+the door. The little maid, retreating backward against her from the
+direction of the street-door, drew to her attention a crowd of
+sight-seers which had rushed up to the doors and against which Raoul was
+hurriedly closing the shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CLOTILDE AS A SURGEON
+
+
+Was it worse to stay, or to fly? The decision must be instantaneous. But
+Raoul made it easy by crying in their common tongue, as he slammed a
+massive shutter and shot its bolt:
+
+"Go to him! he is down--I heard him fall. Go to him!"
+
+At this rallying cry she seized her shield--that is to say, the little
+yellow attendant--and hurried into the room. Joseph lay just beyond the
+middle of the apartment, face downward. She found water and a basin, wet
+her own handkerchief, and dropped to her knees beside his head; but the
+moment he felt the small feminine hands he stood up. She took him by
+the arm.
+
+"_Asseyez-vous, Monsieu'_--pliz to give you'sev de pens to seet down,
+'Sieu' Frowenfel'."
+
+She spoke with a nervous tenderness in contrast with her alarmed and
+entreating expression of face, and gently pushed him into a chair.
+
+The child ran behind the bed and burst into frightened sobs, but ceased
+when Clotilde turned for an instant and glared at her.
+
+"Mague yo' 'ead back," said Clotilde, and with tremulous tenderness she
+softly pressed back his brow and began wiping off the blood. "W'ere you
+is 'urted?"
+
+But while she was asking her question she had found the gash and was
+growing alarmed at its ugliness, when Raoul, having made everything
+fast, came in with:
+
+"Wat's de mattah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'? w'at's de mattah wid you? Oo done
+dat, 'Sieur Frowen fel'?"
+
+Joseph lifted his head and drew away from it the small hand and wet
+handkerchief, and without letting go the hand, looked again into
+Clotilde's eyes, and said:
+
+"Go home; oh, go home!"
+
+"Oh! no," protested Raoul, whereupon Clotilde turned upon him with a
+perfectly amiable, nurse's grimace for silence.
+
+"I goin' rad now," she said.
+
+Raoul's silence was only momentary.
+
+"Were you lef you' hat, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" he asked, and stole an
+artist's glance at Clotilde, while Joseph straightened up, and nerving
+himself to a tolerable calmness of speech, said:
+
+"I have been struck with a stick of wood by a half-witted person under a
+misunderstanding of my intentions; but the circumstances are such as to
+blacken my character hopelessly; but I am innocent!" he cried,
+stretching forward both arms and quite losing his momentary
+self-control.
+
+"'Sieu' Frowenfel'!" cried Clotilde, tears leaping to her eyes, "I am
+shoe of it!"
+
+"I believe you! I believe you, 'Sieur Frowenfel'!" exclaimed Raoul with
+sincerity.
+
+"You will not believe me," said Joseph. "You will not; it will be
+impossible."
+
+"_Mais_" cried Clotilde, "id shall nod be impossib'!"
+
+But the apothecary shook his head.
+
+"All I can be suspected of will seem probable; the truth only is
+incredible."
+
+His head began to sink and a pallor to overspread his face.
+
+"_Allez, Monsieur, allez_," cried Clotilde to Raoul, a picture of
+beautiful terror which he tried afterward to paint from memory,
+"_appelez_ Doctah Kin!"
+
+Raoul made a dash for his hat, and the next moment she heard, with
+unpleasant distinctness, his impetuous hand slam the shop door and
+lock her in.
+
+"_Baille ma do l'eau_" she called to the little mulattress, who
+responded by searching wildly for a cup and presently bringing a
+measuring-glass full of water.
+
+Clotilde gave it to the wounded man, and he rose at once and stood on
+his feet.
+
+"Raoul."
+
+"'E gone at Doctah Kin."
+
+"I do not need Doctor Keene; I am not badly hurt. Raoul should not have
+left you here in this manner. You must not stay."
+
+"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel', I am afred to paz dad gangue!"
+
+A new distress seized Joseph in view of this additional complication.
+But, unmindful of this suggestion, the fair Creole suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"'Sieu' Frowenfel', you har a hinnocen' man! Go, hopen yo' do's an' stan
+juz as you har ub biffo dad crowd and sesso! My God! 'Sieu' Frowenfel',
+iv you cannod stan' ub by you'sev--"
+
+She ceased suddenly with a wild look, as if another word would have
+broken the levees of her eyes, and in that instant Frowenfeld recovered
+the full stature of a man.
+
+"God bless you!" he cried. "I will do it!" He started, then turned again
+toward her, dumb for an instant, and said: "And God reward you! You
+believe in me, and you do not even know me."
+
+Her eyes became wilder still as she looked up into his face with the
+words:
+
+"_Mais_, I does know you--betteh'n you know annyt'in' boud it!" and
+turned away, blushing violently.
+
+Frowenfeld gave a start. She had given him too much light. He recognized
+her, and she knew it. For another instant he gazed at her averted face,
+and then with forced quietness said:
+
+"Please go into the shop."
+
+The whole time that had elapsed since the shutting of the doors had not
+exceeded five minutes; a sixth sufficed for Clotilde and her attendant
+to resume their original position in the nook by the private door and
+for Frowenfeld to wash his face and hands. Then the alert and numerous
+ears without heard a drawing of bolts at the door next to that which
+Raoul had issued, its leaves opened outward, and first the pale hands
+and then the white, weakened face and still bloody hair and apparel of
+the apothecary made their appearance. He opened a window and another
+door. The one locked by Raoul, when unbolted, yielded without a key, and
+the shop stood open.
+
+"My friends," said the trembling proprietor, "if any of you wishes to
+buy anything, I am ready to serve him. The rest will please move away."
+
+The invitation, though probably understood, was responded to by only a
+few at the banquette's edge, where a respectable face or two wore
+scrutinizing frowns. The remainder persisted in silently standing and
+gazing in at the bloody man.
+
+Frowenfeld bore the gaze. There was one element of emphatic satisfaction
+in it--it drew their observation from Clotilde at the other end of the
+shop. He stole a glance backward; she was not there. She had watched her
+chance, safely escaped through the side door, and was gone.
+
+Raoul returned.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', Doctor Keene is took worse ag'in. 'E is in bed; but
+'e say to tell you in dat lill troubl' of dis mawnin' it is himseff w'at
+is inti'lie wrong, an' 'e hass you poddon. 'E says sen' fo' Doctor
+Conrotte, but I din go fo' him; dat ole scoun'rel--he believe in puttin'
+de niggas fre'."
+
+Frowenfeld said he would not consult professional advisers; with a
+little assistance from Raoul, he could give the cut the slight attention
+it needed. He went back into his room, while Raoul turned back to the
+door and addressed the public.
+
+"Pray, Messieurs, come in and be seated." He spoke in the Creole French
+of the gutters. "Come in. M. Frowenfeld is dressing, and desires that
+you will have a little patience. Come in. Take chairs. You will not come
+in? No? Nor you, Monsieur? No? I will set some chairs outside, eh? No?"
+
+They moved by twos and threes away, and Raoul, retiring, gave his
+employer such momentary aid as was required. When Joseph, in changed
+dress, once more appeared, only a child or two lingered to see him, and
+he had nothing to do but sit down and, as far as he felt at liberty to
+do so, answer his assistant's questions.
+
+During the recital, Raoul was obliged to exercise the severest
+self-restraint to avoid laughing,--a feeling which was modified by the
+desire to assure his employer that he understood this sort of thing
+perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought no less of a man,
+_providing he was a gentleman_, because of an unlucky retributive knock
+on the head. But he feared laughter would overclimb speech; and, indeed,
+with all expression of sympathy stifled, he did not succeed so
+completely in hiding the conflicting emotion but that Joseph did once
+turn his pale, grave face surprisedly, hearing a snuffling sound,
+suddenly stifled in a drawer of corks. Said Raoul, with an unsteady
+utterance, as he slammed the drawer:
+
+"H-h-dat makes me dat I can't 'elp to laugh w'en I t'ink of dat fool
+yesse'dy w'at want to buy my pigshoe for honly one 'undred dolla'--ha,
+ha ha, ha!"
+
+He laughed almost indecorously.
+
+"Raoul," said Frowenfeld, rising and closing his eyes, "I am going back
+for my hat. It would make matters worse for that person to send it to
+me, and it would be something like a vindication for me to go back to
+the house and get it."
+
+Mr. Innerarity was about to make strenuous objection, when there came in
+one whom he recognized as an attaché of his cousin Honoré's
+counting-room, and handed the apothecary a note. It contained Honoré's
+request that if Frowenfeld was in his shop he would have the goodness to
+wait there until the writer could call and see him.
+
+"I will wait," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+"FO' WAD YOU CRYNE?"
+
+
+Clotilde, a step or two from home, dismissed her attendant, and as
+Aurora, with anxious haste, opened to her familiar knock, appeared
+before her pale and trembling.
+
+"_Ah, ma fille_--"
+
+The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint upon
+her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and there,
+while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to reverie
+before she was called upon to speak. Then Aurora first quietly took
+possession of her hands, and after another tender pause asked in
+English, which was equivalent to whispering:
+
+"Were you was, _chérie?_"
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"
+
+Aurora straightened up with angry astonishment and drew in her breath
+for an emphatic speech, but Clotilde, liberating her own hands, took
+Aurora's, and hurriedly said, turning still paler as she spoke:
+
+"'E godd his 'ead strigue! 'Tis all knog in be'ine! 'E come in
+blidding--"
+
+"In w'ere?" cried Aurora.
+
+"In 'is shob."
+
+"You was in dad shob of 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"I wend ad 'is shob to pay doze rend."
+
+"How--you wend ad 'is shob to pay--"
+
+Clotilde produced the bracelet. The two looked at each other in silence
+for a moment, while Aurora took in without further explanation
+Clotilde's project and its failure.
+
+"An' 'Sieur Frowenfel'--dey kill 'im? Ah! _Ma chère_, fo' wad you mague
+me to hass all dose question?"
+
+Clotilde gave a brief account of the matter, omitting only her
+conversation with Frowenfeld.
+
+"_Mais_, oo strigue 'im?" demanded Aurora, impatiently.
+
+"Addunno!" replied the other. "Bud I does know 'e is hinnocen'!"
+
+A small scouting-party of tears reappeared on the edge of her eyes.
+
+"Innocen' from wad?"
+
+Aurora betrayed a twinkle of amusement.
+
+"Hev'ryt'in', iv you pliz!" exclaimed Clotilde, with most uncalled-for
+warmth.
+
+"An' you crah bic-ause 'e is nod guiltie?"
+
+"Ah! foolish!"
+
+"Ah, non, my chile, I know fo' wad you cryne: 't is h-only de sighd of
+de blood."
+
+"Oh, sighd of blood!"
+
+Clotilde let a little nervous laugh escape through her dejection.
+
+"Well, then,"--Aurora's eyes twinkled like stars,--"id muz be bic-ause
+'Sieur Frowenfel' bump 'is 'ead--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"'Tis nod tru'!" cried Clotilde; but, instead of laughing, as Aurora had
+supposed she would, she sent a double flash of light from her eyes,
+crimsoned, and retorted, as the tears again sprang from their
+lurking-place, "You wand to mague ligue you don't kyah! But _I_ know! I
+know verrie well! You kyah fifty time' as mudge as me! I know you! I
+know you! I bin wadge you!"
+
+Aurora was quite dumb for a moment, and gazed at Clotilde, wondering
+what could have made her so unlike herself. Then she half rose up, and,
+as she reached forward an arm, and laid it tenderly about her daughter's
+neck, said:
+
+"Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me wad dad
+mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma _second word of honor_"--she
+rolled up her fist--"juz wad I thing about dad 'Sieur Frowenfel'!"
+
+"I don't kyah wad de whole worl' thing aboud 'im!"
+
+"_Mais_, anny'ow, tell me fo' wad you cryne!"
+
+Clotilde gazed aside for a moment and then confronted her questioner
+consentingly.
+
+"I tole 'im I knowed 'e was h-innocen'."
+
+"Eh, Men, dad was h-only de poli-i-idenez. Wad 'e said?"
+
+"E said I din knowed 'im 'tall."
+
+"An' you," exclaimed Aurora, "it is nod pozzyble dad you--"
+
+"I tole 'im I know 'im bette'n 'e know annyt'in' 'boud id!"
+
+The speaker dropped her face into her mother's lap.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Aurora, "an' wad of dad? I would say dad, me, fo'
+time' a day. I gi'e you my word 'e don godd dad sens' to know wad
+dad mean."
+
+"Ah! don godd sens'!" cried Clotilde, lifting her head up suddenly with
+a face of agony. "'E reg--'e reggo-ni-i-ize me!"
+
+Aurora caught her daughter's cheeks between her hands and laughed all
+over them.
+
+"_Mais_, don you see 'ow dad was luggy? Now, you know?--'e goin' fall
+in love wid you an' you goin' 'ave dad sadizfagzion to rif-use de
+biggis' hand in Noo-'leans. An' you will be h-even, ha, ha! Bud me--you
+wand to know wad I thing aboud 'im? I thing 'e is one--egcellen'
+drug-cl--ah, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde replied with a smile of grieved incredulity.
+
+"De bez in de ciddy!" insisted the other. She crossed the forefinger of
+one hand upon that of the other and kissed them, reversed the cross and
+kissed them again. "_Mais_, ad de sem tam," she added, giving her
+daughter time to smile, "I thing 'e is one _noble gen'leman_. Nod to
+sood me, of coze, _mais, çà fait rien_--daz nott'n; me, I am now a h'ole
+woman, you know, eh? Noboddie can' nevva sood me no mo', nod ivven dad
+Govenno' Cleb-orne."
+
+She tried to look old and jaded.
+
+"Ah, Govenno' Cleb-orne!" exclaimed Clotilde.
+
+"Yass!--Ah, you!--you thing iv a man is nod a Creole 'e bown to be no
+'coun'! I assu' you dey don' godd no boddy wad I fine a so nize
+gen'leman lag Govenno' Cleb-orne! Ah! Clotilde, you godd no lib'ral'ty!"
+
+The speaker rose, cast a discouraged parting look upon her narrow-minded
+companion and went to investigate the slumbrous silence of the kitchen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+AURORA'S LAST PICAYUNE
+
+
+Not often in Aurora's life had joy and trembling so been mingled in one
+cup as on this day. Clotilde wept; and certainly the mother's heart
+could but respond; yet Clotilde's tears filled her with a secret
+pleasure which fought its way up into the beams of her eyes and asserted
+itself in the frequency and heartiness of her laugh despite her sincere
+participation in her companion's distresses and a fearful looking
+forward to to-morrow.
+
+Why these flashes of gladness? If we do not know, it is because we have
+overlooked one of her sources of trouble. From the night of the _bal
+masqué_ she had--we dare say no more than that she had been haunted; she
+certainly would not at first have admitted even so much to herself. Yet
+the fact was not thereby altered, and first the fact and later the
+feeling had given her much distress of mind. Who he was whose image
+would not down, for a long time she did not know. This, alone, was
+torture; not merely because it was mystery, but because it helped to
+force upon her consciousness that her affections, spite of her, were
+ready and waiting for him and he did not come after them. That he loved
+her, she knew; she had achieved at the ball an overwhelming victory, to
+her certain knowledge, or, depend upon it, she never would have
+unmasked--never.
+
+But with this torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of loving, but
+the fear of her daughter. This is a world that allows nothing without
+its obverse and reverse. Strange differences are often seen between the
+two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world
+of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds
+herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom,
+and on the other, Stepfather.
+
+Then, all this torture to be hidden under smiles! Worse still, when by
+and by Messieurs Agoussou, Assonquer, Danny and others had been appealed
+to and a Providence boundless in tender compassion had answered in their
+stead, she and her lover had simultaneously discovered each other's
+identity only to find that he was a Montague to her Capulet. And the
+source of her agony must be hidden, and falsely attributed to the rent
+deficiency and their unprotected lives. Its true nature must be
+concealed even from Clotilde. What a secret--for what a spirit--to keep
+from what a companion!--a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might
+be, gall to Clotilde. She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all
+alone--alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the lions
+and tigers. She wished she had told the secret when it was small and had
+let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde's knowledge day by
+day. At first it had been but a garland, then it had become a chain, now
+it was a ball and chain; and it was oh! and oh! if Clotilde would only
+fall in love herself! How that would simplify matters! More than twice
+or thrice she had tried to reveal her overstrained heart in broken
+sections; but on her approach to the very outer confines of the matter,
+Clotilde had always behaved so strangely, so nervously, in short, so
+beyond Aurora's comprehension, that she invariably failed to make any
+revelation.
+
+And now, here in the very central darkness of this cloud of troubles,
+comes in Clotilde, throws herself upon the defiant little bosom so full
+of hidden suffering, and weeps tears of innocent confession that in a
+moment lay the dust of half of Aurora's perplexities. Strange world! The
+tears of the orphan making the widow weep for joy, if she only dared.
+
+The pair sat down opposite each other at their little dinner-table. They
+had a fixed hour for dinner. It is well to have a fixed hour; it is in
+the direction of system. Even if you have not the dinner, there is the
+hour. Alphonsina was not in perfect harmony with this fixed-hour idea.
+It was Aurora's belief, often expressed in hungry moments with the laugh
+of a vexed Creole lady (a laugh worthy of study), that on the day when
+dinner should really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would
+drop dead of apoplexy and she of fright. She said it to-day, shutting
+her arms down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised,
+and dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its
+perch. Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a certain
+desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and which suited
+the hither-thither movement of her conflicting feelings. This is why she
+had wished for dinner.
+
+Boiled shrimps, rice, claret-and-water, bread--they were dining well the
+day before execution. Dining is hardly correct, either, for Clotilde, at
+least, did not eat; they only sat. Clotilde had, too, if not her
+unknown, at least her unconfessed emotions. Aurora's were tossed by the
+waves, hers were sunken beneath them. Aurora had a faith that the rent
+would be paid--a faith which was only a vapor, but a vapor gilded by the
+sun--that is, by Apollo, or, to be still more explicit, by Honoré
+Grandissime. Clotilde, deprived of this confidence, had tried to raise
+means wherewith to meet the dread obligation, or, rather, had tried to
+try and had failed. To-day was the ninth, to-morrow, the street. Joseph
+Frowenfeld was hurt; her dependence upon his good offices was gone. When
+she thought of him suffering under public contumely, it seemed to her as
+if she could feel the big drops of blood dropping from her heart; and
+when she recalled her own actions, speeches, and demonstrations in his
+presence, exaggerated by the groundless fear that he had guessed into
+the deepest springs of her feelings, then she felt those drops of blood
+congeal. Even if the apothecary had been duller of discernment than she
+supposed, here was Aurora on the opposite side of the table, reading
+every thought of her inmost soul. But worst of all was 'Sieur
+Frowenfel's indifference. It is true that, as he had directed upon her
+that gaze of recognition, there was a look of mighty gladness, if she
+dared believe her eyes. But no, she dared not; there was nothing there
+for her, she thought,--probably (when this anguish of public disgrace
+should by any means be lifted) a benevolent smile at her and her
+betrayal of interest. Clotilde felt as though she had been laid entire
+upon a slide of his microscope.
+
+Aurora at length broke her reverie.
+
+"Clotilde,"--she spoke in French--"the matter with you is that you have
+no heart. You never did have any. Really and truly, you do not care
+whether 'Sieur Frowenfel' lives or dies. You do not care how he is or
+where he is this minute. I wish you had some of my too large heart. I
+not only have the heart, as I tell you, to think kindly of our enemies,
+those Grandissime, for example"--she waved her hand with the air of
+selecting at random--"but I am burning up to know what is the condition
+of that poor, sick, noble 'Sieur Frowenfel', and I am going to do it!"
+
+The heart which Clotilde was accused of not having gave a stir of deep
+gratitude. Dear, pretty little mother! Not only knowing full well the
+existence of this swelling heart and the significance, to-day, of its
+every warm pulsation, but kindly covering up the discovery with
+make-believe reproaches. The tears started in her eyes; that was
+her reply.
+
+"Oh, now! it is the rent again, I suppose," cried Aurora, "always the
+rent. It is not the rent that worries _me_, it is 'Sieur Frowenfel',
+poor man. But very well, Mademoiselle Silence, I will match you for
+making me do all the talking." She was really beginning to sink under
+the labor of carrying all the sprightliness for both. "Come," she said,
+savagely, "propose something."
+
+"Would you think well to go and inquire?"
+
+"Ah, listen! Go and what? No, Mademoiselle, I think not."
+
+"Well, send Alphonsina."
+
+"What? And let him know that I am anxious about him? Let me tell you, my
+little girl, I shall not drag upon myself the responsibility of
+increasing the self-conceit of any of that sex."
+
+"Well, then, send to buy a picayune's worth of something."
+
+"Ah, ha, ha! An emetic, for instance. Tell him we are poisoned on
+mushrooms, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde laughed too.
+
+"Ah, no," she said. "Send for something he does not sell."
+
+Aurora was laughing while Clotilde spoke; but as she caught these words
+she stopped with open-mouthed astonishment, and, as Clotilde blushed,
+laughed again.
+
+"Oh, Clotilde, Clotilde, Clotilde!"--she leaned forward over the table,
+her face beaming with love and laughter--"you rowdy! you rascal! You
+are just as bad as your mother, whom you think so wicked! I accept your
+advice. Alphonsina!"
+
+"Momselle!"
+
+The answer came from the kitchen.
+
+"Come go--or, rather,--_vini 'ci courri dans boutique de l'apothecaire_.
+Clotilde," she continued, in better French, holding up the coin to
+view, "look!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The last picayune we have in the world--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+HONORÉ MAKES SOME CONFESSIONS
+
+
+"Comment çà va, Raoul?" said Honoré Grandissime; he had come to the shop
+according to the proposal contained in his note. "Where is Mr.
+Frowenfeld?"
+
+He found the apothecary in the rear room, dressed, but just rising from
+the bed at sound of his voice. He closed the door after him; they shook
+hands and took chairs.
+
+"You have fever," said the merchant. "I have been troubled that way
+myself, some, lately." He rubbed his face all over, hard, with one
+hand,' and looked at the ceiling. "Loss of sleep, I suppose, in both of
+us; in your case voluntary--in pursuit of study, most likely; in my
+case--effect of anxiety." He smiled a moment and then suddenly sobered
+as after a pause he said:
+
+"But I hear you are in trouble; may I ask--"
+
+Frowenfeld had interrupted him with almost the same words:
+
+"May I venture to ask, Mr. Grandissime, what--"
+
+And both were silent for a moment.
+
+"Oh," said Honoré, with a gesture. "My trouble--I did not mean to
+mention it; 't is an old matter--in part. You know, Mr. Frowenfeld,
+there is a kind of tree not dreamed of in botany, that lets fall its
+fruit every day in the year--you know? We call it--with reverence--'our
+dead father's mistakes.' I have had to eat much of that fruit; a man who
+has to do that must expect to have now and then a little fever."
+
+"I have heard," replied Frowenfeld, "that some of the titles under which
+your relatives hold their lands are found to be of the kind which the
+State's authorities are pronouncing worthless. I hope this is not
+the case."
+
+"I wish they had never been put into my custody," said M. Grandissime.
+
+Some new thought moved him to draw his chair closer.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, those two ladies whom you went to see the other
+evening--"
+
+His listener started a little:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did they ever tell you their history?"
+
+"No, sir; but I have heard it."
+
+"And you think they have been deeply wronged, eh? Come, Mr. Frowenfeld,
+take right hold of the acacia-bush." M. Grandissime did not smile.
+
+Frowenfeld winced. "I think they have."
+
+"And you think restitution should be made them, no doubt, eh?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"At any cost?"
+
+The questioner showed a faint, unpleasant smile, that stirred something
+like opposition in the breast of the apothecary.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+The next question had a tincture even of fierceness:
+
+"You think it right to sink fifty or a hundred people into poverty to
+lift one or two out?"
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld, slowly, "you bade me study this
+community."
+
+"I adv--yes; what is it you find?"
+
+"I find--it may be the same with other communities, I suppose it is,
+more or less--that just upon the culmination of the moral issue it turns
+and asks the question which is behind it, instead of the question which
+is before it."
+
+"And what is the question before me?"
+
+"I know it only in the abstract."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The apothecary looked distressed.
+
+"You should not make me say it," he objected.
+
+"Nevertheless," said the Creole, "I take that liberty."
+
+"Well, then," said Frowenfeld, "the question behind is Expediency and
+the question in front, Divine Justice. You are asking yourself--"
+
+He checked himself.
+
+"Which I ought to regard," said M. Grandissime, quickly. "Expediency, of
+course, and be like the rest of mankind." He put on a look of bitter
+humor. "It is all easy enough for you, Mr. Frowenfeld, my-de'-seh; you
+have the easy part--the theorizing."
+
+He saw the ungenerousness of his speech as soon as it was uttered, yet
+he did not modify it.
+
+"True, Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld; and after a pause--"but you
+have the noble part--the doing."
+
+"Ah, my-de'-seh!" exclaimed Honoré; "the noble part! There is the
+bitterness of the draught! The opportunity to act is pushed upon me, but
+the opportunity to act nobly has passed by."
+
+He again drew his chair closer, glanced behind him and spoke low:
+
+"Because for years I have had a kind of custody of all my kinsmen's
+property interests, Agricola's among them, it is supposed that he has
+always kept the plantation of Aurore Nancanou (or rather of
+Clotilde--who, you know, by our laws is the real heir). That is a
+mistake. Explain it as you please, call it remorse, pride, love--what
+you like--while I was in France and he was managing my mother's
+business, unknown to me he gave me that plantation. When I succeeded him
+I found it and all its revenues kept distinct--as was but proper--from
+all other accounts, and belonging to me. 'Twas a fine, extensive place,
+had a good overseer on it and--I kept it. Why? Because I was a coward. I
+did not want it or its revenues; but, like my father, I would not offend
+my people. Peace first and justice afterwards--that was the principle
+on which I quietly made myself the trustee of a plantation and income
+which you would have given back to their owners, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld was silent.
+
+"My-de'-seh, recollect that to us the Grandissime name is a treasure.
+And what has preserved it so long? Cherishing the unity of our family;
+that has done it; that is how my father did it. Just or unjust, good or
+bad, needful or not, done elsewhere or not, I do not say; but it is a
+Creole trait. See, even now" (the speaker smiled on one side of his
+mouth) "in a certain section of the territory certain men, Creoles" (he
+whispered, gravely), "_some Grandissimes among them_, evading the United
+States revenue laws and even beating and killing some of the officials:
+well! Do the people at large repudiate those men? My-de'-seh, in no
+wise, seh! No; if they were _Américains_--but a Louisianian--is a
+Louisianian; touch him not; when you touch him you touch all Louisiana!
+So with us Grandissimes; we are legion, but we are one. Now,
+my-de'-seh, the thing you ask me to do is to cast overboard that old
+traditional principle which is the secret of our existence."
+
+"_I_ ask you?"
+
+"Ah, bah! you know you expect it. Ah! but you do not know the uproar
+such an action would make. And no 'noble part' in it, my-de'-seh,
+either. A few months ago--when we met by those graves--if
+I had acted then, my action would have been one of pure--even
+violent--_self_-sacrifice. Do you remember--on the levee, by the Place
+d'Armes--me asking you to send Agricola to me? I tried then to speak of
+it. He would not let me. Then, my people felt safe in their land-titles
+and public offices; this restitution would have hurt nothing but pride.
+Now, titles in doubt, government appointments uncertain, no ready
+capital in reach for any purpose, except that which would have to be
+handed over with the plantation (for to tell you the fact, my-de'-seh,
+no other account on my books has prospered), with matters changed in
+this way, I become the destroyer of my own flesh and blood! Yes, seh!
+and lest I might still find some room to boast, another change moves me
+into a position where it suits me, my-de'-seh, to make the restitution
+so fatal to those of my name. When you and I first met, those ladies
+were as much strangers to me as to you--as far as I _knew_. Then, if I
+had done this thing--but now--now, my-de'-seh, I find myself in love
+with one of them!"
+
+M. Grandissime looked his friend straight in the eye with the frowning
+energy of one who asserts an ugly fact.
+
+Frowenfeld, regarding the speaker with a gaze of respectful attention,
+did not falter; but his fevered blood, with an impulse that started him
+half from his seat, surged up into his head and face; and then--
+
+M. Grandissime blushed.
+
+In the few silent seconds that followed, the glances of the two friends
+continued to pass into each other's eyes, while about Honoré's mouth
+hovered the smile of one who candidly surrenders his innermost secret,
+and the lips of the apothecary set themselves together as though he were
+whispering to himself behind them, "Steady."
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, taking a sudden breath and waving a
+hand, "I came to ask about _your_ trouble; but if you think you have any
+reason to withhold your confidence--"
+
+"No, sir; no! But can I be no help to you in this matter?"
+
+The Creole leaned back smilingly in his chair and knit his fingers.
+
+"No, I did not intend to say all this; I came to offer my help to you;
+but my mind is full--what do you expect? My-de'-seh, the foam must come
+first out of the bottle. You see"--he leaned forward again, laid two
+fingers in his palm and deepened his tone--"I will tell you: this
+tree--'our dead father's mistakes'--is about to drop another rotten
+apple. I spoke just now of the uproar this restitution would make; why,
+my-de'-seh, just the mention of the lady's name at my house, when we
+lately held the _fête de grandpère_, has given rise to a quarrel which
+is likely to end in a duel."
+
+"Raoul was telling me," said the apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime made an affirmative gesture.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, if you--if any one--could teach my people--I mean my
+family--the value of peace (I do not say the duty, my-de'-seh; a
+merchant talks of values); if you could teach them the value of peace, I
+would give you, if that was your price"--he ran the edge of his left
+hand knife-wise around the wrist of his right--"that. And if you would
+teach it to the whole community--well--I think I would not give my head;
+maybe you would." He laughed.
+
+"There is a peace which is bad," said the contemplative apothecary.
+
+"Yes," said the Creole, promptly, "the very kind that I have been
+keeping all this time--and my father before me!"
+
+He spoke with much warmth.
+
+"Yes," he said again, after a pause which was not a rest, "I often see
+that we Grandissimes are a good example of the Creoles at large; we have
+one element that makes for peace; that--pardon the
+self-consciousness--is myself; and another element that makes for
+strife--led by my uncle Agricola; but, my-de'-seh, the peace element is
+that which ought to make the strife, and the strife element is that
+which ought to be made to keep the peace! Mr. Frowenfeld, I propose to
+become the strife-maker; how then, can I be a peacemaker at the same
+time? There is my diffycultie."
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," exclaimed Frowenfeld, "if you have any design in view
+founded on the high principles which I know to be the foundations of all
+your feelings, and can make use of the aid of a disgraced man, use me."
+
+"You are very generous," said the Creole, and both were silent. Honoré
+dropped his eyes from Frowenfeld's to the floor, rubbed his knee with
+his palm, and suddenly looked up.
+
+"You are innocent of wrong?"
+
+"Before God."
+
+"I feel sure of it. Tell me in a few words all about it. I ought to be
+able to extricate you. Let me hear it."
+
+Frowenfeld again told as much as he thought he could, consistently with
+his pledges to Palmyre, touching with extreme lightness upon the part
+taken by Clotilde.
+
+"Turn around," said M. Grandissime at the close; "let me see the back of
+your head. And it is that that is giving you this fever, eh?"
+
+"Partly," replied Frowenfeld; "but how shall I vindicate my innocence? I
+think I ought to go back openly to this woman's house and get my hat. I
+was about to do that when I got your note; yet it seems a feeble--even
+if possible--expedient."
+
+"My friend," said Honoré, "leave it to me. I see your whole case, both
+what you tell and what you conceal. I guess it with ease. Knowing
+Palmyre so well, and knowing (what you do not) that all the voudous in
+town think you a sorcerer, I know just what she would drop down and beg
+you for--a _ouangan_, ha, ha! You see? Leave it all to me--and your hat
+with Palmyre, take a febrifuge and a nap, and await word from me."
+
+"And may I offer you no help in your difficulty?" asked the apothecary,
+as the two rose and grasped hands.
+
+"Oh!" said the Creole, with a little shrug, "you may do anything you
+can--which will be nothing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+TESTS OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+Frowenfeld turned away from the closing door, caught his head between
+his hands and tried to comprehend the new wildness of the tumult within.
+Honoré Grandissime avowedly in love with one of them--_which one_?
+Doctor Keene visibly in love with one of them--_which one_? And he! What
+meant this bounding joy that, like one gorgeous moth among innumerable
+bats, flashed to and fro among the wild distresses and dismays swarming
+in and out of his distempered imagination? He did not answer the
+question; he only knew the confusion in his brain was dreadful. Both
+hands could not hold back the throbbing of his temples; the table did
+not steady the trembling of his hands; his thoughts went hither and
+thither, heedless of his call. Sit down as he might, rise up, pace the
+room, stand, lean his forehead against the wall--nothing could quiet the
+fearful disorder, until at length he recalled Honoré's neglected advice
+and resolutely lay down and sought sleep; and, long before he had hoped
+to secure it, it came.
+
+In the distant Grandissime mansion, Agricola Fusilier was casting about
+for ways and means to rid himself of the heaviest heart that ever had
+throbbed in his bosom. He had risen at sunrise from slumber worse than
+sleeplessness, in which his dreams had anticipated the duel of to-morrow
+with Sylvestre. He was trying to get the unwonted quaking out of his
+hands and the memory of the night's heart-dissolving phantasms from
+before his inner vision. To do this he had resort to a very familiar, we
+may say time-honored, prescription--rum. He did not use it after the
+voudou fashion; the voudous pour it on the ground--Agricola was an
+anti-voudou. It finally had its effect. By eleven o'clock he seemed,
+outwardly at least, to be at peace with everything in Louisiana that he
+considered Louisianian, properly so-called; as to all else he was ready
+for war, as in peace one should be. While in this mood, and performing
+at a sideboard the solemn rite of _las onze_, news incidentally reached
+him, by the mouth of his busy second, Hippolyte, of Frowenfeld's
+trouble, and despite 'Polyte's protestations against the principal in a
+pending "affair" appearing on the street, he ordered the carriage and
+hurried to the apothecary's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Frowenfeld awoke, the fingers of his clock were passing the
+meridan. His fever was gone, his brain was calm, his strength in good
+measure had returned. There had been dreams in his sleep, too; he had
+seen Clotilde standing at the foot of his bed. He lay now, for a moment,
+lost in retrospection.
+
+"There can be no doubt about it," said he, as he rose up, looking back
+mentally at something in the past.
+
+The sound of carriage-wheels attracted his attention by ceasing before
+his street door. A moment later the voice of Agricola was heard in the
+shop greeting Raoul. As the old man lifted the head of his staff to tap
+on the inner door, Frowenfeld opened it.
+
+"Fusilier to the rescue!" said the great Louisianian, with a grasp of
+the apothecary's hand and a gaze of brooding admiration.
+
+Joseph gave him a chair, but with magnificent humility he insisted on
+not taking it until "Professor Frowenfeld" had himself sat down.
+
+The apothecary was very solemn. It seemed to him as if in this little
+back room his dead good name was lying in state, and these visitors were
+coming in to take their last look. From time to time he longed for more
+light, wondering why the gravity of his misadventure should seem
+so great.
+
+"H-m-h-y dear Professor!" began the old man. Pages of print could not
+comprise all the meanings of his smile and accent; benevolence,
+affection, assumed knowledge of the facts, disdain of results,
+remembrance of his own youth, charity for pranks, patronage--these were
+but a few. He spoke very slowly and deeply and with this smile of a
+hundred meanings. "Why did you not send for me, Joseph? Sir, whenever
+you have occasion to make a list of the friends who will stand by you,
+_right or wrong_--h-write the name of Citizen Agricola Fusilier at the
+top! Write it large and repeat it at the bottom! You understand me,
+Joseph?--and, mark me,--right or wrong!"
+
+"Not wrong," said Frowenfeld, "at least not in defence of wrong; I could
+not do that; but, I assure you, in this matter I have done--"
+
+"No worse than any one else would have done under the circumstances, my
+dear boy!--Nay, nay, do not interrupt me; I understand you, I understand
+you. H-do you imagine there is anything strange to me in this--at
+my age?"
+
+"But I am--"
+
+"--all right, sir! that is _what_ you are. And you are under the wing of
+Agricola Fusilier, the old eagle; that is _where_ you are. And you are
+one of my brood; that is _who_ you are. Professor, listen to your old
+father. _The--man--makes--the--crime!_ The wisdom of mankind never
+brought forth a maxim of more gigantic beauty. If the different grades
+of race and society did not have corresponding moral and civil
+liberties, varying in degree as they vary--h-why! _this_ community, at
+least, would go to pieces! See here! Professor Frowenfeld is charged
+with misdemeanor. Very well, who is he? Foreigner or native? Foreigner
+by sentiment and intention, or only by accident of birth? Of our mental
+fibre--our aspirations--our delights--our indignations? I answer for
+you, Joseph, yes!--yes! What then? H-why, then the decision! Reached
+how? By apologetic reasonings? By instinct, sir! h-h-that guide of the
+nobly proud! And what is the decision? Not guilty. Professor Frowenfeld,
+_absolvo te!_"
+
+It was in vain that the apothecary repeatedly tried to interrupt this
+speech. "Citizen Fusilier, do you know me no better?"--"Citizen
+Fusilier, if you will but listen!"--such were the fragments of his
+efforts to explain. The old man was not so confident as he pretended to
+be that Frowenfeld was that complete proselyte which alone satisfies a
+Creole; but he saw him in a predicament and cast to him this life-buoy,
+which if a man should refuse, he would deserve to drown.
+
+Frowenfeld tried again to begin.
+
+"Mr. Fusilier--"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier!"
+
+"Citizen, candor demands that I undeceive--"
+
+"Candor demands--h-my dear Professor, let me tell you exactly what she
+demands. She demands that in here--within this apartment--we understand
+each other. That demand is met."
+
+"But--" Frowenfeld frowned impatiently.
+
+"That demand, Joseph, is fully met! I understand the whole matter like
+an eye-witness! Now there is another demand to be met, the demand of
+friendship! In here, candor; outside, friendship; in here, one of our
+brethren has been adventurous and unfortunate; outside"--the old man
+smiled a smile of benevolent mendacity--"outside, nothing has happened."
+
+Frowenfeld insisted savagely on speaking; but Agricola raised his voice,
+and gray hairs prevailed.
+
+"At least, what _has_ happened? The most ordinary thing in the world;
+Professor Frowenfeld lost his footing on a slippery gunwale, fell, cut
+his head upon a protruding spike, and went into the house of Palmyre to
+bathe his wound; but finding it worse than he had at first supposed it,
+immediately hurried out again and came to his store. He left his hat
+where it had fallen, too muddy to be worth recovery. Hippolyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin and others, passing at the time, thought he had met
+with violence in the house of the hair-dresser, and drew some natural
+inferences, but have since been better informed; and the public will
+please understand that Professor Frowenfeld is a white man, a gentleman,
+and a Louisianian, ready to vindicate his honor, and that Citizen
+Agricola Fusilier is his friend!"
+
+The old man looked around with the air of a bull on a hill-top.
+
+Frowenfeld, vexed beyond degree, restrained himself only for the sake
+of an object in view, and contented himself with repeating for the
+fourth or fifth time,--
+
+"I cannot accept any such deliverance."
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, friendship--society--demands it; our circle must
+be protected in all its members. You have nothing to do with it. You
+will leave it with me, Joseph."
+
+"No, no," said Frowenfeld, "I thank you, but--"
+
+"Ah! my dear boy, thank me not; I cannot help these impulses; I belong
+to a warm-hearted race. But"--he drew back in his chair sidewise and
+made great pretence of frowning--"you decline the offices of that
+precious possession, a Creole friend?"
+
+"I only decline to be shielded by a fiction."
+
+"Ah-h!" said Agricola, further nettling his victim by a gaze of stagy
+admiration. "'_Sans peur et sans reproche_'--and yet you disappoint me.
+Is it for naught, that I have sallied forth from home, drawing the
+curtains of my carriage to shield me from the gazing crowd? It was to
+rescue my friend--my vicar--my coadjutor--my son--from the laughs and
+finger-points of the vulgar mass. H-I might as well have stayed at
+home--or better, for my peculiar position to-day rather requires me to
+keep in--"
+
+"No, citizen," said Frowenfeld, laying his hand upon Agricola's arm, "I
+trust it is not in vain that you have come out. There _is_ a man in
+trouble whom only you can deliver."
+
+The old man began to swell with complacency.
+
+"H-why, really--"
+
+"_He_, Citizen, is truly of your kind--"
+
+"He must be delivered, Professor Frowenfeld--"
+
+"He is a native Louisianian, not only by accident of birth but by
+sentiment and intention," said Frowenfeld.
+
+The old man smiled a benign delight, but the apothecary now had the
+upper hand, and would not hear him speak.
+
+"His aspirations," continued the speaker, "his indignations--mount with
+his people's. His pulse beats with yours, sir. He is a part of your
+circle. He is one of your caste."
+
+Agricola could not be silent.
+
+"Ha-a-a-ah! Joseph, h-h-you make my blood tingle! Speak to the point;
+who--"
+
+"I believe him, moreover, Citizen Fusilier, innocent of the charge
+laid--"
+
+"H-innocent? H-of course he is innocent, sir! We will _make_ him inno--"
+
+"Ah! Citizen, he is already under sentence of death!"
+
+"_What?_ A Creole under sentence!" Agricola swore a heathen oath, set
+his knees apart and grasped his staff by the middle. "Sir, we will
+liberate him if we have to overturn the government!"
+
+Frowenfeld shook his head.
+
+"You have got to overturn something stronger than government."
+
+"And pray what--"
+
+"A conventionality," said Frowenfeld, holding the old man's eye.
+
+"Ha, ha! my b-hoy, h-you are right. But we will overturn--eh?"
+
+"I say I fear your engagements will prevent. I hear you take part
+to-morrow morning in--"
+
+Agricola suddenly stiffened.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, it strikes me, sir, you are taking something of a
+liberty."
+
+"For which I ask pardon," exclaimed Frowenfeld. "Then I may not
+expect--"
+
+The old man melted again.
+
+"But who is this person in mortal peril?"
+
+Frowenfeld hesitated.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," he said, looking first down at the floor and then up
+into the inquirer's face, "on my assurance that he is not only a native
+Creole, but a Grandissime--"
+
+"It is not possible!" exclaimed Agricola.
+
+"--a Grandissime of the purest blood, will you pledge me your aid to
+liberate him from his danger, 'right or wrong'?"
+
+"_Will_ I? H-why, certainly! Who is he?"
+
+"Citizen--it is Sylves--"
+
+Agricola sprang up with a thundering oath.
+
+The apothecary put out a pacifying hand, but it was spurned.
+
+"Let me go! How dare you, sir? How dare you, sir?" bellowed Agricola.
+
+He started toward the door, cursing furiously and keeping his eye fixed
+on Frowenfeld with a look of rage not unmixed with terror.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," said the apothecary, following him with one palm
+uplifted, as if that would ward off his abuse, "don't go! I adjure you,
+don't go! Remember your pledge, Citizen Fusilier!"
+
+Agricola did not pause a moment; but when he had swung the door
+violently open the way was still obstructed. The painter of "Louisiana
+refusing to enter the Union" stood before him, his head elevated
+loftily, one foot set forward and his arm extended like a tragedian's.
+
+"Stan' bag-sah!"
+
+"Let me pass! Let me pass, or I will kill you!"
+
+Mr. Innerarity smote his bosom and tossed his hand aloft.
+
+"Kill me-firse an' pass aftah!"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," said Frowenfeld, "I beg you to hear me."
+
+"Go away! Go away!"
+
+The old man drew back from the door and stood in the corner against the
+book-shelves as if all the horrors of the last night's dreams had taken
+bodily shape in the person of the apothecary. He trembled and stammered:
+
+"Ke--keep off! Keep off! My God! Raoul, he has insulted me!" He made a
+miserable show of drawing a weapon. "No man may insult me and live! If
+you are a man, Professor Frowenfeld, you will defend yourself!"
+
+Frowenfeld lost his temper, but his hasty reply was drowned by Raoul's
+vehement speech.
+
+"'Tis not de trute!" cried Raoul. "He try to save you from
+hell-'n'-damnation w'en 'e h-ought to give you a good cuss'n!"--and in
+the ecstasy of his anger burst into tears.
+
+Frowenfeld, in an agony of annoyance, waved him away and he disappeared,
+shutting the door.
+
+Agricola, moved far more from within than from without, had sunk into a
+chair under the shelves. His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell
+down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his
+staff, the other his knee, and both trembled violently. As Frowenfeld,
+with every demonstration of beseeching kindness, began to speak, he
+lifted his eyes and said, piteously:
+
+"Stop! Stop!"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier, it is you who must stop. Stop before God Almighty
+stops you, I beg you. I do not presume to rebuke you. I _know_ you want
+a clear record. I know it better to-day than I ever did before. Citizen
+Fusilier, I honor your intentions--"
+
+Agricola roused a little and looked up with a miserable attempt at his
+habitual patronizing smile.
+
+"H-my dear boy, I overlook"--but he met in
+
+Frowenfeld's eyes a spirit so superior to his dissimulation that the
+smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory and
+apologetic distress. He reached up an arm.
+
+"I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error"--his eyes
+quailed and dropped to the floor--"but I--your arm, my dear Joseph; age
+is creeping upon me." He rose to his feet. "I am feeling really
+indisposed to-day--not at all bright; my solicitude for you, my
+dear b--"
+
+He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the apothecary,
+moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the table stumbled
+into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him. He folded his arms on
+the edge of the board and rested his forehead on them, while Frowenfeld
+sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew paper and pen across the
+table and wrote.
+
+"Are you writing something, Professor?" asked the old man, without
+stirring. His staff tumbled to the floor. The apothecary's answer was a
+low, preoccupied one. Two or three times over he wrote and rejected what
+he had written.
+
+Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid the
+writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and waited.
+
+After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to conceal his
+anguish under a smile.
+
+"I have a sad headache."
+
+He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen which
+Frowenfeld extended toward him.
+
+"What can I do for you, Professor? Sign something? There is nothing I
+would not do for Professor Frowenfeld. What have you written, eh?"
+
+He felt helplessly for his spectacles.
+
+Frowenfeld read:
+
+"_Mr. Sylvestre Grandissime: I spoke in haste_."
+
+He felt himself tremble as he read. Agricola fumbled with the pen,
+lifted his eyes with one more effort at the old look, said, "My dear
+boy, I do this purely to please you," and to Frowenfeld's delight and
+astonishment wrote:
+
+"_Your affectionate uncle, Agricola Fusilier_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+LOUISIANA STATES HER WANTS
+
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Raoul as that person turned in the front door
+of the shop after watching Agricola's carriage roll away--he had
+intended to unburden his mind to the apothecary with all his natural
+impetuosity; but Frowenfeld's gravity as he turned, with the paper in
+his hand, induced a different manner. Raoul had learned, despite all the
+impulses of his nature, to look upon Frowenfeld with a sort of
+enthusiastic awe. He dropped his voice and said--asking like a child a
+question he was perfectly able to answer--
+
+"What de matta wid Agricole?"
+
+Frowenfeld, for the moment well-nigh oblivious of his own trouble,
+turned upon his assistant a look in which elation was oddly blended
+with solemnity, and replied as he walked by:
+
+"Rush of truth to the heart."
+
+Raoul followed a step.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"
+
+The apothecary turned once more. Raoul's face bore an expression of
+earnest practicability that invited confidence.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', Agricola writ'n' to Sylvestre to stop dat dool?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You goin' take dat lett' to Sylvestre?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', dat de wrong g-way. You got to take it to 'Polyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin, an' 'e got to take it to Valentine Grandissime, an'
+'_e_ got to take it to Sylvestre. You see, you got to know de manner to
+make. Once 'pon a time I had a diffycultie wid--"
+
+"I see," said Frowenfeld; "where may I find Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin
+at this time of day?"
+
+Raoul shrugged.
+
+"If the pre-parish-ions are not complitted, you will not find 'im; but
+if they har complitted--you know 'im?"
+
+"By sight."
+
+"Well, you may fine him at Maspero's, or helse in de front of de
+Veau-qui-tête, or helse at de Café Louis Quatorze--mos' likely in front
+of de Veau-qui-tête. You know, dat diffycultie I had, dat arise itseff
+from de discush'n of one of de mil-littery mov'ments of ca-valry; you
+know, I--"
+
+"Yes," said the apothecary; "here, Raoul, is some money; please go and
+buy me a good, plain hat."
+
+"All right." Raoul darted behind the counter and got his hat out of a
+drawer. "Were at you buy your hats?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"I will go at _my_ hatter."
+
+As the apothecary moved about his shop awaiting Raoul's return, his own
+disaster became once more the subject of his anxiety. He noticed that
+almost every person who passed looked in. "This is the place,"--"That is
+the man,"--how plainly the glances of passers sometimes speak! The
+people seemed, moreover, a little nervous. Could even so little a city
+be stirred about such a petty, private trouble as this of his? No; the
+city was having tribulations of its own.
+
+New Orleans was in that state of suppressed excitement which, in later
+days, a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has caused to be
+described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul perceived it
+before he had left the shop twenty paces behind. By the time he reached
+the first corner he was in the swirl of the popular current. He enjoyed
+it like a strong swimmer. He even drank of it. It was better than wine
+and music mingled.
+
+"Twelve weeks next Thursday, and no sign of re-cession!" said one of
+two rapid walkers just in front of him. Their talk was in the French of
+the province.
+
+"Oh, re-cession!" exclaimed the other angrily. "The cession is a
+reality. That, at least, we have got to swallow. Incredulity is dead."
+
+The first speaker's feelings could find expression only in profanity.
+
+"The cession--we wash our hands of it!" He turned partly around upon his
+companion, as they hurried along, and gave his hands a vehement dry
+washing. "If Incredulity is dead, Non-participation reigns in its stead,
+and Discontent is prime minister!" He brandished his fist as they
+turned a corner.
+
+"If we must change, let us be subjects of the First Consul!" said one of
+another pair whom Raoul met on a crossing.
+
+There was a gathering of boys and vagabonds at the door of a gun-shop. A
+man inside was buying a gun. That was all.
+
+A group came out of a "coffee-house." The leader turned about upon the
+rest:
+
+"_Ah, bah! cette_ Amayrican libetty!"
+
+"See! see! it is this way!" said another of the number, taking two
+others by their elbows, to secure an audience, "we shall do nothing
+ourselves; we are just watching that vile Congress. It is going to tear
+the country all to bits!"
+
+"Ah, my friend, you haven't got the _inside_ news," said still
+another--Raoul lingered to hear him--"Louisiana is going to state her
+wants! We have the liberty of free speech and are going to use it!"
+
+His information was correct; Louisiana, no longer incredulous of her
+Americanization, had laid hold of her new liberties and was beginning to
+run with them, like a boy dragging his kite over the clods. She was
+about to state her wants, he said.
+
+"And her don't-wants," volunteered one whose hand Raoul shook heartily.
+"We warn the world. If Congress doesn't take heed, we will not be
+responsible for the consequences!"
+
+Raoul's hatter was full of the subject. As Mr. Innerarity entered, he
+was saying good-day to a customer in his native tongue, English, and so
+continued:
+
+"Yes, under Spain we had a solid, quiet government--Ah! Mr. Innerarity,
+overjoyed to see you! We were speaking of these political troubles. I
+wish we might see the last of them. It's a terrible bad mess; corruption
+to-day--I tell you what--it will be disruption to-morrow. Well, it is no
+work of ours; we shall merely stand off and see it."
+
+"Mi-frien'," said Raoul, with mingled pity and superiority, "you haven't
+got doze _inside_ nooz; Louisiana is goin' to state w'at she want."
+
+On his way back toward the shop Mr. Innerarity easily learned
+Louisiana's wants and don't-wants by heart. She wanted a Creole
+governor; she did not want Casa Calvo invited to leave the country; she
+wanted the provisions of the Treaty of Cession hurried up; "as soon as
+possible," that instrument said; she had waited long enough; she did not
+want "dat trile bi-ju'y"--execrable trash! she wanted an _unwatched
+import trade!_ she did not want a single additional Américain appointed
+to office; she wanted the slave trade.
+
+Just in sight of the bareheaded and anxious Frowenfeld, Raoul let
+himself be stopped by a friend.
+
+The remark was exchanged that the times were exciting.
+
+"And yet," said the friend, "the city was never more peaceable. It is
+exasperating to see that coward governor looking so diligently after his
+police and hurrying on the organization of the Américain volunteer
+militia!" He pointed savagely here and there. "M. Innerarity, I am lost
+in admiration at the all but craven patience with which our people
+endure their wrongs! Do my pistols show _too_ much through my coat?
+Well, good-day; I must go home and clean my gun; my dear friend, one
+don't know how soon he may have to encounter the Recorder and Register
+of Land-titles."
+
+Raoul finished his errand.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', excuse me--I take dat lett' to 'Polyte for you if
+you want." There are times when mere shopkeeping--any peaceful
+routine--is torture.
+
+But the apothecary felt so himself; he declined his assistant's offer
+and went out toward the Veau-qui-tête.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+FROWENFELD FINDS SYLVESTRE
+
+
+The Veau-qui-tête restaurant occupied the whole ground floor of a small,
+low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco building which still
+stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter streets, in company with
+the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of
+the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept
+kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It
+was a favorite rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the
+court-rooms and municipal bureaus. There you found the choicest legal
+and political gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat
+and drink.
+
+Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had to move
+about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not overlooking the
+object of his search.
+
+As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed
+rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and
+murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes
+on his back.
+
+There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever
+he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he
+saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state
+of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him
+particularly discordant.
+
+Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in
+the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant,
+mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_. It was a portion of the
+Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants
+of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of
+Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper
+title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city,
+Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles,
+who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their
+complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading
+rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed
+these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three
+with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.
+
+Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Américain, in
+English.
+
+"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other
+governments we had any quantity!"
+
+"Yes," said the venturesome Américain in retort, "such as it was;
+_assignats, liberanzas, bons_--Claiborne will give us better money than
+that when he starts his bank."
+
+"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father.
+What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he
+had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered
+curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.
+
+A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been
+greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without
+turning his eyes.
+
+"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to
+be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty
+they give us--all eat out of one trough."
+
+"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man,
+setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have, is"--he was
+speaking in French, but gave the want in English--"Representesh'n wizout
+Taxa--" There his eye fell upon Frowenfeld and followed him with
+a scowl.
+
+"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wass you sink of a mane
+w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in ze
+sem room?"
+
+The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more general than
+he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did so, to an
+Américain merchant with whom he had some acquaintance.
+
+"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see me? I
+thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all, does it
+sum up?"
+
+A Creole interrupted him with an answer:
+
+"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Pahtitsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"
+
+The voice was like Honoré's. Frowenfeld looked; it was Agamemnon
+Grandissime.
+
+"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started up the
+rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he suddenly found
+himself one of a crowd standing before a newly-posted placard, and at a
+glance saw it to be one of the inflammatory publications which were a
+feature of the times, appearing both daily and nightly on walls
+and fences.
+
+"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it back,"
+said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.
+
+Exchange Alley was once _Passage de la Bourse_, and led down (as it now
+does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to an establishment which
+seems to have served for a long term of years as a sort of merchants'
+and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a minimum of china and a maximum of
+glass: Maspero's--certainly Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we
+believe, Maspero's the day the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It
+was a livelier spot than the Veau-qui-tête; it was to that what commerce
+is to litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping.
+Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public sentiment
+in which sanctity signs politicians' memorials and chivalry breaks into
+the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump of the machinery was in
+Maspero's.
+
+The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine Grandissime.
+There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners in front of him;
+he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in Creole French.
+
+"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know my
+rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We have"--with
+a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended palm--"a right to
+protect them from the attack of interlopers, even if we have to use
+gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the liberties of even this army
+of fortune-hunters. _Let_ them think." He half laughed. "Who cares
+whether they share our opinions or not? Let them have their own. I had
+rather they would. But let them hold their tongues. Let them remember
+they are Yankees. Let them remember they are unbidden guests." All this
+without the least warmth.
+
+But the answer came aglow with passion, from one of the semicircle, whom
+two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It also was in French,
+but the apothecary was astonished to hear his own name uttered.
+
+"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see Joseph--"has never
+held his tongue. He has given us good reason half a dozen times, with
+his too free speech and his high moral whine, to hang him with the
+lamppost rope! And now, when we have borne and borne and borne and borne
+with him, and he shows up, all at once, in all his rottenness, you say
+let him alone! One would think you were defending Honoré Grandissime!"
+The back of one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of
+the other.
+
+Valentine smiled.
+
+"Honoré Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are talking about.
+Not Honoré, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own avowal, is guilty of
+affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we have good reason to suspect
+of meditating his family's dishonor and embarrassment!" Somebody saw the
+apothecary and laid a cautionary touch on Valentine's arm, but he
+brushed it off. "As for Professor Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."
+
+"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.
+
+"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you again
+what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin and held his
+clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he is--he is--"
+
+He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large, white, and
+immovable, stood close before him.
+
+"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander, edging
+toward a pillar.
+
+The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the
+apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blushing mood, and was not
+disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made a
+sudden, angry change of attitude, and demanded:
+
+"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee clown?
+Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"
+
+Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he said:
+
+"Sir, I am not aware that I have ever offered you the slightest injury
+or affront; if you wish to finish your conversation with this gentleman,
+I will wait till you are through."
+
+The Creole bowed, as a knight who takes up the gage. He turned to
+Valentine.
+
+"Valentine, I was sayin' to you dad diz pusson is a cowa'd and a sneak;
+I repead thad! I repead id! I spurn you! Go f'om yeh!"
+
+The apothecary stood like a cliff.
+
+It was too much for Creole forbearance. His adversary, with a long snarl
+of oaths, sprang forward and with a great sweep of his arm slapped the
+apothecary on the cheek. And then--
+
+What a silence!
+
+Frowenfeld had advanced one step; his opponent stood half turned away,
+but with his face toward the face he had just struck and his eyes
+glaring up into the eyes of the apothecary. The semicircle was
+dissolved, and each man stood in neutral isolation, motionless and
+silent. For one instant objects lost all natural proportion, and to the
+expectant on-lookers the largest thing in the room was the big,
+upraised, white fist of Frowenfeld. But in the next--how was this? Could
+it be that that fist had not descended?
+
+The imperturbable Valentine, with one preventing arm laid across the
+breast of the expected victim and an open hand held restrainingly up for
+truce, stood between the two men and said:
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld--one moment--"
+
+Frowenfeld's face was ashen.
+
+"Don't speak, sir!" he exclaimed. "If I attempt to parley I shall break
+every bone in his body. Don't speak! I can guess your explanation--he is
+drunk. But take him away."
+
+Valentine, as sensible as cool, assisted by the kinsman who had laid a
+hand on his arm, shuffled his enraged companion out. Frowenfeld's still
+swelling anger was so near getting the better of him that he
+unconsciously followed a quick step or two; but as Valentine looked back
+and waved him to stop, he again stood still.
+
+"_Professeur_--you know,--" said a stranger, "daz Sylvestre
+Grandissime."
+
+Frowenfeld rather spoke to himself than answered:
+
+"If I had not known that, I should have--" He checked himself and left
+the place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the apothecary was gathering these experiences, the free spirit of
+Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in a hen-coop.
+One moment after another brought him straggling evidences, now of one
+sort, now of another, of the "never more peaceable" state of affairs
+without. If only some pretext could be conjured up, plausible or flimsy,
+no matter; if only some man would pass with a gun on his shoulder, were
+it only a blow-gun; or if his employer were any one but his beloved
+Frowenfeld, he would clap up the shutters as quickly as he had already
+done once to-day, and be off to the wars. He was just trying to hear
+imaginary pistol-shots down toward the Place d'Armes, when the
+apothecary returned.
+
+"D' you fin' him?"
+
+"I found Sylvestre."
+
+"'E took de lett'?"
+
+"I did not offer it." Frowenfeld, in a few compact sentences, told his
+adventure.
+
+Raoul was ablaze with indignation.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', gimmy dat lett'!" He extended his pretty hand.
+
+Frowenfeld pondered.
+
+"Gimmy 'er!" persisted the artist; "befo' I lose de sight from dat lett'
+she goin' to be hanswer by Sylvestre Grandissime, an' 'e goin' to wrat
+you one appo-logie! Oh! I goin' mek 'im crah fo' shem!"
+
+"If I could know you would do only as I--"
+
+"I do it!" cried Raoul, and sprang for his hat; and in the end
+Frowenfeld let him have his way.
+
+"I had intended seeing him--" the apothecary said.
+
+"Nevvamine to see; I goin' tell him!" cried Raoul, as he crowded his
+hat fiercely down over his curls and plunged out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+TO COME TO THE POINT
+
+
+It was equally a part of Honoré Grandissime's nature and of his art as a
+merchant to wear a look of serene leisure. With this look on his face he
+reëntered his counting-room after his morning visit to Frowenfeld's
+shop. He paused a moment outside the rail, gave the weak-eyed gentleman
+who presided there a quiet glance equivalent to a beckon, and, as that
+person came near, communicated two or three items of intelligence or
+instruction concerning office details, by which that invaluable diviner
+of business meanings understood that he wished to be let alone for an
+hour. Then M. Grandissime passed on into his private office, and,
+shutting the door behind him, walked briskly to his desk and sat down.
+
+He dropped his elbows upon a broad paper containing some recently
+written, unfinished memoranda that included figures in column, cast his
+eyes quite around the apartment, and then covered his face with his
+palms--a gesture common enough for a tired man of business in a moment
+of seclusion; but just as the face disappeared in the hands, the look
+of serene leisure gave place to one of great mental distress. The paper
+under his elbows, to the consideration of which he seemed about to
+return, was in the handwriting of his manager, with additions by his own
+pen. Earlier in the day he had come to a pause in the making of these
+additions, and, after one or two vain efforts to proceed, had laid down
+his pen, taken his hat, and gone to see the unlucky apothecary. Now he
+took up the broken thread. To come to a decision; that was the task
+which forced from him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly
+through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles,
+and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come;
+let me make up my mind."
+
+There may be men who take every moral height at a dash; but to the most
+of us there must come moments when our wills can but just rise and walk
+in their sleep. Those who in such moments wait for clear views find,
+when the issue is past, that they were only yielding to the devil's
+chloroform.
+
+Honoré Grandissme bent his eyes upon the paper. But he saw neither its
+figures nor its words. The interrogation, "Surrender Fausse Rivière?"
+appeared to hang between his eyes and the paper, and when his resolution
+tried to answer "Yes," he saw red flags; he heard the auctioneer's drum;
+he saw his kinsmen handing house-keys to strangers; he saw the old
+servants of the great family standing in the marketplace; he saw
+kinswomen pawning their plate; he saw his clerks (Brahmins, Mandarins,
+Grandissimes) standing idle and shabby in the arcade of the Cabildo and
+on the banquettes of Maspero's and the Veau-qui-tête; he saw red-eyed
+young men in the Exchange denouncing a man who, they said, had,
+ostensibly for conscience's sake, but really for love, forced upon the
+woman he had hoped to marry a fortune filched from his own kindred. He
+saw the junto of doctors in Frowenfeld's door charitably deciding him
+insane; he saw the more vengeful of his family seeking him with
+half-concealed weapons; he saw himself shot at in the rue Royale, in the
+rue Toulouse, and in the Place d'Armes: and, worst of all, missed.
+
+But he wiped his forehead, and the writing on the paper became, in a
+measure, visible. He read:
+
+Total mortgages on the lands of all the Grandissimes  $--
+Total present value of same, titles at buyers' risk    --
+Cash, goods, and accounts                              --
+Fausse Rivière Plantation account                      --
+
+There were other items, but he took up the edge of the paper
+mechanically, pushed it slowly away from him, leaned back in his chair
+and again laid his hands upon his face.
+
+"Suppose I retain Fausse Rivière," he said to himself, as if he had not
+said it many times before.
+
+Then he saw memoranda that were not on any paper before him--such a
+mortgage to be met on such a date; so much from Fausse Rivière
+Plantation account retained to protect that mortgage from foreclosure;
+such another to be met on such a date--so much more of same account to
+protect it. He saw Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, with anguished faces,
+offering woman's pleadings to deaf constables. He saw the remainder of
+Aurora's plantation account thrown to the lawyers to keep the question
+of the Grandissime titles languishing in the courts. He saw the fortunes
+of his clan rallied meanwhile and coming to the rescue, himself and
+kindred growing independent of questionable titles, and even Fausse
+Rivière Plantation account restored, but Aurora and Clotilde nowhere to
+be found. And then he saw the grave, pale face of Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+He threw himself forward, drew the paper nervously toward him, and
+stared at the figures. He began at the first item and went over the
+whole paper, line by line, testing every extension, proving every
+addition, noting if possibly any transposition of figures had been made
+and overlooked, if something was added that should have been subtracted,
+or subtracted that should have been added. It was like a prisoner trying
+the bars of his cell.
+
+Was there no way to make things happen differently? Had he not
+overlooked some expedient? Was not some financial manoeuvre possible
+which might compass both desired ends? He left his chair and walked up
+and down, as Joseph at that very moment was doing in the room where he
+had left him, came back, looked at the paper, and again walked up and
+down. He murmured now and then to himself: "_Self_-denial--that is not
+the hard work. Penniless myself--_that_ is play," and so on. He turned
+by and by and stood looking up at that picture of the man in the cuirass
+which Aurora had once noticed. He looked at it, but he did not see it.
+He was thinking--"Her rent is due to-morrow. She will never believe I am
+not her landlord. She will never go to my half-brother." He turned once
+more and mentally beat his breast as he muttered: "Why do I not decide?"
+
+Somebody touched the doorknob. Honoré stepped forward and opened it. It
+was a mortgager.
+
+"_Ah! entrez, Monsieur_."
+
+He retained the visitor's hand, leading him in and talking pleasantly in
+French until both had found chairs. The conversation continued in that
+tongue through such pointless commercial gossip as this:
+
+"So the brig _Equinox_ is aground at the head of the Passes," said M.
+Grandissime.
+
+"I have just heard she is off again."
+
+"Aha?"
+
+"Yes; the Fort Plaquemine canoe is just up from below. I understand John
+McDonough has bought the entire cargo of the schooner _Freedom_."
+
+"No, not all; Blanque et Fils bought some twenty boys and women out of
+the lot. Where is she lying?"
+
+"Right at the head of the Basin."
+
+And much more like this; but by and by the mortgager came to the point
+with the casual remark:
+
+"The excitement concerning land titles seems to increase rather than
+subside."
+
+"They must have _something_ to be excited about, I suppose," said M.
+Grandissime, crossing his legs and smiling. It was tradesman's talk.
+
+"Yes," replied the other; "there seems to be an idea current to-day that
+all holders under Spanish titles are to be immediately dispossessed,
+without even process of court. I believe a very slight indiscretion on
+the part of the Governor-General would precipitate a riot."
+
+"He will not commit any," said M. Grandissime with a quiet gravity,
+changing his manner to that of one who draws upon a reserve of private
+information. "There will be no outbreak."
+
+"I suppose not. We do not know, really, that the American Congress will
+throw any question upon titles; but still--"
+
+"What are some of the shrewdest Americans among us doing?" asked M.
+Grandissime.
+
+"Yes," replied the mortgager, "it is true they are buying these very
+titles; but they may be making a mistake?"
+
+Unfortunately for the speaker, he allowed his face an expression of
+argumentative shrewdness as he completed this sentence, and M.
+Grandissime, the merchant, caught an instantaneous full view of his
+motive; he wanted to buy. He was a man whose known speculative policy
+was to "go in" in moments of panic.
+
+M. Grandissime was again face to face with the question of the morning.
+To commence selling must be to go on selling. This, as a plan, included
+restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution to the
+Grandissimes, for should their _sold_ titles be pronounced bad, then the
+titles of other lands would be bad; many an asset among M. Grandissime's
+memoranda would shrink into nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the
+Grandissime estates, left to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's
+accumulated fortune, would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should
+these titles, after being parted with, turn out good, his incensed
+kindred, shutting their eyes to his memoranda and despising his
+exhibits, would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go
+about the streets of his town the subject of their implacable
+denunciation, the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So
+much, should he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter
+upon that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail
+himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune which
+the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if lost at all,
+only when the family could afford to lose them, and Honoré Grandissime
+would continue to be Honoré the Magnificent, the admiration of the city
+and the idol of his clan. But Aurora--and Clotilde--would have to eat
+the crust of poverty, while their fortunes, even in his hands, must bear
+all the jeopardy of the scheme. That was all. Retain Fausse Rivière and
+its wealth, and save the Grandissimes; surrender Fausse Rivière, let
+the Grandissime estates go, and save the Nancanous. That was the
+whole dilemma.
+
+"Let me see," said M. Grandissime. "You have a mortgage on one of our
+Golden Coast plantations. Well, to be frank with you, I was thinking of
+that when you came in. You know I am partial to prompt transactions--I
+thought of offering you either to take up that mortgage or to sell you
+the plantation, as you may prefer. I have ventured to guess that it
+would suit you to own it."
+
+And the speaker felt within him a secret exultation in the idea that he
+had succeeded in throwing the issue off upon a Providence that could
+control this mortgager's choice.
+
+"I would prefer to leave that choice with you," said the coy would-be
+purchaser; and then the two went coquetting again for another moment.
+
+"I understand that Nicholas Girod is proposing to erect a four-story
+brick building on the corner of Royale and St. Pierre. Do you think it
+practicable? Do you think our soil will support such a structure?"
+
+"Pitot thinks it will. Boré says it is perfectly feasible."
+
+So they dallied.
+
+"Well," said the mortgager, presently rising, "you will make up your
+mind and let me know, will you?"
+
+The chance repetition of those words "make up your mind" touched Honoré
+Grandissime like a hot iron. He rose with the visitor.
+
+"Well, sir, what would you give us for our title in case we should
+decide to part with it?"
+
+The two men moved slowly, side by side, toward the door, and in the
+half-open doorway, after a little further trifling, the title was sold.
+
+"Well, good-day," said M. Grandissime. "M. de Brahmin will arrange the
+papers for us to-morrow."
+
+He turned back toward his private desk.
+
+"And now," thought he, "I am acting without resolving. No merit; no
+strength of will; no clearness of purpose; no emphatic decision; nothing
+but a yielding to temptation."
+
+And M. Grandissime spoke truly; but it is only whole men who so
+yield--yielding to the temptation to do right.
+
+He passed into the counting-room, to M. De Brahmin, and standing there
+talked in an inaudible tone, leaning over the upturned spectacles of his
+manager, for nearly an hour. Then, saying he would go to dinner, he went
+out. He did not dine at home nor at the Veau-qui-tête, nor at any of the
+clubs; so much is known; he merely disappeared for two or three hours
+and was not seen again until late in the afternoon, when two or three
+Brahmins and Grandissimes, wandering about in search of him, met him on
+the levee near the head of the rue Bienville, and with an exclamation of
+wonder and a look of surprise at his dusty shoes, demanded to know
+where he had hid himself while they had been ransacking the town in
+search of him.
+
+"We want you to tell us what you will do about our titles."
+
+He smiled pleasantly, the picture of serenity, and replied:
+
+"I have not fully made up my mind yet; as soon as I do so I will let you
+know."
+
+There was a word or two more exchanged, and then, after a moment of
+silence, with a gentle "Eh, bien," and a gesture to which they were
+accustomed, he stepped away backward, they resumed their hurried walk
+and talk, and he turned into the rue Bienville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+AN INHERITANCE OF WRONG
+
+
+"I tell you," Doctor Keene used to say, "that old woman's a thinker."
+His allusion was to Clemence, the _marchande des calas_. Her mental
+activity was evinced not more in the cunning aptness of her songs than
+in the droll wisdom of her sayings. Not the melody only, but the often
+audacious, epigrammatic philosophy of her tongue as well, sold her
+_calas_ and gingercakes.
+
+But in one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too much on
+her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle at
+Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd aphorisms
+could see that she herself had made a life-study of herself and her
+conditions; but she little thought that others--some with wits and some
+with none--young hare-brained Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like--were
+silently, and for her most unluckily, charging their memories with her
+knowing speeches; and that of every one of those speeches she would
+ultimately have to give account.
+
+Doctor Keene, in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an occasional
+skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of
+_calas_, he enounced an old current conviction which is not without
+holders even to this day; for we may still hear it said by those who
+will not be decoyed down from the mountain fastnesses of the old
+Southern doctrines, that their slaves were "the happiest people under
+the sun." Clemence had made bold to deny this with argumentative
+indignation, and was courteously informed in retort that she had
+promulgated a falsehood of magnitude.
+
+"W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po' nigga kin
+tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell w'at ain' so--if
+dey know it, aw if dey don' know it--den dat _is_ a big lie!" And she
+laughed to contortion.
+
+"What is that you say?" he demanded, with mock ferocity. "You charge
+white people with lying?"
+
+"Oh, sakes, Mawse Chawlie, no! De people don't mek up dat ah; de debble
+pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de grett cyount'-feiteh?
+Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek an' put some debblemen' on de under
+side, an' one o' his pootiess lies on top; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and 'e
+rub dat lie on 'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess
+licks on dat lie; entel ev'ybody say: 'Oh, how pooty!' An' dey tek it
+fo' good money, yass--and pass it! Dey b'lieb it!"
+
+"Oh," said some one at Doctor Keene's side, disposed to quiz, "you
+niggers don't know when you are happy."
+
+"Dass so, Mawse--_c'est vrai, oui_!" she answered quickly: "we donno no
+mo'n white folks!"
+
+The laugh was against him.
+
+"Mawse Chawlie," she said again, "w'a's dis I yeh 'bout dat Eu'ope
+country? 's dat true de niggas is all free in Eu'ope!"
+
+Doctor Keene replied that something like that was true.
+
+"Well, now, Mawse Chawlie, I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is _so_,
+den fo' w'y I yeh folks bragg'n 'bout de 'stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope'?"
+
+The mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase brought
+another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.
+
+"I gwan tell you," said the _marchande_; "'t is becyaze dey got a 'fixed
+wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the general ha, ha. "Oh,
+ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"
+
+She made a gesture for attention.
+
+"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n
+loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow de cyaht gotteh
+be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is heel'"--she suited the action
+to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say:
+'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh country gittin' _too_ free!'"
+
+"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks is werry
+kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--dey _wants to b'lieb_ we is. W'y,
+you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem
+weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey
+b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' dey _knows_ dey lak it de bess."
+
+The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see
+the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving,
+with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their
+poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see
+these efforts meet, or seem to meet, some degree of success. Happily man
+cannot so place his brother that his misery will continue unmitigated.
+You may dwarf a man to the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he
+will put out green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the
+dwarfed classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a
+crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.
+
+To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could reach to
+the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one of the
+population. She had certain affections toward people and places; but
+they were not of a consuming sort.
+
+As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are fine and
+keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why? Because we get them
+as we get our old swords and gems and laces--from our grandsires,
+mothers, and all. Refined they are--after centuries of refining. But the
+feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African
+savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and
+blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning,
+nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the
+rest--she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human
+feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her
+childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with
+pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an
+additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her
+since. She had had children, assorted colors--had one with her now, the
+black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and
+there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere
+within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for.
+Husbands--like the Samaritan woman's. We know she was a constant singer
+and laugher.
+
+And so on that day, when Honoré Grandissime had advised the
+Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid demonstration
+of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his little capital,
+Clemence went up one street and down another, singing her song and
+laughing her professional merry laugh. How could it be otherwise? Let
+events take any possible turn, how could it make any difference to
+Clemence? What could she hope to gain? What could she fear to lose? She
+sold some of her goods to Casa Calvo's Spanish guard and sang them a
+Spanish song; some to Claiborne's soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle
+with unclean words of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers'
+laughter; some to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious
+comment or two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their
+Américain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and (after going
+home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she sold some more of her
+wares to the excited groups of Creoles to which we have had occasion to
+allude, and from whom, insensible as she was to ribaldry, she was glad
+to escape. The day now drawing to a close, she turned her steps toward
+her wonted crouching-place, the willow avenue on the levee, near the
+Place d'Armes. But she had hardly defined this decision clearly in her
+mind, and had but just turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song
+attracted an ear in a second-story room under whose window she was
+passing. As usual, it was fitted to the passing event:
+
+     "_Apportez moi mo' sabre,
+     Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum_."
+
+"Run, fetch that girl here," said Dr. Keene to the slave woman who had
+just entered his room with a pitcher of water.
+
+"Well, old eavesdropper," he said, as Clemence came, "what is the
+scandal to-day?"
+
+Clemence laughed.
+
+"You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth'n' 'tall 'bout nobody. I'se a
+nigga w'at mine my own business."
+
+"Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on outside."
+
+"I d' no noth'n' 'bout no goin's on; got no time fo' sit down, me; got
+sell my cakes. I don't goin' git mix' in wid no white folks's doin's."
+
+"Hush, you old hypocrite; I will buy all your cakes. Put them out there
+on the table."
+
+The invalid, sitting up in bed, drew a purse from behind his pillow and
+tossed her a large price. She tittered, courtesied and received
+the money.
+
+"Well, well, Mawse Chawlie, 'f you ain' de funni'st gen'leman I knows,
+to be sho!"
+
+"Have you seen Joseph Frowenfeld to-day?" he asked.
+
+"He, he, he! W'at I got do wid Mawse Frowenfel'? I goes on de off side
+o' sich folks--folks w'at cann' 'have deyself no bette'n dat--he, he,
+he! At de same time I did happen, jis chancin' by accident, to see 'im."
+
+"How is he?"
+
+Dr. Keene made plain by his manner that any sensational account would
+receive his instantaneous contempt, and she answered within bounds.
+
+"Well, now, tellin' the simple trufe, he ain' much hurt."
+
+The doctor turned slowly and cautiously in bed.
+
+"Have you seen Honoré Grandissime?"
+
+"W'y--das funny you ass me dat. I jis now see 'im dis werry minnit."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Jis gwine into de house wah dat laydy live w'at 'e runned over dat ah
+time."
+
+"Now, you old hag," cried the sick man, his weak, husky voice trembling
+with passion, "you know you're telling me a lie."
+
+"No, Mawse Chawlie," she protested with a coward's frown, "I swah I
+tellin' you de God's trufe!"
+
+"Hand me my clothes off that chair."
+
+"Oh! but, Mawse Chawlie--"
+
+The little doctor cursed her. She did as she was bid, and made as if to
+leave the room.
+
+"Don't you go away."
+
+"But Mawse Chawlie, you' undress'--he, he!"
+
+She was really abashed and half frightened.
+
+"I know that; and you have got to help me put my clothes on."
+
+"You gwan kill yo'se'f, Mawse Chawlie," she said, handling a garment.
+
+"Hold your black tongue."
+
+She dressed him hastily, and he went down the stairs of his
+lodging-house and out into the street. Clemence went in search of
+her master.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE EAGLE VISITS THE DOVES IN THEIR NEST
+
+
+Alphonsina--only living property of Aurora and Clotilde--was called upon
+to light a fire in the little parlor. Elsewhere, although the day was
+declining, few persons felt such a need; but in No. 19 rue Bienville
+there were two chilling influences combined requiring an artificial
+offset. One was the ground under the floor, which was only three inches
+distant, and permanently saturated with water; the other was despair.
+
+Before this fire the two ladies sat down together like watchers, in that
+silence and vacuity of mind which come after an exhaustive struggle
+ending in the recognition of the inevitable; a torpor of thought, a
+stupefaction of feeling, a purely negative state of joylessness sequent
+to the positive state of anguish. They were now both hungry, but in want
+of some present friend acquainted with the motions of mental distress
+who could guess this fact and press them to eat. By their eyes it was
+plain they had been weeping much; by the subdued tone, too, of their
+short and infrequent speeches.
+
+Alphonsina, having made the fire, went out with a bundle. It was
+Aurora's last good dress. She was going to try to sell it.
+
+"It ought not to be so hard," began Clotilde, in a quiet manner of
+contemplating some one else's difficulty, but paused with the saying
+uncompleted, and sighed under her breath.
+
+"But it _is_ so hard," responded Aurora.
+
+"No, it ought not to be so hard--"
+
+"How, not so hard?"
+
+"It is not so hard to live," said Clotilde; "but it is hard to be
+ladies. You understand--" she knit her fingers, dropped them into her
+lap and turned her eyes toward Aurora, who responded with the same
+motions, adding the crossing of her silk-stockinged ankles before
+the fire.
+
+"No," said Aurora, with a scintillation of irrepressible mischief in her
+eyes.
+
+"After all," pursued Clotilde, "what troubles us is not how to make a
+living, but how to get a living without making it."
+
+"Ah! that would be magnificent!" said Aurora, and then added, more
+soberly; "but we are compelled to make a living."
+
+"No."
+
+"No-o? Ah! what do you mean with your 'no'?"
+
+"I mean it is just the contrary; we are compelled not to make a living.
+Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skillful with the
+needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could
+nurse the sick; but I must not. I could be a confectioner, a milliner,
+a dressmaker, a vest-maker, a cleaner of gloves and laces, a dyer, a
+bird-seller, a mattress-maker, an upholsterer, a dancing-teacher, a
+florist--"
+
+"Oh!" softly exclaimed Aurora, in English, "you could be--you know
+w'ad?--an egcellen' drug-cl'--ah, ha, ha!"
+
+"Now--"
+
+But the threatened irruption was averted by a look of tender apology
+from Aurora, in reply to one of martyrdom from Clotilde.
+
+"My angel daughter," said Aurora, "if society has decreed that ladies
+must be ladies, then that is our first duty; our second is to live. Do
+you not see why it is that this practical world does not permit ladies
+to make a living? Because if they could, none of them would ever consent
+to be married. Ha! women talk about marrying for love; but society is
+too sharp to trust them, yet! It makes it _necessary_ to marry. I will
+tell you the honest truth; some days when I get very, very hungry, and
+we have nothing but rice--all because we are ladies without male
+protectors--I think society could drive even me to marriage!--for your
+sake, though, darling; of course, only for your sake!"
+
+"Never!" replied Clotilde; "for my sake, never; for your own sake if you
+choose. I should not care. I should be glad to see you do so if it would
+make you happy; but never for my sake and never for hunger's sake; but
+for love's sake, yes; and God bless thee, pretty maman."
+
+"Clotilde, dear," said the unconscionable widow, "let me assure you,
+once for all,--starvation is preferable. I mean for me, you understand,
+simply for me; that is my feeling on the subject."
+
+Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon her
+deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie, and sighed
+softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and stretched
+out her feet.
+
+"I wish Alphonsina would come back," she said. "Ah!" she added, hearing
+a footfall on the step outside the street door, "there she is."
+
+She arose and drew the bolt. Unseen to her, the person whose footsteps
+she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted to knock, but
+pausing to "makeup his mind." He heard the bolt shoot back, recognized
+the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here again he was robbed of
+volition, rapped.
+
+"That is not Alphonsina!"
+
+The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.
+
+"But you must open it," whispered Clotilde, half rising.
+
+Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson. Clotilde rose
+up quickly. The gentleman lifted his hat.
+
+"Madame Nancanou."
+
+"M. Grandissime?"
+
+"Oui, Madame."
+
+For once, Aurora was in an uncontrollable flutter. She stammered, lost
+her breath, and even spoke worse French than she needed to have done.
+
+"Be pl--pleased, sir--to enter. Clotilde, my daughter--Monsieur
+Grandissime. P-please be seated, sir. Monsieur Grandissime,"--she
+dropped into a chair with an air of vivacity pitiful to behold,--"I
+suppose you have come for the rent." She blushed even more violently
+than before, and her hand stole upward upon her heart to stay its
+violent beating. "Clotilde, dear, I should be glad if you would put the
+fire before the screen; it is so much too warm." She pushed her chair
+back and shaded her face with her hand. "I think the warmer is growing
+weather outside, is it--is it not?"
+
+The struggles of a wounded bird could not have been more piteous.
+Monsieur Grandissime sought to speak. Clotilde, too, nerved by the sight
+of her mother's embarrassment, came to her support, and she and the
+visitor spoke in one breath.
+
+"Maman, if Monsieur--pardon--"
+
+"Madame Nancanou, the--pardon, Mademoiselle--"
+
+"I have presumed to call upon you," resumed M. Grandissime, addressing
+himself now to both ladies at once, "to see if I may enlist you in a
+purely benevolent undertaking in the interest of one who has been
+unfortunate--a common acquaintance--"
+
+"Common acquaint--" interrupted Aurora, with a hostile lighting of her
+eyes.
+
+"I believe so--Professor Frowenfeld." M. Grandissme saw Clotilde start,
+and in her turn falsely accuse the fire by shading her face: but it was
+no time to stop. "Ladies," he continued, "please allow me, for the sake
+of the good it may effect, to speak plainly and to the point."
+
+The ladies expressed acquiescence by settling themselves to hear.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld had the extraordinary misfortune this morning to
+incur the suspicion of having entered a house for the purpose of--at
+least, for a bad design--"
+
+"He is innocent!" came from Clotilde, against her intention; Aurora
+covertly put out a hand, and Clotilde clutched it nervously.
+
+"As, for example, robbery," said the self-recovered Aurora, ignoring
+Clotilde's look of protestation.
+
+"Call it so," responded M. Grandissime. "Have you heard at whose house
+this was?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"It was at the house of Palmyre Philosophe."
+
+"Palmyre Philosophe!" exclaimed Aurora, in low astonishment. Clotilde
+let slip, in a tone of indignant incredulity, a soft "Ah!" Aurora
+turned, and with some hope that M. Grandissime would not understand,
+ventured to say in Spanish, quietly:
+
+"Come, come, this will never do."
+
+And Clotilde replied in the same tongue:
+
+"I know it, but he is innocent."
+
+"Let us understand each other," said their visitor. "There is not the
+faintest idea in the mind of one of us that Professor Frowenfeld is
+guilty of even an intention of wrong; otherwise I should not be here. He
+is a man simply incapable of anything ignoble."
+
+Clotilde was silent. Aurora answered promptly, with the air of one not
+to be excelled in generosity:
+
+"Certainly, he is very incapabl'."
+
+"Still," resumed the visitor, turning especially to Clotilde, "the known
+facts are these, according to his own statement: he was in the house of
+Palmyre on some legitimate business which, unhappily, he considers
+himself on some account bound not to disclose, and by some mistake of
+Palmyre's old Congo woman, was set upon by her and wounded, barely
+escaping with a whole skull into the street, an object of public
+scandal. Laying aside the consideration of his feelings, his reputation
+is at stake and likely to be ruined unless the affair can be explained
+clearly and satisfactorily, and at once, by his friends."
+
+"And you undertake--" began Aurora.
+
+"Madame Nancanou," said Honoré Grandissime, leaning toward her
+earnestly, "you know--I must beg leave to appeal to your candor and
+confidence--you know everything concerning Palmyre that I know. You know
+me, and who I am; you know it is not for me to undertake to confer with
+Palmyre. I know, too, her old affection for you; she lives but a little
+way down this street upon which you live; there is still daylight
+enough at your disposal; if you will, you can go to see her, and get
+from her a full and complete exoneration of this young man. She cannot
+come to you; she is not fit to leave her room."
+
+"Cannot leave her room?"
+
+"I am, possibly, violating confidence in this disclosure, but it is
+unavoidable--you have to know: she is not fully recovered from a
+pistol-shot wound received between two and three weeks ago."
+
+"Pistol-shot wound!"
+
+Both ladies started forward with open lips and exclamations of
+amazement.
+
+"Received from a third person--not myself and not Professor
+Frowenfeld--in a desperate attempt made by her to avenge the wrongs
+which she has suffered, as you, Madam, as well as I, are aware, at the
+hands of--"
+
+Aurora rose up with a majestic motion for the speaker to desist.
+
+"If it is to mention the person of whom your allusion reminds me, that
+you have honored us with a call this evening, Monsieur--"
+
+Her eyes were flashing as he had seen them flash in front of the Place
+d'Armes.
+
+"I beg you not to suspect me of meanness," he answered, gently, and with
+a remonstrative smile. "I have been trying all day, in a way unnecessary
+to explain, to be generous."
+
+"I suppose you are incapabl'," said Aurora, following her double
+meaning with that combination of mischievous eyes and unsmiling face of
+which she was master. She resumed her seat, adding: "It is generous for
+you to admit that Palmyre has suffered wrongs."
+
+"It _would_ be," he replied, "to attempt to repair them, seeing that I
+am not responsible for them, but this I cannot claim yet to have done. I
+have asked of you, Madam, a generous act. I might ask another of you
+both jointly. It is to permit me to say without offence, that there is
+one man, at least, of the name of Grandissime who views with regret and
+mortification the yet deeper wrongs which you are even now suffering."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, inwardly ready for fierce tears, but with no
+outward betrayal save a trifle too much grace and an over-bright smile,
+"Monsieur is much mistaken; we are quite comfortable and happy, wanting
+nothing, eh, Clotilde?--not even our rights, ha, ha!"
+
+She rose and let Alphonsina in. The bundle was still in the negress's
+arms. She passed through the room and disappeared in the direction of
+the kitchen.
+
+"Oh! no, sir, not at all," repeated Aurora, as she once more sat down.
+
+"You ought to want your rights," said M. Grandissime. "You ought to have
+them."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+Aurora was really finding it hard to conceal her growing excitement,
+and turned, with a faint hope of relief, toward Clotilde.
+
+Clotilde, looking only at their visitor, but feeling her mother's
+glance, with a tremulous and half-choked voice, said eagerly:
+
+"Then why do you not give them to us?"
+
+"Ah!" interposed Aurora, "we shall get them to-morrow, when the sheriff
+comes."
+
+And, thereupon what did Clotilde do but sit bolt upright, with her hands
+in her lap, and let the tears roll, tear after tear, down her cheeks.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," said Aurora, smiling still, "those that you see are
+really tears. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, I really have to laugh; for I just
+happened to remember our meeting at the masked ball last September. We
+had such a pleasant evening and were so much indebted to you for our
+enjoyment,--particularly myself,--little thinking, you know, that you
+were one of that great family which believes we ought to have our
+rights, you know. There are many people who ought to have their rights.
+There was Bras-Coupé; indeed, he got them--found them in the swamp.
+Maybe Clotilde and I shall find ours in the street. When we unmasked in
+the theatre, you know, I did not know you were my landlord, and you did
+not know that I could not pay a few picayunes of rent. But you must
+excuse those tears; Clotilde is generally a brave little woman, and
+would not be so rude as to weep before a stranger; but she is weak
+to-day--we are both weak to-day, from the fact that we have eaten
+nothing since early morning, although we have abundance of food--for
+want of appetite, you understand. You must sometimes be affected the
+same way, having the care of so much wealth _of all sorts_."
+
+Honoré Grandissime had risen to his feet and was standing with one hand
+on the edge of the lofty mantel, his hat in the other dropped at his
+side and his eye fixed upon Aurora's beautiful face, whence her small
+nervous hand kept dashing aside the tears through which she defiantly
+talked and smiled. Clotilde sat with clenched hands buried in her lap,
+looking at Aurora and still weeping.
+
+And M. Grandissime was saying to himself:
+
+"If I do this thing now--if I do it here--I do it on an impulse; I do it
+under constraint of woman's tears; I do it because I love this woman; I
+do it to get out of a corner; I do it in weakness, not in strength; I do
+it without having made up my mind whether or not it is the best thing
+to do."
+
+And then, without intention, with scarcely more consciousness of
+movement than belongs to the undermined tree which settles, roots and
+all, into the swollen stream, he turned and moved toward the door.
+
+Clotilde rose.
+
+"Monsieur Grandissime."
+
+He stopped and looked back.
+
+"We will see Palmyre at once, according to your request."
+
+He turned his eyes toward Aurora.
+
+"Yes," said she, and she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed
+aloud.
+
+She heard his footstep again; it reached the door; the door
+opened--closed; she heard his footstep again; was he gone?
+
+He was gone.
+
+The two women threw themselves into each other's arms and wept.
+Presently Clotilde left the room. She came back in a moment from the
+rear apartment, with a bonnet and veil in her hands.
+
+"No," said Aurora, rising quickly, "I must do it."
+
+"There is no time to lose," said Clotilde. "It will soon be dark."
+
+It was hardly a minute before Aurora was ready to start. A kiss, a
+sorrowful look of love exchanged, the veil dropped over the swollen
+eyes, and Aurora was gone.
+
+A minute passed, hardly more, and--what was this?--the soft patter of
+Aurora's knuckles on the door.
+
+"Just here at the corner I saw Palmyre leaving her house and walking
+down the rue Royale. We must wait until morn--"
+
+Again a footfall on the doorstep, and the door, which was standing ajar,
+was pushed slightly by the force of the masculine knock which followed.
+
+"Allow me," said the voice of Honoré Grandissime, as Aurora bowed at the
+door. "I should have handed you this; good-day."
+
+She received a missive. It was long, like an official document; it bore
+evidence of having been carried for some hours in a coat-pocket, and was
+folded in one of those old, troublesome ways in use before the days of
+envelopes. Aurora pulled it open.
+
+"It is all figures; light a candle."
+
+The candle was lighted by Clotilde and held over Aurora's shoulder; they
+saw a heading and footing more conspicuous than the rest of the writing.
+
+The heading read:
+
+     "_Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, owners of Fausse Rivière
+     Plantation, in account with Honoré Grandissime_."
+
+The footing read:
+
+     _ "Balance at credit, subject to order of Aurora and Clotilde
+     Nancanou, $105,000.00_."
+
+The date followed:
+
+     "_March_ 9, 1804."
+
+and the signature:
+
+     "_H. Grandissime_."
+
+A small piece of torn white paper slipped from the account to the floor.
+Clotilde's eye followed it, but Aurora, without acknowledgement of
+having seen it, covered it with her foot.
+
+In the morning Aurora awoke first. She drew from under her pillow this
+slip of paper. She had not dared look at it until now. The writing on
+it had been roughly scratched down with a pencil. It read:
+
+     "_Not for love of woman, but in the name of justice and the
+     fear of God_."
+
+"And I was so cruel," she whispered.
+
+Ah! Honoré Grandissime, she was kind to that little writing! She did not
+put it back under her pillow; she _kept it warm_, Honoré Grandissime,
+from that time forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+BAD FOR CHARLIE KEENE
+
+
+On the same evening of which we have been telling, about the time that
+Aurora and Clotilde were dropping their last tear of joy over the
+document of restitution, a noticeable figure stood alone at the corner
+of the rue du Canal and the rue Chartres. He had reached there and
+paused, just as the brighter glare of the set sun was growing dim above
+the tops of the cypresses. After walking with some rapidity of step, he
+had stopped aimlessly, and laid his hand with an air of weariness upon a
+rotting China-tree that leaned over the ditch at the edge of the
+unpaved walk.
+
+"Setting in cypress," he murmured. We need not concern ourselves as to
+his meaning.
+
+One could think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street was
+the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the open
+plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of live-oak
+and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of these objects
+were already darkening. At one or two points the sky was reflected from
+marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously the old house and
+willow-copse of Jean Poquelin. Down the empty street or road, which
+stretched with arrow-like straightness toward the northwest, the
+draining-canal that gave it its name tapered away between occasional
+overhanging willows and beside broken ranks of rotting palisades, its
+foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding and purpling under the swiftly
+waning light, and ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The
+observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his
+glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed
+quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every
+cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined
+indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of
+ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around. As his eye passed
+them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary view, he sighed
+heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then again--"Dissolution! order of
+the day--"
+
+A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional
+exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling up
+and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by the
+occasional cutting of his fin above the water.
+
+He spoke again:
+
+"It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves."
+
+His speech was French. He straightened up, smote the tree softly with
+his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the very truth
+be told, as belongs by right to a lover. And yet his mind did not
+dwell on love.
+
+He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing hither
+and thither through the deep of his meditations went with him. As he
+turned into the rue Chartres it showed itself thus:
+
+"Right; it is but right;" he shook his head slowly--"it is but right."
+
+In the rue Douane he spoke again:
+
+"Ah! Frowenfeld"--and smiled unpleasantly, with his head down.
+
+And as he made yet another turn, and took his meditative way down the
+city's front, along the blacksmith's shops in the street afterward
+called Old Levee, he resumed, in English, and with a distinctness that
+made a staggering sailor halt and look after him:
+
+"There are but two steps to civilization, the first easy, the second
+difficult; to construct--to reconstruct--ah! there it is! the tearing
+down! The tear'--"
+
+He was still, but repeated the thought by a gesture of distress turned
+into a slow stroke of the forehead.
+
+"Monsieur Honoré Grandissime," said a voice just ahead.
+
+"_Eh, bien_?"
+
+At the mouth of an alley, in the dim light of the streep lamp, stood the
+dark figure of Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c., holding up the loosely
+hanging form of a small man, the whole front of whose clothing was
+saturated with blood.
+
+"Why, Charlie Keene! Let him down again, quickly--quickly; do not hold
+him so!"
+
+"Hands off," came in a ghastly whisper from the shape.
+
+"Oh, Chahlie, my boy--"
+
+"Go and finish your courtship," whispered the doctor.
+
+"Oh Charlie, I have just made it forever impossible!"
+
+"Then help me back to my bed; I don't care to die in the street."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+MORE REPARATION
+
+
+"That is all," said the fairer Honoré, outside Doctor Keene's sick-room
+about ten o'clock at night. He was speaking to the black son of
+Clemence, who had been serving as errand-boy for some hours. He spoke
+in a low tone just without the half-open door, folding again a paper
+which the lad had lately borne to the apothecary of the rue Royale, and
+had now brought back with Joseph's answer written under
+Honoré's inquiry.
+
+"That is all," said the other Honoré, standing partly behind the first,
+as the eyes of his little menial turned upon him that deprecatory glance
+of inquiry so common to slave children. The lad went a little way down
+the corridor, curled up upon the floor against the wall, and was soon
+asleep. The fairer Honoré handed the darker the slip of paper; it was
+received and returned in silence. The question was:
+
+     "_Can you state anything positive concerning the duel_?"
+
+And the reply:
+
+     "_Positively there will be none. Sylvestre my sworn friend for
+     life_."
+
+The half-brothers sat down under a dim hanging lamp in the corridor, and
+except that every now and then one or the other stepped noiselessly to
+the door to look in upon the sleeping sick man, or in the opposite
+direction to moderate by a push with the foot the snoring of Clemence's
+"boy," they sat the whole night through in whispered counsel.
+
+The one, at the request of the other, explained how he had come to be
+with the little doctor in such extremity.
+
+It seems that Clemence, seeing and understanding the doctor's
+imprudence, had sallied out with the resolve to set some person on his
+track. We have said that she went in search of her master. Him she met,
+and though she could not really count him one of the doctor's friends,
+yet, rightly believing in his humanity, she told him the matter. He set
+off in what was for him a quick pace in search of the rash invalid, was
+misdirected by a too confident child and had given up the hope of
+finding him, when a faint sound of distress just at hand drew him into
+an alley, where, close down against a wall, with his face to the earth,
+lay Doctor Keene. The f.m.c. had just raised him and borne him out of
+the alley when Honoré came up.
+
+"And you say that, when you would have inquired for him at Frowenfeld's,
+you saw Palmyre there, standing and talking with Frowenfeld? Tell me
+more exactly."
+
+And the other, with that grave and gentle economy of words which made
+his speech so unique, recounted what we amplify:
+
+Palmyre had needed no pleading to induce her to exonerate Joseph. The
+doctors were present at Frowenfeld's in more than usual number. There
+was unusualness, too, in their manner and their talk. They were not
+entirely free from the excitement of the day, and as they talked--with
+an air of superiority, of Creole inflammability, and with some
+contempt--concerning Camille Brahmin's and Charlie Mandarin's efforts to
+precipitate a war, they were yet visibly in a state of expectation.
+Frowenfeld, they softly said, had in his odd way been indiscreet among
+these inflammables at Maspero's just when he could least afford to be
+so, and there was no telling what they might take the notion to do to
+him before bedtime. All that over and above the independent, unexplained
+scandal of the early morning. So Joseph and his friends this evening,
+like Aurora and Clotilde in the morning, were, as we nowadays say of
+buyers and sellers, "apart," when suddenly and unannounced, Palmyre
+presented herself among them. When the f.m.c. saw her, she had already
+handed Joseph his hat and with much sober grace was apologizing for her
+slave's mistake. All evidence of her being wounded was concealed. The
+extraordinary excitement of the morning had not hurt her, and she seemed
+in perfect health. The doctors sat or stood around and gave rapt
+attention to her patois, one or two translating it for Joseph, and he
+blushing to the hair, but standing erect and receiving it at second hand
+with silent bows. The f.m.c. had gazed on her for a moment, and then
+forced himself away. He was among the few who had not heard the morning
+scandal, and he did not comprehend the evening scene. He now asked
+Honoré concerning it, and quietly showed great relief when it was
+explained.
+
+Then Honoré, breaking a silence, called the attention of the f.m.c. to
+the fact that the latter had two tenants at Number 19 rue Bienville.
+Honoré became the narrator now and told all, finally stating that the
+die was cast--restitution made.
+
+And then the darker Honoré made a proposition to the other, which, it
+is little to say, was startling. They discussed it for hours.
+
+"So just a condition," said the merchant, raising his whisper so much
+that the rentier laid a hand in his elbow,--"such mere justice," he
+said, more softly, "ought to be an easy condition. God knows"--he lifted
+his glance reverently--"my very right to exist comes after yours. You
+are the elder."
+
+The solemn man offered no disclaimer.
+
+What could the proposition be which involved so grave an issue, and to
+which M. Grandissime's final answer was "I will do it"?
+
+It was that Honoré f.m.c. should become a member of the mercantile house
+of H. Grandissime, enlisting in its capital all his wealth. And the one
+condition was that the new style should be _Grandissime Brothers_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+THE PIQUE-EN-TERRE LOSES ONE OF HER CREW
+
+
+Ask the average resident of New Orleans if his town is on an island, and
+he will tell you no. He will also wonder how any one could have got that
+notion,--so completely has Orleans Island, whose name at the beginning
+of the present century was in everybody's mouth, been forgotten. It was
+once a question of national policy, a point of difference between
+Republican and Federalist, whether the United States ought to buy this
+little strip of semi-submerged land, or whether it would not be more
+righteous to steal it. The Kentuckians kept the question at a red heat
+by threatening to become an empire by themselves if one course or the
+other was not taken; but when the First Consul offered to sell all
+Louisiana, our commissioners were quite robbed of breath. They had
+approached to ask a hair from the elephant's tail, and were offered
+the elephant.
+
+For Orleans Island--island it certainly was until General Jackson closed
+Bayou Manchac--is a narrow, irregular, flat tract of forest, swamp,
+city, prairie and sea-marsh, lying east and west, with the Mississippi,
+trending southeastward, for its southern boundary, and for its northern,
+a parallel and contiguous chain of alternate lakes and bayous, opening
+into the river through Bayou Manchac, and into the Gulf through the
+passes of the Malheureuse Islands. On the narrowest part of it stands
+New Orleans. Turning and looking back over the rear of the town, one may
+easily see from her steeples Lake Pontchartrain glistening away to the
+northern horizon, and in his fancy extend the picture to right and left
+till Pontchartrain is linked in the west by Pass Manchac to Lake
+Maurepas, and in the east by the Rigolets and Chef Menteur to
+Lake Borgne.
+
+An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little streams have
+of running away from the big ones. The river makes its own bed and its
+own banks, and continuing season after season, through ages of
+alternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those banks, creates a
+ridge which thus becomes a natural elevated aqueduct. Other slightly
+elevated ridges mark the present or former courses of minor outlets, by
+which the waters of the Mississippi have found the sea. Between these
+ridges lie the cypress swamps, through whose profound shades the clear,
+dark, deep bayous creep noiselessly away into the tall grasses of the
+shaking prairies. The original New Orleans was built on the Mississippi
+ridge, with one of these forest-and-water-covered basins stretching back
+behind her to westward and northward, closed in by Metairie Ridge and
+Lake Pontchartrain. Local engineers preserve the tradition that the
+Bayou Sauvage once had its rise, so to speak, in Toulouse street. Though
+depleted by the city's present drainage system and most likely poisoned
+by it as well, its waters still move seaward in a course almost due
+easterly, and empty into Chef Menteur, one of the watery threads
+of a tangled skein of "passes" between the lakes and the open
+Gulf. Three-quarters of a century ago this Bayou Sauvage (or
+Gentilly--corruption of Chantilly) was a navigable stream of wild and
+sombre beauty.
+
+On a certain morning in August, 1804, and consequently some five months
+after the events last mentioned, there emerged from the darkness of
+Bayou Sauvage into the prairie-bordered waters of Chef Menteur, while
+the morning star was still luminous in the sky above and in the water
+below, and only the practised eye could detect the first glimmer of day,
+a small, stanch, single-masted, broad and very light-draught boat, whose
+innocent character, primarily indicated in its coat of many colors,--the
+hull being yellow below the water line and white above, with tasteful
+stripings of blue and red,--was further accentuated by the peaceful name
+of _Pique-en-terre_ (the Sandpiper).
+
+She seemed, too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she would have
+liked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit this, and in a
+moment more the water was rippling after her swift rudder, as she glided
+away in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes. But when she had left behind
+her the mouth of the passage, she changed her course and, leaving the
+Pointe on her left, bore down toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bent
+upon passing through the Rigolets.
+
+We know not how to describe the joyousness of the effect when at length
+one leaves behind him the shadow and gloom of the swamp, and there
+bursts upon his sight the widespread, flower-decked, bird-haunted
+prairies of Lake Catharine. The inside and outside of a prison scarcely
+furnish a greater contrast; and on this fair August morning the contrast
+was at its strongest. The day broke across a glad expanse of cool and
+fragrant green, silver-laced with a network of crisp salt pools and
+passes, lakes, bayous and lagoons, that gave a good smell, the inspiring
+odor of interclasped sea and shore, and both beautified and perfumed
+the happy earth, laid bare to the rising sun. Waving marshes of wild
+oats, drooping like sated youth from too much pleasure; watery acres hid
+under crisp-growing greenth starred with pond-lilies and rippled by
+water-fowl; broad stretches of high grass, with thousands of ecstatic
+wings palpitating above them; hundreds of thousands of white and pink
+mallows clapping their hands in voiceless rapture, and that amazon queen
+of the wild flowers, the morning-glory, stretching her myriad lines,
+lifting up the trumpet and waving her colors, white, azure and pink,
+with lacings of spider's web, heavy with pearls and diamonds--the gifts
+of the summer night. The crew of the _Pique-en-terre_ saw all these and
+felt them; for, whatever they may have been or failed to be, they were
+men whose heartstrings responded to the touches of nature. One alone of
+their company, and he the one who should have felt them most, showed
+insensibility, sighed laughingly and then laughed sighingly, in the face
+of his fellows and of all this beauty, and profanely confessed that his
+heart's desire was to get back to his wife. He had been absent from her
+now for nine hours!
+
+But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed and left
+astern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the after-larboard-quarter,
+the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far and wide their dazzling white
+and blue, and, as the little boat issues from the deep channel of the
+Rigolets, the white-armed waves catch her and toss her like a merry
+babe. A triumph for the helmsman--he it is who sighs, at intervals of
+tiresome frequency, for his wife. He had, from the very starting-place
+in the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets
+as--wind and tide considered--the most practicable of all the passes.
+Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint
+of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one hereafter
+dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation? He
+knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster,
+much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon which he
+was a little slow and doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebb
+tide--Pass Jean or Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, Chef
+Menteur,--
+
+Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf--the Gulf of Mexico--there
+appears a speck of white. It is known to those on board the
+_Pique-en-terre_, the moment it is descried, as the canvas of a large
+schooner. The opinion, first expressed by the youthful husband, who
+still reclines with the tiller held firmly under his arm, and then by
+another member of the company who sits on the centreboard-well, is
+unanimously adopted, that she is making for the Rigolets, will pass
+Petites Coquilles by eleven o'clock, and will tie up at the little port
+of St. Jean, on the bayou of the same name, before sundown, if the wind
+holds anywise as it is.
+
+On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his glass,
+and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the little sail
+just visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a half-deck, well
+filled with men, in all probability a pleasure party bound to the
+Chandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion, and passes into comments
+on the superior skill of landsmen over seamen in the handling of small
+sailing craft.
+
+By and by the two vessels near each other. They approach within hailing
+distance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the young
+man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from under
+a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner's one
+passenger:
+
+"Hello, Challie Keene."
+
+And the passenger more quietly answers back:
+
+"Hello, Raoul, is that you?"
+
+M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was he.
+
+"You kin hask Sylvestre!" he concluded.
+
+The doctor's eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men, the most
+of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting with
+their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark négligé of
+amateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry in
+their handsome faces which characterizes the Creole with his collar off.
+
+The mettlesome little doctor felt the odds against him in the exchange
+of greetings.
+
+"Ola, Dawctah!"
+
+"_Hé_, Doctah, _que-ce qui t'après fé?_"
+
+"_Ho, ho, compère Noyo!_"
+
+"_Comment va_, Docta?"
+
+A light peppering of profanity accompanied each salute.
+
+The doctor put on defensively a smile of superiority to the juniors and
+of courtesy to the others, and responsively spoke their names:
+
+"'Polyte--Sylvestre--Achille--Émile--ah! Agamemnon."
+
+The Doctor and Agamemnon raised their hats.
+
+As Agamemnon was about to speak, a general expostulatory outcry drowned
+his voice. The _Pique-en-terre_ was going about close abreast of the
+schooner, and angry questions and orders were flying at Raoul's head
+like a volley of eggs.
+
+"Messieurs," said Raoul, partially rising but still stooping over the
+tiller, and taking his hat off his bright curls with mock courtesy, "I
+am going back to New Orleans. I would not give _that_ for all the fish
+in the sea; I want to see my wife. I am going back to New Orleans to see
+my wife--and to congratulate the city upon your absence." Incredulity,
+expostulation, reproach, taunt, malediction--he smiled unmoved upon
+them all.
+
+"Messieurs, I _must_ go and see my wife."
+
+Amid redoubled outcries he gave the helm to Camille Brahmin, and
+fighting his way with his pretty feet against half-real efforts to throw
+him overboard, clambered forward to the mast, whence a moment later,
+with the help of the schooner-master's hand, he reached the deck of the
+larger vessel. The _Pique-en-terre_ turned, and with a little flutter
+spread her smooth wing and skimmed away.
+
+"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose third
+finger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom. "W'at you
+got to say to dat?"
+
+The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a thrill
+of anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love affair that
+did not include Clotilde Nancanou.
+
+"Whom have you married?"
+
+"De pritties' gal in de citty."
+
+The questioner controlled himself.
+
+"M-hum," he responded, with a contraction of the eyes.
+
+Raoul waited an instant for some kindlier comment, and finding the hope
+vain, suddenly assumed a look of delighted admiration.
+
+"Hi, yi, yi! Doctah, 'ow you har lookingue fine."
+
+The true look of the doctor was that he had not much longer to live. A
+smile of bitter humor passed over his face, and he looked for a near
+seat, saying:
+
+"How's Frowenfeld?"
+
+Raoul struck an ecstatic attitude and stretched forth his hand as if the
+doctor could not fail to grasp it. The invalid's heart sank like lead.
+
+"Frowenfeld has got her," he thought.
+
+"Well?" said he with a frown of impatience and restraint; and Raoul
+cried:
+
+"I sole my pigshoe!"
+
+The doctor could not help but laugh.
+
+"Shades of the masters!"
+
+"No; 'Louizyanna rif-using to hantre de h-Union.'"
+
+The doctor stood corrected.
+
+The two walked across the deck, following the shadow of the swinging
+sail. The doctor lay down in a low-swung hammock, and Raoul sat upon the
+deck _à la Turque_.
+
+"Come, come, Raoul, tell me, what is the news?"
+
+"News? Oh, I donno. You 'eard concernin' the dool?"
+
+"You don't mean to say--"
+
+"Yesseh!"
+
+"Agricola and Sylvestre?"
+
+"W'at de dev'! No! Burr an' 'Ammiltong; in Noo-Juzzy-las-June. Collonnel
+Burr, 'e--"
+
+"Oh, fudge! yes. How is Frowenfeld?"
+
+"'E's well. Guess 'ow much I sole my pigshoe."
+
+"Well, how much?"
+
+"Two 'ondred fifty." He laid himself out at length, his elbow on the
+deck, his head in his hand. "I believe I'm sorry I sole 'er."
+
+"I don't wonder. How's Honoré? Tell me what has happened. Remember, I've
+been away five months."
+
+"No; I am verrie glad dat I sole 'er. What? Ha! I should think so! If
+it have not had been fo' dat I would not be married to-day. You think I
+would get married on dat sal'rie w'at Proffis-or Frowenfel' was payin'
+me? Twenty-five dolla' de mont'? Docta Keene, no gen'leman h-ought to
+git married if 'e 'ave not anny'ow fifty dolla' de mont'! If I wasn' a
+h-artiz I wouldn' git married; I gie you my word!"
+
+"Yes," said the little doctor, "you are right. Now tell me the news."
+
+"Well, dat Cong-ress gone an' make--"
+
+"Raoul, stop. I know that Congress has divided the province into two
+territories; I know you Creoles think all your liberties are lost; I
+know the people are in a great stew because they are not allowed to
+elect their own officers and legislatures, and that in Opelousas and
+Attakapas they are as wild as their cattle about it--"
+
+"We 'ad two big mitting' about it," interrupted Raoul; "my bro'r-in-law
+speak at both of them!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Chahlie Mandarin."
+
+"Glad to hear it," said Doctor Keene,--which was the truth. "Besides
+that, I know Laussat has gone to Martinique; that the Américains have a
+newspaper, and that cotton is two-bits a pound. Now what I want to know
+is, how are my friends? What has Honoré done? What has Frowenfeld done?
+And Palmyre,--and Agricole? They hustled me away from here as if I had
+been caught trying to cut my throat. Tell me everything."
+
+And Raoul sank the artist and bridegroom in the historian, and told him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE NEWS
+
+
+"My cousin Honoré,--well, you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is 'ole fam'ly."
+
+"How so?" asked Doctor Keene, with a handkerchief over his face to
+shield his eyes from the sun.
+
+"Well,--ce't'nly 'e did! Di'n' 'e gave dat money to Aurora De
+Grapion?--one 'undred five t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de
+money my h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah! w'en I will swear on a
+stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win dat 'abitation
+fair!--If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to see it! I'll swear to
+it! Hah!"
+
+"And have she and her daughter actually got the money?"
+
+"She--an'--heh--daughtah--ac--shilly--got-'at-money-sir! W'at? Dey
+livin' in de rue Royale in mag-_niff_ycen' style on top de drug-sto' of
+Proffis-or Frowenfel'."
+
+"But how, over Frowenfeld's, when Frowenfeld's is a one-story--"
+
+"My dear frien'! Proffis-or Frowenfel' is _moove!_ You rickleck dat big
+new t'ree-story buildin' w'at jus' finished in de rue Royale, a lill mo'
+farther up town from his old shop? Well, we open dare _a big sto'!_ An'
+listen! You think Honoré di'n' bitrayed' 'is family? Madame Nancanou an'
+heh daughtah livin' upstair an' rissy-ving de finess soci'ty in de
+Province!--an' _me?_--downstair' meckin' pill! You call dat justice?"
+
+But Doctor Keene, without waiting for this question, had asked one:
+
+"Does Frowenfeld board with them?"
+
+"Psh-sh-sh! Board! Dey woon board de Marquis of Casa Calvo! I don't
+b'lieve dey would board Honoré Grandissime! All de king' an' queen' in
+de worl' couldn' board dare! No, sir!--'Owever, you know, I think dey
+are splendid ladies. Me an' my wife, we know them well. An' Honoré--I
+think my cousin Honoré's a splendid gen'leman, too." After a moment's
+pause he resumed, with a happy sigh, "Well, I don' care, I'm married. A
+man w'at's married, 'e don' care.
+
+"But I di'n' t'ink Honoré could ever do lak dat odder t'ing."
+
+"Do he and Joe Frowenfeld visit there?"
+
+"Doctah Keene," demanded Raoul, ignoring the question, "I hask you now,
+plain, don' you find dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honoré?"
+
+"What way?"
+
+"W'at? You dunno? You don' yeh 'ow 'e gone partner' wid a nigga?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Doctor Keene drew the handkerchief off his face and half lifted his
+feeble head.
+
+"Yesseh! 'e gone partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honoré
+Grandissime, seh!"
+
+The doctor dropped his head again and laid the handkerchief back on his
+face.
+
+"What do the family say to that?"
+
+"But w'at _can_ dey say? It save dem from ruin! At de sem time, me, I
+think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, but it is dat name
+w'at 'e give de h-establishmen'--Grandissime Frères! H-only for 'is
+money we would 'ave catch' dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and
+fedder. Grandissime Frères! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honoré no
+mo'. But I t'ink dass wrong. W'at you t'ink, Doctah?"
+
+That evening, at candle-light, Raoul got the right arm of his slender,
+laughing wife about his neck; but Doctor Keene tarried all night in
+suburb St. Jean. He hardly felt the moral courage to face the results of
+the last five months. Let us understand them better ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+AN INDIGNANT FAMILY AND A SMASHED SHOP
+
+
+It was indeed a fierce storm that had passed over the head of Honoré
+Grandissime. Taken up and carried by it, as it seemed to him, without
+volition, he had felt himself thrown here and there, wrenched, torn,
+gasping for moral breath, speaking the right word as if in delirium,
+doing the right deed as if by helpless instinct, and seeing himself in
+every case, at every turn, tricked by circumstance out of every vestige
+of merit. So it seemed to him. The long contemplated restitution was
+accomplished. On the morning when Aurora and Clotilde had expected to be
+turned shelterless into the open air, they had called upon him in his
+private office and presented the account of which he had put them in
+possession the evening before. He had honored it on the spot. To the two
+ladies who felt their own hearts stirred almost to tears of gratitude,
+he was--as he sat before them calm, unmoved, handling keen-edged facts
+with the easy rapidity of one accustomed to use them, smiling
+courteously and collectedly, parrying their expressions of
+appreciation--to them, we say, at least to one of them, he was "the
+prince of gentlemen." But, at the same time, there was within him,
+unseen, a surge of emotions, leaping, lashing, whirling, yet ever
+hurrying onward along the hidden, rugged bed of his honest intention.
+
+The other restitution, which even twenty-four hours earlier might have
+seemed a pure self-sacrifice, became a self-rescue. The f.m.c. was the
+elder brother. A remark of Honoré made the night they watched in the
+corridor by Doctor Keene's door, about the younger's "right to exist,"
+was but the echo of a conversation they had once had together in
+Europe. There they had practised a familiarity of intercourse which
+Louisiana would not have endured, and once, when speaking upon the
+subject of their common fatherhood, the f.m.c., prone to melancholy
+speech, had said:
+
+"You are the lawful son of Numa Grandissime; I had no right to be born."
+
+But Honoré quickly answered:
+
+"By the laws of men, it may be; but by the law of God's justice, you are
+the lawful son, and it is I who should not have been born."
+
+But, returned to Louisiana, accepting with the amiable, old-fashioned
+philosophy of conservatism the sins of the community, he had forgotten
+the unchampioned rights of his passive half-brother. Contact with
+Frowenfeld had robbed him of his pleasant mental drowsiness, and the
+oft-encountered apparition of the dark sharer of his name had become a
+slow-stepping, silent embodiment of reproach. The turn of events had
+brought him face to face with the problem of restitution, and he had
+solved it. But where had he come out? He had come out the beneficiary of
+this restitution, extricated from bankruptcy by an agreement which gave
+the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kinship which had always been
+his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!
+
+Such was the stress within. Then there was the storm without. The
+Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had reached
+them all that Honoré had met the question of titles by selling one of
+their largest estates. It was received with wincing frowns, indrawn
+breath, and lifted feet, but without protest, and presently with a smile
+of returning confidence.
+
+"Honoré knew; Honoré was informed; they had all authorized Honoré; and
+Honoré, though he might have his odd ways and notions, picked up during
+that unfortunate stay abroad, might safely be trusted to stand by the
+interests of his people."
+
+After the first shock some of them even raised a laugh:
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! Honoré would show those Yankees!"
+
+They went to his counting-room and elsewhere, in search of him, to smite
+their hands into the hands of their far-seeing young champion. But, as
+we have seen, they did not find him; none dreamed of looking for him in
+an enemy's camp (19 Bienville) or on the lonely suburban commons,
+talking to himself in the ghostly twilight; and the next morning, while
+Aurora and Clotilde were seated before him in his private office,
+looking first at the face and then at the back of two mighty drafts of
+equal amount on Philadelphia, the cry of treason flew forth to these
+astounded Grandissimes, followed by the word that the sacred fire was
+gone out in the Grandissime temple (counting-room), that Delilahs in
+duplicate were carrying off the holy treasures, and that the
+uncircumcised and unclean--even an f.m.c.--was about to be inducted into
+the Grandissime priesthood.
+
+Aurora and Clotilde were still there, when the various members of the
+family began to arrive and display their outlines in impatient
+shadow-play upon the glass door of the private office; now one, and now
+another, dallied with the doorknob and by and by obtruded their lifted
+hats and urgent, anxious faces half into the apartment; but Honoré would
+only glance toward them, and with a smile equally courteous,
+authoritative and fleeting, say:
+
+"Good-morning, Camille" (or Charlie--or Agamemnon, as the case might
+be); "I will see you later; let me trouble you to close the door."
+
+To add yet another strain, the two ladies, like frightened, rescued
+children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him to become the
+custodian and investor of their wealth. Ah, woman! who is a tempter like
+thee? But Honoré said no, and showed them the danger of such a course.
+
+"Suppose I should die suddenly. You might have trouble with my
+executors."
+
+The two beauties assented pensively; but in Aurora's bosom a great throb
+secretly responded that as for her, in that case, she should have no use
+for money--in a nunnery.
+
+"Would not Monsieur at least consent to be their financial adviser?"
+
+He hemmed, commenced a sentence twice, and finally said:
+
+"You will need an agent; some one to take full charge of your affairs;
+some person on whose sagacity and integrity you can place the fullest
+dependence."
+
+"Who, for instance?" asked Aurora.
+
+"I should say, without hesitation, Professor Frowenfeld, the apothecary.
+You know his trouble of yesterday is quite cleared up. You had not
+heard? Yes. He is not what we call an enterprising man, but--so much the
+better. Take him all in all, I would choose him above all others;
+if you--"
+
+Aurora interrupted him. There was an ill-concealed wildness in her eye
+and a slight tremor in her voice, as she spoke, which she had not
+expected to betray. The quick, though quiet eye of Honoré Grandissime
+saw it, and it thrilled him through.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime, I take the risk; I wish you to take care of my
+money."
+
+"But, Maman," said Clotilde, turning with a timid look to her mother,
+"If Monsieur Grandissime would rather not--"
+
+Aurora, feeling alarmed at what she had said, rose up. Clotilde and
+Honoré did the same, and he said:
+
+"With Professor Frowenfeld in charge of your affairs, I shall feel them
+not entirely removed from my care also. We are very good friends."
+
+Clotilde looked at her mother. The three exchanged glances. The ladies
+signified their assent and turned to go, but M. Grandissime
+stopped them.
+
+"By your leave, I will send for him. If you will be seated again--"
+
+They thanked him and resumed their seats; he excused himself, passed
+into the counting-room, and sent a messenger for the apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime's meeting with his kinsmen was a stormy one. Aurora and
+Clotilde heard the strife begin, increase, subside, rise again and
+decrease. They heard men stride heavily to and fro, they heard hands
+smite together, palms fall upon tables and fists upon desks, heard
+half-understood statement and unintelligible counter-statement and
+derisive laughter; and, in the midst of all, like the voice of a man who
+rules himself, the clear-noted, unimpassioned speech of Honoré, sounding
+so loftily beautiful in the ear of Aurora that when Clotilde looked at
+her, sitting motionless with her rapt eyes lifted up, those eyes came
+down to her own with a sparkle of enthusiasm, and she softly said:
+
+"It sounds like St. Gabriel!" and then blushed.
+
+Clotilde answered with a happy, meaning look, which intensified the
+blush, and then leaning affectionately forward and holding the maman's
+eyes with her own, she said:
+
+"You have my consent."
+
+"Saucy!" said Aurora. "Wait till I get my own."
+
+Some of his kinsmen Honoré pacified; some he silenced. He invited all to
+withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the
+invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they
+then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing"
+attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous
+cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana.
+You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of
+the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in
+unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by unflinching
+self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride revelling in
+ancestral, perennial rebellion against common sense.
+
+"That is Agricola," whispered Aurora, with lifted head and eyes dilated
+and askance, as one deep-chested voice roared above all others.
+
+Agricola stormed.
+
+"Uncle," Aurora by and by heard Honoré say, "shall I leave my own
+counting-room?"
+
+At that moment Joseph Frowenfeld entered, pausing with one hand on the
+outer rail. No one noticed him but Honoré, who was watching for him, and
+who, by a silent motion, directed him into the private office.
+
+"H-whe shake its dust from our feet!" said Agricola, gathering some
+young retainers by a sweep of his glance and going out down the stair in
+the arched way, unmoved by the fragrance of warm bread. On the banquette
+he harangued his followers.
+
+He said that in such times as these every lover of liberty should go
+armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians
+had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged
+before juries for asserting the human right of free trade or ridding the
+earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had
+been forged into thumbscrews, and a Congress which had bound itself to
+give them all the rights of American citizens--sorry boon!--was
+preparing to slip their birthright acres from under their feet, and
+leave them hanging, a bait to the vultures of the Américain immigration.
+Yes; the age of trickery! Its apostles, he said, were even then at work
+among their fellow-citizens, warping, distorting, blasting, corrupting,
+poisoning the noble, unsuspecting, confiding Creole mind. For months the
+devilish work had been allowed, by a patient, peace-loving people, to go
+on. But shall it go on forever? (Cries of "No!" "No!") The smell of
+white blood comes on the south breeze. Dessalines and Christophe had
+recommenced their hellish work. Virginia, too, trembles for the safety
+of her fair mothers and daughters. We know not what is being plotted in
+the canebrakes of Louisiana. But we know that in the face of these
+things the prelates of trickery are sitting in Washington allowing
+throats to go unthrottled that talked tenderly about the "negro slave;"
+we know worse: we know that mixed blood has asked for equal rights from
+a son of the Louisiana noblesse, and that those sacred rights have been
+treacherously, pusillanimously surrendered into its possession. Why did
+we not rise yesterday, when the public heart was stirred? The
+forbearance of this people would be absurd if it were not saintly. But
+the time has, come when Louisiana must protect herself! If there is one
+here who will not strike for his lands, his rights and the purity of his
+race, let him speak! (Cries of "We will rise now!" "Give us a leader!"
+"Lead the way!")
+
+"Kinsmen, friends," continued Agricola, "meet me at nightfall before the
+house of this too-long-spared mulatto. Come armed. Bring a few feet of
+stout rope. By morning the gentlemen of color will know their places
+better than they do to-day; h-whe shall understand each other! H-whe
+shall set the negrophiles to meditating."
+
+He waved them away.
+
+With a huzza the accumulated crowd moved off. Chance carried them up the
+rue Royale; they sang a song; they came to Frowenfeld's. It was an
+Américain establishment; that was against it. It was a gossiping place
+of Américain evening loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer's
+den--(we are on an ascending scale); its proprietor had refused
+employment to some there present, had refused credit to others, was an
+impudent condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten
+over the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse
+still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all,
+Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd stopped to
+have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless fellow in the
+throng--he was still singing--said: "Here's the place," and dropped two
+bricks through the glass of the show-window. Raoul, with a cry of
+retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it
+from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off
+struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's
+was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish
+that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the
+Governor's police were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.
+
+Joseph was sitting in M. Grandissime's private office, in council with
+him and the ladies, and Aurora was just saying:
+
+"Well, anny'ow, 'Sieur Frowenfel', ad laz you consen'!" and gathering
+her veil from her lap, when Raoul burst in, all sweat and rage.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', we ruin'! Ow pharmacie knock all in pieces! My
+pigshoe is los'!"
+
+He dropped into a chair and burst into tears.
+
+Shall we never learn to withhold our tears until we are sure of our
+trouble? Raoul little knew the joy in store for him. 'Polyte, it
+transpired the next day, had rushed in after the first volley of
+missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of
+asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and bore
+away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter the
+Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks later Honoré
+Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he was "betrothed,"
+purchased this painting and presented it to a club of _natural
+connoisseurs_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+OVER THE NEW STORE
+
+
+The accident of the ladies Nancanou making their new home over
+Frowenfeld's drug-store occurred in the following rather amusing way. It
+chanced that the building was about completed at the time that the
+apothecary's stock in trade was destroyed; Frowenfeld leased the lower
+floor. Honoré Grandissime f.m.c. was the owner. He being concealed from
+his enemies, Joseph treated with that person's inadequately remunerated
+employé. In those days, as still in the old French Quarter, it was not
+uncommon for persons, even of wealth, to make their homes over stores,
+and buildings were constructed with a view to their partition in this
+way. Hence, in Chartres and Decatur streets, to-day--and in the
+cross-streets between--so many store-buildings with balconies, dormer
+windows, and sometimes even belvideres. This new building caught the eye
+and fancy of Aurora and Clotilde. The apartments for the store were
+entirely isolated. Through a large _porte-cochère_, opening upon the
+banquette immediately beside and abreast of the store-front, one entered
+a high, covered carriage-way with a tessellated pavement and green
+plastered walls, and reached,--just where this way (corridor, the
+Creoles always called it) opened into a sunny court surrounded with
+narrow parterres,--a broad stairway leading to a hall over the
+"corridor" and to the drawing-rooms over the store. They liked it!
+Aurora would find out at once what sort of an establishment was likely
+to be opened below, and if that proved unexceptionable she would lease
+the upper part without more ado.
+
+Next day she said:
+
+"Clotilde, thou beautiful, I have signed the lease!"
+
+"Then the store below is to be occupied by a--what?"
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Guess a pharmacien!"
+
+Clotilde's lips parted, she was going to smile, when her thought changed
+and she blushed offendedly.
+
+"Not--"
+
+"'Sieur Frowenf--ah, ha, ha, ha!--_ha, ha, ha_!"
+
+Clotilde burst into tears.
+
+Still they moved in--it was written in the bond; and so did the
+apothecary; and probably two sensible young lovers never before nor
+since behaved with such abject fear of each other--for a time. Later,
+and after much oft-repeated good advice given to each separately and to
+both together, Honoré Grandissime persuaded them that Clotilde could
+make excellent use of a portion of her means by reenforcing Frowenfeld's
+very slender stock and well filling his rather empty-looking store, and
+so they signed regular articles of copartnership, blushing frightfully.
+
+Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honoré not; once Honoré had seen the
+ladies' moneys satisfactorily invested, he kept aloof. It is pleasant
+here to remark that neither Aurora nor Clotilde made any waste of their
+sudden acquisitions; they furnished their rooms with much beauty at
+moderate cost, and their _salon_ with artistic, not extravagant,
+elegance, and, for the sake of greater propriety, employed a decayed
+lady as housekeeper; but, being discreet in all other directions, they
+agreed upon one bold outlay--a volante.
+
+Almost any afternoon you might have seen this vehicle on the Terre aux
+Boeuf, or Bayou, or Tchoupitoulas Road; and because of the brilliant
+beauty of its occupants it became known from all other volantes as
+the "meteor."
+
+Frowenfeld's visits were not infrequent; he insisted on Clotdlde's
+knowing just what was being done with her money. Without indulging
+ourselves in the pleasure of contemplating his continued mental
+unfolding, we may say that his growth became more rapid in this season
+of universal expansion; love had entered into his still compacted soul
+like a cupid into a rose, and was crowding it wide open. However, as
+yet, it had not made him brave. Aurora used to slip out of the
+drawing-room, and in some secluded nook of the hall throw up her clasped
+hands and go through all the motions of screaming merriment.
+
+"The little fool!"--it was of her own daughter she whispered this
+complimentary remark--"the little fool is afraid of the fish!"
+
+"You!" she said to Clotilde, one evening after Joseph had gone, "you
+call yourself a Creole girl!"
+
+But she expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blushing girl as a
+blushing man. And then--though they did sometimes digress--Clotilde and
+her partner met to talk "business" in a purely literal sense.
+
+Aurora, after a time, had taken her money into her own keeping.
+
+"You mighd gid robb' ag'in, you know, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," she said.
+
+But when he mentioned Clotilde's fortune as subject to the same
+contingency, Aurora replied:
+
+"Ah! bud Clotilde mighd gid robb'!"
+
+But for all the exuberance of Aurora's spirits, there was a cloud in her
+sky. Indeed, we know it is only when clouds are in the sky that we get
+the rosiest tints; and so it was with Aurora. One night, when she had
+heard the wicket in the _porte-cochère_ shut behind three evening
+callers, one of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she
+expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph
+Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a
+hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept
+again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped her
+face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of the
+penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care
+or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of extraordinary
+expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts. Aurora had been crying of
+nights. Even that same night, Clotilde awoke, opened her eyes and beheld
+her mother risen from the pillow and sitting upright in the bed beside
+her; the moon, shining brightly through the mosquito-bar revealed with
+distinctness her head slightly drooped, her face again in her hands and
+the dark folds of her hair falling about her shoulders, half-concealing
+the richly embroidered bosom of her snowy gown, and coiling in
+continuous abundance about her waist and on the slight summer covering
+of the bed. Before her on the sheet lay a white paper. Clotilde did not
+try to decipher the writing on it; she knew, at sight, the slip that had
+fallen from the statement of account on the evening of the ninth of
+March. Aurora withdrew her hands from her face--Clotilde shut her eyes;
+she heard Aurora put the paper in her bosom.
+
+"Clotilde," she said, very softly.
+
+"Maman," the daughter replied, opening her eyes, reached up her arms and
+drew the dear head down.
+
+"Clotilde, once upon a time I woke this way, and, while you were asleep,
+left the bed and made a vow to Monsieur Danny. Oh! it was a sin! but I
+cannot do those things now; I have been frightened ever since. I shall
+never do so any more. I shall never commit another sin as long as
+I live!"
+
+Their lips met fervently.
+
+"My sweet sweet," whispered Clotilde, "you looked so beautiful sitting
+up with the moonlight all around you!"
+
+"Clotilde, my beautiful daughter," said Aurora, pushing her bedmate from
+her and pretending to repress a smile, "I tell you now, because you
+don't know, and it is my duty as your mother to tell you--the meanest
+wickedness a woman can do in all this bad, bad world is to look ugly
+in bed!"
+
+Clotilde answered nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms,
+turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three
+hours of patient wakefulness, fell asleep.
+
+But at daybreak next morning, he that wrote the paper had not closed his
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
+
+
+There was always some flutter among Frowenfeld's employés when he was
+asked for, and this time it was the more pronounced because he was
+sought by a housemaid from the upper floor. It was hard for these two or
+three young Ariels to keep their Creole feet to the ground when it was
+presently revealed to their sharp ears that the "prof-fis-or" was
+requested to come upstairs.
+
+The new store was an extremely neat, bright, and well-ordered
+establishment; yet to ascend into the drawing-rooms seemed to the
+apothecary like going from the hold of one of those smart old
+packet-ships of his day into the cabin. Aurora came forward, with the
+slippers of a Cinderella twinkling at the edge of her robe. It seemed
+unfit that the floor under them should not be clouds.
+
+"Proffis-or Frowenfel', good-day! Teg a cha'." She laughed. It was the
+pure joy of existence. "You's well? You lookin' verrie well! Halways
+bizzie? You fine dad agriz wid you' healt', 'Sieur Frowenfel'? Yes? Ha,
+ha, ha!" She suddenly leaned toward him across the arm of her chair,
+with an earnest face. "'Sieur Frowenfel', Palmyre wand see you. You don'
+wan' come ad 'er 'ouse, eh?--an' you don' wan' her to come ad yo'
+bureau. You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she drez the hair of Clotilde an'
+mieself. So w'en she tell me dad, I juz say, 'Palmyre, I will sen' for
+Proffis-or Frowenfel' to come yeh; but I don' thing 'e comin'.' You
+know, I din' wan' you to 'ave dad troub'; but Clotilde--ha, ha, ha!
+Clotilde is sudge a foolish--she nevva thing of dad troub' to you--she
+say she thing you was too kine-'arted to call dad troub'--ha, ha, ha! So
+anny'ow we sen' for you, eh!"
+
+Frowenfeld said he was glad they had done so, whereupon Aurora rose
+lightly, saying:
+
+"I go an' sen' her." She started away, but turned back to add: "You
+know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she say she cann' truz nobody bud y'u." She
+ended with a low, melodious laugh, bending her joyous eyes upon the
+apothecary with her head dropped to one side in a way to move a heart
+of flint.
+
+She turned and passed through a door, and by the same way Palmyre
+entered. The philosophe came forward noiselessly and with a subdued
+expression, different from any Frowenfeld had ever before seen. At the
+first sight of her a thrill of disrelish ran through him of which he was
+instantly ashamed; as she came nearer he met her with a deferential bow
+and the silent tender of a chair. She sat down, and, after a moment's
+pause, handed him a sealed letter.
+
+He turned it over twice, recognized the handwriting, felt the disrelish
+return, and said:
+
+"This is addressed to yourself."
+
+She bowed.
+
+"Do you know who wrote it?" he asked.
+
+She bowed again.
+
+"_Oui, Miché_."
+
+"You wish me to open it? I cannot read French."
+
+She seemed to have some explanation to offer, but could not command the
+necessary English; however, with the aid of Frowenfeld's limited
+guessing powers, she made him understand that the bearer of the letter
+to her had brought word from the writer that it was written in English
+purposely that M. Frowenfeld--the only person he was willing should see
+it--might read it. Frowenfeld broke the seal and ran his eye over the
+writing, but remained silent.
+
+The woman stirred, as if to say "Well?" But he hesitated.
+
+"Palmyre," he suddenly said, with a slight, dissuasive smile, "it would
+be a profanation for me to read this."
+
+She bowed to signify that she caught his meaning, then raised her elbows
+with an expression of dubiety, and said:
+
+"'E hask you--"
+
+"Yes," murmured the apothecary. He shook his head as if to protest to
+himself, and read in a low but audible voice:
+
+     "Star of my soul, I approach to die. It is not for me
+     possible to live without Palmyre. Long time have I so done,
+     but now, cut off from to see thee, by imprisonment, as it may
+     be called, love is starving to death. Oh, have pity on the
+     faithful heart which, since ten years, change not, but forget
+     heaven and earth for you. Now in the peril of the life,
+     hidden away, that absence from the sight of you make his
+     seclusion the more worse than death. Halas! I pine! Not other
+     ten years of despair can I commence. Accept this love. If so
+     I will live for you, but if to the contraire, I must die for
+     you. Is there anything at all what I will not give or even do
+     if Palmyre will be my wife? Ah, no, far otherwise, there is
+     nothing!" ...
+
+Frowenfeld looked over the top of the letter. Palmyre sat with her eyes
+cast down, slowly shaking her head. He returned his glance to the page,
+coloring somewhat with annoyance at being made a proposing medium.
+
+"The English is very faulty here," he said, without looking up. "He
+mentions Bras-Coupé." Palmyre started and turned toward him; but he went
+on without lifting his eyes. "He speaks of your old pride and affection
+toward him as one who with your aid might have been a leader and
+deliverer of his people." Frowenfeld looked up. "Do you under--"
+
+"_Allez, Miché_" said she, leaning forward, her great eyes fixed on the
+apothecary and her face full of distress. "_Mo comprend bien_."
+
+"He asks you to let him be to you in the place of Bras-Coupé."
+
+The eyes of the philosophe, probably for the first time since the death
+of the giant, lost their pride. They gazed upon Frowenfeld almost with
+piteousness; but she compressed her lips and again slowly shook
+her head.
+
+"You see," said Frowenfeld, suddenly feeling a new interest, "he
+understands their wants. He knows their wrongs. He is acquainted with
+laws and men. He could speak for them. It would not be insurrection--it
+would be advocacy. He would give his time, his pen, his speech, his
+means, to get them justice--to get them their rights."
+
+She hushed the over-zealous advocate with a sad and bitter smile and
+essayed to speak, studied as if for English words, and, suddenly
+abandoning that attempt, said, with ill-concealed scorn and in the
+Creole patois:
+
+"What is all that? What I want is vengeance!"
+
+"I will finish reading," said Frowenfeld, quickly, not caring to
+understand the passionate speech.
+
+     "Ah, Palmyre! Palmyre! What you love and hope to love you
+     because his heart keep itself free, he is loving another!"
+
+_"Qui ci ça, Miché?"_
+
+Frowenfeld was loth to repeat. She had understood, as her face showed;
+but she dared not believe. He made it shorter:
+
+"He means that Honoré Grandissime loves another woman."
+
+"'Tis a lie!" she exclaimed, a better command of English coming with the
+momentary loss of restraint.
+
+The apothecary thought a moment and then decided to speak.
+
+"I do not think so," he quietly said.
+
+"'Ow you know dat?"
+
+She, too, spoke quietly, but under a fearful strain. She had thrown
+herself forward, but, as she spoke, forced herself back into her seat.
+
+"He told me so himself."
+
+The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her
+eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost
+all knowledge of place or of human presence. She walked down the
+drawing-room quite to its curtained windows and there stopped, her face
+turned away and her hand laid with a visible tension on the back of a
+chair. She remained so long that Frowenfeld had begun to think of
+leaving her so, when she turned and came back. Her form was erect, her
+step firm and nerved, her lips set together and her hands dropped easily
+at her side; but when she came close up before the apothecary she was
+trembling. For a moment she seemed speechless, and then, while her eyes
+gleamed with passion, she said, in a cold, clear tone, and in her
+native patois:
+
+"Very well: if I cannot love I can have my revenge." She took the letter
+from him and bowed her thanks, still adding, in the same tongue, "There
+is now no longer anything to prevent."
+
+The apothecary understood the dark speech. She meant that, with no hope
+of Honoré's love, there was no restraining motive to withhold her from
+wreaking what vengeance she could upon Agricola. But he saw the folly
+of a debate.
+
+"That is all I can do?" asked he.
+
+"_Oui, merci, Miché_" she said; then she added, in perfect English, "but
+that is not all _I_ can do," and then--laughed.
+
+The apothecary had already turned to go, and the laugh was a low one;
+but it chilled his blood. He was glad to get back to his employments.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+BUSINESS CHANGES
+
+
+We have now recorded some of the events which characterized the five
+months during which Doctor Keene had been vainly seeking to recover his
+health in the West Indies.
+
+"Is Mr. Frowenfeld in?" he asked, walking very slowly, and with a cane,
+into the new drug-store on the morning of his return to the city.
+
+"If Professo' Frowenfel' 's in?" replied a young man in shirt-sleeves,
+speaking rapidly, slapping a paper package which he had just tied, and
+sliding it smartly down the counter. "No, seh."
+
+A quick step behind the doctor caused him to turn; Raoul was just
+entering, with a bright look of business on his face, taking his coat
+off as he came.
+
+"Docta Keene! _Teck_ a chair. 'Ow you like de noo sto'? See? Fo'
+counters! T'ree clerk'! De whole interieure paint undre mie h-own
+direction! If dat is not a beautiful! eh? Look at dat sign."
+
+He pointed to some lettering in harmonious colors near the ceiling at
+the farther end of the house. The doctor looked and read:
+
+     MANDARIN, AG'T, APOTHECARY.
+
+"Why not Frowenfeld?" he asked.
+
+Raoul shrugged.
+
+"'Tis better dis way."
+
+That was his explanation.
+
+"Not the De Brahmin Mandarin who was Honoré's manager?"
+
+"Yes. Honoré was n' able to kip 'im no long-er. Honoré is n' so rich lak
+befo'."
+
+"And Mandarin is really in charge here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Profess-or Frowenfel' all de time at de ole corner, w'ere 'e
+_con_tinue to keep 'is private room and h-use de ole shop fo' ware'ouse.
+'E h-only come yeh w'en Mandarin cann' git 'long widout 'im."
+
+"What does he do there? _He's_ not rich."
+
+Raoul bent down toward the doctor's chair and whispered the dark secret:
+
+"Studyin'!"
+
+Doctor Keene went out.
+
+Everything seemed changed to the returned wanderer. Poor man! The
+changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one
+broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes
+fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to
+the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of
+the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of
+strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. The people
+he met on the street were more or less familiar to his memory, but many
+that should have recognized him failed to do so, and others were made to
+notice him rather by his cough than by his face. Some did not know he
+had been away. It made him cross.
+
+He had walked slowly down beyond the old Frowenfeld corner and had just
+crossed the street to avoid the dust of a building which was being torn
+down to make place for a new one, when he saw coming toward him,
+unconscious of his proximity, Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+"Doctor Keene!" said Frowenfeld, with almost the enthusiasm of Raoul.
+
+The doctor was very much quieter.
+
+"Hello, Joe."
+
+They went back to the new drug-store, sat down in a pleasant little rear
+corner enclosed by a railing and curtains, and talked.
+
+"And did the trip prove of no advantage to you?"
+
+"You see. But never mind me; tell me about Honoré; how does that row
+with his family progress?"
+
+"It still continues; the most of his people hold ideas of justice and
+prerogative that run parallel with family and party lines, lines of
+caste, of custom and the like they have imparted their bad feeling
+against him to the community at large; very easy to do just now, for the
+election for President of the States comes on in the fall, and though we
+in Louisiana have little or nothing to do with it, the people are
+feverish."
+
+"The country's chill-day," said Doctor Keene; "dumb chill, hot fever."
+
+"The excitement is intense," said Frowenfeld. "It seems we are not to
+be granted suffrage yet; but the Creoles have a way of casting votes in
+their mind. For example, they have voted Honoré Grandissime a traitor;
+they have voted me an encumbrance; I hear one of them casting that
+vote now."
+
+Some one near the front of the store was talking excitedly with Raoul:
+
+"An'--an'--an' w'at are the consequence? The consequence are that we
+smash his shop for him an' 'e 'ave to make a noo-start with a Creole
+partner's money an' put 'is sto' in charge of Creole'! If I know he is
+yo' frien'? Yesseh! Valuable citizen? An' w'at we care for valuable
+citizen? Let him be valuable if he want; it keep' him from gettin' the
+neck broke; but--he mus'-tek-kyeh--'ow--he--talk'! He-mus'-tek-kyeh 'ow
+he stir the 'ot blood of Louisyanna!"
+
+"He is perfectly right," said the little doctor, in his husky undertone;
+"neither you nor Honoré is a bit sound, and I shouldn't wonder if they
+would hang you both, yet; and as for that darkey who has had the
+impudence to try to make a commercial white gentleman of himself--it may
+not be I that ought to say it, but--he will get his deserts--sure!"
+
+"There are a great many Americans that think as you do," said
+Frowenfeld, quietly.
+
+"But," said the little doctor, "what did that fellow mean by your Creole
+partner? Mandarin is in charge of your store, but he is not your
+partner, is he? Have you one?"
+
+"A silent one," said the apothecary
+
+"So silent as to be none of my business?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, who is it, then?"
+
+"It is Mademoiselle Nancanou."
+
+"Your partner in business?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,--"
+
+The insinuation conveyed in the doctor's manner was very trying, but
+Joseph merely reddened.
+
+"Purely business, I suppose," presently said the doctor, with a ghastly
+ironical smile. "Does the arrangem'--" his utterance failed him--"does
+it end there?"
+
+"It ends there."
+
+"And you don't see that it ought either not to have begun, or else ought
+not to have ended there?"
+
+Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:
+
+"And who takes care of Aurora's money?"
+
+"Herself."
+
+"Exclusively?"
+
+They both smiled more good-naturedly.
+
+"Exclusively."
+
+"She's a coon;" and the little doctor rose up and crawled away,
+ostensibly to see another friend, but really to drag himself into his
+bedchamber and lock himself in. The next day--the yellow fever was bad
+again--he resumed the practice of his profession.
+
+"'Twill be a sort of decent suicide without the element of
+pusillanimity," he thought to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
+
+
+When Honoré Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had returned to the city
+in a very feeble state of health, he rose at once from the desk where he
+was sitting and went to see him; but it was on that morning when the
+doctor was sitting and talking with Joseph, and Honoré found his chamber
+door locked. Doctor Keene called twice, within the following two days,
+upon Honoré at his counting-room; but on both occasions Honoré's chair
+was empty. So it was several days before they met. But one hot morning
+in the latter part of August,--the August days were hotter before the
+cypress forest was cut down between the city and the lake than they are
+now,--as Doctor Keene stood in the middle of his room breathing
+distressedly after a sad fit of coughing, and looking toward one of his
+windows whose closed sash he longed to see opened, Honoré knocked at
+the door.
+
+"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why, Honoré,--well, it
+serves you right for stopping to knock. Sit down."
+
+Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other; and, after a pause,
+Doctor Keene said:
+
+"Honoré, you are pretty badly stove."
+
+M. Grandissime smiled.
+
+"Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more complimentary to you; you might
+look more sick."
+
+"Oh, I have resumed my trade," replied Doctor Keene.
+
+"So I have heard; but, Charlie, that is all in favor of the people who
+want a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind killing him; I
+should advise you not to do it."
+
+"You mean" (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) "if I
+should ask your advice. I am going to get well, Honoré."
+
+His visitor shrugged.
+
+"So much the better. I do confess I am tempted to make use of you in
+your official capacity, right now. Do you feel strong enough to go with
+me in your gig a little way?"
+
+"A professional call?"
+
+"Yes, and a difficult case; also a confidential one."
+
+"Ah! confidential!" said the little man, in his painful, husky irony.
+"You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our 'professor'
+into, eh?"
+
+"Possibly a worse one," replied the amiable Creole.
+
+"And I must be mum, eh?"
+
+"I would prefer."
+
+"Shall I need any instruments? No?"--with a shade of disappointment on
+his face.
+
+He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street door.
+
+"How are affairs about town?" he asked, as he made some slight
+preparation for the street.
+
+"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private difficulty
+between a Creole and an Américain drew instantly half the street
+together to take sides strictly according to belongings and without
+asking a question. My-de'-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a war
+of human acids and alkalies."
+
+They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who drove
+turned, by Honoré's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it,
+passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river
+again and entered the rue Condé. The route was circuitous. They stopped
+at the carriage-door of a large brick house. The wicket was opened by
+Clemence. They alighted without driving in.
+
+"Hey, old witch," said the doctor, with mock severity; "not hung yet?"
+
+The houses of any pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the closely
+built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American
+plan. Honoré led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellated
+carriage-hall, on one side of which were the drawing-rooms, closed and
+darkened. They turned at the bottom, ascended a broad, iron-railed
+staircase to the floor above, and halted before the open half of a
+glazed double door with a clumsy iron latch. It was the entrance to two
+spacious chambers, which were thrown into one by folded doors.
+
+The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his eyebrows--the
+rooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable largeness and heaviness,
+lofty sobriety, abundance of finely wrought brass mounting, motionless
+richness of upholstery, much silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a soft
+semi-obscurity--such were the characteristics. The long windows of the
+farther apartment could be seen to open over the street, and the air
+from behind, coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in the
+paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and
+cavernous.
+
+"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own bedchamber?" the
+doctor whispered.
+
+"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly answered
+Honoré. "Agricole and some others ransacked this house one night last
+March--the day I announced the new firm; but of course, then, he was
+not here."
+
+They entered, and the figure of Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c., came into
+view in the centre of the farther room, reclining in an attitude of
+extreme languor on a low couch, whither he had come from the high bed
+near by, as the impression of his form among its pillows showed. He
+turned upon the two visitors his slow, melancholy eyes, and, without an
+attempt to rise or speak, indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, an
+invitation to be seated.
+
+"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and drawing
+it close to the side of the couch.
+
+The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless hand, which
+had not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but sank idly back
+upon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and its nails
+slightly blue.
+
+"Lie still," said the doctor, reassuringly, as the rentier began to lift
+the one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the couch and the
+hand which hung out of sight across a large, linen-covered cushion.
+
+By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon acquainted
+himself with the case before him. It was a very plain one. By and by he
+rubbed his face and red curls and suddenly said:
+
+"You will not take my prescription."
+
+The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.
+
+"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his wont, and,
+as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little
+satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty.
+I'll give Honoré the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription
+to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling;
+they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He
+rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at
+Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It
+will give you an object for going out."
+
+The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching the
+bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in a
+direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the
+paved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had
+placed glasses of lemonade.
+
+"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurable
+organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; still
+your--your patient--"
+
+"My half-brother," said Honoré.
+
+"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the question
+the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will kill
+him _soon_, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutely
+nothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."
+
+"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honoré, with something of the
+doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be killed by it."
+
+"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in reverie,
+gazed upon the glass which he was slowly turning around with his
+attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However,
+one _may_ love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, and
+yet not die."
+
+"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said Honoré with
+gentle gravity.
+
+"Yes," said the other, still toying with his glass.
+
+He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met and
+remained steadfastly fixed each upon each.
+
+"You've got it bad," said Doctor Keene, mechanically.
+
+"And you?" retorted the Creole.
+
+"It isn't going to kill me."
+
+"It has not killed me. And," added M. Grandissime, as they passed
+through the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in mind the
+numberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and sons and
+daughters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die of love,
+my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."
+
+This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but he took
+no advantage of it.
+
+"Honoré," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside the
+doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a chance for you,
+why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon you are making? Why,
+sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak spot your action has
+shown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from our
+transcendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that
+would have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have
+a chance to do something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the
+'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"
+
+"Hush!" said Honoré; "do you suppose I have not temptation enough
+already?"
+
+He began to move away.
+
+"Honoré," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made a
+mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"
+
+Honoré nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden new
+thought.
+
+"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you are
+prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."
+
+"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straight
+up and down manly thing."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+The doctor stepped into his gig--
+
+"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION
+
+
+One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and consequently
+earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes were set all
+a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another of their number
+had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to the enemy,"--a phrase
+first applied by him to Honoré.
+
+"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had asked on
+that earlier occasion.
+
+"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!" replied
+Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Américains in matters of business
+and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a
+race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest
+prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert,
+imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a
+listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most
+time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but
+Honoré has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked
+out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his case an
+act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I simply do not
+understand them! _H-you_ know, Professor Frowenfeld, what he has done!
+You know how ignominiously he has surrendered the key of a moral
+position which for the honor of the Grandissime-Fusilier name we have
+felt it necessary to hold against our hereditary enemies!
+And--you--know--" here Agricola actually dropped all artificiality and
+spoke from the depths of his feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has
+joined himself in business h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do?
+What can we say? It is Honoré Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell!
+He is gone over to the enemy.'"
+
+The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul Innerarity.
+Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such part as he could
+understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with ever-broadening
+admiration. We know how devoted he became to the interests and fame of
+"Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had married. Not to divide his
+generous heart he took rooms opposite the drug-store, resolved that
+"Frowenfeld's" should be not only the latest closed but the earliest
+opened of all the pharmacies in New Orleans.
+
+This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his bride fell
+suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of Aurora and Clotilde
+could not be so near to trouble and not know it, and before Raoul was
+nearly enough recovered from the shock of this peril to remember that he
+was a Grandissime, these last two of the De Grapions had hastened across
+the street to the small, white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of
+universal human love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame
+Innerarity recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could
+pay such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four
+became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward
+Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed her
+all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to be, for
+him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily inaccessible; but
+Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was delighted with Aurora.
+He told her in confidence that "Profess-or Frowenfel'" was the best man
+in the world; but she boldly said, taking pains to speak with a
+tear-and-a-half of genuine gratitude,--"Egcep' Monsieur Honoré
+Grandissime," and he assented, at first with hesitation and then with
+ardor. The four formed a group of their own; and it is not certain that
+this was not the very first specimen ever produced in the Crescent City
+of that social variety of New Orleans life now distinguished as
+Uptown Creoles.
+
+Almost the first thing acquired by Raoul in the camp of the enemy was a
+certain Aurorean audacity; and on the afternoon to which we allude,
+having told Frowenfeld a rousing fib to the effect that the
+multitudinous inmates of the maternal Grandissime mansion had insisted
+on his bringing his esteemed employer to see them, he and his bride had
+the hardihood to present him on the front veranda.
+
+The straightforward Frowenfeld was much pleased with his reception. It
+was not possible for such as he to guess the ire with which his presence
+was secretly regarded. New Orleans, let us say once more, was small, and
+the apothecary of the rue Royale locally famed; and what with curiosity
+and that innate politeness which it is the Creole's boast that he cannot
+mortify, the veranda, about the top of the great front stair, was well
+crowded with people of both sexes and all ages. It would be most
+pleasant to tarry once more in description of this gathering of nobility
+and beauty; to recount the points of Creole loveliness in midsummer
+dress; to tell in particular of one and another eye-kindling face,
+form, manner, wit; to define the subtle qualities of Creole air and sky
+and scene, or the yet more delicate graces that characterize the music
+of Creole voice and speech and the light of Creole eyes; to set forth
+the gracious, unaccentuated dignity of the matrons and the ravishing
+archness of their daughters. To Frowenfeld the experience seemed all
+unreal. Nor was this unreality removed by conversation on grave
+subjects; for few among either the maturer or the younger beauty could
+do aught but listen to his foreign tongue like unearthly strangers in
+the old fairy tales. They came, however, in the course of their talk to
+the subject of love and marriage. It is not certain that they entered
+deeper into the great question than a comparison of its attendant
+Anglo-American and Franco-American conventionalities; but sure it is
+that somehow--let those young souls divine the method who can--every
+unearthly stranger on that veranda contrived to understand Frowenfeld's
+English. Suddenly the conversation began to move over the ground of
+inter-marriage between hostile families. Then what eyes and ears! A
+certain suspicion had already found lodgement in the universal
+Grandissime breast, and every one knew in a moment that, to all intents
+and purposes, they were about to argue the case of Honoré and Aurora.
+
+The conversation became discussion, Frowenfeld, Raoul and Raoul's little
+seraph against the whole host, chariots, horse and archery. Ah! such
+strokes as the apothecary dealt! And if Raoul and "Madame Raoul" played
+parts most closely resembling the blowing of horns and breaking of
+pitchers, still they bore themselves gallantly. The engagement was
+short; we need not say that nobody surrendered; nobody ever gives up the
+ship in parlor or veranda debate: and yet--as is generally the case in
+such affairs--truth and justice made some unacknowledged headway. If
+anybody on either side came out wounded--this to the credit of the
+Creoles as a people--the sufferer had the heroic good manners not to say
+so. But the results were more marked than this; indeed, in more than one
+or two candid young hearts and impressible minds the wrongs and rights
+of sovereign true love began there on the spot to be more generously
+conceded and allowed. "My-de'-seh," Honoré had once on a time said to
+Frowenfeld, meaning that to prevail in conversational debate one should
+never follow up a faltering opponent, "you mus' _crack_ the egg, not
+smash it!" And Joseph, on rising to take his leave, could the more
+amiably overlook the feebleness of the invitation to call again, since
+he rejoiced, for Honoré's sake, in the conviction that the egg
+was cracked.
+
+Agricola, the Grandissimes told the apothecary, was ill in his room, and
+Madame de Grandissime, his sister--Honoré's mother--begged to be excused
+that she might keep him company. The Fusiliers were a very close order;
+or one might say they garrisoned the citadel.
+
+But Joseph's rising to go was not immediately upon the close of the
+discussion; those courtly people would not let even an unwelcome guest
+go with the faintest feeling of disrelish for them. They were casting
+about in their minds for some momentary diversion with which to add a
+finishing touch to their guest's entertainment, when Clemence appeared
+in the front garden walk and was quickly surrounded by bounding
+children, alternately begging and demanding a song. Many of even the
+younger adults remembered well when she had been "one of the hands on
+the place," and a passionate lover of the African dance. In the same
+instant half a dozen voices proposed that for Joseph's amusement
+Clemence should put her cakes off her head, come up on the veranda and
+show a few of her best steps.
+
+"But who will sing?"
+
+"Raoul!"
+
+"Very well; and what shall it be?"
+
+"'Madame Gaba.'"
+
+No, Clemence objected.
+
+"Well, well, stand back--something better than 'Madame Gaba.'"
+
+Raoul began to sing and Clemence instantly to pace and turn, posture,
+bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp, wheel, lift
+her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with crossed ankles, smite
+her palms, march, circle, leap,--an endless improvisation of rhythmic
+motion to this modulated responsive chant:
+
+     Raoul. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça_."
+
+     Clemence. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+     He. "_Yé donné vingt cinq sous pou' manzé poulé_."
+
+     She. "_Miché Igenne, dit--dit--dit--_"
+
+     He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça!_"
+
+     She. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+     He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça!_"
+
+     She. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+Frowenfeld was not so greatly amused as the ladies thought he should
+have been, and was told that this was not a fair indication of what he
+would see if there were ten dancers instead of one.
+
+How much less was it an indication of what he would have seen in that
+mansion early the next morning, when there was found just outside of
+Agricola's bedroom door a fresh egg, not cracked, according to Honoré's
+maxim, but smashed, according to the lore of the voudous. Who could have
+got in in the night? And did the intruder get in by magic, by outside
+lock-picking, or by inside collusion? Later in the morning, the children
+playing in the basement found--it had evidently been accidentally
+dropped, since the true use of its contents required them to be
+scattered in some person's path--a small cloth bag, containing a
+quantity of dogs' and cats' hair, cut fine and mixed with salt
+and pepper.
+
+"Clemence?"
+
+"Pooh! Clemence. No! But as sure as the sun turns around the
+world--Palmyre Philosophe!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+"CAULDRON BUBBLE"
+
+
+The excitement and alarm produced by the practical threat of voudou
+curses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was quite another;
+and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of voudou charms was
+found in the four corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissime
+family were ignorant of how they could have come there. Let us examine
+these terrible engines of mischief. In one corner was an acorn drilled
+through with two holes at right angles to each other, a small feather
+run through each hole; in the second a joint of cornstalk with a cavity
+scooped from the middle, the pith left intact at the ends, and the space
+filled with parings from that small callous spot near the knee of the
+horse, called the "nail;" in the third corner a bunch of parti-colored
+feathers; something equally meaningless in the fourth. No thread was
+used in any of them. All fastening was done with the gum of trees. It
+was no easy task for his kindred to prevent Agricola, beside himself
+with rage and fright, from going straight to Palmyre's house and
+shooting her down in open day.
+
+"We shall have to watch our house by night," said a gentleman of the
+household, when they had at length restored the Citizen to a condition
+of mind which enabled them to hold him in a chair.
+
+"Watch this house?" cried a chorus. "You don't suppose she comes near
+here, do you? She does it all from a distance. No, no; watch
+_her_ house."
+
+Did Agricola believe in the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No,
+and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the
+levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed,
+re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a
+picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the imp
+of death thus placated, must have been a sort of spiritual Cheap John.
+
+Several more nights passed. The house of Palmyre, closely watched,
+revealed nothing. No one came out, no one went in, no light was seen.
+They should have watched in broad daylight. At last, one midnight,
+'Polyte Grandissime stepped cautiously up to one of the batten doors
+with an auger, and succeeded, without arousing any one, in boring a
+hole. He discovered a lighted candle standing in a glass of water.
+
+"Nothing but a bedroom light," said one.
+
+"Ah, bah!" whispered the other; "it is to make the spell work strong."
+
+"We will not tell Agricola first; we had better tell Honoré," said
+Sylvestre.
+
+"You forget," said 'Polyte, "that I no longer have any acquaintance with
+Monsieur Honoré Grandissime."
+
+They told Agamemnon; and it would have gone hard with the
+"_milatraise_" but for the additional fact that suspicion had fastened
+upon another person; but now this person in turn had to be identified.
+It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola, but to wait and
+seek further developments. Agricola, having lost all ability to sleep in
+the mansion, moved into a small cottage in a grove near the house. But
+the very next morning, he turned cold with horror to find on his
+doorstep a small black-coffined doll, with pins run through the heart, a
+burned-out candle at the head and another at the feet.
+
+"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the old man
+as he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate. "What if I
+should tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnight
+to-night, you will see the real author of this mischief--eh?"
+
+"And why to-night?"
+
+"Because the moon rises at midnight."
+
+There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds under
+the ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would say now, in Congo Square,
+from three pistols--Agricola's, 'Polyte's, and the weapon of an
+ill-defined, retreating figure answering the description of the person
+who had stabbed Agricola the preceding February. "And yet," said
+'Polyte, "I would have sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."
+
+Through Raoul these events came to the ear of Frowenfield. It was about
+the time that Raoul's fishing party, after a few days' mishaps, had
+returned home. Palmyre, on several later dates, had craved further
+audiences and shown other letters from the hidden f.m.c. She had heard
+them calmly, and steadfastly preserved the one attitude of refusal. But
+it could not escape Frowenfeld's notice that she encouraged the sending
+of additional letters. He easily guessed the courier to be Clemence; and
+now, as he came to ponder these revelations of Raoul, he found that
+within twenty-four hours after every visit of Clemence to the house of
+Palmyre, Agricola suffered a visitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+CAUGHT
+
+
+The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it is yet
+summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two hundred yards
+northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in which Agricola had
+made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of which we have spoken,
+stood one of these trees, whose leaves were beginning to lie thickly
+upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and luxuriant hedge of
+Cherokee-rose started from this tree and stretched toward the northwest
+across the level country, until it merged into the green confusion of
+gardened homes in the vicinity of Bayou St. Jean, or, by night, into the
+common obscurity of a starlit perspective. When an unclouded moon shone
+upon it, it cast a shadow as black as velvet.
+
+Under this fig-tree, some three hours later than that at which Honoré
+bade Joseph good-night, a man was stooping down and covering something
+with the broad, fallen leaves.
+
+"The moon will rise about three o'clock," thought he. "That, the hour of
+universal slumber, will be, by all odds, the time most likely to bring
+developments."
+
+He was the same person who had spent the most of the day in a
+blacksmith's shop in St. Louis street, superintending a piece of
+smithing. Now that he seemed to have got the thing well hid, he turned
+to the base of the tree and tried the security of some attachment. Yes,
+it was firmly chained. He was not a robber; he was not an assassin; he
+was not an officer of police; and what is more notable, seeing he was a
+Louisianian, he was not a soldier nor even an ex-soldier; and this
+although, under his clothing, he was encased from head to foot in a
+complete suit of mail. Of steel? No. Of brass? No. It was all one
+piece--_a white skin_; and on his head he wore an invisible helmet--the
+name of Grandissime. As he straightened up and withdrew into the grove,
+you would have recognized at once--by his thick-set, powerful frame,
+clothed seemingly in black, but really, as you might guess, in blue
+cottonade, by his black beard and the general look of a seafarer--a
+frequent visitor at the Grandissime mansion, a country member of that
+great family, one whom we saw at the _fête de grandpère_.
+
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime was a man of few words, no
+sentiments, short methods; materialistic, we might say; quietly
+ferocious; indifferent as to means, positive as to ends, quick of
+perception, sure in matters of saltpetre, a stranger at the
+custom-house, and altogether--_take him right_--very much of a
+gentleman. He had been, for a whole day, beset with the idea that the
+way to catch a voudou was--to catch him; and as he had caught numbers of
+them on both sides of the tropical and semi-tropical Atlantic, he
+decided to try his skill privately on the one who--his experience told
+him--was likely to visit Agricola's doorstep to-night. All things being
+now prepared, he sat down at the root of a tree in the grove, where the
+shadow was very dark, and seemed quite comfortable. He did not strike at
+the mosquitoes; they appeared to understand that he did not wish to
+trifle. Neither did his thoughts or feelings trouble him; he sat and
+sharpened a small penknife on his boot.
+
+His mind--his occasional transient meditation--was the more comfortable
+because he was one of those few who had coolly and unsentimentally
+allowed Honoré Grandissime to sell their lands. It continued to grow
+plainer every day that the grants with which theirs were classed--grants
+of old French or Spanish under-officials--were bad. Their sagacious
+cousin seemed to have struck the right standard, and while those titles
+which he still held on to remained unimpeached, those that he had
+parted with to purchasers--as, for instance, the grant held by this
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime--could be bought back now for half
+what he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well
+have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in
+perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails in the dark.
+
+By and by he put up the little tool and sat looking out upon the
+prospect. The time of greatest probability had not come, but the voudou
+might choose not to wait for that; and so he kept watch. There was a
+great stillness. The cocks had finished a round and were silent. No dog
+barked. A few tiny crickets made the quiet land seem the more deserted.
+Its beauties were not entirely overlooked--the innumerable host of stars
+above, the twinkle of myriad fireflies on the dark earth below. Between
+a quarter and a half-mile away, almost in a line with the Cherokee
+hedge, was a faint rise of ground, and on it a wide-spreading live-oak.
+There the keen, seaman's eye of the Capitain came to a stop, fixed upon
+a spot which he had not noticed before. He kept his eye on it, and
+waited for the stronger light of the moon.
+
+Presently behind the grove at his back she rose; and almost the first
+beam that passed over the tops of the trees, and stretched across the
+plain, struck the object of his scrutiny. What was it? The ground, he
+knew; the tree, he knew; he knew there ought to be a white paling
+enclosure about the trunk of the tree: for there were buried--ah!--he
+came as near laughing at himself as ever he did in his life; the
+apothecary of the rue Royale had lately erected some marble headstones
+there, and--
+
+"Oh! my God!"
+
+While Capitain Jean-Baptiste had been trying to guess what the
+tombstones were, a woman had been coming toward him in the shadow of the
+hedge. She was not expecting to meet him; she did not know that he was
+there; she knew she had risks to run, but was ignorant of what they
+were; she did not know there was anything under the fig-tree which she
+so nearly and noiselessly approached. One moment her foot was lifted
+above the spot where the unknown object lay with wide-stretched jaws
+under the leaves, and the next, she uttered that cry of agony and
+consternation which interrupted the watcher's meditation. She was caught
+in a huge steel-trap.
+
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime remained perfectly still. She fell, a
+snarling, struggling, groaning heap, to the ground, wild with pain and
+fright, and began the hopeless effort to draw the jaws of the trap apart
+with her fingers.
+
+"_Ah! bon Dieu, bon Dieu!_ Quit a-_bi-i-i-i-tin' me_! Oh! Lawd 'a'
+mussy! Ow-ow-ow! lemme go! Dey go'n' to kyetch an' hang me! Oh! an' I
+hain' done nutt'n' 'gainst _no_body! Ah! _bon Dieu! ein pov' vié
+négresse_! Oh! Jemimy! I cyan' gid dis yeh t'ing loose--oh! m-m-m-m! An'
+dey'll tra to mek out't I voudou' Mich-Agricole! An' I did n' had
+nutt'n' do wid it! Oh Lawd, oh _Lawd_, you'll be mighty good ef you
+lemme loose! I'm a po' nigga! Oh! dey had n' ought to mek it so
+_pow_'ful!"
+
+Hands, teeth, the free foot, the writhing body, every combination of
+available forces failed to spread the savage jaws, though she strove
+until hands and mouth were bleeding.
+
+Suddenly she became silent; a thought of precaution came to her; she
+lifted from the earth a burden she had dropped there, struggled to a
+half-standing posture, and, with her foot still in the trap, was
+endeavoring to approach the end of the hedge near by, to thrust this
+burden under it, when she opened her throat in a speechless ecstasy of
+fright on feeling her arm grasped by her captor.
+
+"O-o-o-h! Lawd! o-o-oh! Lawd!" she cried, in a frantic, husky whisper,
+going down upon her knees, "_Oh, Miché! pou' l'amou' du bon Dieu! Pou'
+l'amou du bon Dieu ayez pitié d'ein pov' négresse! Pov' négresse,
+Miché_, w'at nevva done nutt'n' to nobody on'y jis sell _calas_! I iss
+comin' 'long an' step inteh dis-yeh bah-trap by acci_dent_! Ah! _Miché,
+Miché_, ple-e-ease be good! _Ah! mon Dieu_!--an' de Lawd'll reward
+you--'deed 'E will, _Miché_!"
+
+"_Qui ci ça?_" asked the Capitain, sternly, stooping and grasping her
+burden, which she had been trying to conceal under herself.
+
+"Oh, Miché, don' trouble dat! Please jes tek dis yeh trap offen me--da's
+all! Oh, don't, mawstah, ple-e-ease don' spill all my wash'n' t'ings!
+'Tain't nutt'n' but my old dress roll' up into a ball. Oh, please--now,
+you see? nutt'n' but a po' nigga's dr--_oh! fo' de love o' God, Miché
+Jean-Baptiste, don' open dat ah box! Y'en a rien du tout la-dans, Miché
+Jean-Baptiste; du tout, du tout_! Oh, my God! _Miché_, on'y jis teck
+dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef yo' _please_, it's bit'n' me lak a
+_dawg_!--if you _please, Miché_! Oh! you git kill' if you open dat ah
+box, Mawse Jean-Baptiste! _Mo' parole d'honneur le plus sacre_--I'll
+kiss de cross! Oh, _sweet Miché Jean, laisse moi aller_! Nutt'n' but
+some dutty close _la-dans_." She repeated this again and again, even
+after Capitain Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black coffin from
+the old dress in which it was wrapped. "_Rien du tout, Miché_; nutt'n'
+but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."
+
+He removed the lid and saw within, resting on the cushioned bottom, the
+image, in myrtle-wax, moulded and painted with some rude skill, of a
+negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder--a _bras coupé_--with a
+dirk grasped in its hand.
+
+The old woman lifted her eyes to heaven; her teeth chattered; she gasped
+twice before she could recover utterance. "_Oh, Miché_ Jean-Baptiste, I
+di' n' mek dat ah! _Mo' té pas fé ça_! I swea' befo' God! Oh, no, no,
+no! 'Tain' nutt'n' nohow but a lill play-toy, _Miché_. Oh, sweet _Miché
+Jean_, you not gwan to kill me? I di' n' mek it! It was--ef you lemme
+go, I tell you who mek it! Sho's I live I tell you, _Miché Jean_--ef you
+lemme go! Sho's God's good to me--ef you lemme go! Oh, God A'mighty,
+_Miché Jean_, sho's God's good to me."
+
+She was becoming incoherent.
+
+Then Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime for the first time spoke at
+length:
+
+"Do you see this?" he spoke the French of the Atchafalaya. He put his
+long flintlock pistol close to her face. "I shall take the trap off; you
+will walk three feet in front of me; if you make it four I blow your
+brains out; we shall go to Agricole. But right here, just now, before I
+count ten, you will tell me who sent you here; at the word ten, if I
+reach it, I pull the trigger. One--two--three--"
+
+"Oh, _Miché_, she gwan to gib me to de devil wid _houdou_ ef I tell
+you--Oh, good _Lawdy_!"
+
+But he did not pause.
+
+"Four--five--six--seven--eight--"
+
+"Palmyre!" gasped the negress, and grovelled on the ground.
+
+The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed in her
+arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the mansion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to Frowenfeld,
+rose up from where he had all this time lain, close against the hedge,
+and glided off down its black shadow to warn the philosophe.
+
+When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old
+table-knife with its end ground to a point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+BLOOD FOR A BLOW
+
+
+It seems to be one of the self-punitive characteristics of tyranny,
+whether the tyrant be a man, a community, or a caste, to have a
+pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence lay in irons,
+it is barely now, that our South is casting off a certain apprehensive
+tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest provocation active, and
+now and then violent, concerning her "blacks." This fear, like others
+similar elsewhere in the world, has always been met by the same one
+antidote--terrific cruelty to the tyrant's victim. So we shall presently
+see the Grandissime ladies, deeming themselves compassionate, urging
+their kinsmen to "give the poor wretch a sound whipping and let her go."
+Ah! what atrocities are we unconsciously perpetrating North and South
+now, in the name of mercy or defence, which the advancing light of
+progressive thought will presently show out in their enormity?
+
+Agricola slept late. He had gone to his room the evening before much
+incensed at the presumption of some younger Grandissimes who had brought
+up the subject, and spoken in defence, of their cousin Honoré. He had
+retired, however, not to rest, but to construct an engine of offensive
+warfare which would revenge him a hundred-fold upon the miserable
+school of imported thought which had sent its revolting influences to
+the very Grandissime hearthstone; he wrote a "_Phillipique Générale
+contre la Conduite du Gouvernement de la Louisiane_" and a short but
+vigorous chapter in English on "The Insanity of Educating the Masses."
+This accomplished, he had gone to bed in a condition of peaceful
+elation, eager for the next day to come that he might take these mighty
+productions to Joseph Frowenfeld, and make him a present of them for
+insertion in his book of tables.
+
+Jean-Baptiste felt no need of his advice, that he should rouse him; and,
+for a long time before the old man awoke, his younger kinsmen were
+stirring about unwontedly, going and coming through the hall of the
+mansion, along its verandas and up and down its outer flight of stairs.
+Gates were opening and shutting, errands were being carried by negro
+boys on bareback horses, Charlie Mandarin of St. Bernard parish and an
+Armand Fusilier from Faubourg Ste. Marie had on some account come--as
+they told the ladies--"to take breakfast;" and the ladies, not yet
+informed, amusedly wondering at all this trampling and stage whispering,
+were up a trifle early. In those days Creole society was a ship, in
+which the fair sex were all passengers and the ruder sex the crew. The
+ladies of the Grandissime mansion this morning asked passengers'
+questions, got sailors' answers, retorted wittily and more or less
+satirically, and laughed often, feeling their constrained
+insignificance. However, in a house so full of bright-eyed children,
+with mothers and sisters of all ages as their confederates, the secret
+was soon out, and before Agricola had left his little cottage in the
+grove the topic of all tongues was the abysmal treachery and
+_ingratitude_ of negro slaves. The whole tribe of Grandissime believed,
+this morning, in the doctrine of total depravity--of the negro.
+
+And right in the face of this belief, the ladies put forth the
+generously intentioned prayer for mercy. They were answered that they
+little knew what frightful perils they were thus inviting upon
+themselves.
+
+The male Grandissimes were not surprised at this exhibition of weak
+clemency in their lovely women; they were proud of it; it showed the
+magnanimity that was natural to the universal Grandissime heart, when
+not restrained and repressed by the stern necessities of the hour. But
+Agricola disappointed them. Why should he weaken and hesitate, and
+suggest delays and middle courses, and stammer over their proposed
+measures as "extreme"? In very truth, it seemed as though that
+drivelling, woman-beaten Deutsch apotheke--ha! ha! ha!--in the rue
+Royale had bewitched Agricola as well as Honoré. The fact was, Agricola
+had never got over the interview which had saved Sylvestre his life.
+
+"Here, Agricole," his kinsmen at length said, "you see you are too old
+for this sort of thing; besides, it would be bad taste for you, who
+might be presumed to harbor feelings of revenge, to have a voice in
+this council." And then they added to one another: "We will wait until
+'Polyte reports whether or not they have caught Palmyre; much will
+depend on that."
+
+Agricola, thus ruled out, did a thing he did not fully understand; he
+rolled up the "_Philippique Générale_" and "The Insanity of Educating
+the Masses," and, with these in one hand and his staff in the other, set
+out for Frowenfeld's, not merely smarting but trembling under the
+humiliation of having been sent, for the first time in his life, to the
+rear as a non-combatant.
+
+He found the apothecary among his clerks, preparing with his own hands
+the "chalybeate tonic" for which the f.m.c. was expected to call. Raoul
+Innerarity stood at his elbow, looking on with an amiable air of having
+been superseded for the moment by his master.
+
+"Ha-ah! Professor Frowenfeld!"
+
+The old man nourished his scroll.
+
+Frowenfeld said good-morning, and they shook hands across the counter;
+but the old man's grasp was so tremulous that the apothecary looked at
+him again.
+
+"Does my hand tremble, Joseph? It is not strange; I have had much to
+excite me this morning."
+
+"Wat's de mattah?" demanded Raoul, quickly.
+
+"My life--which I admit, Professor Frowenfeld, is of little value
+compared with such a one as yours--has been--if not attempted, at least
+threatened."
+
+"How?" cried Raoul.
+
+"H-really, Professor, we must agree that a trifle like that ought not to
+make old Agricola Fusilier nervous. But I find it painful, sir, very
+painful. I can lift up this right hand, Joseph, and swear I never gave a
+slave--man or woman--a blow in my life but according to my notion of
+justice. And now to find my life attempted by former slaves of my own
+household, and taunted with the righteous hamstringing of a dangerous
+runaway! But they have apprehended the miscreants; one is actually in
+hand, and justice will take its course; trust the Grandissimes for
+that--though, really, Joseph, I assure you, I counselled leniency."
+
+"Do you say they have caught her?" Frowenfeld's question was sudden and
+excited; but the next moment he had controlled himself.
+
+"H-h-my son, I did not say it was a 'her'!"
+
+"Was it not Clemence? Have they caught her?"
+
+"H-yes--"
+
+The apothecary turned to Raoul.
+
+"Go tell Honoré Grandissime."
+
+"But, Professor Frowenfeld--" began Agricola.
+
+Frowenfeld turned to repeat his instruction, but Raoul was already
+leaving the store.
+
+Agricola straightened up angrily.
+
+"Pro-hofessor Frowenfeld, by what right do you interfere?"
+
+"No matter," said the apothecary, turning half-way and pouring the
+tonic into a vial.
+
+"Sir," thundered the old lion, "h-I demand of you to answer! How dare
+you insinuate that my kinsmen may deal otherwise than justly?"
+
+"Will they treat her exactly as if she were white, and had threatened
+the life of a slave?" asked Frowenfeld from behind the desk at the end
+of the counter.
+
+The old man concentrated all the indignation of his nature in the reply.
+
+"No-ho, sir!"
+
+As he spoke, a shadow approaching from the door caused him to turn. The
+tall, dark, finely clad form of the f.m.c, in its old soft-stepping
+dignity and its sad emaciation, came silently toward the spot where
+he stood.
+
+Frowenfeld saw this, and hurried forward inside the counter with the
+preparation in his hand.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld," said Agricola, pointing with his ugly staff, "I
+demand of you, as a keeper of a white man's pharmacy, to turn that
+negro out."
+
+"Citizen Fusilier!" exclaimed the apothecary; "Mister Grandis--"
+
+He felt as though no price would be too dear at that moment to pay for
+the presence of the other Honoré. He had to go clear to the end of the
+counter and come down the outside again to reach the two men. They did
+not wait for him. Agricola turned upon the f.m.c.
+
+"Take off your hat!"
+
+A sudden activity seized every one connected with the establishment as
+the quadroon let his thin right hand slowly into his bosom, and answered
+in French, in his soft, low voice:
+
+"I wear my hat on my head."
+
+Frowenfeld was hurrying toward them; others stepped forward, and from
+two or three there came half-uttered exclamations of protest; but
+unfortunately nothing had been done or said to provoke any one to rush
+upon them, when Agricola suddenly advanced a step and struck the f.m.c.
+on the head with his staff. Then the general outcry and forward rush
+came too late; the two crashed together and fell, Agricola above, the
+f.m.c. below, and a long knife lifted up from underneath sank to its
+hilt, once--twice--thrice,--in the old man's back.
+
+The two men rose, one in the arms of his friends, the other upon his own
+feet. While every one's attention was directed toward the wounded man,
+his antagonist restored his dagger to its sheath, took up his hat and
+walked away unmolested. When Frowenfeld, with Agricola still in his
+arms, looked around for the quadroon, he was gone.
+
+Doctor Keene, sent for instantly, was soon at Agricola's side.
+
+"Take him upstairs; he can't be moved any further."
+
+Frowenfeld turned and began to instruct some one to run upstairs and
+ask permission, but the little doctor stopped him.
+
+"Joe, for shame! you don't know those women better than that? Take the
+old man right up!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+VOUDOU CURED
+
+
+"Honoré," said Agricola, faintly, "where is Honoré!"
+
+"He has been sent for," said Doctor Keene and the two ladies in a
+breath.
+
+Raoul, bearing the word concerning Clemence, and the later messenger
+summoning him to Agricola's bedside, reached Honoré within a minute of
+each other. His instructions were quickly given, for Raoul to take his
+horse and ride down to the family mansion, to break gently to his mother
+the news of Agricola's disaster, and to say to his kinsmen with
+imperative emphasis, not to touch the _marchande des calas_ till he
+should come. Then he hurried to the rue Royale.
+
+But when Raoul arrived at the mansion he saw at a glance that the news
+had outrun him. The family carriage was already coming round the bottom
+of the front stairs for three Mesdames Grandissime and Madame Martinez.
+The children on all sides had dropped their play, and stood about,
+hushed and staring. The servants moved with quiet rapidity. In the hall
+he was stopped by two beautiful girls.
+
+"Raoul! Oh, Raoul, how is he now? Oh! Raoul, if you could only stop
+them! They have taken old Clemence down into the swamp--as soon as they
+heard about Agricole--Oh, Raoul, surely that would be cruel! She nursed
+me--and me--when we were babies!"
+
+"Where is Agamemnon?"
+
+"Gone to the city."
+
+"What did he say about it?"
+
+"He said they were doing wrong, that he did not approve their action,
+and that they would get themselves into trouble: that he washed his
+hands of it."
+
+"Ah-h-h!" exclaimed Raoul, "wash his hands! Oh, yes, wash his hands?
+Suppose we all wash our hands? But where is Valentine? Where is Charlie
+Mandarin?"
+
+"Ah! Valentine is gone with Agamemnon, saying the same thing, and
+Charlie Mandarin is down in the swamp, the worst of all of them!"
+
+"But why did you let Agamemnon and Valentine go off that way, you?"
+
+"Ah! listen to Raoul! What can a woman do?"
+
+"What can a woman--Well, even if I was a woman, I would do something!"
+
+He hurried from the house, leaped into the saddle and galloped across
+the fields toward the forest.
+
+Some rods within the edge of the swamp, which, at this season, was
+quite dry in many places, on a spot where the fallen dead bodies of
+trees overlay one another and a dense growth of willows and vines and
+dwarf palmetto shut out the light of the open fields, the younger and
+some of the harsher senior members of the Grandissime family were
+sitting or standing about, in an irregular circle whose centre was a big
+and singularly misshapen water-willow. At the base of this tree sat
+Clemence, motionless and silent, a wan, sickly color in her face, and
+that vacant look in her large, white-balled, brown-veined eyes, with
+which hope-forsaken cowardice waits for death. Somewhat apart from the
+rest, on an old cypress stump, half-stood, half-sat, in whispered
+consultation, Jean-Baptiste Grandissime and Charlie Mandarin.
+
+"_Eh bien_, old woman," said Mandarin, turning, without rising, and
+speaking sharply in the negro French, "have you any reason to give why
+you should not be hung to that limb over your head?"
+
+She lifted her eyes slowly to his, and made a feeble gesture of
+deprecation.
+
+"_Mo té pas fé cette bras_, Mawse Challie--I di'n't mek dat ahm; no
+'ndeed I di'n', Mawse Challie. I ain' wuth hangin', gen'lemen; you'd
+oughteh jis gimme fawty an' lemme go. I--I--I--I di'n' 'ten' no hawm to
+Mawse-Agricole; I wa'n't gwan to hu't nobody in God's worl'; 'ndeed I
+wasn'. I done tote dat old case-knife fo' twenty year'--_mo po'te ça
+dipi vingt ans_. I'm a po' ole _marchande des calas; mo courri_ 'mongs'
+de sojer boys to sell my cakes, you know, and da's de onyest reason why
+I cyah dat ah ole fool knife." She seemed to take some hope from the
+silence with which they heard her. Her eye brightened and her voice took
+a tone of excitement. "You'd oughteh tek me and put me in calaboose, an'
+let de law tek 'is co'se. You's all nice gen'lemen--werry nice
+gen'lemen, an' you sorter owes it to yo'sev's fo' to not do no sich
+nasty wuck as hangin' a po' ole nigga wench; 'deed you does. 'Tain' no
+use to hang me; you gwan to kyetch Palmyre yit; _li courri dans marais;_
+she is in de swamp yeh, sum'ers; but as concernin' me, you'd oughteh jis
+gimme fawty an lemme go. You mus'n't b'lieve all dis-yeh nonsense 'bout
+insurrectionin'; all fool-nigga talk. W'at we want to be insurrectionin'
+faw? We de happies' people in de God's worl'!" She gave a start, and
+cast a furtive glance of alarm behind her. "Yes, we is; you jis' oughteh
+gimme fawty an' lemme go! Please, gen'lemen! God'll be good to you, you
+nice, sweet gen'lemen!"
+
+Charlie Mandarin made a sign to one who stood at her back, who responded
+by dropping a rawhide noose over her head. She bounded up with a cry of
+terror; it may be that she had all along hoped that all was
+make-believe. She caught the noose wildly with both hands and tried to
+lift it over her head.
+
+"Ah! no, mawsteh, you cyan' do dat! It's ag'in' de law! I's 'bleeged to
+have my trial, yit. Oh, no, no! Oh, good God, no! Even if I is a nigga!
+You cyan' jis' murdeh me hyeh in de woods! _Mo dis la zize_! I tell de
+judge on you! You ain' got no mo' biznis to do me so 'an if I was a
+white 'oman! You dassent tek a white 'oman out'n de Pa'sh Pris'n an' do
+'er so! Oh, sweet mawsteh, fo' de love o' God! Oh, Mawse Challie, _pou'
+l'amou' du bon Dieu n'fé pas ça_! Oh, Mawse 'Polyte, is you gwan to let
+'em kill ole Clemence? Oh, fo' de mussy o' Jesus Christ, Mawse 'Polyte,
+leas' of all, _you_! You dassent help to kill me, Mawse 'Polyte! You
+knows why! Oh God, Mawse 'Polyte, you knows why! Leas' of all you, Mawse
+'Polyte! Oh, God 'a' mussy on my wicked ole soul! I aint fitt'n to die!
+Oh, gen'lemen, I kyan' look God in de face! _Oh, Michés, ayez pitié de
+moin! Oh, God A'mighty ha' mussy on my soul_! Oh, gen'lemen, dough yo'
+kinfolks kyvvah up yo' tricks now, dey'll dwap f'um undeh you some day!
+_Solé levé là, li couché là_! Yo' tu'n will come! Oh, God A'mighty! de
+God o' de po' nigga wench! Look down, oh God, look down an' stop dis yeh
+foolishness! Oh, God, fo' de love o' Jesus! _Oh, Michés, y'en a ein
+zizement_! Oh, yes, deh's a judgmen' day! Den it wont be a bit o' use to
+you to be white! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, fo', fo', fo', de, de, _love 0'
+God! Oh_!"
+
+They drew her up.
+
+Raoul was not far off. He heard the woman's last cry, and came threshing
+through the bushes on foot. He saw Sylvestre, unconscious of any
+approach, spring forward, jerk away the hands that had drawn the thong
+over the branch, let the strangling woman down and loosen the noose. Her
+eyes, starting out with horror, turned to him; she fell on her knees and
+clasped her hands. The tears were rolling down Sylvestre's face.
+
+"My friends, we must not do this! You _shall_ not do it!"
+
+He hurled away, with twice his natural strength, one who put out a hand.
+
+"No, sirs!" cried Raoul, "you shall not do it! I come from Honoré! Touch
+her who dares!"
+
+He drew a weapon.
+
+"Monsieur Innerarity," said 'Polyte, "_who is_ Monsieur Honoré
+Grandissime? There are two of the name, you know,--partners--brothers.
+Which of--but it makes no difference; before either of them sees this
+assassin she is going to be a lump of nothing!"
+
+The next word astonished every one. It was Charlie Mandarin who spoke.
+
+"Let her go!"
+
+"Let her go!" said Jean-Baptiste Grandissime; "give her a run for life.
+Old woman, rise up. We propose to let you go. Can you run? Never mind,
+we shall see. Achille, put her upon her feet. Now, old woman, run!"
+
+She walked rapidly, but with unsteady feet, toward the fields.
+
+"Run! If you don't run I will shoot you this minute!"
+
+She ran.
+
+"Faster!"
+
+She ran faster.
+
+"Run!"
+
+"Run!"
+
+"Run, Clemence! Ha, ha, ha!" It was so funny to see her scuttling and
+tripping and stumbling. "_Courri! courri, Clemence! c'est pou to' vie!_
+ha, ha, ha--"
+
+A pistol-shot rang out close behind Raoul's ear; it was never told who
+fired it. The negress leaped into the air and fell at full length to the
+ground, stone dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+DYING WORDS
+
+
+Drivers of vehicles in the rue Royale turned aside before two slight
+barriers spanning the way, one at the corner below, the other at that
+above, the house where the aged high-priest of a doomed civilization lay
+bleeding to death. The floor of the store below, the pavement of the
+corridor where stood the idle volante, were covered with straw, and
+servants came and went by the beckoning of the hand.
+
+"This way," whispered a guide of the four ladies from the Grandissime
+mansion. As Honoré's mother turned the angle half-way up the muffled
+stair, she saw at the landing above, standing as if about to part, yet
+in grave council, a man and a woman, the fairest--she noted it even in
+this moment of extreme distress--she had ever looked upon. He had
+already set one foot down upon the stair, but at sight of the ascending
+group drew back and said:
+
+"It is my mother;" then turned to his mother and took her hand; they had
+been for months estranged, but now they silently kissed.
+
+"He is sleeping," said Honoré. "Maman, Madame Nancanou."
+
+The ladies bowed--the one looking very large and splendid, the other
+very sweet and small. There was a single instant of silence, and Aurora
+burst into tears.
+
+For a moment Madame Grandissime assumed a frown that was almost a
+reminder of her brother's, and then the very pride of the Fusiliers
+broke down. She uttered an inaudible exclamation, drew the weeper firmly
+into her bosom, and with streaming eyes and choking voice, but yet with
+majesty, whispered, laying her hand on Aurora's head:
+
+"Never mind, my child; never mind; never mind."
+
+And Honoré's sister, when she was presently introduced, kissed Aurora
+and murmured:
+
+"The good God bless thee! It is He who has brought us together."
+
+"Who is with him just now?" whispered the two other ladies, while Honoré
+and his mother stood a moment aside in hurried consultation.
+
+"My daughter," said Aurora, "and--"
+
+"Agamemnon," suggested Madame Martinez.
+
+"I believe so," said Aurora.
+
+Valentine appeared from the direction of the sick-room and beckoned to
+Honoré. Doctor Keene did the same and continued to advance.
+
+"Awake?" asked Honoré.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Alas! my brother!" said Madame Grandissime, and started forward,
+followed by the other women.
+
+"Wait," said Honoré, and they paused. "Charlie," he said, as the little
+doctor persistently pushed by him at the head of the stair.
+
+"Oh, there's no chance, Honoré, you'd as well all go in there."
+
+They gathered into the room and about the bed. Madame Grandissime bent
+over it.
+
+"Ah! sister," said the dying man, "is that you? I had the sweetest dream
+just now--just for a minute." He sighed. "I feel very weak. Where is
+Charlie Keene?"
+
+He had spoken in French; he repeated his question in English. He thought
+he saw the doctor.
+
+"Charlie, if I must meet the worst I hope you will tell me so; I am
+fully prepared. Ah! excuse--I thought it was--
+
+"My eyes seem dim this evening. _Est-ce-vous_, Honoré? Ah, Honoré, you
+went over to the enemy, did you?--Well,--the Fusilier blood would
+al--ways--do as it pleased. Here's your old uncle's hand, Honoré. I
+forgive you, Honoré--my noble-hearted, foolish--boy." He spoke feebly,
+and with great nervousness.
+
+"Water."
+
+It was given him by Aurora. He looked in her face; they could not be
+sure whether he recognized her or not. He sank back, closed his eyes,
+and said, more softly and dreamily, as if to himself, "I forgive
+everybody. A man must die--I forgive--even the enemies--of Louisiana."
+
+He lay still a few moments, and then revived excitedly. "Honoré! tell
+Professor Frowenfeld to take care of that _Philippique Générale_. 'Tis a
+grand thing, Honoré, on a grand theme! I wrote it myself in one evening.
+Your Yankee Government is a failure, Honoré, a drivelling failure. It
+may live a year or two, not longer. Truth will triumph. The old
+Louisiana will rise again. She will get back her trampled rights. When
+she does, remem'--" His voice failed, but he held up one finger firmly
+by way of accentuation.
+
+There was a stir among the kindred. Surely this was a turn for the
+better. The doctor ought to be brought back. A little while ago he was
+not nearly so strong. "Ask Honoré if the doctor should not come." But
+Honoré shook his head. The old man began again.
+
+"Honoré! Where is Honoré? Stand by me, here, Honoré; and sister?--on
+this other side. My eyes are very poor to-day. Why do I perspire so?
+Give me a drink. You see--I am better now; I have ceased--to throw up
+blood. Nay, let me talk." He sighed, closed his eyes, and opened them
+again suddenly. "Oh, Honoré, you and the Yankees--you and--all--going
+wrong--education--masses--weaken--caste--indiscr'--quarrels settl'--by
+affidav'--Oh! Honoré."
+
+"If he would only forget," said one, in an agonized whisper, "that
+_philippique générale_!"
+
+Aurora whispered earnestly and tearfully to Madame Grandissime. Surely
+they were not going to let him go thus! A priest could at least do no
+harm. But when the proposition was made to him by his sister, he said:
+
+"No;--no priest. You have my will, Honoré,--in your iron box. Professor
+Frowenfeld,"--he changed his speech to English,--"I have written you an
+article on--" his words died on his lips.
+
+"Joseph, son, I do not see you. Beware, my son, of the doctrine of equal
+rights--a bottomless iniquity. Master and man--arch and pier--arch
+above--pier below." He tried to suit the gesture to the words, but both
+hands and feet were growing uncontrollably restless.
+
+"Society, Professor,"--he addressed himself to a weeping girl,--"society
+has pyramids to build which make menials a necessity, and Nature
+furnishes the menials all in dark uniform. She--I cannot tell you--you
+will find--all in the _Philippique Générale_. Ah! Honoré, is it--"
+
+He suddenly ceased.
+
+"I have lost my glasses."
+
+Beads of sweat stood out upon his face. He grew frightfully pale. There
+was a general dismayed haste, and they gave him a stimulant.
+
+"Brother," said the sister, tenderly.
+
+He did not notice her.
+
+"Agamemnon! Go and tell Jean-Baptiste--" his eyes drooped and flashed
+again wildly.
+
+"I am here, Agricole," said the voice of Jean-Baptiste, close beside the
+bed.
+
+"I told you to let--that negress--"
+
+"Yes, we have let her go. We have let all of them go."
+
+"All of them," echoed the dying man, feebly, with wandering eyes.
+Suddenly he brightened again and tossed his arms. "Why, there you were
+wrong, Jean-Baptiste; the community must be protected." His voice sank
+to a murmur. "He would not take off--'you must remem'--" He was silent.
+"You must remem'--those people are--are not--white people." He ceased a
+moment. "Where am I going?" He began evidently to look, or try to look,
+for some person; but they could not divine his wish until, with piteous
+feebleness, he called:
+
+"Aurore De Grapion!"
+
+So he had known her all the time.
+
+Honoré's mother had dropped on her knees beside the bed, dragging Aurora
+down with her.
+
+They rose together.
+
+The old man groped distressfully with one hand. She laid her own in it.
+
+"Honoré!
+
+"What could he want?" wondered the tearful family. He was feeling about
+with the other hand.
+
+"Hon'--Honoré"--his weak clutch could scarcely close upon his nephew's
+hand.
+
+"Put them--put--put them--"
+
+What could it mean? The four hands clasped.
+
+"Ah!" said one, with fresh tears, "he is trying to speak and cannot."
+
+But he did.
+
+"Aurora De Gra--I pledge'--pledge'--pledged--this union--to your
+fa'--father--twenty--years--ago."
+
+The family looked at each other in dejected amazement. They had never
+known it.
+
+"He is going," said Agamemnon; and indeed it seemed as though he was
+gone; but he rallied.
+
+"Agamemnon! Valentine! Honoré! patriots! protect the race! Beware of
+the"--that sentence escaped him. He seemed to fancy himself haranguing a
+crowd; made another struggle for intelligence, tried once, twice, to
+speak, and the third time succeeded:
+
+"Louis'--Louisian'--a--for--ever!" and lay still.
+
+They put those two words on his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES
+
+
+And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the mason who
+cut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,
+half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints came,
+attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon the old man's
+tomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more distinctly as years went
+by, that Forever was a trifle long for one to confine one's patriotic
+affection to a small fraction of a great country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the police
+in their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to justice?" asked
+some _Américain_ or other of 'Polyte Grandissime.
+
+"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neither
+Palmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when we
+cannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no police!"
+
+So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the other two
+were never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the Grandissimes to
+know that in later times, under the gentler influences of a higher
+civilization, their old Spanish-colonial ferocity was gradually absorbed
+by the growth of better traits. To-day almost all the savagery that can
+justly be charged against Louisiana must--strange to say--be laid at
+the door of the _Américain_. The Creole character has been diluted and
+sweetened.
+
+One morning early in September, some two weeks after the death of
+Agricola, the same brig which something less than a year before had
+brought the Frowenfelds to New Orleans crossed, outward bound, the sharp
+line dividing the sometimes tawny waters of Mobile Bay from the deep
+blue Gulf, and bent her way toward Europe.
+
+She had two passengers; a tall, dark, wasted yet handsome man of
+thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, and a woman seemingly some
+three years younger, of beautiful though severe countenance; "very
+elegant-looking people and evidently rich," so the brig-master described
+them,--"had much the look of some of the Mississippi River 'Lower Coast'
+aristocracy." Their appearance was the more interesting for a look of
+mental distress evident on the face of each. Brother and sister they
+called themselves; but, if so, she was the most severely reserved and
+distant sister the master of the vessel had ever seen.
+
+They landed, if the account comes down to us right, at Bordeaux. The
+captain, a fellow of the peeping sort, found pastime in keeping them in
+sight after they had passed out of his care ashore. They went to
+different hotels!
+
+The vessel was detained some weeks in this harbor, and her master
+continued to enjoy himself in the way in which he had begun. He saw his
+late passengers meet often, in a certain quiet path under the trees of
+the Quinconce. Their conversations were low; in the patois they used
+they could have afforded to speak louder; their faces were always grave
+and almost always troubled. The interviews seemed to give neither of
+them any pleasure. The monsieur grew thinner than ever, and
+sadly feeble.
+
+"He wants to charter her," the seaman concluded, "but she doesn't like
+his rates."
+
+One day, the last that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each in
+a way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard,
+woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,--with "eyes that shone
+like lamps," as said the observer.
+
+"She's a-sendin' him 'way to lew-ard," thought he. Finally the Monsieur
+handed her--or rather placed upon the seat near which she stood, what
+she would not receive--a folded and sealed document, seized her hand,
+kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the seat, weak and pale,
+and rose to go, leaving the document behind. The mariner picked it up;
+it was directed to _M. Honoré Grandissime, Nouvelle Orléans, États Unis,
+Amérique_. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or possibly
+reconsidering, and received it from him.
+
+"It looked like a last will and testament," the seaman used to say, in
+telling the story.
+
+The next morning, being at the water's edge and seeing a number of
+persons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered down toward
+it to see how small a thing was required to draw a crowd of these
+Frenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.
+
+Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited for this
+question to be asked him, in order to state the more impressively that
+he did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux packet, and he saw the Madame
+twice or thrice, apparently living at great ease, but solitary, in the
+rue--. He was free to relate that he tried to scrape acquaintance with
+her, but failed ignominiously.
+
+The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other places,
+including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were collected regularly
+by H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime Frères. Rumor said, and
+tradition repeats, that neither for the advancement of a friendless
+people, nor even for the repair of the properties' wear and tear, did
+one dollar of it ever remain in New Orleans; but that once a year
+Honoré, "as instructed," remitted to Madame--say Madame Inconnue--of
+Bordeaux, the equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It is
+averred he did this without interruption for twenty years. "Let us see:
+fifty times twenty--one million dollars. That is only a _part_ of the
+_pecuniary_ loss which this sort of thing costs Louisiana."
+
+But we have wandered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+"ALL RIGHT"
+
+
+The sun is once more setting upon the Place d'Armes. Once more the
+shadows of cathedral and town-hall lie athwart the pleasant grounds
+where again the city's fashion and beauty sit about in the sedate
+Spanish way, or stand or slowly move in and out among the old willows
+and along the white walks. Children are again playing on the sward;
+some, you may observe, are in black, for Agricola. You see, too, a more
+peaceful river, a nearer-seeming and greener opposite shore, and many
+other evidences of the drowsy summer's unwillingness to leave the
+embrace of this seductive land; the dreamy quietude of birds; the
+spreading, folding, re-expanding and slow pulsating of the
+all-prevailing fan (how like the unfolding of an angel's wing is
+ofttimes the broadening of that little instrument!); the oft-drawn
+handkerchief; the pale, cool colors of summer costume; the swallow,
+circling and twittering overhead or darting across the sight; the
+languid movement of foot and hand; the reeking flanks and foaming bits
+of horses; the ear-piercing note of the cicada; the dancing butterfly;
+the dog, dropping upon the grass and looking up to his master with
+roping jaw and lolling tongue; the air sweetened with the merchandise of
+the flower _marchandes_.
+
+On the levee road, bridles and saddles, whips, gigs, and
+carriages,--what a merry coming and going! We look, perforce, toward the
+old bench where, six months ago, sat Joseph Frowenfeld. There is
+somebody there--a small, thin, weary-looking man, who leans his bared
+head slightly back against the tree, his thin fingers knit together in
+his lap, and his chapeau-bras pressed under his arm. You note his
+extreme neatness of dress, the bright, unhealthy restlessness of his
+eye, and--as a beam from the sun strikes them--the fineness of his short
+red curls. It is Doctor Keene.
+
+He lifts his head and looks forward. Honoré and Frowenfeld are walking
+arm-in-arm under the furthermost row of willows. Honoré is speaking. How
+gracefully, in correspondence with his words, his free arm or
+hand--sometimes his head or even his lithe form--moves in quiet gesture,
+while the grave, receptive apothecary takes into his meditative mind, as
+into a large, cool cistern, the valued rain-fall of his friend's
+communications. They are near enough for the little doctor easily to
+call them; but he is silent. The unhappy feel so far away from the
+happy. Yet--"Take care!" comes suddenly to his lips, and is almost
+spoken; for the two, about to cross toward the Place d'Armes at the very
+spot where Aurora had once made her narrow escape, draw suddenly back,
+while the black driver of a volante reins up the horse he bestrides, and
+the animal himself swerves and stops.
+
+The two friends, though startled apart, hasten with lifted hats to the
+side of the volante, profoundly convinced that one, at least, of its two
+occupants is heartily sorry that they were not rolled in the dust. Ah,
+ah! with what a wicked, ill-stifled merriment those two ethereal women
+bend forward in the faintly perfumed clouds of their ravishing
+summer-evening garb, to express their equivocal mortification
+and regret.
+
+"Oh! I'm so sawry, oh! Almoze runned o'--ah, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Aurora could keep the laugh back no longer.
+
+"An' righd yeh befo' haivry _boddie_! Ah, ha, ha! 'Sieur Grandissime,
+'tis _me-e-e_ w'ad know 'ow dad is bad, ha, ha, ha! Oh! I assu' you,
+gen'lemen, id is hawful!"
+
+And so on.
+
+By and by Honoré seemed urging them to do something, the thought of
+which made them laugh, yet was entertained as not entirely absurd. It
+may have been that to which they presently seemed to consent; they
+alighted from the volante, dismissed it, and walked each at a partner's
+side down the grassy avenue of the levee. It was as Clotilde with one
+hand swept her light robes into perfect adjustment for the walk, and
+turned to take the first step with Frowenfeld, that she raised her eyes
+for the merest instant to his, and there passed between them an exchange
+of glance which made the heart of the little doctor suddenly burn like a
+ball of fire.
+
+"Now we're all right," he murmured bitterly to himself, as, without
+having seen him, she took the arm of the apothecary, and they
+moved away.
+
+Yes, if his irony was meant for this pair, he divined correctly. Their
+hearts had found utterance across the lips, and the future stood waiting
+for them on the threshold of a new existence, to usher them into a
+perpetual copartnership in all its joys and sorrows, its
+disappointments, its imperishable hopes, its aims, its conflicts, its
+rewards; and the true--the great--the everlasting God of love was with
+them. Yes, it had been "all right," now, for nearly twenty-four
+hours--an age of bliss. And now, as they walked beneath the willows
+where so many lovers had walked before them, they had whole histories to
+tell of the tremors, the dismays, the misconstructions and longings
+through which their hearts had come to this bliss; how at such a time,
+thus and so; and after such and such a meeting, so and so; no part of
+which was heard by alien ears, except a fragment of Clotilde's speech
+caught by a small boy in unintentioned ambush.
+
+"--Evva sinze de firze nighd w'en I big-in to nurze you wid de fivver."
+
+She was telling him, with that new, sweet boldness so wonderful to a
+lately accepted lover, how long she had loved him.
+
+Later on they parted at the _porte-cochère_. Honoré and Aurora had got
+there before them, and were passing on up the stairs. Clotilde,
+catching, a moment before, a glimpse of her face, had seen that there
+was something wrong; weather-wise as to its indications she perceived an
+impending shower of tears. A faint shade of anxiety rested an instant on
+her own face. Frowenfeld could not go in. They paused a little within
+the obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that
+everything _was_ "all right," they--
+
+God be praised for love's young dream!
+
+The slippered feet of the happy girl, as she slowly mounted the stair
+alone, overburdened with the weight of her blissful reverie, made no
+sound. As she turned its mid-angle she remembered Aurora. She could
+guess pretty well the source of her trouble; Honoré was trying to treat
+that hand-clasping at the bedside of Agricola as a binding compact;
+"which, of course, was not fair." She supposed they would have gone into
+the front drawing-room; she would go into the back. But she
+miscalculated; as she silently entered the door she saw Aurora standing
+a little way beyond her, close before Honoré, her eyes cast down, and
+the trembling fan hanging from her two hands like a broken pinion. He
+seemed to be reiterating, in a tender undertone, some question intended
+to bring her to a decision. She lifted up her eyes toward his with a
+mute, frightened glance.
+
+The intruder, with an involuntary murmur of apology, drew back; but, as
+she turned, she was suddenly and unspeakably saddened to see Aurora drop
+her glance, and, with a solemn slowness whose momentous significance
+was not to be mistaken, silently shake her head.
+
+"Alas!" cried the tender heart of Clotilde. "Alas! M. Grandissime!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+"NO!"
+
+
+If M. Grandissime had believed that he was prepared for the supreme
+bitterness of that moment, he had sadly erred. He could not speak. He
+extended his hand in a dumb farewell, when, all unsanctioned by his
+will, the voice of despair escaped him in a low groan. At the same
+moment, a tinkling sound drew near, and the room, which had grown dark
+with the fall of night, began to brighten with the softly widening light
+of an evening lamp, as a servant approached to place it in the front
+drawing-room.
+
+Aurora gave her hand and withdrew it. In the act the two somewhat
+changed position, and the rays of the lamp, as the maid passed the door,
+falling upon Aurora's face, betrayed the again upturned eyes.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--"
+
+They fell.
+
+The lover paused.
+
+"You thing I'm crool."
+
+She was the statue of meekness.
+
+"Hope has been cruel to me," replied M. Grandissime, "not you; that I
+cannot say. Adieu."
+
+He was turning.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--"
+
+She seemed to tremble.
+
+He stood still.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime,"--her voice was very tender,--"wad you' horry?"
+
+There was a great silence.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime, you know--teg a chair."
+
+He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant repassed the
+door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in English--having
+such hazardous things to say. It would conceal possible stammerings.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--you know dad riz'n I--"
+
+She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was still.
+
+"I have no right to ask the reason," said M. Grandissime. "It is
+yours--not mine."
+
+Her head went lower.
+
+"Well, you know,"--she drooped it meditatively to one side, with her
+eyes on the floor,--"'tis bick-ause--'tis bick-ause I thing in a few
+days I'm goin' to die."
+
+M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed.
+
+She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume, but her
+eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of half-soliloquy:
+
+"I 'ave so mudge troub' wit dad hawt."
+
+She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and sighed
+softly, with a dying languor.
+
+M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the street
+below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a gilded Mars
+was driving into battle, a soft note told the half-hour. The lady
+spoke again.
+
+"Id mague"--she sighed once more--"so strange,--sometime' I thing I'm
+git'n' crezzy."
+
+Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made remained as
+silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after another pause,
+with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the fair speaker resumed
+with more energy, as befitting the approach to an incredible climax:
+
+"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime,--id mague me fo'gid my hage! I thing I'm
+young!"
+
+She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his own
+squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she went
+on speaking:
+
+"An' w'en someboddie git'n' ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n' to fill
+ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me to gid
+marri'd wid 'im--I thing 'e's in love to me." Her fingers kept up a
+little shuffling with the fan. "I thing I'm crezzy. I thing I muz be
+go'n' to die torecklie." She looked up to the ceiling with large eyes,
+and then again at the fan in her lap, which continued its spreading and
+shutting. "An' daz de riz'n, 'Sieur Grandissime." She waited until it
+was certain he was about to answer, and then interrupted him nervously:
+"You know, 'Sieur Grandissime, id woon be righd! Id woon be de juztiz to
+_you!_ An' you de bez man I evva know in my life, 'Sieur Grandissime!"
+Her hands shook. "A man w'at nevva wan' to gid marri'd wid noboddie in
+'is life, and now trine to gid marri'd juz only to rip-ose de soul of
+'is oncl'--"
+
+M. Grandissime uttered an exclamation of protest, and she ceased.
+
+"I asked you," continued he, with low-toned emphasis, "for the single
+and only reason that I want you for my wife."
+
+"Yez," she quickly replied; "daz all. Daz wad I thing. An' I thing daz
+de rad weh to say, 'Sieur Grandissime. Bick-ause, you know, you an' me
+is too hole to talg aboud dad _lovin'_, you know. An' you godd dad grade
+_rizpeg_ fo' me, an' me I godd dad 'ighez rispeg fo' you; bud--" she
+clutched the fan and her face sank lower still--"bud--" she
+swallowed--shook her head--"bud--" She bit her lip; she could not go on.
+
+"Aurora," said her lover, bending forward and taking one of her hands.
+"I _do_ love you with all my soul."
+
+She made a poor attempt to withdraw her hand, abandoned the effort, and
+looked up savagely through a pair of overflowing eyes, demanding:
+
+"_Mais_, fo' w'y you di' n' wan' to sesso?"
+
+M. Grandissime smiled argumentatively.
+
+"I have said so a hundred times, in every way but in words."
+
+She lifted her head proudly, and bowed like a queen.
+
+"_Mais_, you see 'Sieur Grandissime, you bin meg one mizteg."
+
+"Bud 'tis corrected in time," exclaimed he, with suppressed but eager
+joyousness.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime," she said, with a tremendous solemnity, "I'm verrie
+sawrie; _mais_--you spogue too lade."
+
+"No, no!" he cried, "the correction comes in time. Say that, lady; say
+that!"
+
+His ardent gaze beat hers once more down; but she shook her head. He
+ignored the motion.
+
+"And you will correct your answer; ah! say that, too!" he insisted,
+covering the captive hand with both his own, and leaning forward
+from his seat.
+
+"_Mais_, 'Sieur Grandissime, you know, dad is so verrie unegspeg'."
+
+"Oh! unexpected!"
+
+"_Mais_, I was thing all dad time id was Clotilde wad you--"
+
+She turned her face away and buried her mouth in her handkerchief.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "mock me no more, Aurore Nancanou!"
+
+He rose erect and held the hand firmly which she strove to draw away:
+
+"Say the word, sweet lady; say the word!"
+
+She turned upon him suddenly, rose to her feet, was speechless an
+instant while her eyes flashed into his, and crying out:
+
+"No!" burst into tears, laughed through them, and let him clasp her to
+his bosom.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Grandissimes, by
+George Washington Cable.</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Grandissimes
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12280]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRANDISSIMES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<a name="gs2000.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2000.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2000.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"They paused a little within the obscurity of the corridor,<br>
+and just to reassure themselves that everything <i>was</i> 'all
+right'".</b></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>THE GRANDISSIMES</h1>
+<br>
+<h2>BY GEORGE W. CABLE</h2>
+<br>
+<h3>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY<br>
+<br>
+ALBERT HERTER</h3>
+<br>
+<h4>MDCCCXCIX</h4>
+<br>
+<h5>1899</h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<blockquote>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. Masked Batteries.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. The Fate of the Immigrant.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. "And who is my Neighbor?"</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. Family Trees.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. A Maiden who will not Marry.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. Lost Opportunities.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. Was it Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime?</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII. Signed--Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX. Illustrating the Tractive Power of
+Basil.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X. "Oo dad is, 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'?"</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI. Sudden Flashes of Light.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII. The Philosophe.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII. A Call from the
+Rent-Spectre.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV. Before Sunset.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV. Rolled in the Dust.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI. Starlight in the rue
+Chartres.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII. That Night.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII. New Light upon Dark
+Places.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX. Art and Commerce.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX. A very Natural Mistake.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI. Doctor Keene Recovers his
+Bullet.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII. Wars within the Breast.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII. Frowenfeld Keeps his
+Appointment.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV. Frowenfeld Makes an
+Argument.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV. Aurora as a Historian.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI. A Ride and a Rescue.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII. The F&ecirc;te de
+Grandp&egrave;re.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII. The Story of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX. The Story of Bras-Coup&eacute;,
+Continued.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX. Paralysis.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI. Another Wound in a New
+Place.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII. Interrupted
+Preliminaries.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII. Unkindest Cut of
+All.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV. Clotilde as a Surgeon.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV. "Fo' wad you Cryne?"</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI. Aurora's Last
+Picayune.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">XXXVII. Honor&eacute; Makes some
+Confessions.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII. Tests of
+Friendship.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">XXXIX. Louisiana States her
+Wants.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">XL. Frowenfeld Finds Sylvestre.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">XLI. To Come to the Point.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">XLII. An Inheritance of Wrong.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">XLIII. The Eagle Visits the Doves in
+their Nest.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">XLIV. Bad for Charlie Keene.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">XLV. More Reparation.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">XLVI. The Pique-en-terre Loses One of
+her Crew.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVII">XLVII. The News.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLVIII">XLVIII. An Indignant Family and a
+Smashed Shop.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIX">XLIX. Over the New Store.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_L">L. A Proposal of Marriage.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LI">LI. Business Changes.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LII">LII. Love Lies-a-Bleeding.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LIII">LIII. Frowenfeld at the Grandissime
+Mansion.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LIV">LIV. "Cauldron Bubble".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LV">LV. Caught.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LVI">LVI. Blood for a Blow.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LVII">LVII. Voudou Cured.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LVIII">LVIII. Dying Words.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LIX">LIX. Where some Creole Money
+Goes.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LX">LX. "All Right".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_LXI">LXI. "No!".</a></li>
+</ul>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PHOTOGRAVURES</h2>
+<blockquote>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#gs2000.jpg">"They paused a little within the
+obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that
+everything <i>was</i> 'all right'" <i>Frontispiece</i>.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2010.jpg">"She looked upon an unmasked, noble
+countenance, lifted her own mask a little, and then a little more;
+and then shut it quickly".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2026.jpg">"The daughter of the Natchez sitting in
+majesty, clothed in many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed
+and recrossed with girdles of serpent-skins and of
+wampum".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2102.jpg">"Aurora,--alas! alas!--went down upon her
+knees with her gaze fixed upon the candle's flame".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2162.jpg">"The young man with auburn curls rested
+the edge of his burden upon the counter, tore away its wrappings
+and disclosed a painting".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2188.jpg">"Silently regarding the intruder with a
+pair of eyes that sent an icy chill through him and fastened him
+where he stood, lay Palmyre Philosophe".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2198.jpg">"On their part, they would sit in deep
+attention, shielding their faces from the fire, and responding to
+enunciations directly contrary to their convictions with an
+occasional 'yes-seh,' or 'ceddenly,' or 'of coze,' or,--prettier
+affirmation still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2260.jpg">"Bras-Coup&eacute; was practically
+declaring his independence on a slight rise of ground hardly sixty
+feet in circumference and lifted scarce above the water in the
+inmost depths of the swamp".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2308.jpg">"'Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry?
+Iv you will tell me wad dad mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma
+<i>second word of honor</i>'--she rolled up her fist--'juz wad I
+thing about dad 'Sieur Frowenfel!'".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2334.jpg">"His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled
+lock fell down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the
+top of his staff, the other his knee, and both trembled
+violently".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2424.jpg">"The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly
+and silently from her chair, her eyes lifted up and her lips moving
+noiselessly. She seemed to have lost all knowledge of place or of
+human presence".</a></li>
+<li><a href="#gs2436.jpg">"They turned in a direction opposite to
+the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the paved court, at
+a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had placed glasses
+of lemonade".</a></li>
+</ul>
+<br>
+<i>In addition to the foregoing, the stories are illustrated with
+eight smaller photogravures from drawings by Mr.
+Herter</i>.</blockquote>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/gs2001.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3>MASKED BATTERIES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was in the Th&eacute;atre St. Philippe (they had laid a
+temporary floor over the parquette seats) in the city we now call
+New Orleans, in the month of September, and in the year 1803. Under
+the twinkle of numberless candles, and in a perfumed air thrilled
+with the wailing ecstasy of violins, the little Creole capital's
+proudest and best were offering up the first cool night of the
+languidly departing summer to the divine Terpsichore. For summer
+there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to
+talk of leaving when September rises to go. It was like hustling
+her out, it is true, to give a select <i>bal masqu&eacute;</i> at
+such a very early--such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting
+that something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and
+why not this? Everybody knows the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.</p>
+<p>And so, to repeat, it was in the Th&eacute;atre St. Philippe
+(the oldest, the first one), and, as may have been noticed, in the
+year in which the First Consul of France gave away Louisiana. Some
+might call it "sold." Old Agricola Fusilier in the rumbling pomp of
+his natural voice--for he had an hour ago forgotten that he was in
+mask and domino--called it "gave away." Not that he believed it had
+been done; for, look you, how could it be? The pretended treaty
+contained, for instance, no provision relative to the great family
+of Brahmin Mandarin Fusilier de Grandissime. It was evidently
+spurious.</p>
+<p>Being bumped against, he moved a step or two aside, and was
+going on to denounce further the detestable rumor, when a
+masker--one of four who had just finished the contra-dance and were
+moving away in the column of promenaders--brought him smartly
+around with the salutation:</p>
+<p>"<i>Comment to y&eacute;, Citoyen Agricola!</i>"</p>
+<p>"H-you young kitten!" said the old man in a growling voice, and
+with the teased, half laugh of aged vanity as he bent a baffled
+scrutiny at the back-turned face of an ideal Indian Queen. It was
+not merely the <i>tutoiement</i> that struck him as saucy, but the
+further familiarity of using the slave dialect. His French was
+unprovincial.</p>
+<p>"H-the cool rascal!" he added laughingly, and, only half to
+himself; "get into the garb of your true sex, sir, h-and I will
+guess who you are!"</p>
+<p>But the Queen, in the same feigned voice as before,
+retorted:</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah! mo piti fils, to pas connais to zancestres?</i> Don't
+you know your ancestors, my little son!"</p>
+<p>"H-the g-hods preserve us!" said Agricola, with a pompous laugh
+muffled under his mask, "the queen of the Tchoupitoulas I proudly
+acknowledge, and my great-grandfather, Epaminondas Fusilier,
+lieutenant of dragoons under Bienville; but,"--he laid his hand
+upon his heart, and bowed to the other two figures, whose smaller
+stature betrayed the gentler sex--"pardon me, ladies, neither Monks
+nor <i>Filles &agrave; la Cassette</i> grow on our family
+tree."</p>
+<p>The four maskers at once turned their glance upon the old man in
+the domino; but if any retort was intended it gave way as the
+violins burst into an agony of laughter. The floor was immediately
+filled with waltzers and the four figures disappeared.</p>
+<p>"I wonder," murmured Agricola to himself, "if that Dragoon can
+possibly be Honor&eacute; Grandissime."</p>
+<p>Wherever those four maskers went there were cries of delight:
+"Ho, ho, ho! see there! here! there! a group of first colonists!
+One of Iberville's Dragoons! don't you remember great-great
+grandfather Fusilier's portrait--the gilded casque and heron
+plumes? And that one behind in the fawn-skin leggings and shirt of
+birds' skins is an Indian Queen. As sure as sure can be, they are
+intended for Epaminondas and his wife, Lufki-Humma!" All, of
+course, in Louisiana French.</p>
+<p>"But why, then, does he not walk with her?"</p>
+<p>"Why, because, Simplicity, both of them are men, while the
+little Monk on his arm is a lady, as you can see, and so is the
+masque that has the arm of the Indian Queen; look at their little
+hands."</p>
+<p>In another part of the room the four were greeted with, "Ha, ha,
+ha! well, that is magnificent! But see that Huguenotte Girl on the
+Indian Queen's arm! Isn't that fine! Ha, ha! she carries a little
+trunk. She is a <i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette!</i>"</p>
+<p>Two partners in a cotillion were speaking in an undertone,
+behind a fan.</p>
+<p>"And you think you know who it is?" asked one.</p>
+<p>"Know?" replied the other. "Do I know I have a head on my
+shoulders? If that Dragoon is not our cousin Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime--well--"</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute; in mask? he is too sober-sided to do such a
+thing."</p>
+<p>"I tell you it is he! Listen. Yesterday I heard Doctor Charlie
+Keene begging him to go, and telling him there were two ladies,
+strangers, newly arrived in the city, who would be there, and whom
+he wished him to meet. Depend upon it the Dragoon is Honor&eacute;,
+Lufki-Humma is Charlie Keene, and the Monk and the Huguenotte are
+those two ladies."</p>
+<p>But all this is an outside view; let us draw nearer and see what
+chance may discover to us behind those four masks.</p>
+<p>An hour has passed by. The dance goes on; hearts are beating,
+wit is flashing, eyes encounter eyes with the leveled lances of
+their beams, merriment and joy and sudden bright surprises thrill
+the breast, voices are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear
+is bending with a venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there
+deceived, yonder takes prisoners and here surrenders. The very air
+seems to breathe, to sigh, to laugh, while the musicians, with
+disheveled locks, streaming brows and furious bows, strike, draw,
+drive, scatter from the anguished violins a never-ending rout of
+screaming harmonies. But the Monk and the Huguenotte are not on the
+floor. They are sitting where they have been left by their two
+companions, in one of the boxes of the theater, looking out upon
+the unwearied whirl and flash of gauze and light and color.</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>ch&eacute;rie, ch&eacute;rie!</i>" murmured the little
+lady in the Monk's disguise to her quieter companion, and speaking
+in the soft dialect of old Louisiana, "now you get a good idea of
+heaven!"</p>
+<p>The <i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette</i> replied with a sudden turn
+of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against
+this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and
+the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair with a
+gentle sigh.</p>
+<p>"Ah, for shame, tired!" softly laughed the other; then suddenly,
+with her eyes fixed across the room, she seized her companion's
+hand and pressed it tightly. "Do you not see it?" she whispered
+eagerly, "just by the door--the casque with the heron feathers. Ah,
+Clotilde, I <i>cannot</i> believe he is one of those
+Grandissimes!"</p>
+<p>"Well," replied the Huguenotte, "Doctor Keene says he is
+not."</p>
+<p>Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the
+Indian Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we
+understand to be particular about those things, had immediately
+made a memorandum of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account.</p>
+<p>"If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I
+would have turned about and left him in the midst of the
+contra-dance!"</p>
+<p>Behind them sat unmasked a well-aged pair,
+"<i>bredouill&eacute;</i>," as they used to say of the
+wall-flowers, with that look of blissful repose which marks the
+married and established Creole. The lady in monk's attire turned
+about in her chair and leaned back to laugh with these. The passing
+maskers looked that way, with a certain instinct that there was
+beauty under those two costumes. As they did so, they saw the
+<i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette</i> join in this over-shoulder
+conversation. A moment later, they saw the old gentleman protector
+and the <i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette</i> rising to the dance. And
+when presently the distant passers took a final backward glance,
+that same Lieutenant of Dragoons had returned and he and the little
+Monk were once more upon the floor, waiting for the music.</p>
+<p>"But your late companion?" said the voice in the cowl.</p>
+<p>"My Indian Queen?" asked the Creole Epaminondas.</p>
+<p>"Say, rather, your Medicine-Man," archly replied the Monk.</p>
+<p>"In these times," responded the Cavalier, "a medicine-man cannot
+dance long without professional interruption, even when he dances
+for a charitable object. He has been called to two relapsed
+patients." The music struck up; the speaker addressed himself to
+the dance; but the lady did not respond.</p>
+<p>"Do dragoons ever moralize?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"They do more," replied her partner; "sometimes, when beauty's
+enjoyment of the ball is drawing toward its twilight, they catch
+its pleasant melancholy, and confess; will the good father sit in
+the confessional?"</p>
+<p>The pair turned slowly about and moved toward the box from which
+they had come, the lady remaining silent; but just as they were
+entering she half withdrew her arm from his, and, confronting him
+with a rich sparkle of the eyes within the immobile mask of the
+monk, said:</p>
+<p>"Why should the conscience of one poor little monk carry all the
+frivolity of this ball? I have a right to dance, if I wish. I give
+you my word, Monsieur Dragoon, I dance only for the benefit of the
+sick and the destitute. It is you men--you dragoons and others--who
+will not help them without a compensation in this sort of nonsense.
+Why should we shrive you when you ought to burn?"</p>
+<p>"Then lead us to the altar," said the Dragoon.</p>
+<p>"Pardon, sir," she retorted, her words entangled with a musical,
+open-hearted laugh, "I am not going in that direction." She cast
+her glance around the ball-room. "As you say, it is the twilight of
+the ball; I am looking for the evening star,--that is, my little
+Huguenotte."</p>
+<p>"Then you are well mated."</p>
+<p>"How?"</p>
+<p>"For you are Aurora."</p>
+<p>The lady gave a displeased start.</p>
+<p>"Sir!"</p>
+<p>"Pardon," said the Cavalier, "if by accident I have hit upon
+your real name--"</p>
+<p>She laughed again--a laugh which was as exultantly joyous as it
+was high-bred.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my name? Oh no, indeed!" (More work for the Recording
+Angel.)</p>
+<p>She turned to her protectress.</p>
+<p>"Madame, I know you think we should be going home."</p>
+<p>The senior lady replied in amiable speech, but with sleepy eyes,
+and the Monk began to lift and unfold a wrapping. As the Cavalier'
+drew it into his own possession, and, agreeably to his gesture, the
+Monk and he sat down side by side, he said, in a low tone:</p>
+<p>"One more laugh before we part."</p>
+<p>"A monk cannot laugh for nothing."</p>
+<p>"I will pay for it."</p>
+<p>"But with nothing to laugh at?" The thought of laughing at
+nothing made her laugh a little on the spot.</p>
+<p>"We will make something to laugh at," said the Cavalier; "we
+will unmask to each other, and when we find each other first
+cousins, the laugh will come of itself."</p>
+<p>"Ah! we will unmask?--no! I have no cousins. I am certain we are
+strangers."</p>
+<p>"Then we will laugh to think that I paid for the
+disappointment."</p>
+<p>Much more of this childlike badinage followed, and by and by
+they came around again to the same last statement. Another little
+laugh escaped from the cowl.</p>
+<p>"You will pay? Let us see; how much will you give to the sick
+and destitute?"</p>
+<p>"To see who it is I am laughing with, I will give whatever you
+ask."</p>
+<p>"Two hundred and fifty dollars, cash, into the hands of the
+managers!"</p>
+<p>"A bargain!"</p>
+<p>The Monk laughed, and her chaperon opened her eyes and smiled
+apologetically. The Cavalier laughed, too, and said:</p>
+<p>"Good! That was the laugh; now the unmasking."</p>
+<p>"And you positively will give the money to the managers not
+later than to-morrow evening?"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2010.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2010.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2010.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted her own
+mask a little,<br>
+and then a little more; and then shut it quickly".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"Not later. It shall be done without fail."</p>
+<p>"Well, wait till I put on my wrappings; I must be ready to
+run."</p>
+<p>This delightful nonsense was interrupted by the return of the
+<i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette</i> and her aged, but sprightly,
+escort, from a circuit of the floor. Madame again opened her eyes,
+and the four prepared to depart. The Dragoon helped the Monk to
+fortify herself against the outer air. She was ready before the
+others. There was a pause, a low laugh, a whispered "Now!" She
+looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted her own mask a
+little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly down again
+upon a face whose beauty was more than even those fascinating
+graces had promised which Honor&eacute; Grandissime had fitly named
+the Morning; but it was a face he had never seen before.</p>
+<p>"Hush!" she said, "the enemies of religion are watching us; the
+Huguenotte saw me. Adieu"--and they were gone.</p>
+<p>M. Honor&eacute; Grandissime turned on his heel and very soon
+left the ball.</p>
+<p>"Now, sir," thought he to himself, "we'll return to our
+senses."</p>
+<p>"Now I'll put my feathers on again," says the plucked bird.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>THE FATE OF THE IMMIGRANT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was just a fortnight after the ball, that one Joseph
+Frowenfeld opened his eyes upon Louisiana. He was an American by
+birth, rearing and sentiment, yet German enough through his
+parents, and the only son in a family consisting of father, mother,
+self, and two sisters, new-blown flowers of womanhood. It was an
+October dawn, when, long wearied of the ocean, and with bright
+anticipations of verdure, and fragrance, and tropical gorgeousness,
+this simple-hearted family awoke to find the bark that had borne
+them from their far northern home already entering upon the ascent
+of the Mississippi.</p>
+<p>We may easily imagine the grave group, as they came up one by
+one from below, that morning of first disappointment, and stood
+(with a whirligig of jubilant mosquitoes spinning about each head)
+looking out across the waste, seeing the sky and the marsh meet in
+the east, the north, and the west, and receiving with patient
+silence the father's suggestion that the hills would, no doubt,
+rise into view after a while.</p>
+<p>"My children, we may turn this disappointment into a lesson; if
+the good people of this country could speak to us now, they might
+well ask us not to judge them or their land upon one or two hasty
+glances, or by the experiences of a few short days or weeks."</p>
+<p>But no hills rose. However, by and by they found solace in the
+appearance of distant forest, and in the afternoon they entered a
+land--but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by
+gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow,
+decay.</p>
+<p>"The captain told father, when we went to engage passage, that
+New Orleans was on high land," said the younger daughter, with a
+tremor in the voice, and ignoring the remonstrative touch of her
+sister.</p>
+<p>"On high land?" said the captain, turning from the pilot; "well,
+so it is--higher than the swamp, but not higher than the river,"
+and he checked a broadening smile.</p>
+<p>But the Frowenfelds were not a family to complain. It was
+characteristic of them to recognize the bright as well as the
+solemn virtues, and to keep each other reminded of the duty of
+cheerfulness. A smile, starting from the quiet elder sister, went
+around the group, directed against the abstracted and somewhat
+rueful countenance of Joseph, whereat he turned with a better face
+and said that what the Creator had pronounced very good they could
+hardly feel free to condemn. The old father was still more stout of
+heart.</p>
+<p>"These mosquitoes, children, are thought by some to keep the air
+pure," he said.</p>
+<p>"Better keep out of it after sunset," put in the captain.</p>
+<p>After that day and night, the prospect grew less repellent. A
+gradually matured conviction that New Orleans would not be found
+standing on stilts in the quagmire enabled the eye to become
+educated to a better appreciation of the solemn landscape. Nor was
+the landscape always solemn. There were long openings, now and
+then, to right and left, of emerald-green savannah, with the
+dazzling blue of the Gulf far beyond, waving a thousand
+white-handed good-byes as the funereal swamps slowly shut out again
+the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist prairies! How
+weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and yellow
+sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river!
+The profound stillness and breath reminded the old German, so he
+said, of that early time when the evenings and mornings were the
+first days of the half-built world. The barking of a dog in Fort
+Plaquemines seemed to come before its turn in the panorama of
+creation--before the earth was ready for the dog's master.</p>
+<p>But he was assured that to live in those swamps was not entirely
+impossible to man--"if one may call a negro a man." Runaway slaves
+were not so rare in them as one--a lost hunter, for example--might
+wish. His informant was a new passenger, taken aboard at the fort.
+He spoke English.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir! Didn' I had to run from Bras-Coup&eacute; in de
+haidge of de swamp be'ine de 'abitation of my cousin Honor&eacute;,
+one time? You can hask 'oo you like!" (A Creole always provides
+against incredulity.) At this point he digressed a moment: "You
+know my cousin, Honor&eacute; Grandissime, w'at give two hund'
+fifty dolla' to de 'ospill laz mont'? An' juz because my cousin
+Honor&eacute; give it, somebody helse give de semm. Fo' w'y don't
+he give his nemm?"</p>
+<p>The reason (which this person did not know) was that the second
+donor was the first one over again, resolved that the little
+unknown Monk should not know whom she had baffled.</p>
+<p>"Who was Bras-Coup&eacute;?" the good German asked in
+French.</p>
+<p>The stranger sat upon the capstan, and, in the shadow of the
+cypress forest, where the vessel lay moored for a change of wind,
+told in a <i>patois</i> difficult, but not impossible, to
+understand, the story of a man who chose rather to be hunted like a
+wild beast among those awful labyrinths, than to be yoked and
+beaten like a tame one. Joseph, drawing near as the story was
+coming to a close, overheard the following English:</p>
+<p>"Friend, if you dislike heated discussion, do not tell that to
+my son."</p>
+<p>The nights were strangely beautiful. The immigrants almost
+consumed them on deck, the mother and daughters attending in silent
+delight while the father and son, facing south, rejoiced in learned
+recognition of stars and constellations hitherto known to them only
+on globes and charts.</p>
+<p>"Yes, my dear son," said the father, in a moment of ecstatic
+admiration, "wherever man may go, around this globe--however
+uninviting his lateral surroundings may be, the heavens are ever
+over his head, and I am glad to find the stars your favorite
+objects of study."</p>
+<p>So passed the time as the vessel, hour by hour, now slowly
+pushed by the wind against the turbid current, now warping along
+the fragrant precincts of orange or magnolia groves or fields of
+sugar-cane, or moored by night in the deep shade of mighty
+willow-jungles, patiently crept toward the end of their pilgrimage;
+and in the length of time which would at present be consumed in
+making the whole journey from their Northern home to their Southern
+goal, accomplished the distance of ninety-eight miles, and found
+themselves before the little, hybrid city of "Nouvelle
+Orl&eacute;ans." There was the cathedral, and standing beside it,
+like Sancho beside Don Quixote, the squat hall of the Cabildo with
+the calabozo in the rear. There were the forts, the military
+bakery, the hospitals, the plaza, the Almonaster stores, and the
+busy rue Toulouse; and, for the rest of the town, a pleasant
+confusion of green tree-tops, red and gray roofs, and glimpses of
+white or yellow wall, spreading back a few hundred yards behind the
+cathedral, and tapering into a single rank of gardened and
+belvedered villas, that studded either horn of the river's crescent
+with a style of home than which there is probably nothing in the
+world more maternally homelike.</p>
+<p>"And now," said the "captain," bidding the immigrants good-by,
+"keep out of the sun and stay in after dark; you're not
+'acclimated,' as they call it, you know, and the city is full of
+the fever."</p>
+<p>Such were the Frowenfelds. Out of such a mold and into such a
+place came the young Am&eacute;ricain, whom even Agricola Fusilier,
+as we shall see, by and by thought worthy to be made an exception
+of, and honored with his recognition.</p>
+<p>The family rented a two-story brick house in the rue Bienville,
+No. 17, it seems. The third day after, at daybreak, Joseph called
+his father to his bedside to say that he had had a chill, and was
+suffering such pains in his head and back that he would like to lie
+quiet until they passed off. The gentle father replied that it was
+undoubtedly best to do so, and preserved an outward calm. He looked
+at his son's eyes; their pupils were contracted to tiny beads. He
+felt his pulse and his brow; there was no room for doubt; it was
+the dreaded scourge--the fever. We say, sometimes, of hearts that
+they sink like lead; it does not express the agony.</p>
+<p>On the second day, while the unsated fever was running through
+every vein and artery, like soldiery through the streets of a
+burning city, and far down in the caverns of the body the poison
+was ransacking every palpitating corner, the poor immigrant fell
+into a moment's sleep. But what of that? The enemy that moment had
+mounted to the brain. And then there happened to Joseph an
+experience rare to the sufferer by this disease, but not entirely
+unknown,--a delirium of mingled pleasures and distresses. He seemed
+to awake somewhere between heaven and earth, reclining in a
+gorgeous barge, which was draped in curtains of interwoven silver
+and silk, cushioned with rich stuffs of every beautiful dye, and
+perfumed <i>ad nauseam</i> with orange-leaf tea. The crew was a
+single old negress, whose head was wound about with a blue Madras
+handkerchief, and who stood at the prow, and by a singular rotary
+motion, rowed the barge with a teaspoon. He could not get his head
+out of the hot sun; and the barge went continually round and round
+with a heavy, throbbing motion, in the regular beat of which
+certain spirits of the air--one of whom appeared to be a beautiful
+girl and another a small, red-haired man,--confronted each other
+with the continual call and response:</p>
+<p>"Keep the bedclothes on him and the room shut tight, keep the
+bedclothes on him and the room shut tight,"--"An' don' give 'im
+some watta, an' don' give 'im some watta."</p>
+<p>During what lapse of time--whether moments or days--this lasted,
+Joseph could not then know; but at last these things faded away,
+and there came to him a positive knowledge that he was on a
+sick-bed, where unless something could be done for him he should be
+dead in an hour. Then a spoon touched his lips, and a taste of
+brandy and water went all through him; and when he fell into sweet
+slumber and awoke, and found the teaspoon ready at his lips again,
+he had to lift a little the two hands lying before him on the
+coverlet to know that they were his--they were so wasted and
+yellow. He turned his eyes, and through the white gauze of the
+mosquito-bar saw, for an instant, a strange and beautiful young
+face; but the lids fell over his eyes, and when he raised them
+again the blue-turbaned black nurse was tucking the covering about
+his feet.</p>
+<p>"Sister!"</p>
+<p>No answer.</p>
+<p>"Where is my mother?"</p>
+<p>The negress shook her head.</p>
+<p>He was too weak to speak again, but asked with his eyes so
+persistently, and so pleadingly, that by and by she gave him an
+audible answer. He tried hard to understand it, but could not, it
+being in these words:</p>
+<p>"<i>Li pa' oul&eacute; vini 'ci--li pas capabe</i>."</p>
+<p>Thrice a day, for three days more, came a little man with a
+large head surrounded by short, red curls and with small freckles
+in a fine skin, and sat down by the bed with a word of good cheer
+and the air of a commander. At length they had something like an
+extended conversation.</p>
+<p>"So you concluded not to die, eh? Yes, I'm the doctor--Doctor
+Keene. A young lady? What young lady? No, sir, there has been no
+young lady here. You're mistaken. Vagary of your fever. There has
+been no one here but this black girl and me. No, my dear fellow,
+your father and mother can't see you yet; you don't want them to
+catch the fever, do you? Good-bye. Do as your nurse tells you, and
+next week you may raise your head and shoulders a little; but if
+you don't mind her you'll have a backset, and the devil himself
+wouldn't engage to cure you."</p>
+<p>The patient had been sitting up a little at a time for several
+days, when at length the doctor came to pay a final call, "as a
+matter of form;" but, after a few pleasantries, he drew his chair
+up gravely, and, in a tender tone--need we say it? He had come to
+tell Joseph that his father, mother, sisters, all, were gone on a
+second--a longer--voyage, to shores where there could be no
+disappointments and no fevers, forever.</p>
+<p>"And, Frowenfeld," he said, at the end of their long and painful
+talk, "if there is any blame attached to not letting you go with
+them, I think I can take part of it; but if you ever want a
+friend,--one who is courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to
+those he likes,--you can call for Charlie Keene. I'll drop in to
+see you, anyhow, from time to time, till you get stronger. I have
+taken a heap of trouble to keep you alive, and if you should
+relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a deal of good physic
+wasted; so keep in the house."</p>
+<p>The polite neighbors who lifted their cocked hats to Joseph, as
+he spent a slow convalescence just within his open door, were not
+bound to know how or when he might have suffered. There were no
+"Howards" or "Y.M.C.A.'s" in those days; no "Peabody Reliefs." Even
+had the neighbors chosen to take cognizance of those bereavements,
+they were not so unusual as to fix upon him any extraordinary
+interests an object of sight; and he was beginning most
+distressfully to realize that "great solitude" which the
+philosopher attributes to towns, when matters took a decided
+turn.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>"AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>We say matters took a turn; or, better, that Frowenfeld's
+interest in affairs received a new life. This had its beginning in
+Doctor Keene's making himself specially entertaining in an
+old-family-history way, with a view to keeping his patient within
+doors for a safe period. He had conceived a great liking for
+Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon, would drift in to challenge
+him to a game of chess--a game, by the way, for which neither of
+them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned its moves to
+gratify his father, and the doctor--the truth is, the doctor had
+never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who cannot
+easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for one, least of
+all one of their own sex. It may safely be supposed, then, that the
+board often displayed an arrangement of pieces that would have
+bewildered Morphy himself.</p>
+<p>"By the by, Frowenfeld," he said one evening, after the one
+preliminary move with which he invariably opened his game, "you
+haven't made the acquaintance of your pretty neighbors next
+door."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld knew of no specially pretty neighbors next door on
+either side--had noticed no ladies.</p>
+<p>"Well, I will take you in to see them some time." The doctor
+laughed a little, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one
+hand, as he laughed.</p>
+<p>The convalescent wondered what there could be to laugh at.</p>
+<p>"Who are they?" he inquired.</p>
+<p>"Their name is De Grapion--oh, De Grapion, says I! their name is
+Nancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women--the
+brightest, the best, and the bravest--that I know in New Orleans."
+The doctor resumed a cigar which lay against the edge of the
+chess-board, found it extinguished, and proceeded to relight it.
+"Best blood of the province; good as the Grandissimes. Blood is a
+great thing here, in certain odd ways," he went on. "Very curious
+sometimes." He stooped to the floor where his coat had fallen, and
+took his handkerchief from a breast-pocket. "At a grand mask ball
+about two months ago, where I had a bewilderingly fine time with
+those ladies, the proudest old turkey in the theater was an old
+fellow whose Indian blood shows in his very behavior, and yet--ha,
+ha! I saw that same old man, at a quadroon ball a few years ago,
+walk up to the handsomest, best dressed man in the house, a man
+with a skin whiter than his own,--a perfect gentleman as to looks
+and manners,--and without a word slap him in the face."</p>
+<p>"You laugh?" asked Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Laugh? Why shouldn't I? The fellow had no business there. Those
+balls are not given to quadroon <i>males</i>, my friend. He was
+lucky to get out alive, and that was about all he did.</p>
+<p>"They are right!" the doctor persisted, in response to
+Frowenfeld's puzzled look. "The people here have got to be
+particular. However, that is not what we were talking about.
+Quadroon balls are not to be mentioned in connection. Those
+ladies--" He addressed himself to the resuscitation of his cigar.
+"Singular people in this country," he resumed; but his cigar would
+not revive. He was a poor story-teller. To Frowenfeld--as it would
+have been to any one, except a Creole or the most thoroughly
+Creoleized Am&eacute;ricain--his narrative, when it was done, was
+little more than a thick mist of strange names, places and events;
+yet there shone a light of romance upon it that filled it with
+color and populated it with phantoms. Frowenfeld's interest
+rose--was allured into this mist--and there was left befogged. As a
+physician, Doctor Keene thus accomplished his end,--the mental
+diversion of his late patient,--for in the midst of the mist
+Frowenfeld encountered and grappled a problem of human life in
+Creole type, the possible correlations of whose quantities we shall
+presently find him revolving in a studious and sympathetic mind, as
+the poet of to-day ponders the</p>
+<blockquote>"Flower in the crannied wall."</blockquote>
+<p>The quantities in that problem were the ancestral--the
+maternal--roots of those two rival and hostile families whose
+descendants--some brave, others fair--we find unwittingly thrown
+together at the ball, and with whom we are shortly to have the
+honor of an unmasked acquaintance.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>FAMILY TREES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In the year 1673, and in the royal hovel of a Tchoupitoulas
+village not far removed from that "Buffalo's Grazing-ground," now
+better known as New Orleans, was born Lufki-Humma, otherwise Red
+Clay. The mother of Red Clay was a princess by birth as well as by
+marriage. For the father, with that devotion to his people's
+interests presumably common to rulers, had ten moons before
+ventured northward into the territory of the proud and exclusive
+Natchez nation, and had so prevailed with--so outsmoked--their
+"Great Sun," as to find himself, as he finally knocked the ashes
+from his successful calumet, possessor of a wife whose pedigree
+included a long line of royal mothers--fathers being of little
+account in Natchez heraldry--extending back beyond the Mexican
+origin of her nation, and disappearing only in the effulgence of
+her great original, the orb of day himself. As to Red Clay's
+paternal ancestry, we must content ourselves with the fact that the
+father was not only the diplomate we have already found him, but a
+chief of considerable eminence; that is to say, of seven feet
+stature.</p>
+<p>It scarce need be said that when Lufki-Humma was born, the
+mother arose at once from her couch of skins, herself bore the
+infant to the neighboring bayou and bathed it--not for singularity,
+nor for independence, nor for vainglory, but only as one of the
+heart-curdling conventionalities which made up the experience of
+that most pitiful of holy things, an Indian mother.</p>
+<p>Outside the lodge door sat and continued to sit, as she passed
+out, her master or husband. His interest in the trivialities of the
+moment may be summed up in this, that he was as fully prepared as
+some men are in more civilized times and places to hold his queen
+to strict account for the sex of her offspring. Girls for the
+Natchez, if they preferred them, but the chief of the Tchoupitoulas
+wanted a son. She returned from the water, came near, sank upon her
+knees, laid the infant at his feet, and lo! a daughter.</p>
+<p>Then she fell forward heavily upon her face. It may have been
+muscular exhaustion, it may have been the mere wind of her
+hasty-tempered matrimonial master's stone hatchet as it whiffed by
+her skull; an inquest now would be too great an irony; but
+something blew out her "vile candle."</p>
+<p>Among the squaws who came to offer the accustomed funeral
+howlings, and seize mementoes from the deceased lady's scant
+leavings, was one who had in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle
+scarcely cold, and therefore a necessity at her breast, if not a
+place in her heart, for the unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it
+was that this little waif came to be tossed, a droll hypothesis of
+flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the hands of wild nature with
+<i>carte blanche</i> as to the disposal of it. And now, since this
+was Agricola's most boasted ancestor--since it appears the darkness
+of her cheek had no effect to make him less white, or qualify his
+right to smite the fairest and most distant descendant of an
+African on the face, and since this proud station and right could
+not have sprung from the squalid surroundings of her birth, let us
+for a moment contemplate these crude materials.</p>
+<p>As for the flesh, it was indeed only some of that "one flesh" of
+which we all are made; but the blood--to go into finer
+distinctions--the blood, as distinguished from the milk of her
+Alibamon foster-mother, was the blood of the royal caste of the
+great Toltec mother-race, which, before it yielded its Mexican
+splendors to the conquering Aztec, throned the jeweled and
+gold-laden Inca in the South, and sent the sacred fire of its
+temples into the North by the hand of the Natchez. For it is a
+short way of expressing the truth concerning Red Clay's tissues to
+say she had the blood of her mother and the nerve of her father,
+the nerve of the true North American Indian, and had it in its
+finest strength.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2026.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2026.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2026.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"The daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in
+many-colored robes of shining feathers<br>
+crossed and recrossed with girdles of serpent-skins and of
+wampum".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>As to her infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail
+of straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in
+hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout.
+Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may
+have been an Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good
+fortune her impressible little cranium should escape the
+cradle-straps, the shapeliness that nature loves would soon appear.
+And this very fortune befell her. Her father's detestation of an
+infant that had not consulted his wishes as to sex prompted a
+verbal decree which, among other prohibitions, forbade her skull
+the distortions that ambitious and fashionable Indian mothers
+delighted to produce upon their offspring.</p>
+<p>And as to her brain: what can we say? The casket in which Nature
+sealed that brain, and in which Nature's great step-sister, Death,
+finally laid it away, has never fallen into the delighted
+fingers--and the remarkable fineness of its texture will never
+kindle admiration in the triumphant eyes--of those whose scientific
+hunger drives them to dig for <i>crania Americana</i>; nor yet will
+all their learned excavatings ever draw forth one of those pale
+souvenirs of mortality with walls of shapelier contour or more
+delicate fineness, or an interior of more admirable spaciousness,
+than the fair council-chamber under whose dome the mind of
+Lufki-Humma used, about two centuries ago, to sit in frequent
+conclave with high thoughts.</p>
+<p>"I have these facts," it was Agricola Fusilier's habit to say,
+"by family tradition; but you know, sir, h-tradition is much more
+authentic than history!"</p>
+<p>Listening Crane, the tribal medicine-man, one day stepped softly
+into the lodge of the giant chief, sat down opposite him on a mat
+of plaited rushes, accepted a lighted calumet, and, after the
+silence of a decent hour, broken at length by the warrior's
+intimation that "the ear of Raging Buffalo listened for the voice
+of his brother," said, in effect, that if that ear would turn
+toward the village play-ground, it would catch a murmur like the
+pleasing sound of bees among the blossoms of the catalpa, albeit
+the catalpa was now dropping her leaves, for it was the moon of
+turkeys. No, it was the repressed laughter of squaws, wallowing
+with their young ones about the village pole, wondering at the
+Natchez-Tchoupitoulas child, whose eye was the eye of the panther,
+and whose words were the words of an aged chief in council.</p>
+<p>There was more added; we record only enough to indicate the
+direction of Listening Crane's aim. The eye of Raging Buffalo was
+opened to see a vision: the daughter of the Natchez sitting in
+majesty, clothed in many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed
+and recrossed with girdles of serpent-skins and of wampum, her feet
+in quilled and painted moccasins, her head under a glory of plumes,
+the carpet of buffalo-robes about her throne covered with the
+trophies of conquest, and the atmosphere of her lodge blue with the
+smoke of embassadors' calumets; and this extravagant dream the
+capricious chief at once resolved should eventually become reality.
+"Let her be taken to the village temple," he said to his
+prime-minister, "and be fed by warriors on the flesh of
+wolves."</p>
+<p>The Listening Crane was a patient man; he was the "man that
+waits" of the old French proverb; all things came to him. He had
+waited for an opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had
+come. Again, he waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and
+others, he died. He had heard of a race more powerful than the
+Natchez--a white race; he waited for them; and when the year 1682
+saw a humble "black gown" dragging and splashing his way, with La
+Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of Louisiana, holding forth the
+crucifix and backed by French carbines and Mohican tomahawks, among
+the marvels of that wilderness was found this: a child of nine
+sitting, and--with some unostentatious aid from her
+medicine-man--ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of
+their temple. Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition
+of Listening Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's
+Manitou through the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her
+father's fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom,
+sometimes a decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian
+counselor of warriors, and at all times--year after year, until she
+had reached the perfect womanhood of twenty-six--a virgin
+queen.</p>
+<p>On the 11th of March, 1699, two overbold young Frenchmen of M.
+D'Iberville's little exploring party tossed guns on shoulder, and
+ventured away from their canoes on the bank of the Mississippi into
+the wilderness. Two men they were whom an explorer would have been
+justified in hoarding up, rather than in letting out at such risks;
+a pair to lean on, noble and strong. They hunted, killed nothing,
+were overtaken by rain, then by night, hunger, alarm, despair.</p>
+<p>And when they had lain down to die, and had only succeeded in
+falling asleep, the Diana of the Tchoupitoulas, ranging the
+magnolia groves with bow and quiver, came upon them in all the
+poetry of their hope-forsaken strength and beauty, and fell sick of
+love. We say not whether with Zephyr Grandissime or Epaminondas
+Fusilier; that, for the time being, was her secret.</p>
+<p>The two captives were made guests. Listening Crane rejoiced in
+them as representatives of the great gift-making race, and indulged
+himself in a dream of pipe-smoking, orations, treaties, presents
+and alliances, finding its climax in the marriage of his virgin
+queen to the king of France, and unvaryingly tending to the swiftly
+increasing aggrandizement of Listening Crane. They sat down to
+bear's meat, sagamite and beans. The queen sat down with them,
+clothed in her entire wardrobe: vest of swan's skin, with facings
+of purple and green from the neck of the mallard; petticoat of
+plaited hair, with embroideries of quills; leggings of fawn-skin;
+garters of wampum; black and green serpent-skin moccasins, that
+rested on pelts of tiger-cat and buffalo; armlets of gars' scales,
+necklaces of bears' claws and alligators' teeth, plaited tresses,
+plumes of raven and flamingo, wing of the pink curlew, and odors of
+bay and sassafras. Young men danced before them, blowing upon
+reeds, hooting, yelling, rattling beans in gourds and touching
+hands and feet. One day was like another, and the nights were made
+brilliant with flambeau dances and processions.</p>
+<p>Some days later M. D'Iberville's canoe fleet, returning down the
+river, found and took from the shore the two men, whom they had
+given up for dead, and with them, by her own request, the
+abdicating queen, who left behind her a crowd of weeping and
+howling squaws and warriors. Three canoes that put off in their
+wake, at a word from her, turned back; but one old man leaped into
+the water, swam after them a little way, and then unexpectedly
+sank. It was that cautious wader but inexperienced swimmer, the
+Listening Crane.</p>
+<p>When the expedition reached Biloxi, there were two suitors for
+the hand of Agricola's great ancestress. Neither of them was Zephyr
+Grandissime. (Ah! the strong heads of those Grandissimes.)</p>
+<p>They threw dice for her. Demosthenes De Grapion--he who,
+tradition says, first hoisted the flag of France over the little
+fort--seemed to think he ought to have a chance, and being accorded
+it, cast an astonishingly high number; but Epaminondas cast a
+number higher by one (which Demosthenes never could quite
+understand), and got a wife who had loved him from first sight.</p>
+<p>Thus, while the pilgrim fathers of the Mississippi Delta with
+Gallic recklessness were taking wives and moot-wives from the ill
+specimens of three races, arose, with the church's benediction, the
+royal house of the Fusiliers in Louisiana. But the true, main
+Grandissime stock, on which the Fusiliers did early, ever, and yet
+do, love to marry, has kept itself lily-white ever since France has
+loved lilies--as to marriage, that is; as to less responsible
+entanglements, why, of course--</p>
+<p>After a little, the disappointed Demosthenes, with due
+ecclesiastical sanction, also took a most excellent wife, from the
+first cargo of House of Correction girls. Her biography, too, is as
+short as Methuselah's, or shorter; she died. Zephyr Grandissime
+married, still later, a lady of rank, a widow without children,
+sent from France to Biloxi under a <i>lettre de cachet</i>.
+Demosthenes De Grapion, himself an only son, left but one son, who
+also left but one. Yet they were prone to early marriages.</p>
+<p>So also were the Grandissimes, or, as the name is signed in all
+the old notarial papers, the Brahmin Mandarin de Grandissimes. That
+was one thing that kept their many-stranded family line so free
+from knots and kinks. Once the leisurely Zephyr gave them a start,
+generation followed generation with a rapidity that kept the
+competing De Grapions incessantly exasperated, and new-made
+Grandissime fathers continually throwing themselves into the fond
+arms and upon the proud necks of congratulatory grandsires. Verily
+it seemed as though their family tree was a fig-tree; you could not
+look for blossoms on it, but there, instead, was the fruit full of
+seed. And with all their speed they were for the most part fine of
+stature, strong of limb and fair of face. The old nobility of their
+stock, including particularly the unnamed blood of her of the
+<i>lettre de cachet</i>, showed forth in a gracefulness of
+carriage, that almost identified a De Grandissime wherever you saw
+him, and in a transparency of flesh and classic beauty of feature,
+that made their daughters extra-marriageable in a land and day
+which was bearing a wide reproach for a male celibacy not of the
+pious sort.</p>
+<p>In a flock of Grandissimes might always be seen a Fusilier or
+two; fierce-eyed, strong-beaked, dark, heavy-taloned birds, who, if
+they could not sing, were of rich plumage, and could talk, and
+bite, and strike, and keep up a ruffled crest and a self-exalting
+bad humor. They early learned one favorite cry, with which they
+greeted all strangers, crying the louder the more the endeavor was
+made to appease them: "Invaders! Invaders!"</p>
+<p>There was a real pathos in the contrast offered to this family
+line by that other which sprang up, as slenderly as a stalk of wild
+oats, from the loins of Demosthenes De Grapion. A lone son
+following a lone son, and he another--it was sad to contemplate, in
+that colonial beginning of days, three generations of good, Gallic
+blood tripping jocundly along in attenuated Indian file. It made it
+no less pathetic to see that they were brilliant, gallant,
+much-loved, early epauletted fellows, who did not let twenty-one
+catch them without wives sealed with the authentic wedding kiss,
+nor allow twenty-two to find them without an heir. But they had a
+sad aptness for dying young. It was altogether supposable that they
+would have spread out broadly in the land; but they were such
+inveterate duelists, such brave Indian-fighters, such adventurous
+swamp-rangers, and such lively free-livers, that, however
+numerously their half-kin may have been scattered about in an
+unacknowledged way, the avowed name of De Grapion had become less
+and less frequent in lists where leading citizens subscribed their
+signatures, and was not to be seen in the list of managers of the
+late ball.</p>
+<p>It is not at all certain that so hot a blood would not have
+boiled away entirely before the night of the <i>bal
+masqu&eacute;</i>, but for an event which led to the union of that
+blood with a stream equally clear and ruddy, but of a milder
+vintage. This event fell out some fifty-two years after that cast
+of the dice which made the princess Lufki-Humma the mother of all
+the Fusiliers and of none of the De Grapions. Clotilde, the
+Casket-Girl, the little maid who would not marry, was one of an
+heroic sort, worth--the De Grapions maintained--whole swampfuls of
+Indian queens. And yet the portrait of this great ancestress, which
+served as a pattern to one who, at the ball, personated the
+long-deceased heroine <i>en masque</i>, is hopelessly lost in some
+garret. Those Creoles have such a shocking way of filing their
+family relics and records in rat-holes.</p>
+<p>One fact alone remains to be stated: that the De Grapions, try
+to spurn it as they would, never could quite suppress a hard
+feeling in the face of the record, that from the two young men,
+who, when lost in the horrors of Louisiana's swamps, had been
+esteemed as good as dead, and particularly from him who married at
+his leisure,--from Zephyr de Grandissime,--sprang there so many as
+the sands of the Mississippi innumerable.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>A MAIDEN WHO WILL NOT MARRY</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Midway between the times of Lufki-Humma and those of her proud
+descendant, Agricola Fusilier, fifty-two years lying on either
+side, were the days of Pierre Rigaut, the magnificent, the "Grand
+Marquis," the Governor, De Vaudreuil. He was the Solomon of
+Louisiana. For splendor, however, not for wisdom. Those were the
+gala days of license, extravagance and pomp. He made paper money to
+be as the leaves of the forest for multitude; it was nothing
+accounted of in the days of the Grand Marquis. For Louis Quinze was
+king.</p>
+<p>Clotilde, orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was one of sixty, the
+last royal allotment to Louisiana, of imported wives. The king's
+agents had inveigled her away from France with fair stories: "They
+will give you a quiet home with some lady of the colony. Have to
+marry?--not unless it pleases you. The king himself pays your
+passage and gives you a casket of clothes. Think of that these
+times, fillette; and passage free, withal, to--the garden of Eden,
+as you may call it--what more, say you, can a poor girl want?
+Without doubt, too, like a model colonist, you will accept a good
+husband and have a great many beautiful children, who will say with
+pride, 'Me, I am no House-of-Correction-girl stock; my mother'--or
+'grandmother,' as the case may be--'was a <i>fille &agrave; la
+cassette!</i>'"</p>
+<p>The sixty were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of
+the Ursuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine
+soldiers of the king were well wived and ready to settle upon their
+riparian land-grants. The residuum in the nuns' hands was one
+stiff-necked little heretic, named, in part, Clotilde. They bore
+with her for sixty days, and then complained to the Grand Marquis.
+But the Grand Marquis, with all his pomp, was gracious and
+kind-hearted, and loved his ease almost as much as his marchioness
+loved money. He bade them try her another month. They did so, and
+then returned with her; she would neither marry nor pray to
+Mary.</p>
+<p>Here is the way they talked in New Orleans in those days. If you
+care to understand why Louisiana has grown up so out of joint, note
+the tone of those who governed her in the middle of the last
+century:</p>
+<p>"What, my child," the Grand Marquis said, "you a <i>fille
+&agrave; la cassette?</i> France, for shame! Come here by my side.
+Will you take a little advice from an old soldier? It is in one
+word--submit. Whatever is inevitable, submit to it. If you want to
+live easy and sleep easy, do as other people do--submit. Consider
+submission in the present case; how easy, how comfortable, and how
+little it amounts to! A little hearing of mass, a little telling of
+beads, a little crossing of one's self--what is that? One need not
+believe in them. Don't shake your head. Take my example; look at
+me; all these things go in at this ear and out at this. Do king or
+clergy trouble me? Not at all. For how does the king in these
+matters of religion? I shall not even tell you, he is such a bad
+boy. Do you not know that all the <i>noblesse</i>, and all the
+<i>savants</i>, and especially all the archbishops and
+cardinals,--all, in a word, but such silly little chicks as
+yourself,--have found out that this religious business is a joke?
+Actually a joke, every whit; except, to be sure, this heresy phase;
+that is a joke they cannot take. Now, I wish you well, pretty
+child; so if you--eh?--truly, my pet, I fear we shall have to call
+you unreasonable. Stop; they can spare me here a moment; I will
+take you to the Marquise: she is in the next room.... Behold," said
+he, as he entered the presence of his marchioness, "the little maid
+who will not marry!"</p>
+<p>The Marquise was as cold and hard-hearted as the Marquis was
+loose and kind; but we need not recount the slow tortures of the
+<i>fille &agrave; la cassette's</i> second verbal temptation. The
+colony had to have soldiers, she was given to understand, and the
+soldiers must have wives. "Why, I am a soldier's wife, myself!"
+said the gorgeously attired lady, laying her hand upon the
+governor-general's epaulet. She explained, further, that he was
+rather softhearted, while she was a business woman; also that the
+royal commissary's rolls did not comprehend such a thing as a
+spinster, and--incidentally--that living by principle was rather
+out of fashion in the province just then.</p>
+<p>After she had offered much torment of this sort, a definite
+notion seemed to take her; she turned her lord by a touch of the
+elbow, and exchanged two or three business-like whispers with him
+at a window overlooking the Levee.</p>
+<p>"Fillette," she said, returning, "you are going to live on the
+sea-coast. I am sending an aged lady there to gather the wax of the
+wild myrtle. This good soldier of mine buys it for our king at
+twelve livres the pound. Do you not know that women can make money?
+The place is not safe; but there are no safe places in Louisiana.
+There are no nuns to trouble you there; only a few Indians and
+soldiers. You and Madame will live together, quite to yourselves,
+and can pray as you like."</p>
+<p>"And not marry a soldier," said the Grand Marquis.</p>
+<p>"No," said the lady, "not if you can gather enough
+myrtle-berries to afford me a profit and you a living."</p>
+<p>It was some thirty leagues or more eastward to the country of
+the Biloxis, a beautiful land of low, evergreen hills looking out
+across the pine-covered sand-keys of Mississippi Sound to the Gulf
+of Mexico. The northern shore of Biloxi Bay was rich in
+candleberry-myrtle. In Clotilde's day, though Biloxi was no longer
+the capital of the Mississippi Valley, the fort which D'Iberville
+had built in 1699, and the first timber of which is said to have
+been lifted by Zephyr Grandissime at one end and Epaminondas
+Fusilier at the other, was still there, making brave against the
+possible advent of corsairs, with a few old culverines and one
+wooden mortar.</p>
+<p>And did the orphan, in despite of Indians and soldiers and
+wilderness, settle down here and make a moderate fortune? Alas, she
+never gathered a berry! When she--with the aged lady, her appointed
+companion in exile, the young commandant of the fort, in whose
+pinnace they had come, and two or three French sailors and
+Canadians--stepped out upon the white sand of Biloxi beach, she was
+bound with invisible fetters hand and foot, by that Olympian rogue
+of a boy, who likes no better prey than a little maiden who thinks
+she will never marry.</p>
+<p>The officer's name was De Grapion--Georges De Grapion. The
+Marquis gave him a choice grant of land on that part of the
+Mississippi river "coast" known as the Cannes Brul&eacute;es.</p>
+<p>"Of course you know where Cannes Brul&eacute;es is, don't you?"
+asked Doctor Keene of Joseph Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Joseph, with a twinge of reminiscence that recalled
+the study of Louisiana on paper with his father and sisters.</p>
+<p>There Georges De Grapion settled, with the laudable
+determination to make a fresh start against the mortifyingly
+numerous Grandissimes.</p>
+<p>"My father's policy was every way bad," he said to his spouse;
+"it is useless, and probably wrong, this trying to thin them out by
+duels; we will try another plan. Thank you," he added, as she
+handed his coat back to him, with the shoulder-straps cut off. In
+pursuance of the new plan, Madame De Grapion,--the precious little
+heroine!--before the myrtles offered another crop of berries, bore
+him a boy not much smaller (saith tradition) than herself.</p>
+<p>Only one thing qualified the father's elation. On that very day
+Numa Grandissime (Brahmin-Mandarin de Grandissime), a mere child,
+received from Governor de Vaudreuil a cadetship.</p>
+<p>"Never mind, Messieurs Grandissime, go on with your tricks; we
+shall see! Ha! we shall see!"</p>
+<p>"We shall see what?" asked a remote relative of that family.
+"Will Monsieur be so good as to explain himself?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Bang! bang!</p>
+<p>Alas, Madame De Grapion!</p>
+<p>It may be recorded that no affair of honor in Louisiana ever
+left a braver little widow. When Joseph and his doctor pretended to
+play chess together, but little more than a half-century had
+elapsed since the <i>fille &agrave; la cassette</i> stood before
+the Grand Marquis and refused to wed. Yet she had been long gone
+into the skies, leaving a worthy example behind her in twenty years
+of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir and resident of the
+plantation at Cannes Brul&eacute;es, at the age of--they do
+say--eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of
+Franco-Spanish extraction, and, after a fair length of life divided
+between campaigning under the brilliant young Galvez and raising
+unremunerative indigo crops, had lately lain down to sleep, leaving
+only two descendants--females--how shall we describe them?--a Monk
+and a <i>Fille &agrave; la Cassette</i>. It was very hard to have
+to go leaving his family name snuffed out and certain
+Grandissime-ward grievances burning.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"There are so many Grandissimes," said the weary-eyed
+Frowenfeld, "I cannot distinguish between--I can scarcely count
+them."</p>
+<p>"Well, now," said the doctor, "let me tell you, don't try. They
+can't do it themselves. Take them in the mass--as you would
+shrimps."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>LOST OPPORTUNITIES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The little doctor tipped his chair back against the wall, drew
+up his knees, and laughed whimperingly in his freckled hands.</p>
+<p>"I had to do some prodigious lying at that ball. I didn't dare
+let the De Grapion ladies know they were in company with a
+Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"I thought you said their name was Nancanou."</p>
+<p>"Well, certainly--De Grapion-Nancanou. You see, that is one of
+their charms: one is a widow, the other is her daughter, and both
+as young and beautiful as Hebe. Ask Honor&eacute; Grandissime; he
+has seen the little widow; but then he don't know who she is. He
+will not ask me, and I will not tell him. Oh, yes; it is about
+eighteen years now since old De Grapion--elegant, high-stepping old
+fellow--married her, then only sixteen years of age, to young
+Nancanou, an indigo-planter on the Fausse Rivi&egrave;re--the old
+bend, you know, behind Pointe Coup&eacute;e. The young couple went
+there to live. I have been told they had one of the prettiest
+places in Louisiana. He was a man of cultivated tastes, educated in
+Paris, spoke English, was handsome (convivial, of course), and of
+perfectly pure blood. But there was one thing old De Grapion
+overlooked: he and his son-in-law were the last of their names. In
+Louisiana a man needs kinsfolk. He ought to have married his
+daughter into a strong house. They say that Numa Grandissime
+(Honor&eacute;'s father) and he had patched up a peace between the
+two families that included even old Agricola, and that he could
+have married her to a Grandissime. However, he is supposed to have
+known what he was about.</p>
+<p>"A matter of business called young Nancanou to New Orleans. He
+had no friends here; he was a Creole, but what part of his life had
+not been spent on his plantation he had passed in Europe. He could
+not leave his young girl of a wife alone in that exiled sort of
+plantation life, so he brought her and the child (a girl) down with
+him as far as to her father's place, left them there, and came on
+to the city alone.</p>
+<p>"Now, what does the old man do but give him a letter of
+introduction to old Agricole Fusilier! (His name is Agricola, but
+we shorten it to Agricole.) It seems that old De Grapion and
+Agricole had had the indiscretion to scrape up a mutually
+complimentary correspondence. And to Agricole the young man
+went.</p>
+<p>"They became intimate at once, drank together, danced with the
+quadroons together, and got into as much mischief in three days as
+I ever did in a fortnight. So affairs went on until by and by they
+were gambling together. One night they were at the Piety Club,
+playing hard, and the planter lost his last quarti. He became
+desperate, and did a thing I have known more than one planter to
+do: wrote his pledge for every arpent of his land and every slave
+on it, and staked that. Agricole refused to play. 'You shall play,'
+said Nancanou, and when the game was ended he said: 'Monsieur
+Agricola Fusilier, you cheated.' You see? Just as I have frequently
+been tempted to remark to my friend, Mr. Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"But, Frowenfeld, you must know, withal the Creoles are such
+gamblers, they never cheat; they play absolutely fair. So Agricole
+had to challenge the planter. He could not be blamed for that;
+there was no choice--oh, now, Frowenfeld, keep quiet! I tell you
+there was no choice. And the fellow was no coward. He sent Agricole
+a clear title to the real estate and slaves,--lacking only the
+wife's signature,--accepted the challenge and fell dead at the
+first fire.</p>
+<p>"Stop, now, and let me finish. Agricole sat down and wrote to
+the widow that he did not wish to deprive her of her home, and that
+if she would state in writing her belief that the stakes had been
+won fairly, he would give back the whole estate, slaves and all;
+but that if she would not, he should feel compelled to retain it in
+vindication of his honor. Now wasn't that drawing a fine point?"
+The doctor laughed according to his habit, with his face down in
+his hands. "You see, he wanted to stand before all creation--the
+Creator did not make so much difference--in the most exquisitely
+proper light; so he puts the laws of humanity under his feet, and
+anoints himself from head to foot with Creole punctilio."</p>
+<p>"Did she sign the paper?" asked Joseph.</p>
+<p>"She? Wait till you know her! No, indeed; she had the true
+scorn. She and her father sent down another and a better title.
+Creole-like, they managed to bestir themselves to that extent and
+there they stopped.</p>
+<p>"And the airs with which they did it! They kept all their rage
+to themselves, and sent the polite word, that they were not
+acquainted with the merits of the case, that they were not disposed
+to make the long and arduous trip to the city and back, and that if
+M. Fusilier de Grandissime thought he could find any pleasure or
+profit in owning the place, he was welcome; that the widow of
+<i>his late friend</i> was not disposed to live on it, but would
+remain with her father at the paternal home at Cannes
+Brul&eacute;es.</p>
+<p>"Did you ever hear of a more perfect specimen of Creole pride?
+That is the way with all of them. Show me any Creole, or any number
+of Creoles, in any sort of contest, and right down at the
+foundation of it all, I will find you this same preposterous,
+apathetic, fantastic, suicidal pride. It is as lethargic and
+ferocious as an alligator. That is why the Creole almost always is
+(or thinks he is) on the defensive. See these De Grapions' haughty
+good manners to old Agricole; yet there wasn't a Grandissime in
+Louisiana who could have set foot on the De Grapion lands but at
+the risk of his life.</p>
+<p>"But I will finish the story: and here is the really sad part.
+Not many months ago old De Grapion--'old,' said I; they don't grow
+old; I call him old--a few months ago he died. He must have left
+everything smothered in debt; for, like his race, he had stuck to
+indigo because his father planted it, and it is a crop that has
+lost money steadily for years and years. His daughter and
+granddaughter were left like babes in the wood; and, to crown their
+disasters, have now made the grave mistake of coming to the city,
+where they find they haven't a friend--not one, sir! They called me
+in to prescribe for a trivial indisposition, shortly after their
+arrival; and I tell you, Frowenfeld, it made me shiver to see two
+such beautiful women in such a town as this without a male
+protector, and even"--the doctor lowered his voice--"without
+adequate support. The mother says they are perfectly comfortable;
+tells the old couple so who took them to the ball, and whose little
+girl is their embroidery scholar; but you cannot believe a Creole
+on that subject, and I don't believe her. Would you like to make
+their acquaintance?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld hesitated, disliking to say no to his friend, and
+then shook his head.</p>
+<p>"After a while--at least not now, sir, if you please."</p>
+<p>The doctor made a gesture of disappointment.</p>
+<p>"Um-hum," he said grumly--"the only man in New Orleans I would
+honor with an invitation!--but all right; I'll go alone."</p>
+<p>He laughed a little at himself, and left Frowenfeld, if ever he
+should desire it, to make the acquaintance of his pretty neighbors
+as best he could.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>WAS IT HONOR&Eacute; GRANDISSIME?</h3>
+<br>
+<p>A Creole gentleman, on horseback one morning with some practical
+object in view,--drainage, possibly,--had got what he sought,--the
+evidence of his own eyes on certain points,--and now moved quietly
+across some old fields toward the town, where more absorbing
+interests awaited him in the Rue Toulouse; for this Creole
+gentleman was a merchant, and because he would presently find
+himself among the appointments and restraints of the counting-room,
+he heartily gave himself up, for the moment, to the surrounding
+influences of nature.</p>
+<p>It was late in November; but the air was mild and the grass and
+foliage green and dewy. Wild flowers bloomed plentifully and in all
+directions; the bushes were hung, and often covered, with vines of
+sprightly green, sprinkled thickly with smart-looking little
+worthless berries, whose sparkling complacency the combined
+contempt of man, beast and bird could not dim. The call of the
+field-lark came continually out of the grass, where now and then
+could be seen his yellow breast; the orchard oriole was executing
+his fantasias in every tree; a covey of partridges ran across the
+path close under the horse's feet, and stopped to look back almost
+within reach of the riding-whip; clouds of starlings, in their odd,
+irresolute way, rose from the high bulrushes and settled again,
+without discernible cause; little wandering companies of sparrows
+undulated from hedge to hedge; a great rabbit-hawk sat alone in the
+top of a lofty pecan-tree; that petted rowdy, the mocking-bird,
+dropped down into the path to offer fight to the horse, and,
+failing in that, flew up again and drove a crow into ignominious
+retirement beyond the plain; from a place of flags and reeds a
+white crane shot upward, turned, and then, with the slow and
+stately beat peculiar to her wing, sped away until, against the
+tallest cypress of the distant forest, she became a tiny white
+speck on its black, and suddenly disappeared, like one flake of
+snow.</p>
+<p>The scene was altogether such as to fill any hearty soul with
+impulses of genial friendliness and gentle candor; such a scene as
+will sometimes prepare a man of the world, upon the least direct
+incentive, to throw open the windows of his private thought with a
+freedom which the atmosphere of no counting-room or drawing-room
+tends to induce.</p>
+<p>The young merchant--he was young--felt this. Moreover, the
+matter of business which had brought him out had responded to his
+inquiring eye with a somewhat golden radiance; and your true man of
+business--he who has reached that elevated pitch of serene,
+good-natured reserve which is of the high art of his calling--is
+never so generous with his pennyworths of thought as when newly in
+possession of some little secret worth many pounds.</p>
+<p>By and by the behavior of the horse indicated the near presence
+of a stranger; and the next moment the rider drew rein under an
+immense live-oak where there was a bit of paling about some graves,
+and raised his hat.</p>
+<p>"Good-morning, sir." But for the silent r's, his pronunciation
+was exact, yet evidently an acquired one. While he spoke his
+salutation in English, he was thinking in French: "Without doubt,
+this rather oversized, bareheaded, interrupted-looking convalescent
+who stands before me, wondering how I should know in what language
+to address him, is Joseph Frowenfeld, of whom Doctor Keene has had
+so much to say to me. A good face--unsophisticated, but
+intelligent, mettlesome and honest. He will make his mark; it will
+probably be a white one; I will subscribe to the adventure.</p>
+<p>"You will excuse me, sir?" he asked after a pause, dismounting,
+and noticing, as he did so, that Frowenfeld's knees showed recent
+contact with the turf; "I have, myself, some interest in two of
+these graves, sir, as I suppose--you will pardon my freedom--you
+have in the other four."</p>
+<p>He approached the old but newly whitened paling, which encircled
+the tree's trunk as well as the six graves about it. There was in
+his face and manner a sort of impersonal human kindness, well
+calculated to engage a diffident and sensitive stranger, standing
+in dread of gratuitous benevolence or pity.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the convalescent, and ceased; but the other
+leaned against the palings in an attitude of attention, and he felt
+induced to add: "I have buried here my father, mother, and two
+sisters,"--he had expected to continue in an unemotional tone; but
+a deep respiration usurped the place of speech. He stooped quickly
+to pick up his hat, and, as he rose again and looked into his
+listener's face, the respectful, unobtrusive sympathy there
+expressed went directly to his heart.</p>
+<p>"Victims of the fever," said the Creole with great gravity. "How
+did that happen?"</p>
+<p>As Frowenfeld, after a moment's hesitation, began to speak, the
+stranger let go the bridle of his horse and sat down upon the turf.
+Joseph appreciated the courtesy and sat down, too; and thus the ice
+was broken.</p>
+<p>The immigrant told his story; he was young--often younger than
+his years--and his listener several years his senior; but the
+Creole, true to his blood, was able at any time to make himself as
+young as need be, and possessed the rare magic of drawing one's
+confidence without seeming to do more than merely pay attention. It
+followed that the story was told in full detail, including grateful
+acknowledgment of the goodness of an unknown friend, who had
+granted this burial-place on condition that he should not be sought
+out for the purpose of thanking him.</p>
+<p>So a considerable time passed by, in which acquaintance grew
+with delightful rapidity.</p>
+<p>"What will you do now?" asked the stranger, when a short silence
+had followed the conclusion of the story.</p>
+<p>"I hardly know. I am taken somewhat by surprise. I have not
+chosen a definite course in life--as yet. I have been a general
+student, but have not prepared myself for any profession; I am not
+sure what I shall be."</p>
+<p>A certain energy in the immigrant's face half redeemed this
+childlike speech. Yet the Creole's lips, as he opened them to
+reply, betrayed amusement; so he hastened to say:</p>
+<p>"I appreciate your position, Mr. Frowenfeld,--excuse me, I
+believe you said that was your father's name. And yet,"--the shadow
+of an amused smile lurked another instant about a corner of his
+mouth,--"if you would understand me kindly I would say, take
+care--"</p>
+<p>What little blood the convalescent had rushed violently to his
+face, and the Creole added:</p>
+<p>"I do not insinuate you would willingly be idle. I think I know
+what you want. You want to make up your mind <i>now</i> what you
+will <i>do</i>, and at your leisure what you will <i>be</i>; eh? To
+be, it seems to me," he said in summing up,--"that to be is not so
+necessary as to do, eh? or am I wrong?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir," replied Joseph, still red, "I was feeling that just
+now. I will do the first thing that offers; I can dig."</p>
+<p>The Creole shrugged and pouted.</p>
+<p>"And be called a <i>dos brile</i>--a 'burnt-back.'"</p>
+<p>"But"--began the immigrant, with overmuch warmth.</p>
+<p>The other interrupted him, shaking his head slowly and smiling
+as he spoke.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, it is of no use to talk; you may hold in
+contempt the Creole scorn of toil--just as I do, myself, but in
+theory, my-de'-seh, not too much in practice. You cannot afford to
+be <i>entirely</i> different from the community in which you live;
+is that not so?"</p>
+<p>"A friend of mine," said Frowenfeld, "has told me I must
+'compromise.'"</p>
+<p>"You must get acclimated," responded the Creole; "not in body
+only, that you have done; but in mind--in taste--in
+conversation--and in convictions too, yes, ha, ha! They all do
+it--all who come. They hold out a little while--a very little; then
+they open their stores on Sunday, they import cargoes of Africans,
+they bribe the officials, they smuggle goods, they have colored
+housekeepers. My-de'-seh, the water must expect to take the shape
+of the bucket; eh?"</p>
+<p>"One need not be water!" said the immigrant.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said the Creole, with another amiable shrug, and a wave of
+his hand; "certainly you do not suppose that is my advice--that
+those things have my approval."</p>
+<p>Must we repeat already that Frowenfeld was abnormally young?
+"Why have they not your condemnation?" cried he with an earnestness
+that made the Creole's horse drop the grass from his teeth and
+wheel half around.</p>
+<p>The answer came slowly and gently.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, my habit is to buy cheap and sell at a profit.
+My condemnation? My-de'-seh, there is no sa-a-ale for it! it spoils
+the sale of other goods my-de'-seh. It is not to condemn that you
+want; you want to suc-<i>ceed</i>. Ha, ha, ha! you see I am a
+merchant, eh? My-de'-seh, can <i>you</i> afford not to
+succeed?"</p>
+<p>The speaker had grown very much in earnest in the course of
+these few words, and as he asked the closing question, arose,
+arranged his horse's bridle and, with his elbow in the saddle,
+leaned his handsome head on his equally beautiful hand. His whole
+appearance was a dazzling contradiction of the notion that a Creole
+is a person of mixed blood.</p>
+<p>"I think I can!" replied the convalescent, with much spirit,
+rising with more haste than was good, and staggering a moment.</p>
+<p>The horseman laughed outright.</p>
+<p>"Your principle is the best, I cannot dispute that; but whether
+you can act it out--reformers do not make money, you know." He
+examined his saddle-girth and began to tighten it. "One can
+condemn--too cautiously--by a kind of--elevated cowardice (I have
+that fault); but one can also condemn too rashly; I remember when I
+did so. One of the occupants of those two graves you see yonder
+side by side--I think might have lived longer if I had not spoken
+so rashly for his rights. Did you ever hear of Bras-Coup&eacute;,
+Mr. Frowenfeld?"</p>
+<p>"I have heard only the name."</p>
+<p>"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld, <i>there</i> was a bold man's chance to
+denounce wrong and oppression! Why, that negro's death changed the
+whole channel of my convictions."</p>
+<p>The speaker had turned and thrown up his arm with frowning
+earnestness; he dropped it and smiled at himself.</p>
+<p>"Do not mistake me for one of your new-fashioned Philadelphia
+'<i>negrophiles</i>'; I am a merchant, my-de'-seh, a good subject
+of His Catholic Majesty, a Creole of the Creoles, and so forth, and
+so forth. Come!"</p>
+<p>He slapped the saddle.</p>
+<p>To have seen and heard them a little later as they moved toward
+the city, the Creole walking before the horse, and Frowenfeld
+sitting in the saddle, you might have supposed them old
+acquaintances. Yet the immigrant was wondering who his companion
+might be. He had not introduced himself--seemed to think that even
+an immigrant might know his name without asking. Was it
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime? Joseph was tempted to guess so; but the
+initials inscribed on the silver-mounted pommel of the fine old
+Spanish saddle did not bear out that conjecture.</p>
+<p>The stranger talked freely. The sun's rays seemed to set all the
+sweetness in him a-working, and his pleasant worldly wisdom foamed
+up and out like fermenting honey.</p>
+<p>By and by the way led through a broad, grassy lane where the
+path turned alternately to right and left among some wild acacias.
+The Creole waved his hand toward one of them and said:</p>
+<p>"Now, Mr. Frowenfeld, you see? one man walks where he sees
+another's track; that is what makes a path; but you want a man,
+instead of passing around this prickly bush, to lay hold of it with
+his naked hands and pull it up by the roots."</p>
+<p>"But a man armed with the truth is far from being barehanded,"
+replied the convalescent, and they went on, more and more
+interested at every step,--one in this very raw imported material
+for an excellent man, the other in so striking an exponent of a
+unique land and people.</p>
+<p>They came at length to the crossing of two streets, and the
+Creole, pausing in his speech, laid his hand upon the bridle.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld dismounted.</p>
+<p>"Do we part here?" asked the Creole. "Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I
+hope to meet you soon again."</p>
+<p>"Indeed, I thank you, sir," said Joseph, "and I hope we shall,
+although--"</p>
+<p>The Creole paused with a foot in the stirrup and interrupted him
+with a playful gesture; then as the horse stirred, he mounted and
+drew in the rein.</p>
+<p>"I know; you want to say you cannot accept my philosophy and I
+cannot appreciate yours; but I appreciate it more than you think,
+my-de'-seh."</p>
+<p>The convalescent's smile showed much fatigue.</p>
+<p>The Creole extended his hand; the immigrant seized it, wished to
+ask his name, but did not; and the next moment he was gone.</p>
+<p>The convalescent walked meditatively toward his quarters, with a
+faint feeling of having been found asleep on duty and awakened by a
+passing stranger. It was an unpleasant feeling, and he caught
+himself more than once shaking his head. He stopped, at length, and
+looked back; but the Creole was long since out of sight. The
+mortified self-accuser little knew how very similar a feeling that
+vanished person was carrying away with him. He turned and resumed
+his walk, wondering who Monsieur might be, and a little impatient
+with himself that he had not asked.</p>
+<p>"It is Honor&eacute; Grandissime; it must be he!" he said.</p>
+<p>Yet see how soon he felt obliged to change his mind.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>SIGNED--HONOR&Eacute; GRANDISSIME</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the afternoon of the same day, having decided what he would
+"do," he started out in search of new quarters. He found nothing
+then, but next morning came upon a small, single-story building in
+the rue Royale,--corner of Conti,--which he thought would suit his
+plans. There were a door and show-window in the rue Royale, two
+doors in the intersecting street, and a small apartment in the rear
+which would answer for sleeping, eating, and studying purposes, and
+which connected with the front apartment by a door in the left-hand
+corner. This connection he would partially conceal by a
+prescription-desk. A counter would run lengthwise toward the rue
+Royale, along the wall opposite the side-doors. Such was the spot
+that soon became known as "Frowenfeld's Corner."</p>
+<p>The notice "&Agrave; Louer" directed him to inquire at
+numero--rue Cond&eacute;. Here he was ushered through the wicket of
+a <i>porte coch&egrave;re</i> into a broad, paved corridor, and up
+a stair into a large, cool room, and into the presence of a man who
+seemed, in some respects, the most remarkable figure he had yet
+seen in this little city of strange people. A strong, clear, olive
+complexion; features that were faultless (unless a woman-like
+delicacy, that was yet not effeminate, was a fault); hair <i>en
+queue</i>, the handsomer for its premature streakings of gray; a
+tall, well knit form, attired in cloth, linen and leather of the
+utmost fineness; manners Castilian, with a gravity almost
+oriental,--made him one of those rare masculine figures which, on
+the public promenade, men look back at and ladies inquire
+about.</p>
+<p>Now, who might <i>this</i> be? The rent poster had given no
+name. Even the incurious Frowenfeld would fain guess a little. For
+a man to be just of this sort, it seemed plain that he must live in
+an isolated ease upon the unceasing droppings of coupons, rents,
+and like receivables. Such was the immigrant's first conjecture;
+and, as with slow, scant questions and answers they made their
+bargain, every new glance strengthened it; he was evidently a
+<i>rentier</i>. What, then, was his astonishment when Monsieur bent
+down and made himself Frowenfeld's landlord, by writing what the
+universal mind esteemed the synonym of enterprise and activity--the
+name of Honor&eacute; Grandissime. The landlord did not see, or
+ignored, his tenant's glance of surprise, and the tenant asked no
+questions.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>We may add here an incident which seemed, when it took place, as
+unimportant as a single fact well could be.</p>
+<p>The little sum that Frowenfeld had inherited from his father had
+been sadly depleted by the expenses of four funerals; yet he was
+still able to pay a month's rent in advance, to supply his shop
+with a scant stock of drugs, to purchase a celestial globe and some
+scientific apparatus, and to buy a dinner or two of sausages and
+crackers; but after this there was no necessity of hiding his
+purse.</p>
+<p>His landlord early contracted a fondness for dropping in upon
+him, and conversing with him, as best the few and labored English
+phrases at his command would allow. Frowenfeld soon noticed that he
+never entered the shop unless its proprietor was alone, never sat
+down, and always, with the same perfection of dignity that
+characterized all his movements, departed immediately upon the
+arrival of any third person. One day, when the landlord was making
+one of these standing calls,--he always stood' beside a high glass
+case, on the side of the shop opposite the counter,--he noticed in
+Joseph's hand a sprig of basil, and spoke of it.</p>
+<p>"You ligue?"</p>
+<p>The tenant did not understand. "You--find--dad--nize?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld replied that it had been left by the oversight of a
+customer, and expressed a liking for its odor.</p>
+<p>"I sand you," said the landlord,--a speech whose meaning
+Frowenfeld was not sure of until the next morning, when a small,
+nearly naked black boy, who could not speak a word of English,
+brought to the apothecary a luxuriant bunch of this basil, growing
+in a rough box.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATING THE TRACTIVE POWER OF BASIL</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the twenty-fourth day of December, 1803, at two o'clock,
+P.M., the thermometer standing at 79, hygrometer 17, barometer
+29.880, sky partly clouded, wind west, light, the apothecary of the
+rue Royale, now something more than a month established in his
+calling, might have been seen standing behind his counter and
+beginning to show embarrassment in the presence of a lady, who,
+since she had got her prescription filled and had paid for it,
+ought in the conventional course of things to have hurried out,
+followed by the pathetically ugly black woman who tarried at the
+door as her attendant; for to be in an apothecary's shop at all was
+unconventional. She was heavily veiled; but the sparkle of her
+eyes, which no multiplication of veils could quite extinguish, her
+symmetrical and well-fitted figure, just escaping smallness, her
+grace of movement, and a soft, joyous voice, had several days
+before led Frowenfeld to the confident conclusion that she was
+young and beautiful.</p>
+<p>For this was now the third time she had come to buy; and, though
+the purchases were unaccountably trivial, the purchaser seemed not
+so. On the two previous occasions she had been accompanied by a
+slender girl, somewhat taller than she, veiled also, of graver
+movement, a bearing that seemed to Joseph almost too regal, and a
+discernible unwillingness to enter or tarry. There seemed a certain
+family resemblance between her voice and that of the other, which
+proclaimed them--he incautiously assumed--sisters. This time, as we
+see, the smaller, and probably elder, came alone.</p>
+<p>She still held in her hand the small silver which Frowenfeld had
+given her in change, and sighed after the laugh they had just
+enjoyed together over a slip in her English. A very grateful sip of
+sweet the laugh was to the all but friendless apothecary, and the
+embarrassment that rushed in after it may have arisen in part from
+a conscious casting about in his mind for something--anything--that
+might prolong her stay an instant. He opened his lips to speak; but
+she was quicker than he, and said, in a stealthy way that seemed
+oddly unnecessary:</p>
+<p>"You 'ave some basilic?"</p>
+<p>She accompanied her words with a little peeping movement,
+directing his attention, through the open door, to his box of
+basil, on the floor in the rear room.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld stepped back to it, cut half the bunch and returned,
+with the bold intention of making her a present of it; but as he
+hastened back to the spot he had left, he was astonished to see the
+lady disappearing from his farthest front door, followed by her
+negress.</p>
+<p>"Did she change her mind, or did she misunderstand me?" he asked
+himself; and, in the hope that she might return for the basil, he
+put it in water in his back room.</p>
+<p>The day being, as the figures have already shown, an unusually
+mild one, even for a Louisiana December, and the finger of the
+clock drawing by and by toward the last hour of sunlight, some half
+dozen of Frowenfeld's townsmen had gathered, inside and out, some
+standing, some sitting, about his front door, and all discussing
+the popular topics of the day. For it might have been anticipated
+that, in a city where so very little English was spoken and no
+newspaper published except that beneficiary of eighty subscribers,
+the "Moniteur de la Louisiane," the apothecary's shop in the rue
+Royale would be the rendezvous for a select company of
+English-speaking gentlemen, with a smart majority of
+physicians.</p>
+<p>The Cession had become an accomplished fact. With due
+drum-beatings and act-reading, flag-raising, cannonading and
+galloping of aides-de-camp, Nouvelle Orl&eacute;ans had become New
+Orleans, and Louisiane was Louisiana. This afternoon, the first
+week of American jurisdiction was only something over half gone,
+and the main topic of public debate was still the Cession. Was it
+genuine? and, if so, would it stand?</p>
+<p>"Mark my words," said one, "the British flag will be floating
+over this town within ninety days!" and he went on whittling the
+back of his chair.</p>
+<p>From this main question, the conversation branched out to the
+subject of land titles. Would that great majority of Spanish
+titles, derived from the concessions of post-commandants and others
+of minor authority, hold good?</p>
+<p>"I suppose you know what ---- thinks about it?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Well, he has quietly purchased the grant made by Carondelet to
+the Marquis of----, thirty thousand acres, and now says the grant
+is two hundred <i>and</i> thirty thousand. That is one style of men
+Governor Claiborne is going to have on his hands. The town will
+presently be as full of them as my pocket is of tobacco
+crumbs,--every one of them with a Spanish grant as long as Clark's
+ropewalk and made up since the rumor of the Cession."</p>
+<p>"I hear that some of Honor&eacute; Grandissime's titles are
+likely to turn out bad,--some of the old Brahmin properties and
+some of the Mandarin lands."</p>
+<p>"Fudge!" said Dr. Keene.</p>
+<p>There was also the subject of rotation in office. Would this
+provisional governor-general himself be able to stand fast? Had not
+a man better temporize a while, and see what Ex-Governor-general
+Casa Calvo and Trudeau were going to do? Would not men who
+sacrificed old prejudices, braved the popular contumely, and came
+forward and gave in their allegiance to the President's appointee,
+have to take the chances of losing their official positions at
+last? Men like Camille Brahmin, for instance, or Charlie Mandarin:
+suppose Spain or France should get the province back, then where
+would they be?</p>
+<p>"One of the things I pity most in this vain world," drawled
+Doctor Keene, "is a hive of patriots who don't know where to
+swarm."</p>
+<p>The apothecary was drawn into the discussion--at least he
+thought he was. Inexperience is apt to think that Truth will be
+knocked down and murdered unless she comes to the rescue. Somehow,
+Frowenfeld's really excellent arguments seemed to give out more
+heat than light. They were merciless; their principles were not
+only lofty to dizziness, but precipitous, and their heights
+unoccupied, and--to the common sight--unattainable. In consequence,
+they provoked hostility and even resentment. With the kindest, the
+most honest, and even the most modest, intentions, he found
+himself--to his bewilderment and surprise--sniffed at by the
+ungenerous, frowned upon by the impatient, and smiled down by the
+good-natured in a manner that brought sudden blushes of
+exasperation to his face, and often made him ashamed to find
+himself going over these sham battles again in much savageness of
+spirit, when alone with his books; or, in moments of weakness,
+casting about for such unworthy weapons as irony and satire. In the
+present debate, he had just provoked a sneer that made his blood
+leap and his friends laugh, when Doctor Keene, suddenly rising and
+beckoning across the street, exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Oh! Agricole! Agricole! <i>venez ici</i>; we want you."</p>
+<p>A murmur of vexed protest arose from two or three.</p>
+<p>"He's coming," said the whittler, who had also beckoned.</p>
+<p>"Good evening, Citizen Fusilier," said Doctor Keene. "Citizen
+Fusilier, allow me to present my friend, Professor Frowenfeld--yes,
+you are a professor--yes, you are. He is one of your sort, Citizen
+Fusilier, a man of thorough scientific education. I believe on my
+soul, sir, he knows nearly as much as you do!"</p>
+<p>The person who confronted the apothecary was a large, heavily
+built, but well-molded and vigorous man, of whom one might say that
+he was adorned with old age. His brow was dark, and furrowed partly
+by time and partly by a persistent, ostentatious frown. His eyes
+were large, black and bold, and the gray locks above them curled
+short and harsh like the front of a bull. His nose was fine and
+strong, and if there was any deficiency in mouth or chin, it was
+hidden by a beard that swept down over his broad breast like the
+beard of a prophet. In his dress, which was noticeably soiled, the
+fashions of three decades were hinted at; he seemed to have donned
+whatever he thought his friends would most have liked him to leave
+off.</p>
+<p>"Professor," said the old man, extending something like the paw
+of a lion, and giving Frowenfeld plenty of time to become
+thoroughly awed, "this is a pleasure as magnificent as unexpected!
+A scientific man?--in Louisiana?" He looked around upon the doctors
+as upon a graduating class.</p>
+<p>"Professor, I am rejoiced!" He paused again, shaking the
+apothecary's hand with great ceremony. "I do assure you, sir, I
+dislike to relinquish your grasp. Do me the honor to allow me to
+become your friend! I congratulate my downtrodden country on the
+acquisition of such a citizen! I hope, sir,--at least I might have
+hoped, had not Louisiana just passed into the hands of the most
+clap-trap government in the universe, notwithstanding it pretends
+to be a republic,--I might have hoped that you had come among us to
+fasten the lie direct upon a late author, who writes of us that
+'the air of this region is deadly to the Muses.'"</p>
+<p>"He didn't say that?" asked one of the debaters, with pretended
+indignation.</p>
+<p>"He did, sir, after eating our bread!"</p>
+<p>"And sucking our sugar-cane, too, no doubt!" said the wag; but
+the old man took no notice.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, naturally, was not anxious to reply, and was greatly
+relieved to be touched on the elbow by a child with a picayune in
+one hand and a tumbler in the other. He escaped behind the counter
+and gladly remained there.</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier," asked one of the gossips, "what has the new
+government to do with the health of the Muses?"</p>
+<p>"It introduces the English tongue," said the old man,
+scowling.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well," replied the questioner, "the Creoles will soon learn
+the language."</p>
+<p>"English is not a language, sir; it is a jargon! And when this
+young simpleton, Claiborne, attempts to cram it down the public
+windpipe in the courts, as I understand he intends, he will fail!
+Hah! sir, I know men in this city who would rather eat a dog than
+speak English! I speak it, but I also speak Choctaw."</p>
+<p>"The new land titles will be in English."</p>
+<p>"They will spurn his rotten titles. And if he attempts to
+invalidate their old ones, why, let him do it! Napoleon Buonaparte"
+(Italian pronounciation) "will make good every arpent within the
+next two years. <i>Think so?</i> I know it! <i>How?</i> H-I
+perceive it! H-I hope the yellow fever may spare you to witness
+it."</p>
+<p>A sullen grunt from the circle showed the "citizen" that he had
+presumed too much upon the license commonly accorded his advanced
+age, and by way of a diversion he looked around for Frowenfeld to
+pour new flatteries upon. But Joseph, behind his counter, unaware
+of either the offense or the resentment, was blushing with pleasure
+before a visitor who had entered by the side door farthest from the
+company.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen," said Agricola, "h-my dear friends, you must not
+expect an old Creole to like anything in comparison with <i>la
+belle langue</i>."</p>
+<p>"Which language do you call <i>la belle?</i>" asked Doctor
+Keene, with pretended simplicity.</p>
+<p>The old man bent upon him a look of unspeakable contempt, which
+nobody noticed. The gossips were one by one stealing a glance
+toward that which ever was, is and must be an irresistible
+lodestone to the eyes of all the sons of Adam, to wit, a chaste and
+graceful complement of--skirts. Then in a lower tone they resumed
+their desultory conversation.</p>
+<p>It was the seeker after basil who stood before the counter,
+holding in her hand, with her purse, the heavy veil whose folds had
+before concealed her features.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>"OO DAD IS, 'SIEUR FROWENFEL'?"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Whether the removal of the veil was because of the milder light
+of the evening, or the result of accident, or of haste, or both, or
+whether, by reason of some exciting or absorbing course of thought,
+the wearer had withdrawn it unconsciously, was a matter that
+occupied the apothecary as little as did Agricola's continued
+harangue. As he looked upon the fair face through the light gauze
+which still overhung but not obscured it, he readily perceived,
+despite the sprightly smile, something like distress, and as she
+spoke this became still more evident in her hurried undertone.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', I want you to sell me doze
+<i>basilic</i>."</p>
+<p>As she slipped the rings of her purse apart her fingers
+trembled.</p>
+<p>"It is waiting for you," said Frowenfeld; but the lady did not
+hear him; she was giving her attention to the loud voice of
+Agricola saying in the course of discussion:</p>
+<p>"The Louisiana Creole is the noblest variety of enlightened
+man!"</p>
+<p>"Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked, softly, but with an
+excited eye.</p>
+<p>"That is Mr. Agricola Fusilier," answered Joseph in the same
+tone, his heart leaping inexplicably as he met her glance. With an
+angry flush she looked quickly around, scrutinized the old man in
+an instantaneous, thorough way, and then glanced back at the
+apothecary again, as if asking him to fulfil her request the
+quicker.</p>
+<p>He hesitated, in doubt as to her meaning.</p>
+<p>"Wrap it yonder," she almost whispered.</p>
+<p>He went, and in a moment returned, with the basil only partially
+hid in a paper covering.</p>
+<p>But the lady, muffled again in her manifold veil, had once more
+lost her eagerness for it; at least, instead of taking it, she
+moved aside, offering room for a masculine figure just entering.
+She did not look to see who it might be--plenty of time to do that
+by accident, by and by. There she made a mistake; for the
+new-comer, with a silent bow of thanks, declined the place made for
+him, moved across the shop, and occupied his eyes with the contents
+of the glass case, his back being turned to the lady and
+Frowenfeld. The apothecary recognized the Creole whom he had met
+under the live-oak.</p>
+<p>The lady put forth her hand suddenly to receive the package. As
+she took it and turned to depart, another small hand was laid upon
+it and it was returned to the counter. Something was said in a
+low-pitched undertone, and the two sisters--if Frowenfeld's guess
+was right--confronted each other. For a single instant only they
+stood so; an earnest and hurried murmur of French words passed
+between them, and they turned together, bowed with great suavity,
+and were gone.</p>
+<p>"The Cession is a mere temporary political manoeuvre!" growled
+M. Fusilier.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's merchant friend came from his place of waiting, and
+spoke twice before he attracted the attention of the bewildered
+apothecary.</p>
+<p>"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I have been told that--"</p>
+<p>Joseph gazed after the two ladies crossing the street, and felt
+uncomfortable that the group of gossips did the same. So did the
+black attendant who glanced furtively back.</p>
+<p>"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I--"</p>
+<p>"Oh! how do you do, sir?" exclaimed the apothecary, with great
+pleasantness, of face. It seemed the most natural thing that they
+should resume their late conversation just where they had left off,
+and that would certainly be pleasant. But the man of more
+experience showed an unresponsive expression, that was as if he
+remembered no conversation of any note.</p>
+<p>"I have been told that you might be able to replace the glass in
+this thing out of your private stock."</p>
+<p>He presented a small, leather-covered case, evidently containing
+some optical instrument. "It will give me a pretext for going," he
+had said to himself, as he put it into his pocket in his
+counting-room. He was not going to let the apothecary know he had
+taken such a fancy to him.</p>
+<p>"I do not know," replied Frowenfeld, as he touched the spring of
+the case; "I will see what I have."</p>
+<p>He passed into the back room, more than willing to get out of
+sight till he might better collect himself.</p>
+<p>"I do not keep these things for sale," said he as he went.</p>
+<p>"Sir?" asked the Creole, as if he had not understood, and
+followed through the open door.</p>
+<p>"Is this what that lady was getting?" he asked, touching the
+remnant of the basil in the box.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the apothecary, with his face in the drawer of
+a table.</p>
+<p>"They had no carriage with them." The Creole spoke with his back
+turned, at the same time running his eyes along a shelf of books.
+Frowenfeld made only the sound of rejecting bits of crystal and
+taking up others. "I do not know who they are," ventured the
+merchant.</p>
+<p>Joseph still gave no answer, but a moment after approached, with
+the instrument in his extended hand.</p>
+<p>"You had it? I am glad," said the owner, receiving it, but
+keeping one hand still on the books.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld put up his materials.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, are these your books? I mean do you use these
+books?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>The Creole stepped back to the door.</p>
+<p>"Agricola!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Quoi</i>!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Vien ici</i>."</p>
+<p>Citizen Fusilier entered, followed by a small volley of retorts
+from those with whom he had been disputing, and who rose as he did.
+The stranger said something very sprightly in French, running the
+back of one finger down the rank of books, and a lively dialogue
+followed.</p>
+<p>"You must be a great scholar," said the unknown by and by,
+addressing the apothecary.</p>
+<p>"He is a professor of chimistry," said the old man.</p>
+<p>"I am nothing, as yet, but a student," said Joseph, as the three
+returned into the shop; "certainly not a scholar, and still less a
+professor." He spoke with a new quietness of manner that made the
+younger Creole turn upon him a pleasant look.</p>
+<p>"H-my young friend," said the patriarch, turning toward Joseph
+with a tremendous frown, "when I, Agricola Fusilier, pronounce you
+a professor, you are a professor. Louisiana will not look to
+<i>you</i> for your credentials; she will look to me!"</p>
+<p>He stumbled upon some slight impediment under foot. There were
+times when it took but little to make Agricola stumble.</p>
+<p>Looking to see what it was, Joseph picked up a silken purse.
+There was a name embroidered on it.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>SUDDEN FLASHES OF LIGHT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The day was nearly gone. The company that had been chatting at
+the front door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried
+until bedtime, had wandered off; however, by stepping toward the
+light the young merchant could decipher the letters on the purse.
+Citizen Fusilier drew out a pair of spectacles, looked over his
+junior's shoulder, read aloud, "<i>Aurore De G. Nanca</i>--," and
+uttered an imprecation.</p>
+<p>"Do not speak to me!" he thundered; "do not approach me! she did
+it maliciously!"</p>
+<p>"Sir!" began Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>But the old man uttered another tremendous malediction and
+hurried into the street and away.</p>
+<p>"Let him pass," said the other Creole calmly.</p>
+<p>"What is the matter with him?" asked Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"He is getting old." The Creole extended the purse carelessly to
+the apothecary. "Has it anything inside?"</p>
+<p>"But a single pistareen."</p>
+<p>"That is why she wanted the <i>basilic</i>, eh?"</p>
+<p>"I do not understand you, sir."</p>
+<p>"Do you not know what she was going to do with it?"</p>
+<p>"With the basil? No sir."</p>
+<p>"May be she was going to make a little tisane, eh?" said the
+Creole, forcing down a smile.</p>
+<p>But a portion of the smile would come when Frowenfeld answered,
+with unnecessary resentment:</p>
+<p>"She was going to make some proper use of it, which need not
+concern me."</p>
+<p>"Without doubt."</p>
+<p>The Creole quietly walked a step or two forward and back and
+looked idly into the glass case. "Is this young man in love with
+her?" he asked himself. He turned around.</p>
+<p>"Do you know those ladies, Mr. Frowenfeld? Do you visit them at
+home?"</p>
+<p>He drew out his porte-monnaie.</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"I will pay you for the repair of this instrument; have you
+change for--"</p>
+<p>"I will see," said the apothecary.</p>
+<p>As he spoke he laid the purse on a stool, till he should light
+his shop, and then went to his till without again taking it.</p>
+<p>The Creole sauntered across to the counter and nipped the herb
+which still lay there.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know what some very excellent people do
+with this? They rub it on the sill of the door to make the money
+come into the house."</p>
+<p>Joseph stopped aghast with the drawer half drawn.</p>
+<p>"Not persons of intelligence and--"</p>
+<p>"All kinds. It is only some of the foolishness which they take
+from the slaves. Many of your best people consult the voudou
+horses."</p>
+<p>"Horses?"</p>
+<p>"Priestesses, you might call them," explained the Creole, "like
+Momselle Marcelline or 'Zabeth Philosophe."</p>
+<p>"Witches!" whispered Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Oh no," said the other with a shrug; "that is too hard a name;
+say fortune-tellers. But Mr. Frowenfeld, I wish you to lend me your
+good offices. Just supposing the possi<i>bil</i>ity that that lady
+may be in need of money, you know, and will send back or come back
+for the purse, you know, knowing that she most likely lost it here,
+I ask you the favor that you will not let her know I have filled it
+with gold. In fact, if she mentions my name--"</p>
+<p>"To confess the truth, sir, I am not acquainted with your
+name."</p>
+<p>The Creole smiled a genuine surprise.</p>
+<p>"I thought you knew it." He laughed a little at himself. "We
+have nevertheless become very good friends--I believe? Well, in
+fact then, Mr. Frowenfeld, you might say you do not know who put
+the money in." He extended his open palm with the purse hanging
+across it. Joseph was about to object to this statement, but the
+Creole, putting on an expression of anxious desire, said: "I mean,
+not by name. It is somewhat important to me, Mr. Frowenfeld, that
+that lady should not know my present action. If you want to do
+those two ladies a favor, you may rest assured the way to do it is
+to say you do not know who put this gold." The Creole in his
+earnestness slipped in his idiom. "You will excuse me if I do not
+tell you my name; you can find it out at any time from Agricola.
+Ah! I am glad she did not see me! You must not tell anybody about
+this little event, eh?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir," said Joseph, as he finally accepted the purse. "I
+shall say nothing to any one else, and only what I cannot avoid
+saying to the lady and her sister."</p>
+<p>"<i>'Tis not her sister</i>" responded the Creole, "<i>'tis her
+daughter</i>."</p>
+<p>The italics signify, not how the words were said, but how they
+sounded to Joseph. As if a dark lantern were suddenly turned full
+upon it, he saw the significance of Citizen Fusilier's transport.
+The fair strangers were the widow and daughter of the man whom
+Agricola had killed in duel--the ladies with whom Doctor Keene had
+desired to make him acquainted.</p>
+<p>"Well, good evening, Mr. Frowenfeld." The Creole extended his
+hand (his people are great hand-shakers). "Ah--" and then, for the
+first time, he came to the true object of his visit. "The
+conversation we had some weeks ago, Mr. Frowenfeld, has started a
+train of thought in my mind"--he began to smile as if to convey the
+idea that Joseph would find the subject a trivial one--"which has
+almost brought me to the--"</p>
+<p>A light footfall accompanied with the soft sweep of robes cut
+short his words. There had been two or three entrances and exits
+during the time the Creole had tarried, but he had not allowed them
+to disturb him. Now, however, he had no sooner turned and fixed his
+glance upon this last comer, than without so much as the invariable
+Creole leave-taking of "Well, good evening, sir," he hurried
+out.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>THE PHILOSOPHE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The apothecary felt an inward nervous start as there advanced
+into the light of his hanging lamp and toward the spot where he had
+halted, just outside the counter, a woman of the quadroon caste, of
+superb stature and poise, severely handsome features, clear, tawny
+skin and large, passionate black eyes.</p>
+<p>"<i>Bon soi', Mich&eacute;</i>." [Monsieur.] A rather hard, yet
+not repellent smile showed her faultless teeth.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld bowed.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mo vien c'erc'er la bourse de Madame</i>."</p>
+<p>She spoke the best French at her command, but it was not
+understood.</p>
+<p>The apothecary could only shake his head.</p>
+<p>"<i>La bourse</i>" she repeated, softly smiling, but with a
+scintillation of the eyes in resentment of his scrutiny. "<i>La
+bourse</i>" she reiterated.</p>
+<p>"Purse?"</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui, Mich&eacute;</i>."</p>
+<p>"You are sent for it?"</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui, Mich&eacute;</i>."</p>
+<p>He drew it from his breast pocket and marked the sudden glisten
+of her eyes, reflecting the glisten of the gold in the silken
+mesh.</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui, c'est &ccedil;a</i>," said she, putting her hand out
+eagerly.</p>
+<p>"I am afraid to give you this to-night," said Joseph.</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui</i>," ventured she, dubiously, the lightning playing
+deep back in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"You might be robbed," said Frowenfeld. "It is very dangerous
+for you to be out alone. It will not be long, now, until gun-fire."
+(Eight o'clock P.M.--the gun to warn slaves to be in-doors, under
+pain of arrest and imprisonment.)</p>
+<p>The object of this solicitude shook her head with a smile at its
+gratuitousness. The smile showed determination also.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mo pas compren</i>'," she said.</p>
+<p>"Tell the lady to send for it to-morrow."</p>
+<p>She smiled helplessly and somewhat vexedly, shrugged and again
+shook her head. As she did so she heard footsteps and voices in the
+door at her back.</p>
+<p>"<i>C'est &ccedil;a</i>" she said again with a hurried attempt
+at extreme amiability; "Dat it; <i>oui</i>;" and lifting her hand
+with some rapidity made a sudden eager reach for the purse, but
+failed.</p>
+<p>"No!" said Frowenfeld, indignantly.</p>
+<p>"Hello!" said Charlie Keene amusedly, as he approached from the
+door.</p>
+<p>The woman turned, and in one or two rapid sentences in the
+Creole dialect offered her explanation.</p>
+<p>"Give her the purse, Joe; I will answer for its being all
+right."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld handed it to her. She started to pass through the
+door in the rue Royale by which Doctor Keene had entered; but on
+seeing on its threshold Agricola frowning upon her, she turned
+quickly with evident trepidation, and hurried out into the darkness
+of the other street.</p>
+<p>Agricola entered. Doctor Keene looked about the shop.</p>
+<p>"I tell you, Agricole, you didn't have it with you; Frowenfeld,
+you haven't seen a big knotted walking-stick?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was sure no walking-stick had been left there.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, Frowenfeld," said Doctor Keene, with a little laugh,
+as the three sat down, "I'd a'most as soon trust that woman as if
+she was white."</p>
+<p>The apothecary said nothing.</p>
+<p>"How free," said Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at
+the sky without, and ending with a philosopher's smile upon his two
+companions,--"how free we people are from prejudice against the
+negro!"</p>
+<p>"The white people," said Frowenfeld, half abstractedly, half
+inquiringly.</p>
+<p>"H-my young friend, when we say, 'we people,' we <i>always</i>
+mean we white people. The non-mention of color always implies pure
+white; and whatever is not pure white is to all intents and
+purposes pure black. When I say the 'whole community,' I mean the
+whole white portion; when I speak of the 'undivided public
+sentiment,' I mean the sentiment of the white population. What else
+could I mean? Could you suppose, sir, the expression which you may
+have heard me use--'my downtrodden country'--includes blacks and
+mulattoes? What is that up yonder in the sky? The moon. The new
+moon, or the old moon, or the moon in her third quarter, but always
+the moon! Which part of it? Why, the shining part--the white part,
+always and only! Not that there is a prejudice against the negro.
+By no means. Wherever he can be of any service in a strictly menial
+capacity we kindly and generously tolerate his presence."</p>
+<p>Was the immigrant growing wise, or weak, that he remained
+silent?</p>
+<p>Agricola rose as he concluded and said he would go home. Doctor
+Keene gave him his hand lazily, without rising.</p>
+<p>"Frowenfeld," he said, with a smile and in an undertone, as
+Agricola's footsteps died away, "don't you know who that woman
+is?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll tell you."</p>
+<p>He told him.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>On that lonely plantation at the Cannes Brul&eacute;es, where
+Aurore Nancanou's childhood had been passed without brothers or
+sisters, there had been given her, according to the well-known
+custom of plantation life, a little quadroon slave-maid as her
+constant and only playmate. This maid began early to show herself
+in many ways remarkable. While yet a child she grew tall, lithe,
+agile; her eyes were large and black, and rolled and sparkled if
+she but turned to answer to her name. Her pale yellow forehead, low
+and shapely, with the jet hair above it, the heavily pencilled
+eyebrows and long lashes below, the faint red tinge that blushed
+with a kind of cold passion through the clear yellow skin of the
+cheek, the fulness of the red, voluptuous lips and the roundness of
+her perfect neck, gave her, even at fourteen, a barbaric and
+magnetic beauty, that startled the beholder like an unexpected
+drawing out of a jewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only
+from high Latin ancestry on the one side and--we might
+venture--Jaloff African on the other. To these charms of person she
+added mental acuteness, conversational adroitness, concealed
+cunning, and noiseless but visible strength of will; and to these,
+that rarest of gifts in one of her tincture, the purity of true
+womanhood.</p>
+<p>At fourteen a necessity which had been parleyed with for two
+years or more became imperative, and Aurore's maid was taken from
+her. Explanation is almost superfluous. Aurore was to become a lady
+and her playmate a lady's maid; but not <i>her</i> maid, because
+the maid had become, of the two, the ruling spirit. It was a
+question of grave debate in the mind of M. De Grapion what
+disposition to make of her.</p>
+<p>About this time the Grandissimes and De Grapions, through
+certain efforts of Honor&eacute;'s father (since dead) were making
+some feeble pretences of mutual good feeling, and one of those
+Kentuckian dealers in corn and tobacco whose flatboat fleets were
+always drifting down the Mississippi, becoming one day M. De
+Grapion's transient guest, accidentally mentioned a wish of
+Agricola Fusilier. Agricola, it appeared, had commissioned him to
+buy the most beautiful lady's maid that in his extended journeyings
+he might be able to find; he wanted to make her a gift to his
+niece, Honor&eacute;'s sister. The Kentuckian saw the demand met in
+Aurore's playmate. M. De Grapion would not sell her. (Trade with a
+Grandissime? Let them suspect he needed money?) No; but he would
+ask Agricola to accept the services of the waiting-maid for, say,
+ten years. The Kentuckian accepted the proposition on the spot and
+it was by and by carried out. She was never recalled to the Cannes
+Brul&eacute;es, but in subsequent years received her freedom from
+her master, and in New Orleans became Palmyre la Philosophe, as
+they say in the corrupt French of the old Creoles, or Palmyre
+Philosophe, noted for her taste and skill as a hair-dresser, for
+the efficiency of her spells and the sagacity of her divinations,
+but most of all for the chaste austerity with which she practised
+the less baleful rites of the voudous.</p>
+<p>"That's the woman," said Doctor Keene, rising to go, as he
+concluded the narrative,--"that's she, Palmyre Philosophe. Now you
+get a view of the vastness of Agricole's generosity; he tolerates
+her even though she does not present herself in the 'strictly
+menial capacity.' Reason why--<i>he's afraid of her</i>."</p>
+<p>Time passed, if that may be called time which we have to measure
+with a clock. The apothecary of the rue Royale found better ways of
+measurement. As quietly as a spider he was spinning information
+into knowledge and knowledge into what is supposed to be wisdom;
+whether it was or not we shall see. His unidentified merchant
+friend who had adjured him to become acclimated as "they all did"
+had also exhorted him to study the human mass of which he had
+become a unit; but whether that study, if pursued, was sweetening
+and ripening, or whether it was corrupting him, that friend did not
+come to see; it was the busy time of year. Certainly so young a
+solitary, coming among a people whose conventionalities were so at
+variance with his own door-yard ethics, was in sad danger of being
+unduly--as we might say--Timonized. His acquaintances continued to
+be few in number.</p>
+<p>During this fermenting period he chronicled much wet and some
+cold weather. This may in part account for the uneventfulness of
+its passage; events do not happen rapidly among the Creoles in bad
+weather. However, trade was good.</p>
+<p>But the weather cleared; and when it was getting well on into
+the Creole spring and approaching the spring of the almanacs,
+something did occur that extended Frowenfeld's acquaintance without
+Doctor Keene's assistance.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>A CALL FROM THE RENT-SPECTRE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It is nearly noon of a balmy morning late in February. Aurore
+Nancanou and her daughter have only this moment ceased sewing, in
+the small front room of No. 19 rue Bienville. Number 19 is the
+right-hand half of a single-story, low-roofed tenement, washed with
+yellow ochre, which it shares generously with whoever leans against
+it. It sits as fast on the ground as a toad. There is a kitchen
+belonging to it somewhere among the weeds in the back yard, and
+besides this room where the ladies are, there is, directly behind
+it, a sleeping apartment. Somewhere back of this there is a little
+nook where in pleasant weather they eat. Their cook and housemaid
+is the plain person who attends them on the street. Her bedchamber
+is the kitchen and her bed the floor. The house's only other
+protector is a hound, the aim of whose life is to get thrust out of
+the ladies' apartments every fifteen minutes.</p>
+<p>Yet if you hastily picture to yourself a forlorn-looking
+establishment, you will be moving straight away from the fact.
+Neatness, order, excellence, are prevalent qualities in all the
+details of the main house's inward garniture. The furniture is
+old-fashioned, rich, French, imported. The carpets, if not new, are
+not cheap, either. Bits of crystal and silver, visible here and
+there, are as bright as they are antiquated; and one or two
+portraits, and the picture of Our Lady of Many Sorrows, are
+passably good productions. The brass work, of which there is much,
+is brilliantly burnished, and the front room is bright and
+cheery.</p>
+<p>At the street door of this room somebody has just knocked.
+Aurore has risen from her seat. The other still sits on a low chair
+with her hands and sewing dropped into her lap, looking up
+steadfastly into her mother's face with a mingled expression of
+fondness and dismayed expectation. Aurore hesitates beside her
+chair, desirous of resuming her seat, even lifts her sewing from
+it; but tarries a moment, her alert suspense showing in her eyes.
+Her daughter still looks up into them. It is not strange that the
+dwellers round about dispute as to which is the fairer, nor that in
+the six months during which the two have occupied Number 19 the
+neighbors have reached no conclusion on this subject. If some young
+enthusiast compares the daughter--in her eighteenth year--to a
+bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediately
+retorts that the other--in her thirty-fifth--is the red, red,
+full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. If one says the maiden has
+the dew of youth,--"But!" cry two or three mothers in a breath,
+"that other one, child, will never grow old. With her it will
+always be morning. That woman is going to last forever;
+ha-a-a-a!--even longer!"</p>
+<p>There was one direction in which the widow evidently had the
+advantage; you could see from the street or the opposite windows
+that she was a wise householder. On the day they moved into Number
+19 she had been seen to enter in advance of all her other movables,
+carrying into the empty house a new broom, a looking-glass, and a
+silver coin. Every morning since, a little watching would have
+discovered her at the hour of sunrise sprinkling water from her
+side casement, and her opposite neighbors often had occasion to
+notice that, sitting at her sewing by the front window, she never
+pricked her finger but she quickly ran it up behind her ear, and
+then went on with her work. Would anybody but Joseph Frowenfeld
+ever have lived in and moved away from the two-story brick next
+them on the right and not have known of the existence of such a
+marvel?</p>
+<p>"Ha!" they said, "she knows how to keep off bad luck, that
+Madame yonder. And the younger one seems not to like it. Girls
+think themselves so smart these days."</p>
+<p>Ah, there was the knock again, right there on the street-door,
+as loud as if it had been given with a joint of sugar-cane!</p>
+<p>The daughter's hand, which had just resumed the needle, stood
+still in mid-course with the white thread half-drawn. Aurore
+tiptoed slowly over the carpeted floor. There came a shuffling
+sound, and the corner of a folded white paper commenced appearing
+and disappearing under the door. She mounted a chair and peeped
+through that odd little <i>jalousie</i> which formerly was in
+almost all New Orleans street-doors; but the missive had meantime
+found its way across the sill, and she saw only the unpicturesque
+back of a departing errand-boy. But that was well. She had a pride,
+to maintain which--and a poverty, to conceal which--she felt to be
+necessary to her self-respect; and this made her of necessity a
+trifle unsocial in her own castle. Do you suppose she was going to
+put on the face of having been born or married to this degraded
+condition of things?</p>
+<p>Who knows?--the knock might have been from 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'--ha, ha! He might be just silly enough to call so early;
+or it might have been from that <i>polisson</i> of a
+Grandissime,--which one didn't matter, they were all
+detestable,--coming to collect the rent. That was her original
+fear; or, worse still, it might have been, had it been softer, the
+knock of some possible lady visitor. She had no intention of
+admitting any feminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up
+indigence. Besides, it was Monday. There is no sense in trifling
+with bad luck. The reception of Monday callers is a source of
+misfortune never known to fail, save in rare cases when good luck
+has already been secured by smearing the front walk or the
+banquette with Venetian red.</p>
+<p>Before the daughter could dart up and disengage herself from her
+work her mother had pounced upon the paper. She was standing and
+reading, her rich black lashes curtaining their downcast eyes, her
+infant waist and round, close-fitted, childish arms harmonizing
+prettily with her mock frown of infantile perplexity, and her long,
+limp robe heightening the grace of her posture, when the younger
+started from her seat with the air of determining not to be left at
+a disadvantage.</p>
+<p>But what is that on the dark eyelash? With a sudden additional
+energy the daughter dashes the sewing and chair to right and left,
+bounds up, and in a moment has Aurore weeping in her embrace and
+has snatched the note from her hand.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah! maman! Ah! ma ch&egrave;re m&egrave;re</i>!"</p>
+<p>The mother forced a laugh. She was not to be mothered by her
+daughter; so she made a dash at Clotilde's uplifted hand to recover
+the note, which was unavailing. Immediately there arose in colonial
+French the loveliest of contentions, the issue of which was that
+the pair sat down side by side, like two sisters over one
+love-letter, and undertook to decipher the paper. It read as
+follows:</p>
+<blockquote>"NEW ORLEANS, 20 Feb're, 1804.<br>
+<br>
+"MADAME NANCANOU: I muss oblige to ass you for rent of that house
+whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville street whare I do
+not received thos rent from you not since tree mons and I demand
+you this is mabe thirteen time. And I give to you notice of 19 das
+writen in Anglish as the new law requi. That witch the law make
+necessare only for 15 das, and when you not pay me those rent in 19
+das till the tense of Marh I will rekes you to move out. That witch
+make me to be verry sorry. I have the honor to remain, Madam,<br>
+<br>
+<blockquote>"Your humble servant,<br>
+"H. Grandissime.<br>
+"<i>per</i> Z.F."</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<p>There was a short French postscript on the opposite page signed
+only by M. Z&eacute;non Fran&ccedil;ois, explaining that he, who
+had allowed them in the past to address him as their landlord and
+by his name, was but the landlord's agent; that the landlord was a
+far better-dressed man than he could afford to be; that the writing
+opposite was a notice for them to quit the premises they had rented
+(not leased), or pay up; that it gave the writer great pain to send
+it, although it was but the necessary legal form and he only an
+irresponsible drawer of an inadequate salary, with thirteen
+children to support; and that he implored them to tear off and burn
+up this postscript immediately they had read it.</p>
+<p>"Ah, the miserable!" was all the comment made upon it as the two
+ladies addressed their energies to the previous English. They had
+never suspected him of being M. Grandissime.</p>
+<p>Their eyes dragged slowly and ineffectually along the lines to
+the signature.</p>
+<p>"H. Grandissime! Loog ad 'im!" cried the widow, with a sudden
+short laugh, that brought the tears after it like a wind-gust in a
+rose-tree. She held the letter out before them as if she was
+lifting something alive by the back of the neck, and to intensify
+her scorn spoke in the hated tongue prescribed by the new courts.
+"Loog ad 'im! dad ridge gen'leman oo give so mudge money to de
+'ozpill!"</p>
+<p>"Bud, <i>maman</i>," said the daughter, laying her hand
+appeasingly upon her mother's knee, "<i>ee</i> do nod know 'ow we
+is poor."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" retorted Aurore, "<i>par example! Non?</i> Ee thingue we
+is ridge, eh? Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She cast
+upon her daughter the look of burning scorn intended for Agricola
+Fusilier. "You wan' to tague the pard of dose Grandissime'?"</p>
+<p>The daughter returned a look of agony.</p>
+<p>"No," she said, "bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee
+nod boun' to ged 'is rend?"</p>
+<p>"Boun' to ged--ah! yez ee muz do 'is possible to ged 'is rend.
+Oh! certain<i>lee</i>. Ee is ridge, bud ee need a lill money, bad,
+bad. Fo' w'at?" The excited speaker rose to her feet under a sudden
+inspiration. "<i>Tenez, Mademoiselle!</i>" She began to make great
+show of unfastening her dress.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais, comment?</i>" demanded the suffering daughter.</p>
+<p>"Yez!" continued Aurore, keeping up the demonstration, "you wand
+'im to 'ave 'is rend so bad! An' I godd honely my cloze; so you juz
+tague diz to you' fine gen'lemen, 'Sieur Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"Ah-h-h-h!" cried the martyr.</p>
+<p>"An' you is righd," persisted the tormentor, still unfastening;
+but the daughter's tears gushed forth, and the repentant tease
+threw herself upon her knees, drew her child's head into her bosom
+and wept afresh.</p>
+<p>Half an hour was passed in council; at the end of which they
+stood beneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen
+fire-dog, and no conclusion reached.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my child!"--they had come to themselves now and were
+speaking in their peculiar French--"if we had here in these hands
+but the tenth part of what your papa often played away in one night
+without once getting angry! But we have not. Ah! but your father
+was a fine fellow; if he could have lived for you to know him! So
+accomplished! Ha, ha, ha! I can never avoid laughing, when I
+remember him teaching me to speak English; I used to enrage him
+so!"</p>
+<p>The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of
+discussion. There were nineteen days yet allowed them. God
+knows--by the expiration of that time they might be able to pay.
+With the two music scholars whom she then had and three more whom
+she had some hope to get, she made bold to say they could pay the
+rent.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden
+brightness, "you don't need a mask and costume to resemble your
+great-grandmother, the casket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part,
+that with the one embroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and
+the three others who had declined to take lessons, they could
+easily pay the rent--and how kind it was of Monsieur, the aged
+father of that one embroidery scholar, to procure those invitations
+to the ball! The dear old man! He said he must see one more ball
+before he should die.</p>
+<p>Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that
+her daughter was content to admire her silently.</p>
+<p>"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you
+remember the evening you treated me so ill?"</p>
+<p>The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.</p>
+<p>"I did not treat you ill."</p>
+<p>"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my
+purse?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the
+andiron; her eyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse
+blame yourself. For the way you found it again--which was far
+worse--thank Palmyre. If you had not asked her to find it and
+shared the gold with her we could have returned with it to 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let him see us. I do not
+doubt he filled the purse."</p>
+<p>"He? He never knew it was empty. It was Nobody who filled it.
+Palmyre says that Papa L&eacute;bat--"</p>
+<p>"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superstitious mention.</p>
+<p>The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing the
+unendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the
+cloud hung over but a moment.</p>
+<p>"Clotilde," she said, a minute after, turning with a look of
+sun-bright resolve, "I am going to see him."</p>
+<p>"To see whom?" asked the other, looking back from the window,
+whither she had gone to recover from a reactionary trembling.</p>
+<p>"To whom, my child? Why--"</p>
+<p>"You do not expect mercy from Honor&eacute; Grandissime? You
+would not ask it?"</p>
+<p>"No. There is no mercy in the Grandissime blood; but cannot I
+demand justice? Ha! it is justice that I shall demand!"</p>
+<p>"And you will really go and see him?"</p>
+<p>"You will see, Mademoiselle," replied Aurore, dropping a broom
+with which she had begun to sweep up some spilled buttons.</p>
+<p>"And I with you?"</p>
+<p>"No! To a counting-room? To the presence of the chief of that
+detestable race? No!"</p>
+<p>"But you don't know where his office is."</p>
+<p>"Anybody can tell me."</p>
+<p>Preparation began at once. By and by--</p>
+<p>"Clotilde."</p>
+<p>Clotilde was stooping behind her mother, with a ribbon between
+her lips, arranging a flounce.</p>
+<p>"M-m-m."</p>
+<p>"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it
+<i>is</i> dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go
+out of his sight and she never came back!"</p>
+<p>"Hold still!" said Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key,
+"haven't I got to put it instantly into my pocket if I want the
+money to come there? Well, then!"</p>
+<p>The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina
+to put on her shoes.</p>
+<p>"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina
+to be seized for the rent?"</p>
+<p>"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"</p>
+<p>"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you
+have none? Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I
+cannot pay the rent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything
+happens to me it is M. Grandissime who is responsible."</p>
+<p>Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the
+mirror. The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels
+half around and looks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and
+loose ribbons gave her a more girlish look than ever.</p>
+<p>"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and
+smites her daughter's cheek softly with her palm.</p>
+<p>"And you are not afraid to go alone?"</p>
+<p>"No; but remember! look at that dog!"</p>
+<p>The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the
+street door, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon
+her lips, pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes
+back, and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the buttons
+and take away the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of
+it, gathers the hound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out
+together--Aurore sallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her
+sewing and await the coming of a guitar scholar.</p>
+<p>"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from
+imagining that Aurore had set about a little private business which
+she proposed to herself to accomplish before she even started in
+the direction of M. Grandissime's counting-rooms.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>BEFORE SUNSET</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In old times, most of the sidewalks of New Orleans not in the
+heart of town were only a rough, rank turf, lined on the side next
+the ditch with the gunwales of broken-up flatboats--ugly, narrow,
+slippery objects. As Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to
+anglicize her name--as Aurora gained a corner where two of these
+gunwales met, she stopped and looked back to make sure that
+Clotilde was not watching her. That others had noticed her here and
+there she did not care; that was something beauty would have to
+endure, and it only made her smile to herself.</p>
+<p>"Everybody sees I am from the country--walking on the street
+without a waiting-maid."</p>
+<p>A boy passed, hushing his whistle, and gazing at the lone lady
+until his turning neck could twist no farther. She was so dewy
+fresh! After he had got across the street he turned to look again.
+Where could she have disappeared?</p>
+<p>The only object to be seen on the corner from which she had
+vanished was a small, yellow-washed house much like the one Aurora
+occupied, as it was like hundreds that then characterized and still
+characterize the town, only that now they are of brick instead of
+adobe. They showed in those days, even more than now, the wide
+contrast between their homely exteriors and the often elegant
+apartments within. However, in this house the front room was merely
+neat. The furniture was of rude, heavy pattern, Creole-made, and
+the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap pictures had not come.
+The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was spread and hung with
+a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework. The brazen
+feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as were the brass
+mountings of the bedstead and the brass globes on the cold
+andirons. Curtains of blue and white hung at the single window. The
+floor, from habitual scrubbing with the common weed which
+politeness has to call <i>Helenium autumnale</i>, was stained a
+bright, clean yellow. On it were, here and there in places, white
+mats woven of bleached palmetto-leaf. Such were the room's
+appointments; there was but one thing more, a singular bit of
+fantastic carving,--a small table of dark mahogany supported on the
+upward-writhing images of three scaly serpents.</p>
+<p>Aurora sat down beside this table. A dwarf Congo woman, as black
+as soot, had ushered her in, and, having barred the door, had
+disappeared, and now the mistress of the house entered.</p>
+<p>February though it was, she was dressed--and looked
+comfortable--in white. That barbaric beauty which had begun to bud
+twenty years before was now in perfect bloom. The united grace and
+pride of her movement was inspiring but--what shall we
+say?--feline? It was a femininity without humanity,--something that
+made her, with all her superbness, a creature that one would want
+to find chained. It was the woman who had received the gold from
+Frowenfeld--Palmyre Philosophe.</p>
+<p>The moment her eyes fell upon Aurora her whole appearance
+changed. A girlish smile lighted up her face, and as Aurora rose up
+reflecting it back, they simultaneously clapped hands, laughed and
+advanced joyously toward each other, talking rapidly without regard
+to each other's words.</p>
+<p>"Sit down," said Palmyre, in the plantation French of their
+childhood, as they shook hands.</p>
+<p>They took chairs and drew up face to face as close as they could
+come, then sighed and smiled a moment, and then looked grave and
+were silent. For in the nature of things, and notwithstanding the
+amusing familiarity common between Creole ladies and the menial
+class, the unprotected little widow should have had a very serious
+errand to bring her to the voudou's house.</p>
+<p>"Palmyre," began the lady, in a sad tone.</p>
+<p>"Momselle Aurore."</p>
+<p>"I want you to help me." The former mistress not only cast her
+hands into her lap, lifted her eyes supplicatingly and dropped them
+again, but actually locked her fingers to keep them from
+trembling.</p>
+<p>"Momselle Aurore--" began Palmyre, solemnly.</p>
+<p>"Now, I know what you are going to say--but it is of no use to
+say it; do this much for me this one time and then I will let
+voudou alone as much as you wish--forever!"</p>
+<p>"You have not lost your purse <i>again?</i>"</p>
+<p>"Ah! foolishness, no."</p>
+<p>Both laughed a little, the philosophe feebly, and Aurora with an
+excited tremor.</p>
+<p>"Well?" demanded the quadroon, looking grave again.</p>
+<p>Aurora did not answer.</p>
+<p>"Do you wish me to work a spell for you?"</p>
+<p>The widow nodded, with her eyes cast down.</p>
+<p>Both sat quite still for some time; then the philosophe gently
+drew the landlord's letter from between Aurora's hands.</p>
+<p>"What is this?" She could not read in any language.</p>
+<p>"I must pay my rent within nineteen days."</p>
+<p>"Have you not paid it?"</p>
+<p>The delinquent shook her head.</p>
+<p>"Where is the gold that came into your purse? All gone?"</p>
+<p>"For rice and potatoes," said Aurora, and for the first time she
+uttered a genuine laugh, under that condition of mind which Latins
+usually substitute for fortitude. Palmyre laughed too, very
+properly.</p>
+<p>Another silence followed. The lady could not return the
+quadroon's searching gaze.</p>
+<p>"Momselle Aurore," suddenly said Palmyre, "you want me to work a
+spell for something else."</p>
+<p>Aurora started, looked up for an instant in a frightened way,
+and then dropped her eyes and let her head droop, murmuring:</p>
+<p>"No, I do not."</p>
+<p>Palmyre fixed a long look upon her former mistress. She saw that
+though Aurora might be distressed about the rent, there was
+something else,--a deeper feeling,--impelling her upon a course the
+very thought of which drove the color from her lips and made her
+tremble.</p>
+<p>"You are wearing red," said the philosophe.</p>
+<p>Aurora's hand went nervously to the red ribbon about her
+neck.</p>
+<p>"It is an accident; I had nothing else convenient."</p>
+<p>"Mich&eacute; Agoussou loves red," persisted Palmyre. (Monsieur
+Agoussou is the demon upon whom the voudous call in matters of
+love.)</p>
+<p>The color that came into Aurora's cheek ought to have suited
+Monsieur precisely.</p>
+<p>"It is an accident," she feebly insisted.</p>
+<p>"Well," presently said Palmyre, with a pretence of abandoning
+her impression, "then you want me to work you a spell for money, do
+you?"</p>
+<p>Aurora nodded, while she still avoided the quadroon's
+glance.</p>
+<p>"I know better," thought the philosophe. "You shall have the
+sort you want."</p>
+<p>The widow stole an upward glance.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" said Palmyre, with the manner of one making a decided
+digression, "I have been wanting to ask you something. That evening
+at the pharmacy--was there a tall, handsome gentleman standing by
+the counter?"</p>
+<p>"He was standing on the other side."</p>
+<p>"Did you see his face?"</p>
+<p>"No; his back was turned."</p>
+<p>"Momselle Aurore," said Palmyre, dropping her elbows upon her
+knees and taking the lady's hand as if the better to secure the
+truth, "was that the gentleman you met at the ball?"</p>
+<p>"My faith!" said Aurora, stretching her eyebrows upward. "I did
+not think to look. Who was it?"</p>
+<p>But Palmyre Philosophe was not going to give more than she got,
+even to her old-time Momselle; she merely straightened back into
+her chair with an amiable face.</p>
+<p>"Who do you think he is?" persisted Aurora, after a pause,
+smiling downward and toying with her rings.</p>
+<p>The quadroon shrugged.</p>
+<p>They both sat in reverie for a moment--a long moment for such
+sprightly natures--and Palmyre's mien took on a professional
+gravity. She presently pushed the landlord's letter under the
+lady's hands as they lay clasped in her lap, and a moment after
+drew Aurora's glance with her large, strong eyes and asked:</p>
+<p>"What shall we do?"</p>
+<p>The lady immediately looked startled and alarmed and again
+dropped her eyes in silence. The quadroon had to speak again.</p>
+<p>"We will burn a candle."</p>
+<p>Aurora trembled.</p>
+<p>"No," she succeeded in saying.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Palmyre, "you must get your rent money." But the
+charm which she was meditating had no reference to rent money. "She
+knows that," thought the voudou.</p>
+<p>As she rose and called her Congo slave-woman, Aurora made as if
+to protest further; but utterance failed her. She clenched her
+hands and prayed to fate for Clotilde to come and lead her away as
+she had done at the apothecary's. And well she might.</p>
+<p>The articles brought in by the servant were simply a little
+pound-cake and cordial, a tumbler half-filled with the <i>sirop
+naturelle</i> of the sugar-cane, and a small piece of candle of the
+kind made from the fragrant green wax of the candleberry myrtle.
+These were set upon the small table, the bit of candle standing,
+lighted, in the tumbler of sirup, the cake on a plate, the cordial
+in a wine-glass. This feeble child's play was all; except that as
+Palmyre closed out all daylight from the room and received the
+offering of silver that "paid the floor" and averted
+<i>guillons</i> (interferences of outside imps), Aurora,--alas!
+alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon the
+candle's flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp of good
+fortune) to cast his snare in her behalf around the mind and heart
+of--she knew not whom.</p>
+<p>By and by her lips, which had moved at first, were still and she
+only watched the burning wax. When the flame rose clear and long it
+was a sign that Assonquer was enlisted in the coveted endeavor.
+When the wick sputtered, the devotee trembled in fear of failure.
+Its charred end curled down and twisted away from her and her heart
+sank; but the tall figure of Palmyre for a moment came between, the
+wick was snuffed, the flame tapered up again, and for a long time
+burned, a bright, tremulous cone. Again the wick turned down, but
+this time toward her,--a propitious omen,--and suddenly fell
+through the expended wax and went out in the sirup.</p>
+<p>The daylight, as Palmyre let it once more into the apartment,
+showed Aurora sadly agitated. In evidence of the innocence of her
+fluttering heart, guilt, at least for the moment, lay on it, an
+appalling burden.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2102.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2102.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2102.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Aurora,--alas! alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze
+fixed upon the candle's flame".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"That is all, Palmyre, is it not? I am sure that is all--it must
+be all. I cannot stay any longer. I wish I was with Clotilde; I
+have stayed too long."</p>
+<p>"Yes; all for the present," replied the quadroon. "Here, here is
+some charmed basil; hold it between your lips as you walk--"</p>
+<p>"But I am going to my landlord's office!"</p>
+<p>"Office? Nobody is at his office now; it is too late. You would
+find that your landlord had gone to dinner. I will tell you,
+though, where you <i>must</i> go. First go home; eat your dinner;
+and this evening [the Creoles never say afternoon], about a
+half-hour before sunset, walk down Royale to the lower corner of
+the Place d'Armes, pass entirely around the square and return up
+Royale. Never look behind until you get into your house again."</p>
+<p>Aurora blushed with shame.</p>
+<p>"Alone?" she exclaimed, quite unnerved and tremulous.</p>
+<p>"You will seem to be alone; but I will follow behind you when
+you pass here. Nothing shall hurt you. If you do that, the charm
+will certainly work; if you do not--"</p>
+<p>The quadroon's intentions were good. She was determined to see
+who it was that could so infatuate her dear little Momselle; and,
+as on such an evening as the present afternoon promised to merge
+into all New Orleans promenaded on the Place d'Armes and the levee,
+her charm was a very practical one.</p>
+<p>"And that will bring the money, will it?" asked Aurora.</p>
+<p>"It will bring anything you want."</p>
+<p>"Possible?"</p>
+<p>"These things that <i>you</i> want, Momselle Aurore, are easy to
+bring. You have no charms working against you. But, oh, I wish to
+God I could work the <i>curse</i> I want to work!" The woman's eyes
+blazed, her bosom heaved, she lifted her clenched hand above her
+head and looked upward, crying: "I would give this right hand off
+at the wrist to catch Agricola Fusilier where I could work him a
+curse! But I shall; I shall some day be revenged!" She pitched her
+voice still higher. "I cannot die till I have been! There is
+nothing that could kill me, I want my revenge so bad!" As suddenly
+as she had broken out, she hushed, unbarred the door, and with a
+stern farewell smile saw Aurora turn homeward.</p>
+<p>"Give me something to eat, <i>ch&eacute;rie</i>," cried the
+exhausted lady, dropping into Clotilde's chair and trying to
+die.</p>
+<p>"Ah! <i>maman</i>, what makes you look so sick?"</p>
+<p>Aurora waved her hand contemptuously and gasped.</p>
+<p>"Did you see him? What kept you so long--so long?"</p>
+<p>"Ask me nothing; I am so enraged with disappointment. He was
+gone to dinner!"</p>
+<p>"Ah! my poor mother!"</p>
+<p>"And I must go back as soon as I can take a little
+<i>sieste</i>. I am determined to see him this very day."</p>
+<p>"Ah! my poor mother!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>ROLLED IN THE DUST</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"No, Frowenfeld," said little Doctor Keene, speaking for the
+after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go,
+get the air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long
+as you like and come home in any condition you think best." And
+Joseph, tormented into this course, put on his hat and went
+out.</p>
+<p>"Hard to move as a cow in the moonlight," continued Doctor
+Keene, "and knows just about as much of the world. He wasn't aware,
+until I told him to-day, that there are two Honor&eacute;
+Grandissimes." [Laughter.]</p>
+<p>"Why did you tell him?"</p>
+<p>"I didn't give him anything but the bare fact. I want to see how
+long it will take him to find out the rest."</p>
+<p>The Place d'Armes offered amusement to every one else rather
+than to the immigrant. The family relation, the most noticeable
+feature of its' well-pleased groups, was to him too painful a
+reminder of his late losses, and, after an honest endeavor to
+flutter out of the inner twilight of himself into the outer glare
+of a moving world, he had given up the effort and had passed beyond
+the square and seated himself upon a rude bench which encircled the
+trunk of a willow on the levee.</p>
+<p>The negress, who, resting near by with a tray of cakes before
+her, has been for some time contemplating the three-quarter face of
+her unconscious neighbor, drops her head at last with a small,
+Ethiopian, feminine laugh. It is a self-confession that, pleasant
+as the study of his countenance is, to resolve that study into
+knowledge is beyond her powers; and very pardonably so it is, she
+being but a <i>marchande des g&acirc;teaux</i> (an itinerant
+cake-vender), and he, she concludes, a man of parts. There is a
+purpose, too, as well as an admission, in the laugh. She would like
+to engage him in conversation. But he does not notice. Little
+supposing he is the object of even a cake-merchant's attention, he
+is lost in idle meditation.</p>
+<p>One would guess his age to be as much as twenty-six. His face is
+beardless, of course, like almost everybody's around him, and of a
+German kind of seriousness. A certain diffidence in his look may
+tend to render him unattractive to careless eyes, the more so since
+he has a slight appearance of self-neglect. On a second glance, his
+refinement shows out more distinctly, and one also sees that he is
+not shabby. The little that seems lacking is woman's care, the
+brush of attentive fingers here and there, the turning of a fold in
+the high-collared coat, and a mere touch on the neckerchief and
+shirt-frill. He has a decidedly good forehead. His blue eyes, while
+they are both strong and modest, are noticeable, too, as betraying
+fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them is deepened by a certain
+worn look of excess--in books; a most unusual look in New Orleans
+in those days, and pointedly out of keeping with the scene which
+was absorbing his attention.</p>
+<p>You might mistake the time for mid-May. Before the view lies the
+Place d'Armes in its green-breasted uniform of new spring grass
+crossed diagonally with white shell walks for facings, and dotted
+with the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of the city for decorations. Over the
+line of shade-trees which marks its farther boundary, the
+white-topped twin turrets of St. Louis Cathedral look across it and
+beyond the bared site of the removed battery (built by the busy
+Carondelet to protect Louisiana from herself and Kentucky, and
+razed by his immediate successors) and out upon the Mississippi,
+the color of whose surface is beginning to change with the changing
+sky of this beautiful and now departing day. A breeze, which is
+almost early June, and which has been hovering over the bosom of
+the great river and above the turf-covered levee, ceases, as if it
+sank exhausted under its burden of spring odors, and in the
+profound calm the cathedral bell strikes the sunset hour. From its
+neighboring garden, the convent of the Ursulines responds in a tone
+of devoutness, while from the parapet of the less pious little Fort
+St. Charles, the evening gun sends a solemn ejaculation rumbling
+down the "coast;" a drum rolls, the air rises again from the water
+like a flock of birds, and many in the square and on the levee's
+crown turn and accept its gentle blowing. Rising over the levee
+willows, and sinking into the streets,--which are lower than the
+water,--it flutters among the balconies and in and out of dim
+Spanish arcades, and finally drifts away toward that part of the
+sky where the sun is sinking behind the low, unbroken line of
+forest. There is such seduction in the evening air, such sweetness
+of flowers on its every motion, such lack of cold, or heat, or
+dust, or wet, that the people have no heart to stay in-doors; nor
+is there any reason why they should. The levee road is dotted with
+horsemen, and the willow avenue on the levee's crown, the whole
+short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate on the right and
+Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright with promenaders,
+although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight; for, so
+far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of which we
+have already spoken,--the nineteenth of Louisiana's delicious
+February.</p>
+<p>Among the throng were many whose names were going to be written
+large in history. There was Casa Calvo,--Sebastian de Casa Calvo de
+la Puerta y O'Farril, Marquis of Casa Calvo,--a man then at the
+fine age of fifty-three, elegant, fascinating, perfect in Spanish
+courtesy and Spanish diplomacy, rolling by in a showy equipage
+surrounded by a clanking body-guard of the Catholic king's cavalry.
+There was young Daniel Clark, already beginning to amass those
+riches which an age of litigation has not to this day consumed; it
+was he whom the French colonial prefect, Laussat, in a late letter
+to France, had extolled as a man whose "talents for intrigue were
+carried to a rare degree of excellence." There was Laussat himself,
+in the flower of his years, sour with pride, conscious of great
+official insignificance and full of petty spites--he yet tarried in
+a land where his beautiful wife was the "model of taste." There was
+that convivial old fox, Wilkinson, who had plotted for years with
+Miro and did not sell himself and his country to Spain because--as
+we now say--"he found he could do better;" who modestly confessed
+himself in a traitor's letter to the Spanish king as a man "whose
+head may err, but whose heart cannot deceive!" and who brought
+Governor Gayoso to an early death-bed by simply out-drinking him.
+There also was Edward Livingston, attorney-at-law, inseparably
+joined to the mention of the famous Batture cases--though that was
+later. There also was that terror of colonial peculators, the old
+ex-Intendant Morales, who, having quarrelled with every governor of
+Louisiana he ever saw, was now snarling at Casa Calvo from force of
+habit.</p>
+<p>And the Creoles--the Knickerbockers of Louisiana--but time would
+fail us. The Villeres and Destrehans--patriots and patriots' sons;
+the De La Chaise family in mourning for young Auguste La Chaise of
+Kentuckian-Louisianian-San Domingan history; the Livaudaises,
+<i>p&egrave;re et fils</i>, of Haunted House fame, descendants of
+the first pilot of the Belize; the pirate brothers Lafitte, moving
+among the best; Marigny de Mandeville, afterwards the marquis
+member of Congress; the Davezacs, the Mossys, the Boulignys, the
+Labatuts, the Bringiers, the De Trudeaus, the De Macartys, the De
+la Houssayes, the De Lavilleboeuvres, the Grandpr&eacute;s, the
+Forstalls; and the proselyted Creoles: &Eacute;tienne de
+Bor&eacute; (he was the father of all such as handle the
+sugar-kettle); old man Pitot, who became mayor; Madame Pontalba and
+her unsuccessful suitor, John McDonough; the three Girods, the two
+Graviers, or the lone Julian Poydras, godfather of orphan girls.
+Besides these, and among them as shining fractions of the
+community, the numerous representatives of the not only noble, but
+noticeable and ubiquitous, family of Grandissime: Grandissimes
+simple and Grandissimes compound; Brahmins, Mandarins and
+Fusiliers. One, 'Polyte by name, a light, gay fellow, with classic
+features, hair turning gray, is standing and conversing with this
+group here by the mock-cannon inclosure of the grounds. Another,
+his cousin, Charlie Mandarin, a tall, very slender, bronzed
+gentleman in a flannel hunting-shirt and buckskin leggings, is
+walking, in moccasins, with a sweet lady in whose tasteful attire
+feminine scrutiny, but such only, might detect economy, but whose
+marked beauty of yesterday is retreating and reappearing in the
+flock of children who are noisily running round and round them,
+nominally in the care of three fat and venerable black nurses.
+Another, yonder, Th&eacute;ophile Grandissime, is whipping his
+stockings with his cane, a lithe youngster in the height of the
+fashion (be it understood the fashion in New Orleans was five years
+or so behind Paris), with a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and
+giddy laugh, and a confession of experiences which these pages,
+fortunately for their moral tone, need not recount. All these were
+there and many others.</p>
+<p>This throng, shifting like the fragments of colored glass in the
+kaleidoscope, had its far-away interest to the contemplative
+Joseph. To them he was of little interest, or none. Of the many
+passers, scarcely an occasional one greeted him, and such only with
+an extremely polite and silent dignity which seemed to him like
+saying something of this sort: "Most noble alien, give you
+good-day--stay where you are. Profoundly yours--"</p>
+<p>Two men came through the Place d'Armes on conspicuously fine
+horses. One it is not necessary to describe. The other, a man of
+perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, was extremely
+handsome and well dressed, the martial fashion of the day showing
+his tall and finely knit figure to much advantage. He sat his horse
+with an uncommon grace, and, as he rode beside his companion, spoke
+and gave ear by turns with an easy dignity sufficient of itself to
+have attracted popular observation. It was the apothecary's unknown
+friend. Frowenfeld noticed them while they were yet in the middle
+of the grounds. He could hardly have failed to do so, for some one
+close beside his bench in undoubted allusion to one of the
+approaching figures exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Here comes Honor&eacute; Grandissime."</p>
+<p>Moreover, at that moment there was a slight unwonted stir on the
+Place d'Armes. It began at the farther corner of the square, hard
+by the Principal, and spread so quickly through the groups near
+about, that in a minute the entire company were quietly made aware
+of something going notably wrong in their immediate presence. There
+was no running to see it. There seemed to be not so much as any
+verbal communication of the matter from mouth to mouth. Rather a
+consciousness appeared to catch noiselessly from one to another as
+the knowledge of human intrusion comes to groups of deer in a park.
+There was the same elevating of the head here and there, the same
+rounding of beautiful eyes. Some stared, others slowly approached,
+while others turned and moved away; but a common indignation was in
+the breast of that thing dreadful everywhere, but terrible in
+Louisiana, the Majority. For there, in the presence of those good
+citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers and
+daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole
+whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, the uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the
+tallest family tree ever transplanted from France to Louisiana,
+Honor&eacute;,--the worshiped, the magnificent,--in the broad light
+of the sun's going down, rode side by side with the Yankee governor
+and was not ashamed!</p>
+<p>Joseph, on his bench, sat contemplating the two parties to this
+scandal as they came toward him. Their horses' flanks were damp
+from some pleasant gallop, but their present gait was the soft,
+mettlesome movement of animals who will even submit to walk if
+their masters insist. As they wheeled out of the broad diagonal
+path that crossed the square, and turned toward him in the highway,
+he fancied that the Creole observed him. He was not mistaken. As
+they seemed about to pass the spot where he sat, M. Grandissime
+interrupted the governor with a word and, turning his horse's head,
+rode up to the bench, lifting his hat as he came.</p>
+<p>"Good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."</p>
+<p>Joseph, looking brighter than when he sat unaccosted, rose and
+blushed.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know my uncle very well, I
+believe--Agricole Fusilier--long beard?"</p>
+<p>"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."</p>
+<p>"Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I shall be much obliged if you will tell
+him--that is, should you meet him this evening--that I wish to see
+him. If you will be so kind?"</p>
+<p>"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's diffidence made itself evident in this reiterated
+phrase.</p>
+<p>"I do not know that you will see him, but if you should, you
+know--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, certainly, sir!"</p>
+<p>The two paused a single instant, exchanging a smile of amiable
+reminder from the horseman and of bashful but pleased
+acknowledgment from the one who saw his precepts being reduced to
+practice.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime lifted his hat and turned. Frowenfeld sat
+down.</p>
+<p>"<i>Bou zou, Mich&eacute; Honor&eacute;!</i>" called the
+<i>marchande</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Comment to y&eacute;, Clemence?</i>"</p>
+<p>The merchant waved his hand as he rode away with his
+companion.</p>
+<p>"<i>Beau Mich&eacute;, l&agrave;</i>," said the
+<i>marchande</i>, catching Joseph's eye.</p>
+<p>He smiled his ignorance and shook his head.</p>
+<p>"Dass one fine gen'leman," she repeated. "<i>Mo pa'l&eacute;
+Angl&eacute;</i>," she added with a chuckle.</p>
+<p>"You know him?"</p>
+<p>"Oh! yass, sah; Mawse Honor&eacute; knows me, yass. All de
+gen'lemens knows me. I sell de <i>calas;</i> mawnin's sell
+<i>calas</i>, evenin's sell zinzer-cake. <i>You</i> know me" (a
+fact which Joseph had all along been aware of). "Dat me w'at pass
+in rue Royale ev'y mawnin' holl'in' '<i>B&eacute; calas touts
+chauds</i>,' an' singin'; don't you know?"</p>
+<p>The enthusiasm of an artist overcame any timidity she might have
+been supposed to possess, and, waiving the formality of an
+invitation, she began, to Frowenfeld's consternation, to sing, in a
+loud, nasal voice.</p>
+<p>But the performance, long familiar, attracted no public
+attention, and he for whose special delight it was intended had
+taken an attitude of disclaimer and was again contemplating the
+quiet groups of the Place d'Armes and the pleasant hurry of the
+levee road.</p>
+<p>"Don't you know?" persisted the woman. "Yass, sah, dass me; I's
+Clemence."</p>
+<p>But Frowenfeld was looking another way.</p>
+<p>"You know my boy," suddenly said she.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld looked at her.</p>
+<p>"Yass, sah. Dat boy w'at bring you de box of <i>basilic</i> lass
+Chrismus; dass my boy."</p>
+<p>She straightened her cakes on the tray and made some changes in
+their arrangement that possibly were important.</p>
+<p>"I learned to speak English in Fijinny. Bawn dah."</p>
+<p>She looked steadily into the apothecary's absorbed countenance
+for a full minute, then let her eyes wander down the highway. The
+human tide was turning cityward. Presently she spoke again.</p>
+<p>"Folks comin' home a'ready, yass."</p>
+<p>Her hearer looked down the road.</p>
+<p>Suddenly a voice that, once heard, was always known,--deep and
+pompous, as if a lion roared,--sounded so close behind him as to
+startle him half from his seat.</p>
+<p>"Is this a corporeal man, or must I doubt my eyes? Hah!
+Professor Frowenfeld!" it said.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Fusilier!" exclaimed Frowenfeld in a subdued voice, while
+he blushed again and looked at the new-comer with that sort of awe
+which children experience in a menagerie.</p>
+<p>"<i>Citizen</i> Fusilier," said the lion.</p>
+<p>Agricola indulged to excess the grim hypocrisy of brandishing
+the catchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a
+breath that was strong with the praise of the "superior liberties
+of Europe,"--those old, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of which
+America was settled.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld smiled amusedly and apologetically at the same
+moment.</p>
+<p>"I am glad to meet you. I--"</p>
+<p>He was going on to give Honor&eacute; Grandissime's message, but
+was interrupted.</p>
+<p>"My young friend," rumbled the old man in his deepest key,
+smiling emotionally and holding and solemning continuing to shake
+Joseph's hand, "I am sure you are. You ought to thank God that you
+have my acquaintance."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld colored to the temples.</p>
+<p>"I must acknowledge--" he began.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" growled the lion, "your beautiful modesty leads you to
+misconstrue me, sir. You pay my judgment no compliment. I know your
+worth, sir; I merely meant, sir, that in me--poor, humble me--you
+have secured a sympathizer in your tastes and plans. Agricola
+Fusilier, sir, is not a cock on a dunghill, to find a jewel and
+then scratch it aside."</p>
+<p>The smile of diffidence, but not the flush, passed from the
+young man's face, and he sat down forcibly.</p>
+<p>"You jest," he said.</p>
+<p>The reply was a majestic growl.</p>
+<p>"I <i>never</i> jest!" The speaker half sat down, then
+straightened up again. "Ah, the Marquis of Caso Calvo!--I must bow
+to him, though an honest man's bow is more than he deserves."</p>
+<p>"More than he deserves?" was Frowenfeld's query.</p>
+<p>"More than he deserves!" was the response.</p>
+<p>"What has he done? I have never heard----"</p>
+<p>The denunciator turned upon Frowenfeld his most royal frown, and
+retorted with a question which still grows wild in Louisiana:</p>
+<p>"What"--he seemed to shake his mane--"what has he <i>not</i>
+done, sir?" and then he withdrew his frown slowly, as if to add,
+"You'll be careful next time how you cast doubt upon a public
+official's guilt."</p>
+<p>The marquis's cavalcade came briskly jingling by. Frowenfeld saw
+within the carriage two men, one in citizen's dress, the other in a
+brilliant uniform. The latter leaned forward, and, with a
+cordiality which struck the young spectator as delightful, bowed.
+The immigrant glanced at Citizen Fusilier, expecting to see the
+greeting returned with great haughtiness; instead of which that
+person uncovered his leonine head, and, with a solemn sweep of his
+cocked hat, bowed half his length. Nay, he more than bowed, he
+bowed down--so that the action hurt Frowenfeld from head to
+foot.</p>
+<p>"What large gentlemen was that sitting on the other side?" asked
+the young man, as his companion sat down with the air of having
+finished an oration.</p>
+<p>"No gentleman at all!" thundered the citizen. "That fellow"
+(beetling frown), "that <i>fellow</i> is Edward Livingston."</p>
+<p>"The great lawyer?"</p>
+<p>"The great villain!"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld himself frowned.</p>
+<p>The old man laid a hand upon his junior's shoulder and growled
+benignantly:</p>
+<p>"My young friend, your displeasure delights me!"</p>
+<p>The patience with which Frowenfeld was bearing all this forced a
+chuckle and shake of the head from the <i>marchande</i>.</p>
+<p>Citizen Fusilier went on speaking in a manner that might be
+construed either as address or soliloquy, gesticulating much and
+occasionally letting out a fervent word that made passers look
+around and Joseph inwardly wince. With eyes closed and hands folded
+on the top of the knotted staff which he carried but never used, he
+delivered an apostrophe to the "spotless soul of youth," enticed by
+the "spirit of adventure" to "launch away upon the unploughed sea
+of the future!" He lifted one hand and smote the back of the other
+solemnly, once, twice, and again, nodding his head faintly several
+times without opening his eyes, as who should say, "Very
+impressive; go on," and so resumed; spoke of this spotless soul of
+youth searching under unknown latitudes for the "sunken treasures
+of experience"; indulged, as the reporters of our day would say, in
+"many beautiful nights of rhetoric," and finally depicted the
+loathing with which the spotless soul of youth "recoils!"--suiting
+the action to the word so emphatically as to make a pretty little
+boy who stood gaping at him start back--"on encountering in the
+holy chambers of public office the vultures hatched in the nests of
+ambition and avarice!"</p>
+<p>Three or four persons lingered carelessly near by with ears wide
+open. Frowenfeld felt that he must bring this to an end, and, like
+any young person who has learned neither deceit nor disrespect to
+seniors, he attempted to reason it down.</p>
+<p>"You do not think many of our public men are dishonest!"</p>
+<p>"Sir!" replied the rhetorician, with a patronizing smile, "h-you
+must be thinking of France!"</p>
+<p>"No, sir; of Louisiana."</p>
+<p>"Louisiana! Dishonest? All, sir, all. They are all as corrupt as
+Olympus, sir!"</p>
+<p>"Well," said Frowenfeld, with more feeling than was called for,
+"there is one who, I feel sure, is pure. I know it by his
+face!"</p>
+<p>The old man gave a look of stern interrogation.</p>
+<p>"Governor Claiborne."</p>
+<p>"Ye-e-e g-hods! Claiborne! <i>Claiborne!</i> Why, he is a
+Yankee!"</p>
+<p>The lion glowered over the lamb like a thundercloud.</p>
+<p>"He is a Virginian," said Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"He is an American, and no American can be honest."</p>
+<p>"You are prejudiced," exclaimed the young man.</p>
+<p>Citizen Fusilier made himself larger.</p>
+<p>"What is prejudice? I do not know."</p>
+<p>"I am an American myself," said Frowenfeld, rising up with his
+face burning.</p>
+<p>The citizen rose up also, but unruffled.</p>
+<p>"My beloved young friend," laying his hand heavily upon the
+other's shoulder, "you are not. You were merely born in
+America."</p>
+<p>But Frowenfeld was not appeased.</p>
+<p>"Hear me through," persisted the flatterer. "You were merely
+born in America. I, too, was born in America--but will any man
+responsible for his opinion mistake me--Agricola Fusilier--for an
+American?"</p>
+<p>He clutched his cane in the middle and glared around, but no
+person seemed to be making the mistake to which he so scornfully
+alluded, and he was about to speak again when an outcry of alarm
+coming simultaneously from Joseph and the <i>marchande</i> directed
+his attention to a lady in danger.</p>
+<p>The scene, as afterward recalled to the mind of the un-American
+citizen, included the figures of his nephew and the new governor
+returning up the road at a canter; but, at the time, he knew only
+that a lady of unmistakable gentility, her back toward him, had
+just gathered her robes and started to cross the road, when there
+was a general cry of warning, and the <i>marchande</i> cried,
+"<i>Garde choual!</i>" while the lady leaped directly into the
+danger and his nephew's horse knocked her to the earth!</p>
+<p>Though there was a rush to the rescue from every direction, she
+was on her feet before any one could reach her, her lips
+compressed, nostrils dilated, cheek burning, and eyes flashing a
+lady's wrath upon a dismounted horseman. It was the governor. As
+the crowd had rushed in, the startled horses, from whom the two
+riders had instantly leaped, drew violently back, jerking their
+masters with them and leaving only the governor in range of the
+lady's angry eye.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle!" he cried, striving to reach her.</p>
+<p>She pointed him in gasping indignation to his empty saddle, and,
+as the crowd farther separated them, waved away all permission to
+apologize and turned her back.</p>
+<p>"Hah!" cried the crowd, echoing her humor.</p>
+<p>"Lady," interposed the governor, "do not drive us to the
+rudeness of leaving--"</p>
+<p>"<i>Animal, vous!</i>" cried half a dozen, and the lady gave him
+such a look of scorn that he did not finish his sentence.</p>
+<p>"Open the way, there," called a voice in French.</p>
+<p>It was Honor&eacute; Grandissime. But just then he saw that the
+lady had found the best of protectors, and the two horsemen, having
+no choice, remounted and rode away. As they did so, M. Grandissime
+called something hurriedly to Frowenfeld, on whose arm the lady
+hung, concerning the care of her; but his words were lost in the
+short yell of derision sent after himself and his companion by the
+crowd.</p>
+<p>Old Agricola, meanwhile, was having a trouble of his own. He had
+followed Joseph's wake as he pushed through the throng; but as the
+lady turned her face he wheeled abruptly away. This brought again
+into view the bench he had just left, whereupon he, in turn, cried
+out, and, dashing through all obstructions, rushed back to it,
+lifting his ugly staff as he went and flourishing it in the face of
+Palmyre Philosophe.</p>
+<p>She stood beside the seat with the smile of one foiled and
+intensely conscious of peril, but neither frightened nor suppliant,
+holding back with her eyes the execution of Agricola's threat
+against her life.</p>
+<p>Presently she drew a short step backward, then another, then a
+third, and then turned and moved away down the avenue of willows,
+followed for a few steps by the lion and by the laughing comment of
+the <i>marchande</i>, who stood looking after them with her tray
+balanced on her head.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ya, ya! ye connais voudou bien!</i><a name=
+"FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a>"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a>
+"They're up in the voudou arts."</blockquote>
+<p>The old man turned to rejoin his companion. The day was rapidly
+giving place to night and the people were withdrawing to their
+homes. He crossed the levee, passed through the Place d'Armes and
+on into the city without meeting the object of his search. For
+Joseph and the lady had hurried off together.</p>
+<p>As the populace floated away in knots of three, four and five,
+those who had witnessed mademoiselle's (?) mishap told it to those
+who had not; explaining that it was the accursed Yankee governor
+who had designedly driven his horse at his utmost speed against the
+fair victim (some of them butted against their hearers by way of
+illustration); that the fiend had then maliciously laughed; that
+this was all the Yankees came to New Orleans for, and that there
+was an understanding among them--"Understanding, indeed!" exclaimed
+one, "They have instructions from the President!"--that unprotected
+ladies should be run down wherever overtaken. If you didn't believe
+it you could ask the tyrant, Claiborne, himself; he made no secret
+of it. One or two--but they were considered by others
+extravagant--testified that, as the lady fell, they had seen his
+face distorted with a horrid delight, and had heard him cry: "Daz
+de way to knog them!"</p>
+<p>"But how came a lady to be out on the levee, at sunset, on foot
+and alone?" asked a citizen, and another replied--both using the
+French of the late province:</p>
+<p>"As for being on foot"--a shrug. "But she was not alone; she had
+a <i>milatraisse</i> behind her."</p>
+<p>"Ah! so; that was well."</p>
+<p>"But--ha, ha!--the <i>milatraisse</i>, seeing her mistress out
+of danger, takes the opportunity to try to bring the curse upon
+Agricola Fusilier by sitting down where he had just risen up, and
+had to get away from him as quickly as possible to save her own
+skull."</p>
+<p>"And left the lady?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; and who took her to her home at last, but Frowenfeld, the
+apothecary!"</p>
+<p>"Ho, ho! the astrologer! We ought to hang that fellow."</p>
+<p>"With his books tied to his feet," suggested a third citizen.
+"It is no more than we owe to the community to go and smash his
+show-window. He had better behave himself. Come, gentlemen, a
+little <i>taffia</i> will do us good. When shall we ever get
+through these exciting times?"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>STARLIGHT IN THE RUE CHARTRES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"Oh! M'sieur Frowenfel', tague me ad home!"</p>
+<p>It was Aurora, who caught the apothecary's arm vehemently in
+both her hands with a look of beautiful terror. And whatever
+Joseph's astronomy might have previously taught him to the
+contrary, he knew by his senses that the earth thereupon turned
+entirely over three times in two seconds.</p>
+<p>His confused response, though unintelligible, answered all
+purposes, as the lady found herself the next moment hurrying across
+the Place d'Armes close to his side, and as they by-and-by passed
+its farther limits she began to be conscious that she was clinging
+to her protector as though she would climb up and hide under his
+elbow. As they turned up the rue Chartres she broke the
+silence.</p>
+<p>"Oh!-h!"--breathlessly,--"'h!--M'sieur Frowenf'--you walkin' so
+faz!"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" echoed Frowenfeld, "I did not know what I was doing."</p>
+<p>"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the lady, "me, too, juz de sem lag you!
+<i>attendez</i>; wait."</p>
+<p>They halted; a moment's deft manipulation of a veil turned it
+into a wrapping for her neck.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', oo dad man was? You know 'im?"</p>
+<p>She returned her hand to Frowenfeld's arm and they moved on.</p>
+<p>"The one who spoke to you, or--you know the one who got near
+enough to apologize is not the one whose horse struck you!"</p>
+<p>"I din know. But oo dad odder one? I saw h-only 'is back, bud I
+thing it is de sem--"</p>
+<p>She identified it with the back that was turned to her during
+her last visit to Frowenfeld's shop; but finding herself about to
+mention a matter so nearly connected with the purse of gold, she
+checked herself; but Frowenfeld, eager to say a good word for his
+acquaintance, ventured to extol his character while he concealed
+his name.</p>
+<p>"While I have never been introduced to him, I have some
+acquaintance with him, and esteem him a noble gentleman."</p>
+<p>"W'ere you meet him?"</p>
+<p>"I met him first," he said, "at the graves of my parents and
+sisters."</p>
+<p>There was a kind of hush after the mention, and the lady made no
+reply.</p>
+<p>"It was some weeks after my loss," resumed Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"In wad <i>cimeti&egrave;re</i> dad was?"</p>
+<p>"In no cemetery--being Protestants, you know--"</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, sir?" with a gentle sigh.</p>
+<p>"The physician who attended me procured permission to bury them
+on some private land below the city."</p>
+<p>"Not in de groun'<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href=
+"#Footnote_2">[2]</a>?"</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a>
+Only Jews and paupers are buried in the ground in New
+Orleans.</blockquote>
+<p>"Yes; that was my father's expressed wish when he died."</p>
+<p>"You 'ad de fivver? Oo nurse you w'en you was sick?"</p>
+<p>"An old hired negress."</p>
+<p>"Dad was all?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Hm-m-m!" she said piteously, and laughed in her sleeve.</p>
+<p>Who could hope to catch and reproduce the continuous lively
+thrill which traversed the frame of the escaped book-worm as every
+moment there was repeated to his consciousness the knowledge that
+he was walking across the vault of heaven with the evening star on
+his arm--at least, that he was, at her instigation, killing time
+along the dim, ill-lighted <i>trottoirs</i> of the rue Chartres,
+with Aurora listening sympathetically at his side. But let it go;
+also the sweet broken English with which she now and then
+interrupted him; also the inward, hidden sparkle of her dancing
+Gallic blood; her low, merry laugh; the roguish mental reservation
+that lurked behind her graver speeches; the droll bravados she
+uttered against the powers that be, as with timid fingers he
+brushed from her shoulder a little remaining dust of the late
+encounter--these things, we say, we let go,--as we let butterflies
+go rather than pin them to paper.</p>
+<p>They had turned into the rue Bienville, and were walking toward
+the river, Frowenfeld in the midst of a long sentence, when a low
+cry of tearful delight sounded in front of them, some one in long
+robes glided forward, and he found his arm relieved of its burden
+and that burden transferred to the bosom and passionate embrace of
+another--we had almost said a fairer--Creole, amid a bewildering
+interchange of kisses and a pelting shower of Creole French.</p>
+<p>A moment after, Frowenfeld found himself introduced to "my
+dotter, Clotilde," who all at once ceased her demonstrations of
+affection and bowed to him with a majestic sweetness, that seemed
+one instant grateful and the next, distant.</p>
+<p>"I can hardly understand that you are not sisters," said
+Frowenfeld, a little awkwardly.</p>
+<p>"Ah! <i>ecoutez!</i>" exclaimed the younger.</p>
+<p>"Ah! <i>par exemple!</i>" cried the elder, and they laughed down
+each other's throats, while the immigrant blushed.</p>
+<p>This encounter was presently followed by a silent surprise when
+they stopped and turned before the door of Number 19, and
+Frowenfeld contrasted the women with their painfully humble
+dwelling. But therein is where your true Creole was, and still
+continues to be, properly, yea, delightfully un-American; the
+outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's
+nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of
+this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten
+shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy,
+with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of
+snowy lace, as its bright-eyed tenants.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', if you pliz to come in," said Aurora, and
+the timid apothecary would have bravely accepted the invitation,
+but for a quick look which he saw the daughter give the mother;
+whereupon he asked, instead, permission to call at some future day,
+and received the cordial leave of Aurora and another bow from
+Clotilde.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>THAT NIGHT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Do we not fail to accord to our nights their true value? We are
+ever giving to our days the credit and blame of all we do and
+mis-do, forgetting those silent, glimmering hours when plans--and
+sometimes plots--are laid; when resolutions are formed or changed;
+when heaven, and sometimes heaven's enemies, are invoked; when
+anger and evil thoughts are recalled, and sometimes hate made to
+inflame and fester; when problems are solved, riddles guessed, and
+things made apparent in the dark, which day refused to reveal. Our
+nights are the keys to our days. They explain them. They are also
+the day's correctors. Night's leisure untangles the mistakes of
+day's haste. We should not attempt to comprise our pasts in the
+phrase, "in those days;" we should rather say "in those days and
+nights."</p>
+<p>That night was a long-remembered one to the apothecary of the
+rue Royale. But it was after he had closed his shop, and in his
+back room sat pondering the unusual experiences of the evening,
+that it began to be, in a higher degree, a night of events to most
+of those persons who had a part in its earlier incidents.</p>
+<p>That Honor&eacute; Grandissime whom Frowenfeld had only this day
+learned to know as <i>the</i> Honor&eacute; Grandissime and the
+young governor-general were closeted together.</p>
+<p>"What can you expect, my-de'-seh?" the Creole was asking, as
+they confronted each other in the smoke of their choice tobacco.
+"Remember, they are citizens by compulsion. You say your best and
+wisest law is that one prohibiting the slave-trade; my-de'-seh, I
+assure you, privately, I agree with you; but they abhor your
+law!</p>
+<p>"Your principal danger--at least, I mean difficulty--is this:
+that the Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some
+through loss of office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old
+condition of things, will not only hold off from all participation
+in your government, but will make all sympathy with it, all
+advocacy of its principles, and especially all office-holding under
+it, odious--disreputable--infamous. You may find yourself
+constrained to fill your offices with men who can face down the
+contumely of a whole people. You know what such men generally are.
+One out of a hundred may be a moral hero--the ninety-nine will be
+scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown
+out early in the day.</p>
+<p>"Count O'Reilly, when he established the Spanish power here
+thirty-five years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner's
+sword; but, my-de'-seh, you are here to establish a <i>free</i>
+government; and how can you make it freer than the people wish it?
+There is your riddle! They hold off and say, 'Make your government
+as free as you can, but do not ask us to help you;' and before you
+know it you have no retainers but a gang of shameless mercenaries,
+who will desert you whenever the indignation of this people
+overbalances their indolence; and you will fall the victim of what
+you may call our mutinous patriotism."</p>
+<p>The governor made a very quiet, unappreciative remark about a
+"patriotism that lets its government get choked up with corruption
+and then blows it out with gunpowder!"</p>
+<p>The Creole shrugged.</p>
+<p>"And repeats the operation indefinitely," he said.</p>
+<p>The governor said something often heard, before and since, to
+the effect that communities will not sacrifice themselves for mere
+ideas.</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh," replied the Creole, "you speak like a true
+Anglo-Saxon; but, sir! how many communities have <i>committed</i>
+suicide. And this one?--why, it is <i>just</i> the kind to do
+it!"</p>
+<p>"Well," said the governor, smilingly, "you have pointed out what
+you consider to be the breakers, now can you point out the
+channel?"</p>
+<p>"Channel? There is none! And you, nor I, cannot dig one. Two
+great forces <i>may</i> ultimately do it, Religion and
+Education--as I was telling you I said to my young friend, the
+apothecary,--but still I am free to say what would be my first and
+principal step, if I was in your place--as I thank God I am
+not."</p>
+<p>The listener asked him what that was.</p>
+<p>"Wherever I could find a Creole that I could venture to trust,
+my-de'-seh, I would put him in office. Never mind a little
+political heterodoxy, you know; almost any man can be trusted to
+shoot away from the uniform he has on. And then--"</p>
+<p>"But," said the other, "I have offered you--"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" replied the Creole, like a true merchant, "me, I am too
+busy; it is impossible! But, I say, I would <i>compel</i>,
+my-de'-seh, this people to govern themselves!"</p>
+<p>"And pray, how would you give a people a free government and
+then compel them to administer it?"</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh, you should not give one poor Creole the puzzle
+which belongs to your whole Congress; but you may depend on this,
+that the worst thing for all parties--and I say it only because it
+is worst for all--would be a feeble and dilatory punishment of bad
+faith."</p>
+<p>When this interview finally drew to a close the governor had
+made a memorandum of some fifteen or twenty Grandissimes, scattered
+through different cantons of Louisiana, who, their kinsman
+Honor&eacute; thought, would not decline appointments.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Certain of the Muses were abroad that night. Faintly audible to
+the apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness
+which is yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by
+night, came from a neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and
+machine-like tune-beat of an African dance. There our lately met
+<i>marchande</i> (albeit she was but a guest, fortified against the
+street-watch with her master's written "pass") led the ancient
+Calinda dance with that well-known song of derision, in whose ever
+multiplying stanzas the helpless satire of a feeble race still
+continues to celebrate the personal failings of each newly
+prominent figure among the dominant caste. There was a new distich
+to the song to-night, signifying that the pride of the Grandissimes
+must find his friends now among the Yankees:</p>
+<blockquote>"Mich&eacute; Hon'r&eacute;, all&eacute;!
+h-all&eacute;!<br>
+Trouv&eacute; to zamis parmi les Yankis.<br>
+Danc&eacute; calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!<br>
+Danc&eacute; calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!</blockquote>
+<p>Frowenfeld, as we have already said, had closed his shop, and
+was sitting in the room behind it with one arm on his table and the
+other on his celestial globe, watching the flicker of his small
+fire and musing upon the unusual experiences of the evening. Upon
+every side there seemed to start away from his turning glance the
+multiplied shadows of something wrong. The melancholy face of that
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime, his landlord, at whose mention Dr. Keene
+had thought it fair to laugh without explaining; the tall,
+bright-eyed <i>milatraisse</i>; old Agricola; the lady of the
+basil; the newly identified merchant friend, now the more
+satisfactory Honor&eacute;,--they all came before him in his
+meditation, provoking among themselves a certain discord, faint but
+persistent, to which he strove to close his ear. For he was
+brain-weary. Even in the bright recollection of the lady and her
+talk he became involved among shadows, and going from bad to worse,
+seemed at length almost to gasp in an atmosphere of hints,
+allusions, faint unspoken admissions, ill-concealed antipathies,
+unfinished speeches, mistaken identities and whisperings of hidden
+strife. The cathedral clock struck twelve and was answered again
+from the convent belfry; and as the notes died away he suddenly
+became aware that the weird, drowsy throb of the African song and
+dance had been swinging drowsily in his brain for an unknown lapse
+of time.</p>
+<p>The apothecary nodded once or twice, and thereupon rose up and
+prepared for bed, thinking to sleep till morning.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Aurora and her daughter had long ago put out their chamber
+light. Early in the evening the younger had made favorable mention
+of retiring, to which the elder replied by asking to be left awhile
+to her own thoughts. Clotilde, after some tender protestations,
+consented, and passed through the open door that showed, beyond it,
+their couch. The air had grown just cool and humid enough to make
+the warmth of one small brand on the hearth acceptable, and before
+this the fair widow settled herself to gaze beyond her tiny,
+slippered feet into its wavering flame, and think. Her thoughts
+were such as to bestow upon her face that enhancement of beauty
+that comes of pleasant reverie, and to make it certain that that
+little city afforded no fairer sight,--unless, indeed, it was the
+figure of Clotilde just beyond the open door, as in her white
+nightdress, enriched with the work of a diligent needle, she knelt
+upon the low <i>prie-Dieu</i> before the little family altar, and
+committed her pure soul to the Divine keeping.</p>
+<p>Clotilde could not have been many minutes asleep when Aurora
+changed her mind and decided to follow. The shade upon her face had
+deepened for a moment into a look of trouble; but a bright
+philosophy, which was part of her paternal birthright, quickly
+chased it away, and she passed to her room, disrobed, lay softly
+down beside the beauty already there and smiled herself to
+sleep,--</p>
+<blockquote>"Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,<br>
+As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."</blockquote>
+<p>But she also wakened again, and lay beside her unconscious
+bedmate, occupied with the company of her own thoughts. "Why should
+these little concealments ruffle my bosom? Does not even Nature
+herself practise wiles? Look at the innocent birds; do they build
+where everybody can count their eggs? And shall a poor human
+creature try to be better than a bird? Didn't I say my prayers
+under the blanket just now?"</p>
+<p>Her companion stirred in her sleep, and she rose upon one elbow
+to bend upon the sleeper a gaze of ardent admiration. "Ah,
+beautiful little chick! how guileless! indeed, how deficient in
+that respect!" She sat up in the bed and hearkened; the bell struck
+for midnight. Was that the hour? The fates were smiling! Surely M.
+Assonquer himself must have wakened her to so choice an
+opportunity. She ought not to despise it. Now, by the application
+of another and easily wrought charm, that darkened hour lately
+spent with Palmyre would have, as it were, its colors set.</p>
+<p>The night had grown much cooler. Stealthily, by degrees, she
+rose and left the couch. The openings of the room were a window and
+two doors, and these, with much caution, she contrived to open
+without noise. None of them exposed her to the possibility of
+public view. One door looked into the dim front room; the window
+let in only a flood of moonlight over the top of a high house which
+was without openings on that side; the other door revealed a
+weed-grown back yard, and that invaluable protector, the cook's
+hound, lying fast asleep.</p>
+<p>In her night-clothes as she was, she stood a moment in the
+centre of the chamber, then sank upon one knee, rapped the floor
+gently but audibly thrice, rose, drew a step backward, sank upon
+the other knee, rapped thrice, rose again, stepped backward, knelt
+the third time, the third time rapped, and then, rising, murmured a
+vow to pour upon the ground next day an oblation of champagne--then
+closed the doors and window and crept back to bed. Then she knew
+how cold she had become. It seemed as though her very marrow was
+frozen. She was seized with such an uncontrollable shivering that
+Clotilde presently opened her eyes, threw her arm about her
+mother's neck, and said:</p>
+<p>"Ah! my sweet mother, are you so cold?"</p>
+<p>"The blanket was all off of me," said the mother, returning the
+embrace, and the two sank into unconsciousness together.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Into slumber sank almost at the same moment Joseph Frowenfeld.
+He awoke, not a great while later, to find himself standing in the
+middle of the floor. Three or four men had shouted at once, and
+three pistol-shots, almost in one instant, had resounded just
+outside his shop. He had barely time to throw himself into half his
+garments when the knocker sounded on his street door, and when he
+opened it Agricola Fusilier entered, supported by his nephew
+Honor&eacute; on one side and Doctor Keene on the other. The
+latter's right hand was pressed hard against a bloody place in
+Agricola's side.</p>
+<p>"Give us plenty of light, Frowenfeld," said the doctor, "and a
+chair and some lint, and some Castile soap, and some towels and
+sticking-plaster, and anything else you can think of. Agricola's
+about scared to death--"</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld," groaned the aged citizen, "I am basely
+and mortally stabbed!"</p>
+<p>"Right on, Frowenfeld," continued the doctor, "right on into the
+back room. Fasten that front door. Here, Agricola, sit down here.
+That's right, Frow., stir up a little fire. Give me--never mind,
+I'll just cut the cloth open."</p>
+<p>There was a moment of silent suspense while the wound was being
+reached, and then the doctor spoke again.</p>
+<p>"Just as I thought; only a safe and comfortable gash that will
+keep you in-doors a while with your arm in a sling. You are more
+scared than hurt, I think, old gentleman."</p>
+<p>"You think an infernal falsehood, sir!"</p>
+<p>"See here, sir," said the doctor, without ceasing to ply his
+dexterous hands in his art, "I'll jab these scissors into your back
+if you say that again."</p>
+<p>"I suppose," growled the "citizen," "it is just the thing your
+professional researches have qualified you for, sir!"</p>
+<p>"Just stand here, Mr. Frowenfeld," said the little doctor,
+settling down to a professional tone, "and hand me things as I ask
+for them. Honor&eacute;, please hold this arm; so." And so, after a
+moderate lapse of time, the treatment that medical science of those
+days dictated was applied--whatever that was. Let those who do not
+know give thanks.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime explained to Frowenfeld what had occurred.</p>
+<p>"You see, I succeeded in meeting my uncle, and we went together
+to my office. My uncle keeps his accounts with me. Sometimes we
+look them over. We stayed until midnight; I dismissed my carriage.
+As we walked homeward we met some friends coming out of the rooms
+of the Bagatelle Club; five or six of my uncles and cousins, and
+also Doctor Keene. We all fell a-talking of my grandfather's
+<i>f&ecirc;te de grandp&egrave;re</i> of next month, and went to
+have some coffee. When we separated, and my uncle and my cousin
+Achille Grandissime and Doctor Keene and myself came down Royal
+street, out from that dark alley behind your shop jumped a little
+man and stuck my uncle with a knife. If I had not caught his arm he
+would have killed my uncle."</p>
+<p>"And he escaped," said the apothecary.</p>
+<p>"No, sir!" said Agricola, with his back turned.</p>
+<p>"I think he did. I do not think he was struck."</p>
+<p>"And Mr.----, your cousin?"</p>
+<p>"Achille? I have sent him for a carriage."</p>
+<p>"Why, Agricola," said the doctor, snipping the loose ravellings
+from his patient's bandages, "an old man like you should not have
+enemies."</p>
+<p>"I am <i>not</i> an old man, sir!"</p>
+<p>"I said <i>young</i> man."</p>
+<p>"I am not a <i>young</i> man, sir!"</p>
+<p>"I wonder who the fellow was," continued Doctor Keene, as he
+readjusted the ripped sleeve.</p>
+<p>"That is <i>my</i> affair, sir; I know who it was."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"And yet she insists," M. Grandissime was asking Frowenfeld,
+standing with his leg thrown across the celestial globe, "that I
+knocked her down intentionally?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, about to answer, was interrupted by a rap on the
+door.</p>
+<p>"That is my cousin, with the carriage," said M. Grandissime,
+following the apothecary into the shop.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld opened to a young man,--a rather poor specimen of the
+Grandissime type, deficient in stature but not in stage manner.</p>
+<p>"<i>Est il mort</i>?" he cried at the threshold.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, let me make you acquainted with my cousin,
+Achille Grandissime."</p>
+<p>Mr. Achille Grandissime gave Frowenfeld such a bow as we see now
+only in pictures.</p>
+<p>"Ve'y 'appe to meck, yo' acquaintenz!"</p>
+<p>Agricola entered, followed by the doctor, and demanded in
+indignant thunder-tones, as he entered:</p>
+<p>"Who--ordered--that--carriage?"</p>
+<p>"I did," said Honor&eacute;. "Will you please get into it at
+once."</p>
+<p>"Ah! dear Honor&eacute;!" exclaimed the old man, "always too
+kind! I go in it purely to please you."</p>
+<p>Good-night was exchanged; Honor&eacute; entered the vehicle and
+Agricola was helped in. Achille touched his hat, bowed and waved
+his hand to Joseph, and shook hands with the doctor, and saying,
+"Well, good-night. Doctor Keene," he shut himself out of the shop
+with another low bow. "Think I am going to shake hands with an
+apothecary?" thought M. Achille.</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene had refused Honor&eacute;'s invitation to go with
+them.</p>
+<p>"Frowenfeld," he said, as he stood in the middle of the shop
+wiping a ring with a towel and looking at his delicate, freckled
+hand, "I propose, before going to bed with you, to eat some of your
+bread and cheese. Aren't you glad?"</p>
+<p>"I shall be, Doctor," replied the apothecary, "if you will tell
+me what all this means."</p>
+<p>"Indeed I will not,--that is, not to-night. What? Why, it would
+take until breakfast to tell what 'all this means,'--the story of
+that pestiferous darky Bras Coup&eacute;, with the rest? Oh, no,
+sir. I would sooner not have any bread and cheese. What on earth
+has waked your curiosity so suddenly, anyhow?"</p>
+<p>"Have you any idea who stabbed Citizen Fusilier?" was Joseph's
+response.</p>
+<p>"Why, at first I thought it was the other Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime; but when I saw how small the fellow was, I was at a
+loss, completely. But, whoever it is, he has my bullet in him,
+whatever Honor&eacute; may think."</p>
+<p>"Will Mr. Fusilier's wound give him much trouble?" asked Joseph,
+as they sat down to a luncheon at the fire.</p>
+<p>"Hardly; he has too much of the blood of Lufki-Humma in him. But
+I need not say that; for the Grandissime blood is just as strong. A
+wonderful family, those Grandissimes! They are an old, illustrious
+line, and the strength that was once in the intellect and will is
+going down into the muscles. I have an idea that their greatness
+began, hundreds of years ago, in ponderosity of arm,--of frame,
+say,--and developed from generation to generation, in a rising
+scale, first into fineness of sinew, then, we will say, into force
+of will, then into power of mind, then into subtleties of genius.
+Now they are going back down the incline. Look at Honor&eacute;; he
+is high up on the scale, intellectual and sagacious. But look at
+him physically, too. What an exquisite mold! What compact strength!
+I should not wonder if he gets that from the Indian Queen. What
+endurance he has! He will probably go to his business by and by and
+not see his bed for seventeen or eighteen hours. He is the flower
+of the family, and possibly the last one. Now, old Agricola shows
+the downward grade better. Seventy-five, if he is a day, with,
+maybe, one-fourth the attainments he pretends to have, and still
+less good sense; but strong--as an orang-outang. Shall we go to
+bed?"</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/gs2141.jpg" width="40%" alt=""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/gs2143.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>NEW LIGHT UPON DARK PLACES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When the long, wakeful night was over, and the doctor gone,
+Frowenfeld seated himself to record his usual observations of the
+weather; but his mind was elsewhere--here, there, yonder. There are
+understandings that expand, not imperceptibly hour by hour, but as
+certain flowers do, by little explosive ruptures, with periods of
+quiescence between. After this night of experiences it was natural
+that Frowenfeld should find the circumference of his perceptions
+consciously enlarged. The daylight shone, not into his shop alone,
+but into his heart as well. The face of Aurora, which had been the
+dawn to him before, was now a perfect sunrise, while in pleasant
+timeliness had come in this Apollo of a Honor&eacute; Grandissime.
+The young immigrant was dazzled. He felt a longing to rise up and
+run forward in this flood of beams. He was unconscious of fatigue,
+or nearly so--would, have been wholly so but for the return by and
+by of that same dim shadow, or shadows, still rising and darting
+across every motion of the fancy that grouped again the actors in
+last night's scenes; not such shadows as naturally go with sunlight
+to make it seem brighter, but a something which qualified the
+light's perfection and the air's freshness.</p>
+<p>Wherefore, resolved: that he would compound his life, from this
+time forward, by a new formula: books, so much; observation, so
+much; social intercourse, so much; love--as to that, time enough
+for that in the future (if he was in love with anybody, he
+certainly did not know it); of love, therefore, amount not yet
+necessary to state, but probably (when it should be introduced), in
+the generous proportion in which physicians prescribe <i>aqua</i>.
+Resolved, in other words, without ceasing to be Frowenfeld the
+studious, to begin at once the perusal of this newly found book,
+the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should find it a
+difficult task--not only that much of it was in a strange tongue,
+but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be
+lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn
+fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the
+purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence
+at was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies
+Nancanou.</p>
+<p>As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose
+temperature had just been recorded as 50&deg; F., the apothecary
+stepped half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came
+blowing upon his tired forehead from the north. As he did so, he
+said to himself:</p>
+<p>"How are these two Honor&eacute; Grandissimes related to each
+other, and why should one be thought capable of attempting the life
+of Agricola?"</p>
+<p>The answer was on its way to him.</p>
+<p>There is left to our eyes but a poor vestige of the picturesque
+view presented to those who looked down the rue Royale before the
+garish day that changed the rue Enghien into Ingine street, and
+dropped the 'e' from Royale. It was a long, narrowing perspective
+of arcades, lattices, balconies, <i>zaguans</i>, dormer windows,
+and blue sky--of low, tiled roofs, red and wrinkled, huddled down
+into their own shadows; of canvas awnings with fluttering borders,
+and of grimy lamp-posts twenty feet in height, each reaching out a
+gaunt iron arm over the narrow street and dangling a lamp from its
+end. The human life which dotted the view displayed a variety of
+tints and costumes such as a painter would be glad to take just as
+he found them: the gayly feathered Indian, the slashed and
+tinselled Mexican, the leather-breeched raftsmen, the blue-or
+yellow-turbaned <i>n&eacute;gresse</i>, the sugar-planter in white
+flannel and moccasins, the average townsman in the last suit of
+clothes of the lately deceased century, and now and then a
+fashionable man in that costume whose union of tight-buttoned
+martial severity, swathed throat, and effeminate superabundance of
+fine linen seemed to offer a sort of state's evidence against the
+pompous tyrannies and frivolities of the times.</p>
+<p>The <i>marchande des calas</i> was out. She came toward Joseph's
+shop, singing in a high-pitched nasal tone this new song:</p>
+<blockquote>"D&eacute;'tit zozos--y&eacute; t&eacute; assis--<br>
+D&eacute;'tit zozos--si la barrier.<br>
+D&eacute;'tit zozos, qui zabott&eacute;;<br>
+Qui &ccedil;a y&eacute; di' mo pas conn&eacute;.<br>
+<br>
+"Manzeur-poulet vini simin,<br>
+Croup&eacute; si y&eacute; et croqu&eacute; y&eacute;;<br>
+Personn' pli' 'tend' y&eacute; zabott&eacute;--<br>
+D&eacute;'tit zozos si la barrier."</blockquote>
+<p>"You lak dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down
+from her turbaned head a flat Indian basket of warm rice cakes.</p>
+<p>"What does it mean?"</p>
+<p>She laughed again--more than the questioner could see occasion
+for.</p>
+<p>"Dat mean--two lill birds; dey was sittin' on de fence an'
+gabblin' togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime',
+an' you can't mek out w'at dey sayin', even ef dey know demself?
+H-ya! Chicken-hawk come 'long dat road an' jes' set down an' munch
+'em, an' nobody can't no mo' hea' deir lill gabblin' on de fence,
+you know."</p>
+<p>Here she laughed again.</p>
+<p>Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge
+in benevolence.</p>
+<p>"Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks
+been a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes'
+<i>calas</i> I's got for you."</p>
+<p>As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then,
+lower and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop
+behind him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed. She
+followed the new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of
+the cakes, whispered, "Dat's my mawstah," lifted her basket to her
+head and went away. Her master was Frowenfeld's landlord.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave
+"Good-morning, sir."</p>
+<p>"--m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low bow.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld waited in silence.</p>
+<p>The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to
+speak, smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way
+word by word through the unfamiliar language:</p>
+<p>"Ah lag to teg you apar'."</p>
+<p>"See me alone?"</p>
+<p>The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.</p>
+<p>"Alone," said he.</p>
+<p>"Shall we go into my room?"</p>
+<p>"<i>S'il vous plait, m'sieu'</i>."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring
+kitchen, stood on the table. It was a frugal one, but more
+comfortable than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of
+just pride in Creole cookery. Joseph deposited his <i>calas</i>
+with these things and made haste to produce a chair, which his
+visitor, as usual, declined.</p>
+<p>"Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'."</p>
+<p>"I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord
+insisted and turned away from him to look up at the books on the
+wall, precisely as that other of the same name had done a few weeks
+before.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the
+landlord turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before
+seen the common likeness.</p>
+<p>"Dez stog," said the sombre man.</p>
+<p>"What, sir? Oh!--dead stock? But how can the materials of an
+education be dead stock?"</p>
+<p>The landlord shrugged. He would not argue the point. One
+American trait which the Creole is never entirely ready to
+encounter is this gratuitous Yankee way of going straight to the
+root of things.</p>
+<p>"Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean," continued the
+apothecary; "but are men right in measuring such things only by
+their present market value?"</p>
+<p>The landlord had no reply. It was little to him, his manner
+intimated; his contemplation dwelt on deeper flaws in human right
+and wrong; yet--but it was needless to discuss it. However, he did
+speak.</p>
+<p>"Ah was elevade in Pariz."</p>
+<p>"Educated in Paris," exclaimed Joseph, admiringly. "Then you
+certainly cannot find your education dead stock."</p>
+<p>The grave, not amused, smile which was the landlord's only
+rejoinder, though perfectly courteous, intimated that his tenant
+was sailing over depths of the question that he was little aware
+of. But the smile in a moment gave way for the look of one who was
+engrossed with another subject.</p>
+<p>"M'sieu'," he began; but just then Joseph made an apologetic
+gesture and went forward to wait upon an inquirer after "Godfrey's
+Cordial;" for that comforter was known to be obtainable at
+"Frowenfeld's." The business of the American drug-store was daily
+increasing. When Frowenfeld returned his landlord stood ready to
+address him, with the air of having decided to make short of a
+matter.</p>
+<p>"M'sieu'----"</p>
+<p>"Have a seat, sir," urged the apothecary.</p>
+<p>His visitor again declined, with his uniform melancholy grace.
+He drew close to Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Ah wand you mague me one <i>ouangan</i>," he said.</p>
+<p>Joseph shook his head. He remembered Doctor Keene's expressed
+suspicion concerning the assault of the night before.</p>
+<p>"I do not understand you, sir; what is that?"</p>
+<p>"You know."</p>
+<p>The landlord offered a heavy, persuading smile.</p>
+<p>"An unguent? Is that what you mean--an ointment?"</p>
+<p>"M'sieu'," said the applicant, with a not-to-be-deceived
+expression, "<i>vous &ecirc;tes astrologue--magicien</i>--"</p>
+<p>"God forbid!"</p>
+<p>The landlord was grossly incredulous.</p>
+<p>"You godd one 'P'tit Albert.'"</p>
+<p>He dropped his forefinger upon an iron-clasped book on the
+table, whose title much use had effaced.</p>
+<p>"That is the Bible. I do not know what the Tee Albare is!"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld darted an aroused glance into the ever-courteous eyes
+of his visitor, who said without a motion:</p>
+<p>"You di'n't gave Agricola Fusilier <i>une ouangan, la nuit
+pass&eacute;</i>?"</p>
+<p>"Sir?"</p>
+<p>"Ee was yeh?--laz nighd?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Fusilier was here last night--yes. He had been attacked by
+an assassin and slightly wounded. He was accompanied by his nephew,
+who, I suppose, is your cousin: he has the same name."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, hoping he had changed the subject, concluded with a
+propitiatory smile, which, however, was not reflected.</p>
+<p>"Ma bruzzah," said the visitor.</p>
+<p>"Your brother!"</p>
+<p>"Ma whide bruzzah; ah ham nod whide, m'sieu'."</p>
+<p>Joseph said nothing. He was too much awed to speak; the
+ejaculation that started toward his lips turned back and rushed
+into his heart, and it was the quadroon who, after a moment, broke
+the silence:</p>
+<p>"Ah ham de holdez son of Numa Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"Yes--yes," said Frowenfeld, as if he would wave away something
+terrible.</p>
+<p>"Nod sell me--<i>ouangan</i>?" asked the landlord, again.</p>
+<p>"Sir," exclaimed Frowenfeld, taking a step backward, "pardon me
+if I offend you; that mixture of blood which draws upon you the
+scorn of this community is to me nothing--nothing! And every
+invidious distinction made against you on that account I despise!
+But, sir, whatever may be either your private wrongs, or the wrongs
+you suffer in common with your class, if you have it in your mind
+to employ any manner of secret art against the interests or person
+of any one--"</p>
+<p>The landlord was making silent protestations, and his tenant,
+lost in a wilderness of indignant emotions, stopped.</p>
+<p>"M'sieu'," began the quadroon, but ceased and stood with an
+expression of annoyance every moment deepening on his face, until
+he finally shook his head slowly, and said with a baffled smile:
+"Ah can nod spig Engliss."</p>
+<p>"Write it," said Frowenfeld, lifting forward a chair.</p>
+<p>The landlord, for the first time in their acquaintance, accepted
+a seat, bowing low as he did so, with a demonstration of profound
+gratitude that just perceptibly heightened his even dignity. Paper,
+quills, and ink were handed down from a shelf and Joseph retired
+into the shop.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; Grandissime, f.m.c. (these initials could hardly
+have come into use until some months later, but the convenience
+covers the sin of the slight anachronism), Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, free man of color, entered from the rear room so
+silently that Joseph was first made aware of his presence by
+feeling him at his elbow. He handed the apothecary--but a few words
+in time, lest we misjudge.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The father of the two Honor&eacute;s was that Numa
+Grandissime--that mere child--whom the Grand Marquis, to the great
+chagrin of the De Grapions, had so early cadetted. The commission
+seems not to have been thrown away. While the province was still in
+first hands, Numa's was a shining name in the annals of Kerlerec's
+unsatisfactory Indian wars; and in 1768 (when the colonists,
+ill-informed, inflammable, and long ill-governed, resisted the
+transfer of Louisiana to Spain), at a time of life when most young
+men absorb all the political extravagances of their day, he had
+stood by the side of law and government, though the popular cry was
+a frenzied one for "liberty." Moreover, he had held back his whole
+chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had
+secured valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities
+from that really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act
+of summary vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has
+branded him in history as Cruel O'Reilly. But the experience of
+those days turned Numa gray, and withal he was not satisfied with
+their outcome. In the midst of the struggle he had weakened in one
+manly resolve--against his will he married. The lady was a
+Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare intelligence and
+beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels of his
+seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would
+never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe
+conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but--as between
+his Maker and himself--he had forfeited the right to wed, they all
+knew how. But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding
+strife about to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an
+undivided clan through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly
+sacrificed a little sentimental feeling," as his family defined it,
+by breaking faith with the mother of the man now standing at Joseph
+Frowenfeld's elbow, and who was then a little toddling boy. It was
+necessary to save the party--nay, that was a slip; we should say,
+to save the family; this is not a parable. Yet Numa loved his wife.
+She bore him a boy and a girl, twins; and as her son grew in
+physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he indulged the hope
+that--the ambition and pride of all the various Grandissimes now
+centering in this lawful son, and all strife being lulled--he
+should yet see this Honor&eacute; right the wrongs which he had not
+quite dared to uproot. And Honor&eacute; inherited the hope and
+began to make it an intention and aim even before his departure
+(with his half-brother the other Honor&eacute;) for school in
+Paris, at the early age of fifteen. Numa soon after died, and
+Honor&eacute;, after various fortunes in Paris, London, and
+elsewhere, in the care, or at least company, of a pious uncle in
+holy orders, returned to the ancestral mansion. The father's
+will--by the law they might have set it aside, but that was not
+their way--left the darker Honor&eacute; the bulk of his fortune,
+the younger a competency. The latter--instead of taking office, as
+an ancient Grandissime should have done--to the dismay and
+mortification of his kindred, established himself in a prosperous
+commercial business. The elder bought houses and became a
+<i>rentier</i>.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The landlord handed the apothecary the following writing:</p>
+<blockquote>MR. JOSEPH FROWENFELD:<br>
+<br>
+Think not that anybody is to be either poisoned by me nor yet to be
+made a sufferer by the exercise of anything by me of the character
+of what is generally known as grigri, otherwise magique. This, sir,
+I do beg your permission to offer my assurance to you of the same.
+Ah, no! it is not for that! I am the victim of another entirely and
+a far differente and dissimilar passion, <i>i.e.</i>, Love.
+Esteemed sir, speaking or writing to you as unto the only man of
+exclusively white blood whom I believe is in Louisiana willing to
+do my dumb, suffering race the real justice, I love Palmyre la
+Philosophe with a madness which is by the human lips or tongues not
+possible to be exclaimed (as, I may add, that I have in the same
+like manner since exactley nine years and seven months and some
+days). Alas! heavens! I can't help it in the least particles at
+all! What, what shall I do, for ah! it is pitiful! She loves me not
+at all, but, on the other hand, is (if I suspicion not wrongfully)
+wrapped up head and ears in devotion of one who does not love her,
+either, so cold and incapable of appreciation is he. I allude to
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime.<br>
+<br>
+Ah! well do I remember the day when we returned--he and me--from
+the France. She was there when we landed on that levee, she was
+among that throng of kindreds and domestiques, she shind like the
+evening star as she stood there (it was the first time I saw her,
+but she was known to him when at fifteen he left his home, but I
+resided not under my own white father's roof--not at all--far from
+that). She cried out "A la fin to vini!" and leap herself with both
+resplendant arm around his neck and kist him twice on the one cheek
+and the other, and her resplendant eyes shining with a so great
+beauty.<br>
+<br>
+If you will give me a <i>poudre d'amour</i> such as I doubt not
+your great knowledge enable you to make of a power that cannot to
+be resist, while still at the same time of a harmless character
+toward the life or the health of such that I shall succeed in its
+use to gain the affections of that emperice of my soul, I hesitate
+not to give you such price as it may please you to nominate up as
+high as to $l,000--nay, more. Sir, will you do that?<br>
+<br>
+I have the honor to remain, sir,<br>
+<br>
+Very respectfully, your obedient servant,<br>
+<br>
+H. Grandissime.</blockquote>
+<p>Frowenfeld slowly transferred his gaze from the paper to his
+landlord's face. Dejection and hope struggled with each other in
+the gaze that was returned; but when Joseph said, with a
+countenance full of pity, "I have no power to help you," the
+disappointed lover merely looked fixedly for a moment in the
+direction of the street, then lifted his hat toward his head,
+bowed, and departed.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>ART AND COMMERCE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was some two or three days after the interview just related
+that the apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a
+friend to sit in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a
+short errand. He was kept away somewhat longer than he had intended
+to stay, for, as they were coming out of the cathedral, he met
+Aurora and Clotilde. Both the ladies greeted him with a cordiality
+which was almost inebriating, Aurora even extending her hand. He
+stood but a moment, responding blushingly to two or three trivial
+questions from her; yet even in so short a time, and although
+Clotilde gave ear with the sweetest smiles and loveliest changes of
+countenance, he experienced a lively renewal of a conviction that
+this young lady was most unjustly harboring toward him a vague
+disrelish, if not a positive distrust. That she had some mental
+reservation was certain.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, as he raised his hat for
+good-day, "you din come home yet."</p>
+<p>He did not understand until he had crimsoned and answered he
+knew not what--something about having intended every day. He felt
+lifted he knew not where, Paradise opened, there was a flood of
+glory, and then he was alone; the ladies, leaving adieus sweeter
+than the perfume they carried away with them, floated into the
+south and were gone. Why was it that the elder, though plainly
+regarded by the younger with admiration, dependence, and
+overflowing affection, seemed sometimes to be, one might almost
+say, watched by her? He liked Aurora the better.</p>
+<p>On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he
+received many such visitors as the one who had called during his
+absence, he might be permitted to be vain. It was Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, and he had left no message.</p>
+<p>"Frowenfeld," said his friend, "it would pay you to employ a
+regular assistant."</p>
+<p>Joseph was in an abstracted mood.</p>
+<p>"I have some thought of doing so."</p>
+<p>Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was
+his dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of
+them leaped up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the
+edge of the <i>trottoir</i>, brushed that part of their
+wearing-apparel which always fits with great neatness on a Creole,
+and trooped into the shop. The apothecary fell behind his defences,
+that is to say, his prescription desk, and explained to them in a
+short and spirited address that he did not wish to employ any of
+them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them understood not a word of
+English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They bowed gratefully,
+and said good-day.</p>
+<p>Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and though they
+were far from letting him know it, some of them felt it and
+interchanged expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they
+stopped on the next corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had
+treated them as if they all wanted situations. Was this so? Far
+from it. Only twenty men were applicants; the other twenty were
+friends who had come to see them get the place. And again, though,
+as the apothecary had said, none of them knew anything about the
+drug business--no, nor about any other business under the
+heavens--they were all willing that he should teach them--except
+one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel tarried a
+moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on
+Frowenfeld's account it was probably as well that he could not
+qualify, since he was expecting from France an important government
+appointment as soon as these troubles should be settled and
+Louisiana restored to her former happy condition. But he had a
+friend--a cousin--whom he would recommend, just the man for the
+position; a splendid fellow; popular, accomplished--what? the best
+trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might ever hope to look upon; a
+"so good fisherman as I never saw! "--the marvel of the
+ball-room--could handle a partner of twice his weight; the speaker
+had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to
+her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left--this way! and
+then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left
+to right--"so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and
+knew more comig song!"--the speaker would hasten to secure him
+before he should take some other situation.</p>
+<p>The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph
+made shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially
+met his requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger
+in a book which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop
+floor in deep thought. There were two loose threads hanging from
+the web of incident weaving around him which ought to connect
+somewhere; but where? They were the two visits made to his shop by
+the young merchant, Honor&eacute; Grandissime. He stopped still to
+think; what "train of thought" could he have started in the mind of
+such a man?</p>
+<p>He was about to resume his walk, when there came in, or more
+strictly speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed
+man, whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate,
+silver-buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him
+all-pure Creole. His name, when it was presently heard, accounted
+for the blond type by revealing a Franco-Celtic origin.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in
+after recess, "I 'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo'
+window."</p>
+<p>He wheeled half around as he spoke and seized from a naked black
+boy, who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in
+paper.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art
+exposition. A pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly
+jewel-casket, or a pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols--the
+property of some ancient gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune,
+and which must be sold to keep up the bravery of good clothes and
+pomade that hid slow starvation--went into the shop-window of the
+ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of by <i>tombola</i>. And
+it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral education of
+one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any sort of
+evil, that in this drivelling species of gambling he saw nothing
+hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" appeared also
+articles for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for
+instance, the wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety;
+tremulous little bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been
+made entirely of the bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large
+and spreading, the sight of which would make any botanist fall down
+"and die as mad as the wild waves be," whose ticketed merit was
+that they were composed exclusively of materials produced upon
+Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines' convent and chapel, done
+in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years, the daughter of the
+widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in ordinary ink,
+done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by "a
+citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should
+come to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere,
+the critics were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those
+critics; and, fortunately, we have a few still left.</p>
+<p>The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden
+upon the counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a
+painting.</p>
+<p>He said nothing--with his mouth; but stood at arm's length
+balancing the painting and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph
+Frowenfeld a look more replete with triumph than Caesar's
+three-worded dispatch.</p>
+<p>The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a
+somnambulist. At length he spoke:</p>
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+<p>"Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union!" replied the Creole,
+with an ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs.</p>
+<p>Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's
+anatomy.</p>
+<p>"Gran' subjec'!" said the Creole.</p>
+<p>"Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary.</p>
+<p>"Allegoricon? No, sir! Allegoricon never saw dat pigshoe. If you
+insist to know who make dat pigshoe--de hartis' stan' bif-ore
+you!"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2162.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2162.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2162.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden
+upon the counter,<br>
+tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"It is your work?"</p>
+<p>"'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de disting-wish
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible'
+as 'igh as yo' head!"</p>
+<p>He smote his breast.</p>
+<p>"Do you wish to put it in the window?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, seh."</p>
+<p>"For sale?"</p>
+<p>M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying:</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to be too proud,
+eh? I want you to say, 'My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to
+sell anything; 'tis for egs-hibby-shun'; <i>mais</i>--when somebody
+look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of
+languishing covetousness, "'you say, <i>foudre tonnerre!</i> what
+de dev'!--I take dat ris-pon-sibble-ty--you can have her for two
+hun'red fifty dollah!' Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window,
+his new friend following him about spanielwise; "but you had better
+let me say plainly that it is for sale."</p>
+<p>"Oh--I don't care--<i>mais</i>--my rillation' will never forgive
+me! <i>Mais</i>--go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'T is for sale."</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the
+window, "one week ago"--he held up one finger--"what I was doing?
+Makin' bill of ladin', my faith!--for my cousin Honor&eacute;! an'
+now, I ham a hartis'! So soon I foun' dat, I say, 'Cousin
+Honor&eacute;,'"--the eloquent speaker lifted his foot and
+administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick--"I never goin'
+to do anoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu!"</p>
+<p>He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of
+his cousin's office.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are
+making a great mistake."</p>
+<p>"You tink I hass too much?"</p>
+<p>"Well, sir, to be candid, I do; but that is not your greatest
+mistake."</p>
+<p>"What she's worse?"</p>
+<p>The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed.</p>
+<p>"I would rather not say; it is a passably good example of Creole
+art; there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you
+ask for it."</p>
+<p>"What dat is?"</p>
+<p>The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld
+replied:</p>
+<p>"If it could become the means of reminding this community that
+crude ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing else
+in this world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth
+thousands of dollars!"</p>
+<p>"You tink she is worse a t'ousand dollah?" asked the Creole,
+shadow and sunshine chasing each other across his face.</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>The unwilling critic strove unnecessarily against his smile.</p>
+<p>"Ow much you tink?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Innerarity, as an exercise it is worth whatever truth or
+skill it has taught you; to a judge of paintings it is ten dollars'
+worth of paint thrown away; but as an article of sale it is worth
+what it will bring without misrepresentation."</p>
+<p>"Two--hun-rade an'--fifty--dollahs or--not'in'!" said the
+indignant Creole, clenching one fist, and with the other hand
+lifting his hat by the front corner and slapping it down upon the
+counter. "Ha, ha, ha! a pase of waint--a wase of paint! 'Sieur
+Frowenfel', you don' know not'in' 'bout it! You har a jedge of
+painting?" he added cautiously.</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"<i>Eh, bien! foudre tonnerre</i>!--look yeh! you know? 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'? Dat de way de publique halways talk about a hartis's
+firs' pigshoe. But, I hass you to pardon me, Monsieur Frowenfel',
+if I 'ave speak a lill too warm."</p>
+<p>"Then you must forgive me if, in my desire to set you right, I
+have spoken with too much liberty. I probably should have said only
+what I first intended to say, that unless you are a person of
+independent means--"</p>
+<p>"You t'ink I would make bill of ladin'? Ah! Hm-m!"</p>
+<p>"--that you had made a mistake in throwing up your means of
+support--"</p>
+<p>"But 'e 'as fill de place an' don' want me no mo'. You want a
+clerk?--one what can speak fo' lang-widge--French, Eng-lish,
+Spanish, <i>an'</i> Italienne? Come! I work for you in de mawnin'
+an' paint in de evenin'; come!"</p>
+<p>Joseph was taken unaware. He smiled, frowned, passed his hand
+across his brow, noticed, for the first time since his delivery of
+the picture, the naked little boy standing against the edge of a
+door, said, "Why--," and smiled again.</p>
+<p>"I riffer you to my cousin Honor&eacute;," said Innerarity.</p>
+<p>"Have you any knowledge of this business?"</p>
+<p>"I 'ave.'</p>
+<p>"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently,
+as I may require?"</p>
+<p>"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.</p>
+<p>"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the
+evening?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, seh."</p>
+<p>Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the
+black boy, took off his coat and fell to work decanting something,
+with the understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should
+begin from date if his cousin should recommend him.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in
+the day, "you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe
+of a niggah?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly not."</p>
+<p>"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;!"</p>
+<p>We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent
+in a few hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp,
+a lexicon, a microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry,
+a city directory, a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings,
+a comic almanac, a diving bell, a Creole <i>veritas</i>. Before the
+day had had time to cool, his continual stream of words had done
+more to elucidate the mysteries in which his employer had begun to
+be befogged than half a year of the apothecary's slow and
+scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to carve a strange
+fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew forward in
+panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier, Zephyr
+Grandissime and the lady of the <i>lettre de cachet</i>,
+Demosthenes De Grapion and the <i>fille &agrave;
+l'h&ocirc;pital</i>, Georges De Grapion and the <i>fille &agrave;
+la cassette</i>, Numa Grandissime, father of the two
+Honor&eacute;s, young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made
+them</p>
+<blockquote>"Knit hands and beat the ground<br>
+In a light, fantastic round,"</blockquote>
+<p>would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.</p>
+<p>"Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny
+'istory of France an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about
+de Boulignys, de Sauv&eacute;s, de Grandpr&egrave;s, de Lemoynes,
+de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! De Grandissimes is as hole as de dev'!
+What? De mose of de Creole families is not so hold as plenty of my
+yallah kinfolks!"</p>
+<p>The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M.
+Raoul's statements.</p>
+<p>But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing
+before his illimitable talking power in order to digest in
+seclusion the ancestral episodes of the Grandissimes and De
+Grapions, laid pleasant plans for the immediate future. To-morrow
+morning he would leave the shop in Raoul's care and call on M.
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime to advise with him concerning the
+retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrow evening he
+would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet up to the
+doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening he would
+go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who had
+looked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged in
+Frowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours
+were to be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his
+"dead stock."</p>
+<p>And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly
+planned, there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which,
+now on this side, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous
+whisper to make haste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed,
+and was gliding about, the expectation of a crisis.</p>
+<p>Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of
+Number 19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen
+days of grace allowed them in which to save their little fortress.
+For Palmyre's assurance that the candle burning would certainly
+cause the rent-money to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde
+unknown, and to Aurora it was poor stuff to make peace of mind of.
+But there was a degree of impracticability in these ladies, which,
+if it was unfortunate, was, nevertheless, a part of their Creole
+beauty, and made the absence of any really brilliant outlook what
+the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps they had not been as
+diligent as they might have been in canvassing all possible ways
+and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fast bearing down
+upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad managers.
+They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay; could
+wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger;
+could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult
+their convenience, and then come home to a table that would make
+any kind soul weep; but as to estimating the velocity of
+bills-payable in their orbits, such trained sagacity was not
+theirs. Their economy knew how to avoid what the Creole-African
+apothegm calls <i>commerce Man Lizon--qui asset&eacute; pou' trois
+picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin</i> (bought for three
+picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that made their
+very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as it
+was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the
+cook's leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo
+plates.</p>
+<p>On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M.
+Grandissime, on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in
+front of an old Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's
+shop,--this blacksmith's shop stood between a jeweller's store and
+a large, balconied and dormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore
+Nancanou, closely veiled, had halted in a hesitating way and was
+inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman the whereabouts of the
+counting-room of M. Honor&eacute; Grandissime.</p>
+<p>Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase
+within the archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have
+thanked a prince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm
+rusks, coming from a bakery in the paved court below, rushed
+through the archway and up the stair and accompanied her into the
+cemetery-like silence of the counting-room. There were in the
+department some fourteen clerks. It was a den of Grandissimes. More
+than half of them were men beyond middle life, and some were yet
+older. One or two were so handsome, under their noble silvery
+locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, for instance,--would have
+thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is the head of the
+house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in the silent
+toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the room.
+There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with
+very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a
+privileged loudness.</p>
+<p>"H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.</p>
+<p>A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a
+silent bow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather
+than care or years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.</p>
+<p>"Madame,"--in an undertone.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in
+French.</p>
+<p>But the young man responded in English.</p>
+<p>"You har one tenant, ent it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, seh."</p>
+<p>"Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."</p>
+<p>"No, seh; M. Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."</p>
+<p>"I muz see M. Grandissime."</p>
+<p>Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.</p>
+<p>The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The
+quill of the sore-eyed man scratched louder--scratch, scratch--as
+though it were trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue
+Bienville--for a moment, and then ceased. The clerk, with one hand
+behind him and one touching the desk, murmured a few words, to
+which the other, after glancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a
+short, low reply and resumed his pen. The clerk returned, came
+through a gateway in the railing, led the way into a rich inner
+room, and turning with another courtly bow, handed her a cushioned
+armchair and retired.</p>
+<p>"After eighteen years," thought Aurora, as she found herself
+alone. It had been eighteen years since any representative of the
+De Grapion line had met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she
+knew; even that representative was only her deceased husband, a
+mere connection by marriage. How many years it was since her
+grandfather, Georges De Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his
+fatal meeting with a Mandarin de Grandissime, she did not remember.
+There, opposite her on the wall, was the portrait of a young man in
+a corslet who might have been M. Mandarin himself. She felt the
+blood of her race growing warmer in her veins. "Insolent tribe,"
+she said, without speaking, "we have no more men left to fight you;
+but now wait. See what a woman can do."</p>
+<p>These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one
+object to another. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with
+mingled defiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the
+apothecary, she indulged in a quiet smile. The smile was still
+there as her glance in its gradual sweep reached a small
+mirror.</p>
+<p>She almost leaped from her seat.</p>
+<p>Not because that mirror revealed a recess which she had not
+previously noticed; not because behind a costly desk therein sat a
+youngish man, reading a letter; not because he might have been
+observing her, for it was altogether likely that, to avoid
+premature interruption, he had avoided looking up; nor because this
+was evidently Honor&eacute; Grandissime; but because Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, if this were he, was the same person whom she had seen
+only with his back turned in the pharmacy--the rider whose horse
+ten days ago had knocked her down, the Lieutenant of Dragoons who
+had unmasked and to whom she had unmasked at the ball! Fly! But
+where? How? It was too late; she had not even time to lower her
+veil. M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter
+with a slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward
+her. For an instant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling
+blush and a distressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she
+rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly
+sedate as the inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.</p>
+<p>He spoke in Parisian French:</p>
+<p>"Please be seated, madame."</p>
+<p>She sank down.</p>
+<p>"Do you wish to see me?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>She did not see her way out of this falsehood, but--she couldn't
+say yes.</p>
+<p>Silence followed.</p>
+<p>"Whom do--"</p>
+<p>"I wish to see M. Honor&eacute; Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"That is my name, madame."</p>
+<p>"Ah!"--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now,
+and was ready for war. "You are not one of his clerks?"</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: "You
+little honey-bee, you want to sting me, eh?" and then he answered
+her question.</p>
+<p>"No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for."</p>
+<p>"The gentleman she was look--" her pride resented the fact.
+"Me!"--thought she--"I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you
+have been longing to meet ever since the ball;" but her look was
+unmoved gravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and
+handed him the rent notice.</p>
+<p>"I received that from your office the Monday before last."</p>
+<p>There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it
+was the day of the run-over.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only
+half unfolded, saw the advisability of calling up all the resources
+of his sagacity and wit in order to answer wisely; and as they
+answered his call a brighter nobility so overspread face and person
+that Aurora inwardly exclaimed at it even while she exulted in her
+thrust.</p>
+<p>"Monday before last?"</p>
+<p>She slightly bowed.</p>
+<p>"A serious misfortune befell me that day," said M.
+Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"Ah?" replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress,
+"but you have entirely recovered, I suppose."</p>
+<p>"It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification
+for which I fear you will accept no apology."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Aurora, with an air of generous
+protestation, "it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your
+horse."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped
+his glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:</p>
+<p>"My horse is very well, I thank you."</p>
+<p>But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he
+seemed to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of
+it.</p>
+<p>"He is trying to think how he will get rid of me," thought
+Aurora; "he is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and
+when the tenth of March comes we shall be put into the street."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not
+lift her hands.</p>
+<p>"I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this
+notice to reach you from my office; I am not the Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime for whom this is signed."</p>
+<p>Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the
+subterfuge she had been anticipating. Had she been at home she
+would have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she
+only smiled meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian
+harbor and made an unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief
+under her folded hands.</p>
+<p>"There are, you know,"--began Honor&eacute;, with a smile which
+changed the meaning to "You know very well there are"--"two
+Honor&eacute; Grandissimes. This one who sent you this letter is a
+man of color--"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.</p>
+<p>"If you will entrust this paper to me," said Honor&eacute;,
+quietly, "I will see him and do now engage that you shall have no
+further trouble about it. Of course, I do not mean that I will pay
+it, myself; I dare not offer to take such a liberty."</p>
+<p>Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too
+far.</p>
+<p>Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She
+neither smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of
+amiable practicality as she presently said, receiving back the
+rent-notice as she spoke:</p>
+<p>"I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his
+notice in the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the
+matter. I shall have to attend to it myself."</p>
+<p>"Ah! little enchantress," thought her grave-faced listener, as
+he gave attention, "this, after all--ball and all--is the mood in
+which you look your very, very best"--a fact which nobody knew
+better than the enchantress herself.</p>
+<p>He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into the
+counting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some
+ingenuity of his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could
+not fail to feel that they had never before seen quite so fair a
+couple. But she dropped her veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite "No
+farther," and passed out.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave
+the door a soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.</p>
+<p>The clerk who had before acted as usher came in and handed him a
+slip of paper with a name written on it. M. Grandissime folded it
+twice, gazed out the window, and finally nodded. The clerk
+disappeared, and Joseph Frowenfeld paused an instant in the door
+and then advanced, with a buoyant good-morning.</p>
+<p>"Good-morning," responded M. Grandissime.</p>
+<p>He smiled and extended his hand, yet there was a mechanical and
+preoccupied air that was not what Joseph felt justified in
+expecting.</p>
+<p>"How can I serve you, Mr. Frhowenfeld?" asked the merchant,
+glancing through into the counting-room. His coldness was almost
+all in Joseph's imagination, but to the apothecary it seemed such
+that he was nearly induced to walk away without answering. However,
+he replied:</p>
+<p>"A young man whom I have employed refers to you to recommend
+him."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir? Prhay, who is that?"</p>
+<p>"Your cousin, I believe, Mr. Raoul Innerarity."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime gave a low, short laugh, and took two steps
+toward his desk.</p>
+<p>"Rhaoul? Oh yes, I rhecommend Rhaoul to you. As an assistant in
+yo' sto'?--the best man you could find."</p>
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Joseph, coldly. "Good-morning!" he added
+turning to go.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frhowenfeld," said the other, "do you evva rhide?"</p>
+<p>"I used to ride," replied the apothecary, turning, hat in hand,
+and wondering what such a question could mean.</p>
+<p>"If I send a saddle-hoss to yo' do' on day aftah to-morrhow
+evening at fo' o'clock, will you rhide out with me for-h about a
+hour-h and a half--just for a little pleasu'e?"</p>
+<p>Joseph was yet more astonished than before. He hesitated,
+accepted the invitation, and once more said good-morning.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>DOCTOR KEENE RECOVERS HIS BULLET</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It early attracted the apothecary's notice, in observing the
+civilization around him, that it kept the flimsy false bottoms in
+its social errors only by incessant reiteration. As he re-entered
+the shop, dissatisfied with himself for accepting M. Grandissime's
+invitation to ride, he knew by the fervent words which he overheard
+from the lips of his employee that the f.m.c. had been making one
+of his reconnoisances, and possibly had ventured in to inquire for
+his tenant.</p>
+<p>"I t'ink, me, dat hanny w'ite man is a gen'leman; but I don't
+care if a man are good like a h-angel, if 'e har not pu'e w'ite
+'<i>ow can</i> 'e be a gen'leman?"</p>
+<p>Raoul's words were addressed to a man who, as he rose up and
+handed Frowenfeld a note, ratified the Creole's sentiment by a
+spurt of tobacco juice and an affirmative "Hm-m."</p>
+<p>The note was a lead-pencil scrawl, without date.</p>
+<blockquote>DEAR JOE: Come and see me some time this evening.<br>
+I am on my back in bed. Want your help in a little<br>
+matter. Yours, Keene.<br>
+<br>
+I have found out who ---- ----"</blockquote>
+<p>Frowenfeld pondered: "I have found out who ---- ----" Ah! Doctor
+Keene had found out who stabbed Agricola.</p>
+<p>Some delays occurred in the afternoon, but toward sunset the
+apothecary dressed and went out. From the doctor's bedside in the
+rue St. Louis, if not delayed beyond all expectation, he would
+proceed to visit the ladies at Number 19 rue Bienville. The air was
+growing cold and threatening bad weather.</p>
+<p>He found the Doctor prostrate, wasted, hoarse, cross and almost
+too weak for speech. He could only whisper, as his friend
+approached his pillow:</p>
+<p>"These vile lungs!"</p>
+<p>"Hemorrhage?"</p>
+<p>The invalid held up three small, freckled fingers.</p>
+<p>Joseph dared not show pity in his gaze, but it seemed savage not
+to express some feeling, so after standing a moment he began to
+say:</p>
+<p>"I am very sorry--"</p>
+<p>"You needn't bother yourself!" whispered the doctor, who lay
+frowning upward. By and by he whispered again.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld bent his ear, and the little man, so merry when well,
+repeated, in a savage hiss:</p>
+<p>"Sit down!"</p>
+<p>It was some time before he again broke the silence.</p>
+<p>"Tell you what I want--you to do--for me."</p>
+<p>"Well, sir--"</p>
+<p>"Hold on!" gasped the invalid, shutting his eyes with
+impatience,--"till I get through."</p>
+<p>He lay a little while motionless, and then drew from under his
+pillow a wallet, and from the wallet a pistol-ball.</p>
+<p>"Took that out--a badly neglected wound--last day I saw you."
+Here a pause, an appalling cough, and by and by a whisper: "Knew
+the bullet in an instant." He smiled wearily. "Peculiar size." He
+made a feeble motion. Frowenfeld guessed the meaning of it and
+handed him a pistol from a small table. The ball slipped softly
+home. "Refused two hundred dollars--those pistols"--with a sigh and
+closed eyes. By and by again--"Patient had smart fever--but it will
+be gone--time you get--there. Want you to--take care--t' I get
+up."</p>
+<p>"But, Doctor--"</p>
+<p>The sick man turned away his face with a petulant frown; but
+presently, with an effort at self-control, brought it back and
+whispered:</p>
+<p>"You mean you--not physician?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"No. No more are half--doc's. You can do it. Simple gun-shot
+wound in the shoulder." A rest. "Pretty wound; ranges"--he gave up
+the effort to describe it. "You'll see it." Another rest. "You
+see--this matter has been kept quiet so far. I don't want any
+one--else to know--anything about it." He sighed audibly and looked
+as though he had gone to sleep, but whispered again, with his eyes
+closed--"'specially on culprit's own account."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was silent: but the invalid was waiting for an
+answer, and, not getting it, stirred peevishly.</p>
+<p>"Do you wish me to go to-night?" asked the apothecary.</p>
+<p>"To-morrow morning. Will you--?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly, Doctor."</p>
+<p>The invalid lay quite still for several minutes, looking
+steadily at his friend, and finally let a faint smile play about
+his mouth,--a wan reminder of his habitual roguery.</p>
+<p>"Good boy," he whispered.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld rose and straightened the bedclothes, took a few
+steps about the room, and finally returned. The Doctor's restless
+eye had followed him at every movement.</p>
+<p>"You'll go?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," replied the apothecary, hat in hand; "where is it?"</p>
+<p>"Corner Bienville and Bourbon,--upper river corner,--yellow
+one-story house, doorsteps on street. You know the house?"</p>
+<p>"I think I do."</p>
+<p>"Good-night. Here!--I wish you would send that black girl in
+here--as you go out--make me better fire--Joe!" the call was a
+ghostly whisper.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld paused in the door.</p>
+<p>"You don't mind my--bad manners, Joe?"</p>
+<p>The apothecary gave one of his infrequent smiles.</p>
+<p>"No, Doctor."</p>
+<p>He started toward Number 19 rue Bienville, but a light, cold
+sprinkle set in, and he turned back toward his shop. No sooner had
+the rain got him there than it stopped, as rain sometimes will
+do.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>WARS WITHIN THE BREAST</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The next morning came in frigid and gray. The unseasonable
+numerals which the meteorologist recorded in his tables might have
+provoked a superstitious lover of better weather to suppose that
+Monsieur Danny, the head imp of discord, had been among the
+a&euml;rial currents. The passionate southern sky, looking down and
+seeing some six thousand to seventy-five hundred of her favorite
+children disconcerted and shivering, tried in vain, for two hours,
+to smile upon them with a little frozen sunshine, and finally burst
+into tears.</p>
+<p>In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say, the sky was
+closely imitating the simultaneous behavior of Aurora Nancanou.
+Never was pretty lady in cheerier mood than that in which she had
+come home from Honor&eacute;'s counting-room. Hard would it be to
+find the material with which to build again the castles-in-air that
+she founded upon two or three little discoveries there made. Should
+she tell them to Clotilde? Ah! and for what? No, Clotilde was a
+dear daughter--ha! few women were capable of having such a daughter
+as Clotilde; but there were things about which she was entirely too
+scrupulous. So, when she came in from that errand profoundly
+satisfied that she would in future hear no more about the rent than
+she might choose to hear, she had been too shrewd to expose herself
+to her daughter's catechising. She would save her little
+revelations for disclosure when they might be used to advantage. As
+she threw her bonnet upon the bed, she exclaimed, in a tone of
+gentle and wearied reproach:</p>
+<p>"Why did you not remind me that M. Honor&eacute; Grandissime,
+that precious somebody-great, has the honor to rejoice in a
+quadroon half-brother of the same illustrious name? Why did you not
+remind me, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! and you know it as well as A, B, C," playfully retorted
+Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"Well, guess which one is our landlord?"</p>
+<p>"Which one?"</p>
+<p>"<i>Ma foi</i>! how do <i>I</i> know? I had to wait a shameful
+long time to see <i>Monsieur le prince</i>,--just because I am a De
+Grapion, I know. When at last I saw him, he says, 'Madame, this is
+the other Honor&eacute; Grandissime.' There, you see we are the
+victims of a conspiracy; if I go to the other, he will send me back
+to the first. But, Clotilde, my darling," cried the beautiful
+speaker, beamingly, "dismiss all fear and care; we shall have no
+more trouble about it."</p>
+<p>"And how, indeed, do you know that?"</p>
+<p>"Something tells it to me in my ear. I feel it! Trust in
+Providence, my child. Look at me, how happy I am; but you--you
+never trust in Providence. That is why we have so much
+trouble,--because you don't trust in Providence. Oh! I am so
+hungry, let us have dinner."</p>
+<p>"What sort of a person is M. Grandissime in his appearance?"
+asked Clotilde, over their feeble excuse for a dinner.</p>
+<p>"What sort? Do you imagine I had nothing better to do than
+notice whether a Grandissime is good-looking or not? For all I know
+to the contrary, he is--some more rice, please, my dear."</p>
+<p>But this light-heartedness did not last long. It was based on an
+unutterable secret, all her own, about which she still had
+trembling doubts; this, too, notwithstanding her consultation of
+the dark oracles. She was going to stop that. In the long run,
+these charms and spells themselves bring bad luck. Moreover, the
+practice, indulged in to excess, was wicked, and she had promised
+Clotilde,--that droll little saint,--to resort to them no more.
+Hereafter, she should do nothing of the sort, except, to be sure,
+to take such ordinary precautions against misfortune as casting
+upon the floor a little of whatever she might be eating or drinking
+to propitiate M. Assonquer. She would have liked, could she have
+done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the front door-sill
+an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to Papa
+L&eacute;bat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that
+admit suitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would surely
+have licked it up. Ah me! was she forgetting that she was a
+widow?</p>
+<p>She was in poor plight to meet the all but icy gray morning;
+and, to make her misery still greater, she found, on dressing, that
+an accident had overtaken her, which she knew to be a trustworthy
+sign of love grown cold. She had lost--alas! how can we communicate
+it in English!--a small piece of lute-string ribbon, about <i>so
+long</i>, which she used for--not a necktie exactly, but--</p>
+<p>And she hunted and hunted, and couldn't bear to give up the
+search, and sat down to breakfast and ate nothing, and rose up and
+searched again (not that she cared for the omen), and struck the
+hound with the broom, and broke the broom, and hunted again, and
+looked out the front window, and saw the rain beginning to fall,
+and dropped into a chair--crying, "Oh! Clotilde, my child, my
+child! the rent collector will be here Saturday and turn us into
+the street!" and so fell a-weeping.</p>
+<p>A little tear-letting lightened her unrevealable burden, and she
+rose, rejoicing that Clotilde had happened to be out of
+eye-and-ear-shot. The scanty fire in the fireplace was ample to
+warm the room; the fire within her made it too insufferably hot!
+Rain or no rain, she parted the window-curtains and lifted the
+sash. What a mark for Love's arrow she was, as, at the window, she
+stretched her two arms upward! And, "right so," who should chance
+to come cantering by, the big drops of rain pattering after him,
+but the knightliest man in that old town, and the fittest to
+perfect the fine old-fashioned poetry of the scene!</p>
+<p>"Clotilde," said Aurora, turning from her mirror, whither she
+had hastened to see if her face showed signs of tears (Clotilde was
+entering the room), "we shall never be turned out of this house by
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime!"</p>
+<p>"Why?" asked Clotilde, stopping short in the floor, forgetting
+Aurora's trust in Providence, and expecting to hear that M.
+Grandissime had been found dead in his bed.</p>
+<p>"Because I saw him just now; he rode by on horseback. A man with
+that noble face could never <i>do such a thing</i>!"</p>
+<p>The astonished Clotilde looked at her mother searchingly. This
+sort of speech about a Grandissime? But Aurora was the picture of
+innocence.</p>
+<p>Clotilde uttered a derisive laugh.</p>
+<p>"<i>Impertinente</i>!" exclaimed the other, laboring not to join
+in it.</p>
+<p>"Ah-h-h!" cried Clotilde, in the same mood, "and what face had
+he when he wrote that letter?"</p>
+<p>"What face?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, what face?"</p>
+<p>"I do not know what face you mean," said Aurora.</p>
+<p>"What face," repeated Clotilde, "had Monsieur Honor&eacute; de
+Grandissime on the day that he wrote--"</p>
+<p>"Ah, f-fah!" cried Aurora, and turned away, "you don't know what
+you are talking about! You make me wish sometimes that I were
+dead!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde had gone and shut down the sash, as it began to rain
+hard and blow. As she was turning away, her eye was attracted by an
+object at a distance.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" asked Aurora, from a seat before the fire.</p>
+<p>"Nothing," said Clotilde, weary of the sensational,--"a man in
+the rain."</p>
+<p>It was the apothecary of the rue Royale, turning from that
+street toward the rue Bourbon, and bowing his head against the
+swirling norther.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>FROWENFELD KEEPS HIS APPOINTMENT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Doctor Keene, his ill-humor slept off, lay in bed in a quiescent
+state of great mental enjoyment. At times he would smile and close
+his eyes, open them again and murmur to himself, and turn his head
+languidly and smile again. And when the rain and wind, all tangled
+together, came against the window with a whirl and a slap, his
+smile broadened almost to laughter.</p>
+<p>"He's in it," he murmured, "he's just reaching there. I would
+give fifty dollars to see him when he first gets into the house and
+sees where he is."</p>
+<p>As this wish was finding expression on the lips of the little
+sick man, Joseph Frowenfeld was making room on a narrow doorstep
+for the outward opening of a pair of small batten doors, upon which
+he had knocked with the vigorous haste of a man in the rain. As
+they parted, he hurriedly helped them open, darted within, heedless
+of the odd black shape which shuffled out of his way, wheeled and
+clapped them shut again, swung down the bar and then turned, and
+with the good-natured face that properly goes with a ducking,
+looked to see where he was.</p>
+<p>One object--around which everything else instantly became
+nothing--set his gaze. On the high bed, whose hangings of blue we
+have already described, silently regarding the intruder with a pair
+of eyes that sent an icy thrill through him and fastened him where
+he stood, lay Palmyre Philosophe. Her dress was a long, snowy
+morning-gown, wound loosely about at the waist with a cord and
+tassel of scarlet silk; a bright-colored woollen shawl covered her
+from the waist down, and a necklace of red coral heightened to its
+utmost her untamable beauty.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2188.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2188.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2188.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Silently regarding the intruder with a pair of eyes that sent
+an icy chill through him<br>
+and fastened him where he stood, lay Palmyre Philosophe".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>An instantaneous indignation against Doctor Keene set the face
+of the speechless apothecary on fire, and this, being as
+instantaneously comprehended by the philosophe, was the best of
+introductions. Yet her gaze did not change.</p>
+<p>The Congo negress broke the spell with a bristling protest, all
+in African b's and k's, but hushed and drew off at a single word of
+command from her mistress.</p>
+<p>In Frowenfeld's mind an angry determination was taking shape, to
+be neither trifled with nor contemned. And this again the quadroon
+discerned, before he was himself aware of it.</p>
+<p>"Doctor Keene"--he began, but stopped, so uncomfortable were her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>She did not stir or reply.</p>
+<p>Then he bethought him with a start, and took off his dripping
+hat.</p>
+<p>At this a perceptible sparkle of imperious approval shot along
+her glance; it gave the apothecary speech.</p>
+<p>"The doctor is sick, and he asked me to dress your wound."</p>
+<p>She made the slightest discernible motion of the head, remained
+for a moment silent, and then, still with the same eye, motioned
+her hand toward a chair near a comfortable fire.</p>
+<p>He sat down. It would be well to dry himself. He drew near the
+hearth and let his gaze fall into the fire. When he presently
+lifted his eyes and looked full upon the woman with a steady,
+candid glance, she was regarding him with apparent coldness, but
+with secret diligence and scrutiny, and a yet more inward and
+secret surprise and admiration. Hard rubbing was bringing out the
+grain of the apothecary. But she presently suppressed the feeling.
+She hated men.</p>
+<p>But Frowenfeld, even while his eyes met hers, could not resent
+her hostility. This monument of the shame of two races--this
+poisonous blossom of crime growing out of crime--this final,
+unanswerable white man's accuser--this would-be murderess--what
+ranks and companies would have to stand up in the Great Day with
+her and answer as accessory before the fact! He looked again into
+the fire.</p>
+<p>The patient spoke:</p>
+<p>"<i>Eh bi'n, Mich&eacute;</i>?" Her look was severe, but less
+aggressive. The shuffle of the old negress's feet was heard and she
+appeared bearing warm and cold water and fresh bandages; after
+depositing them she tarried.</p>
+<p>"Your fever is gone," said Frowenfeld, standing by the bed. He
+had laid his fingers on her wrist. She brushed them off and once
+more turned full upon him the cold hostility of her passionate
+eyes.</p>
+<p>The apothecary, instead of blushing, turned pale.</p>
+<p>"You--" he was going to say, "You insult me;" but his lips came
+tightly together. Two big cords appeared between his brows, and his
+blue eyes spoke for him. Then, as the returning blood rushed even
+to his forehead, he said, speaking his words one by one;</p>
+<p>"Please understand that you must trust me."</p>
+<p>She may not have understood his English, but she comprehended,
+nevertheless. She looked up fixedly for a moment, then passively
+closed her eyes. Then she turned, and Frowenfeld put out one strong
+arm, helped her to a sitting posture on the side of the bed and
+drew the shawl about her.</p>
+<p>"Zizi," she said, and the negress, who had stood perfectly still
+since depositing the water and bandages, came forward and proceeded
+to bare the philosophe's superb shoulder. As Frowenfeld again put
+forward his hand, she lifted her own as if to prevent him, but he
+kindly and firmly put it away and addressed himself with silent
+diligence to his task; and by the time he had finished, his womanly
+touch, his commanding gentleness, his easy despatch, had inspired
+Palmyre not only with a sense of safety, comfort, and repose, but
+with a pleased wonder.</p>
+<p>This woman had stood all her life with dagger drawn, on the
+defensive against what certainly was to her an unmerciful world.
+With possibly one exception, the man now before her was the only
+one she had ever encountered whose speech and gesture were clearly
+keyed to that profound respect which is woman's first, foundation
+claim on man. And yet, by inexorable decree, she belonged to what
+we used to call "the happiest people under the sun." We ought to
+stop saying that.</p>
+<p>So far as Palmyre knew, the entire masculine wing of the mighty
+and exalted race, three-fourths of whose blood bequeathed her none
+of its prerogatives, regarded her as legitimate prey. The man
+before her did not. There lay the fundamental difference that, in
+her sight, as soon as she discovered it, glorified him. Before this
+assurance the cold fierceness of her eyes gave way, and a
+friendlier light from them rewarded the apothecary's final touch.
+He called for more pillows, made a nest of them, and, as she let
+herself softly into it, directed his next consideration toward his
+hat and the door.</p>
+<p>It was many an hour after he had backed out into the trivial
+remains of the rain-storm before he could replace with more
+tranquillizing images the vision of the philosophe reclining among
+her pillows, in the act of making that uneasy movement of her
+fingers upon the collar button of her robe, which women make when
+they are uncertain about the perfection of their dishabille, and
+giving her inaudible adieu with the majesty of an empress.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>FROWENFELD MAKES AN ARGUMENT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the afternoon of the same day on which Frowenfeld visited the
+house of the philosophe, the weather, which had been so unfavorable
+to his late plans, changed; the rain ceased, the wind drew around
+to the south, and the barometer promised a clear sky. Wherefore he
+decided to leave his business, when he should have made his evening
+weather notes, to the care of M. Raoul Innerarity, and venture to
+test both Mademoiselle Clotilde's repellent attitude and Aurora's
+seeming cordiality at Number 19 rue Bienville.</p>
+<p>Why he should go was a question which the apothecary felt
+himself but partially prepared to answer. What necessity called
+him, what good was to be effected, what was to happen next, were
+points he would have liked to be clear upon. That he should be
+going merely because he was invited to come--merely for the
+pleasure of breathing their atmosphere--that he should be supinely
+gravitating toward them--this conclusion he positively could not
+allow; no, no; the love of books and the fear of women alike
+protested.</p>
+<p>True, they were a part of that book which is pronounced "the
+proper study of mankind,"--indeed, that was probably the reason
+which he sought: he was going to contemplate them as a frontispiece
+to that unwriteable volume which he had undertaken to con. Also,
+there was a charitable motive. Doctor Keene, months before, had
+expressed a deep concern regarding their lack of protection and
+even of daily provision; he must quietly look into that. Would some
+unforeseen circumstance shut him off this evening again from this
+very proper use of time and opportunity?</p>
+<p>As he was sitting at the table in his back room, registering his
+sunset observations, and wondering what would become of him if
+Aurora should be out and that other in, he was startled by a loud,
+deep voice exclaiming, close behind him:</p>
+<p>"<i>Eh, bien! Monsieur le Professeur!</i>"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld knew by the tone, before he looked behind him, that
+he would find M. Agricola Fusilier very red in the face; and when
+he looked, the only qualification he could make was that the
+citizen's countenance was not so ruddy as the red handkerchief in
+which his arm was hanging.</p>
+<p>"What have you there?" slowly continued the patriarch, taking
+his free hand off his fettered arm and laying it upon the page as
+Frowenfeld hurriedly rose, and endeavored to shut the book.</p>
+<p>"Some private memoranda," answered the meteorologist, managing
+to get one page turned backward, reddening with confusion and
+indignation, and noticing that Agricola's spectacles were upside
+down.</p>
+<p>"Private! Eh? No such thing, sir! Professor Frowenfeld, allow
+me" (a classic oath) "to say to your face, sir, that you are the
+most brilliant and the most valuable man--of your years--in
+afflicted Louisiana! Ha!" (reading:) "'Morning observation;
+Cathedral clock, 7 A.M. Thermometer 70 degrees.' Ha! 'Hygrometer
+l5'--but this is not to-day's weather? Ah! no. Ha! 'Barometer
+30.380.' Ha! 'Sky cloudy, dark; wind, south, light.' Ha! 'River
+rising.' Ha! Professor Frowenfeld, when will you give your splendid
+services to your section? You must tell me, my son, for I ask you,
+my son, not from curiosity, but out of impatient interest."</p>
+<p>"I cannot say that I shall ever publish my tables," replied the
+"son," pulling at the book.</p>
+<p>"Then, sir, in the name of Louisiana," thundered the old man,
+clinging to the book, "I can! They shall be published! Ah! yes,
+dear Frowenfeld. The book, of course, will be in French, eh? You
+would not so affront the most sacred prejudices of the noble people
+to whom you owe everything as to publish it in English? You--ah!
+have we torn it?"</p>
+<p>"I do not write French," said the apothecary, laying the torn
+edges together.</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld, men are born for each other. What do I
+behold before me? I behold before me, in the person of my gifted
+young friend, a supplement to myself! Why has Nature strengthened
+the soul of Agricola to hold the crumbling fortress of this body
+until these eyes--which were once, my dear boy, as proud and
+piercing as the battle-steed's--have become dim?"</p>
+<p>Joseph's insurmountable respect for gray hairs kept him
+standing, but he did not respond with any conjecture as to Nature's
+intentions, and there was a stern silence.</p>
+<p>The crumbling fortress resumed, his voice pitched low like the
+beginning of the long roll. He knew Nature's design.</p>
+<p>"It was in order that you, Professor Frowenfeld, might become my
+vicar! Your book shall be in French! We must give it a wide scope!
+It shall contain valuable geographical, topographical,
+biographical, and historical notes. It shall contain complete lists
+of all the officials in the province (I don't say territory, I say
+province) with their salaries and perquisites; ah! we will expose
+that! And--ha! I will write some political essays for it. Raoul
+shall illustrate it. Honor&eacute; shall give you money to publish
+it. Ah! Professor Frowenfeld, the star of your fame is rising out
+of the waves of oblivion! Come--I dropped in purposely to ask
+you--come across the street and take a glass of <i>taffia</i> with
+Agricola Fusilier."</p>
+<p>This crowning honor the apothecary was insane enough to decline,
+and Agricola went away with many professions of endearment, but
+secretly offended because Joseph had not asked about his wound.</p>
+<p>All the same the apothecary, without loss of time, departed for
+the yellow-washed cottage, Number 19 rue Bienville.</p>
+<p>"To-morrow, at four P.M.," he said to himself, "if the weather
+is favorable, I ride with M. Grandissime."</p>
+<p>He almost saw his books and instruments look up at him
+reproachfully.</p>
+<p>The ladies were at home. Aurora herself opened the door, and
+Clotilde came forward from the bright fireplace with a cordiality
+never before so unqualified. There was something about these
+ladies--in their simple, but noble grace, in their half-Gallic,
+half-classic beauty, in a jocund buoyancy mated to an amiable
+dignity--that made them appear to the scholar as though they had
+just bounded into life from the garlanded procession of some old
+fresco. The resemblance was not a little helped on by the costume
+of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and belated by
+the distance from Paris). Their black hair, somewhat heavier on
+Clotilde's head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted <i>en
+Grecque</i>, and adorned only with the spoils of a nosegay given to
+Clotilde by a chivalric small boy in the home of her music
+scholar.</p>
+<p>"We was expectin' you since several days," said Clotilde, as the
+three sat down before the fire, Frowenfeld in a cushioned chair
+whose moth-holes had been carefully darned.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld intimated, with tolerable composure, that matters
+beyond his control had delayed his coming, beyond his
+intention.</p>
+<p>"You gedd'n' ridge," said Aurora, dropping her wrists across
+each other.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, for once, laughed outright, and it seemed so odd in
+him to do so that both the ladies followed his example. The
+ambition to be rich had never entered his thought, although in an
+unemotional, German way, he was prospering in a little city where
+wealth was daily pouring in, and a man had only to keep step, so to
+say, to march into possessions.</p>
+<p>"You hought to 'ave a mo' larger sto' an' some clerque," pursued
+Aurora.</p>
+<p>The apothecary answered that he was contemplating the
+enlargement of his present place or removal to a roomier, and that
+he had already employed an assistant.</p>
+<p>"Oo it is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"</p>
+<p>Clotilde turned toward the questioner a remonstrative
+glance.</p>
+<p>"His name," replied Frowenfeld, betraying a slight
+embarrassment, "is--Innerarity; Mr. Raoul Innerarity; he is--"</p>
+<p>"Ee pain' dad pigtu' w'at 'angin' in yo' window?"</p>
+<p>Clotilde's remonstrance rose to a slight movement and a
+murmur.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld answered in the affirmative, and possibly betrayed
+the faint shadow of a smile. The response was a peal of laughter
+from both ladies.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2198.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2198.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2198.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"On their part, they would sit in deep attention, shielding
+their faces from the fire, and responding to enunciations directly
+contrary to their convictions with an occasional 'yes-seh,' or
+'ceddenly,' or 'of coze,' or,--prettier affirmation still,--a
+solemn drooping of the eyelids".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"He is an excellent drug clerk," said Frowenfeld
+defensively.</p>
+<p>Whereat Aurora laughed again, leaning over and touching
+Clotilde's knee with one finger.</p>
+<p>"An' excellen' drug cl'--ha, ha, ha! oh!"</p>
+<p>"You muz podden uz, M'sieu' Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, with
+forced gravity.</p>
+<p>Aurora sighed her participation in the apology; and, a few
+moments later, the apothecary and both ladies (the one as fond of
+the abstract as the other two were ignorant of the concrete) were
+engaged in an animated, running discussion on art, society,
+climate, education,--all those large, secondary <i>desiderata</i>
+which seem of first importance to young ambition and secluded
+beauty, flying to and fro among these subjects with all the
+liveliness and uncertainty of a game of pussy-wants-a-corner.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld had never before spent such an hour. At its
+expiration, he had so well held his own against both the others,
+that the three had settled down to this sort of entertainment:
+Aurora would make an assertion, or Clotilde would ask a question;
+and Frowenfeld, moved by that frankness and ardent zeal for truth
+which had enlisted the early friendship of Dr. Keene, amused and
+attracted Honor&eacute; Grandissime, won the confidence of the
+f.m.c., and tamed the fiery distrust and enmity of Palmyre, would
+present his opinions without the thought of a reservation either in
+himself or his hearers. On their part, they would sit in deep
+attention, shielding their faces from the fire, and responding to
+enunciations directly contrary to their convictions with an
+occasional "yes-seh," or "ceddenly," or "of coze," or,--prettier
+affirmation still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids, a slight
+compression of the lips, and a low, slow declination of the
+head.</p>
+<p>"The bane of all Creole art-effort"--(we take up the
+apothecary's words at a point where Clotilde was leaning forward
+and slightly frowning in an honest attempt to comprehend his
+condensed English)--"the bane of all Creole art-effort, so far as I
+have seen it, is amateurism."</p>
+<p>"Amateu--" murmured Clotilde, a little beclouded on the main
+word and distracted by a French difference of meaning, but planting
+an elbow on one knee in the genuineness of her attention, and
+responding with a bow.</p>
+<p>"That is to say," said Frowenfeld, apologizing for the
+homeliness of his further explanation by a smile, "a kind of
+ambitious indolence that lays very large eggs, but can neither see
+the necessity for building a nest beforehand, nor command the
+patience to hatch the eggs afterward."</p>
+<p>"Of coze," said Aurora.</p>
+<p>"It is a great pity," said the sermonizer, looking at the face
+of Clotilde, elongated in the brass andiron; and, after a pause:
+"Nothing on earth can take the place of hard and patient labor. But
+that, in this community, is not esteemed; most sorts of it are
+contemned; the humbler sorts are despised, and the higher are
+regarded with mingled patronage and commiseration. Most of those
+who come to my shop with their efforts at art hasten to explain,
+either that they are merely seeking pastime, or else that they are
+driven to their course by want; and if I advise them to take their
+work back and finish it, they take it back and never return.
+Industry is not only despised, but has been degraded and disgraced,
+handed over into the hands of African savages."</p>
+<p>"Doze Creole' is <i>lezzy</i>," said Aurora.</p>
+<p>"That is a hard word to apply to those who do not
+<i>consciously</i> deserve it," said Frowenfeld; "but if they could
+only wake up to the fact,--find it out themselves--"</p>
+<p>"Ceddenly," said Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, leaning her head on one side,
+"some pipple thing it is doze climade; 'ow you lag doze
+climade?"</p>
+<p>"I do not suppose," replied the visitor, "there is a more
+delightful climate in the world."</p>
+<p>"Ah-h-h!"--both ladies at once, in a low, gracious tone of
+acknowledgment.</p>
+<p>"I thing Louisiana is a paradize-me!" said Aurora. "W'ere you
+goin' fin' sudge a h-air?" She respired a sample of it. "W'ere you
+goin' fin' sudge a so ridge groun'? De weed' in my bag yard is
+twenny-five feet 'igh!"</p>
+<p>"Ah! maman!"</p>
+<p>"Twenty-six!" said Aurora, correcting herself. "W'ere you fin'
+sudge a reever lag dad Mississippi? <i>On dit</i>," she said,
+turning to Clotilde, "<i>que ses eaux ont la
+propri&eacute;t&eacute; de contribuer m&ecirc;me &agrave;
+multiplier l'esp&egrave;ce humaine</i>--ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde turned away an unmoved countenance to hear
+Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld had contracted a habit of falling into meditation
+whenever the French language left him out of the conversation.</p>
+<p>"Yes," he said, breaking a contemplative pause, "the climate is
+<i>too</i> comfortable and the soil too rich,--though I do not
+think it is entirely on their account that the people who enjoy
+them are so sadly in arrears to the civilized world." He blushed
+with the fear that his talk was bookish, and felt grateful to
+Clotilde for seeming to understand his speech.</p>
+<p>"W'ad you fin' de rizzon is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"I do not wish to philosophize," he answered.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, go hon." "<i>Mais</i>, go ahade," said both
+ladies, settling themselves.</p>
+<p>"It is largely owing," exclaimed Frowenfeld, with sudden fervor,
+"to a defective organization of society, which keeps this
+community, and will continue to keep it for an indefinite time to
+come, entirely unprepared and disinclined to follow the course of
+modern thought."</p>
+<p>"Of coze," murmured Aurora, who had lost her bearings almost at
+the first word.</p>
+<p>"One great general subject of thought now is human
+rights,--universal human rights. The entire literature of the world
+is becoming tinctured with contradictions of the dogmas upon which
+society in this section is built. Human rights is, of all subjects,
+the one upon which this community is most violently determined to
+hear no discussion. It has pronounced that slavery and caste are
+right, and sealed up the whole subject. What, then, will they do
+with the world's literature? They will coldly decline to look at
+it, and will become, more and more as the world moves on, a
+comparatively illiterate people."</p>
+<p>"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, as Frowenfeld
+paused--Aurora was stunned to silence,--"de Unitee State' goin' pud
+doze nigga' free, aind it?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld pushed his hair hard back. He was in the stream now,
+and might as well go through.</p>
+<p>"I have heard that charge made, even by some Americans. I do not
+know. But there is a slavery that no legislation can abolish,--the
+slavery of caste. That, like all the slaveries on earth, is a
+double bondage. And what a bondage it is which compels a community,
+in order to preserve its established tyrannies, to walk behind the
+rest of the intelligent world! What a bondage is that which incites
+a people to adopt a system of social and civil distinctions,
+possessing all the enormities and none of the advantages of those
+systems which Europe is learning to despise! This system, moreover,
+is only kept up by a flourish of weapons. We have here what you may
+call an armed aristocracy. The class over which these instruments
+of main force are held is chosen for its servility, ignorance, and
+cowardice; hence, indolence in the ruling class. When a man's
+social or civil standing is not dependent on his knowing how to
+read, he is not likely to become a scholar."</p>
+<p>"Of coze," said Aurora, with a pensive respiration, "I thing id
+is doze climade," and the apothecary stopped, as a man should who
+finds himself unloading large philosophy in a little parlor.</p>
+<p>"I thing, me, dey hought to pud doze quadroon' free?" It was
+Clotilde who spoke, ending with the rising inflection to indicate
+the tentative character of this daringly premature declaration.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld did not answer hastily.</p>
+<p>"The quadroons," said he, "want a great deal more than mere free
+papers can secure them. Emancipation before the law, though it may
+be a right which man has no right to withhold, is to them little
+more than a mockery until they achieve emancipation in the minds
+and good will of the people--'the people,' did I say? I mean the
+ruling class." He stopped again. One must inevitably feel a little
+silly, setting up tenpins for ladies who are too polite, even if
+able, to bowl them down.</p>
+<p>Aurora and the visitor began to speak simultaneously; both
+apologized, and Aurora said:</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', w'en I was a lill girl,"--and Frowenfeld
+knew that he was going to hear the story of Palmyre. Clotilde
+moved, with the obvious intention to mend the fire. Aurora asked,
+in French, why she did not call the cook to do it, and Frowenfeld
+said, "Let me,"--threw on some wood, and took a seat nearer
+Clotilde. Aurora had the floor.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>AURORA AS A HISTORIAN</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Alas! the phonograph was invented three-quarters of a century
+too late. If type could entrap one-half the pretty oddities of
+Aurora's speech,--the arch, the pathetic, the grave, the earnest,
+the matter-of-fact, the ecstatic tones of her voice,--nay, could it
+but reproduce the movement of her hands, the eloquence of her eyes,
+or the shapings of her mouth,--ah! but type--even the
+phonograph--is such an inadequate thing! Sometimes she laughed;
+sometimes Clotilde, unexpectedly to herself, joined her; and twice
+or thrice she provoked a similar demonstration from the ox-like
+apothecary,--to her own intense amusement. Sometimes she shook her
+head in solemn scorn; and, when Frowenfeld, at a certain point
+where Palmyre's fate locked hands for a time with that of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;, asked a fervid question concerning that strange
+personage, tears leaped into her eyes, as she said:</p>
+<p>"Ah! 'Sieur Frowenfel', iv I tra to tell de sto'y of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;, I goin' to cry lag a lill bebby."</p>
+<p>The account of the childhood days upon the plantation at Cannes
+Brul&eacute;es may be passed by. It was early in Palmyre's
+fifteenth year that that Kentuckian, 'mutual friend' of her master
+and Agricola, prevailed with M. de Grapion to send her to the
+paternal Grandissime mansion,--a complimentary gift, through
+Agricola, to Mademoiselle, his niece,--returnable ten years after
+date.</p>
+<p>The journey was made in safety; and, by and by, Palmyre was
+presented to her new mistress. The occasion was notable. In a great
+chair in the centre sat the <i>grandp&egrave;re</i>, a Chevalier de
+Grandissime, whose business had narrowed down to sitting on the
+front veranda and wearing his decorations,--the cross of St. Louis
+being one; on his right, Colonel Numa Grandissime, with one arm
+dropped around Honor&eacute;, then a boy of Palmyre's age,
+expecting to be off in sixty days for France; and on the left, with
+Honor&eacute;'s fair sister nestled against her, "Madame Numa," as
+the Creoles would call her, a stately woman and beautiful, a great
+admirer of her brother Agricola. (Aurora took pains to explain that
+she received these minutiae from Palmyre herself in later years.)
+One other member of the group was a young don of some twenty years'
+age, not an inmate of the house, but only a cousin of Aurora on her
+deceased mother's side. To make the affair complete, and as a seal
+to this tacit Grandissime-de-Grapion treaty, this sole available
+representative of the "other side" was made a guest for the
+evening. Like the true Spaniard that he was, Don Jos&eacute;
+Martinez fell deeply in love with Honor&eacute;'s sister. Then
+there came Agricola leading in Palmyre. There were others, for the
+Grandissime mansion was always full of Grandissimes; but this was
+the central group.</p>
+<p>In this house Palmyre grew to womanhood, retaining without
+interruption the place into which she seemed to enter by right of
+indisputable superiority over all competitors,--the place of
+favorite attendant to the sister of Honor&eacute;. Attendant, we
+say, for servant she never seemed. She grew tall, arrowy, lithe,
+imperial, diligent, neat, thorough, silent. Her new mistress,
+though scarcely at all her senior, was yet distinctly her mistress;
+she had that through her Fusilier blood; experience was just then
+beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime was a superb
+variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey. Palmyre loved
+her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be
+the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brul&eacute;es.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre
+entered the house. But even that was not soon enough.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, in her recital, "Palmyre, she
+never tole me dad, <i>mais</i> I am shoe, <i>shoe</i> dad she fall
+in love wid Honor&eacute; Grandissime. 'Sieur Frowenfel', I thing
+dad Honor&eacute; Grandissime is one bad man, ent it? Whad you
+thing, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"</p>
+<p>"I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the
+best, as I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened
+gentlemen in the city," said the apothecary.</p>
+<p>"Ah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'! ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>"That is my conviction."</p>
+<p>The lady went on with her story.</p>
+<p>"Hanny'ow, I know she <i>con</i>tinue in love wid 'im all doze
+ten year' w'at 'e been gone. She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to
+wrad dad ledder to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo'."</p>
+<p>Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene
+had related to Frowenfeld,--her own marriage and removal to Fausse
+Rivi&egrave;re, the visit of her husband to the city, his
+unfortunate and finally fatal affair with Agricola, and the
+surrender of all her land and slaves to that successful
+duellist.</p>
+<p>M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement
+concerning Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own
+astonishment, responded favorably to a letter from Honor&eacute;'s
+sister, irresistible for its goodness, good sense, and eloquent
+pleading, asking leave to detain Palmyre two years longer; but this
+response came only after the old master and his pretty, stricken
+Aurora had wept over it until they were weak and gentle,--and was
+not a response either, but only a silent consent.</p>
+<p>Shortly before the return of Honor&eacute;--and here it was that
+Aurora took up again the thread of her account--while his mother,
+long-widowed, reigned in the paternal mansion, with Agricola for
+her manager, Bras-Coup&eacute; appeared. From that advent, and the
+long and varied mental sufferings which its consequences brought
+upon her, sprang that second change in Palmyre, which made her
+finally untamable, and ended in a manumission, granted her more for
+fear than for conscience' sake. When Aurora attempted to tell those
+experiences, even leaving Bras-Coup&eacute; as much as might be out
+of the recital, she choked with tears at the very start, stopped,
+laughed, and said:</p>
+<p>"<i>C'est tout</i>--daz all. 'Sieur Frowenfel', oo you fine dad
+pigtu' to loog lag, yonnah, hon de wall?"</p>
+<p>She spoke as if he might have overlooked it, though twenty
+times, at least, in the last hour, she had seen him glance at
+it.</p>
+<p>"It is a good likeness," said the apothecary, turning to
+Clotilde, yet showing himself somewhat puzzled in the matter of the
+costume.</p>
+<p>The ladies laughed.</p>
+<p>"Daz ma grade-gran'-mamma," said Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"Dass one <i>fille &agrave; la cassette</i>," said Aurora, "my
+gran'-muzzah; <i>mais</i>, ad de sem tarn id is Clotilde." She
+touched her daughter under the chin with a ringed finger. "Clotilde
+is my gran'-mamma."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld rose to go.</p>
+<p>"You muz come again, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said both ladies, in a
+breath.</p>
+<p>What could he say?</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>A RIDE AND A RESCUE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"Douane or Bienville?"</p>
+<p>Such was the choice presented by Honor&eacute; Grandissime to
+Joseph Frowenfeld, as the former on a lively brown colt and the
+apothecary on a nervy chestnut fell into a gentle, preliminary trot
+while yet in the rue Royale, looked after by that great admirer of
+both, Raoul Innerarity.</p>
+<p>"Douane?" said Frowenfeld. (It was the street we call
+Custom-house.)</p>
+<p>"It has mud-holes," objected Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>"Well, then, the rue du Canal?"</p>
+<p>"The canal--I can smell it from here. Why not rue
+Bienville?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld said he did not know. (We give the statement for what
+it is worth.)</p>
+<p>Notice their route. A spirit of perversity seems to have entered
+into the very topography of this quarter. They turned up the rue
+Bienville (up is toward the river); reaching the levee, they took
+their course up the shore of the Mississippi (almost due south),
+and broke into a lively gallop on the Tchoupitoulas road, which in
+those days skirted that margin of the river nearest the sunsetting,
+namely, the <i>eastern</i> bank.</p>
+<p>Conversation moved sluggishly for a time, halting upon trite
+topics or swinging easily from polite inquiry to mild affirmation,
+and back again. They were men of thought, these two, and one of
+them did not fully understand why he was in his present position;
+hence some reticence. It was one of those afternoons in early March
+that make one wonder how the rest of the world avoids emigrating to
+Louisiana in a body.</p>
+<p>"Is not the season early?" asked Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime believed it was; but then the Creole spring
+always seemed so, he said.</p>
+<p>The land was an inverted firmament of flowers. The birds were an
+innumerable, busy, joy-compelling multitude, darting and fluttering
+hither and thither, as one might imagine the babes do in heaven.
+The orange-groves were in blossom; their dark-green boughs seemed
+snowed upon from a cloud of incense, and a listening ear might
+catch an incessant, whispered trickle of falling petals, dropping
+"as the honey-comb." The magnolia was beginning to add to its dark
+and shining evergreen foliage frequent sprays of pale new leaves
+and long, slender, buff buds of others yet to come. The oaks, both
+the bare-armed and the "green-robed senators," the willows, and the
+plaqueminiers, were putting out their subdued florescence as if
+they smiled in grave participation with the laughing gardens. The
+homes that gave perfection to this beauty were those old, large,
+belvidered colonial villas, of which you may still here and there
+see one standing, battered into half ruin, high and broad, among
+foundries, cotton-and tobacco-sheds, junk-yards, and longshoremen's
+hovels, like one unconquered elephant in a wreck of artillery. In
+Frowenfeld's day the "smell of their garments was like Lebanon."
+They were seen by glimpses through chance openings in lofty hedges
+of Cherokee-rose or bois-d'arc, under boughs of cedar or
+pride-of-China, above their groves of orange or down their long,
+overarched avenues of oleander; and the lemon and the pomegranate,
+the banana, the fig, the shaddock, and at times even the mango and
+the guava, joined "hands around" and tossed their fragrant locks
+above the lilies and roses. Frowenfeld forgot to ask himself
+further concerning the probable intent of M. Grandissime's
+invitation to ride; these beauties seemed rich enough in good
+reasons. He felt glad and grateful.</p>
+<p>At a certain point the two horses turned of their own impulse,
+as by force of habit, and with a few clambering strides mounted to
+the top of the levee and stood still, facing the broad, dancing,
+hurrying, brimming river.</p>
+<p>The Creole stole an amused glance at the elated, self-forgetful
+look of his immigrant friend.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as the delighted apothecary turned
+with unwonted suddenness and saw his smile, "I believe you like
+this better than discussion. You find it easier to be in harmony
+with Louisiana than with Louisianians, eh?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld colored with surprise. Something unpleasant had
+lately occurred in his shop. Was this to signify that M.
+Grandissime had heard of it?</p>
+<p>"I am a Louisianian," replied he, as if this were a point
+assailed.</p>
+<p>"I would not insinuate otherwise," said M. Grandissime, with a
+kindly gesture. "I would like you to feel so. We are citizens now
+of a different government from that under which we lived the
+morning we first met. Yet"--the Creole paused and smiled--"you are
+not, and I am glad you are not, what we call a Louisianian."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's color increased. He turned quickly in his saddle as
+if to say something very positive, but hesitated, restrained
+himself and asked:</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime, is not your Creole 'we' a word that does much
+damage?"</p>
+<p>The Creole's response was at first only a smile, followed by a
+thoughtful countenance; but he presently said, with some
+suddenness:</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh, yes. Yet you see I am, even this moment, forgetting
+we are not a separate people. Yes, our Creole 'we' does damage, and
+our Creole 'you' does more. I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my
+people to understand that it is time to stop calling those who come
+and add themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders.
+That is what I hear my cousins, 'Polyte and Sylvestre, in the heat
+of discussion, called you the other evening; is it so?"</p>
+<p>"I brought it upon myself," said Frowenfeld. "I brought it upon
+myself."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" interrupted M. Grandissime, with a broad smile, "excuse
+me--I am fully prepared to believe it. But the charge is a false
+one. I told them so. My-de'-seh--I know that a citizen of the
+United States in the United States has a right to become, and to be
+called, under the laws governing the case, a Louisianian, a
+Vermonter, or a Virginian, as it may suit his whim; and even if he
+should be found dishonest or dangerous, he has a right to be
+treated just exactly as we treat the knaves and ruffians who are
+native born! Every discreet man must admit that."</p>
+<p>"But if they do not enforce it, Mr. Grandissime," quickly
+responded the sore apothecary, "if they continually forget it--if
+one must surrender himself to the errors and crimes of the
+community as he finds it--"</p>
+<p>The Creole uttered a low laugh.</p>
+<p>"Party differences, Mr. Frowenfeld; they have them in all
+countries."</p>
+<p>"So your cousins said," said Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"And how did you answer them?"</p>
+<p>"Offensively," said the apothecary, with sincere
+mortification.</p>
+<p>"Oh! that was easy," replied the other, amusedly; "but how?"</p>
+<p>"I said that, having here only such party differences as are
+common elsewhere, we do not behave as they elsewhere do; that in
+most civilized countries the immigrant is welcome, but here he is
+not. I am afraid I have not learned the art of courteous debate,"
+said Frowenfeld, with a smile of apology.</p>
+<p>"'Tis a great art," said the Creole, quietly, stroking his
+horse's neck. "I suppose my cousins denied your statement with
+indignation, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; they said the honest immigrant is always welcome."</p>
+<p>"Well, do you not find that true?"</p>
+<p>"But, Mr. Grandissime, that is requiring the immigrant to prove
+his innocence!" Frowenfeld spoke from the heart. "And even the
+honest immigrant is welcome only when he leaves his peculiar
+opinions behind him. Is that right, sir?"</p>
+<p>The Creole smiled at Frowenfeld's heat.</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh, my cousins complain that you advocate measures
+fatal to the prevailing order of society."</p>
+<p>"But," replied the unyielding Frowenfeld, turning redder than
+ever, "that is the very thing that American liberty gives me the
+right--peaceably--to do! Here is a structure of society defective,
+dangerous, erected on views of human relations which the world is
+abandoning as false; yet the immigrant's welcome is modified with
+the warning not to touch these false foundations with one of his
+fingers."</p>
+<p>"Did you tell my cousins the foundations of society here are
+false?"</p>
+<p>"I regret to say I did, very abruptly. I told them they were
+privately aware of the fact."</p>
+<p>"You may say," said the ever-amiable Creole, "that you allowed
+debate to run into controversy, eh?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was silent; he compared the gentleness of this
+Creole's rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and
+felt humiliated. But M. Grandissime spoke with a rallying
+smile.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, you never make pills with eight corners
+eh?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir." The apothecary smiled.</p>
+<p>"No, you make them round; cannot you make your doctrines the
+same way? My-de'-seh, you will think me impertinent; but the reason
+I speak is because I wish very much that you and my cousins would
+not be offended with each other. To tell you the truth, my-de'-seh,
+I hoped to use you with them--pardon my frankness."</p>
+<p>"If Louisiana had more men like you, M. Grandissime," cried the
+untrained Frowenfeld, "society would be less sore to the
+touch."</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh," said the Creole, laying his hand out toward his
+companion and turning his horse in such a way as to turn the other
+also, "do me one favor; remember that it <i>is</i> sore to the
+touch."</p>
+<p>The animals picked their steps down the inner face of the levee
+and resumed their course up the road at a walk.</p>
+<p>"Did you see that man just turn the bend of the road, away
+yonder?" the Creole asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Did you recognize him?"</p>
+<p>"It was--my landlord, wasn't it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Did he not have a conversation with you lately, too?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir; why do you ask?"</p>
+<p>"It has had a bad effect on him. I wonder why he is out here on
+foot?"</p>
+<p>The horses quickened their paces. The two friends rode along in
+silence. Frowenfeld noticed his companion frequently cast an eye up
+along the distant sunset shadows of the road with a new anxiety.
+Yet, when M. Grandissime broke the silence it was only to say:</p>
+<p>"I suppose you find the blemishes in our state of society can
+all be attributed to one main defect, Mr. Frowenfeld?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was glad of the chance to answer:</p>
+<p>"I have not overlooked that this society has disadvantages as
+well as blemishes; it is distant from enlightened centres; it has a
+language and religion different from that of the great people of
+which it is now called to be a part. That it has also positive
+blemishes of organism--"</p>
+<p>"Yes," interrupted the Creole, smiling at the immigrant's sudden
+magnanimity, "its positive blemishes; do they all spring from one
+main defect?"</p>
+<p>"I think not. The climate has its influence, the soil has its
+influence--dwellers in swamps cannot be mountaineers."</p>
+<p>"But after all," persisted the Creole, "the greater part of our
+troubles comes from--"</p>
+<p>"Slavery," said Frowenfeld, "or rather caste."</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said M. Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"You surprise me, sir," said the simple apothecary. "I supposed
+you were--"</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh," exclaimed M. Grandissime, suddenly becoming very
+earnest, "I am nothing, nothing! There is where you have the
+advantage of me. I am but a <i>dilettante</i>, whether in politics,
+in philosophy, morals, or religion. I am afraid to go deeply into
+anything, lest it should make ruin in my name, my family, my
+property."</p>
+<p>He laughed unpleasantly.</p>
+<p>The question darted into Frowenfeld's mind, whether this might
+not be a hint of the matter that M. Grandissime had been trying to
+see him about.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime," he said, "I can hardly believe you would
+neglect a duty either for family, property, or society."</p>
+<p>"Well, you mistake," said the Creole, so coldly that Frowenfeld
+colored.</p>
+<p>They galloped on. M. Grandissime brightened again, almost to the
+degree of vivacity. By and by they slackened to a slow trot and
+were silent. The gardens had been long left behind, and they were
+passing between continuous Cherokee-rose hedges on the right and on
+the left, along that bend of the Mississippi where its waters,
+glancing off three miles above from the old De Macarty levee (now
+Carrollton), at the slightest opposition in the breeze go whirling
+and leaping like a herd of dervishes across to the ever-crumbling
+shore, now marked by the little yellow depot-house of Westwego.
+Miles up the broad flood the sun was disappearing gorgeously. From
+their saddles, the two horsemen feasted on the scene without
+comment.</p>
+<p>But presently, M. Grandissime uttered a low ejaculation and
+spurred his horse toward a tree hard by, preparing, as he went, to
+fasten his rein to an overhanging branch. Frowenfeld, agreeable to
+his beckon, imitated the movement.</p>
+<p>"I fear he intends to drown himself," whispered M. Grandissime,
+as they hurriedly dismounted.</p>
+<p>"Who? Not--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, your landlord, as you call him. He is on the flatboat; I
+saw his hat over the levee. When we get on top the levee, we must
+get right into it. But do not follow him into the water in front of
+the flat; it is certain death; no power of man could keep you from
+going under it."</p>
+<p>The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee's
+crown. Just abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo
+and moored to the levee. They leaped into it. A human figure
+swerved from the onset of the Creole and ran toward the bow of the
+boat, and in an instant more would have been in the river.</p>
+<p>"Stop!" said Frowenfeld, seizing the unresisting f.m.c. firmly
+by the collar.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; Grandissime smiled, partly at the apothecary's
+brief speech, but much more at his success.</p>
+<p>"Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as he came near.</p>
+<p>The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with
+him, and he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the
+levee, and took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.</p>
+<p>"He gives his pledge not to try again," said the Creole, as the
+two companions proceeded to resume the saddle. "Do not look after
+him." (Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)</p>
+<p>They turned homeward.</p>
+<p>"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, suddenly, "if the
+<i>immygrant</i> has cause of complaint, how much more has
+<i>that</i> man! True, it is only love for which he would have just
+now drowned himself; yet what an accusation, my-de'-seh, is his
+whole life against that 'caste' which shuts him up within its
+narrow and almost solitary limits! And yet, Mr. Frowenfeld, this
+people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest and most
+precious of their virtues. My-de'-seh, it never occurs to us that
+in this matter we are interested, and therefore disqualified,
+witnesses. We say we are not understood; that the jury (the
+civilized world) renders its decision without viewing the body;
+that we are judged from a distance. We forget that we ourselves are
+too <i>close</i> to see distinctly, and so continue, a spectacle to
+civilization, sitting in a horrible darkness, my-de'-seh!" He
+frowned.</p>
+<p>"The shadow of the Ethiopian," said the grave apothecary.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime's quick gesture implied that Frowenfeld had said
+the very word.</p>
+<p>"Ah! my-de'-seh, when I try sometimes to stand outside and look
+at it, I am <i>ama-aze</i> at the length, the blackness of that
+shadow!" (He was so deeply in earnest that he took no care of his
+English.) "It is the <i>N&eacute;m&eacute;sis</i> w'ich, instead of
+coming afteh, glides along by the side of this morhal, political,
+commercial, social mistake! It blanches, my-de'-seh, ow whole
+civilization! It drhags us a centurhy behind the rhes' of the
+world! It rhetahds and poisons everhy industrhy we got!--mos' of
+all our-h immense agrhicultu'e! It brheeds a thousan' cusses that
+nevva leave home but jus' flutter-h up an' rhoost, my-de'-seh, on
+ow <i>heads</i>; an' we nevva know it!--yes, sometimes some of us
+know it."</p>
+<p>He changed the subject.</p>
+<p>They had repassed the ruins of Fort St. Louis, and were well
+within the precincts of the little city, when, as they pulled up
+from a final gallop, mention was made of Doctor Keene. He was
+improving; Honor&eacute; had seen him that morning; so, at another
+hour, had Frowenfeld. Doctor Keene had told Honor&eacute; about
+Palmyre's wound.</p>
+<p>"You was at her house again this morning?" asked the Creole.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime shook his head warningly.</p>
+<p>"'Tis a dangerous business. You are almost sure to become the
+object of slander. You ought to tell Doctor Keene to make some
+other arrangement, or presently you, too, will be under the--" he
+lowered his voice, for Frowenfeld was dismounting at the shop door,
+and three or four acquaintances stood around--"under the 'shadow of
+the Ethiopian.'"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<h3>THE F&Ecirc;TE DE GRANDP&Egrave;RE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down
+Esplanade street will notice, across on the right, between it and
+that sorry streak once fondly known as Champs
+&Eacute;lys&eacute;es, two or three large, old houses, rising above
+the general surroundings and displaying architectural features
+which identify them with an irrevocable past--a past when the
+faithful and true Creole could, without fear of contradiction,
+express his religious belief that the antipathy he felt for the
+Am&eacute;ricain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in
+his ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative
+Providence. There is, for instance, or was until lately, one house
+which some hundred and fifteen years ago was the suburban residence
+of the old sea-captain governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the
+oranges as silent and gray as a pelican, and, so far as we know,
+has never had one cypress plank added or subtracted since its
+master was called to France and thrown into the Bastile. Another
+has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, when the setting
+sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectacles
+standing up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there
+and will never come back. These houses are the last remaining--if,
+indeed, they were not pulled down yesterday--of a group that once
+marked from afar the direction of the old highway between the
+city's walls and the suburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier
+aristocracy of the colony; all that pretty crew of counts,
+chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons, etc., who loved their kings,
+and especially their kings' moneys, with an <i>abandon</i> which
+affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.</p>
+<p>Among these stood the great mother-mansion of the Grandissimes.
+Do not look for it now; it is quite gone. The round,
+white-plastered brick pillars which held the house fifteen feet up
+from the reeking ground and rose on loftily to sustain the great
+overspreading roof, or clustered in the cool, paved basement; the
+lofty halls, with their multitudinous glitter of gilded brass and
+twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the immense encircling
+veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk abreast; the great
+front stairs, descending from the veranda to the garden, with a
+lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps forty Grandissimes
+could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere, whence you
+could see the cathedral, the Ursulines', the governor's mansion,
+and the river, far away, shining between the villas of
+Tchoupitoulas Coast--all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall
+as the flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this
+<i>f&ecirc;te de grandp&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+<p>Odd to say, it was not the grandp&egrave;re's birthday that had
+passed. For weeks the happy children of the many Grandissime
+branches--the Mandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins--had been
+standing with their uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to
+clap hands and jump, and still, from week to week, the appointed
+day had been made to fall back, and fall back before--what think
+you?--an inability to understand Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house
+that her best child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long
+been so. Even in Honor&eacute;'s early youth, a scant two years
+after she had watched him, over the tops of her green myrtles and
+white and crimson oleanders, go away, a lad of fifteen, supposing
+he would of course come back a Grandissime of the Grandissimes--an
+inflexible of the inflexibles--he was found "inciting" (so the
+stately dames and officials who graced her front veranda called it)
+a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of transatlantic
+letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud, rekindled by the
+Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. The main difficulty
+seemed to be that Honor&eacute; could not be satisfied with a clean
+conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships of
+single households; his longing was, and had ever been-- he had
+inherited it from his father--to see one unbroken and harmonious
+Grandissime family gathering yearly under this venerated roof
+without reproach before all persons, classes, and races with whom
+they had ever had to do. It was not hard for the old mansion to
+forgive him once or twice; but she had had to do it often. It seems
+no over-stretch of fancy to say she sometimes gazed down upon his
+erring ways with a look of patient sadness in her large and
+beautiful windows.</p>
+<p>And how had that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short
+instance: when, seven years before this present <i>f&ecirc;te de
+grandp&egrave;re</i>, he came back from Europe, and she (this old
+home which we cannot help but personify), though in trouble then--a
+trouble that sent up the old feud flames again--opened her halls to
+rejoice in him with the joy of all her gathered families, he
+presently said such strange things in favor of indiscriminate human
+freedom that for very shame's sake she hushed them up, in the fond
+hope that he would outgrow such heresies. But he? On top of all the
+rest, he declined a military commission and engaged in
+commerce--"shopkeeping, <i>parbleu!</i>"</p>
+<p>However, therein was developed a grain of consolation.
+Honor&eacute; became--as he chose to call it--more prudent. With
+much tact, Agricola was amiably crowded off the dictator's chair,
+to become, instead, a sort of seneschal. For a time the family
+peace was perfect, and Honor&eacute;, by a touch here to-day and a
+word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name, and all who bore
+it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as in his father's
+day--that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his very soul, as a
+sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods--as in
+Numa's day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other
+cession, like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her
+children's slave-schooners and the prostration alike of their
+slave-made crops and their Spanish liberties; and just in the
+fateful moment where Numa would have stood by her, Honor&eacute;
+had let go. Ah, it was bitter!</p>
+<p>"See what foreign education does!" cried a Mandarin de
+Grandissime of the Baton Rouge Coast. "I am sorry
+now"--derisively--"that I never sent <i>my</i> boy to France, am I
+not? No! No-o-o! I would rather my son should never know how to
+read, than that he should come back from Paris repudiating the
+sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Is education better
+than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends with
+Am&eacute;ricains and tell me they--that call a negro
+'monsieur'--are as good as his father? But that is what we get for
+letting Honor&eacute; become a merchant. Ha! the degradation!
+Shaking hands with men who do not believe in the slave trade! Shake
+hands? Yes; associate--fraternize! with apothecaries and
+negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the <i>f&ecirc;te de
+grandp&egrave;re</i>, in the house where he is really the
+chief--the <i>ca&ccedil;ique!</i>"</p>
+<p>No! The family would not come together on the first appointment;
+no, nor on the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his
+wish; no, nor on the third--nor on the fourth.</p>
+<p>"<i>Non, Messieurs</i>!" cried both youth and reckless age; and,
+sometimes, also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of
+means, of force and of influence, urged on from behind by their
+proud and beautiful wives and daughters.</p>
+<p>Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days.
+Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with
+the poetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community
+recognized the supreme domination of "the gentleman" in questions
+of right and of "the ladies" in matters of sentiment. Under such
+conditions strength establishes over weakness a showy protection
+which is the subtlest of tyrannies, yet which, in the very moment
+of extending its arm over woman, confers upon her a power which a
+truer freedom would only diminish; constitutes her in a large
+degree an autocrat of public sentiment and thus accepts her
+narrowest prejudices and most belated errors as veriest need-be's
+of social life.</p>
+<p>The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those
+who boiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a
+close cover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most
+part, those who were holding office under old Spanish commissions,
+and were daily expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana
+thereby ruined. The steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the
+family--the timid, the apathetic, the "conservative." The
+conservatives found ease better than exactitude, the trouble of
+thinking great, the agony of deciding harrowing, and the
+alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so much
+easier--and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying to
+contemplate.</p>
+<p>"The Yankee was an inferior animal."</p>
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+<p>"But Honor&eacute; had a right to his convictions."</p>
+<p>"Yes, that was so, too."</p>
+<p>"It looked very traitorous, however."</p>
+<p>"Yes, so it did."</p>
+<p>"Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honor&eacute; was
+advancing the true interests of his people."</p>
+<p>"Very likely."</p>
+<p>"It would not do to accept office under the Yankee
+government."</p>
+<p>"Of course not."</p>
+<p>"Yet it would never do to let the Yankees get the offices,
+either."</p>
+<p>"That was true; nobody could deny that."</p>
+<p>"If Spain or France got the country back, they would certainly
+remember and reward those who had held out faithfully."</p>
+<p>"Certainly! That was an old habit with France and Spain."</p>
+<p>"But if they did not get the country back--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, that is so; Honor&eacute; is a very good fellow,
+and--"</p>
+<p>And, one after another, under the mild coolness of
+Honor&eacute;'s amiable disregard, their indignation trickled back
+from steam to water, and they went on drawing their stipends, some
+in Honor&eacute;'s counting-room, where they held positions, some
+from the provisional government, which had as yet made but few
+changes, and some, secretly, from the cunning Casa-Calvo; for, blow
+the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinity of the average
+Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.</p>
+<p>Then, at the right moment, Honor&eacute; made a single happy
+stroke, and even the hot Grandissimes, they of the interior
+parishes and they of Agricola's squadron, slaked and crumbled when
+he wrote each a letter saying that the governor was about to send
+them appointments, and that it would be well, if they wished to
+<i>evade</i> them, to write the governor at once, surrendering
+their present commissions. Well! Evade? They would evade nothing!
+Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to write to the
+usurper? They would submit to keep the positions first.</p>
+<p>But the next move was Honor&eacute;'s making the whole town
+aware of his apostasy. The great mansion, with the old
+grandp&egrave;re sitting out in front, shivered. As we have seen,
+he had ridden through the Place d'Armes with the arch-usurper
+himself. Yet, after all, a Grandissime would be a Grandissime
+still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn't that
+glorious--never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? It
+was not everyone who could ride with the governor.</p>
+<p>And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that
+would not meet either in January or February, met in the first week
+of March, every constituent one of them.</p>
+<p>The feast has been eaten. The garden now is joyous with children
+and the veranda resplendent with ladies. From among the latter the
+eye quickly selects one. She is perceptibly taller than the others;
+she sits in their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you
+look at her there is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make
+which you would not allow. Her hair, once black, now lifted up into
+a glistening snow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful
+face, while her full stature and stately bearing suggest the finer
+parts of Agricola, her brother. It is Madame Grandissime, the
+mother of Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite
+cousin. On her right is her daughter, the widowed se&ntilde;ora of
+Jos&eacute; Martinez; she has wonderful black hair and a white brow
+as wonderful. The commanding carriage of the mother is tempered in
+her to a gentle dignity and calm, contrasting pointedly with the
+animated manners of the courtly matrons among whom she sits, and
+whose continuous conversation takes this direction or that, at the
+pleasure of Madame Grandissime.</p>
+<p>But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those
+children who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails
+of the front stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of
+beautiful girls, which every few minutes, at an end of the veranda,
+appears, wheels and disappears, and you note, as it were by
+flashes, the characteristics of face and figure that mark the
+Louisianaises in the perfection of the new-blown flower. You see
+that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who
+might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and
+golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows,
+here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a less
+vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As
+Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole
+stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes.
+There is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, and a full
+red-ripeness of the lips would hardly be in keeping; but there is
+plenty of life in their eyes, which glance out between the curtains
+of their long lashes with a merry dancing that keeps time to the
+prattle of tongues. You are not able to get a straight look into
+them, and if you could you would see only your own image cast back
+in pitiful miniature; but you turn away and feel, as you fortify
+yourself with an inward smile, that they know you, you man, through
+and through, like a little song. And in turning, your sight is glad
+to rest again on the face of Honor&eacute;'s mother. You see, this
+time, that she <i>is</i> his mother, by a charm you had overlooked,
+a candid, serene and lovable smile. It is the wonder of those who
+see that smile that she can ever be harsh.</p>
+<p>The playful, mock-martial tread of the delicate Creole feet is
+all at once swallowed up by the sound of many heavier steps in the
+hall, and the fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and
+nephews of the great family come out, not a man of them that
+cannot, with a little care, keep on his feet. Their descendants of
+the present day sip from shallower glasses and with less marked
+results.</p>
+<p>The matrons, rising, offer the chief seat to the first comer,
+the great-grandsire--the oldest living Grandissime--Alcibiade, a
+shaken but unfallen monument of early colonial days, a browned and
+corrugated souvenir of De Vaudreuil's pomps, of O'Reilly's iron
+rule, of Galvez' brilliant wars--a man who had seen Bienville and
+Zephyr Grandissime. With what splendor of manner Madame Fusilier de
+Grandissime offers, and he accepts, the place of honor! Before he
+sits down he pauses a moment to hear out the companion on whose arm
+he had been leaning. But Th&eacute;ophile, a dark, graceful youth
+of eighteen, though he is recounting something with all the
+oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantly silent, bows with
+grave deference to the ladies, hands the aged forefather gracefully
+to his seat, and turning, recommences the recital before one who
+hears all with the same perfect courtesy--his beloved cousin
+Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out. Gallant crew! These are
+they who have been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor
+(?) to understand the opaque motives of Numa's son.</p>
+<p>In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of
+fifty, with the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is
+Colonel Agamemnon Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's
+military pride, conservator of its military glory, and, after
+Honor&eacute;, the most admired of the name. Achille Grandissime,
+he who took Agricola away from Frowenfeld's shop in the carriage,
+essays to engage Agamemnon in conversation, and the colonel, with a
+glance at his kinsman's nether limbs and another at his own, and
+with that placid facility with which the graver sort of Creoles
+take up the trivial topics of the lighter, grapples the subject of
+boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who prefixes to
+Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife is, is
+answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a
+step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking
+black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned
+boy, below. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite
+down to the bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade.
+He is a large, broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands
+smoking a cigar, with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances
+at the sky with the eye of a hunter--or, it may be, of a
+sailor.</p>
+<p>"Valentine will not marry," says one of two ladies who lean over
+the rail of the veranda above. "I wonder why."</p>
+<p>The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her
+shoulders and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the
+answer to which would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do
+him no credit.</p>
+<p>Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had
+retired. Raoul was there; his pretty auburn head might have been
+seen about half-way up the steps, close to one well sprinkled with
+premature gray.</p>
+<p>"No such thing!" exclaimed his companion.</p>
+<p>(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)</p>
+<p>"I give you my sacred word of honor!" cried Raoul.</p>
+<p>"That Honor&eacute; is having all his business carried on in
+English?" asked the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)</p>
+<p>"I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on
+a stack of Bibles that high!"</p>
+<p>"Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!"</p>
+<p>This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a
+spasmodic flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.</p>
+<p>"Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;!" called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three
+persons passed the call around the corner of the veranda.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By
+the time he arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.</p>
+<p>"Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be
+written in English," said Sylvestre.</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"It is not true, is it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory
+"Ah!" except Honor&eacute;'s mother. She turned upon him a look of
+silent but intense and indignant disappointment.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his
+defeat, "Honor&eacute;!"</p>
+<p>But Honor&eacute; was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two
+half dozens of girls.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap
+of writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor
+and of a boot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee?'"</p>
+<p>There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.</p>
+<p>"Ask Valentine," said Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man's only retort was to
+survey the company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to
+push the ashes slowly from his cigar with his little finger. M.
+Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, could not read.</p>
+<p>"Show it to Agricola," cried two or three, as that great man
+came out upon the veranda, heavy-eyed, and with tumbled hair.</p>
+<p>Sylvestre, spying Agricola's head beyond the ladies, put the
+question.</p>
+<p>"How is it spelled on that paper?" retorted the king of
+beasts.</p>
+<p>"L-a-y--"</p>
+<p>"Ignoramus!" growled the old man.</p>
+<p>"I did not spell it," cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the
+paper. But Sylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady snatched
+the paper, two or three cried "Give it to Agricola!" and a pretty
+boy, whom the laughter and excitement had lured from the garden,
+scampered up the steps and handed it to the old man.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;!" cried Raoul, "it must not be read. It is one of
+your private matters."</p>
+<p>But Raoul's insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a
+private matter brought another laugh.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who
+could not understand English, as well as those who could, listened.
+It was a paper Sylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the
+day of Aurore's visit to the counting-room. Agricola read:</p>
+<blockquote>"What is that layde want in thare with
+Honor&eacute;?"<br>
+"Honor&eacute; is goin giv her bac that proprety--that is<br>
+Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband."</blockquote>
+<p>That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was
+reading aloud--"that is Aurore De Grap--"</p>
+<p>At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a
+sharp flash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of
+silence followed and Agricola's thundering voice rolled down upon
+Sylvestre in a succession of terrible imprecations.</p>
+<p>It was painful to see the young man's face as, speechless, he
+received this abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile
+playing about his mouth, half of distress and half of defiance,
+that said as plain as a smile could say, "Uncle Agricola, you will
+have to pay for this mistake."</p>
+<p>As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward
+to Valentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and passing
+with a courteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola,
+went into the house. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his
+shoe-buckles, tossed his cigar quietly into the grass and passed
+around a corner of the house to meet Sylvestre in the rear.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with
+him, and Agricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few
+male figures down in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep
+up their spirits on the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or
+the waning daylight, and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not
+long before Raoul, who had come up upon the veranda, was left
+alone. He seemed to wait for something, as, leaning over the rail
+while the stars came out, he sang to himself, in a soft undertone,
+a snatch of a Creole song:</p>
+<blockquote>"La pluie--la pluie tombait,<br>
+Crapaud criait,<br>
+Moustique chantait--"</blockquote>
+<p>The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did
+not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended
+the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf
+gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself
+in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the
+moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been dipped in
+quicksilver.</p>
+<p>In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or
+seven dark forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of
+their cigars to be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his
+ear; but he did not listen. In a little while there came a light
+footstep, and a soft, mock-startled "Who is that?" and one of that
+same sparkling group of girls that had lately hung upon
+Honor&eacute; came so close to Raoul, in her attempt to discern his
+lineaments, that their lips accidentally met. They had but a moment
+of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled forth by a
+feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the great
+rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes
+were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire,
+waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of
+each, from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul
+Innerarity.</p>
+<p>"But mark," they cried unitedly, "you have got to wind up with
+the story of Bras-Coup&eacute;!"</p>
+<p>"A song! A song!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Une chanson Cr&eacute;ole! Une chanson des
+n&egrave;gres!</i>"</p>
+<p>"Sing 'y&eacute; tol&eacute; danc&eacute; la doung y doung
+doung!'" cried a black-eyed girl.</p>
+<p>Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.</p>
+<p>"Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on."</p>
+<p>But instead he sang them this:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>La pr&eacute;mier' fois mo t&eacute; 'oir li,<br>
+Li t&eacute; pos&eacute; au bord so lit;<br>
+Mo di', Bouzon, bel n'amour&egrave;se!<br>
+L'aut' fois li t&eacute; si' so la saise<br>
+Comme vi&eacute; Madam dans so fauteil,<br>
+Quand li viv&eacute; c&oacute;t&eacute; soleil.<br>
+<br>
+So gi&eacute;s y&eacute; t&eacute; plis noir pass&eacute; la
+nouitte,<br>
+So d&eacute; la lev' plis doux passe la quitte!<br>
+Tou' mo la vie, zamein mo oir<br>
+Ein n' amour&egrave;se zoli comme &ccedil;a!<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mo' bli&eacute; manz&eacute;--mo'
+bli&eacute; boir'--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mo' bli&eacute; tout dipi &ccedil;'
+temps-l&agrave;--<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mo' bli&eacute; parl&eacute;--mo'
+bli&eacute; dormi,<br>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quand mo pens&eacute; apr&eacute;s
+zami!</i>"</blockquote>
+<p>"And you have heard Bras-Coup&eacute; sing that, yourself?"</p>
+<p>"Once upon a time," said Raoul, warming with his subject, "we
+were coming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues. We had been
+three days fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador. Bras-Coup&eacute;
+had one pirogue with six paddles--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes!" cried a youth named Baltazar; "sing that, Raoul!"</p>
+<p>And he sang that.</p>
+<p>"But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out
+in the bayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!"</p>
+<p>"That boat song, do you mean, which they sing as a signal to
+those on shore?" He hummed.</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/250.png" width="100%" alt=""></p>
+<blockquote>"D&eacute; zabs, d&eacute; zabs, d&eacute; counou
+oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e,<br>
+D&eacute; zabs, d&eacute; zabs, d&eacute; counou oua&iuml;e
+oua&iuml;e,<br>
+Counou oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e,<br>
+Counou oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e,<br>
+Counou oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e oua&iuml;e, momza;<br>
+Momza, momza, momza, momza,<br>
+Roza, roza, roza-et--momza."</blockquote>
+<p>This was followed by another and still another, until the hour
+began to grow late. And then they gathered closer around him and
+heard the promised story. At the same hour Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, wrapping himself in a greatcoat and giving himself up
+to sad and somewhat bitter reflections, had wandered from the
+paternal house, and by and by from the grounds, not knowing why or
+whither, but after a time soliciting, at Frowenfeld's closing door,
+the favor of his company. He had been feeling a kind of
+suffocation. This it was that made him seek and prize the presence
+and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary. He led him out to
+the edge of the river. Here they sat down, and with a laborious
+attempt at a hard and jesting mood, Honor&eacute; told the same
+dark story.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<h3>THE STORY OF BRAS-COUP&Eacute;</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"A very little more than eight years ago," began
+Honor&eacute;--but not only Honor&eacute;, but Raoul also; and not
+only they, but another, earlier on the same day,--Honor&eacute;,
+the f.m.c. But we shall not exactly follow the words of any one of
+these.</p>
+<p>Bras-Coup&eacute;, they said, had been, in Africa and under
+another name, a prince among his people. In a certain war of
+conquest, to which he had been driven by <i>ennui</i>, he was
+captured, stripped of his royalty, marched down upon the beach of
+the Atlantic, and, attired as a true son of Adam, with two goodly
+arms intact, became a commodity. Passing out of first hands in
+barter for a looking-glass, he was shipped in good order and
+condition on board the good schooner <i>&Eacute;galit&eacute;</i>,
+whereof Blank was master, to be delivered without delay at the port
+of Nouvelle Orl&eacute;ans (the dangers of fire and navigation
+excepted), unto Blank Blank. In witness whereof, He that made men's
+skins of different colors, but all blood of one, hath entered the
+same upon His book, and sealed it to the day of judgment.</p>
+<p>Of the voyage little is recorded--here below; the less the
+better. Part of the living merchandise failed to keep; the weather
+was rough, the cargo large, the vessel small. However, the captain
+discovered there was room over the side, and there--all flesh is
+grass--from time to time during the voyage he jettisoned the
+unmerchantable.</p>
+<p>Yet, when the reopened hatches let in the sweet smell of the
+land, Bras-Coup&eacute; had come to the upper--the favored--the
+buttered side of the world; the anchor slid with a rumble of relief
+down through the muddy fathoms of the Mississippi, and the prince
+could hear through the schooner's side the savage current of the
+river, leaping and licking about the bows, and whimpering low
+welcomes home. A splendid picture to the eyes of the royal captive,
+as his head came up out of the hatchway, was the little
+Franco-Spanish-American city that lay on the low, brimming bank.
+There were little forts that showed their whitewashed teeth; there
+was a green parade-ground, and yellow barracks, and cabildo, and
+hospital, and cavalry stables, and custom-house, and a most
+inviting jail, convenient to the cathedral--all of dazzling white
+and yellow, with a black stripe marking the track of the
+conflagration of 1794, and here and there among the low roofs a
+lofty one with round-topped dormer windows and a breezy belvidere
+looking out upon the plantations of coffee and indigo beyond the
+town.</p>
+<p>When Bras-Coup&eacute; staggered ashore, he stood but a moment
+among a drove of "likely boys," before Agricola Fusilier, managing
+the business adventures of the Grandissime estate, as well as the
+residents thereon, and struck with admiration for the physical
+beauties of the chieftain (a man may even fancy a negro--as a
+negro), bought the lot, and, both to resell him with the rest to
+some unappreciative 'Cadian, induced Don Jos&eacute; Martinez'
+overseer to become his purchaser.</p>
+<p>Down in the rich parish of St. Bernard (whose boundary line now
+touches that of the distended city) lay the plantation, known
+before Bras-Coup&eacute; passed away as La Renaissance. Here it was
+that he entered at once upon a chapter of agreeable surprises. He
+was humanely met, presented with a clean garment, lifted into a
+cart drawn by oxen, taken to a whitewashed cabin of logs, finer
+than his palace at home, and made to comprehend that it was a free
+gift. He was also given some clean food, whereupon he fell sick. At
+home it would have been the part of piety for the magnate next the
+throne to launch him heavenward at once; but now, healing doses
+were administered, and to his amazement he recovered. It reminded
+him that he was no longer king.</p>
+<p>His name, he replied to an inquiry touching that subject,
+was--------, something in the Jaloff tongue, which he by and by
+condescended to render into Congo: Mioko-Koanga; in French
+Bras-Coup&eacute;; the Arm Cut Off. Truly it would have been easy
+to admit, had this been his meaning, that his tribe, in losing him,
+had lost its strong right arm close off at the shoulder; not so
+easy for his high-paying purchaser to allow, if this other was his
+intent: that the arm which might no longer shake the spear or swing
+the wooden sword was no better than a useless stump never to be
+lifted for aught else. But whether easy to allow or not, that was
+his meaning. He made himself a type of all Slavery, turning into
+flesh and blood the truth that all Slavery is maiming.</p>
+<p>He beheld more luxury in a week than all his subjects had seen
+in a century. Here Congo girls were dressed in cottons and flannels
+worth, where he came from, an elephant's tusk apiece. Everybody
+wore clothes--children and lads alone excepted. Not a lion had
+invaded the settlement since his immigration. The serpents were as
+nothing; an occasional one coming up through the floor--that was
+all. True, there was more emaciation than unassisted conjecture
+could explain--a profusion of enlarged joints and diminished
+muscles, which, thank God, was even then confined to a narrow
+section and disappeared with Spanish rule. He had no experimental
+knowledge of it; nay, regular meals, on the contrary, gave him
+anxious concern, yet had the effect--spite of his apprehension that
+he was being fattened for a purpose--of restoring the herculean
+puissance which formerly in Africa had made him the terror of the
+battle.</p>
+<p>When one day he had come to be quite himself, he was invited out
+into the sunshine, and escorted by the driver (a sort of foreman to
+the overseer), went forth dimly wondering. They reached a field
+where some men and women were hoeing. He had seen men and
+women--subjects of his--labor--a little--in Africa. The driver
+handed him a hoe; he examined it with silent interest--until by
+signs he was requested to join the pastime.</p>
+<p>"What?"</p>
+<p>He spoke, not with his lips, but with the recoil of his splendid
+frame and the ferocious expansion of his eyes. This invitation was
+a cataract of lightning leaping down an ink-black sky. In one
+instant of all-pervading clearness he read his sentence--WORK.</p>
+<p>Bras-Coup&eacute; was six feet five. With a sweep as quick as
+instinct the back of the hoe smote the driver full in the head.
+Next, the prince lifted the nearest Congo crosswise, brought
+thirty-two teeth together in his wildly kicking leg and cast him
+away as a bad morsel; then, throwing another into the branches of a
+willow, and a woman over his head into a draining-ditch, he made
+one bound for freedom, and fell to his knees, rocking from side to
+side under the effect of a pistol-ball from the overseer. It had
+struck him in the forehead, and running around the skull in search
+of a penetrable spot, tradition--which sometimes jests--says came
+out despairingly, exactly where it had entered.</p>
+<p>It so happened that, except the overseer, the whole company were
+black. Why should the trivial scandal be blabbed? A plaster or two
+made everything even in a short time, except in the driver's
+case--for the driver died. The woman whom Bras-Coup&eacute; had
+thrown over his head lived to sell <i>calas</i> to Joseph
+Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>Don Jos&eacute;, young and austere, knew nothing about
+agriculture and cared as much about human nature. The overseer
+often thought this, but never said it; he would not trust even
+himself with the dangerous criticism. When he ventured to reveal
+the foregoing incidents to the se&ntilde;or he laid all the blame
+possible upon the man whom death had removed beyond the reach of
+correction, and brought his account to a climax by hazarding the
+asserting that Bras-Coup&eacute; was an animal that could not be
+whipped.</p>
+<p>"Caramba!" exclaimed the master, with gentle emphasis, "how
+so?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps se&ntilde;or had better ride down to the quarters,"
+replied the overseer.</p>
+<p>It was a great sacrifice of dignity, but the master made it.</p>
+<p>"Bring him out."</p>
+<p>They brought him out--chains on his feet, chains on his wrists,
+an iron yoke on his neck. The Spanish Creole master had often seen
+the bull, with his long, keen horns and blazing eye, standing in
+the arena; but this was as though he had come face to face with a
+rhinoceros.</p>
+<p>"This man is not a Congo," he said.</p>
+<p>"He is a Jaloff," replied the encouraged overseer. "See his
+fine, straight nose; moreover, he is a <i>candio</i>--a prince. If
+I whip him he will die."</p>
+<p>The dauntless captive and fearless master stood looking into
+each other's eyes until each recognized in the other his peer in
+physical courage, and each was struck with an admiration for the
+other which no after difference was sufficient entirely to destroy.
+Had Bras-Coup&eacute;'s eye quailed but once--just for one little
+instant--he would have got the lash; but, as it was--</p>
+<p>"Get an interpreter," said Don Jos&eacute;; then, more
+privately, "and come to an understanding. I shall require it of
+you."</p>
+<p>Where might one find an interpreter--one not merely able to
+render a Jaloff's meaning into Creole French, or Spanish, but with
+such a turn for diplomatic correspondence as would bring about an
+"understanding" with this African buffalo? The overseer was left
+standing and thinking, and Clemence, who had not forgotten who
+threw her into the draining-ditch, cunningly passed by.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Clemence--"</p>
+<p>"<i>Mo pas capabe! Mo pas capabe!</i> (I cannot, I cannot!)
+<i>Ya, ya, ya! 'oir Mich&eacute; Agricol' Fusilier! ouala yune bon
+monture, oui!</i>"--which was to signify that Agricola could
+interpret the very Papa L&eacute;bat.</p>
+<p>"Agricola Fusilier! The last man on earth to make peace."</p>
+<p>But there seemed to be no choice, and to Agricola the overseer
+went. It was but a little ride to the Grandissime place.</p>
+<p>"I, Agricola Fusilier, stand as an interpreter to a negro?
+H-sir!"</p>
+<p>"But I thought you might know of some person," said the
+weakening applicant, rubbing his ear with his hand.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" replied Agricola, addressing the surrounding scenery, "if
+I did not--who would? You may take Palmyre."</p>
+<p>The overseer softly smote his hands together at the happy
+thought.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Agricola, "take Palmyre; she has picked up as many
+negro dialects as I know European languages."</p>
+<p>And she went to the don's plantation as interpreter, followed by
+Agricola's prayer to Fate that she might in some way be overtaken
+by disaster. The two hated each other with all the strength they
+had. He knew not only her pride, but her passion for the absent
+Honor&eacute;. He hated her, also, for her intelligence, for the
+high favor in which she stood with her mistress, and for her
+invincible spirit, which was more offensively patent to him than to
+others, since he was himself the chief object of her silent
+detestation.</p>
+<p>It was Palmyre's habit to do nothing without painstaking. "When
+Mademoiselle comes to be Se&ntilde;ora," thought she--she knew that
+her mistress and the don were affianced--"it will be well to have a
+Se&ntilde;or's esteem. I shall endeavor to succeed." It was from
+this motive, then, that with the aid of her mistress she attired
+herself in a resplendence of scarlet and beads and feathers that
+could not fail the double purpose of connecting her with the
+children of Ethiopia and commanding the captive's instant
+admiration.</p>
+<p>Alas for those who succeed too well! No sooner did the African
+turn his tiger glance upon her than the fire of his eyes died out;
+and when she spoke to him in the dear accents of his native tongue,
+the matter of strife vanished from his mind. He loved.</p>
+<p>He sat down tamely in his irons and listened to Palmyre's
+argument as a wrecked mariner would listen to ghostly church-bells.
+He would give a short assent, feast his eyes, again assent, and
+feast his ears; but when at length she made bold to approach the
+actual issue, and finally uttered the loathed word, <i>Work</i>, he
+rose up, six feet five, a statue of indignation in black
+marble.</p>
+<p>And then Palmyre, too, rose up, glorying in him, and went to
+explain to master and overseer. Bras-Coup&eacute; understood, she
+said, that he was a slave--it was the fortune of war, and he was a
+warrior; but, according to a generally recognized principle in
+African international law, he could not reasonably be expected to
+work.</p>
+<p>"As Se&ntilde;or will remember I told him," remarked the
+overseer; "how can a man expect to plow with a zebra?"</p>
+<p>Here he recalled a fact in his earlier experience. An African of
+this stripe had been found to answer admirably as a "driver" to
+make others work. A second and third parley, extending through two
+or three days, were held with the prince, looking to his
+appointment to the vacant office of driver; yet what was the
+master's amazement to learn at length that his Highness declined
+the proffered honor.</p>
+<p>"Stop!" spoke the overseer again, detecting a look of alarm in
+Palmyre's face as she turned away, "he doesn't do any such thing.
+If Se&ntilde;or will let me take the man to Agricola--"</p>
+<p>"No!" cried Palmyre, with an agonized look, "I will tell. He
+will take the place and fill it if you will give me to him for his
+own--but oh, messieurs, for the love of God--I do not want to be
+his wife!"</p>
+<p>The overseer looked at the Se&ntilde;or, ready to approve
+whatever he should decide. Bras-Coup&eacute;'s intrepid audacity
+took the Spaniard's heart by irresistible assault.</p>
+<p>"I leave it entirely with Se&ntilde;or Fusilier," he said.</p>
+<p>"But he is not my master; he has no right--"</p>
+<p>"Silence!"</p>
+<p>And she was silent; and so, sometimes, is fire in the wall.</p>
+<p>Agricola's consent was given with malicious promptness, and as
+Bras-Coup&eacute;'s fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he
+fill his office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear
+veranda of the Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one
+already appointed to take place in the grand hall of the same house
+six months from that present day. In the meanwhile Palmyre should
+remain with Mademoiselle, who had promptly but quietly made up her
+mind that Palmyre should not be wed unless she wished to be.
+Bras-Coup&eacute; made no objection, was royally worthless for a
+time, but learned fast, mastered the "gumbo" dialect in a few
+weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for
+gourde dollars. Nevertheless, there were but three persons within
+as many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.</p>
+<p>The first was Palmyre. His bearing in her presence was ever one
+of solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in
+himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth
+being there to see. "It was royal!" said the overseer.</p>
+<p>The second was not that official. When Bras-Coup&eacute;
+said--as, at stated intervals, he did say--"<i>Mo courri c'ez
+Agricole Fusilier pou' 'oir 'namourouse</i> (I go to Agricola
+Fusilier to see my betrothed,)" the overseer would sooner have
+intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws than that one lover. He
+would look after him and shake a prophetic head. "Trouble coming;
+better not deceive that fellow;" yet that was the very thing
+Palmyre dared do. Her admiration for Bras-Coup&eacute; was almost
+boundless. She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the
+contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the
+gigantic embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded
+realization of her lifetime longing for terrible strength. But the
+single deficiency in all this impassioned regard was--what so many
+fairer loves have found impossible to explain to so many gentler
+lovers--an entire absence of preference; her heart she could not
+give him--she did not have it. Yet after her first prayer to the
+Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance, to the secret surprise
+and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated content. It was
+artifice; she knew Agricola's power, and to seem to consent was her
+one chance with him. He might thus be beguiled into withdrawing his
+own consent. That failing, she had Mademoiselle's promise to come
+to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment; and that
+failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain hard
+breast was not too hard. Another element of safety, of which she
+knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brul&eacute;e. The word
+had reached there that love had conquered--that, despite all hard
+words, and rancor, and positive injury, the Grandissime hand--the
+fairest of Grandissime hands--was about to be laid into that of one
+who without much stretch might be called a De Grapion; that there
+was, moreover, positive effort being made to induce a restitution
+of old gaming-table spoils. Honor&eacute; and Mademoiselle, his
+sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were striving for this
+end. Don Jos&eacute; sent this intelligence to his kinsman as glad
+tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which
+makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre,
+also, was given to the chieftain. The letter that came back to the
+young Spaniard did not blame him so much: <i>he</i> was ignorant of
+all the facts; but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify
+him that if Palmyre's union with Bras-Coup&eacute; should be
+completed, as sure as there was a God in heaven, the writer would
+have the life of the man who knowingly had thus endeavored to
+dishonor one who <i>shared the blood of the De Grapions</i>.
+Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to
+drop hints to Don Jos&eacute; that the engagement of
+Bras-Coup&eacute; and Palmyre need not be considered irreversible;
+but the don was not desirous of disappointing his terrible pet.
+Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a little too deeply. She
+thought the moment had come for herself to insist on the match, and
+thus provoke Agricola to forbid it. To her incalculable dismay she
+saw him a second time reconsider and become silent.</p>
+<p>The second person who did not fear Bras-Coup&eacute; was
+Mademoiselle. On one of the giant's earliest visits to see Palmyre
+he obeyed the summons which she brought him, to appear before the
+lady. A more artificial man might have objected on the score of
+dress, his attire being a single gaudy garment tightly enveloping
+the waist and thighs. As his eyes fell upon the beautiful white
+lady he prostrated himself upon the ground, his arms outstretched
+before him. He would not move till she was gone. Then he arose like
+a hermit who has seen a vision. "<i>Bras-Coup&eacute; n' pas
+oul&eacute; oir zombis</i> (Bras-Coup&eacute; dares not look upon a
+spirit)." From that hour he worshipped. He saw her often; every
+time, after one glance at her countenance, he would prostrate his
+gigantic length with his face in the dust.</p>
+<p>The third person who did not fear him was--Agricola? Nay, it was
+the Spaniard--a man whose capability to fear anything in nature or
+beyond had never been discovered.</p>
+<p>Long before the end of his probation Bras-Coup&eacute; would
+have slipped the entanglements of bondage, though as yet he felt
+them only as one feels a spider's web across the face, had not the
+master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted
+him to be his game-keeper. Many a day did these two living
+magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the
+meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and
+wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when
+even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the
+other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew
+nigh<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a>. A goodly
+company had assembled. All things were ready. The bride was
+dressed, the bridegroom had come. On the great back piazza, which
+had been inclosed with sail-cloth and lighted with lanterns, was
+Palmyre, full of a new and deep design and playing her deceit to
+the last, robed in costly garments to whose beauty was added the
+charm of their having been worn once, and once only, by her beloved
+Mademoiselle.</p>
+<blockquote><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a>
+An over-zealous Franciscan once complained bitterly to the bishop
+of Havana, that people were being married in Louisiana in their own
+houses after dark and thinking nothing of it. It is not certain
+that he had reference to the Grandissime mansion; at any rate he
+was tittered down by the whole community.</blockquote>
+<p>But where was Bras-Coup&eacute;?</p>
+<p>The question was asked of Palmyre by Agricola with a gaze that
+meant in English, "No tricks, girl!"</p>
+<p>Among the servants who huddled at the windows and door to see
+the inner magnificence a frightened whisper was already going
+round.</p>
+<p>"We have made a sad discovery, Mich&eacute; Fusilier," said the
+overseer. "Bras-Coup&eacute; is here; we have him in a room just
+yonder. But--the truth is, sir, Bras-Coup&eacute; is a voudou."</p>
+<p>"Well, and suppose he is; what of it? Only hush; do not let his
+master know it. It is nothing; all the blacks are voudous, more or
+less."</p>
+<p>"But he declines to dress himself--has painted himself all rings
+and stripes, antelope fashion."</p>
+<p>"Tell him Agricola Fusilier says, 'dress immediately!'"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mich&eacute;, we have said that five times already, and his
+answer--you will pardon me--his answer is--spitting on the
+ground--that you are a contemptible <i>dotchian</i> (white
+trash)."</p>
+<p>There is nothing to do but privily to call the very bride--the
+lady herself. She comes forth in all her glory, small, but oh, so
+beautiful! Slam! Bras-Coup&eacute; is upon his face, his
+finger-tips touching the tips of her snowy slippers. She gently
+bids him go and dress, and at once he goes.</p>
+<p>Ah! now the question may be answered without whispering. There
+is Bras-Coup&eacute;, towering above all heads, in ridiculous red
+and blue regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him
+that keeps every one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that
+passed along the thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the
+bosom of Palmyre. Oh, Bras-Coup&eacute;--heroic soul! She would not
+falter. She would let the silly priest say his say--then her
+cunning should help her <i>not to be</i> his wife, yet to show his
+mighty arm how and when to strike.</p>
+<p>"He is looking for Palmyre," said some, and at that moment he
+saw her.</p>
+<p>"Ho-o-o-o-o!"</p>
+<p>Agricola's best roar was a penny trumpet to Bras-Coup&eacute;'s
+note of joy. The whole masculine half of the indoor company flocked
+out to see what the matter was. Bras-Coup&eacute; was taking her
+hand in one of his and laying his other upon her head; and as some
+one made an unnecessary gesture for silence, he sang, beating slow
+and solemn time with his naked foot and with the hand that dropped
+hers to smite his breast:</p>
+<blockquote>"'<i>En haut la montagne, zami,<br>
+Mo p&eacute; coup&eacute; canne, zami,<br>
+Pou' f&eacute; l'a'zen' zami,<br>
+Pou' mo baille Palmyre.<br>
+Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre mo c'ere,<br>
+Mo l'aim&eacute; 'ou'--mo l'aim&eacute; 'ou'</i>.'"</blockquote>
+<p>"<i>Montagne?</i>" asked one slave of another, "<i>qui est
+&ccedil;&agrave;, montagne? gnia pas qui&ccedil; 'ose comme
+&ccedil;&agrave; dans la Louisiana?</i> (What's a mountain?" We
+haven't such things in Louisiana.)"</p>
+<p>"<i>Mein ye gagnein plein montagnes dans l'Afrique</i>,
+listen!"</p>
+<blockquote>"'<i>Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre, mo' piti zozo,'<br>
+Mo l'aim&eacute; 'ou'--mo l'aim&eacute;, l'aim&eacute;
+'ou'</i>.'"</blockquote>
+<p>"Bravissimo!--" but just then a counter-attraction drew the
+white company back into the house. An old French priest with
+sandalled feet and a dirty face had arrived. There was a moment of
+handshaking with the good father, then a moment of palpitation and
+holding of the breath, and then--you would have known it by the
+turning away of two or three feminine heads in tears--the lily hand
+became the don's, to have and to hold, by authority of the Church
+and the Spanish king. And all was merry, save that outside there
+was coming up as villanous a night as ever cast black looks in
+through snug windows.</p>
+<p>It was just as the newly-wed Spaniard, with Agricola and all the
+guests, were concluding the byplay of marrying the darker couple,
+that the hurricane struck the dwelling. The holy and jovial father
+had made faint pretence of kissing this second bride; the ladies,
+colonels, dons, etc.,--though the joke struck them as a trifle
+coarse--were beginning to laugh and clap hands again and the gowned
+jester to bow to right and left, when Bras-Coup&eacute;, tardily
+realizing the consummation of his hopes, stepped forward to embrace
+his wife.</p>
+<p>"Bras-Coup&eacute;!"</p>
+<p>The voice was that of Palmyre's mistress. She had not been able
+to comprehend her maid's behavior, but now Palmyre had darted upon
+her an appealing look.</p>
+<p>The warrior stopped as if a javelin had flashed over his head
+and stuck in the wall.</p>
+<p>"Bras-Coup&eacute; must wait till I give him his wife."</p>
+<p>He sank, with hidden face, slowly to the floor.</p>
+<p>"Bras-Coup&eacute; hears the voice of zombis; the voice is
+sweet, but the words are very strong; from the same sugar-cane
+comes <i>sirop</i> and <i>tafia</i>; Bras-Coup&eacute; says to
+zombis, 'Bras-Coup&eacute; will wait; but if the <i>dotchians</i>
+deceive Bras-Coup&eacute;--" he rose to his feet with his eyes
+closed and his great black fist lifted over his
+head--"Bras-Coup&eacute; will call Voudou-Magnan!"</p>
+<p>The crowd retreated and the storm fell like a burst of infernal
+applause. A whiff like fifty witches flouted up the canvas curtain
+of the gallery and a fierce black cloud, drawing the moon under its
+cloak, belched forth a stream of fire that seemed to flood the
+ground; a peal of thunder followed as if the sky had fallen in, the
+house quivered, the great oaks groaned, and every lesser thing
+bowed down before the awful blast. Every lip held its breath for a
+minute--or an hour, no one knew--there was a sudden lull of the
+wind, and the floods came down. Have you heard it thunder and rain
+in those Louisiana lowlands? Every clap seems to crack the world.
+It has rained a moment; you peer through the black pane--your house
+is an island, all the land is sea.</p>
+<p>However, the supper was spread in the hall and in due time the
+guests were filled. Then a supper was spread in the big hall in the
+basement, below stairs, the sons and daughters of Ham came down
+like the fowls of the air upon a rice-field, and Bras-Coup&eacute;,
+throwing his heels about with the joyous carelessness of a smutted
+Mercury, for the first time in his life tasted the blood of the
+grape. A second, a fifth, a tenth time he tasted it, drinking more
+deeply each time, and would have taken it ten times more had not
+his bride cunningly concealed it. It was like stealing a tiger's
+kittens.</p>
+<p>The moment quickly came when he wanted his eleventh bumper. As
+he presented his request a silent shiver of consternation ran
+through the dark company; and when, in what the prince meant as a
+remonstrative tone, he repeated the petition--splitting the table
+with his fist by way of punctuation--there ensued a hustling up
+staircases and a cramming into dim corners that left him alone at
+the banquet.</p>
+<p>Leaving the table, he strode upstairs and into the chirruping
+and dancing of the grand salon. There was a halt in the cotillion
+and a hush of amazement like the shutting off of steam.
+Bras-Coup&eacute; strode straight to his master, laid his paw upon
+his fellow-bridegroom's shoulder and in a thunder-tone
+demanded:</p>
+<p>"More!"</p>
+<p>The master swore a Spanish oath, lifted his hand and--fell,
+beneath the terrific fist of his slave, with a bang that jingled
+the candelabra. Dolorous stroke!--for the dealer of it. Given,
+apparently to him--poor, tipsy savage--in self-defence, punishable,
+in a white offender, by a small fine or a few days' imprisonment,
+it assured Bras-Coup&eacute; the death of a felon; such was the old
+<i>Code Noir</i>. (We have a <i>Code Noir</i> now, but the new one
+is a mental reservation, not an enactment.)</p>
+<p>The guests stood for an instant as if frozen, smitten stiff with
+the instant expectation of insurrection, conflagration and rapine
+(just as we do to-day whenever some poor swaggering Pompey rolls up
+his fist and gets a ball through his body), while, single-handed
+and naked-fisted in a room full of swords, the giant stood over his
+master, making strange signs and passes and rolling out in wrathful
+words of his mother tongue what it needed no interpreter to tell
+his swarming enemies was a voudou malediction.</p>
+<p>"<i>Nous sommes grigis!</i>" screamed two or three ladies, "we
+are bewitched!"</p>
+<p>"Look to your wives and daughters!" shouted a
+Brahmin-Mandarin.</p>
+<p>"Shoot the black devils without mercy!" cried a
+Mandarin-Fusilier, unconsciously putting into a single outflash of
+words the whole Creole treatment of race troubles.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2260.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2260.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2260.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Bras-Coup&eacute; was practically declaring his independence on
+a slight rise of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and
+lifted scarce above the water in the inmost depths of the
+swamp".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>With a single bound Bras-Coup&eacute; reached the drawing-room
+door; his gaudy regimentals made a red and blue streak down the
+hall; there was a rush of frilled and powdered gentlemen to the
+rear veranda, an avalanche of lightning with Bras-Coup&eacute; in
+the midst making for the swamp, and then all without was blackness
+of darkness and all within was a wild commingled chatter of Creole,
+French, and Spanish tongues,--in the midst of which the reluctant
+Agricola returned his dresssword to its scabbard.</p>
+<p>While the wet lanterns swung on crazily in the trees along the
+way by which the bridegroom was to have borne his bride; while
+Madame Grandissime prepared an impromptu bridalchamber; while the
+Spaniard bathed his eye and the blue gash on his cheek-bone; while
+Palmyre paced her room in a fever and wild tremor of conflicting
+emotions throughout the night, and the guests splashed home after
+the storm as best they could, Bras-Coup&eacute; was practically
+declaring his independence on a slight rise of ground hardly sixty
+feet in circumference and lifted scarce above the water in the
+inmost depths of the swamp.</p>
+<p>And amid what surroundings! Endless colonnades of cypresses;
+long, motionless drapings of gray moss; broad sheets of noisome
+waters, pitchy black, resting on bottomless ooze; cypress knees
+studding the surface; patches of floating green, gleaming
+brilliantly here and there; yonder where the sunbeams wedge
+themselves in, constellations of water-lilies, the many-hued iris,
+and a multitude of flowers that no man had named; here, too,
+serpents great and small, of wonderful colorings, and the dull and
+loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer
+recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a
+century old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes
+and creatures of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and
+scarlet fruit in deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic
+insects, gorgeous dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: the blue
+heron, the snowy crane, the red-bird, the moss-bird, the night-hawk
+and the chuckwill's-widow; a solemn stillness and stifled air only
+now and then disturbed by the call or whir of the summer duck, the
+dismal ventriloquous note of the rain-crow, or the splash of a dead
+branch falling into the clear but lifeless bayou.</p>
+<p>The pack of Cuban hounds that howl from Don Jos&eacute;'s
+kennels cannot snuff the trail of the stolen canoe that glides
+through the sombre blue vapors of the African's fastnesses. His
+arrows send no telltale reverberations to the distant clearing.
+Many a wretch in his native wilderness has Bras-Coup&eacute;
+himself, in palmier days, driven to just such an existence, to
+escape the chains and horrors of the barracoons; therefore not a
+whit broods he over man's inhumanity, but, taking the affair as a
+matter of course, casts about him for a future.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<h3>THE STORY OF BRAS-COUP&Eacute;, CONTINUED</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Bras-Coup&eacute; let the autumn pass, and wintered in his
+den.</p>
+<p>Don Jos&eacute;, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He
+took his se&ntilde;ora to his hall, and under her rule it took on
+for a while a look and feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge
+into a home. Wherever the lady's steps turned--or it is as correct
+to say wherever the proud tread of Palmyre turned--the features of
+bachelor's-hall disappeared; guns, dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went
+their way into proper banishment, and the broad halls and lofty
+chambers--the floors now muffled with mats of palmetto-leaf--no
+longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but breathed a
+redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of well-contented
+song.</p>
+<p>But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coup&eacute;'s
+"<i>piti zozo</i>." Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole
+nights heaping reproaches upon herself for the impulse--now to her,
+because it had failed, inexplicable in its folly--which had
+permitted her hand to lie in Bras-Coup&eacute;'s and the priest to
+bind them together.</p>
+<p>For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have
+said, in the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself
+consecrate to a hopeless love. But now she was a black man's wife!
+and even he unable to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had
+hoped to teach him. She had heard of San Domingo; for months the
+fierce heart within her silent bosom had been leaping and shouting
+and seeing visions of fire and blood, and when she brooded over the
+nearness of Agricola and the remoteness of Honor&eacute; these
+visions got from her a sort of mad consent. The lesson she would
+have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was too late.
+Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined belief
+in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her
+giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and
+gone like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce
+despair. A wild aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her
+glance in moments of anger--moments which had grown more and more
+infrequent under the softening influence of her Mademoiselle's
+nature--now came back intensified, and blazed in her eye
+perpetually. Whatever her secret love may have been in kind, its
+sinking beyond hope below the horizon had left her fifty times the
+mutineer she had been before--the mutineer who has nothing to
+lose.</p>
+<p>"She loves her <i>candio</i>" said the negroes.</p>
+<p>"Simple creatures!" said the overseer, who prided himself on his
+discernment, "she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it's a case of
+hate at first sight--the strongest kind."</p>
+<p>Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to
+the African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola's ruin.</p>
+<p>The se&ntilde;or, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but
+now his heart conceived and brought forth its first-born fear,
+sired by superstition--the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes
+said that Bras-Coup&eacute; had cursed the land. Morning after
+morning the master looked out with apprehension toward the fields,
+until one night the worm came upon the indigo, and between sunset
+and sunrise every green leaf had been eaten up and there was
+nothing left for either insect or apprehension to feed upon.</p>
+<p>And then he said--and the echo came back from the Cannes
+Brul&eacute;es--that the very bottom culpability of this thing
+rested on the Grandissimes, and specifically on their fugleman
+Agricola, through his putting the hellish African upon him.
+Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown before, fell upon
+his slaves. Those to whom life was spared--but to whom strength did
+not return--wandered about the place like scarecrows, looking for
+shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration, "<i>No'
+ouanga</i> (we are bewitched), <i>Bras-Coup&eacute; f&eacute; moi
+des grigis</i> (the voudou's spells are on me)." The ripple of song
+was hushed and the flowers fell upon the floor.</p>
+<p>"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his
+kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice--'Fight
+the devil with fire.'"</p>
+<p>No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.</p>
+<p>But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?</p>
+<p>No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch
+Bras-Coup&eacute;, why, let him go. The overseer tried the hounds
+once more and came home with the best one across his saddle-bow, an
+arrow run half through its side.</p>
+<p>Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and
+nocturnal charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the
+master heard the wild monotone of their infernal worship, he
+stopped it with a word.</p>
+<p>Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection
+of hope and courage. It may have been--it certainly was, in
+part--because young Honor&eacute; Grandissime had returned. He was
+like the sun's warmth wherever he went; and the other Honor&eacute;
+was like his shadow. The fairer one quickly saw the meaning of
+these things, hastened to cheer the young don with hopes of a
+better future, and to effect, if he could, the restoration of
+Bras-Coup&eacute; to his master's favor. But this latter effort was
+an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the
+same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.</p>
+<p>His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her.
+Honor&eacute; would gladly have solved one or two riddles by
+effecting their honorable union in marriage. The previous ceremony
+on the Grandissime back piazza need be no impediment; all
+slave-owners understood those things. Following Honor&eacute;'s
+advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his paternal
+portion, sent to Cannes Brul&eacute;es a written offer, to buy
+Palmyre at any price that her master might name, stating his
+intention to free her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion
+could hardly hope to settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet
+he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by
+following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever
+should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the
+would-be purchaser to him. It would open up to the old braggart a
+line of retreat, thought the planter of the Cannes
+Brul&eacute;es.</p>
+<p>But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.</p>
+<p>"She is already married," said he to M. Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, f.m.c. "She is the lawful wife of Bras-Coup&eacute;;
+and what God has joined together let no man put asunder. You know
+it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to make a show of your
+wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of equality. I overlook
+the impertinence for the sake of the man whose white blood you
+carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian airs and
+self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will slap
+it."</p>
+<p>The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give
+him the opportunity, and he did it--at that quadroon ball to which
+Dr. Keene alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>But Don Jos&eacute;, we say, plucked up new spirit..</p>
+<p>"Last year's disasters were but fortune's freaks," he said.
+"See, others' crops have failed all about us."</p>
+<p>The overseer shook his head.</p>
+<p>"<i>C'est ce maudit cocodri' l&agrave; bas</i> (It is that
+accursed alligator, Bras-Coup&eacute;, down yonder in the
+swamp)."</p>
+<p>And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief.
+He and his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned,
+summer passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no
+harvest smiled. "Alas!" cried the planters, "we are all poor men!"
+The worst among the worst were the fields of Bras-Coup&eacute;'s
+master--parched and shrivelled. "He does not understand planting,"
+said his neighbors; "neither does his overseer. Maybe, too, it is
+true as he says, that he is voudoued."</p>
+<p>One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.</p>
+<p>The third noon after--the sad wife sitting by the
+bedside--suddenly, right in the centre of the room, with the door
+open behind him, stood the magnificent, half-nude form of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;. He did not fall down as the mistress's eyes met
+his, though all his flesh quivered. The master was lying with his
+eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three days' work.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mioko-Koanga oul&eacute; so' femme</i> (Bras-Coup&eacute;
+wants his wife)."</p>
+<p>The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.</p>
+<p>"<i>Bras-Coup&eacute; oul&eacute; so' femme</i>!" repeated the
+black.</p>
+<p>"Seize him!" cried the sick man, trying to rise.</p>
+<p>But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened
+faces, none dared molest the giant. The master turned his
+entreating eyes upon his wife, but she seemed stunned, and only
+covered her face with her hands and sat as if paralyzed by a
+foreknowledge of what was coming.</p>
+<p>Bras-Coup&eacute; lifted his great black palm and commenced:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mo c&eacute; voudrai que la maison ci l&agrave;, et tout
+&ccedil;a qui pas femme' ici, s'raient encore maudits</i>! (May
+this house, and all in it who are not women, be accursed)."</p>
+<p>The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless
+wrath.</p>
+<p>The African pointed his finger through the open window.</p>
+<p>"May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that
+overrun it."</p>
+<p>The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly
+rushed from the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment
+appeared Palmyre.</p>
+<p>"Speak to him," faintly cried the panting invalid.</p>
+<p>She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an
+easy motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog,
+he caught her by the arm.</p>
+<p>"<i>Bras-Coup&eacute; oul&eacute; so' femme</i>," he said, and
+just then Palmyre would have gone with him to the equator.</p>
+<p>"You shall not have her!" gasped the master.</p>
+<p>The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife
+at arm's length, resumed his malediction:</p>
+<p>"May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor
+and the wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their
+cover."</p>
+<p>With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow
+and extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his
+brain reeled, his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre
+and her mistress were bending over him, the overseer stood
+awkwardly by, and Bras-Coup&eacute; was gone.</p>
+<p>The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou
+found fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds
+wandered through broken hedges from field to field and came up with
+staring bones and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and
+thorns wrestled and throttled each other in a struggle for
+standing-room--rag-weed, smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed,
+iron-weed--until the burning skies of midsummer checked their
+growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank and dingy
+flowers.</p>
+<p>"Why in the name of--St. Francis," asked the priest of the
+overseer, "didn't the se&ntilde;ora use her power over the black
+scoundrel when he stood and cursed, that day?"</p>
+<p>"Why, to tell you the truth, father," said the overseer, in a
+discreet whisper, "I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coup&eacute;
+had half a right to do it."</p>
+<p>"Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honor&eacute;--looks at both
+sides of a question--a miserable practice; but why couldn't Palmyre
+use <i>her</i> eyes? They would have stopped him."</p>
+<p>"Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best <i>monture</i>
+(Plutonian medium) in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is
+afraid of her. Sir, I think sometimes Bras-Coup&eacute; is dead and
+his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She would rather add to his curse
+than take from it."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, "castigation
+would help her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it
+would even make a Christian of the inexpugnable
+Bras-Coup&eacute;."</p>
+<p>But Bras-Coup&eacute; kept beyond the reach alike of the lash
+and of the Latin Bible.</p>
+<p>By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to
+the master's sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was
+attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms
+would not annihilate. It was that year of history when the
+despairing planters saw ruin hovering so close over them that they
+cried to heaven for succor. Providence raised up &Eacute;tienne de
+Bor&eacute;. "And if &Eacute;tienne is successful," cried the
+news-bearer, "and gets the juice of the sugar-cane to crystallize,
+so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet save our lands and
+homes. Oh, Se&ntilde;or, it will make you strong again to see these
+fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses cutting
+it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals,
+counting the canes they cut," and the bearer of good tidings sang
+them for very joy:</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/282.png" width="100%" alt=""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"And Honor&eacute; Grandissime is going to introduce it on his
+lands," said Don Jos&eacute;.</p>
+<p>"That is true," said Agricola Fusilier, coming in.
+Honor&eacute;, the indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle
+and his brother-in-law for the moment not only to speaking, but to
+friendly, terms.</p>
+<p>The se&ntilde;or smiled.</p>
+<p>"I have some good tidings, too," he said; "my beloved lady has
+borne me a son."</p>
+<p>"Another scion of the house of Grand--I mean Martinez!"
+exclaimed Agricola. "And now, Don Jos&eacute;, let me say that
+<i>I</i> have an item of rare intelligence!"</p>
+<p>The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes
+with a sudden, savage light in them.</p>
+<p>"No," said Agricola, "he is not exactly taken yet, but they are
+on his track."</p>
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+<p>"The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having
+just played a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game
+being about to end between the white champions of two rival
+faubourgs, the beating of tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and
+sounding of wooden horns drew the populace across the fields to a
+spot whose present name of Congo Square still preserves a reminder
+of its old barbaric pastimes. On a grassy plain under the ramparts,
+the performers of these hideous discords sat upon the ground facing
+each other, and in their midst the dancers danced. They gyrated in
+couples, a few at a time, throwing their bodies into the most
+startling attitudes and the wildest contortions, while the whole
+company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the weird
+music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed
+in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in
+time with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting,
+in that wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten,
+the unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with
+their ejaculatory burdens of "<i>Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!</i>" and
+"<i>Aie Calinda! Danc&eacute; Calinda!</i>" The volume of sound
+rose and fell with the augmentation or diminution of the dancers'
+extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and supple, bounding into the
+ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers and trumpeters; now a
+wearied dancer, finding his strength going, gathered all his force
+at the cry of "<i>Danc&eacute; zisqu'a mort!</i>" rallied to a
+grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at the
+mouth.</p>
+<p>The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been
+lugged out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the
+enthusiasm had risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring
+the blackest of black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches
+of "Indienne"--the stuff used for slave women's best
+dresses--jingling with bells, his feet in moccasins, his tight,
+crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace of alligator's
+teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined about his
+neck.</p>
+<p>It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had
+been sent there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a
+tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the
+male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of
+saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before
+was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling
+heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head, the multitude
+howled with rapture.</p>
+<p>Ill-starred Bras-Coup&eacute;. He was in that extra-hazardous
+and irresponsible condition of mind and body known in the
+undignified present as "drunk again."</p>
+<p>By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by
+some design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow
+bushes, and the woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no
+other, whom he had interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded,
+next admiringly gazed upon, and then distinctly recognized, his
+whilom driver. Five minutes later the Spanish police were putting
+their heads together to devise a quick and permanent capture; and
+in the midst of the sixth minute, as the wonderful fellow was
+rising in a yet more astounding leap than his last, a lasso fell
+about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt tree, face
+upward upon the turf.</p>
+<p>"The runaway slave," said the old French code, continued in
+force by the Spaniards, "the runaway slave who shall continue to be
+so for one month from the day of his being denounced to the
+officers of justice shall have his ears cut off and shall be
+branded with the flower de luce on the shoulder; and on a second
+offence of the same nature, persisted in during one month of his
+being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be marked with the
+flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third offence he shall
+die." Bras-Coup&eacute; had run away only twice. "But," said
+Agricola, "these 'bossals' must be taught their place. Besides,
+there is Article 27 of the same code: 'The slave who, having struck
+his master, shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital
+punishment'--a very necessary law!" He concluded with a scowl upon
+Palmyre, who shot back a glance which he never forgot.</p>
+<p>The Spaniard showed himself very merciful--for a Spaniard; he
+spared the captive's life. He might have been more merciful still;
+but Honor&eacute; Grandissime said some indignant things in the
+African's favor, and as much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as
+to punish the runaway, he would have repented his clemency, as he
+repented the momentary truce with Agricola, but for the tearful
+pleading of the se&ntilde;ora and the hot, dry eyes of her maid.
+Because of these he overlooked the offence against his person and
+estate, and delivered Bras-Coup&eacute; to the law to suffer only
+the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by
+attempting to be a free man.</p>
+<p>We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for
+Bras-Coup&eacute;. But what it cost her to make that intercession,
+knowing that his death would leave her free, and that if he lived
+she must be his wife, let us not attempt to say.</p>
+<p>In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now
+crumbling away, stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and
+grated cells, its iron cages and its whips; and there, soon enough,
+they strapped Bras-Coup&eacute; face downward and laid on the lash.
+And yet not a sound came from the mutilated but unconquered African
+to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.</p>
+<p>("And you suffered this thing to take place?" asked Joseph
+Frowenfeld of Honor&eacute; Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh!" exclaimed the Creole, "they lied to me--said they
+would not harm him!")</p>
+<p>He was brought at sunrise to the plantation. The air was sweet
+with the smell of the weed-grown fields. The long-horned oxen that
+drew him and the naked boy that drove the team stopped before his
+cabin.</p>
+<p>"You cannot put that creature in there," said the thoughtful
+overseer. "He would suffocate under a roof--he has been too long
+out-of-doors for that. Put him on my cottage porch." There, at
+last, Palmyre burst into tears and sank down, while before her, on
+a soft bed of dry grass, rested the helpless form of the captive
+giant, a cloth thrown over his galled back, his ears shorn from his
+head, and the tendons behind his knees severed. His eyes were dry,
+but there was in them that unspeakable despair that fills the eye
+of the charger when, fallen in battle, he gazes with
+sidewise-bended neck on the ruin wrought upon him. His eye turned
+sometimes slowly to his wife. He need not demand her now--she was
+always by him.</p>
+<p>There was much talk over him--much idle talk. He merely lay
+still under it with a fixed frown; but once some incautious tongue
+dropped the name of Agricola. The black man's eyes came so quickly
+round to Palmyre that she thought he would speak; but no; his words
+were all in his eyes. She answered their gleam with a fierce
+affirmative glance, whereupon he slowly bent his head and spat upon
+the floor.</p>
+<p>There was yet one more trial of his wild nature. The mandate
+came from his master's sick-bed that he must lift the curse.</p>
+<p>Bras-Coup&eacute; merely smiled. God keep thy enemy from such a
+smile!</p>
+<p>The overseer, with a policy less Spanish than his master's,
+endeavored to use persuasion. But the fallen prince would not so
+much as turn one glance from his parted hamstrings. Palmyre was
+then besought to intercede. She made one poor attempt, but her
+husband was nearer doing her an unkindness than ever he had been
+before; he made a slow sign for silence--with his fist; and every
+mouth was stopped.</p>
+<p>At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from
+the mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and
+sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much
+such a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither
+burning brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.</p>
+<p>"Bras-Coup&eacute;," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in
+his mangled ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried. As he was
+dying, Bras-Coup&eacute;, he asked that you would forgive him."</p>
+<p>The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken
+since the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those
+large, clear eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have
+taken refuge as in a citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a
+moment, and then, like an expiring beacon, went out.</p>
+<p>"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here?"
+whispered the overseer to Palmyre. "Let her come. Tell her not to
+fear, but to bring the babe--in her own arms, tell
+her--quickly!"</p>
+<p>The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the
+bed of sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the
+African's arm. Bras-Coup&eacute; turned his gaze upon it; it
+smiled, its mother's smile, and put its hand upon the runaway's
+face, and the first tears of Bras-Coup&eacute;'s life, the dying
+testimony of his humanity, gushed from his eyes and rolled down his
+cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own tenderly upon the
+babe's forehead, then removing it, waved it abroad, inaudibly moved
+his lips, dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The curse was
+lifted.</p>
+<p>"<i>Le pauv' dgiab'</i>!" said the overseer, wiping his eyes and
+looking fieldward. "Palmyre, you must get the priest."</p>
+<p>The priest came, in the identical gown in which he had appeared
+the night of the two weddings. To the good father's many tender
+questions Bras-Coup&eacute; turned a failing eye that gave no
+answers; until, at length:</p>
+<p>"Do you know where you are going?" asked the holy man.</p>
+<p>"Yes," answered his eyes, brightening.</p>
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+<p>He did not reply; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed
+looking far away.</p>
+<p>So the question was repeated.</p>
+<p>"Do you know where you are going?"</p>
+<p>And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.</p>
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+<p>The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe,
+and Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an
+eager ear to catch the answer.</p>
+<p>"To--" the voice failed a moment; the departing hero essayed
+again; again it failed; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and
+with an ecstatic, upward smile, whispered, "To--Africa"--and was
+gone.</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/gs2279.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/gs2281.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+<h3>PARALYSIS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>As we have said, the story of Bras-Coup&eacute; was told that
+day three times: to the Grandissime beauties once, to Frowenfeld
+twice. The fair Grandissimes all agreed, at the close; that it was
+pitiful. Specially, that it was a great pity to have hamstrung
+Bras-Coup&eacute;, a man who even in his cursing had made an
+exception in favor of the ladies. True, they could suggest no
+alternative; it was undeniable that he had deserved his fate;
+still, it seemed a pity. They dispersed, retired and went to sleep
+confirmed in this sentiment. In Frowenfeld the story stirred deeper
+feelings.</p>
+<p>On this same day, while it was still early morning,
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime, f.m.c., with more than even his wonted
+slowness of step and propriety of rich attire, had reappeared in
+the shop of the rue Royale. He did not need to say he desired
+another private interview. Frowenfeld ushered him silently and at
+once into his rear room, offered him a chair (which he accepted),
+and sat down before him.</p>
+<p>In his labored way the quadroon stated his knowledge that
+Frowenfeld had been three times to the dwelling of Palmyre
+Philosophe. Why, he further intimated, he knew not, nor would he
+ask; but <i>he</i>--when <i>he</i> had applied for admission--had
+been refused. He had laid open his heart to the apothecary's
+eyes--"It may have been unwisely--"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld interrupted him; Palmyre had been ill for several
+days; Doctor Keene--who, Mr. Grandissime probably knew, was her
+physician--</p>
+<p>The landlord bowed, and Frowenfeld went on to explain that
+Doctor Keene, while attending her, had also fallen sick and had
+asked him to take the care of this one case until he could himself
+resume it. So there, in a word, was the reason why Joseph had, and
+others had not, been admitted to her presence.</p>
+<p>As obviously to the apothecary's eyes as anything intangible
+could be, a load of suffering was lifted from the quadroon's mind,
+as this explanation was concluded. Yet he only sat in meditation
+before his tenant, who regarded him long and sadly. Then, seized
+with one of his energetic impulses, he suddenly said:</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime, you are a man of intelligence,
+accomplishments, leisure and wealth; why" (clenchings his fists and
+frowning), "why do you not give yourself--your
+time--wealth--attainments--energies--everything--to the cause of
+the downtrodden race with which this community's scorn unjustly
+compels you to rank yourself?"</p>
+<p>The quadroon did not meet Frowenfeld's kindled eyes for a
+moment, and when he did, it was slowly and dejectedly.</p>
+<p>"He canno' be," he said, and then, seeing his words were not
+understood, he added: "He 'ave no Cause. Dad peop' 'ave no Cause."
+He went on from this with many pauses and gropings after words and
+idiom, to tell, with a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld
+almost unmanly, the reasons why the people, a little of whose blood
+had been enough to blast his life, would never be free by the force
+of their own arm. Reduced to the meanings which he vainly tried to
+convey in words, his statement was this: that that people was not a
+people. Their cause--was in Africa. They upheld it there--they lost
+it there--and to those that are here the struggle was over; they
+were, one and all, prisoners of war.</p>
+<p>"You speak of them in the third person," said Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Ah ham nod a slev."</p>
+<p>"Are you certain of that?" asked the tenant.</p>
+<p>His landlord looked at him.</p>
+<p>"It seems to me," said Frowenfeld, "that you--your class--the
+free quadroons--are the saddest slaves of all. Your men, for a
+little property, and your women, for a little amorous attention,
+let themselves be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a
+paltry bait of sham freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous
+contumely which flattens them into the dirt like grass under a
+slab. I would rather be a runaway in the swamps than content myself
+with such a freedom. As your class stands before the world
+to-day--free in form but slaves in spirit--you are--I do not know
+but I was almost ready to say--a warning to philanthropists!"</p>
+<p>The free man of color slowly arose.</p>
+<p>"I trust you know," said Frowenfeld, "that I say nothing in
+offence."</p>
+<p>"Havery word is tru'," replied the sad man.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime," said the apothecary, as his landlord sank
+back again into his seat, "I know you are a broken-hearted
+man."</p>
+<p>The quadroon laid his fist upon his heart and looked up.</p>
+<p>"And being broken-hearted, you are thus specially fitted for a
+work of patient and sustained self-sacrifice. You have only those
+things to lose which grief has taught you to despise--ease, money,
+display. Give yourself to your people--to those, I mean, who groan,
+or should groan, under the degraded lot which is theirs and yours
+in common."</p>
+<p>The quadroon shook his head, and after a moment's silence,
+answered:</p>
+<p>"Ah cannod be one Toussaint l'Ouverture. Ah cannod trah to be.
+Hiv I trah, I h-only s'all soogceed to be one
+Bras-Coup&eacute;."</p>
+<p>"You entirely misunderstand me," said Frowenfeld in quick
+response. "I have no stronger disbelief than my disbelief in
+insurrection. I believe that to every desirable end there are two
+roads, the way of strife and the way of peace. I can imagine a man
+in your place, going about among his people, stirring up their
+minds to a noble discontent, laying out his means, sparingly here
+and bountifully there, as in each case might seem wisest, for their
+enlightenment, their moral elevation, their training in skilled
+work; going, too, among the men of the prouder caste, among such as
+have a spirit of fairness, and seeking to prevail with them for a
+public recognition of the rights of all; using all his cunning to
+show them the double damage of all oppression, both great and
+petty--"</p>
+<p>The quadroon motioned "enough." There was a heat in his eyes
+which Frowenfeld had never seen before.</p>
+<p>"M'sieu'," he said, "waid till Agricola Fusilier ees keel."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean 'dies'?"</p>
+<p>"No," insisted the quadroon; "listen." And with slow,
+painstaking phrase this man of strong feeling and feeble will (the
+trait of his caste) told--as Frowenfeld felt he would do the moment
+he said "listen"--such part of the story of Bras-Coup&eacute; as
+showed how he came by his deadly hatred of Agricola.</p>
+<p>"Tale me," said the landlord, as he concluded the recital, "w'y
+deen Bras Coup&eacute; mague dad curze on Agricola Fusilier? Becoze
+Agricola ees one sorcier! Elz 'e bin dade sinz long tamm."</p>
+<p>The speaker's gestures seemed to imply that his own hand, if
+need be, would have brought the event to pass.</p>
+<p>As he rose to say adieu, Frowenfeld, without previous intention,
+laid a hand upon his visitor's arm.</p>
+<p>"Is there no one who can make peace between you?"</p>
+<p>The landlord shook his head.</p>
+<p>"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."</p>
+<p>"I mean," insisted Frowenfeld, "Is there no man who can stand
+between you and those who wrong you, and effect a peaceful
+reparation?"</p>
+<p>The landlord slowly moved away, neither he nor his tenant
+speaking, but each knowing that the one man in the minds of both,
+as a possible peacemaker, was Honor&eacute; Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"Should the opportunity offer," continued Joseph, "may I speak a
+word for you myself?"</p>
+<p>The quadroon paused a moment, smiled politely though bitterly,
+and departed repeating again:</p>
+<p>"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."</p>
+<p>"Palsied," murmured Frowenfeld, looking after him,
+regretfully,--"like all of them."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's thoughts were still on the same theme when, the day
+having passed, the hour was approaching wherein Innerarity was
+exhorted to tell his good-night story in the merry circle at the
+distant Grandissime mansion. As the apothecary was closing his last
+door for the night, the fairer Honor&eacute; called him out into
+the moonlight.</p>
+<p>"Withered," the student was saying audibly to himself, "not in
+the shadow of the Ethiopian, but in the glare of the white
+man."</p>
+<p>"Who is withered?" pleasantly demanded Honor&eacute;. The
+apothecary started slightly.</p>
+<p>"Did I speak? How do you do, sir? I meant the free
+quadroons."</p>
+<p>"Including the gentleman from whom you rent your store?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, him especially; he told me this morning the story of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime laughed. Joseph did not see why, nor did the
+laugh sound entirely genuine.</p>
+<p>"Do not open the door, Mr Frowenfeld," said the Creole, "Get
+your greatcoat and cane and come take a walk with me; I will tell
+you the same story."</p>
+<p>It was two hours before they approached this door again on their
+return. Just before they reached it, Honor&eacute; stopped under
+the huge street-lamp, whose light had gone out, where a large stone
+lay before him on the ground in the narrow, moonlit street. There
+was a tall, unfinished building at his back.</p>
+<p>"Mr Frowenfeld,"--he struck the stone with his cane,--"this
+stone is Bras-Coup&eacute;--we cast it aside because it turns the
+edge of our tools."</p>
+<p>He laughed. He had laughed to-night more than was comfortable to
+a man of Frowenfeld's quiet mind.</p>
+<p>As the apothecary thrust his shopkey into the lock and so paused
+to hear his companion, who had begun again to speak, he wondered
+what it could be--for M. Grandissime had not disclosed it--that
+induced such a man as he to roam aimlessly, as it seemed, in
+deserted streets at such chill and dangerous hours. "What does he
+want with me?" The thought was so natural that it was no miracle
+the Creole read it.</p>
+<p>"Well," said he, smiling and taking an attitude, "you are a
+great man for causes, Mr. Frowenfeld; but me, I am for results, ha,
+ha! You may ponder the philosophy of Bras-Coup&eacute; in your
+study, but <i>I</i> have got to get rid of his results, me. You
+know them."</p>
+<p>"You tell me it revived a war where you had made a peace," said
+Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Yes--yes--that is his results; but good night, Mr.
+Frowenfeld."</p>
+<p>"Good night, sir."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+<h3>ANOTHER WOUND IN A NEW PLACE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Each day found Doctor Keene's strength increasing, and on the
+morning following the incidents last recorded he was imprudently
+projecting an outdoor promenade. An announcement from Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, who had paid an early call, had, to that gentleman's
+no small surprise, produced a sudden and violent effect on the
+little man's temper.</p>
+<p>He was sitting alone by his window, looking out upon the levee,
+when the apothecary entered the apartment.</p>
+<p>"Frowenfeld," he instantly began, with evident displeasure most
+unaccountable to Joseph, "I hear you have been visiting the
+Nancanous."</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have been there."</p>
+<p>"Well, you had no business to go!"</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene smote the arm of his chair with his fist.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld reddened with indignation, but suppressed his retort.
+He stood still in the middle of the floor, and Doctor Keene looked
+out of the window.</p>
+<p>"Doctor Keene," said the visitor, when his attitude was no
+longer tolerable, "have you anything more to say to me before I
+leave you?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"It is necessary for me, then, to say that in fulfilment of my
+promise, I am going from here to the house of Palmyre, and that she
+will need no further attention after to-day. As to your present
+manner toward me, I shall endeavor to suspend judgment until I have
+some knowledge of its cause."</p>
+<p>The doctor made no reply, but went on looking out of the window,
+and Frowenfeld turned and left him.</p>
+<p>As he arrived in the philosophe's sick-chamber--where he found
+her sitting in a chair set well back from a small fire--she
+half-whispered "Mich&eacute;" with a fine, greeting smile, as if to
+a brother after a week's absence. To a person forced to lie abed,
+shut away from occupation and events, a day is ten, three are a
+month: not merely in the wear and tear upon the patience, but also
+in the amount of thinking and recollecting done. It was to be
+expected, then, that on this, the apothecary's fourth visit,
+Palmyre would have learned to take pleasure in his coming.</p>
+<p>But the smile was followed by a faint, momentary frown, as if
+Frowenfeld had hardly returned it in kind. Likely enough, he had
+not. He was not distinctively a man of smiles; and as he engaged in
+his appointed task she presently thought of this.</p>
+<p>"This wound is doing so well," said Joseph, still engaged with
+the bandages, "that I shall not need to come again." He was not
+looking at her as he spoke, but he felt her give a sudden start.
+"What is this?" he thought, but presently said very quietly: "With
+the assistance of your slave woman, you can now attend to it
+yourself."</p>
+<p>She made no answer.</p>
+<p>When, with a bow, he would have bade her good morning, she held
+out her hand for his. After a barely perceptible hesitation, he
+gave it, whereupon she held it fast, in a way to indicate that
+there was something to be said which he must stay and hear.</p>
+<p>She looked up into his face. She may have been merely framing in
+her mind the word or two of English she was about to utter; but an
+excitement shone through her eyes and reddened her lips, and
+something sent out from her countenance a look of wild
+distress.</p>
+<p>"You goin' tell 'im?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Who? Agricola?"</p>
+<p>"<i>Non</i>!"</p>
+<p>He spoke the next name more softly.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>Her eyes looked deeply into his for a moment, then dropped, and
+she made a sign of assent.</p>
+<p>He was about to say that Honor&eacute; knew already, but saw no
+necessity for doing so, and changed his answer.</p>
+<p>"I will never tell any one."</p>
+<p>"You know?" she asked, lifting her eyes for an instant. She
+meant to ask if he knew the motive that had prompted her murderous
+intent.</p>
+<p>"I know your whole sad history."</p>
+<p>She looked at him for a moment, fixedly; then, still holding his
+hand with one of hers, she threw the other to her face and turned
+away her head. He thought she moaned.</p>
+<p>Thus she remained for a few moments, then suddenly she turned,
+clasped both hands about his, her face flamed up and she opened her
+lips to speak, but speech failed. An expression of pain and
+supplication came upon her countenance, and the cry burst from
+her:</p>
+<p>"Meg 'im to love me!"</p>
+<p>He tried to withdraw his hand, but she held it fast, and,
+looking up imploringly with her wide, electric eyes, cried:</p>
+<p>"<i>Vous pouvez le faire, vous pouvez le faire</i> (You can do
+it, you can do it); <i>vous &ecirc;tes sorcier, mo conn&eacute;
+bien vous &ecirc;tes sorcier</i> (you are a sorcerer, I know)."</p>
+<p>However harmless or healthful Joseph's touch might be to the
+philosophe, he felt now that hers, to him, was poisonous. He dared
+encounter her eyes, her touch, her voice, no longer. The better man
+in him was suffocating. He scarce had power left to liberate his
+right hand with his left, to seize his hat and go.</p>
+<p>Instantly she rose from her chair, threw herself on her knees in
+his path, and found command of his language sufficient to cry as
+she lifted her arms, bared of their drapery:</p>
+<p>"Oh, my God! don' rif-used me--don' rif-used me!"</p>
+<p>There was no time to know whether Frowenfeld wavered or not. The
+thought flashed into his mind that in all probability all the care
+and skill he had spent upon the wound was being brought to naught
+in this moment of wild posturing and excitement; but before it
+could have effect upon his movements, a stunning blow fell upon the
+back of his head, and Palmyre's slave woman, the Congo dwarf, under
+the impression that it was the most timely of strokes, stood
+brandishing a billet of pine and preparing to repeat the blow.</p>
+<p>He hurled her, snarling and gnashing like an ape, against the
+farther wall, cast the bar from the street door and plunged out,
+hatless, bleeding and stunned.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+<h3>INTERRUPTED PRELIMINARIES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>About the same time of day, three gentlemen (we use the term
+gentlemen in its petrified state) were walking down the rue Royale
+from the direction of the Faubourg Ste. Marie.</p>
+<p>They were coming down toward Palmyre's corner. The middle one,
+tall and shapely, might have been mistaken at first glance for
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime, but was taller and broader, and wore a
+cocked hat, which Honor&eacute; did not. It was Valentine. The
+short, black-bearded man in buckskin breeches on his right was
+Jean-Baptiste Grandissime, and the slight one on the left, who,
+with the prettiest and most graceful gestures and balancings, was
+leading the conversation, was Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin, a cousin
+and counterpart of that sturdy-hearted challenger of Agricola,
+Sylvestre.</p>
+<p>"But after all," he was saying in Louisiana French, "there is no
+spot comparable, for comfortable seclusion, to the old orange grove
+under the levee on the Point; twenty minutes in a skiff, five
+minutes for preliminaries--you would not want more, the ground has
+been measured off five hundred times--'are you ready?'--"</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah!" said Valentine, tossing his head, "the Yankees would
+be down on us before you could count one."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, behind the Jesuits' warehouses, if you insist. I
+don't care. Perdition take such a government! I am almost sorry I
+went to the governor's reception."</p>
+<p>"It was quiet, I hear; a sort of quiet ball, all promenading and
+no contra-dances. One quadroon ball is worth five of such."</p>
+<p>This was the opinion of Jean-Baptiste.</p>
+<p>"No, it was fine, anyhow. There was a contra-dance. The music
+was--t&aacute;rata joonc, tar&aacute;, tar&aacute;--t&aacute;rata
+joonc, tar&aacute;rata joonc, tar&aacute;--oh! it was the finest
+thing--and composed here. They compose as fine things here as they
+do anywhere in the--look there! That man came out of Palmyre's
+house; see how he staggered just then!"</p>
+<p>"Drunk," said Jean-Baptiste.</p>
+<p>"No, he seems to be hurt. He has been struck on the head. Oho, I
+tell you, gentlemen, that same Palmyre is a wonderful animal! Do
+you see? She not only defends herself and ejects the wretch, but
+she puts her mark upon him; she identifies him, ha, ha, ha! Look at
+the high art of the thing; she keeps his hat as a small souvenir
+and gives him a receipt for it on the back of his head. Ah! but
+hasn't she taught him a lesson? Why, gentlemen,--it is--if it isn't
+that sorcerer of an apothecary!"</p>
+<p>"What?" exclaimed the other two; "well, well, but this is too
+good! Caught at last, ha, ha, ha, the saintly villain! Ah, ha, ha!
+Will not Honor&eacute; be proud of him now? <i>Ah! voil&agrave; un
+joli Joseph!</i> What did I tell you? Didn't I <i>always</i> tell
+you so?"</p>
+<p>"But the beauty of it is, he is caught so cleverly. No
+escape--no possible explanation. There he is, gentlemen, as plain
+as a rat in a barrel, and with as plain a case. Ha, ha, ha! Isn't
+it just glorious?"</p>
+<p>And all three laughed in such an ecstasy of glee that Frowenfeld
+looked back, saw them, and knew forthwith that his good name was
+gone. The three gentlemen, with tears of merriment still in their
+eyes, reached a corner and disappeared.</p>
+<p>"Mister," said a child, trotting along under Frowenfeld's
+elbow,--the odd English of the New Orleans street-urchin was at
+that day just beginning to be heard--"Mister, dey got some blood on
+de back of you' hade!"</p>
+<p>But Frowenfeld hurried on groaning with mental anguish.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+<h3>UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was the year 1804. The world was trembling under the tread of
+the dread Corsican. It was but now that he had tossed away the
+whole Valley of the Mississippi, dropping it overboard as a little
+sand from a balloon, and Christendom in a pale agony of suspense
+was watching the turn of his eye; yet when a gibbering black fool
+here on the edge of civilization merely swings a pine-knot, the
+swinging of that pine-knot becomes to Joseph Frowenfeld, student of
+man, a matter of greater moment than the destination of the
+Boulogne Flotilla. For it now became for the moment the foremost
+necessity of his life to show, to that minute fraction of the
+earth's population which our terror misnames "the world," that a
+man may leap forth hatless and bleeding from the house of a New
+Orleans quadroon into the open street and yet be pure white within.
+Would it answer to tell the truth? Parts of that truth he was
+pledged not to tell; and even if he could tell it all it was
+incredible--bore all the features of a flimsy lie.</p>
+<p>"Mister," repeated the same child who had spoken before,
+reinforced by another under the other elbow, "dey got some
+<i>blood</i> on de back of you' hade."</p>
+<p>And the other added the suggestion:</p>
+<p>"Dey got one drug-sto', yondah."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld groaned again. The knock had been a hard one, the
+ground and sky went round not a little, but he retained withal a
+white-hot process of thought that kept before him his hopeless
+inability to explain. He was coffined alive. The world (so-called)
+would bury him in utter loathing, and write on his headstone the
+one word--hypocrite. And he should lie there and helplessly
+contemplate Honor&eacute; pushing forward those purposes which he
+had begun to hope he was to have had the honor of furthering. But
+instead of so doing he would now be the by-word of the street.</p>
+<p>"Mister," interposed the child once more, spokesman this time
+for a dozen blacks and whites of all sizes trailing along before
+and behind, "<i>dey got some blood</i> on de back of you'
+<i>hade</i>."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>That same morning Clotilde had given a music-scholar her
+appointed lesson, and at its conclusion had borrowed of her
+patroness (how pleasant it must have been to have such things to
+lend!) a little yellow maid, in order that, with more propriety,
+she might make a business call. It was that matter of the rent--one
+that had of late occasioned her great secret distress. "It is
+plain," she had begun to say to herself, unable to comprehend
+Aurora's peculiar trust in Providence, "that if the money is to be
+got I must get it." A possibility had flashed upon her mind; she
+had nurtured it into a project, had submitted it to her
+father-confessor in the cathedral, and received his unqualified
+approval of it, and was ready this morning to put it into
+execution. A great merit of the plan was its simplicity. It was
+merely to find for her heaviest bracelet a purchaser in time, and a
+price sufficient, to pay to-morrow's "maturities." See there
+again!--to her, her little secret was of greater import than the
+collision of almost any pine-knot with almost any head.</p>
+<p>It must not be accepted as evidence either of her unwillingness
+to sell or of the amount of gold in the bracelet, that it took the
+total of Clotilde's moral and physical strength to carry it to the
+shop where she hoped--against hope--to dispose of it.</p>
+<p>'Sieur Frowenfeld, M. Innerarity said, was out, but would
+certainly be in in a few minutes, and she was persuaded to take a
+chair against the half-hidden door at the bottom of the shop with
+the little borrowed maid crouched at her feet.</p>
+<p>She had twice or thrice felt a regret that she had undertaken to
+wait, and was about to rise and go, when suddenly she saw before
+her Joseph Frowenfeld, wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow
+and smeared with blood from his forehead down. She rose quickly and
+silently, turned sick and blind, and laid her hand upon the back of
+the chair for support. Frowenfeld stood an instant before her,
+groaned, and disappeared through the door. The little maid,
+retreating backward against her from the direction of the
+street-door, drew to her attention a crowd of sight-seers which had
+rushed up to the doors and against which Raoul was hurriedly
+closing the shop.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+<h3>CLOTILDE AS A SURGEON</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Was it worse to stay, or to fly? The decision must be
+instantaneous. But Raoul made it easy by crying in their common
+tongue, as he slammed a massive shutter and shot its bolt:</p>
+<p>"Go to him! he is down--I heard him fall. Go to him!"</p>
+<p>At this rallying cry she seized her shield--that is to say, the
+little yellow attendant--and hurried into the room. Joseph lay just
+beyond the middle of the apartment, face downward. She found water
+and a basin, wet her own handkerchief, and dropped to her knees
+beside his head; but the moment he felt the small feminine hands he
+stood up. She took him by the arm.</p>
+<p>"<i>Asseyez-vous, Monsieu'</i>--pliz to give you'sev de pens to
+seet down, 'Sieu' Frowenfel'."</p>
+<p>She spoke with a nervous tenderness in contrast with her alarmed
+and entreating expression of face, and gently pushed him into a
+chair.</p>
+<p>The child ran behind the bed and burst into frightened sobs, but
+ceased when Clotilde turned for an instant and glared at her.</p>
+<p>"Mague yo' 'ead back," said Clotilde, and with tremulous
+tenderness she softly pressed back his brow and began wiping off
+the blood. "W'ere you is 'urted?"</p>
+<p>But while she was asking her question she had found the gash and
+was growing alarmed at its ugliness, when Raoul, having made
+everything fast, came in with:</p>
+<p>"Wat's de mattah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'? w'at's de mattah wid you?
+Oo done dat, 'Sieur Frowen fel'?"</p>
+<p>Joseph lifted his head and drew away from it the small hand and
+wet handkerchief, and without letting go the hand, looked again
+into Clotilde's eyes, and said:</p>
+<p>"Go home; oh, go home!"</p>
+<p>"Oh! no," protested Raoul, whereupon Clotilde turned upon him
+with a perfectly amiable, nurse's grimace for silence.</p>
+<p>"I goin' rad now," she said.</p>
+<p>Raoul's silence was only momentary.</p>
+<p>"Were you lef you' hat, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" he asked, and stole
+an artist's glance at Clotilde, while Joseph straightened up, and
+nerving himself to a tolerable calmness of speech, said:</p>
+<p>"I have been struck with a stick of wood by a half-witted person
+under a misunderstanding of my intentions; but the circumstances
+are such as to blacken my character hopelessly; but I am innocent!"
+he cried, stretching forward both arms and quite losing his
+momentary self-control.</p>
+<p>"'Sieu' Frowenfel'!" cried Clotilde, tears leaping to her eyes,
+"I am shoe of it!"</p>
+<p>"I believe you! I believe you, 'Sieur Frowenfel'!" exclaimed
+Raoul with sincerity.</p>
+<p>"You will not believe me," said Joseph. "You will not; it will
+be impossible."</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>" cried Clotilde, "id shall nod be impossib'!"</p>
+<p>But the apothecary shook his head.</p>
+<p>"All I can be suspected of will seem probable; the truth only is
+incredible."</p>
+<p>His head began to sink and a pallor to overspread his face.</p>
+<p>"<i>Allez, Monsieur, allez</i>," cried Clotilde to Raoul, a
+picture of beautiful terror which he tried afterward to paint from
+memory, "<i>appelez</i> Doctah Kin!"</p>
+<p>Raoul made a dash for his hat, and the next moment she heard,
+with unpleasant distinctness, his impetuous hand slam the shop door
+and lock her in.</p>
+<p>"<i>Baille ma do l'eau</i>" she called to the little mulattress,
+who responded by searching wildly for a cup and presently bringing
+a measuring-glass full of water.</p>
+<p>Clotilde gave it to the wounded man, and he rose at once and
+stood on his feet.</p>
+<p>"Raoul."</p>
+<p>"'E gone at Doctah Kin."</p>
+<p>"I do not need Doctor Keene; I am not badly hurt. Raoul should
+not have left you here in this manner. You must not stay."</p>
+<p>"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel', I am afred to paz dad gangue!"</p>
+<p>A new distress seized Joseph in view of this additional
+complication. But, unmindful of this suggestion, the fair Creole
+suddenly exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"'Sieu' Frowenfel', you har a hinnocen' man! Go, hopen yo' do's
+an' stan juz as you har ub biffo dad crowd and sesso! My God!
+'Sieu' Frowenfel', iv you cannod stan' ub by you'sev--"</p>
+<p>She ceased suddenly with a wild look, as if another word would
+have broken the levees of her eyes, and in that instant Frowenfeld
+recovered the full stature of a man.</p>
+<p>"God bless you!" he cried. "I will do it!" He started, then
+turned again toward her, dumb for an instant, and said: "And God
+reward you! You believe in me, and you do not even know me."</p>
+<p>Her eyes became wilder still as she looked up into his face with
+the words:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, I does know you--betteh'n you know annyt'in' boud
+it!" and turned away, blushing violently.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld gave a start. She had given him too much light. He
+recognized her, and she knew it. For another instant he gazed at
+her averted face, and then with forced quietness said:</p>
+<p>"Please go into the shop."</p>
+<p>The whole time that had elapsed since the shutting of the doors
+had not exceeded five minutes; a sixth sufficed for Clotilde and
+her attendant to resume their original position in the nook by the
+private door and for Frowenfeld to wash his face and hands. Then
+the alert and numerous ears without heard a drawing of bolts at the
+door next to that which Raoul had issued, its leaves opened
+outward, and first the pale hands and then the white, weakened face
+and still bloody hair and apparel of the apothecary made their
+appearance. He opened a window and another door. The one locked by
+Raoul, when unbolted, yielded without a key, and the shop stood
+open.</p>
+<p>"My friends," said the trembling proprietor, "if any of you
+wishes to buy anything, I am ready to serve him. The rest will
+please move away."</p>
+<p>The invitation, though probably understood, was responded to by
+only a few at the banquette's edge, where a respectable face or two
+wore scrutinizing frowns. The remainder persisted in silently
+standing and gazing in at the bloody man.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld bore the gaze. There was one element of emphatic
+satisfaction in it--it drew their observation from Clotilde at the
+other end of the shop. He stole a glance backward; she was not
+there. She had watched her chance, safely escaped through the side
+door, and was gone.</p>
+<p>Raoul returned.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', Doctor Keene is took worse ag'in. 'E is in
+bed; but 'e say to tell you in dat lill troubl' of dis mawnin' it
+is himseff w'at is inti'lie wrong, an' 'e hass you poddon. 'E says
+sen' fo' Doctor Conrotte, but I din go fo' him; dat ole
+scoun'rel--he believe in puttin' de niggas fre'."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld said he would not consult professional advisers; with
+a little assistance from Raoul, he could give the cut the slight
+attention it needed. He went back into his room, while Raoul turned
+back to the door and addressed the public.</p>
+<p>"Pray, Messieurs, come in and be seated." He spoke in the Creole
+French of the gutters. "Come in. M. Frowenfeld is dressing, and
+desires that you will have a little patience. Come in. Take chairs.
+You will not come in? No? Nor you, Monsieur? No? I will set some
+chairs outside, eh? No?"</p>
+<p>They moved by twos and threes away, and Raoul, retiring, gave
+his employer such momentary aid as was required. When Joseph, in
+changed dress, once more appeared, only a child or two lingered to
+see him, and he had nothing to do but sit down and, as far as he
+felt at liberty to do so, answer his assistant's questions.</p>
+<p>During the recital, Raoul was obliged to exercise the severest
+self-restraint to avoid laughing,--a feeling which was modified by
+the desire to assure his employer that he understood this sort of
+thing perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought no
+less of a man, <i>providing he was a gentleman</i>, because of an
+unlucky retributive knock on the head. But he feared laughter would
+overclimb speech; and, indeed, with all expression of sympathy
+stifled, he did not succeed so completely in hiding the conflicting
+emotion but that Joseph did once turn his pale, grave face
+surprisedly, hearing a snuffling sound, suddenly stifled in a
+drawer of corks. Said Raoul, with an unsteady utterance, as he
+slammed the drawer:</p>
+<p>"H-h-dat makes me dat I can't 'elp to laugh w'en I t'ink of dat
+fool yesse'dy w'at want to buy my pigshoe for honly one 'undred
+dolla'--ha, ha ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>He laughed almost indecorously.</p>
+<p>"Raoul," said Frowenfeld, rising and closing his eyes, "I am
+going back for my hat. It would make matters worse for that person
+to send it to me, and it would be something like a vindication for
+me to go back to the house and get it."</p>
+<p>Mr. Innerarity was about to make strenuous objection, when there
+came in one whom he recognized as an attach&eacute; of his cousin
+Honor&eacute;'s counting-room, and handed the apothecary a note. It
+contained Honor&eacute;'s request that if Frowenfeld was in his
+shop he would have the goodness to wait there until the writer
+could call and see him.</p>
+<p>"I will wait," was the reply.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+<h3>"FO' WAD YOU CRYNE?"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Clotilde, a step or two from home, dismissed her attendant, and
+as Aurora, with anxious haste, opened to her familiar knock,
+appeared before her pale and trembling.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah, ma fille</i>--"</p>
+<p>The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint
+upon her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and
+there, while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few
+moments to reverie before she was called upon to speak. Then Aurora
+first quietly took possession of her hands, and after another
+tender pause asked in English, which was equivalent to
+whispering:</p>
+<p>"Were you was, <i>ch&eacute;rie?</i>"</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"</p>
+<p>Aurora straightened up with angry astonishment and drew in her
+breath for an emphatic speech, but Clotilde, liberating her own
+hands, took Aurora's, and hurriedly said, turning still paler as
+she spoke:</p>
+<p>"'E godd his 'ead strigue! 'Tis all knog in be'ine! 'E come in
+blidding--"</p>
+<p>"In w'ere?" cried Aurora.</p>
+<p>"In 'is shob."</p>
+<p>"You was in dad shob of 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"</p>
+<p>"I wend ad 'is shob to pay doze rend."</p>
+<p>"How--you wend ad 'is shob to pay--"</p>
+<p>Clotilde produced the bracelet. The two looked at each other in
+silence for a moment, while Aurora took in without further
+explanation Clotilde's project and its failure.</p>
+<p>"An' 'Sieur Frowenfel'--dey kill 'im? Ah! <i>Ma
+ch&egrave;re</i>, fo' wad you mague me to hass all dose
+question?"</p>
+<p>Clotilde gave a brief account of the matter, omitting only her
+conversation with Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, oo strigue 'im?" demanded Aurora, impatiently.</p>
+<p>"Addunno!" replied the other. "Bud I does know 'e is
+hinnocen'!"</p>
+<p>A small scouting-party of tears reappeared on the edge of her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"Innocen' from wad?"</p>
+<p>Aurora betrayed a twinkle of amusement.</p>
+<p>"Hev'ryt'in', iv you pliz!" exclaimed Clotilde, with most
+uncalled-for warmth.</p>
+<p>"An' you crah bic-ause 'e is nod guiltie?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! foolish!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, non, my chile, I know fo' wad you cryne: 't is h-only de
+sighd of de blood."</p>
+<p>"Oh, sighd of blood!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde let a little nervous laugh escape through her
+dejection.</p>
+<p>"Well, then,"--Aurora's eyes twinkled like stars,--"id muz be
+bic-ause 'Sieur Frowenfel' bump 'is 'ead--ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>"'Tis nod tru'!" cried Clotilde; but, instead of laughing, as
+Aurora had supposed she would, she sent a double flash of light
+from her eyes, crimsoned, and retorted, as the tears again sprang
+from their lurking-place, "You wand to mague ligue you don't kyah!
+But <i>I</i> know! I know verrie well! You kyah fifty time' as
+mudge as me! I know you! I know you! I bin wadge you!"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2308.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2308.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2308.jpg" width="55%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"'Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me
+wad dad mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma <i>second word of
+honor</i>'--she rolled up her fist--'juz wad I thing about dad
+'Sieur Frowenfel!'".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>Aurora was quite dumb for a moment, and gazed at Clotilde,
+wondering what could have made her so unlike herself. Then she half
+rose up, and, as she reached forward an arm, and laid it tenderly
+about her daughter's neck, said:</p>
+<p>"Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me wad
+dad mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma <i>second word of
+honor</i>"--she rolled up her fist--"juz wad I thing about dad
+'Sieur Frowenfel'!"</p>
+<p>"I don't kyah wad de whole worl' thing aboud 'im!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, anny'ow, tell me fo' wad you cryne!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde gazed aside for a moment and then confronted her
+questioner consentingly.</p>
+<p>"I tole 'im I knowed 'e was h-innocen'."</p>
+<p>"Eh, Men, dad was h-only de poli-i-idenez. Wad 'e said?"</p>
+<p>"E said I din knowed 'im 'tall."</p>
+<p>"An' you," exclaimed Aurora, "it is nod pozzyble dad you--"</p>
+<p>"I tole 'im I know 'im bette'n 'e know annyt'in' 'boud id!"</p>
+<p>The speaker dropped her face into her mother's lap.</p>
+<p>"Ha, ha!" laughed Aurora, "an' wad of dad? I would say dad, me,
+fo' time' a day. I gi'e you my word 'e don godd dad sens' to know
+wad dad mean."</p>
+<p>"Ah! don godd sens'!" cried Clotilde, lifting her head up
+suddenly with a face of agony. "'E reg--'e reggo-ni-i-ize me!"</p>
+<p>Aurora caught her daughter's cheeks between her hands and
+laughed all over them.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, don you see 'ow dad was luggy? Now, you know?--'e
+goin' fall in love wid you an' you goin' 'ave dad sadizfagzion to
+rif-use de biggis' hand in Noo-'leans. An' you will be h-even, ha,
+ha! Bud me--you wand to know wad I thing aboud 'im? I thing 'e is
+one--egcellen' drug-cl--ah, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde replied with a smile of grieved incredulity.</p>
+<p>"De bez in de ciddy!" insisted the other. She crossed the
+forefinger of one hand upon that of the other and kissed them,
+reversed the cross and kissed them again. "<i>Mais</i>, ad de sem
+tam," she added, giving her daughter time to smile, "I thing 'e is
+one <i>noble gen'leman</i>. Nod to sood me, of coze, <i>mais,
+&ccedil;&agrave; fait rien</i>--daz nott'n; me, I am now a h'ole
+woman, you know, eh? Noboddie can' nevva sood me no mo', nod ivven
+dad Govenno' Cleb-orne."</p>
+<p>She tried to look old and jaded.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Govenno' Cleb-orne!" exclaimed Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"Yass!--Ah, you!--you thing iv a man is nod a Creole 'e bown to
+be no 'coun'! I assu' you dey don' godd no boddy wad I fine a so
+nize gen'leman lag Govenno' Cleb-orne! Ah! Clotilde, you godd no
+lib'ral'ty!"</p>
+<p>The speaker rose, cast a discouraged parting look upon her
+narrow-minded companion and went to investigate the slumbrous
+silence of the kitchen.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+<h3>AURORA'S LAST PICAYUNE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Not often in Aurora's life had joy and trembling so been mingled
+in one cup as on this day. Clotilde wept; and certainly the
+mother's heart could but respond; yet Clotilde's tears filled her
+with a secret pleasure which fought its way up into the beams of
+her eyes and asserted itself in the frequency and heartiness of her
+laugh despite her sincere participation in her companion's
+distresses and a fearful looking forward to to-morrow.</p>
+<p>Why these flashes of gladness? If we do not know, it is because
+we have overlooked one of her sources of trouble. From the night of
+the <i>bal masqu&eacute;</i> she had--we dare say no more than that
+she had been haunted; she certainly would not at first have
+admitted even so much to herself. Yet the fact was not thereby
+altered, and first the fact and later the feeling had given her
+much distress of mind. Who he was whose image would not down, for a
+long time she did not know. This, alone, was torture; not merely
+because it was mystery, but because it helped to force upon her
+consciousness that her affections, spite of her, were ready and
+waiting for him and he did not come after them. That he loved her,
+she knew; she had achieved at the ball an overwhelming victory, to
+her certain knowledge, or, depend upon it, she never would have
+unmasked--never.</p>
+<p>But with this torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of
+loving, but the fear of her daughter. This is a world that allows
+nothing without its obverse and reverse. Strange differences are
+often seen between the two sides; and one of the strangest and most
+inharmonious in this world of human relations is that coinage which
+a mother sometimes finds herself offering to a daughter, and which
+reads on one side, Bridegroom, and on the other, Stepfather.</p>
+<p>Then, all this torture to be hidden under smiles! Worse still,
+when by and by Messieurs Agoussou, Assonquer, Danny and others had
+been appealed to and a Providence boundless in tender compassion
+had answered in their stead, she and her lover had simultaneously
+discovered each other's identity only to find that he was a
+Montague to her Capulet. And the source of her agony must be
+hidden, and falsely attributed to the rent deficiency and their
+unprotected lives. Its true nature must be concealed even from
+Clotilde. What a secret--for what a spirit--to keep from what a
+companion!--a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might be, gall
+to Clotilde. She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all
+alone--alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the
+lions and tigers. She wished she had told the secret when it was
+small and had let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde's
+knowledge day by day. At first it had been but a garland, then it
+had become a chain, now it was a ball and chain; and it was oh! and
+oh! if Clotilde would only fall in love herself! How that would
+simplify matters! More than twice or thrice she had tried to reveal
+her overstrained heart in broken sections; but on her approach to
+the very outer confines of the matter, Clotilde had always behaved
+so strangely, so nervously, in short, so beyond Aurora's
+comprehension, that she invariably failed to make any
+revelation.</p>
+<p>And now, here in the very central darkness of this cloud of
+troubles, comes in Clotilde, throws herself upon the defiant little
+bosom so full of hidden suffering, and weeps tears of innocent
+confession that in a moment lay the dust of half of Aurora's
+perplexities. Strange world! The tears of the orphan making the
+widow weep for joy, if she only dared.</p>
+<p>The pair sat down opposite each other at their little
+dinner-table. They had a fixed hour for dinner. It is well to have
+a fixed hour; it is in the direction of system. Even if you have
+not the dinner, there is the hour. Alphonsina was not in perfect
+harmony with this fixed-hour idea. It was Aurora's belief, often
+expressed in hungry moments with the laugh of a vexed Creole lady
+(a laugh worthy of study), that on the day when dinner should
+really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would drop dead of
+apoplexy and she of fright. She said it to-day, shutting her arms
+down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised, and
+dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its
+perch. Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a
+certain desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and
+which suited the hither-thither movement of her conflicting
+feelings. This is why she had wished for dinner.</p>
+<p>Boiled shrimps, rice, claret-and-water, bread--they were dining
+well the day before execution. Dining is hardly correct, either,
+for Clotilde, at least, did not eat; they only sat. Clotilde had,
+too, if not her unknown, at least her unconfessed emotions.
+Aurora's were tossed by the waves, hers were sunken beneath them.
+Aurora had a faith that the rent would be paid--a faith which was
+only a vapor, but a vapor gilded by the sun--that is, by Apollo,
+or, to be still more explicit, by Honor&eacute; Grandissime.
+Clotilde, deprived of this confidence, had tried to raise means
+wherewith to meet the dread obligation, or, rather, had tried to
+try and had failed. To-day was the ninth, to-morrow, the street.
+Joseph Frowenfeld was hurt; her dependence upon his good offices
+was gone. When she thought of him suffering under public contumely,
+it seemed to her as if she could feel the big drops of blood
+dropping from her heart; and when she recalled her own actions,
+speeches, and demonstrations in his presence, exaggerated by the
+groundless fear that he had guessed into the deepest springs of her
+feelings, then she felt those drops of blood congeal. Even if the
+apothecary had been duller of discernment than she supposed, here
+was Aurora on the opposite side of the table, reading every thought
+of her inmost soul. But worst of all was 'Sieur Frowenfel's
+indifference. It is true that, as he had directed upon her that
+gaze of recognition, there was a look of mighty gladness, if she
+dared believe her eyes. But no, she dared not; there was nothing
+there for her, she thought,--probably (when this anguish of public
+disgrace should by any means be lifted) a benevolent smile at her
+and her betrayal of interest. Clotilde felt as though she had been
+laid entire upon a slide of his microscope.</p>
+<p>Aurora at length broke her reverie.</p>
+<p>"Clotilde,"--she spoke in French--"the matter with you is that
+you have no heart. You never did have any. Really and truly, you do
+not care whether 'Sieur Frowenfel' lives or dies. You do not care
+how he is or where he is this minute. I wish you had some of my too
+large heart. I not only have the heart, as I tell you, to think
+kindly of our enemies, those Grandissime, for example"--she waved
+her hand with the air of selecting at random--"but I am burning up
+to know what is the condition of that poor, sick, noble 'Sieur
+Frowenfel', and I am going to do it!"</p>
+<p>The heart which Clotilde was accused of not having gave a stir
+of deep gratitude. Dear, pretty little mother! Not only knowing
+full well the existence of this swelling heart and the
+significance, to-day, of its every warm pulsation, but kindly
+covering up the discovery with make-believe reproaches. The tears
+started in her eyes; that was her reply.</p>
+<p>"Oh, now! it is the rent again, I suppose," cried Aurora,
+"always the rent. It is not the rent that worries <i>me</i>, it is
+'Sieur Frowenfel', poor man. But very well, Mademoiselle Silence, I
+will match you for making me do all the talking." She was really
+beginning to sink under the labor of carrying all the sprightliness
+for both. "Come," she said, savagely, "propose something."</p>
+<p>"Would you think well to go and inquire?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, listen! Go and what? No, Mademoiselle, I think not."</p>
+<p>"Well, send Alphonsina."</p>
+<p>"What? And let him know that I am anxious about him? Let me tell
+you, my little girl, I shall not drag upon myself the
+responsibility of increasing the self-conceit of any of that
+sex."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, send to buy a picayune's worth of something."</p>
+<p>"Ah, ha, ha! An emetic, for instance. Tell him we are poisoned
+on mushrooms, ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde laughed too.</p>
+<p>"Ah, no," she said. "Send for something he does not sell."</p>
+<p>Aurora was laughing while Clotilde spoke; but as she caught
+these words she stopped with open-mouthed astonishment, and, as
+Clotilde blushed, laughed again.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Clotilde, Clotilde, Clotilde!"--she leaned forward over the
+table, her face beaming with love and laughter--"you rowdy! you
+rascal! You are just as bad as your mother, whom you think so
+wicked! I accept your advice. Alphonsina!"</p>
+<p>"Momselle!"</p>
+<p>The answer came from the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"Come go--or, rather,--<i>vini 'ci courri dans boutique de
+l'apothecaire</i>. Clotilde," she continued, in better French,
+holding up the coin to view, "look!"</p>
+<p>"What?"</p>
+<p>"The last picayune we have in the world--ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+<h3>HONOR&Eacute; MAKES SOME CONFESSIONS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"Comment &ccedil;&agrave; va, Raoul?" said Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime; he had come to the shop according to the proposal
+contained in his note. "Where is Mr. Frowenfeld?"</p>
+<p>He found the apothecary in the rear room, dressed, but just
+rising from the bed at sound of his voice. He closed the door after
+him; they shook hands and took chairs.</p>
+<p>"You have fever," said the merchant. "I have been troubled that
+way myself, some, lately." He rubbed his face all over, hard, with
+one hand,' and looked at the ceiling. "Loss of sleep, I suppose, in
+both of us; in your case voluntary--in pursuit of study, most
+likely; in my case--effect of anxiety." He smiled a moment and then
+suddenly sobered as after a pause he said:</p>
+<p>"But I hear you are in trouble; may I ask--"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld had interrupted him with almost the same words:</p>
+<p>"May I venture to ask, Mr. Grandissime, what--"</p>
+<p>And both were silent for a moment.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Honor&eacute;, with a gesture. "My trouble--I did not
+mean to mention it; 't is an old matter--in part. You know, Mr.
+Frowenfeld, there is a kind of tree not dreamed of in botany, that
+lets fall its fruit every day in the year--you know? We call
+it--with reverence--'our dead father's mistakes.' I have had to eat
+much of that fruit; a man who has to do that must expect to have
+now and then a little fever."</p>
+<p>"I have heard," replied Frowenfeld, "that some of the titles
+under which your relatives hold their lands are found to be of the
+kind which the State's authorities are pronouncing worthless. I
+hope this is not the case."</p>
+<p>"I wish they had never been put into my custody," said M.
+Grandissime.</p>
+<p>Some new thought moved him to draw his chair closer.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, those two ladies whom you went to see the other
+evening--"</p>
+<p>His listener started a little:</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Did they ever tell you their history?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir; but I have heard it."</p>
+<p>"And you think they have been deeply wronged, eh? Come, Mr.
+Frowenfeld, take right hold of the acacia-bush." M. Grandissime did
+not smile.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld winced. "I think they have."</p>
+<p>"And you think restitution should be made them, no doubt,
+eh?"</p>
+<p>"I do."</p>
+<p>"At any cost?"</p>
+<p>The questioner showed a faint, unpleasant smile, that stirred
+something like opposition in the breast of the apothecary.</p>
+<p>"Yes," he answered.</p>
+<p>The next question had a tincture even of fierceness:</p>
+<p>"You think it right to sink fifty or a hundred people into
+poverty to lift one or two out?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld, slowly, "you bade me study
+this community."</p>
+<p>"I adv--yes; what is it you find?"</p>
+<p>"I find--it may be the same with other communities, I suppose it
+is, more or less--that just upon the culmination of the moral issue
+it turns and asks the question which is behind it, instead of the
+question which is before it."</p>
+<p>"And what is the question before me?"</p>
+<p>"I know it only in the abstract."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>The apothecary looked distressed.</p>
+<p>"You should not make me say it," he objected.</p>
+<p>"Nevertheless," said the Creole, "I take that liberty."</p>
+<p>"Well, then," said Frowenfeld, "the question behind is
+Expediency and the question in front, Divine Justice. You are
+asking yourself--"</p>
+<p>He checked himself.</p>
+<p>"Which I ought to regard," said M. Grandissime, quickly.
+"Expediency, of course, and be like the rest of mankind." He put on
+a look of bitter humor. "It is all easy enough for you, Mr.
+Frowenfeld, my-de'-seh; you have the easy part--the
+theorizing."</p>
+<p>He saw the ungenerousness of his speech as soon as it was
+uttered, yet he did not modify it.</p>
+<p>"True, Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld; and after a
+pause--"but you have the noble part--the doing."</p>
+<p>"Ah, my-de'-seh!" exclaimed Honor&eacute;; "the noble part!
+There is the bitterness of the draught! The opportunity to act is
+pushed upon me, but the opportunity to act nobly has passed
+by."</p>
+<p>He again drew his chair closer, glanced behind him and spoke
+low:</p>
+<p>"Because for years I have had a kind of custody of all my
+kinsmen's property interests, Agricola's among them, it is supposed
+that he has always kept the plantation of Aurore Nancanou (or
+rather of Clotilde--who, you know, by our laws is the real heir).
+That is a mistake. Explain it as you please, call it remorse,
+pride, love--what you like--while I was in France and he was
+managing my mother's business, unknown to me he gave me that
+plantation. When I succeeded him I found it and all its revenues
+kept distinct--as was but proper--from all other accounts, and
+belonging to me. 'Twas a fine, extensive place, had a good overseer
+on it and--I kept it. Why? Because I was a coward. I did not want
+it or its revenues; but, like my father, I would not offend my
+people. Peace first and justice afterwards--that was the principle
+on which I quietly made myself the trustee of a plantation and
+income which you would have given back to their owners, eh?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was silent.</p>
+<p>"My-de'-seh, recollect that to us the Grandissime name is a
+treasure. And what has preserved it so long? Cherishing the unity
+of our family; that has done it; that is how my father did it. Just
+or unjust, good or bad, needful or not, done elsewhere or not, I do
+not say; but it is a Creole trait. See, even now" (the speaker
+smiled on one side of his mouth) "in a certain section of the
+territory certain men, Creoles" (he whispered, gravely), "<i>some
+Grandissimes among them</i>, evading the United States revenue laws
+and even beating and killing some of the officials: well! Do the
+people at large repudiate those men? My-de'-seh, in no wise, seh!
+No; if they were <i>Am&eacute;ricains</i>--but a Louisianian--is a
+Louisianian; touch him not; when you touch him you touch all
+Louisiana! So with us Grandissimes; we are legion, but we are one.
+Now, my-de'-seh, the thing you ask me to do is to cast overboard
+that old traditional principle which is the secret of our
+existence."</p>
+<p>"<i>I</i> ask you?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah! you know you expect it. Ah! but you do not know the
+uproar such an action would make. And no 'noble part' in it,
+my-de'-seh, either. A few months ago--when we met by those
+graves--if I had acted then, my action would have been one of
+pure--even violent--<i>self</i>-sacrifice. Do you remember--on the
+levee, by the Place d'Armes--me asking you to send Agricola to me?
+I tried then to speak of it. He would not let me. Then, my people
+felt safe in their land-titles and public offices; this restitution
+would have hurt nothing but pride. Now, titles in doubt, government
+appointments uncertain, no ready capital in reach for any purpose,
+except that which would have to be handed over with the plantation
+(for to tell you the fact, my-de'-seh, no other account on my books
+has prospered), with matters changed in this way, I become the
+destroyer of my own flesh and blood! Yes, seh! and lest I might
+still find some room to boast, another change moves me into a
+position where it suits me, my-de'-seh, to make the restitution so
+fatal to those of my name. When you and I first met, those ladies
+were as much strangers to me as to you--as far as I <i>knew</i>.
+Then, if I had done this thing--but now--now, my-de'-seh, I find
+myself in love with one of them!"</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime looked his friend straight in the eye with the
+frowning energy of one who asserts an ugly fact.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, regarding the speaker with a gaze of respectful
+attention, did not falter; but his fevered blood, with an impulse
+that started him half from his seat, surged up into his head and
+face; and then--</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime blushed.</p>
+<p>In the few silent seconds that followed, the glances of the two
+friends continued to pass into each other's eyes, while about
+Honor&eacute;'s mouth hovered the smile of one who candidly
+surrenders his innermost secret, and the lips of the apothecary set
+themselves together as though he were whispering to himself behind
+them, "Steady."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, taking a sudden breath and
+waving a hand, "I came to ask about <i>your</i> trouble; but if you
+think you have any reason to withhold your confidence--"</p>
+<p>"No, sir; no! But can I be no help to you in this matter?"</p>
+<p>The Creole leaned back smilingly in his chair and knit his
+fingers.</p>
+<p>"No, I did not intend to say all this; I came to offer my help
+to you; but my mind is full--what do you expect? My-de'-seh, the
+foam must come first out of the bottle. You see"--he leaned forward
+again, laid two fingers in his palm and deepened his tone--"I will
+tell you: this tree--'our dead father's mistakes'--is about to drop
+another rotten apple. I spoke just now of the uproar this
+restitution would make; why, my-de'-seh, just the mention of the
+lady's name at my house, when we lately held the <i>f&ecirc;te de
+grandp&egrave;re</i>, has given rise to a quarrel which is likely
+to end in a duel."</p>
+<p>"Raoul was telling me," said the apothecary.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime made an affirmative gesture.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Frowenfeld, if you--if any one--could teach my people--I
+mean my family--the value of peace (I do not say the duty,
+my-de'-seh; a merchant talks of values); if you could teach them
+the value of peace, I would give you, if that was your price"--he
+ran the edge of his left hand knife-wise around the wrist of his
+right--"that. And if you would teach it to the whole
+community--well--I think I would not give my head; maybe you
+would." He laughed.</p>
+<p>"There is a peace which is bad," said the contemplative
+apothecary.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the Creole, promptly, "the very kind that I have
+been keeping all this time--and my father before me!"</p>
+<p>He spoke with much warmth.</p>
+<p>"Yes," he said again, after a pause which was not a rest, "I
+often see that we Grandissimes are a good example of the Creoles at
+large; we have one element that makes for peace; that--pardon the
+self-consciousness--is myself; and another element that makes for
+strife--led by my uncle Agricola; but, my-de'-seh, the peace
+element is that which ought to make the strife, and the strife
+element is that which ought to be made to keep the peace! Mr.
+Frowenfeld, I propose to become the strife-maker; how then, can I
+be a peacemaker at the same time? There is my diffycultie."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Grandissime," exclaimed Frowenfeld, "if you have any design
+in view founded on the high principles which I know to be the
+foundations of all your feelings, and can make use of the aid of a
+disgraced man, use me."</p>
+<p>"You are very generous," said the Creole, and both were silent.
+Honor&eacute; dropped his eyes from Frowenfeld's to the floor,
+rubbed his knee with his palm, and suddenly looked up.</p>
+<p>"You are innocent of wrong?"</p>
+<p>"Before God."</p>
+<p>"I feel sure of it. Tell me in a few words all about it. I ought
+to be able to extricate you. Let me hear it."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld again told as much as he thought he could,
+consistently with his pledges to Palmyre, touching with extreme
+lightness upon the part taken by Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"Turn around," said M. Grandissime at the close; "let me see the
+back of your head. And it is that that is giving you this fever,
+eh?"</p>
+<p>"Partly," replied Frowenfeld; "but how shall I vindicate my
+innocence? I think I ought to go back openly to this woman's house
+and get my hat. I was about to do that when I got your note; yet it
+seems a feeble--even if possible--expedient."</p>
+<p>"My friend," said Honor&eacute;, "leave it to me. I see your
+whole case, both what you tell and what you conceal. I guess it
+with ease. Knowing Palmyre so well, and knowing (what you do not)
+that all the voudous in town think you a sorcerer, I know just what
+she would drop down and beg you for--a <i>ouangan</i>, ha, ha! You
+see? Leave it all to me--and your hat with Palmyre, take a
+febrifuge and a nap, and await word from me."</p>
+<p>"And may I offer you no help in your difficulty?" asked the
+apothecary, as the two rose and grasped hands.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" said the Creole, with a little shrug, "you may do anything
+you can--which will be nothing."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+<h3>TESTS OF FRIENDSHIP</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Frowenfeld turned away from the closing door, caught his head
+between his hands and tried to comprehend the new wildness of the
+tumult within. Honor&eacute; Grandissime avowedly in love with one
+of them--<i>which one</i>? Doctor Keene visibly in love with one of
+them--<i>which one</i>? And he! What meant this bounding joy that,
+like one gorgeous moth among innumerable bats, flashed to and fro
+among the wild distresses and dismays swarming in and out of his
+distempered imagination? He did not answer the question; he only
+knew the confusion in his brain was dreadful. Both hands could not
+hold back the throbbing of his temples; the table did not steady
+the trembling of his hands; his thoughts went hither and thither,
+heedless of his call. Sit down as he might, rise up, pace the room,
+stand, lean his forehead against the wall--nothing could quiet the
+fearful disorder, until at length he recalled Honor&eacute;'s
+neglected advice and resolutely lay down and sought sleep; and,
+long before he had hoped to secure it, it came.</p>
+<p>In the distant Grandissime mansion, Agricola Fusilier was
+casting about for ways and means to rid himself of the heaviest
+heart that ever had throbbed in his bosom. He had risen at sunrise
+from slumber worse than sleeplessness, in which his dreams had
+anticipated the duel of to-morrow with Sylvestre. He was trying to
+get the unwonted quaking out of his hands and the memory of the
+night's heart-dissolving phantasms from before his inner vision. To
+do this he had resort to a very familiar, we may say time-honored,
+prescription--rum. He did not use it after the voudou fashion; the
+voudous pour it on the ground--Agricola was an anti-voudou. It
+finally had its effect. By eleven o'clock he seemed, outwardly at
+least, to be at peace with everything in Louisiana that he
+considered Louisianian, properly so-called; as to all else he was
+ready for war, as in peace one should be. While in this mood, and
+performing at a sideboard the solemn rite of <i>las onze</i>, news
+incidentally reached him, by the mouth of his busy second,
+Hippolyte, of Frowenfeld's trouble, and despite 'Polyte's
+protestations against the principal in a pending "affair" appearing
+on the street, he ordered the carriage and hurried to the
+apothecary's.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When Frowenfeld awoke, the fingers of his clock were passing the
+meridan. His fever was gone, his brain was calm, his strength in
+good measure had returned. There had been dreams in his sleep, too;
+he had seen Clotilde standing at the foot of his bed. He lay now,
+for a moment, lost in retrospection.</p>
+<p>"There can be no doubt about it," said he, as he rose up,
+looking back mentally at something in the past.</p>
+<p>The sound of carriage-wheels attracted his attention by ceasing
+before his street door. A moment later the voice of Agricola was
+heard in the shop greeting Raoul. As the old man lifted the head of
+his staff to tap on the inner door, Frowenfeld opened it.</p>
+<p>"Fusilier to the rescue!" said the great Louisianian, with a
+grasp of the apothecary's hand and a gaze of brooding
+admiration.</p>
+<p>Joseph gave him a chair, but with magnificent humility he
+insisted on not taking it until "Professor Frowenfeld" had himself
+sat down.</p>
+<p>The apothecary was very solemn. It seemed to him as if in this
+little back room his dead good name was lying in state, and these
+visitors were coming in to take their last look. From time to time
+he longed for more light, wondering why the gravity of his
+misadventure should seem so great.</p>
+<p>"H-m-h-y dear Professor!" began the old man. Pages of print
+could not comprise all the meanings of his smile and accent;
+benevolence, affection, assumed knowledge of the facts, disdain of
+results, remembrance of his own youth, charity for pranks,
+patronage--these were but a few. He spoke very slowly and deeply
+and with this smile of a hundred meanings. "Why did you not send
+for me, Joseph? Sir, whenever you have occasion to make a list of
+the friends who will stand by you, <i>right or wrong</i>--h-write
+the name of Citizen Agricola Fusilier at the top! Write it large
+and repeat it at the bottom! You understand me, Joseph?--and, mark
+me,--right or wrong!"</p>
+<p>"Not wrong," said Frowenfeld, "at least not in defence of wrong;
+I could not do that; but, I assure you, in this matter I have
+done--"</p>
+<p>"No worse than any one else would have done under the
+circumstances, my dear boy!--Nay, nay, do not interrupt me; I
+understand you, I understand you. H-do you imagine there is
+anything strange to me in this--at my age?"</p>
+<p>"But I am--"</p>
+<p>"--all right, sir! that is <i>what</i> you are. And you are
+under the wing of Agricola Fusilier, the old eagle; that is
+<i>where</i> you are. And you are one of my brood; that is
+<i>who</i> you are. Professor, listen to your old father.
+<i>The--man--makes--the--crime!</i> The wisdom of mankind never
+brought forth a maxim of more gigantic beauty. If the different
+grades of race and society did not have corresponding moral and
+civil liberties, varying in degree as they vary--h-why! <i>this</i>
+community, at least, would go to pieces! See here! Professor
+Frowenfeld is charged with misdemeanor. Very well, who is he?
+Foreigner or native? Foreigner by sentiment and intention, or only
+by accident of birth? Of our mental fibre--our aspirations--our
+delights--our indignations? I answer for you, Joseph, yes!--yes!
+What then? H-why, then the decision! Reached how? By apologetic
+reasonings? By instinct, sir! h-h-that guide of the nobly proud!
+And what is the decision? Not guilty. Professor Frowenfeld,
+<i>absolvo te!</i>"</p>
+<p>It was in vain that the apothecary repeatedly tried to interrupt
+this speech. "Citizen Fusilier, do you know me no
+better?"--"Citizen Fusilier, if you will but listen!"--such were
+the fragments of his efforts to explain. The old man was not so
+confident as he pretended to be that Frowenfeld was that complete
+proselyte which alone satisfies a Creole; but he saw him in a
+predicament and cast to him this life-buoy, which if a man should
+refuse, he would deserve to drown.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld tried again to begin.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Fusilier--"</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier!"</p>
+<p>"Citizen, candor demands that I undeceive--"</p>
+<p>"Candor demands--h-my dear Professor, let me tell you exactly
+what she demands. She demands that in here--within this
+apartment--we understand each other. That demand is met."</p>
+<p>"But--" Frowenfeld frowned impatiently.</p>
+<p>"That demand, Joseph, is fully met! I understand the whole
+matter like an eye-witness! Now there is another demand to be met,
+the demand of friendship! In here, candor; outside, friendship; in
+here, one of our brethren has been adventurous and unfortunate;
+outside"--the old man smiled a smile of benevolent
+mendacity--"outside, nothing has happened."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld insisted savagely on speaking; but Agricola raised
+his voice, and gray hairs prevailed.</p>
+<p>"At least, what <i>has</i> happened? The most ordinary thing in
+the world; Professor Frowenfeld lost his footing on a slippery
+gunwale, fell, cut his head upon a protruding spike, and went into
+the house of Palmyre to bathe his wound; but finding it worse than
+he had at first supposed it, immediately hurried out again and came
+to his store. He left his hat where it had fallen, too muddy to be
+worth recovery. Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin and others, passing at
+the time, thought he had met with violence in the house of the
+hair-dresser, and drew some natural inferences, but have since been
+better informed; and the public will please understand that
+Professor Frowenfeld is a white man, a gentleman, and a
+Louisianian, ready to vindicate his honor, and that Citizen
+Agricola Fusilier is his friend!"</p>
+<p>The old man looked around with the air of a bull on a
+hill-top.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, vexed beyond degree, restrained himself only for the
+sake of an object in view, and contented himself with repeating for
+the fourth or fifth time,--</p>
+<p>"I cannot accept any such deliverance."</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld, friendship--society--demands it; our
+circle must be protected in all its members. You have nothing to do
+with it. You will leave it with me, Joseph."</p>
+<p>"No, no," said Frowenfeld, "I thank you, but--"</p>
+<p>"Ah! my dear boy, thank me not; I cannot help these impulses; I
+belong to a warm-hearted race. But"--he drew back in his chair
+sidewise and made great pretence of frowning--"you decline the
+offices of that precious possession, a Creole friend?"</p>
+<p>"I only decline to be shielded by a fiction."</p>
+<p>"Ah-h!" said Agricola, further nettling his victim by a gaze of
+stagy admiration. "'<i>Sans peur et sans reproche</i>'--and yet you
+disappoint me. Is it for naught, that I have sallied forth from
+home, drawing the curtains of my carriage to shield me from the
+gazing crowd? It was to rescue my friend--my vicar--my
+coadjutor--my son--from the laughs and finger-points of the vulgar
+mass. H-I might as well have stayed at home--or better, for my
+peculiar position to-day rather requires me to keep in--"</p>
+<p>"No, citizen," said Frowenfeld, laying his hand upon Agricola's
+arm, "I trust it is not in vain that you have come out. There
+<i>is</i> a man in trouble whom only you can deliver."</p>
+<p>The old man began to swell with complacency.</p>
+<p>"H-why, really--"</p>
+<p>"<i>He</i>, Citizen, is truly of your kind--"</p>
+<p>"He must be delivered, Professor Frowenfeld--"</p>
+<p>"He is a native Louisianian, not only by accident of birth but
+by sentiment and intention," said Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>The old man smiled a benign delight, but the apothecary now had
+the upper hand, and would not hear him speak.</p>
+<p>"His aspirations," continued the speaker, "his
+indignations--mount with his people's. His pulse beats with yours,
+sir. He is a part of your circle. He is one of your caste."</p>
+<p>Agricola could not be silent.</p>
+<p>"Ha-a-a-ah! Joseph, h-h-you make my blood tingle! Speak to the
+point; who--"</p>
+<p>"I believe him, moreover, Citizen Fusilier, innocent of the
+charge laid--"</p>
+<p>"H-innocent? H-of course he is innocent, sir! We will
+<i>make</i> him inno--"</p>
+<p>"Ah! Citizen, he is already under sentence of death!"</p>
+<p>"<i>What?</i> A Creole under sentence!" Agricola swore a heathen
+oath, set his knees apart and grasped his staff by the middle.
+"Sir, we will liberate him if we have to overturn the
+government!"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld shook his head.</p>
+<p>"You have got to overturn something stronger than
+government."</p>
+<p>"And pray what--"</p>
+<p>"A conventionality," said Frowenfeld, holding the old man's
+eye.</p>
+<p>"Ha, ha! my b-hoy, h-you are right. But we will
+overturn--eh?"</p>
+<p>"I say I fear your engagements will prevent. I hear you take
+part to-morrow morning in--"</p>
+<p>Agricola suddenly stiffened.</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld, it strikes me, sir, you are taking
+something of a liberty."</p>
+<p>"For which I ask pardon," exclaimed Frowenfeld. "Then I may not
+expect--"</p>
+<p>The old man melted again.</p>
+<p>"But who is this person in mortal peril?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier," he said, looking first down at the floor and
+then up into the inquirer's face, "on my assurance that he is not
+only a native Creole, but a Grandissime--"</p>
+<p>"It is not possible!" exclaimed Agricola.</p>
+<p>"--a Grandissime of the purest blood, will you pledge me your
+aid to liberate him from his danger, 'right or wrong'?"</p>
+<p>"<i>Will</i> I? H-why, certainly! Who is he?"</p>
+<p>"Citizen--it is Sylves--"</p>
+<p>Agricola sprang up with a thundering oath.</p>
+<p>The apothecary put out a pacifying hand, but it was spurned.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2334.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2334.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2334.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his
+dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the
+other his knee, and both trembled violently".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"Let me go! How dare you, sir? How dare you, sir?" bellowed
+Agricola.</p>
+<p>He started toward the door, cursing furiously and keeping his
+eye fixed on Frowenfeld with a look of rage not unmixed with
+terror.</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier," said the apothecary, following him with one
+palm uplifted, as if that would ward off his abuse, "don't go! I
+adjure you, don't go! Remember your pledge, Citizen Fusilier!"</p>
+<p>Agricola did not pause a moment; but when he had swung the door
+violently open the way was still obstructed. The painter of
+"Louisiana refusing to enter the Union" stood before him, his head
+elevated loftily, one foot set forward and his arm extended like a
+tragedian's.</p>
+<p>"Stan' bag-sah!"</p>
+<p>"Let me pass! Let me pass, or I will kill you!"</p>
+<p>Mr. Innerarity smote his bosom and tossed his hand aloft.</p>
+<p>"Kill me-firse an' pass aftah!"</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier," said Frowenfeld, "I beg you to hear me."</p>
+<p>"Go away! Go away!"</p>
+<p>The old man drew back from the door and stood in the corner
+against the book-shelves as if all the horrors of the last night's
+dreams had taken bodily shape in the person of the apothecary. He
+trembled and stammered:</p>
+<p>"Ke--keep off! Keep off! My God! Raoul, he has insulted me!" He
+made a miserable show of drawing a weapon. "No man may insult me
+and live! If you are a man, Professor Frowenfeld, you will defend
+yourself!"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld lost his temper, but his hasty reply was drowned by
+Raoul's vehement speech.</p>
+<p>"'Tis not de trute!" cried Raoul. "He try to save you from
+hell-'n'-damnation w'en 'e h-ought to give you a good cuss'n!"--and
+in the ecstasy of his anger burst into tears.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, in an agony of annoyance, waved him away and he
+disappeared, shutting the door.</p>
+<p>Agricola, moved far more from within than from without, had sunk
+into a chair under the shelves. His head was bowed, a heavy
+grizzled lock fell down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand
+clenched the top of his staff, the other his knee, and both
+trembled violently. As Frowenfeld, with every demonstration of
+beseeching kindness, began to speak, he lifted his eyes and said,
+piteously:</p>
+<p>"Stop! Stop!"</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier, it is you who must stop. Stop before God
+Almighty stops you, I beg you. I do not presume to rebuke you. I
+<i>know</i> you want a clear record. I know it better to-day than I
+ever did before. Citizen Fusilier, I honor your intentions--"</p>
+<p>Agricola roused a little and looked up with a miserable attempt
+at his habitual patronizing smile.</p>
+<p>"H-my dear boy, I overlook"--but he met in</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's eyes a spirit so superior to his dissimulation that
+the smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory
+and apologetic distress. He reached up an arm.</p>
+<p>"I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error"--his
+eyes quailed and dropped to the floor--"but I--your arm, my dear
+Joseph; age is creeping upon me." He rose to his feet. "I am
+feeling really indisposed to-day--not at all bright; my solicitude
+for you, my dear b--"</p>
+<p>He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the
+apothecary, moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the
+table stumbled into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him. He
+folded his arms on the edge of the board and rested his forehead on
+them, while Frowenfeld sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew
+paper and pen across the table and wrote.</p>
+<p>"Are you writing something, Professor?" asked the old man,
+without stirring. His staff tumbled to the floor. The apothecary's
+answer was a low, preoccupied one. Two or three times over he wrote
+and rejected what he had written.</p>
+<p>Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid
+the writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and
+waited.</p>
+<p>After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to
+conceal his anguish under a smile.</p>
+<p>"I have a sad headache."</p>
+<p>He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen
+which Frowenfeld extended toward him.</p>
+<p>"What can I do for you, Professor? Sign something? There is
+nothing I would not do for Professor Frowenfeld. What have you
+written, eh?"</p>
+<p>He felt helplessly for his spectacles.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld read:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mr. Sylvestre Grandissime: I spoke in haste</i>."</p>
+<p>He felt himself tremble as he read. Agricola fumbled with the
+pen, lifted his eyes with one more effort at the old look, said,
+"My dear boy, I do this purely to please you," and to Frowenfeld's
+delight and astonishment wrote:</p>
+<p>"<i>Your affectionate uncle, Agricola Fusilier</i>."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2>
+<h3>LOUISIANA STATES HER WANTS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Raoul as that person turned in the
+front door of the shop after watching Agricola's carriage roll
+away--he had intended to unburden his mind to the apothecary with
+all his natural impetuosity; but Frowenfeld's gravity as he turned,
+with the paper in his hand, induced a different manner. Raoul had
+learned, despite all the impulses of his nature, to look upon
+Frowenfeld with a sort of enthusiastic awe. He dropped his voice
+and said--asking like a child a question he was perfectly able to
+answer--</p>
+<p>"What de matta wid Agricole?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld, for the moment well-nigh oblivious of his own
+trouble, turned upon his assistant a look in which elation was
+oddly blended with solemnity, and replied as he walked by:</p>
+<p>"Rush of truth to the heart."</p>
+<p>Raoul followed a step.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"</p>
+<p>The apothecary turned once more. Raoul's face bore an expression
+of earnest practicability that invited confidence.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', Agricola writ'n' to Sylvestre to stop dat
+dool?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"You goin' take dat lett' to Sylvestre?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', dat de wrong g-way. You got to take it to
+'Polyte Brahmin-Mandarin, an' 'e got to take it to Valentine
+Grandissime, an' '<i>e</i> got to take it to Sylvestre. You see,
+you got to know de manner to make. Once 'pon a time I had a
+diffycultie wid--"</p>
+<p>"I see," said Frowenfeld; "where may I find Hippolyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin at this time of day?"</p>
+<p>Raoul shrugged.</p>
+<p>"If the pre-parish-ions are not complitted, you will not find
+'im; but if they har complitted--you know 'im?"</p>
+<p>"By sight."</p>
+<p>"Well, you may fine him at Maspero's, or helse in de front of de
+Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te, or helse at de Caf&eacute; Louis
+Quatorze--mos' likely in front of de Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te. You know,
+dat diffycultie I had, dat arise itseff from de discush'n of one of
+de mil-littery mov'ments of ca-valry; you know, I--"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the apothecary; "here, Raoul, is some money; please
+go and buy me a good, plain hat."</p>
+<p>"All right." Raoul darted behind the counter and got his hat out
+of a drawer. "Were at you buy your hats?"</p>
+<p>"Anywhere."</p>
+<p>"I will go at <i>my</i> hatter."</p>
+<p>As the apothecary moved about his shop awaiting Raoul's return,
+his own disaster became once more the subject of his anxiety. He
+noticed that almost every person who passed looked in. "This is the
+place,"--"That is the man,"--how plainly the glances of passers
+sometimes speak! The people seemed, moreover, a little nervous.
+Could even so little a city be stirred about such a petty, private
+trouble as this of his? No; the city was having tribulations of its
+own.</p>
+<p>New Orleans was in that state of suppressed excitement which, in
+later days, a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has
+caused to be described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul
+perceived it before he had left the shop twenty paces behind. By
+the time he reached the first corner he was in the swirl of the
+popular current. He enjoyed it like a strong swimmer. He even drank
+of it. It was better than wine and music mingled.</p>
+<p>"Twelve weeks next Thursday, and no sign of re-cession!" said
+one of two rapid walkers just in front of him. Their talk was in
+the French of the province.</p>
+<p>"Oh, re-cession!" exclaimed the other angrily. "The cession is a
+reality. That, at least, we have got to swallow. Incredulity is
+dead."</p>
+<p>The first speaker's feelings could find expression only in
+profanity.</p>
+<p>"The cession--we wash our hands of it!" He turned partly around
+upon his companion, as they hurried along, and gave his hands a
+vehement dry washing. "If Incredulity is dead, Non-participation
+reigns in its stead, and Discontent is prime minister!" He
+brandished his fist as they turned a corner.</p>
+<p>"If we must change, let us be subjects of the First Consul!"
+said one of another pair whom Raoul met on a crossing.</p>
+<p>There was a gathering of boys and vagabonds at the door of a
+gun-shop. A man inside was buying a gun. That was all.</p>
+<p>A group came out of a "coffee-house." The leader turned about
+upon the rest:</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah, bah! cette</i> Amayrican libetty!"</p>
+<p>"See! see! it is this way!" said another of the number, taking
+two others by their elbows, to secure an audience, "we shall do
+nothing ourselves; we are just watching that vile Congress. It is
+going to tear the country all to bits!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, my friend, you haven't got the <i>inside</i> news," said
+still another--Raoul lingered to hear him--"Louisiana is going to
+state her wants! We have the liberty of free speech and are going
+to use it!"</p>
+<p>His information was correct; Louisiana, no longer incredulous of
+her Americanization, had laid hold of her new liberties and was
+beginning to run with them, like a boy dragging his kite over the
+clods. She was about to state her wants, he said.</p>
+<p>"And her don't-wants," volunteered one whose hand Raoul shook
+heartily. "We warn the world. If Congress doesn't take heed, we
+will not be responsible for the consequences!"</p>
+<p>Raoul's hatter was full of the subject. As Mr. Innerarity
+entered, he was saying good-day to a customer in his native tongue,
+English, and so continued:</p>
+<p>"Yes, under Spain we had a solid, quiet government--Ah! Mr.
+Innerarity, overjoyed to see you! We were speaking of these
+political troubles. I wish we might see the last of them. It's a
+terrible bad mess; corruption to-day--I tell you what--it will be
+disruption to-morrow. Well, it is no work of ours; we shall merely
+stand off and see it."</p>
+<p>"Mi-frien'," said Raoul, with mingled pity and superiority, "you
+haven't got doze <i>inside</i> nooz; Louisiana is goin' to state
+w'at she want."</p>
+<p>On his way back toward the shop Mr. Innerarity easily learned
+Louisiana's wants and don't-wants by heart. She wanted a Creole
+governor; she did not want Casa Calvo invited to leave the country;
+she wanted the provisions of the Treaty of Cession hurried up; "as
+soon as possible," that instrument said; she had waited long
+enough; she did not want "dat trile bi-ju'y"--execrable trash! she
+wanted an <i>unwatched import trade!</i> she did not want a single
+additional Am&eacute;ricain appointed to office; she wanted the
+slave trade.</p>
+<p>Just in sight of the bareheaded and anxious Frowenfeld, Raoul
+let himself be stopped by a friend.</p>
+<p>The remark was exchanged that the times were exciting.</p>
+<p>"And yet," said the friend, "the city was never more peaceable.
+It is exasperating to see that coward governor looking so
+diligently after his police and hurrying on the organization of the
+Am&eacute;ricain volunteer militia!" He pointed savagely here and
+there. "M. Innerarity, I am lost in admiration at the all but
+craven patience with which our people endure their wrongs! Do my
+pistols show <i>too</i> much through my coat? Well, good-day; I
+must go home and clean my gun; my dear friend, one don't know how
+soon he may have to encounter the Recorder and Register of
+Land-titles."</p>
+<p>Raoul finished his errand.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', excuse me--I take dat lett' to 'Polyte for
+you if you want." There are times when mere shopkeeping--any
+peaceful routine--is torture.</p>
+<p>But the apothecary felt so himself; he declined his assistant's
+offer and went out toward the Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2>
+<h3>FROWENFELD FINDS SYLVESTRE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te restaurant occupied the whole ground
+floor of a small, low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco
+building which still stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter
+streets, in company with the well-preserved old Cabildo and the
+young Cathedral, reminding one of the shabby and swarthy Creoles
+whom we sometimes see helping better-kept kinsmen to murder time on
+the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It was a favorite
+rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the court-rooms and
+municipal bureaus. There you found the choicest legal and political
+gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat and drink.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had
+to move about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not
+overlooking the object of his search.</p>
+<p>As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking,
+gazed rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and
+smiled and murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt
+their four eyes on his back.</p>
+<p>There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but
+wherever he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once
+or twice he saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was
+something in the state of mind of these good citizens that made the
+present sight of him particularly discordant.</p>
+<p>Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking
+excitedly in the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet
+amusedly defiant, mention of a certain <i>Pointe Canadienne</i>. It
+was a portion of the Mississippi River "coast" not far above New
+Orleans, where the merchants of the city met the smugglers who came
+up from the Gulf by way of Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men
+did not call it by the proper title just given; there were
+commercial gentlemen in the Creole city, Englishmen, Scotchmen,
+Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles, who in public
+indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their complicity
+with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading
+rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld
+passed these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after
+him, three with offensive smiles and one with a stare of
+contempt.</p>
+<p>Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an
+Am&eacute;ricain, in English.</p>
+<p>"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under
+other governments we had any quantity!"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the venturesome Am&eacute;ricain in retort, "such as
+it was; <i>assignats, liberanzas, bons</i>--Claiborne will give us
+better money than that when he starts his bank."</p>
+<p>"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old
+father. What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker
+ceased; he had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld
+heard a muttered curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud
+burst of laughter.</p>
+<p>A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always
+been greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him
+without turning his eyes.</p>
+<p>"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in
+Louisiana is to be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is
+the kind of liberty they give us--all eat out of one trough."</p>
+<p>"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed
+man, setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have,
+is"--he was speaking in French, but gave the want in
+English--"Representesh'n wizout Taxa--" There his eye fell upon
+Frowenfeld and followed him with a scowl.</p>
+<p>"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wass you sink of a
+mane w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in
+ze sem room?"</p>
+<p>The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more
+general than he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did
+so, to an Am&eacute;ricain merchant with whom he had some
+acquaintance.</p>
+<p>"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see
+me? I thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all,
+does it sum up?"</p>
+<p>A Creole interrupted him with an answer:</p>
+<p>"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Pahtitsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"</p>
+<p>The voice was like Honor&eacute;'s. Frowenfeld looked; it was
+Agamemnon Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started
+up the rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he
+suddenly found himself one of a crowd standing before a
+newly-posted placard, and at a glance saw it to be one of the
+inflammatory publications which were a feature of the times,
+appearing both daily and nightly on walls and fences.</p>
+<p>"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it
+back," said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.</p>
+<p>Exchange Alley was once <i>Passage de la Bourse</i>, and led
+down (as it now does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to
+an establishment which seems to have served for a long term of
+years as a sort of merchants' and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a
+minimum of china and a maximum of glass: Maspero's--certainly
+Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we believe, Maspero's the day
+the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It was a livelier spot
+than the Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te; it was to that what commerce is to
+litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping.
+Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public
+sentiment in which sanctity signs politicians' memorials and
+chivalry breaks into the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump
+of the machinery was in Maspero's.</p>
+<p>The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine
+Grandissime. There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners
+in front of him; he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in
+Creole French.</p>
+<p>"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know
+my rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We
+have"--with a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended
+palm--"a right to protect them from the attack of interlopers, even
+if we have to use gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the
+liberties of even this army of fortune-hunters. <i>Let</i> them
+think." He half laughed. "Who cares whether they share our opinions
+or not? Let them have their own. I had rather they would. But let
+them hold their tongues. Let them remember they are Yankees. Let
+them remember they are unbidden guests." All this without the least
+warmth.</p>
+<p>But the answer came aglow with passion, from one of the
+semicircle, whom two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It
+also was in French, but the apothecary was astonished to hear his
+own name uttered.</p>
+<p>"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see
+Joseph--"has never held his tongue. He has given us good reason
+half a dozen times, with his too free speech and his high moral
+whine, to hang him with the lamppost rope! And now, when we have
+borne and borne and borne and borne with him, and he shows up, all
+at once, in all his rottenness, you say let him alone! One would
+think you were defending Honor&eacute; Grandissime!" The back of
+one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of the other.</p>
+<p>Valentine smiled.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute; Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are
+talking about. Not Honor&eacute;, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own
+avowal, is guilty of affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we
+have good reason to suspect of meditating his family's dishonor and
+embarrassment!" Somebody saw the apothecary and laid a cautionary
+touch on Valentine's arm, but he brushed it off. "As for Professor
+Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."</p>
+<p>"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.</p>
+<p>"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you
+again what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin
+and held his clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he
+is--he is--"</p>
+<p>He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large,
+white, and immovable, stood close before him.</p>
+<p>"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander,
+edging toward a pillar.</p>
+<p>The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the
+apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blushing mood, and was
+not disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made
+a sudden, angry change of attitude, and demanded:</p>
+<p>"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee
+clown? Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"Sir, I am not aware that I have ever offered you the slightest
+injury or affront; if you wish to finish your conversation with
+this gentleman, I will wait till you are through."</p>
+<p>The Creole bowed, as a knight who takes up the gage. He turned
+to Valentine.</p>
+<p>"Valentine, I was sayin' to you dad diz pusson is a cowa'd and a
+sneak; I repead thad! I repead id! I spurn you! Go f'om yeh!"</p>
+<p>The apothecary stood like a cliff.</p>
+<p>It was too much for Creole forbearance. His adversary, with a
+long snarl of oaths, sprang forward and with a great sweep of his
+arm slapped the apothecary on the cheek. And then--</p>
+<p>What a silence!</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld had advanced one step; his opponent stood half turned
+away, but with his face toward the face he had just struck and his
+eyes glaring up into the eyes of the apothecary. The semicircle was
+dissolved, and each man stood in neutral isolation, motionless and
+silent. For one instant objects lost all natural proportion, and to
+the expectant on-lookers the largest thing in the room was the big,
+upraised, white fist of Frowenfeld. But in the next--how was this?
+Could it be that that fist had not descended?</p>
+<p>The imperturbable Valentine, with one preventing arm laid across
+the breast of the expected victim and an open hand held
+restrainingly up for truce, stood between the two men and said:</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld--one moment--"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's face was ashen.</p>
+<p>"Don't speak, sir!" he exclaimed. "If I attempt to parley I
+shall break every bone in his body. Don't speak! I can guess your
+explanation--he is drunk. But take him away."</p>
+<p>Valentine, as sensible as cool, assisted by the kinsman who had
+laid a hand on his arm, shuffled his enraged companion out.
+Frowenfeld's still swelling anger was so near getting the better of
+him that he unconsciously followed a quick step or two; but as
+Valentine looked back and waved him to stop, he again stood
+still.</p>
+<p>"<i>Professeur</i>--you know,--" said a stranger, "daz Sylvestre
+Grandissime."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld rather spoke to himself than answered:</p>
+<p>"If I had not known that, I should have--" He checked himself
+and left the place.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>While the apothecary was gathering these experiences, the free
+spirit of Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in
+a hen-coop. One moment after another brought him straggling
+evidences, now of one sort, now of another, of the "never more
+peaceable" state of affairs without. If only some pretext could be
+conjured up, plausible or flimsy, no matter; if only some man would
+pass with a gun on his shoulder, were it only a blow-gun; or if his
+employer were any one but his beloved Frowenfeld, he would clap up
+the shutters as quickly as he had already done once to-day, and be
+off to the wars. He was just trying to hear imaginary pistol-shots
+down toward the Place d'Armes, when the apothecary returned.</p>
+<p>"D' you fin' him?"</p>
+<p>"I found Sylvestre."</p>
+<p>"'E took de lett'?"</p>
+<p>"I did not offer it." Frowenfeld, in a few compact sentences,
+told his adventure.</p>
+<p>Raoul was ablaze with indignation.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', gimmy dat lett'!" He extended his pretty
+hand.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld pondered.</p>
+<p>"Gimmy 'er!" persisted the artist; "befo' I lose de sight from
+dat lett' she goin' to be hanswer by Sylvestre Grandissime, an' 'e
+goin' to wrat you one appo-logie! Oh! I goin' mek 'im crah fo'
+shem!"</p>
+<p>"If I could know you would do only as I--"</p>
+<p>"I do it!" cried Raoul, and sprang for his hat; and in the end
+Frowenfeld let him have his way.</p>
+<p>"I had intended seeing him--" the apothecary said.</p>
+<p>"Nevvamine to see; I goin' tell him!" cried Raoul, as he crowded
+his hat fiercely down over his curls and plunged out.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2>
+<h3>TO COME TO THE POINT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was equally a part of Honor&eacute; Grandissime's nature and
+of his art as a merchant to wear a look of serene leisure. With
+this look on his face he re&euml;ntered his counting-room after his
+morning visit to Frowenfeld's shop. He paused a moment outside the
+rail, gave the weak-eyed gentleman who presided there a quiet
+glance equivalent to a beckon, and, as that person came near,
+communicated two or three items of intelligence or instruction
+concerning office details, by which that invaluable diviner of
+business meanings understood that he wished to be let alone for an
+hour. Then M. Grandissime passed on into his private office, and,
+shutting the door behind him, walked briskly to his desk and sat
+down.</p>
+<p>He dropped his elbows upon a broad paper containing some
+recently written, unfinished memoranda that included figures in
+column, cast his eyes quite around the apartment, and then covered
+his face with his palms--a gesture common enough for a tired man of
+business in a moment of seclusion; but just as the face disappeared
+in the hands, the look of serene leisure gave place to one of great
+mental distress. The paper under his elbows, to the consideration
+of which he seemed about to return, was in the handwriting of his
+manager, with additions by his own pen. Earlier in the day he had
+come to a pause in the making of these additions, and, after one or
+two vain efforts to proceed, had laid down his pen, taken his hat,
+and gone to see the unlucky apothecary. Now he took up the broken
+thread. To come to a decision; that was the task which forced from
+him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly through his
+palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles, and then
+opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come; let
+me make up my mind."</p>
+<p>There may be men who take every moral height at a dash; but to
+the most of us there must come moments when our wills can but just
+rise and walk in their sleep. Those who in such moments wait for
+clear views find, when the issue is past, that they were only
+yielding to the devil's chloroform.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; Grandissme bent his eyes upon the paper. But he
+saw neither its figures nor its words. The interrogation,
+"Surrender Fausse Rivi&egrave;re?" appeared to hang between his
+eyes and the paper, and when his resolution tried to answer "Yes,"
+he saw red flags; he heard the auctioneer's drum; he saw his
+kinsmen handing house-keys to strangers; he saw the old servants of
+the great family standing in the marketplace; he saw kinswomen
+pawning their plate; he saw his clerks (Brahmins, Mandarins,
+Grandissimes) standing idle and shabby in the arcade of the Cabildo
+and on the banquettes of Maspero's and the Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te; he
+saw red-eyed young men in the Exchange denouncing a man who, they
+said, had, ostensibly for conscience's sake, but really for love,
+forced upon the woman he had hoped to marry a fortune filched from
+his own kindred. He saw the junto of doctors in Frowenfeld's door
+charitably deciding him insane; he saw the more vengeful of his
+family seeking him with half-concealed weapons; he saw himself shot
+at in the rue Royale, in the rue Toulouse, and in the Place
+d'Armes: and, worst of all, missed.</p>
+<p>But he wiped his forehead, and the writing on the paper became,
+in a measure, visible. He read:</p>
+<blockquote>Total mortgages on the lands of all the Grandissimes
+$--<br>
+Total present value of same, titles at buyers' risk --<br>
+Cash, goods, and accounts --<br>
+Fausse Rivi&egrave;re Plantation account --</blockquote>
+<p>There were other items, but he took up the edge of the paper
+mechanically, pushed it slowly away from him, leaned back in his
+chair and again laid his hands upon his face.</p>
+<p>"Suppose I retain Fausse Rivi&egrave;re," he said to himself, as
+if he had not said it many times before.</p>
+<p>Then he saw memoranda that were not on any paper before
+him--such a mortgage to be met on such a date; so much from Fausse
+Rivi&egrave;re Plantation account retained to protect that mortgage
+from foreclosure; such another to be met on such a date--so much
+more of same account to protect it. He saw Aurora and Clotilde
+Nancanou, with anguished faces, offering woman's pleadings to deaf
+constables. He saw the remainder of Aurora's plantation account
+thrown to the lawyers to keep the question of the Grandissime
+titles languishing in the courts. He saw the fortunes of his clan
+rallied meanwhile and coming to the rescue, himself and kindred
+growing independent of questionable titles, and even Fausse
+Rivi&egrave;re Plantation account restored, but Aurora and Clotilde
+nowhere to be found. And then he saw the grave, pale face of Joseph
+Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>He threw himself forward, drew the paper nervously toward him,
+and stared at the figures. He began at the first item and went over
+the whole paper, line by line, testing every extension, proving
+every addition, noting if possibly any transposition of figures had
+been made and overlooked, if something was added that should have
+been subtracted, or subtracted that should have been added. It was
+like a prisoner trying the bars of his cell.</p>
+<p>Was there no way to make things happen differently? Had he not
+overlooked some expedient? Was not some financial manoeuvre
+possible which might compass both desired ends? He left his chair
+and walked up and down, as Joseph at that very moment was doing in
+the room where he had left him, came back, looked at the paper, and
+again walked up and down. He murmured now and then to himself:
+"<i>Self</i>-denial--that is not the hard work. Penniless
+myself--<i>that</i> is play," and so on. He turned by and by and
+stood looking up at that picture of the man in the cuirass which
+Aurora had once noticed. He looked at it, but he did not see it. He
+was thinking--"Her rent is due to-morrow. She will never believe I
+am not her landlord. She will never go to my half-brother." He
+turned once more and mentally beat his breast as he muttered: "Why
+do I not decide?"</p>
+<p>Somebody touched the doorknob. Honor&eacute; stepped forward and
+opened it. It was a mortgager.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah! entrez, Monsieur</i>."</p>
+<p>He retained the visitor's hand, leading him in and talking
+pleasantly in French until both had found chairs. The conversation
+continued in that tongue through such pointless commercial gossip
+as this:</p>
+<p>"So the brig <i>Equinox</i> is aground at the head of the
+Passes," said M. Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"I have just heard she is off again."</p>
+<p>"Aha?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; the Fort Plaquemine canoe is just up from below. I
+understand John McDonough has bought the entire cargo of the
+schooner <i>Freedom</i>."</p>
+<p>"No, not all; Blanque et Fils bought some twenty boys and women
+out of the lot. Where is she lying?"</p>
+<p>"Right at the head of the Basin."</p>
+<p>And much more like this; but by and by the mortgager came to the
+point with the casual remark:</p>
+<p>"The excitement concerning land titles seems to increase rather
+than subside."</p>
+<p>"They must have <i>something</i> to be excited about, I
+suppose," said M. Grandissime, crossing his legs and smiling. It
+was tradesman's talk.</p>
+<p>"Yes," replied the other; "there seems to be an idea current
+to-day that all holders under Spanish titles are to be immediately
+dispossessed, without even process of court. I believe a very
+slight indiscretion on the part of the Governor-General would
+precipitate a riot."</p>
+<p>"He will not commit any," said M. Grandissime with a quiet
+gravity, changing his manner to that of one who draws upon a
+reserve of private information. "There will be no outbreak."</p>
+<p>"I suppose not. We do not know, really, that the American
+Congress will throw any question upon titles; but still--"</p>
+<p>"What are some of the shrewdest Americans among us doing?" asked
+M. Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"Yes," replied the mortgager, "it is true they are buying these
+very titles; but they may be making a mistake?"</p>
+<p>Unfortunately for the speaker, he allowed his face an expression
+of argumentative shrewdness as he completed this sentence, and M.
+Grandissime, the merchant, caught an instantaneous full view of his
+motive; he wanted to buy. He was a man whose known speculative
+policy was to "go in" in moments of panic.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime was again face to face with the question of the
+morning. To commence selling must be to go on selling. This, as a
+plan, included restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution
+to the Grandissimes, for should their <i>sold</i> titles be
+pronounced bad, then the titles of other lands would be bad; many
+an asset among M. Grandissime's memoranda would shrink into
+nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the Grandissime estates, left
+to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's accumulated fortune,
+would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should these titles,
+after being parted with, turn out good, his incensed kindred,
+shutting their eyes to his memoranda and despising his exhibits,
+would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go about the
+streets of his town the subject of their implacable denunciation,
+the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So much, should
+he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter upon
+that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail
+himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune
+which the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if
+lost at all, only when the family could afford to lose them, and
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime would continue to be Honor&eacute; the
+Magnificent, the admiration of the city and the idol of his clan.
+But Aurora--and Clotilde--would have to eat the crust of poverty,
+while their fortunes, even in his hands, must bear all the jeopardy
+of the scheme. That was all. Retain Fausse Rivi&egrave;re and its
+wealth, and save the Grandissimes; surrender Fausse Rivi&egrave;re,
+let the Grandissime estates go, and save the Nancanous. That was
+the whole dilemma.</p>
+<p>"Let me see," said M. Grandissime. "You have a mortgage on one
+of our Golden Coast plantations. Well, to be frank with you, I was
+thinking of that when you came in. You know I am partial to prompt
+transactions--I thought of offering you either to take up that
+mortgage or to sell you the plantation, as you may prefer. I have
+ventured to guess that it would suit you to own it."</p>
+<p>And the speaker felt within him a secret exultation in the idea
+that he had succeeded in throwing the issue off upon a Providence
+that could control this mortgager's choice.</p>
+<p>"I would prefer to leave that choice with you," said the coy
+would-be purchaser; and then the two went coquetting again for
+another moment.</p>
+<p>"I understand that Nicholas Girod is proposing to erect a
+four-story brick building on the corner of Royale and St. Pierre.
+Do you think it practicable? Do you think our soil will support
+such a structure?"</p>
+<p>"Pitot thinks it will. Bor&eacute; says it is perfectly
+feasible."</p>
+<p>So they dallied.</p>
+<p>"Well," said the mortgager, presently rising, "you will make up
+your mind and let me know, will you?"</p>
+<p>The chance repetition of those words "make up your mind" touched
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime like a hot iron. He rose with the
+visitor.</p>
+<p>"Well, sir, what would you give us for our title in case we
+should decide to part with it?"</p>
+<p>The two men moved slowly, side by side, toward the door, and in
+the half-open doorway, after a little further trifling, the title
+was sold.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-day," said M. Grandissime. "M. de Brahmin will
+arrange the papers for us to-morrow."</p>
+<p>He turned back toward his private desk.</p>
+<p>"And now," thought he, "I am acting without resolving. No merit;
+no strength of will; no clearness of purpose; no emphatic decision;
+nothing but a yielding to temptation."</p>
+<p>And M. Grandissime spoke truly; but it is only whole men who so
+yield--yielding to the temptation to do right.</p>
+<p>He passed into the counting-room, to M. De Brahmin, and standing
+there talked in an inaudible tone, leaning over the upturned
+spectacles of his manager, for nearly an hour. Then, saying he
+would go to dinner, he went out. He did not dine at home nor at the
+Veau-qui-t&ecirc;te, nor at any of the clubs; so much is known; he
+merely disappeared for two or three hours and was not seen again
+until late in the afternoon, when two or three Brahmins and
+Grandissimes, wandering about in search of him, met him on the
+levee near the head of the rue Bienville, and with an exclamation
+of wonder and a look of surprise at his dusty shoes, demanded to
+know where he had hid himself while they had been ransacking the
+town in search of him.</p>
+<p>"We want you to tell us what you will do about our titles."</p>
+<p>He smiled pleasantly, the picture of serenity, and replied:</p>
+<p>"I have not fully made up my mind yet; as soon as I do so I will
+let you know."</p>
+<p>There was a word or two more exchanged, and then, after a moment
+of silence, with a gentle "Eh, bien," and a gesture to which they
+were accustomed, he stepped away backward, they resumed their
+hurried walk and talk, and he turned into the rue Bienville.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2>
+<h3>AN INHERITANCE OF WRONG</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"I tell you," Doctor Keene used to say, "that old woman's a
+thinker." His allusion was to Clemence, the <i>marchande des
+calas</i>. Her mental activity was evinced not more in the cunning
+aptness of her songs than in the droll wisdom of her sayings. Not
+the melody only, but the often audacious, epigrammatic philosophy
+of her tongue as well, sold her <i>calas</i> and gingercakes.</p>
+<p>But in one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too
+much on her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle
+at Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd
+aphorisms could see that she herself had made a life-study of
+herself and her conditions; but she little thought that
+others--some with wits and some with none--young hare-brained
+Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like--were silently, and for her
+most unluckily, charging their memories with her knowing speeches;
+and that of every one of those speeches she would ultimately have
+to give account.</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene, in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an
+occasional skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering
+over the price of <i>calas</i>, he enounced an old current
+conviction which is not without holders even to this day; for we
+may still hear it said by those who will not be decoyed down from
+the mountain fastnesses of the old Southern doctrines, that their
+slaves were "the happiest people under the sun." Clemence had made
+bold to deny this with argumentative indignation, and was
+courteously informed in retort that she had promulgated a falsehood
+of magnitude.</p>
+<p>"W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po'
+nigga kin tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell
+w'at ain' so--if dey know it, aw if dey don' know it--den dat
+<i>is</i> a big lie!" And she laughed to contortion.</p>
+<p>"What is that you say?" he demanded, with mock ferocity. "You
+charge white people with lying?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, sakes, Mawse Chawlie, no! De people don't mek up dat ah; de
+debble pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de grett
+cyount'-feiteh? Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek an' put some
+debblemen' on de under side, an' one o' his pootiess lies on top;
+an' 'e gilt dat lie, and 'e rub dat lie on 'is elbow, an' 'e shine
+dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess licks on dat lie; entel ev'ybody say:
+'Oh, how pooty!' An' dey tek it fo' good money, yass--and pass it!
+Dey b'lieb it!"</p>
+<p>"Oh," said some one at Doctor Keene's side, disposed to quiz,
+"you niggers don't know when you are happy."</p>
+<p>"Dass so, Mawse--<i>c'est vrai, oui</i>!" she answered quickly:
+"we donno no mo'n white folks!"</p>
+<p>The laugh was against him.</p>
+<p>"Mawse Chawlie," she said again, "w'a's dis I yeh 'bout dat
+Eu'ope country? 's dat true de niggas is all free in Eu'ope!"</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene replied that something like that was true.</p>
+<p>"Well, now, Mawse Chawlie, I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is
+<i>so</i>, den fo' w'y I yeh folks bragg'n 'bout de 'stayt o'
+s'iety in Eu'ope'?"</p>
+<p>The mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase
+brought another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.</p>
+<p>"I gwan tell you," said the <i>marchande</i>; "'t is becyaze dey
+got a 'fixed wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the
+general ha, ha. "Oh, ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"</p>
+<p>She made a gesture for attention.</p>
+<p>"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de
+cyaht-hoss tu'n loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat
+some'ow de cyaht gotteh be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is
+heel'"--she suited the action to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel'
+an' prance up to de fence an' say: 'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh
+country gittin' <i>too</i> free!'"</p>
+<p>"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks
+is werry kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--dey <i>wants to
+b'lieb</i> we is. W'y, you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey
+own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own
+sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' dey
+<i>knows</i> dey lak it de bess."</p>
+<p>The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable
+sight to see the comfortable fractions of Christian communities
+everywhere striving, with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal
+benevolence, to make their poor brethren contented with the ditch.
+Nor does it become so to see these efforts meet, or seem to meet,
+some degree of success. Happily man cannot so place his brother
+that his misery will continue unmitigated. You may dwarf a man to
+the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he will put out
+green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the dwarfed
+classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a
+crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.</p>
+<p>To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could
+reach to the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one
+of the population. She had certain affections toward people and
+places; but they were not of a consuming sort.</p>
+<p>As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are
+fine and keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why?
+Because we get them as we get our old swords and gems and
+laces--from our grandsires, mothers, and all. Refined they
+are--after centuries of refining. But the feelings handed down to
+Clemence had come through ages of African savagery; through fires
+that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and blacken and char;
+starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning, nakedness,
+dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the
+rest--she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human
+feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her
+childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with
+pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked,
+as an additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard
+of her since. She had had children, assorted colors--had one with
+her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others
+were here and there, some in the Grandissime households or
+field-gangs, some elsewhere within occasional sight, some dead,
+some not accounted for. Husbands--like the Samaritan woman's. We
+know she was a constant singer and laugher.</p>
+<p>And so on that day, when Honor&eacute; Grandissime had advised
+the Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid
+demonstration of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his
+little capital, Clemence went up one street and down another,
+singing her song and laughing her professional merry laugh. How
+could it be otherwise? Let events take any possible turn, how could
+it make any difference to Clemence? What could she hope to gain?
+What could she fear to lose? She sold some of her goods to Casa
+Calvo's Spanish guard and sang them a Spanish song; some to
+Claiborne's soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle with unclean words
+of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers' laughter; some
+to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious comment or
+two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their
+Am&eacute;ricain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and
+(after going home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she
+sold some more of her wares to the excited groups of Creoles to
+which we have had occasion to allude, and from whom, insensible as
+she was to ribaldry, she was glad to escape. The day now drawing to
+a close, she turned her steps toward her wonted crouching-place,
+the willow avenue on the levee, near the Place d'Armes. But she had
+hardly defined this decision clearly in her mind, and had but just
+turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song attracted an ear in
+a second-story room under whose window she was passing. As usual,
+it was fitted to the passing event:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Apportez moi mo' sabre,<br>
+Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>"Run, fetch that girl here," said Dr. Keene to the slave woman
+who had just entered his room with a pitcher of water.</p>
+<p>"Well, old eavesdropper," he said, as Clemence came, "what is
+the scandal to-day?"</p>
+<p>Clemence laughed.</p>
+<p>"You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth'n' 'tall 'bout nobody.
+I'se a nigga w'at mine my own business."</p>
+<p>"Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on
+outside."</p>
+<p>"I d' no noth'n' 'bout no goin's on; got no time fo' sit down,
+me; got sell my cakes. I don't goin' git mix' in wid no white
+folks's doin's."</p>
+<p>"Hush, you old hypocrite; I will buy all your cakes. Put them
+out there on the table."</p>
+<p>The invalid, sitting up in bed, drew a purse from behind his
+pillow and tossed her a large price. She tittered, courtesied and
+received the money.</p>
+<p>"Well, well, Mawse Chawlie, 'f you ain' de funni'st gen'leman I
+knows, to be sho!"</p>
+<p>"Have you seen Joseph Frowenfeld to-day?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"He, he, he! W'at I got do wid Mawse Frowenfel'? I goes on de
+off side o' sich folks--folks w'at cann' 'have deyself no bette'n
+dat--he, he, he! At de same time I did happen, jis chancin' by
+accident, to see 'im."</p>
+<p>"How is he?"</p>
+<p>Dr. Keene made plain by his manner that any sensational account
+would receive his instantaneous contempt, and she answered within
+bounds.</p>
+<p>"Well, now, tellin' the simple trufe, he ain' much hurt."</p>
+<p>The doctor turned slowly and cautiously in bed.</p>
+<p>"Have you seen Honor&eacute; Grandissime?"</p>
+<p>"W'y--das funny you ass me dat. I jis now see 'im dis werry
+minnit."</p>
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+<p>"Jis gwine into de house wah dat laydy live w'at 'e runned over
+dat ah time."</p>
+<p>"Now, you old hag," cried the sick man, his weak, husky voice
+trembling with passion, "you know you're telling me a lie."</p>
+<p>"No, Mawse Chawlie," she protested with a coward's frown, "I
+swah I tellin' you de God's trufe!"</p>
+<p>"Hand me my clothes off that chair."</p>
+<p>"Oh! but, Mawse Chawlie--"</p>
+<p>The little doctor cursed her. She did as she was bid, and made
+as if to leave the room.</p>
+<p>"Don't you go away."</p>
+<p>"But Mawse Chawlie, you' undress'--he, he!"</p>
+<p>She was really abashed and half frightened.</p>
+<p>"I know that; and you have got to help me put my clothes
+on."</p>
+<p>"You gwan kill yo'se'f, Mawse Chawlie," she said, handling a
+garment.</p>
+<p>"Hold your black tongue."</p>
+<p>She dressed him hastily, and he went down the stairs of his
+lodging-house and out into the street. Clemence went in search of
+her master.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
+<h3>THE EAGLE VISITS THE DOVES IN THEIR NEST</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Alphonsina--only living property of Aurora and Clotilde--was
+called upon to light a fire in the little parlor. Elsewhere,
+although the day was declining, few persons felt such a need; but
+in No. 19 rue Bienville there were two chilling influences combined
+requiring an artificial offset. One was the ground under the floor,
+which was only three inches distant, and permanently saturated with
+water; the other was despair.</p>
+<p>Before this fire the two ladies sat down together like watchers,
+in that silence and vacuity of mind which come after an exhaustive
+struggle ending in the recognition of the inevitable; a torpor of
+thought, a stupefaction of feeling, a purely negative state of
+joylessness sequent to the positive state of anguish. They were now
+both hungry, but in want of some present friend acquainted with the
+motions of mental distress who could guess this fact and press them
+to eat. By their eyes it was plain they had been weeping much; by
+the subdued tone, too, of their short and infrequent speeches.</p>
+<p>Alphonsina, having made the fire, went out with a bundle. It was
+Aurora's last good dress. She was going to try to sell it.</p>
+<p>"It ought not to be so hard," began Clotilde, in a quiet manner
+of contemplating some one else's difficulty, but paused with the
+saying uncompleted, and sighed under her breath.</p>
+<p>"But it <i>is</i> so hard," responded Aurora.</p>
+<p>"No, it ought not to be so hard--"</p>
+<p>"How, not so hard?"</p>
+<p>"It is not so hard to live," said Clotilde; "but it is hard to
+be ladies. You understand--" she knit her fingers, dropped them
+into her lap and turned her eyes toward Aurora, who responded with
+the same motions, adding the crossing of her silk-stockinged ankles
+before the fire.</p>
+<p>"No," said Aurora, with a scintillation of irrepressible
+mischief in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"After all," pursued Clotilde, "what troubles us is not how to
+make a living, but how to get a living without making it."</p>
+<p>"Ah! that would be magnificent!" said Aurora, and then added,
+more soberly; "but we are compelled to make a living."</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"No-o? Ah! what do you mean with your 'no'?"</p>
+<p>"I mean it is just the contrary; we are compelled not to make a
+living. Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skillful
+with the needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep
+accounts; I could nurse the sick; but I must not. I could be a
+confectioner, a milliner, a dressmaker, a vest-maker, a cleaner of
+gloves and laces, a dyer, a bird-seller, a mattress-maker, an
+upholsterer, a dancing-teacher, a florist--"</p>
+<p>"Oh!" softly exclaimed Aurora, in English, "you could be--you
+know w'ad?--an egcellen' drug-cl'--ah, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>"Now--"</p>
+<p>But the threatened irruption was averted by a look of tender
+apology from Aurora, in reply to one of martyrdom from
+Clotilde.</p>
+<p>"My angel daughter," said Aurora, "if society has decreed that
+ladies must be ladies, then that is our first duty; our second is
+to live. Do you not see why it is that this practical world does
+not permit ladies to make a living? Because if they could, none of
+them would ever consent to be married. Ha! women talk about
+marrying for love; but society is too sharp to trust them, yet! It
+makes it <i>necessary</i> to marry. I will tell you the honest
+truth; some days when I get very, very hungry, and we have nothing
+but rice--all because we are ladies without male protectors--I
+think society could drive even me to marriage!--for your sake,
+though, darling; of course, only for your sake!"</p>
+<p>"Never!" replied Clotilde; "for my sake, never; for your own
+sake if you choose. I should not care. I should be glad to see you
+do so if it would make you happy; but never for my sake and never
+for hunger's sake; but for love's sake, yes; and God bless thee,
+pretty maman."</p>
+<p>"Clotilde, dear," said the unconscionable widow, "let me assure
+you, once for all,--starvation is preferable. I mean for me, you
+understand, simply for me; that is my feeling on the subject."</p>
+<p>Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon
+her deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie,
+and sighed softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and
+stretched out her feet.</p>
+<p>"I wish Alphonsina would come back," she said. "Ah!" she added,
+hearing a footfall on the step outside the street door, "there she
+is."</p>
+<p>She arose and drew the bolt. Unseen to her, the person whose
+footsteps she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted
+to knock, but pausing to "makeup his mind." He heard the bolt shoot
+back, recognized the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here
+again he was robbed of volition, rapped.</p>
+<p>"That is not Alphonsina!"</p>
+<p>The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.</p>
+<p>"But you must open it," whispered Clotilde, half rising.</p>
+<p>Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson.
+Clotilde rose up quickly. The gentleman lifted his hat.</p>
+<p>"Madame Nancanou."</p>
+<p>"M. Grandissime?"</p>
+<p>"Oui, Madame."</p>
+<p>For once, Aurora was in an uncontrollable flutter. She
+stammered, lost her breath, and even spoke worse French than she
+needed to have done.</p>
+<p>"Be pl--pleased, sir--to enter. Clotilde, my daughter--Monsieur
+Grandissime. P-please be seated, sir. Monsieur Grandissime,"--she
+dropped into a chair with an air of vivacity pitiful to behold,--"I
+suppose you have come for the rent." She blushed even more
+violently than before, and her hand stole upward upon her heart to
+stay its violent beating. "Clotilde, dear, I should be glad if you
+would put the fire before the screen; it is so much too warm." She
+pushed her chair back and shaded her face with her hand. "I think
+the warmer is growing weather outside, is it--is it not?"</p>
+<p>The struggles of a wounded bird could not have been more
+piteous. Monsieur Grandissime sought to speak. Clotilde, too,
+nerved by the sight of her mother's embarrassment, came to her
+support, and she and the visitor spoke in one breath.</p>
+<p>"Maman, if Monsieur--pardon--"</p>
+<p>"Madame Nancanou, the--pardon, Mademoiselle--"</p>
+<p>"I have presumed to call upon you," resumed M. Grandissime,
+addressing himself now to both ladies at once, "to see if I may
+enlist you in a purely benevolent undertaking in the interest of
+one who has been unfortunate--a common acquaintance--"</p>
+<p>"Common acquaint--" interrupted Aurora, with a hostile lighting
+of her eyes.</p>
+<p>"I believe so--Professor Frowenfeld." M. Grandissme saw Clotilde
+start, and in her turn falsely accuse the fire by shading her face:
+but it was no time to stop. "Ladies," he continued, "please allow
+me, for the sake of the good it may effect, to speak plainly and to
+the point."</p>
+<p>The ladies expressed acquiescence by settling themselves to
+hear.</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld had the extraordinary misfortune this
+morning to incur the suspicion of having entered a house for the
+purpose of--at least, for a bad design--"</p>
+<p>"He is innocent!" came from Clotilde, against her intention;
+Aurora covertly put out a hand, and Clotilde clutched it
+nervously.</p>
+<p>"As, for example, robbery," said the self-recovered Aurora,
+ignoring Clotilde's look of protestation.</p>
+<p>"Call it so," responded M. Grandissime. "Have you heard at whose
+house this was?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"It was at the house of Palmyre Philosophe."</p>
+<p>"Palmyre Philosophe!" exclaimed Aurora, in low astonishment.
+Clotilde let slip, in a tone of indignant incredulity, a soft "Ah!"
+Aurora turned, and with some hope that M. Grandissime would not
+understand, ventured to say in Spanish, quietly:</p>
+<p>"Come, come, this will never do."</p>
+<p>And Clotilde replied in the same tongue:</p>
+<p>"I know it, but he is innocent."</p>
+<p>"Let us understand each other," said their visitor. "There is
+not the faintest idea in the mind of one of us that Professor
+Frowenfeld is guilty of even an intention of wrong; otherwise I
+should not be here. He is a man simply incapable of anything
+ignoble."</p>
+<p>Clotilde was silent. Aurora answered promptly, with the air of
+one not to be excelled in generosity:</p>
+<p>"Certainly, he is very incapabl'."</p>
+<p>"Still," resumed the visitor, turning especially to Clotilde,
+"the known facts are these, according to his own statement: he was
+in the house of Palmyre on some legitimate business which,
+unhappily, he considers himself on some account bound not to
+disclose, and by some mistake of Palmyre's old Congo woman, was set
+upon by her and wounded, barely escaping with a whole skull into
+the street, an object of public scandal. Laying aside the
+consideration of his feelings, his reputation is at stake and
+likely to be ruined unless the affair can be explained clearly and
+satisfactorily, and at once, by his friends."</p>
+<p>"And you undertake--" began Aurora.</p>
+<p>"Madame Nancanou," said Honor&eacute; Grandissime, leaning
+toward her earnestly, "you know--I must beg leave to appeal to your
+candor and confidence--you know everything concerning Palmyre that
+I know. You know me, and who I am; you know it is not for me to
+undertake to confer with Palmyre. I know, too, her old affection
+for you; she lives but a little way down this street upon which you
+live; there is still daylight enough at your disposal; if you will,
+you can go to see her, and get from her a full and complete
+exoneration of this young man. She cannot come to you; she is not
+fit to leave her room."</p>
+<p>"Cannot leave her room?"</p>
+<p>"I am, possibly, violating confidence in this disclosure, but it
+is unavoidable--you have to know: she is not fully recovered from a
+pistol-shot wound received between two and three weeks ago."</p>
+<p>"Pistol-shot wound!"</p>
+<p>Both ladies started forward with open lips and exclamations of
+amazement.</p>
+<p>"Received from a third person--not myself and not Professor
+Frowenfeld--in a desperate attempt made by her to avenge the wrongs
+which she has suffered, as you, Madam, as well as I, are aware, at
+the hands of--"</p>
+<p>Aurora rose up with a majestic motion for the speaker to
+desist.</p>
+<p>"If it is to mention the person of whom your allusion reminds
+me, that you have honored us with a call this evening,
+Monsieur--"</p>
+<p>Her eyes were flashing as he had seen them flash in front of the
+Place d'Armes.</p>
+<p>"I beg you not to suspect me of meanness," he answered, gently,
+and with a remonstrative smile. "I have been trying all day, in a
+way unnecessary to explain, to be generous."</p>
+<p>"I suppose you are incapabl'," said Aurora, following her double
+meaning with that combination of mischievous eyes and unsmiling
+face of which she was master. She resumed her seat, adding: "It is
+generous for you to admit that Palmyre has suffered wrongs."</p>
+<p>"It <i>would</i> be," he replied, "to attempt to repair them,
+seeing that I am not responsible for them, but this I cannot claim
+yet to have done. I have asked of you, Madam, a generous act. I
+might ask another of you both jointly. It is to permit me to say
+without offence, that there is one man, at least, of the name of
+Grandissime who views with regret and mortification the yet deeper
+wrongs which you are even now suffering."</p>
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, inwardly ready for fierce tears, but
+with no outward betrayal save a trifle too much grace and an
+over-bright smile, "Monsieur is much mistaken; we are quite
+comfortable and happy, wanting nothing, eh, Clotilde?--not even our
+rights, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>She rose and let Alphonsina in. The bundle was still in the
+negress's arms. She passed through the room and disappeared in the
+direction of the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"Oh! no, sir, not at all," repeated Aurora, as she once more sat
+down.</p>
+<p>"You ought to want your rights," said M. Grandissime. "You ought
+to have them."</p>
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+<p>Aurora was really finding it hard to conceal her growing
+excitement, and turned, with a faint hope of relief, toward
+Clotilde.</p>
+<p>Clotilde, looking only at their visitor, but feeling her
+mother's glance, with a tremulous and half-choked voice, said
+eagerly:</p>
+<p>"Then why do you not give them to us?"</p>
+<p>"Ah!" interposed Aurora, "we shall get them to-morrow, when the
+sheriff comes."</p>
+<p>And, thereupon what did Clotilde do but sit bolt upright, with
+her hands in her lap, and let the tears roll, tear after tear, down
+her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur," said Aurora, smiling still, "those that you see
+are really tears. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, I really have to laugh;
+for I just happened to remember our meeting at the masked ball last
+September. We had such a pleasant evening and were so much indebted
+to you for our enjoyment,--particularly myself,--little thinking,
+you know, that you were one of that great family which believes we
+ought to have our rights, you know. There are many people who ought
+to have their rights. There was Bras-Coup&eacute;; indeed, he got
+them--found them in the swamp. Maybe Clotilde and I shall find ours
+in the street. When we unmasked in the theatre, you know, I did not
+know you were my landlord, and you did not know that I could not
+pay a few picayunes of rent. But you must excuse those tears;
+Clotilde is generally a brave little woman, and would not be so
+rude as to weep before a stranger; but she is weak to-day--we are
+both weak to-day, from the fact that we have eaten nothing since
+early morning, although we have abundance of food--for want of
+appetite, you understand. You must sometimes be affected the same
+way, having the care of so much wealth <i>of all sorts</i>."</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; Grandissime had risen to his feet and was standing
+with one hand on the edge of the lofty mantel, his hat in the other
+dropped at his side and his eye fixed upon Aurora's beautiful face,
+whence her small nervous hand kept dashing aside the tears through
+which she defiantly talked and smiled. Clotilde sat with clenched
+hands buried in her lap, looking at Aurora and still weeping.</p>
+<p>And M. Grandissime was saying to himself:</p>
+<p>"If I do this thing now--if I do it here--I do it on an impulse;
+I do it under constraint of woman's tears; I do it because I love
+this woman; I do it to get out of a corner; I do it in weakness,
+not in strength; I do it without having made up my mind whether or
+not it is the best thing to do."</p>
+<p>And then, without intention, with scarcely more consciousness of
+movement than belongs to the undermined tree which settles, roots
+and all, into the swollen stream, he turned and moved toward the
+door.</p>
+<p>Clotilde rose.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur Grandissime."</p>
+<p>He stopped and looked back.</p>
+<p>"We will see Palmyre at once, according to your request."</p>
+<p>He turned his eyes toward Aurora.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said she, and she buried her face in her handkerchief and
+sobbed aloud.</p>
+<p>She heard his footstep again; it reached the door; the door
+opened--closed; she heard his footstep again; was he gone?</p>
+<p>He was gone.</p>
+<p>The two women threw themselves into each other's arms and wept.
+Presently Clotilde left the room. She came back in a moment from
+the rear apartment, with a bonnet and veil in her hands.</p>
+<p>"No," said Aurora, rising quickly, "I must do it."</p>
+<p>"There is no time to lose," said Clotilde. "It will soon be
+dark."</p>
+<p>It was hardly a minute before Aurora was ready to start. A kiss,
+a sorrowful look of love exchanged, the veil dropped over the
+swollen eyes, and Aurora was gone.</p>
+<p>A minute passed, hardly more, and--what was this?--the soft
+patter of Aurora's knuckles on the door.</p>
+<p>"Just here at the corner I saw Palmyre leaving her house and
+walking down the rue Royale. We must wait until morn--"</p>
+<p>Again a footfall on the doorstep, and the door, which was
+standing ajar, was pushed slightly by the force of the masculine
+knock which followed.</p>
+<p>"Allow me," said the voice of Honor&eacute; Grandissime, as
+Aurora bowed at the door. "I should have handed you this;
+good-day."</p>
+<p>She received a missive. It was long, like an official document;
+it bore evidence of having been carried for some hours in a
+coat-pocket, and was folded in one of those old, troublesome ways
+in use before the days of envelopes. Aurora pulled it open.</p>
+<p>"It is all figures; light a candle."</p>
+<p>The candle was lighted by Clotilde and held over Aurora's
+shoulder; they saw a heading and footing more conspicuous than the
+rest of the writing.</p>
+<p>The heading read:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, owners of Fausse
+Rivi&egrave;re<br>
+Plantation, in account with Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>The footing read:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Balance at credit, subject to order of Aurora and
+Clotilde<br>
+Nancanou, $105,000.00</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>The date followed:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>March</i> 9, 1804."</blockquote>
+<p>and the signature:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>H. Grandissime</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>A small piece of torn white paper slipped from the account to
+the floor. Clotilde's eye followed it, but Aurora, without
+acknowledgement of having seen it, covered it with her foot.</p>
+<p>In the morning Aurora awoke first. She drew from under her
+pillow this slip of paper. She had not dared look at it until now.
+The writing on it had been roughly scratched down with a pencil. It
+read:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Not for love of woman, but in the name of justice
+and the<br>
+fear of God</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>"And I was so cruel," she whispered.</p>
+<p>Ah! Honor&eacute; Grandissime, she was kind to that little
+writing! She did not put it back under her pillow; she <i>kept it
+warm</i>, Honor&eacute; Grandissime, from that time forth.</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/gs2382.jpg" width="50%" alt=""></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="lft"><img src="images/gs2383.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2>
+<h3>BAD FOR CHARLIE KEENE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>On the same evening of which we have been telling, about the
+time that Aurora and Clotilde were dropping their last tear of joy
+over the document of restitution, a noticeable figure stood alone
+at the corner of the rue du Canal and the rue Chartres. He had
+reached there and paused, just as the brighter glare of the set sun
+was growing dim above the tops of the cypresses. After walking with
+some rapidity of step, he had stopped aimlessly, and laid his hand
+with an air of weariness upon a rotting China-tree that leaned over
+the ditch at the edge of the unpaved walk.</p>
+<p>"Setting in cypress," he murmured. We need not concern ourselves
+as to his meaning.</p>
+<p>One could think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street
+was the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the
+open plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of
+live-oak and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of
+these objects were already darkening. At one or two points the sky
+was reflected from marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously
+the old house and willow-copse of Jean Poquelin. Down the empty
+street or road, which stretched with arrow-like straightness toward
+the northwest, the draining-canal that gave it its name tapered
+away between occasional overhanging willows and beside broken ranks
+of rotting palisades, its foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding
+and purpling under the swiftly waning light, and ending suddenly in
+the black shadow of the swamp. The observer of this dismal prospect
+leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his glance out along the
+beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed quickened to
+detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every cypress
+stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined
+indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone
+of ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around. As his eye
+passed them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary
+view, he sighed heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then
+again--"Dissolution! order of the day--"</p>
+<p>A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional
+exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling
+up and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by
+the occasional cutting of his fin above the water.</p>
+<p>He spoke again:</p>
+<p>"It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves."</p>
+<p>His speech was French. He straightened up, smote the tree softly
+with his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the
+very truth be told, as belongs by right to a lover. And yet his
+mind did not dwell on love.</p>
+<p>He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing
+hither and thither through the deep of his meditations went with
+him. As he turned into the rue Chartres it showed itself thus:</p>
+<p>"Right; it is but right;" he shook his head slowly--"it is but
+right."</p>
+<p>In the rue Douane he spoke again:</p>
+<p>"Ah! Frowenfeld"--and smiled unpleasantly, with his head
+down.</p>
+<p>And as he made yet another turn, and took his meditative way
+down the city's front, along the blacksmith's shops in the street
+afterward called Old Levee, he resumed, in English, and with a
+distinctness that made a staggering sailor halt and look after
+him:</p>
+<p>"There are but two steps to civilization, the first easy, the
+second difficult; to construct--to reconstruct--ah! there it is!
+the tearing down! The tear'--"</p>
+<p>He was still, but repeated the thought by a gesture of distress
+turned into a slow stroke of the forehead.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur Honor&eacute; Grandissime," said a voice just
+ahead.</p>
+<p>"<i>Eh, bien</i>?"</p>
+<p>At the mouth of an alley, in the dim light of the streep lamp,
+stood the dark figure of Honor&eacute; Grandissime, f.m.c., holding
+up the loosely hanging form of a small man, the whole front of
+whose clothing was saturated with blood.</p>
+<p>"Why, Charlie Keene! Let him down again, quickly--quickly; do
+not hold him so!"</p>
+<p>"Hands off," came in a ghastly whisper from the shape.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Chahlie, my boy--"</p>
+<p>"Go and finish your courtship," whispered the doctor.</p>
+<p>"Oh Charlie, I have just made it forever impossible!"</p>
+<p>"Then help me back to my bed; I don't care to die in the
+street."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV</h2>
+<h3>MORE REPARATION</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"That is all," said the fairer Honor&eacute;, outside Doctor
+Keene's sick-room about ten o'clock at night. He was speaking to
+the black son of Clemence, who had been serving as errand-boy for
+some hours. He spoke in a low tone just without the half-open door,
+folding again a paper which the lad had lately borne to the
+apothecary of the rue Royale, and had now brought back with
+Joseph's answer written under Honor&eacute;'s inquiry.</p>
+<p>"That is all," said the other Honor&eacute;, standing partly
+behind the first, as the eyes of his little menial turned upon him
+that deprecatory glance of inquiry so common to slave children. The
+lad went a little way down the corridor, curled up upon the floor
+against the wall, and was soon asleep. The fairer Honor&eacute;
+handed the darker the slip of paper; it was received and returned
+in silence. The question was:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Can you state anything positive concerning the
+duel</i>?"</blockquote>
+<p>And the reply:</p>
+<blockquote>"<i>Positively there will be none. Sylvestre my sworn
+friend for<br>
+life</i>."</blockquote>
+<p>The half-brothers sat down under a dim hanging lamp in the
+corridor, and except that every now and then one or the other
+stepped noiselessly to the door to look in upon the sleeping sick
+man, or in the opposite direction to moderate by a push with the
+foot the snoring of Clemence's "boy," they sat the whole night
+through in whispered counsel.</p>
+<p>The one, at the request of the other, explained how he had come
+to be with the little doctor in such extremity.</p>
+<p>It seems that Clemence, seeing and understanding the doctor's
+imprudence, had sallied out with the resolve to set some person on
+his track. We have said that she went in search of her master. Him
+she met, and though she could not really count him one of the
+doctor's friends, yet, rightly believing in his humanity, she told
+him the matter. He set off in what was for him a quick pace in
+search of the rash invalid, was misdirected by a too confident
+child and had given up the hope of finding him, when a faint sound
+of distress just at hand drew him into an alley, where, close down
+against a wall, with his face to the earth, lay Doctor Keene. The
+f.m.c. had just raised him and borne him out of the alley when
+Honor&eacute; came up.</p>
+<p>"And you say that, when you would have inquired for him at
+Frowenfeld's, you saw Palmyre there, standing and talking with
+Frowenfeld? Tell me more exactly."</p>
+<p>And the other, with that grave and gentle economy of words which
+made his speech so unique, recounted what we amplify:</p>
+<p>Palmyre had needed no pleading to induce her to exonerate
+Joseph. The doctors were present at Frowenfeld's in more than usual
+number. There was unusualness, too, in their manner and their talk.
+They were not entirely free from the excitement of the day, and as
+they talked--with an air of superiority, of Creole inflammability,
+and with some contempt--concerning Camille Brahmin's and Charlie
+Mandarin's efforts to precipitate a war, they were yet visibly in a
+state of expectation. Frowenfeld, they softly said, had in his odd
+way been indiscreet among these inflammables at Maspero's just when
+he could least afford to be so, and there was no telling what they
+might take the notion to do to him before bedtime. All that over
+and above the independent, unexplained scandal of the early
+morning. So Joseph and his friends this evening, like Aurora and
+Clotilde in the morning, were, as we nowadays say of buyers and
+sellers, "apart," when suddenly and unannounced, Palmyre presented
+herself among them. When the f.m.c. saw her, she had already handed
+Joseph his hat and with much sober grace was apologizing for her
+slave's mistake. All evidence of her being wounded was concealed.
+The extraordinary excitement of the morning had not hurt her, and
+she seemed in perfect health. The doctors sat or stood around and
+gave rapt attention to her patois, one or two translating it for
+Joseph, and he blushing to the hair, but standing erect and
+receiving it at second hand with silent bows. The f.m.c. had gazed
+on her for a moment, and then forced himself away. He was among the
+few who had not heard the morning scandal, and he did not
+comprehend the evening scene. He now asked Honor&eacute; concerning
+it, and quietly showed great relief when it was explained.</p>
+<p>Then Honor&eacute;, breaking a silence, called the attention of
+the f.m.c. to the fact that the latter had two tenants at Number 19
+rue Bienville. Honor&eacute; became the narrator now and told all,
+finally stating that the die was cast--restitution made.</p>
+<p>And then the darker Honor&eacute; made a proposition to the
+other, which, it is little to say, was startling. They discussed it
+for hours.</p>
+<p>"So just a condition," said the merchant, raising his whisper so
+much that the rentier laid a hand in his elbow,--"such mere
+justice," he said, more softly, "ought to be an easy condition. God
+knows"--he lifted his glance reverently--"my very right to exist
+comes after yours. You are the elder."</p>
+<p>The solemn man offered no disclaimer.</p>
+<p>What could the proposition be which involved so grave an issue,
+and to which M. Grandissime's final answer was "I will do it"?</p>
+<p>It was that Honor&eacute; f.m.c. should become a member of the
+mercantile house of H. Grandissime, enlisting in its capital all
+his wealth. And the one condition was that the new style should be
+<i>Grandissime Brothers</i>.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI</h2>
+<h3>THE PIQUE-EN-TERRE LOSES ONE OF HER CREW</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Ask the average resident of New Orleans if his town is on an
+island, and he will tell you no. He will also wonder how any one
+could have got that notion,--so completely has Orleans Island,
+whose name at the beginning of the present century was in
+everybody's mouth, been forgotten. It was once a question of
+national policy, a point of difference between Republican and
+Federalist, whether the United States ought to buy this little
+strip of semi-submerged land, or whether it would not be more
+righteous to steal it. The Kentuckians kept the question at a red
+heat by threatening to become an empire by themselves if one course
+or the other was not taken; but when the First Consul offered to
+sell all Louisiana, our commissioners were quite robbed of breath.
+They had approached to ask a hair from the elephant's tail, and
+were offered the elephant.</p>
+<p>For Orleans Island--island it certainly was until General
+Jackson closed Bayou Manchac--is a narrow, irregular, flat tract of
+forest, swamp, city, prairie and sea-marsh, lying east and west,
+with the Mississippi, trending southeastward, for its southern
+boundary, and for its northern, a parallel and contiguous chain of
+alternate lakes and bayous, opening into the river through Bayou
+Manchac, and into the Gulf through the passes of the Malheureuse
+Islands. On the narrowest part of it stands New Orleans. Turning
+and looking back over the rear of the town, one may easily see from
+her steeples Lake Pontchartrain glistening away to the northern
+horizon, and in his fancy extend the picture to right and left till
+Pontchartrain is linked in the west by Pass Manchac to Lake
+Maurepas, and in the east by the Rigolets and Chef Menteur to Lake
+Borgne.</p>
+<p>An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little
+streams have of running away from the big ones. The river makes its
+own bed and its own banks, and continuing season after season,
+through ages of alternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those
+banks, creates a ridge which thus becomes a natural elevated
+aqueduct. Other slightly elevated ridges mark the present or former
+courses of minor outlets, by which the waters of the Mississippi
+have found the sea. Between these ridges lie the cypress swamps,
+through whose profound shades the clear, dark, deep bayous creep
+noiselessly away into the tall grasses of the shaking prairies. The
+original New Orleans was built on the Mississippi ridge, with one
+of these forest-and-water-covered basins stretching back behind her
+to westward and northward, closed in by Metairie Ridge and Lake
+Pontchartrain. Local engineers preserve the tradition that the
+Bayou Sauvage once had its rise, so to speak, in Toulouse street.
+Though depleted by the city's present drainage system and most
+likely poisoned by it as well, its waters still move seaward in a
+course almost due easterly, and empty into Chef Menteur, one of the
+watery threads of a tangled skein of "passes" between the lakes and
+the open Gulf. Three-quarters of a century ago this Bayou Sauvage
+(or Gentilly--corruption of Chantilly) was a navigable stream of
+wild and sombre beauty.</p>
+<p>On a certain morning in August, 1804, and consequently some five
+months after the events last mentioned, there emerged from the
+darkness of Bayou Sauvage into the prairie-bordered waters of Chef
+Menteur, while the morning star was still luminous in the sky above
+and in the water below, and only the practised eye could detect the
+first glimmer of day, a small, stanch, single-masted, broad and
+very light-draught boat, whose innocent character, primarily
+indicated in its coat of many colors,--the hull being yellow below
+the water line and white above, with tasteful stripings of blue and
+red,--was further accentuated by the peaceful name of
+<i>Pique-en-terre</i> (the Sandpiper).</p>
+<p>She seemed, too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she
+would have liked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit
+this, and in a moment more the water was rippling after her swift
+rudder, as she glided away in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes.
+But when she had left behind her the mouth of the passage, she
+changed her course and, leaving the Pointe on her left, bore down
+toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bent upon passing through the
+Rigolets.</p>
+<p>We know not how to describe the joyousness of the effect when at
+length one leaves behind him the shadow and gloom of the swamp, and
+there bursts upon his sight the widespread, flower-decked,
+bird-haunted prairies of Lake Catharine. The inside and outside of
+a prison scarcely furnish a greater contrast; and on this fair
+August morning the contrast was at its strongest. The day broke
+across a glad expanse of cool and fragrant green, silver-laced with
+a network of crisp salt pools and passes, lakes, bayous and
+lagoons, that gave a good smell, the inspiring odor of interclasped
+sea and shore, and both beautified and perfumed the happy earth,
+laid bare to the rising sun. Waving marshes of wild oats, drooping
+like sated youth from too much pleasure; watery acres hid under
+crisp-growing greenth starred with pond-lilies and rippled by
+water-fowl; broad stretches of high grass, with thousands of
+ecstatic wings palpitating above them; hundreds of thousands of
+white and pink mallows clapping their hands in voiceless rapture,
+and that amazon queen of the wild flowers, the morning-glory,
+stretching her myriad lines, lifting up the trumpet and waving her
+colors, white, azure and pink, with lacings of spider's web, heavy
+with pearls and diamonds--the gifts of the summer night. The crew
+of the <i>Pique-en-terre</i> saw all these and felt them; for,
+whatever they may have been or failed to be, they were men whose
+heartstrings responded to the touches of nature. One alone of their
+company, and he the one who should have felt them most, showed
+insensibility, sighed laughingly and then laughed sighingly, in the
+face of his fellows and of all this beauty, and profanely confessed
+that his heart's desire was to get back to his wife. He had been
+absent from her now for nine hours!</p>
+<p>But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed
+and left astern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the
+after-larboard-quarter, the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far
+and wide their dazzling white and blue, and, as the little boat
+issues from the deep channel of the Rigolets, the white-armed waves
+catch her and toss her like a merry babe. A triumph for the
+helmsman--he it is who sighs, at intervals of tiresome frequency,
+for his wife. He had, from the very starting-place in the upper
+waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets as--wind
+and tide considered--the most practicable of all the passes. Now
+that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint
+of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one
+hereafter dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast
+navigation? He knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and
+could tell, faster, much faster than he could repeat the
+multiplication table (upon which he was a little slow and
+doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebb tide--Pass Jean or
+Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, Chef Menteur,--</p>
+<p>Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf--the Gulf of
+Mexico--there appears a speck of white. It is known to those on
+board the <i>Pique-en-terre</i>, the moment it is descried, as the
+canvas of a large schooner. The opinion, first expressed by the
+youthful husband, who still reclines with the tiller held firmly
+under his arm, and then by another member of the company who sits
+on the centreboard-well, is unanimously adopted, that she is making
+for the Rigolets, will pass Petites Coquilles by eleven o'clock,
+and will tie up at the little port of St. Jean, on the bayou of the
+same name, before sundown, if the wind holds anywise as it is.</p>
+<p>On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his
+glass, and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the
+little sail just visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a
+half-deck, well filled with men, in all probability a pleasure
+party bound to the Chandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion,
+and passes into comments on the superior skill of landsmen over
+seamen in the handling of small sailing craft.</p>
+<p>By and by the two vessels near each other. They approach within
+hailing distance, and are announcing each to each their identity,
+when the young man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting
+posture, and, from under a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat,
+cries to the schooner's one passenger:</p>
+<p>"Hello, Challie Keene."</p>
+<p>And the passenger more quietly answers back:</p>
+<p>"Hello, Raoul, is that you?"</p>
+<p>M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was
+he.</p>
+<p>"You kin hask Sylvestre!" he concluded.</p>
+<p>The doctor's eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men,
+the most of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were
+gray, sitting with their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in
+the dark n&eacute;glig&eacute; of amateur fishermen and with that
+exultant look of expectant deviltry in their handsome faces which
+characterizes the Creole with his collar off.</p>
+<p>The mettlesome little doctor felt the odds against him in the
+exchange of greetings.</p>
+<p>"Ola, Dawctah!"</p>
+<p>"<i>H&eacute;</i>, Doctah, <i>que-ce qui t'apr&egrave;s
+f&eacute;?</i>"</p>
+<p>"<i>Ho, ho, comp&egrave;re Noyo!</i>"</p>
+<p>"<i>Comment va</i>, Docta?"</p>
+<p>A light peppering of profanity accompanied each salute.</p>
+<p>The doctor put on defensively a smile of superiority to the
+juniors and of courtesy to the others, and responsively spoke their
+names:</p>
+<p>"'Polyte--Sylvestre--Achille--&Eacute;mile--ah! Agamemnon."</p>
+<p>The Doctor and Agamemnon raised their hats.</p>
+<p>As Agamemnon was about to speak, a general expostulatory outcry
+drowned his voice. The <i>Pique-en-terre</i> was going about close
+abreast of the schooner, and angry questions and orders were flying
+at Raoul's head like a volley of eggs.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs," said Raoul, partially rising but still stooping
+over the tiller, and taking his hat off his bright curls with mock
+courtesy, "I am going back to New Orleans. I would not give
+<i>that</i> for all the fish in the sea; I want to see my wife. I
+am going back to New Orleans to see my wife--and to congratulate
+the city upon your absence." Incredulity, expostulation, reproach,
+taunt, malediction--he smiled unmoved upon them all.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs, I <i>must</i> go and see my wife."</p>
+<p>Amid redoubled outcries he gave the helm to Camille Brahmin, and
+fighting his way with his pretty feet against half-real efforts to
+throw him overboard, clambered forward to the mast, whence a moment
+later, with the help of the schooner-master's hand, he reached the
+deck of the larger vessel. The <i>Pique-en-terre</i> turned, and
+with a little flutter spread her smooth wing and skimmed away.</p>
+<p>"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose
+third finger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom.
+"W'at you got to say to dat?"</p>
+<p>The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a
+thrill of anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love
+affair that did not include Clotilde Nancanou.</p>
+<p>"Whom have you married?"</p>
+<p>"De pritties' gal in de citty."</p>
+<p>The questioner controlled himself.</p>
+<p>"M-hum," he responded, with a contraction of the eyes.</p>
+<p>Raoul waited an instant for some kindlier comment, and finding
+the hope vain, suddenly assumed a look of delighted admiration.</p>
+<p>"Hi, yi, yi! Doctah, 'ow you har lookingue fine."</p>
+<p>The true look of the doctor was that he had not much longer to
+live. A smile of bitter humor passed over his face, and he looked
+for a near seat, saying:</p>
+<p>"How's Frowenfeld?"</p>
+<p>Raoul struck an ecstatic attitude and stretched forth his hand
+as if the doctor could not fail to grasp it. The invalid's heart
+sank like lead.</p>
+<p>"Frowenfeld has got her," he thought.</p>
+<p>"Well?" said he with a frown of impatience and restraint; and
+Raoul cried:</p>
+<p>"I sole my pigshoe!"</p>
+<p>The doctor could not help but laugh.</p>
+<p>"Shades of the masters!"</p>
+<p>"No; 'Louizyanna rif-using to hantre de h-Union.'"</p>
+<p>The doctor stood corrected.</p>
+<p>The two walked across the deck, following the shadow of the
+swinging sail. The doctor lay down in a low-swung hammock, and
+Raoul sat upon the deck <i>&agrave; la Turque</i>.</p>
+<p>"Come, come, Raoul, tell me, what is the news?"</p>
+<p>"News? Oh, I donno. You 'eard concernin' the dool?"</p>
+<p>"You don't mean to say--"</p>
+<p>"Yesseh!"</p>
+<p>"Agricola and Sylvestre?"</p>
+<p>"W'at de dev'! No! Burr an' 'Ammiltong; in Noo-Juzzy-las-June.
+Collonnel Burr, 'e--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, fudge! yes. How is Frowenfeld?"</p>
+<p>"'E's well. Guess 'ow much I sole my pigshoe."</p>
+<p>"Well, how much?"</p>
+<p>"Two 'ondred fifty." He laid himself out at length, his elbow on
+the deck, his head in his hand. "I believe I'm sorry I sole
+'er."</p>
+<p>"I don't wonder. How's Honor&eacute;? Tell me what has happened.
+Remember, I've been away five months."</p>
+<p>"No; I am verrie glad dat I sole 'er. What? Ha! I should think
+so! If it have not had been fo' dat I would not be married to-day.
+You think I would get married on dat sal'rie w'at Proffis-or
+Frowenfel' was payin' me? Twenty-five dolla' de mont'? Docta Keene,
+no gen'leman h-ought to git married if 'e 'ave not anny'ow fifty
+dolla' de mont'! If I wasn' a h-artiz I wouldn' git married; I gie
+you my word!"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the little doctor, "you are right. Now tell me the
+news."</p>
+<p>"Well, dat Cong-ress gone an' make--"</p>
+<p>"Raoul, stop. I know that Congress has divided the province into
+two territories; I know you Creoles think all your liberties are
+lost; I know the people are in a great stew because they are not
+allowed to elect their own officers and legislatures, and that in
+Opelousas and Attakapas they are as wild as their cattle about
+it--"</p>
+<p>"We 'ad two big mitting' about it," interrupted Raoul; "my
+bro'r-in-law speak at both of them!"</p>
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+<p>"Chahlie Mandarin."</p>
+<p>"Glad to hear it," said Doctor Keene,--which was the truth.
+"Besides that, I know Laussat has gone to Martinique; that the
+Am&eacute;ricains have a newspaper, and that cotton is two-bits a
+pound. Now what I want to know is, how are my friends? What has
+Honor&eacute; done? What has Frowenfeld done? And Palmyre,--and
+Agricole? They hustled me away from here as if I had been caught
+trying to cut my throat. Tell me everything."</p>
+<p>And Raoul sank the artist and bridegroom in the historian, and
+told him.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII</h2>
+<h3>THE NEWS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"My cousin Honor&eacute;,--well, you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is
+'ole fam'ly."</p>
+<p>"How so?" asked Doctor Keene, with a handkerchief over his face
+to shield his eyes from the sun.</p>
+<p>"Well,--ce't'nly 'e did! Di'n' 'e gave dat money to Aurora De
+Grapion?--one 'undred five t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say,
+'Yeh's de money my h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah! w'en I
+will swear on a stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole
+win dat 'abitation fair!--If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to see
+it! I'll swear to it! Hah!"</p>
+<p>"And have she and her daughter actually got the money?"</p>
+<p>"She--an'--heh--daughtah--ac--shilly--got-'at-money-sir! W'at?
+Dey livin' in de rue Royale in mag-<i>niff</i>ycen' style on top de
+drug-sto' of Proffis-or Frowenfel'."</p>
+<p>"But how, over Frowenfeld's, when Frowenfeld's is a
+one-story--"</p>
+<p>"My dear frien'! Proffis-or Frowenfel' is <i>moove!</i> You
+rickleck dat big new t'ree-story buildin' w'at jus' finished in de
+rue Royale, a lill mo' farther up town from his old shop? Well, we
+open dare <i>a big sto'!</i> An' listen! You think Honor&eacute;
+di'n' bitrayed' 'is family? Madame Nancanou an' heh daughtah livin'
+upstair an' rissy-ving de finess soci'ty in de Province!--an'
+<i>me?</i>--downstair' meckin' pill! You call dat justice?"</p>
+<p>But Doctor Keene, without waiting for this question, had asked
+one:</p>
+<p>"Does Frowenfeld board with them?"</p>
+<p>"Psh-sh-sh! Board! Dey woon board de Marquis of Casa Calvo! I
+don't b'lieve dey would board Honor&eacute; Grandissime! All de
+king' an' queen' in de worl' couldn' board dare! No, sir!--'Owever,
+you know, I think dey are splendid ladies. Me an' my wife, we know
+them well. An' Honor&eacute;--I think my cousin Honor&eacute;'s a
+splendid gen'leman, too." After a moment's pause he resumed, with a
+happy sigh, "Well, I don' care, I'm married. A man w'at's married,
+'e don' care.</p>
+<p>"But I di'n' t'ink Honor&eacute; could ever do lak dat odder
+t'ing."</p>
+<p>"Do he and Joe Frowenfeld visit there?"</p>
+<p>"Doctah Keene," demanded Raoul, ignoring the question, "I hask
+you now, plain, don' you find dat mighty disgressful to do dat way,
+lak Honor&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>"What way?"</p>
+<p>"W'at? You dunno? You don' yeh 'ow 'e gone partner' wid a
+nigga?"</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene drew the handkerchief off his face and half lifted
+his feeble head.</p>
+<p>"Yesseh! 'e gone partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime, seh!"</p>
+<p>The doctor dropped his head again and laid the handkerchief back
+on his face.</p>
+<p>"What do the family say to that?"</p>
+<p>"But w'at <i>can</i> dey say? It save dem from ruin! At de sem
+time, me, I think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, but
+it is dat name w'at 'e give de h-establishmen'--Grandissime
+Fr&egrave;res! H-only for 'is money we would 'ave catch' dat
+quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and fedder. Grandissime
+Fr&egrave;res! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honor&eacute; no
+mo'. But I t'ink dass wrong. W'at you t'ink, Doctah?"</p>
+<p>That evening, at candle-light, Raoul got the right arm of his
+slender, laughing wife about his neck; but Doctor Keene tarried all
+night in suburb St. Jean. He hardly felt the moral courage to face
+the results of the last five months. Let us understand them better
+ourselves.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII</h2>
+<h3>AN INDIGNANT FAMILY AND A SMASHED SHOP</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was indeed a fierce storm that had passed over the head of
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime. Taken up and carried by it, as it seemed
+to him, without volition, he had felt himself thrown here and
+there, wrenched, torn, gasping for moral breath, speaking the right
+word as if in delirium, doing the right deed as if by helpless
+instinct, and seeing himself in every case, at every turn, tricked
+by circumstance out of every vestige of merit. So it seemed to him.
+The long contemplated restitution was accomplished. On the morning
+when Aurora and Clotilde had expected to be turned shelterless into
+the open air, they had called upon him in his private office and
+presented the account of which he had put them in possession the
+evening before. He had honored it on the spot. To the two ladies
+who felt their own hearts stirred almost to tears of gratitude, he
+was--as he sat before them calm, unmoved, handling keen-edged facts
+with the easy rapidity of one accustomed to use them, smiling
+courteously and collectedly, parrying their expressions of
+appreciation--to them, we say, at least to one of them, he was "the
+prince of gentlemen." But, at the same time, there was within him,
+unseen, a surge of emotions, leaping, lashing, whirling, yet ever
+hurrying onward along the hidden, rugged bed of his honest
+intention.</p>
+<p>The other restitution, which even twenty-four hours earlier
+might have seemed a pure self-sacrifice, became a self-rescue. The
+f.m.c. was the elder brother. A remark of Honor&eacute; made the
+night they watched in the corridor by Doctor Keene's door, about
+the younger's "right to exist," was but the echo of a conversation
+they had once had together in Europe. There they had practised a
+familiarity of intercourse which Louisiana would not have endured,
+and once, when speaking upon the subject of their common
+fatherhood, the f.m.c., prone to melancholy speech, had said:</p>
+<p>"You are the lawful son of Numa Grandissime; I had no right to
+be born."</p>
+<p>But Honor&eacute; quickly answered:</p>
+<p>"By the laws of men, it may be; but by the law of God's justice,
+you are the lawful son, and it is I who should not have been
+born."</p>
+<p>But, returned to Louisiana, accepting with the amiable,
+old-fashioned philosophy of conservatism the sins of the community,
+he had forgotten the unchampioned rights of his passive
+half-brother. Contact with Frowenfeld had robbed him of his
+pleasant mental drowsiness, and the oft-encountered apparition of
+the dark sharer of his name had become a slow-stepping, silent
+embodiment of reproach. The turn of events had brought him face to
+face with the problem of restitution, and he had solved it. But
+where had he come out? He had come out the beneficiary of this
+restitution, extricated from bankruptcy by an agreement which gave
+the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kinship which had always
+been his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!</p>
+<p>Such was the stress within. Then there was the storm without.
+The Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had
+reached them all that Honor&eacute; had met the question of titles
+by selling one of their largest estates. It was received with
+wincing frowns, indrawn breath, and lifted feet, but without
+protest, and presently with a smile of returning confidence.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute; knew; Honor&eacute; was informed; they had all
+authorized Honor&eacute;; and Honor&eacute;, though he might have
+his odd ways and notions, picked up during that unfortunate stay
+abroad, might safely be trusted to stand by the interests of his
+people."</p>
+<p>After the first shock some of them even raised a laugh:</p>
+<p>"Ha, ha, ha! Honor&eacute; would show those Yankees!"</p>
+<p>They went to his counting-room and elsewhere, in search of him,
+to smite their hands into the hands of their far-seeing young
+champion. But, as we have seen, they did not find him; none dreamed
+of looking for him in an enemy's camp (19 Bienville) or on the
+lonely suburban commons, talking to himself in the ghostly
+twilight; and the next morning, while Aurora and Clotilde were
+seated before him in his private office, looking first at the face
+and then at the back of two mighty drafts of equal amount on
+Philadelphia, the cry of treason flew forth to these astounded
+Grandissimes, followed by the word that the sacred fire was gone
+out in the Grandissime temple (counting-room), that Delilahs in
+duplicate were carrying off the holy treasures, and that the
+uncircumcised and unclean--even an f.m.c.--was about to be inducted
+into the Grandissime priesthood.</p>
+<p>Aurora and Clotilde were still there, when the various members
+of the family began to arrive and display their outlines in
+impatient shadow-play upon the glass door of the private office;
+now one, and now another, dallied with the doorknob and by and by
+obtruded their lifted hats and urgent, anxious faces half into the
+apartment; but Honor&eacute; would only glance toward them, and
+with a smile equally courteous, authoritative and fleeting,
+say:</p>
+<p>"Good-morning, Camille" (or Charlie--or Agamemnon, as the case
+might be); "I will see you later; let me trouble you to close the
+door."</p>
+<p>To add yet another strain, the two ladies, like frightened,
+rescued children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him
+to become the custodian and investor of their wealth. Ah, woman!
+who is a tempter like thee? But Honor&eacute; said no, and showed
+them the danger of such a course.</p>
+<p>"Suppose I should die suddenly. You might have trouble with my
+executors."</p>
+<p>The two beauties assented pensively; but in Aurora's bosom a
+great throb secretly responded that as for her, in that case, she
+should have no use for money--in a nunnery.</p>
+<p>"Would not Monsieur at least consent to be their financial
+adviser?"</p>
+<p>He hemmed, commenced a sentence twice, and finally said:</p>
+<p>"You will need an agent; some one to take full charge of your
+affairs; some person on whose sagacity and integrity you can place
+the fullest dependence."</p>
+<p>"Who, for instance?" asked Aurora.</p>
+<p>"I should say, without hesitation, Professor Frowenfeld, the
+apothecary. You know his trouble of yesterday is quite cleared up.
+You had not heard? Yes. He is not what we call an enterprising man,
+but--so much the better. Take him all in all, I would choose him
+above all others; if you--"</p>
+<p>Aurora interrupted him. There was an ill-concealed wildness in
+her eye and a slight tremor in her voice, as she spoke, which she
+had not expected to betray. The quick, though quiet eye of
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime saw it, and it thrilled him through.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime, I take the risk; I wish you to take care of
+my money."</p>
+<p>"But, Maman," said Clotilde, turning with a timid look to her
+mother, "If Monsieur Grandissime would rather not--"</p>
+<p>Aurora, feeling alarmed at what she had said, rose up. Clotilde
+and Honor&eacute; did the same, and he said:</p>
+<p>"With Professor Frowenfeld in charge of your affairs, I shall
+feel them not entirely removed from my care also. We are very good
+friends."</p>
+<p>Clotilde looked at her mother. The three exchanged glances. The
+ladies signified their assent and turned to go, but M. Grandissime
+stopped them.</p>
+<p>"By your leave, I will send for him. If you will be seated
+again--"</p>
+<p>They thanked him and resumed their seats; he excused himself,
+passed into the counting-room, and sent a messenger for the
+apothecary.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime's meeting with his kinsmen was a stormy one.
+Aurora and Clotilde heard the strife begin, increase, subside, rise
+again and decrease. They heard men stride heavily to and fro, they
+heard hands smite together, palms fall upon tables and fists upon
+desks, heard half-understood statement and unintelligible
+counter-statement and derisive laughter; and, in the midst of all,
+like the voice of a man who rules himself, the clear-noted,
+unimpassioned speech of Honor&eacute;, sounding so loftily
+beautiful in the ear of Aurora that when Clotilde looked at her,
+sitting motionless with her rapt eyes lifted up, those eyes came
+down to her own with a sparkle of enthusiasm, and she softly
+said:</p>
+<p>"It sounds like St. Gabriel!" and then blushed.</p>
+<p>Clotilde answered with a happy, meaning look, which intensified
+the blush, and then leaning affectionately forward and holding the
+maman's eyes with her own, she said:</p>
+<p>"You have my consent."</p>
+<p>"Saucy!" said Aurora. "Wait till I get my own."</p>
+<p>Some of his kinsmen Honor&eacute; pacified; some he silenced. He
+invited all to withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and
+some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to
+sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward
+modified, was that "all or nothing" attitude which, as years rolled
+by, bled them to penury in those famous
+cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of
+Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within
+the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their
+heads in unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by
+unflinching self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride
+revelling in ancestral, perennial rebellion against common
+sense.</p>
+<p>"That is Agricola," whispered Aurora, with lifted head and eyes
+dilated and askance, as one deep-chested voice roared above all
+others.</p>
+<p>Agricola stormed.</p>
+<p>"Uncle," Aurora by and by heard Honor&eacute; say, "shall I
+leave my own counting-room?"</p>
+<p>At that moment Joseph Frowenfeld entered, pausing with one hand
+on the outer rail. No one noticed him but Honor&eacute;, who was
+watching for him, and who, by a silent motion, directed him into
+the private office.</p>
+<p>"H-whe shake its dust from our feet!" said Agricola, gathering
+some young retainers by a sweep of his glance and going out down
+the stair in the arched way, unmoved by the fragrance of warm
+bread. On the banquette he harangued his followers.</p>
+<p>He said that in such times as these every lover of liberty
+should go armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by
+trickery Louisianians had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of
+parvenues, to be dragged before juries for asserting the human
+right of free trade or ridding the earth of sneaks in the pay of
+the government; that laws, so-called, had been forged into
+thumbscrews, and a Congress which had bound itself to give them all
+the rights of American citizens--sorry boon!--was preparing to slip
+their birthright acres from under their feet, and leave them
+hanging, a bait to the vultures of the Am&eacute;ricain
+immigration. Yes; the age of trickery! Its apostles, he said, were
+even then at work among their fellow-citizens, warping, distorting,
+blasting, corrupting, poisoning the noble, unsuspecting, confiding
+Creole mind. For months the devilish work had been allowed, by a
+patient, peace-loving people, to go on. But shall it go on forever?
+(Cries of "No!" "No!") The smell of white blood comes on the south
+breeze. Dessalines and Christophe had recommenced their hellish
+work. Virginia, too, trembles for the safety of her fair mothers
+and daughters. We know not what is being plotted in the canebrakes
+of Louisiana. But we know that in the face of these things the
+prelates of trickery are sitting in Washington allowing throats to
+go unthrottled that talked tenderly about the "negro slave;" we
+know worse: we know that mixed blood has asked for equal rights
+from a son of the Louisiana noblesse, and that those sacred rights
+have been treacherously, pusillanimously surrendered into its
+possession. Why did we not rise yesterday, when the public heart
+was stirred? The forbearance of this people would be absurd if it
+were not saintly. But the time has, come when Louisiana must
+protect herself! If there is one here who will not strike for his
+lands, his rights and the purity of his race, let him speak! (Cries
+of "We will rise now!" "Give us a leader!" "Lead the way!")</p>
+<p>"Kinsmen, friends," continued Agricola, "meet me at nightfall
+before the house of this too-long-spared mulatto. Come armed. Bring
+a few feet of stout rope. By morning the gentlemen of color will
+know their places better than they do to-day; h-whe shall
+understand each other! H-whe shall set the negrophiles to
+meditating."</p>
+<p>He waved them away.</p>
+<p>With a huzza the accumulated crowd moved off. Chance carried
+them up the rue Royale; they sang a song; they came to
+Frowenfeld's. It was an Am&eacute;ricain establishment; that was
+against it. It was a gossiping place of Am&eacute;ricain evening
+loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer's den--(we are on
+an ascending scale); its proprietor had refused employment to some
+there present, had refused credit to others, was an impudent
+condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten over
+the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse
+still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all,
+Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd
+stopped to have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless
+fellow in the throng--he was still singing--said: "Here's the
+place," and dropped two bricks through the glass of the
+show-window. Raoul, with a cry of retaliative rage, drew and lifted
+a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it from him and three others quickly
+pinioned him and bore him off struggling, pleased to get him away
+unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's was a broken-windowed,
+open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish that had escaped
+the torch only through a chance rumor that the Governor's police
+were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.</p>
+<p>Joseph was sitting in M. Grandissime's private office, in
+council with him and the ladies, and Aurora was just saying:</p>
+<p>"Well, anny'ow, 'Sieur Frowenfel', ad laz you consen'!" and
+gathering her veil from her lap, when Raoul burst in, all sweat and
+rage.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenfel', we ruin'! Ow pharmacie knock all in pieces!
+My pigshoe is los'!"</p>
+<p>He dropped into a chair and burst into tears.</p>
+<p>Shall we never learn to withhold our tears until we are sure of
+our trouble? Raoul little knew the joy in store for him. 'Polyte,
+it transpired the next day, had rushed in after the first volley of
+missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of
+asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and
+bore away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter
+the Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks
+later Honor&eacute; Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he
+was "betrothed," purchased this painting and presented it to a club
+of <i>natural connoisseurs</i>.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX</h2>
+<h3>OVER THE NEW STORE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The accident of the ladies Nancanou making their new home over
+Frowenfeld's drug-store occurred in the following rather amusing
+way. It chanced that the building was about completed at the time
+that the apothecary's stock in trade was destroyed; Frowenfeld
+leased the lower floor. Honor&eacute; Grandissime f.m.c. was the
+owner. He being concealed from his enemies, Joseph treated with
+that person's inadequately remunerated employ&eacute;. In those
+days, as still in the old French Quarter, it was not uncommon for
+persons, even of wealth, to make their homes over stores, and
+buildings were constructed with a view to their partition in this
+way. Hence, in Chartres and Decatur streets, to-day--and in the
+cross-streets between--so many store-buildings with balconies,
+dormer windows, and sometimes even belvideres. This new building
+caught the eye and fancy of Aurora and Clotilde. The apartments for
+the store were entirely isolated. Through a large
+<i>porte-coch&egrave;re</i>, opening upon the banquette immediately
+beside and abreast of the store-front, one entered a high, covered
+carriage-way with a tessellated pavement and green plastered walls,
+and reached,--just where this way (corridor, the Creoles always
+called it) opened into a sunny court surrounded with narrow
+parterres,--a broad stairway leading to a hall over the "corridor"
+and to the drawing-rooms over the store. They liked it! Aurora
+would find out at once what sort of an establishment was likely to
+be opened below, and if that proved unexceptionable she would lease
+the upper part without more ado.</p>
+<p>Next day she said:</p>
+<p>"Clotilde, thou beautiful, I have signed the lease!"</p>
+<p>"Then the store below is to be occupied by a--what?"</p>
+<p>"Guess!"</p>
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+<p>"Guess a pharmacien!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde's lips parted, she was going to smile, when her thought
+changed and she blushed offendedly.</p>
+<p>"Not--"</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Frowenf--ah, ha, ha, ha!--<i>ha, ha, ha</i>!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde burst into tears.</p>
+<p>Still they moved in--it was written in the bond; and so did the
+apothecary; and probably two sensible young lovers never before nor
+since behaved with such abject fear of each other--for a time.
+Later, and after much oft-repeated good advice given to each
+separately and to both together, Honor&eacute; Grandissime
+persuaded them that Clotilde could make excellent use of a portion
+of her means by reenforcing Frowenfeld's very slender stock and
+well filling his rather empty-looking store, and so they signed
+regular articles of copartnership, blushing frightfully.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honor&eacute; not; once
+Honor&eacute; had seen the ladies' moneys satisfactorily invested,
+he kept aloof. It is pleasant here to remark that neither Aurora
+nor Clotilde made any waste of their sudden acquisitions; they
+furnished their rooms with much beauty at moderate cost, and their
+<i>salon</i> with artistic, not extravagant, elegance, and, for the
+sake of greater propriety, employed a decayed lady as housekeeper;
+but, being discreet in all other directions, they agreed upon one
+bold outlay--a volante.</p>
+<p>Almost any afternoon you might have seen this vehicle on the
+Terre aux Boeuf, or Bayou, or Tchoupitoulas Road; and because of
+the brilliant beauty of its occupants it became known from all
+other volantes as the "meteor."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld's visits were not infrequent; he insisted on
+Clotdlde's knowing just what was being done with her money. Without
+indulging ourselves in the pleasure of contemplating his continued
+mental unfolding, we may say that his growth became more rapid in
+this season of universal expansion; love had entered into his still
+compacted soul like a cupid into a rose, and was crowding it wide
+open. However, as yet, it had not made him brave. Aurora used to
+slip out of the drawing-room, and in some secluded nook of the hall
+throw up her clasped hands and go through all the motions of
+screaming merriment.</p>
+<p>"The little fool!"--it was of her own daughter she whispered
+this complimentary remark--"the little fool is afraid of the
+fish!"</p>
+<p>"You!" she said to Clotilde, one evening after Joseph had gone,
+"you call yourself a Creole girl!"</p>
+<p>But she expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blushing girl
+as a blushing man. And then--though they did sometimes
+digress--Clotilde and her partner met to talk "business" in a
+purely literal sense.</p>
+<p>Aurora, after a time, had taken her money into her own
+keeping.</p>
+<p>"You mighd gid robb' ag'in, you know, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," she
+said.</p>
+<p>But when he mentioned Clotilde's fortune as subject to the same
+contingency, Aurora replied:</p>
+<p>"Ah! bud Clotilde mighd gid robb'!"</p>
+<p>But for all the exuberance of Aurora's spirits, there was a
+cloud in her sky. Indeed, we know it is only when clouds are in the
+sky that we get the rosiest tints; and so it was with Aurora. One
+night, when she had heard the wicket in the
+<i>porte-coch&egrave;re</i> shut behind three evening callers, one
+of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she
+expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph
+Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a
+hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept
+again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped
+her face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of
+the penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us
+capable of care or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of
+extraordinary expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts. Aurora had
+been crying of nights. Even that same night, Clotilde awoke, opened
+her eyes and beheld her mother risen from the pillow and sitting
+upright in the bed beside her; the moon, shining brightly through
+the mosquito-bar revealed with distinctness her head slightly
+drooped, her face again in her hands and the dark folds of her hair
+falling about her shoulders, half-concealing the richly embroidered
+bosom of her snowy gown, and coiling in continuous abundance about
+her waist and on the slight summer covering of the bed. Before her
+on the sheet lay a white paper. Clotilde did not try to decipher
+the writing on it; she knew, at sight, the slip that had fallen
+from the statement of account on the evening of the ninth of March.
+Aurora withdrew her hands from her face--Clotilde shut her eyes;
+she heard Aurora put the paper in her bosom.</p>
+<p>"Clotilde," she said, very softly.</p>
+<p>"Maman," the daughter replied, opening her eyes, reached up her
+arms and drew the dear head down.</p>
+<p>"Clotilde, once upon a time I woke this way, and, while you were
+asleep, left the bed and made a vow to Monsieur Danny. Oh! it was a
+sin! but I cannot do those things now; I have been frightened ever
+since. I shall never do so any more. I shall never commit another
+sin as long as I live!"</p>
+<p>Their lips met fervently.</p>
+<p>"My sweet sweet," whispered Clotilde, "you looked so beautiful
+sitting up with the moonlight all around you!"</p>
+<p>"Clotilde, my beautiful daughter," said Aurora, pushing her
+bedmate from her and pretending to repress a smile, "I tell you
+now, because you don't know, and it is my duty as your mother to
+tell you--the meanest wickedness a woman can do in all this bad,
+bad world is to look ugly in bed!"</p>
+<p>Clotilde answered nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched
+arms, turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after
+two or three hours of patient wakefulness, fell asleep.</p>
+<p>But at daybreak next morning, he that wrote the paper had not
+closed his eyes.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L</h2>
+<h3>A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>There was always some flutter among Frowenfeld's employ&eacute;s
+when he was asked for, and this time it was the more pronounced
+because he was sought by a housemaid from the upper floor. It was
+hard for these two or three young Ariels to keep their Creole feet
+to the ground when it was presently revealed to their sharp ears
+that the "prof-fis-or" was requested to come upstairs.</p>
+<p>The new store was an extremely neat, bright, and well-ordered
+establishment; yet to ascend into the drawing-rooms seemed to the
+apothecary like going from the hold of one of those smart old
+packet-ships of his day into the cabin. Aurora came forward, with
+the slippers of a Cinderella twinkling at the edge of her robe. It
+seemed unfit that the floor under them should not be clouds.</p>
+<p>"Proffis-or Frowenfel', good-day! Teg a cha'." She laughed. It
+was the pure joy of existence. "You's well? You lookin' verrie
+well! Halways bizzie? You fine dad agriz wid you' healt', 'Sieur
+Frowenfel'? Yes? Ha, ha, ha!" She suddenly leaned toward him across
+the arm of her chair, with an earnest face. "'Sieur Frowenfel',
+Palmyre wand see you. You don' wan' come ad 'er 'ouse, eh?--an' you
+don' wan' her to come ad yo' bureau. You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel',
+she drez the hair of Clotilde an' mieself. So w'en she tell me dad,
+I juz say, 'Palmyre, I will sen' for Proffis-or Frowenfel' to come
+yeh; but I don' thing 'e comin'.' You know, I din' wan' you to 'ave
+dad troub'; but Clotilde--ha, ha, ha! Clotilde is sudge a
+foolish--she nevva thing of dad troub' to you--she say she thing
+you was too kine-'arted to call dad troub'--ha, ha, ha! So anny'ow
+we sen' for you, eh!"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld said he was glad they had done so, whereupon Aurora
+rose lightly, saying:</p>
+<p>"I go an' sen' her." She started away, but turned back to add:
+"You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she say she cann' truz nobody bud
+y'u." She ended with a low, melodious laugh, bending her joyous
+eyes upon the apothecary with her head dropped to one side in a way
+to move a heart of flint.</p>
+<p>She turned and passed through a door, and by the same way
+Palmyre entered. The philosophe came forward noiselessly and with a
+subdued expression, different from any Frowenfeld had ever before
+seen. At the first sight of her a thrill of disrelish ran through
+him of which he was instantly ashamed; as she came nearer he met
+her with a deferential bow and the silent tender of a chair. She
+sat down, and, after a moment's pause, handed him a sealed
+letter.</p>
+<p>He turned it over twice, recognized the handwriting, felt the
+disrelish return, and said:</p>
+<p>"This is addressed to yourself."</p>
+<p>She bowed.</p>
+<p>"Do you know who wrote it?" he asked.</p>
+<p>She bowed again.</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui, Mich&eacute;</i>."</p>
+<p>"You wish me to open it? I cannot read French."</p>
+<p>She seemed to have some explanation to offer, but could not
+command the necessary English; however, with the aid of
+Frowenfeld's limited guessing powers, she made him understand that
+the bearer of the letter to her had brought word from the writer
+that it was written in English purposely that M. Frowenfeld--the
+only person he was willing should see it--might read it. Frowenfeld
+broke the seal and ran his eye over the writing, but remained
+silent.</p>
+<p>The woman stirred, as if to say "Well?" But he hesitated.</p>
+<p>"Palmyre," he suddenly said, with a slight, dissuasive smile,
+"it would be a profanation for me to read this."</p>
+<p>She bowed to signify that she caught his meaning, then raised
+her elbows with an expression of dubiety, and said:</p>
+<p>"'E hask you--"</p>
+<p>"Yes," murmured the apothecary. He shook his head as if to
+protest to himself, and read in a low but audible voice:</p>
+<blockquote>"Star of my soul, I approach to die. It is not for me
+possible to live without Palmyre. Long time have I so done, but
+now, cut off from to see thee, by imprisonment, as it may be
+called, love is starving to death. Oh, have pity on the faithful
+heart which, since ten years, change not, but forget heaven and
+earth for you. Now in the peril of the life, hidden away, that
+absence from the sight of you make his seclusion the more worse
+than death. Halas! I pine! Not other ten years of despair can I
+commence. Accept this love. If so I will live for you, but if to
+the contraire, I must die for you. Is there anything at all what I
+will not give or even do if Palmyre will be my wife? Ah, no, far
+otherwise, there is nothing!" ...</blockquote>
+<p>Frowenfeld looked over the top of the letter. Palmyre sat with
+her eyes cast down, slowly shaking her head. He returned his glance
+to the page, coloring somewhat with annoyance at being made a
+proposing medium.</p>
+<p>"The English is very faulty here," he said, without looking up.
+"He mentions Bras-Coup&eacute;." Palmyre started and turned toward
+him; but he went on without lifting his eyes. "He speaks of your
+old pride and affection toward him as one who with your aid might
+have been a leader and deliverer of his people." Frowenfeld looked
+up. "Do you under--"</p>
+<p>"<i>Allez, Mich&eacute;</i>" said she, leaning forward, her
+great eyes fixed on the apothecary and her face full of distress.
+"<i>Mo comprend bien</i>."</p>
+<p>"He asks you to let him be to you in the place of
+Bras-Coup&eacute;."</p>
+<p>The eyes of the philosophe, probably for the first time since
+the death of the giant, lost their pride. They gazed upon
+Frowenfeld almost with piteousness; but she compressed her lips and
+again slowly shook her head.</p>
+<p>"You see," said Frowenfeld, suddenly feeling a new interest, "he
+understands their wants. He knows their wrongs. He is acquainted
+with laws and men. He could speak for them. It would not be
+insurrection--it would be advocacy. He would give his time, his
+pen, his speech, his means, to get them justice--to get them their
+rights."</p>
+<p>She hushed the over-zealous advocate with a sad and bitter smile
+and essayed to speak, studied as if for English words, and,
+suddenly abandoning that attempt, said, with ill-concealed scorn
+and in the Creole patois:</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2424.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2424.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2424.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her
+chair, her eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She
+seemed to have lost all knowledge of place or of human
+presence".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"What is all that? What I want is vengeance!"</p>
+<p>"I will finish reading," said Frowenfeld, quickly, not caring to
+understand the passionate speech.</p>
+<blockquote>"Ah, Palmyre! Palmyre! What you love and hope to love
+you because his heart keep itself free, he is loving
+another!"</blockquote>
+<p><i>"Qui ci &ccedil;a, Mich&eacute;?"</i></p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was loth to repeat. She had understood, as her face
+showed; but she dared not believe. He made it shorter:</p>
+<p>"He means that Honor&eacute; Grandissime loves another
+woman."</p>
+<p>"'Tis a lie!" she exclaimed, a better command of English coming
+with the momentary loss of restraint.</p>
+<p>The apothecary thought a moment and then decided to speak.</p>
+<p>"I do not think so," he quietly said.</p>
+<p>"'Ow you know dat?"</p>
+<p>She, too, spoke quietly, but under a fearful strain. She had
+thrown herself forward, but, as she spoke, forced herself back into
+her seat.</p>
+<p>"He told me so himself."</p>
+<p>The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her
+chair, her eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She
+seemed to have lost all knowledge of place or of human presence.
+She walked down the drawing-room quite to its curtained windows and
+there stopped, her face turned away and her hand laid with a
+visible tension on the back of a chair. She remained so long that
+Frowenfeld had begun to think of leaving her so, when she turned
+and came back. Her form was erect, her step firm and nerved, her
+lips set together and her hands dropped easily at her side; but
+when she came close up before the apothecary she was trembling. For
+a moment she seemed speechless, and then, while her eyes gleamed
+with passion, she said, in a cold, clear tone, and in her native
+patois:</p>
+<p>"Very well: if I cannot love I can have my revenge." She took
+the letter from him and bowed her thanks, still adding, in the same
+tongue, "There is now no longer anything to prevent."</p>
+<p>The apothecary understood the dark speech. She meant that, with
+no hope of Honor&eacute;'s love, there was no restraining motive to
+withhold her from wreaking what vengeance she could upon Agricola.
+But he saw the folly of a debate.</p>
+<p>"That is all I can do?" asked he.</p>
+<p>"<i>Oui, merci, Mich&eacute;</i>" she said; then she added, in
+perfect English, "but that is not all <i>I</i> can do," and
+then--laughed.</p>
+<p>The apothecary had already turned to go, and the laugh was a low
+one; but it chilled his blood. He was glad to get back to his
+employments.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI</h2>
+<h3>BUSINESS CHANGES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>We have now recorded some of the events which characterized the
+five months during which Doctor Keene had been vainly seeking to
+recover his health in the West Indies.</p>
+<p>"Is Mr. Frowenfeld in?" he asked, walking very slowly, and with
+a cane, into the new drug-store on the morning of his return to the
+city.</p>
+<p>"If Professo' Frowenfel' 's in?" replied a young man in
+shirt-sleeves, speaking rapidly, slapping a paper package which he
+had just tied, and sliding it smartly down the counter. "No,
+seh."</p>
+<p>A quick step behind the doctor caused him to turn; Raoul was
+just entering, with a bright look of business on his face, taking
+his coat off as he came.</p>
+<p>"Docta Keene! <i>Teck</i> a chair. 'Ow you like de noo sto'?
+See? Fo' counters! T'ree clerk'! De whole interieure paint undre
+mie h-own direction! If dat is not a beautiful! eh? Look at dat
+sign."</p>
+<p>He pointed to some lettering in harmonious colors near the
+ceiling at the farther end of the house. The doctor looked and
+read:</p>
+<blockquote>MANDARIN, AG'T, APOTHECARY.</blockquote>
+<p>"Why not Frowenfeld?" he asked.</p>
+<p>Raoul shrugged.</p>
+<p>"'Tis better dis way."</p>
+<p>That was his explanation.</p>
+<p>"Not the De Brahmin Mandarin who was Honor&eacute;'s
+manager?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Honor&eacute; was n' able to kip 'im no long-er.
+Honor&eacute; is n' so rich lak befo'."</p>
+<p>"And Mandarin is really in charge here?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes. Profess-or Frowenfel' all de time at de ole corner,
+w'ere 'e <i>con</i>tinue to keep 'is private room and h-use de ole
+shop fo' ware'ouse. 'E h-only come yeh w'en Mandarin cann' git
+'long widout 'im."</p>
+<p>"What does he do there? <i>He's</i> not rich."</p>
+<p>Raoul bent down toward the doctor's chair and whispered the dark
+secret:</p>
+<p>"Studyin'!"</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene went out.</p>
+<p>Everything seemed changed to the returned wanderer. Poor man!
+The changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him.
+To one broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart,
+old scenes fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague
+alienation seemed to the little doctor to come like a film over the
+long-familiar vistas of the town where he had once walked in the
+vigor and complacency of strength and distinction. This was not the
+same New Orleans. The people he met on the street were more or less
+familiar to his memory, but many that should have recognized him
+failed to do so, and others were made to notice him rather by his
+cough than by his face. Some did not know he had been away. It made
+him cross.</p>
+<p>He had walked slowly down beyond the old Frowenfeld corner and
+had just crossed the street to avoid the dust of a building which
+was being torn down to make place for a new one, when he saw coming
+toward him, unconscious of his proximity, Joseph Frowenfeld.</p>
+<p>"Doctor Keene!" said Frowenfeld, with almost the enthusiasm of
+Raoul.</p>
+<p>The doctor was very much quieter.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Joe."</p>
+<p>They went back to the new drug-store, sat down in a pleasant
+little rear corner enclosed by a railing and curtains, and
+talked.</p>
+<p>"And did the trip prove of no advantage to you?"</p>
+<p>"You see. But never mind me; tell me about Honor&eacute;; how
+does that row with his family progress?"</p>
+<p>"It still continues; the most of his people hold ideas of
+justice and prerogative that run parallel with family and party
+lines, lines of caste, of custom and the like they have imparted
+their bad feeling against him to the community at large; very easy
+to do just now, for the election for President of the States comes
+on in the fall, and though we in Louisiana have little or nothing
+to do with it, the people are feverish."</p>
+<p>"The country's chill-day," said Doctor Keene; "dumb chill, hot
+fever."</p>
+<p>"The excitement is intense," said Frowenfeld. "It seems we are
+not to be granted suffrage yet; but the Creoles have a way of
+casting votes in their mind. For example, they have voted
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime a traitor; they have voted me an
+encumbrance; I hear one of them casting that vote now."</p>
+<p>Some one near the front of the store was talking excitedly with
+Raoul:</p>
+<p>"An'--an'--an' w'at are the consequence? The consequence are
+that we smash his shop for him an' 'e 'ave to make a noo-start with
+a Creole partner's money an' put 'is sto' in charge of Creole'! If
+I know he is yo' frien'? Yesseh! Valuable citizen? An' w'at we care
+for valuable citizen? Let him be valuable if he want; it keep' him
+from gettin' the neck broke; but--he mus'-tek-kyeh--'ow--he--talk'!
+He-mus'-tek-kyeh 'ow he stir the 'ot blood of Louisyanna!"</p>
+<p>"He is perfectly right," said the little doctor, in his husky
+undertone; "neither you nor Honor&eacute; is a bit sound, and I
+shouldn't wonder if they would hang you both, yet; and as for that
+darkey who has had the impudence to try to make a commercial white
+gentleman of himself--it may not be I that ought to say it, but--he
+will get his deserts--sure!"</p>
+<p>"There are a great many Americans that think as you do," said
+Frowenfeld, quietly.</p>
+<p>"But," said the little doctor, "what did that fellow mean by
+your Creole partner? Mandarin is in charge of your store, but he is
+not your partner, is he? Have you one?"</p>
+<p>"A silent one," said the apothecary</p>
+<p>"So silent as to be none of my business?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Well, who is it, then?"</p>
+<p>"It is Mademoiselle Nancanou."</p>
+<p>"Your partner in business?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,--"</p>
+<p>The insinuation conveyed in the doctor's manner was very trying,
+but Joseph merely reddened.</p>
+<p>"Purely business, I suppose," presently said the doctor, with a
+ghastly ironical smile. "Does the arrangem'--" his utterance failed
+him--"does it end there?"</p>
+<p>"It ends there."</p>
+<p>"And you don't see that it ought either not to have begun, or
+else ought not to have ended there?"</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:</p>
+<p>"And who takes care of Aurora's money?"</p>
+<p>"Herself."</p>
+<p>"Exclusively?"</p>
+<p>They both smiled more good-naturedly.</p>
+<p>"Exclusively."</p>
+<p>"She's a coon;" and the little doctor rose up and crawled away,
+ostensibly to see another friend, but really to drag himself into
+his bedchamber and lock himself in. The next day--the yellow fever
+was bad again--he resumed the practice of his profession.</p>
+<p>"'Twill be a sort of decent suicide without the element of
+pusillanimity," he thought to himself.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII</h2>
+<h3>LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When Honor&eacute; Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had
+returned to the city in a very feeble state of health, he rose at
+once from the desk where he was sitting and went to see him; but it
+was on that morning when the doctor was sitting and talking with
+Joseph, and Honor&eacute; found his chamber door locked. Doctor
+Keene called twice, within the following two days, upon
+Honor&eacute; at his counting-room; but on both occasions
+Honor&eacute;'s chair was empty. So it was several days before they
+met. But one hot morning in the latter part of August,--the August
+days were hotter before the cypress forest was cut down between the
+city and the lake than they are now,--as Doctor Keene stood in the
+middle of his room breathing distressedly after a sad fit of
+coughing, and looking toward one of his windows whose closed sash
+he longed to see opened, Honor&eacute; knocked at the door.</p>
+<p>"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why,
+Honor&eacute;,--well, it serves you right for stopping to knock.
+Sit down."</p>
+<p>Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other; and, after
+a pause, Doctor Keene said:</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;, you are pretty badly stove."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime smiled.</p>
+<p>"Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more complimentary to you;
+you might look more sick."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I have resumed my trade," replied Doctor Keene.</p>
+<p>"So I have heard; but, Charlie, that is all in favor of the
+people who want a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind
+killing him; I should advise you not to do it."</p>
+<p>"You mean" (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) "if
+I should ask your advice. I am going to get well,
+Honor&eacute;."</p>
+<p>His visitor shrugged.</p>
+<p>"So much the better. I do confess I am tempted to make use of
+you in your official capacity, right now. Do you feel strong enough
+to go with me in your gig a little way?"</p>
+<p>"A professional call?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, and a difficult case; also a confidential one."</p>
+<p>"Ah! confidential!" said the little man, in his painful, husky
+irony. "You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our
+'professor' into, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Possibly a worse one," replied the amiable Creole.</p>
+<p>"And I must be mum, eh?"</p>
+<p>"I would prefer."</p>
+<p>"Shall I need any instruments? No?"--with a shade of
+disappointment on his face.</p>
+<p>He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street
+door.</p>
+<p>"How are affairs about town?" he asked, as he made some slight
+preparation for the street.</p>
+<p>"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private
+difficulty between a Creole and an Am&eacute;ricain drew instantly
+half the street together to take sides strictly according to
+belongings and without asking a question. My-de'-seh, we are
+having, as Frowenfeld says, a war of human acids and alkalies."</p>
+<p>They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who
+drove turned, by Honor&eacute;'s direction, toward the rue
+Dauphine, entered it, passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned
+into this toward the river again and entered the rue Cond&eacute;.
+The route was circuitous. They stopped at the carriage-door of a
+large brick house. The wicket was opened by Clemence. They alighted
+without driving in.</p>
+<p>"Hey, old witch," said the doctor, with mock severity; "not hung
+yet?"</p>
+<p>The houses of any pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the
+closely built parts of the town were all of the one, general,
+Spanish-American plan. Honor&eacute; led the doctor through the
+cool, high, tessellated carriage-hall, on one side of which were
+the drawing-rooms, closed and darkened. They turned at the bottom,
+ascended a broad, iron-railed staircase to the floor above, and
+halted before the open half of a glazed double door with a clumsy
+iron latch. It was the entrance to two spacious chambers, which
+were thrown into one by folded doors.</p>
+<p>The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his
+eyebrows--the rooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable
+largeness and heaviness, lofty sobriety, abundance of finely
+wrought brass mounting, motionless richness of upholstery, much
+silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a soft semi-obscurity--such
+were the characteristics. The long windows of the farther apartment
+could be seen to open over the street, and the air from behind,
+coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in the paved
+court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and
+cavernous.</p>
+<p>"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own
+bedchamber?" the doctor whispered.</p>
+<p>"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly
+answered Honor&eacute;. "Agricole and some others ransacked this
+house one night last March--the day I announced the new firm; but
+of course, then, he was not here."</p>
+<p>They entered, and the figure of Honor&eacute; Grandissime,
+f.m.c., came into view in the centre of the farther room, reclining
+in an attitude of extreme languor on a low couch, whither he had
+come from the high bed near by, as the impression of his form among
+its pillows showed. He turned upon the two visitors his slow,
+melancholy eyes, and, without an attempt to rise or speak,
+indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, an invitation to be
+seated.</p>
+<p>"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and
+drawing it close to the side of the couch.</p>
+<p>The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless
+hand, which had not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but
+sank idly back upon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and
+its nails slightly blue.</p>
+<p>"Lie still," said the doctor, reassuringly, as the rentier began
+to lift the one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the
+couch and the hand which hung out of sight across a large,
+linen-covered cushion.</p>
+<p>By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon
+acquainted himself with the case before him. It was a very plain
+one. By and by he rubbed his face and red curls and suddenly
+said:</p>
+<p>"You will not take my prescription."</p>
+<p>The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.</p>
+<p>"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his
+wont, and, as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take
+that little satirical downward pull which his friends disliked,
+"I'll do my duty. I'll give Honor&eacute; the details as to diet;
+no physic; but my prescription to you is, Get up and get out. Never
+mind the risk of rough handling; they can but kill you, and you
+will die anyhow if you stay here." He rose. "I'll send you a
+chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at Frowenfeld's to-morrow
+morning, and you can call there and get it. It will give you an
+object for going out."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="gs2436.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/gs2436.jpg"><img src=
+"images/gs2436.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"They turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took
+chairs in a cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where
+the hospitality of Clemence had placed glasses of
+lemonade".</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together.
+Reaching the bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they
+turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a
+cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where the
+hospitality of Clemence had placed glasses of lemonade.</p>
+<p>"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no
+incurable organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily
+removed; still your--your patient--"</p>
+<p>"My half-brother," said Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the
+question the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?'
+It will kill him <i>soon</i>, if you do not get him to rouse up.
+There is absolutely nothing the matter with him but his unrequited
+love."</p>
+<p>"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honor&eacute;, with
+something of the doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be
+killed by it."</p>
+<p>"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in
+reverie, gazed upon the glass which he was slowly turning around
+with his attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he
+added: "However, one <i>may</i> love as hopelessly and harder than
+that man upstairs, and yet not die."</p>
+<p>"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said
+Honor&eacute; with gentle gravity.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the other, still toying with his glass.</p>
+<p>He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met and
+remained steadfastly fixed each upon each.</p>
+<p>"You've got it bad," said Doctor Keene, mechanically.</p>
+<p>"And you?" retorted the Creole.</p>
+<p>"It isn't going to kill me."</p>
+<p>"It has not killed me. And," added M. Grandissime, as they
+passed through the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in
+mind the numberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and
+sons and daughters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die
+of love, my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."</p>
+<p>This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but
+he took no advantage of it.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette
+beside the doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a
+chance for you, why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon
+you are making? Why, sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak
+spot your action has shown; you have taken an inoculation of
+Quixotic conscience from our transcendental apothecary and
+perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that would have done honor to
+four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have a chance to do
+something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the 'looks o'
+the thing.' Why, what do you care--"</p>
+<p>"Hush!" said Honor&eacute;; "do you suppose I have not
+temptation enough already?"</p>
+<p>He began to move away.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;," said the doctor, following him a step, "I
+couldn't have made a mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora,
+isn't it?"</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute; nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with
+a sudden new thought.</p>
+<p>"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you
+are prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."</p>
+<p>"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the
+straight up and down manly thing."</p>
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+<p>The doctor stepped into his gig--</p>
+<p>"Not till I feel all right <i>here</i>." (In his chest.)</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII</h2>
+<h3>FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION</h3>
+<br>
+<p>One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and
+consequently earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes
+were set all a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another
+of their number had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to
+the enemy,"--a phrase first applied by him to Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had
+asked on that earlier occasion.</p>
+<p>"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!"
+replied Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Am&eacute;ricains in
+matters of business and of government! It implies the exchange of
+social amenities with a race of upstarts! It implies a craven
+consent to submit the sacredest prejudices of our fathers to the
+new-fangled measuring-rods of pert, imported theories upon moral
+and political progress! It implies a listening to, and reasoning
+with, the condemners of some of our most time-honored and
+respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but Honor&eacute;
+has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked
+out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his
+case an act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I
+simply do not understand them! <i>H-you</i> know, Professor
+Frowenfeld, what he has done! You know how ignominiously he has
+surrendered the key of a moral position which for the honor of the
+Grandissime-Fusilier name we have felt it necessary to hold against
+our hereditary enemies! And--you--know--" here Agricola actually
+dropped all artificiality and spoke from the depths of his
+feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has joined himself in business
+h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do? What can we say? It is
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell! He is gone
+over to the enemy.'"</p>
+<p>The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul
+Innerarity. Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such
+part as he could understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with
+ever-broadening admiration. We know how devoted he became to the
+interests and fame of "Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had
+married. Not to divide his generous heart he took rooms opposite
+the drug-store, resolved that "Frowenfeld's" should be not only the
+latest closed but the earliest opened of all the pharmacies in New
+Orleans.</p>
+<p>This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his
+bride fell suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of
+Aurora and Clotilde could not be so near to trouble and not know
+it, and before Raoul was nearly enough recovered from the shock of
+this peril to remember that he was a Grandissime, these last two of
+the De Grapions had hastened across the street to the small,
+white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of universal human
+love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame Innerarity
+recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could pay
+such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four
+became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward
+Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed
+her all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to
+be, for him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily
+inaccessible; but Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was
+delighted with Aurora. He told her in confidence that "Profess-or
+Frowenfel'" was the best man in the world; but she boldly said,
+taking pains to speak with a tear-and-a-half of genuine
+gratitude,--"Egcep' Monsieur Honor&eacute; Grandissime," and he
+assented, at first with hesitation and then with ardor. The four
+formed a group of their own; and it is not certain that this was
+not the very first specimen ever produced in the Crescent City of
+that social variety of New Orleans life now distinguished as Uptown
+Creoles.</p>
+<p>Almost the first thing acquired by Raoul in the camp of the
+enemy was a certain Aurorean audacity; and on the afternoon to
+which we allude, having told Frowenfeld a rousing fib to the effect
+that the multitudinous inmates of the maternal Grandissime mansion
+had insisted on his bringing his esteemed employer to see them, he
+and his bride had the hardihood to present him on the front
+veranda.</p>
+<p>The straightforward Frowenfeld was much pleased with his
+reception. It was not possible for such as he to guess the ire with
+which his presence was secretly regarded. New Orleans, let us say
+once more, was small, and the apothecary of the rue Royale locally
+famed; and what with curiosity and that innate politeness which it
+is the Creole's boast that he cannot mortify, the veranda, about
+the top of the great front stair, was well crowded with people of
+both sexes and all ages. It would be most pleasant to tarry once
+more in description of this gathering of nobility and beauty; to
+recount the points of Creole loveliness in midsummer dress; to tell
+in particular of one and another eye-kindling face, form, manner,
+wit; to define the subtle qualities of Creole air and sky and
+scene, or the yet more delicate graces that characterize the music
+of Creole voice and speech and the light of Creole eyes; to set
+forth the gracious, unaccentuated dignity of the matrons and the
+ravishing archness of their daughters. To Frowenfeld the experience
+seemed all unreal. Nor was this unreality removed by conversation
+on grave subjects; for few among either the maturer or the younger
+beauty could do aught but listen to his foreign tongue like
+unearthly strangers in the old fairy tales. They came, however, in
+the course of their talk to the subject of love and marriage. It is
+not certain that they entered deeper into the great question than a
+comparison of its attendant Anglo-American and Franco-American
+conventionalities; but sure it is that somehow--let those young
+souls divine the method who can--every unearthly stranger on that
+veranda contrived to understand Frowenfeld's English. Suddenly the
+conversation began to move over the ground of inter-marriage
+between hostile families. Then what eyes and ears! A certain
+suspicion had already found lodgement in the universal Grandissime
+breast, and every one knew in a moment that, to all intents and
+purposes, they were about to argue the case of Honor&eacute; and
+Aurora.</p>
+<p>The conversation became discussion, Frowenfeld, Raoul and
+Raoul's little seraph against the whole host, chariots, horse and
+archery. Ah! such strokes as the apothecary dealt! And if Raoul and
+"Madame Raoul" played parts most closely resembling the blowing of
+horns and breaking of pitchers, still they bore themselves
+gallantly. The engagement was short; we need not say that nobody
+surrendered; nobody ever gives up the ship in parlor or veranda
+debate: and yet--as is generally the case in such affairs--truth
+and justice made some unacknowledged headway. If anybody on either
+side came out wounded--this to the credit of the Creoles as a
+people--the sufferer had the heroic good manners not to say so. But
+the results were more marked than this; indeed, in more than one or
+two candid young hearts and impressible minds the wrongs and rights
+of sovereign true love began there on the spot to be more
+generously conceded and allowed. "My-de'-seh," Honor&eacute; had
+once on a time said to Frowenfeld, meaning that to prevail in
+conversational debate one should never follow up a faltering
+opponent, "you mus' <i>crack</i> the egg, not smash it!" And
+Joseph, on rising to take his leave, could the more amiably
+overlook the feebleness of the invitation to call again, since he
+rejoiced, for Honor&eacute;'s sake, in the conviction that the egg
+was cracked.</p>
+<p>Agricola, the Grandissimes told the apothecary, was ill in his
+room, and Madame de Grandissime, his sister--Honor&eacute;'s
+mother--begged to be excused that she might keep him company. The
+Fusiliers were a very close order; or one might say they garrisoned
+the citadel.</p>
+<p>But Joseph's rising to go was not immediately upon the close of
+the discussion; those courtly people would not let even an
+unwelcome guest go with the faintest feeling of disrelish for them.
+They were casting about in their minds for some momentary diversion
+with which to add a finishing touch to their guest's entertainment,
+when Clemence appeared in the front garden walk and was quickly
+surrounded by bounding children, alternately begging and demanding
+a song. Many of even the younger adults remembered well when she
+had been "one of the hands on the place," and a passionate lover of
+the African dance. In the same instant half a dozen voices proposed
+that for Joseph's amusement Clemence should put her cakes off her
+head, come up on the veranda and show a few of her best steps.</p>
+<p>"But who will sing?"</p>
+<p>"Raoul!"</p>
+<p>"Very well; and what shall it be?"</p>
+<p>"'Madame Gaba.'"</p>
+<p>No, Clemence objected.</p>
+<p>"Well, well, stand back--something better than 'Madame
+Gaba.'"</p>
+<p>Raoul began to sing and Clemence instantly to pace and turn,
+posture, bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp,
+wheel, lift her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with
+crossed ankles, smite her palms, march, circle, leap,--an endless
+improvisation of rhythmic motion to this modulated responsive
+chant:</p>
+<blockquote>Raoul. "<i>Mo pas l'aimein &ccedil;a</i>."<br>
+<br>
+Clemence. "<i>Mich&eacute; Igenne, oap! oap! oap!</i>"<br>
+<br>
+He. "<i>Y&eacute; donn&eacute; vingt cinq sous pou' manz&eacute;
+poul&eacute;</i>."<br>
+<br>
+She. "<i>Mich&eacute; Igenne, dit--dit--dit--</i>"<br>
+<br>
+He. "<i>Mo pas l'aimein &ccedil;a!</i>"<br>
+<br>
+She. "<i>Mich&eacute; Igenne, oap! oap! oap!</i>"<br>
+<br>
+He. "<i>Mo pas l'aimein &ccedil;a!</i>"<br>
+<br>
+She. "<i>Mich&eacute; Igenne, oap! oap! oap!</i>"</blockquote>
+<p>Frowenfeld was not so greatly amused as the ladies thought he
+should have been, and was told that this was not a fair indication
+of what he would see if there were ten dancers instead of one.</p>
+<p>How much less was it an indication of what he would have seen in
+that mansion early the next morning, when there was found just
+outside of Agricola's bedroom door a fresh egg, not cracked,
+according to Honor&eacute;'s maxim, but smashed, according to the
+lore of the voudous. Who could have got in in the night? And did
+the intruder get in by magic, by outside lock-picking, or by inside
+collusion? Later in the morning, the children playing in the
+basement found--it had evidently been accidentally dropped, since
+the true use of its contents required them to be scattered in some
+person's path--a small cloth bag, containing a quantity of dogs'
+and cats' hair, cut fine and mixed with salt and pepper.</p>
+<p>"Clemence?"</p>
+<p>"Pooh! Clemence. No! But as sure as the sun turns around the
+world--Palmyre Philosophe!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIV"></a>CHAPTER LIV</h2>
+<h3>"CAULDRON BUBBLE"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The excitement and alarm produced by the practical threat of
+voudou curses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was
+quite another; and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of
+voudou charms was found in the four corners of Agricola's pillow,
+the great Grandissime family were ignorant of how they could have
+come there. Let us examine these terrible engines of mischief. In
+one corner was an acorn drilled through with two holes at right
+angles to each other, a small feather run through each hole; in the
+second a joint of cornstalk with a cavity scooped from the middle,
+the pith left intact at the ends, and the space filled with parings
+from that small callous spot near the knee of the horse, called the
+"nail;" in the third corner a bunch of parti-colored feathers;
+something equally meaningless in the fourth. No thread was used in
+any of them. All fastening was done with the gum of trees. It was
+no easy task for his kindred to prevent Agricola, beside himself
+with rage and fright, from going straight to Palmyre's house and
+shooting her down in open day.</p>
+<p>"We shall have to watch our house by night," said a gentleman of
+the household, when they had at length restored the Citizen to a
+condition of mind which enabled them to hold him in a chair.</p>
+<p>"Watch this house?" cried a chorus. "You don't suppose she comes
+near here, do you? She does it all from a distance. No, no; watch
+<i>her</i> house."</p>
+<p>Did Agricola believe in the supernatural potency of these
+gimcracks? No, and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped
+down every day to the levee, had a slave-boy row him across the
+river in a skiff, landed, re-embarked, and in the middle of the
+stream surreptitiously cast a picayune over his shoulder into the
+river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the imp of death thus placated, must
+have been a sort of spiritual Cheap John.</p>
+<p>Several more nights passed. The house of Palmyre, closely
+watched, revealed nothing. No one came out, no one went in, no
+light was seen. They should have watched in broad daylight. At
+last, one midnight, 'Polyte Grandissime stepped cautiously up to
+one of the batten doors with an auger, and succeeded, without
+arousing any one, in boring a hole. He discovered a lighted candle
+standing in a glass of water.</p>
+<p>"Nothing but a bedroom light," said one.</p>
+<p>"Ah, bah!" whispered the other; "it is to make the spell work
+strong."</p>
+<p>"We will not tell Agricola first; we had better tell
+Honor&eacute;," said Sylvestre.</p>
+<p>"You forget," said 'Polyte, "that I no longer have any
+acquaintance with Monsieur Honor&eacute; Grandissime."</p>
+<p>They told Agamemnon; and it would have gone hard with the
+"<i>milatraise</i>" but for the additional fact that suspicion had
+fastened upon another person; but now this person in turn had to be
+identified. It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola,
+but to wait and seek further developments. Agricola, having lost
+all ability to sleep in the mansion, moved into a small cottage in
+a grove near the house. But the very next morning, he turned cold
+with horror to find on his doorstep a small black-coffined doll,
+with pins run through the heart, a burned-out candle at the head
+and another at the feet.</p>
+<p>"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the
+old man as he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate.
+"What if I should tell you that by watching the Congo
+dancing-ground at midnight to-night, you will see the real author
+of this mischief--eh?"</p>
+<p>"And why to-night?"</p>
+<p>"Because the moon rises at midnight."</p>
+<p>There was firing that night in the deserted Congo
+dancing-grounds under the ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would
+say now, in Congo Square, from three pistols--Agricola's,
+'Polyte's, and the weapon of an ill-defined, retreating figure
+answering the description of the person who had stabbed Agricola
+the preceding February. "And yet," said 'Polyte, "I would have
+sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."</p>
+<p>Through Raoul these events came to the ear of Frowenfield. It
+was about the time that Raoul's fishing party, after a few days'
+mishaps, had returned home. Palmyre, on several later dates, had
+craved further audiences and shown other letters from the hidden
+f.m.c. She had heard them calmly, and steadfastly preserved the one
+attitude of refusal. But it could not escape Frowenfeld's notice
+that she encouraged the sending of additional letters. He easily
+guessed the courier to be Clemence; and now, as he came to ponder
+these revelations of Raoul, he found that within twenty-four hours
+after every visit of Clemence to the house of Palmyre, Agricola
+suffered a visitation.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LV"></a>CHAPTER LV</h2>
+<h3>CAUGHT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it
+is yet summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two
+hundred yards northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in
+which Agricola had made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of
+which we have spoken, stood one of these trees, whose leaves were
+beginning to lie thickly upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and
+luxuriant hedge of Cherokee-rose started from this tree and
+stretched toward the northwest across the level country, until it
+merged into the green confusion of gardened homes in the vicinity
+of Bayou St. Jean, or, by night, into the common obscurity of a
+starlit perspective. When an unclouded moon shone upon it, it cast
+a shadow as black as velvet.</p>
+<p>Under this fig-tree, some three hours later than that at which
+Honor&eacute; bade Joseph good-night, a man was stooping down and
+covering something with the broad, fallen leaves.</p>
+<p>"The moon will rise about three o'clock," thought he. "That, the
+hour of universal slumber, will be, by all odds, the time most
+likely to bring developments."</p>
+<p>He was the same person who had spent the most of the day in a
+blacksmith's shop in St. Louis street, superintending a piece of
+smithing. Now that he seemed to have got the thing well hid, he
+turned to the base of the tree and tried the security of some
+attachment. Yes, it was firmly chained. He was not a robber; he was
+not an assassin; he was not an officer of police; and what is more
+notable, seeing he was a Louisianian, he was not a soldier nor even
+an ex-soldier; and this although, under his clothing, he was
+encased from head to foot in a complete suit of mail. Of steel? No.
+Of brass? No. It was all one piece--<i>a white skin</i>; and on his
+head he wore an invisible helmet--the name of Grandissime. As he
+straightened up and withdrew into the grove, you would have
+recognized at once--by his thick-set, powerful frame, clothed
+seemingly in black, but really, as you might guess, in blue
+cottonade, by his black beard and the general look of a seafarer--a
+frequent visitor at the Grandissime mansion, a country member of
+that great family, one whom we saw at the <i>f&ecirc;te de
+grandp&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+<p>Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime was a man of few words, no
+sentiments, short methods; materialistic, we might say; quietly
+ferocious; indifferent as to means, positive as to ends, quick of
+perception, sure in matters of saltpetre, a stranger at the
+custom-house, and altogether--<i>take him right</i>--very much of a
+gentleman. He had been, for a whole day, beset with the idea that
+the way to catch a voudou was--to catch him; and as he had caught
+numbers of them on both sides of the tropical and semi-tropical
+Atlantic, he decided to try his skill privately on the one who--his
+experience told him--was likely to visit Agricola's doorstep
+to-night. All things being now prepared, he sat down at the root of
+a tree in the grove, where the shadow was very dark, and seemed
+quite comfortable. He did not strike at the mosquitoes; they
+appeared to understand that he did not wish to trifle. Neither did
+his thoughts or feelings trouble him; he sat and sharpened a small
+penknife on his boot.</p>
+<p>His mind--his occasional transient meditation--was the more
+comfortable because he was one of those few who had coolly and
+unsentimentally allowed Honor&eacute; Grandissime to sell their
+lands. It continued to grow plainer every day that the grants with
+which theirs were classed--grants of old French or Spanish
+under-officials--were bad. Their sagacious cousin seemed to have
+struck the right standard, and while those titles which he still
+held on to remained unimpeached, those that he had parted with to
+purchasers--as, for instance, the grant held by this Capitain
+Jean-Baptiste Grandissime--could be bought back now for half what
+he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well
+have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in
+perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails in the
+dark.</p>
+<p>By and by he put up the little tool and sat looking out upon the
+prospect. The time of greatest probability had not come, but the
+voudou might choose not to wait for that; and so he kept watch.
+There was a great stillness. The cocks had finished a round and
+were silent. No dog barked. A few tiny crickets made the quiet land
+seem the more deserted. Its beauties were not entirely
+overlooked--the innumerable host of stars above, the twinkle of
+myriad fireflies on the dark earth below. Between a quarter and a
+half-mile away, almost in a line with the Cherokee hedge, was a
+faint rise of ground, and on it a wide-spreading live-oak. There
+the keen, seaman's eye of the Capitain came to a stop, fixed upon a
+spot which he had not noticed before. He kept his eye on it, and
+waited for the stronger light of the moon.</p>
+<p>Presently behind the grove at his back she rose; and almost the
+first beam that passed over the tops of the trees, and stretched
+across the plain, struck the object of his scrutiny. What was it?
+The ground, he knew; the tree, he knew; he knew there ought to be a
+white paling enclosure about the trunk of the tree: for there were
+buried--ah!--he came as near laughing at himself as ever he did in
+his life; the apothecary of the rue Royale had lately erected some
+marble headstones there, and--</p>
+<p>"Oh! my God!"</p>
+<p>While Capitain Jean-Baptiste had been trying to guess what the
+tombstones were, a woman had been coming toward him in the shadow
+of the hedge. She was not expecting to meet him; she did not know
+that he was there; she knew she had risks to run, but was ignorant
+of what they were; she did not know there was anything under the
+fig-tree which she so nearly and noiselessly approached. One moment
+her foot was lifted above the spot where the unknown object lay
+with wide-stretched jaws under the leaves, and the next, she
+uttered that cry of agony and consternation which interrupted the
+watcher's meditation. She was caught in a huge steel-trap.</p>
+<p>Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime remained perfectly still. She
+fell, a snarling, struggling, groaning heap, to the ground, wild
+with pain and fright, and began the hopeless effort to draw the
+jaws of the trap apart with her fingers.</p>
+<p>"<i>Ah! bon Dieu, bon Dieu!</i> Quit a-<i>bi-i-i-i-tin' me</i>!
+Oh! Lawd 'a' mussy! Ow-ow-ow! lemme go! Dey go'n' to kyetch an'
+hang me! Oh! an' I hain' done nutt'n' 'gainst <i>no</i>body! Ah!
+<i>bon Dieu! ein pov' vi&eacute; n&eacute;gresse</i>! Oh! Jemimy! I
+cyan' gid dis yeh t'ing loose--oh! m-m-m-m! An' dey'll tra to mek
+out't I voudou' Mich-Agricole! An' I did n' had nutt'n' do wid it!
+Oh Lawd, oh <i>Lawd</i>, you'll be mighty good ef you lemme loose!
+I'm a po' nigga! Oh! dey had n' ought to mek it so
+<i>pow</i>'ful!"</p>
+<p>Hands, teeth, the free foot, the writhing body, every
+combination of available forces failed to spread the savage jaws,
+though she strove until hands and mouth were bleeding.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she became silent; a thought of precaution came to her;
+she lifted from the earth a burden she had dropped there, struggled
+to a half-standing posture, and, with her foot still in the trap,
+was endeavoring to approach the end of the hedge near by, to thrust
+this burden under it, when she opened her throat in a speechless
+ecstasy of fright on feeling her arm grasped by her captor.</p>
+<p>"O-o-o-h! Lawd! o-o-oh! Lawd!" she cried, in a frantic, husky
+whisper, going down upon her knees, "<i>Oh, Mich&eacute;! pou'
+l'amou' du bon Dieu! Pou' l'amou du bon Dieu ayez piti&eacute;
+d'ein pov' n&eacute;gresse! Pov' n&eacute;gresse, Mich&eacute;</i>,
+w'at nevva done nutt'n' to nobody on'y jis sell <i>calas</i>! I iss
+comin' 'long an' step inteh dis-yeh bah-trap by acci<i>dent</i>!
+Ah! <i>Mich&eacute;, Mich&eacute;</i>, ple-e-ease be good! <i>Ah!
+mon Dieu</i>!--an' de Lawd'll reward you--'deed 'E will,
+<i>Mich&eacute;</i>!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Qui ci &ccedil;a?</i>" asked the Capitain, sternly, stooping
+and grasping her burden, which she had been trying to conceal under
+herself.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mich&eacute;, don' trouble dat! Please jes tek dis yeh trap
+offen me--da's all! Oh, don't, mawstah, ple-e-ease don' spill all
+my wash'n' t'ings! 'Tain't nutt'n' but my old dress roll' up into a
+ball. Oh, please--now, you see? nutt'n' but a po' nigga's
+dr--<i>oh! fo' de love o' God, Mich&eacute; Jean-Baptiste, don'
+open dat ah box! Y'en a rien du tout la-dans, Mich&eacute;
+Jean-Baptiste; du tout, du tout</i>! Oh, my God!
+<i>Mich&eacute;</i>, on'y jis teck dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef
+yo' <i>please</i>, it's bit'n' me lak a <i>dawg</i>!--if you
+<i>please, Mich&eacute;</i>! Oh! you git kill' if you open dat ah
+box, Mawse Jean-Baptiste! <i>Mo' parole d'honneur le plus
+sacre</i>--I'll kiss de cross! Oh, <i>sweet Mich&eacute; Jean,
+laisse moi aller</i>! Nutt'n' but some dutty close <i>la-dans</i>."
+She repeated this again and again, even after Capitain
+Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black coffin from the old
+dress in which it was wrapped. "<i>Rien du tout, Mich&eacute;</i>;
+nutt'n' but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."</p>
+<p>He removed the lid and saw within, resting on the cushioned
+bottom, the image, in myrtle-wax, moulded and painted with some
+rude skill, of a negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder--a
+<i>bras coup&eacute;</i>--with a dirk grasped in its hand.</p>
+<p>The old woman lifted her eyes to heaven; her teeth chattered;
+she gasped twice before she could recover utterance. "<i>Oh,
+Mich&eacute;</i> Jean-Baptiste, I di' n' mek dat ah! <i>Mo'
+t&eacute; pas f&eacute; &ccedil;a</i>! I swea' befo' God! Oh, no,
+no, no! 'Tain' nutt'n' nohow but a lill play-toy,
+<i>Mich&eacute;</i>. Oh, sweet <i>Mich&eacute; Jean</i>, you not
+gwan to kill me? I di' n' mek it! It was--ef you lemme go, I tell
+you who mek it! Sho's I live I tell you, <i>Mich&eacute;
+Jean</i>--ef you lemme go! Sho's God's good to me--ef you lemme go!
+Oh, God A'mighty, <i>Mich&eacute; Jean</i>, sho's God's good to
+me."</p>
+<p>She was becoming incoherent.</p>
+<p>Then Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime for the first time spoke
+at length:</p>
+<p>"Do you see this?" he spoke the French of the Atchafalaya. He
+put his long flintlock pistol close to her face. "I shall take the
+trap off; you will walk three feet in front of me; if you make it
+four I blow your brains out; we shall go to Agricole. But right
+here, just now, before I count ten, you will tell me who sent you
+here; at the word ten, if I reach it, I pull the trigger.
+One--two--three--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>Mich&eacute;</i>, she gwan to gib me to de devil wid
+<i>houdou</i> ef I tell you--Oh, good <i>Lawdy</i>!"</p>
+<p>But he did not pause.</p>
+<p>"Four--five--six--seven--eight--"</p>
+<p>"Palmyre!" gasped the negress, and grovelled on the ground.</p>
+<p>The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed
+in her arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the
+mansion.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to
+Frowenfeld, rose up from where he had all this time lain, close
+against the hedge, and glided off down its black shadow to warn the
+philosophe.</p>
+<p>When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old
+table-knife with its end ground to a point.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVI"></a>CHAPTER LVI</h2>
+<h3>BLOOD FOR A BLOW</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It seems to be one of the self-punitive characteristics of
+tyranny, whether the tyrant be a man, a community, or a caste, to
+have a pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence
+lay in irons, it is barely now, that our South is casting off a
+certain apprehensive tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest
+provocation active, and now and then violent, concerning her
+"blacks." This fear, like others similar elsewhere in the world,
+has always been met by the same one antidote--terrific cruelty to
+the tyrant's victim. So we shall presently see the Grandissime
+ladies, deeming themselves compassionate, urging their kinsmen to
+"give the poor wretch a sound whipping and let her go." Ah! what
+atrocities are we unconsciously perpetrating North and South now,
+in the name of mercy or defence, which the advancing light of
+progressive thought will presently show out in their enormity?</p>
+<p>Agricola slept late. He had gone to his room the evening before
+much incensed at the presumption of some younger Grandissimes who
+had brought up the subject, and spoken in defence, of their cousin
+Honor&eacute;. He had retired, however, not to rest, but to
+construct an engine of offensive warfare which would revenge him a
+hundred-fold upon the miserable school of imported thought which
+had sent its revolting influences to the very Grandissime
+hearthstone; he wrote a "<i>Phillipique G&eacute;n&eacute;rale
+contre la Conduite du Gouvernement de la Louisiane</i>" and a short
+but vigorous chapter in English on "The Insanity of Educating the
+Masses." This accomplished, he had gone to bed in a condition of
+peaceful elation, eager for the next day to come that he might take
+these mighty productions to Joseph Frowenfeld, and make him a
+present of them for insertion in his book of tables.</p>
+<p>Jean-Baptiste felt no need of his advice, that he should rouse
+him; and, for a long time before the old man awoke, his younger
+kinsmen were stirring about unwontedly, going and coming through
+the hall of the mansion, along its verandas and up and down its
+outer flight of stairs. Gates were opening and shutting, errands
+were being carried by negro boys on bareback horses, Charlie
+Mandarin of St. Bernard parish and an Armand Fusilier from Faubourg
+Ste. Marie had on some account come--as they told the ladies--"to
+take breakfast;" and the ladies, not yet informed, amusedly
+wondering at all this trampling and stage whispering, were up a
+trifle early. In those days Creole society was a ship, in which the
+fair sex were all passengers and the ruder sex the crew. The ladies
+of the Grandissime mansion this morning asked passengers'
+questions, got sailors' answers, retorted wittily and more or less
+satirically, and laughed often, feeling their constrained
+insignificance. However, in a house so full of bright-eyed
+children, with mothers and sisters of all ages as their
+confederates, the secret was soon out, and before Agricola had left
+his little cottage in the grove the topic of all tongues was the
+abysmal treachery and <i>ingratitude</i> of negro slaves. The whole
+tribe of Grandissime believed, this morning, in the doctrine of
+total depravity--of the negro.</p>
+<p>And right in the face of this belief, the ladies put forth the
+generously intentioned prayer for mercy. They were answered that
+they little knew what frightful perils they were thus inviting upon
+themselves.</p>
+<p>The male Grandissimes were not surprised at this exhibition of
+weak clemency in their lovely women; they were proud of it; it
+showed the magnanimity that was natural to the universal
+Grandissime heart, when not restrained and repressed by the stern
+necessities of the hour. But Agricola disappointed them. Why should
+he weaken and hesitate, and suggest delays and middle courses, and
+stammer over their proposed measures as "extreme"? In very truth,
+it seemed as though that drivelling, woman-beaten Deutsch
+apotheke--ha! ha! ha!--in the rue Royale had bewitched Agricola as
+well as Honor&eacute;. The fact was, Agricola had never got over
+the interview which had saved Sylvestre his life.</p>
+<p>"Here, Agricole," his kinsmen at length said, "you see you are
+too old for this sort of thing; besides, it would be bad taste for
+you, who might be presumed to harbor feelings of revenge, to have a
+voice in this council." And then they added to one another: "We
+will wait until 'Polyte reports whether or not they have caught
+Palmyre; much will depend on that."</p>
+<p>Agricola, thus ruled out, did a thing he did not fully
+understand; he rolled up the "<i>Philippique
+G&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i>" and "The Insanity of Educating the
+Masses," and, with these in one hand and his staff in the other,
+set out for Frowenfeld's, not merely smarting but trembling under
+the humiliation of having been sent, for the first time in his
+life, to the rear as a non-combatant.</p>
+<p>He found the apothecary among his clerks, preparing with his own
+hands the "chalybeate tonic" for which the f.m.c. was expected to
+call. Raoul Innerarity stood at his elbow, looking on with an
+amiable air of having been superseded for the moment by his
+master.</p>
+<p>"Ha-ah! Professor Frowenfeld!"</p>
+<p>The old man nourished his scroll.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld said good-morning, and they shook hands across the
+counter; but the old man's grasp was so tremulous that the
+apothecary looked at him again.</p>
+<p>"Does my hand tremble, Joseph? It is not strange; I have had
+much to excite me this morning."</p>
+<p>"Wat's de mattah?" demanded Raoul, quickly.</p>
+<p>"My life--which I admit, Professor Frowenfeld, is of little
+value compared with such a one as yours--has been--if not
+attempted, at least threatened."</p>
+<p>"How?" cried Raoul.</p>
+<p>"H-really, Professor, we must agree that a trifle like that
+ought not to make old Agricola Fusilier nervous. But I find it
+painful, sir, very painful. I can lift up this right hand, Joseph,
+and swear I never gave a slave--man or woman--a blow in my life but
+according to my notion of justice. And now to find my life
+attempted by former slaves of my own household, and taunted with
+the righteous hamstringing of a dangerous runaway! But they have
+apprehended the miscreants; one is actually in hand, and justice
+will take its course; trust the Grandissimes for that--though,
+really, Joseph, I assure you, I counselled leniency."</p>
+<p>"Do you say they have caught her?" Frowenfeld's question was
+sudden and excited; but the next moment he had controlled
+himself.</p>
+<p>"H-h-my son, I did not say it was a 'her'!"</p>
+<p>"Was it not Clemence? Have they caught her?"</p>
+<p>"H-yes--"</p>
+<p>The apothecary turned to Raoul.</p>
+<p>"Go tell Honor&eacute; Grandissime."</p>
+<p>"But, Professor Frowenfeld--" began Agricola.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld turned to repeat his instruction, but Raoul was
+already leaving the store.</p>
+<p>Agricola straightened up angrily.</p>
+<p>"Pro-hofessor Frowenfeld, by what right do you interfere?"</p>
+<p>"No matter," said the apothecary, turning half-way and pouring
+the tonic into a vial.</p>
+<p>"Sir," thundered the old lion, "h-I demand of you to answer! How
+dare you insinuate that my kinsmen may deal otherwise than
+justly?"</p>
+<p>"Will they treat her exactly as if she were white, and had
+threatened the life of a slave?" asked Frowenfeld from behind the
+desk at the end of the counter.</p>
+<p>The old man concentrated all the indignation of his nature in
+the reply.</p>
+<p>"No-ho, sir!"</p>
+<p>As he spoke, a shadow approaching from the door caused him to
+turn. The tall, dark, finely clad form of the f.m.c, in its old
+soft-stepping dignity and its sad emaciation, came silently toward
+the spot where he stood.</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld saw this, and hurried forward inside the counter with
+the preparation in his hand.</p>
+<p>"Professor Frowenfeld," said Agricola, pointing with his ugly
+staff, "I demand of you, as a keeper of a white man's pharmacy, to
+turn that negro out."</p>
+<p>"Citizen Fusilier!" exclaimed the apothecary; "Mister
+Grandis--"</p>
+<p>He felt as though no price would be too dear at that moment to
+pay for the presence of the other Honor&eacute;. He had to go clear
+to the end of the counter and come down the outside again to reach
+the two men. They did not wait for him. Agricola turned upon the
+f.m.c.</p>
+<p>"Take off your hat!"</p>
+<p>A sudden activity seized every one connected with the
+establishment as the quadroon let his thin right hand slowly into
+his bosom, and answered in French, in his soft, low voice:</p>
+<p>"I wear my hat on my head."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld was hurrying toward them; others stepped forward, and
+from two or three there came half-uttered exclamations of protest;
+but unfortunately nothing had been done or said to provoke any one
+to rush upon them, when Agricola suddenly advanced a step and
+struck the f.m.c. on the head with his staff. Then the general
+outcry and forward rush came too late; the two crashed together and
+fell, Agricola above, the f.m.c. below, and a long knife lifted up
+from underneath sank to its hilt, once--twice--thrice,--in the old
+man's back.</p>
+<p>The two men rose, one in the arms of his friends, the other upon
+his own feet. While every one's attention was directed toward the
+wounded man, his antagonist restored his dagger to its sheath, took
+up his hat and walked away unmolested. When Frowenfeld, with
+Agricola still in his arms, looked around for the quadroon, he was
+gone.</p>
+<p>Doctor Keene, sent for instantly, was soon at Agricola's
+side.</p>
+<p>"Take him upstairs; he can't be moved any further."</p>
+<p>Frowenfeld turned and began to instruct some one to run upstairs
+and ask permission, but the little doctor stopped him.</p>
+<p>"Joe, for shame! you don't know those women better than that?
+Take the old man right up!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVII"></a>CHAPTER LVII</h2>
+<h3>VOUDOU CURED</h3>
+<br>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;," said Agricola, faintly, "where is
+Honor&eacute;!"</p>
+<p>"He has been sent for," said Doctor Keene and the two ladies in
+a breath.</p>
+<p>Raoul, bearing the word concerning Clemence, and the later
+messenger summoning him to Agricola's bedside, reached
+Honor&eacute; within a minute of each other. His instructions were
+quickly given, for Raoul to take his horse and ride down to the
+family mansion, to break gently to his mother the news of
+Agricola's disaster, and to say to his kinsmen with imperative
+emphasis, not to touch the <i>marchande des calas</i> till he
+should come. Then he hurried to the rue Royale.</p>
+<p>But when Raoul arrived at the mansion he saw at a glance that
+the news had outrun him. The family carriage was already coming
+round the bottom of the front stairs for three Mesdames Grandissime
+and Madame Martinez. The children on all sides had dropped their
+play, and stood about, hushed and staring. The servants moved with
+quiet rapidity. In the hall he was stopped by two beautiful
+girls.</p>
+<p>"Raoul! Oh, Raoul, how is he now? Oh! Raoul, if you could only
+stop them! They have taken old Clemence down into the swamp--as
+soon as they heard about Agricole--Oh, Raoul, surely that would be
+cruel! She nursed me--and me--when we were babies!"</p>
+<p>"Where is Agamemnon?"</p>
+<p>"Gone to the city."</p>
+<p>"What did he say about it?"</p>
+<p>"He said they were doing wrong, that he did not approve their
+action, and that they would get themselves into trouble: that he
+washed his hands of it."</p>
+<p>"Ah-h-h!" exclaimed Raoul, "wash his hands! Oh, yes, wash his
+hands? Suppose we all wash our hands? But where is Valentine? Where
+is Charlie Mandarin?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! Valentine is gone with Agamemnon, saying the same thing,
+and Charlie Mandarin is down in the swamp, the worst of all of
+them!"</p>
+<p>"But why did you let Agamemnon and Valentine go off that way,
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! listen to Raoul! What can a woman do?"</p>
+<p>"What can a woman--Well, even if I was a woman, I would do
+something!"</p>
+<p>He hurried from the house, leaped into the saddle and galloped
+across the fields toward the forest.</p>
+<p>Some rods within the edge of the swamp, which, at this season,
+was quite dry in many places, on a spot where the fallen dead
+bodies of trees overlay one another and a dense growth of willows
+and vines and dwarf palmetto shut out the light of the open fields,
+the younger and some of the harsher senior members of the
+Grandissime family were sitting or standing about, in an irregular
+circle whose centre was a big and singularly misshapen
+water-willow. At the base of this tree sat Clemence, motionless and
+silent, a wan, sickly color in her face, and that vacant look in
+her large, white-balled, brown-veined eyes, with which
+hope-forsaken cowardice waits for death. Somewhat apart from the
+rest, on an old cypress stump, half-stood, half-sat, in whispered
+consultation, Jean-Baptiste Grandissime and Charlie Mandarin.</p>
+<p>"<i>Eh bien</i>, old woman," said Mandarin, turning, without
+rising, and speaking sharply in the negro French, "have you any
+reason to give why you should not be hung to that limb over your
+head?"</p>
+<p>She lifted her eyes slowly to his, and made a feeble gesture of
+deprecation.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mo t&eacute; pas f&eacute; cette bras</i>, Mawse Challie--I
+di'n't mek dat ahm; no 'ndeed I di'n', Mawse Challie. I ain' wuth
+hangin', gen'lemen; you'd oughteh jis gimme fawty an' lemme go.
+I--I--I--I di'n' 'ten' no hawm to Mawse-Agricole; I wa'n't gwan to
+hu't nobody in God's worl'; 'ndeed I wasn'. I done tote dat old
+case-knife fo' twenty year'--<i>mo po'te &ccedil;a dipi vingt
+ans</i>. I'm a po' ole <i>marchande des calas; mo courri</i>
+'mongs' de sojer boys to sell my cakes, you know, and da's de
+onyest reason why I cyah dat ah ole fool knife." She seemed to take
+some hope from the silence with which they heard her. Her eye
+brightened and her voice took a tone of excitement. "You'd oughteh
+tek me and put me in calaboose, an' let de law tek 'is co'se. You's
+all nice gen'lemen--werry nice gen'lemen, an' you sorter owes it to
+yo'sev's fo' to not do no sich nasty wuck as hangin' a po' ole
+nigga wench; 'deed you does. 'Tain' no use to hang me; you gwan to
+kyetch Palmyre yit; <i>li courri dans marais;</i> she is in de
+swamp yeh, sum'ers; but as concernin' me, you'd oughteh jis gimme
+fawty an lemme go. You mus'n't b'lieve all dis-yeh nonsense 'bout
+insurrectionin'; all fool-nigga talk. W'at we want to be
+insurrectionin' faw? We de happies' people in de God's worl'!" She
+gave a start, and cast a furtive glance of alarm behind her. "Yes,
+we is; you jis' oughteh gimme fawty an' lemme go! Please,
+gen'lemen! God'll be good to you, you nice, sweet gen'lemen!"</p>
+<p>Charlie Mandarin made a sign to one who stood at her back, who
+responded by dropping a rawhide noose over her head. She bounded up
+with a cry of terror; it may be that she had all along hoped that
+all was make-believe. She caught the noose wildly with both hands
+and tried to lift it over her head.</p>
+<p>"Ah! no, mawsteh, you cyan' do dat! It's ag'in' de law! I's
+'bleeged to have my trial, yit. Oh, no, no! Oh, good God, no! Even
+if I is a nigga! You cyan' jis' murdeh me hyeh in de woods! <i>Mo
+dis la zize</i>! I tell de judge on you! You ain' got no mo' biznis
+to do me so 'an if I was a white 'oman! You dassent tek a white
+'oman out'n de Pa'sh Pris'n an' do 'er so! Oh, sweet mawsteh, fo'
+de love o' God! Oh, Mawse Challie, <i>pou' l'amou' du bon Dieu
+n'f&eacute; pas &ccedil;a</i>! Oh, Mawse 'Polyte, is you gwan to
+let 'em kill ole Clemence? Oh, fo' de mussy o' Jesus Christ, Mawse
+'Polyte, leas' of all, <i>you</i>! You dassent help to kill me,
+Mawse 'Polyte! You knows why! Oh God, Mawse 'Polyte, you knows why!
+Leas' of all you, Mawse 'Polyte! Oh, God 'a' mussy on my wicked ole
+soul! I aint fitt'n to die! Oh, gen'lemen, I kyan' look God in de
+face! <i>Oh, Mich&eacute;s, ayez piti&eacute; de moin! Oh, God
+A'mighty ha' mussy on my soul</i>! Oh, gen'lemen, dough yo'
+kinfolks kyvvah up yo' tricks now, dey'll dwap f'um undeh you some
+day! <i>Sol&eacute; lev&eacute; l&agrave;, li couch&eacute;
+l&agrave;</i>! Yo' tu'n will come! Oh, God A'mighty! de God o' de
+po' nigga wench! Look down, oh God, look down an' stop dis yeh
+foolishness! Oh, God, fo' de love o' Jesus! <i>Oh, Mich&eacute;s,
+y'en a ein zizement</i>! Oh, yes, deh's a judgmen' day! Den it wont
+be a bit o' use to you to be white! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, fo',
+fo', fo', de, de, <i>love 0' God! Oh</i>!"</p>
+<p>They drew her up.</p>
+<p>Raoul was not far off. He heard the woman's last cry, and came
+threshing through the bushes on foot. He saw Sylvestre, unconscious
+of any approach, spring forward, jerk away the hands that had drawn
+the thong over the branch, let the strangling woman down and loosen
+the noose. Her eyes, starting out with horror, turned to him; she
+fell on her knees and clasped her hands. The tears were rolling
+down Sylvestre's face.</p>
+<p>"My friends, we must not do this! You <i>shall</i> not do
+it!"</p>
+<p>He hurled away, with twice his natural strength, one who put out
+a hand.</p>
+<p>"No, sirs!" cried Raoul, "you shall not do it! I come from
+Honor&eacute;! Touch her who dares!"</p>
+<p>He drew a weapon.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur Innerarity," said 'Polyte, "<i>who is</i> Monsieur
+Honor&eacute; Grandissime? There are two of the name, you
+know,--partners--brothers. Which of--but it makes no difference;
+before either of them sees this assassin she is going to be a lump
+of nothing!"</p>
+<p>The next word astonished every one. It was Charlie Mandarin who
+spoke.</p>
+<p>"Let her go!"</p>
+<p>"Let her go!" said Jean-Baptiste Grandissime; "give her a run
+for life. Old woman, rise up. We propose to let you go. Can you
+run? Never mind, we shall see. Achille, put her upon her feet. Now,
+old woman, run!"</p>
+<p>She walked rapidly, but with unsteady feet, toward the
+fields.</p>
+<p>"Run! If you don't run I will shoot you this minute!"</p>
+<p>She ran.</p>
+<p>"Faster!"</p>
+<p>She ran faster.</p>
+<p>"Run!"</p>
+<p>"Run!"</p>
+<p>"Run, Clemence! Ha, ha, ha!" It was so funny to see her
+scuttling and tripping and stumbling. "<i>Courri! courri, Clemence!
+c'est pou to' vie!</i> ha, ha, ha--"</p>
+<p>A pistol-shot rang out close behind Raoul's ear; it was never
+told who fired it. The negress leaped into the air and fell at full
+length to the ground, stone dead.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVIII"></a>CHAPTER LVIII</h2>
+<h3>DYING WORDS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Drivers of vehicles in the rue Royale turned aside before two
+slight barriers spanning the way, one at the corner below, the
+other at that above, the house where the aged high-priest of a
+doomed civilization lay bleeding to death. The floor of the store
+below, the pavement of the corridor where stood the idle volante,
+were covered with straw, and servants came and went by the
+beckoning of the hand.</p>
+<p>"This way," whispered a guide of the four ladies from the
+Grandissime mansion. As Honor&eacute;'s mother turned the angle
+half-way up the muffled stair, she saw at the landing above,
+standing as if about to part, yet in grave council, a man and a
+woman, the fairest--she noted it even in this moment of extreme
+distress--she had ever looked upon. He had already set one foot
+down upon the stair, but at sight of the ascending group drew back
+and said:</p>
+<p>"It is my mother;" then turned to his mother and took her hand;
+they had been for months estranged, but now they silently
+kissed.</p>
+<p>"He is sleeping," said Honor&eacute;. "Maman, Madame
+Nancanou."</p>
+<p>The ladies bowed--the one looking very large and splendid, the
+other very sweet and small. There was a single instant of silence,
+and Aurora burst into tears.</p>
+<p>For a moment Madame Grandissime assumed a frown that was almost
+a reminder of her brother's, and then the very pride of the
+Fusiliers broke down. She uttered an inaudible exclamation, drew
+the weeper firmly into her bosom, and with streaming eyes and
+choking voice, but yet with majesty, whispered, laying her hand on
+Aurora's head:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, my child; never mind; never mind."</p>
+<p>And Honor&eacute;'s sister, when she was presently introduced,
+kissed Aurora and murmured:</p>
+<p>"The good God bless thee! It is He who has brought us
+together."</p>
+<p>"Who is with him just now?" whispered the two other ladies,
+while Honor&eacute; and his mother stood a moment aside in hurried
+consultation.</p>
+<p>"My daughter," said Aurora, "and--"</p>
+<p>"Agamemnon," suggested Madame Martinez.</p>
+<p>"I believe so," said Aurora.</p>
+<p>Valentine appeared from the direction of the sick-room and
+beckoned to Honor&eacute;. Doctor Keene did the same and continued
+to advance.</p>
+<p>"Awake?" asked Honor&eacute;.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Alas! my brother!" said Madame Grandissime, and started
+forward, followed by the other women.</p>
+<p>"Wait," said Honor&eacute;, and they paused. "Charlie," he said,
+as the little doctor persistently pushed by him at the head of the
+stair.</p>
+<p>"Oh, there's no chance, Honor&eacute;, you'd as well all go in
+there."</p>
+<p>They gathered into the room and about the bed. Madame
+Grandissime bent over it.</p>
+<p>"Ah! sister," said the dying man, "is that you? I had the
+sweetest dream just now--just for a minute." He sighed. "I feel
+very weak. Where is Charlie Keene?"</p>
+<p>He had spoken in French; he repeated his question in English. He
+thought he saw the doctor.</p>
+<p>"Charlie, if I must meet the worst I hope you will tell me so; I
+am fully prepared. Ah! excuse--I thought it was--</p>
+<p>"My eyes seem dim this evening. <i>Est-ce-vous</i>,
+Honor&eacute;? Ah, Honor&eacute;, you went over to the enemy, did
+you?--Well,--the Fusilier blood would al--ways--do as it pleased.
+Here's your old uncle's hand, Honor&eacute;. I forgive you,
+Honor&eacute;--my noble-hearted, foolish--boy." He spoke feebly,
+and with great nervousness.</p>
+<p>"Water."</p>
+<p>It was given him by Aurora. He looked in her face; they could
+not be sure whether he recognized her or not. He sank back, closed
+his eyes, and said, more softly and dreamily, as if to himself, "I
+forgive everybody. A man must die--I forgive--even the enemies--of
+Louisiana."</p>
+<p>He lay still a few moments, and then revived excitedly.
+"Honor&eacute;! tell Professor Frowenfeld to take care of that
+<i>Philippique G&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i>. 'Tis a grand thing,
+Honor&eacute;, on a grand theme! I wrote it myself in one evening.
+Your Yankee Government is a failure, Honor&eacute;, a drivelling
+failure. It may live a year or two, not longer. Truth will triumph.
+The old Louisiana will rise again. She will get back her trampled
+rights. When she does, remem'--" His voice failed, but he held up
+one finger firmly by way of accentuation.</p>
+<p>There was a stir among the kindred. Surely this was a turn for
+the better. The doctor ought to be brought back. A little while ago
+he was not nearly so strong. "Ask Honor&eacute; if the doctor
+should not come." But Honor&eacute; shook his head. The old man
+began again.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;! Where is Honor&eacute;? Stand by me, here,
+Honor&eacute;; and sister?--on this other side. My eyes are very
+poor to-day. Why do I perspire so? Give me a drink. You see--I am
+better now; I have ceased--to throw up blood. Nay, let me talk." He
+sighed, closed his eyes, and opened them again suddenly. "Oh,
+Honor&eacute;, you and the Yankees--you and--all--going
+wrong--education--masses--weaken--caste--indiscr'--quarrels
+settl'--by affidav'--Oh! Honor&eacute;."</p>
+<p>"If he would only forget," said one, in an agonized whisper,
+"that <i>philippique g&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i>!"</p>
+<p>Aurora whispered earnestly and tearfully to Madame Grandissime.
+Surely they were not going to let him go thus! A priest could at
+least do no harm. But when the proposition was made to him by his
+sister, he said:</p>
+<p>"No;--no priest. You have my will, Honor&eacute;,--in your iron
+box. Professor Frowenfeld,"--he changed his speech to English,--"I
+have written you an article on--" his words died on his lips.</p>
+<p>"Joseph, son, I do not see you. Beware, my son, of the doctrine
+of equal rights--a bottomless iniquity. Master and man--arch and
+pier--arch above--pier below." He tried to suit the gesture to the
+words, but both hands and feet were growing uncontrollably
+restless.</p>
+<p>"Society, Professor,"--he addressed himself to a weeping
+girl,--"society has pyramids to build which make menials a
+necessity, and Nature furnishes the menials all in dark uniform.
+She--I cannot tell you--you will find--all in the <i>Philippique
+G&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i>. Ah! Honor&eacute;, is it--"</p>
+<p>He suddenly ceased.</p>
+<p>"I have lost my glasses."</p>
+<p>Beads of sweat stood out upon his face. He grew frightfully
+pale. There was a general dismayed haste, and they gave him a
+stimulant.</p>
+<p>"Brother," said the sister, tenderly.</p>
+<p>He did not notice her.</p>
+<p>"Agamemnon! Go and tell Jean-Baptiste--" his eyes drooped and
+flashed again wildly.</p>
+<p>"I am here, Agricole," said the voice of Jean-Baptiste, close
+beside the bed.</p>
+<p>"I told you to let--that negress--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, we have let her go. We have let all of them go."</p>
+<p>"All of them," echoed the dying man, feebly, with wandering
+eyes. Suddenly he brightened again and tossed his arms. "Why, there
+you were wrong, Jean-Baptiste; the community must be protected."
+His voice sank to a murmur. "He would not take off--'you must
+remem'--" He was silent. "You must remem'--those people are--are
+not--white people." He ceased a moment. "Where am I going?" He
+began evidently to look, or try to look, for some person; but they
+could not divine his wish until, with piteous feebleness, he
+called:</p>
+<p>"Aurore De Grapion!"</p>
+<p>So he had known her all the time.</p>
+<p>Honor&eacute;'s mother had dropped on her knees beside the bed,
+dragging Aurora down with her.</p>
+<p>They rose together.</p>
+<p>The old man groped distressfully with one hand. She laid her own
+in it.</p>
+<p>"Honor&eacute;!</p>
+<p>"What could he want?" wondered the tearful family. He was
+feeling about with the other hand.</p>
+<p>"Hon'--Honor&eacute;"--his weak clutch could scarcely close upon
+his nephew's hand.</p>
+<p>"Put them--put--put them--"</p>
+<p>What could it mean? The four hands clasped.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said one, with fresh tears, "he is trying to speak and
+cannot."</p>
+<p>But he did.</p>
+<p>"Aurora De Gra--I pledge'--pledge'--pledged--this union--to your
+fa'--father--twenty--years--ago."</p>
+<p>The family looked at each other in dejected amazement. They had
+never known it.</p>
+<p>"He is going," said Agamemnon; and indeed it seemed as though he
+was gone; but he rallied.</p>
+<p>"Agamemnon! Valentine! Honor&eacute;! patriots! protect the
+race! Beware of the"--that sentence escaped him. He seemed to fancy
+himself haranguing a crowd; made another struggle for intelligence,
+tried once, twice, to speak, and the third time succeeded:</p>
+<p>"Louis'--Louisian'--a--for--ever!" and lay still.</p>
+<p>They put those two words on his tomb.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIX"></a>CHAPTER LIX</h2>
+<h3>WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES</h3>
+<br>
+<p>And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the
+mason who cut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,
+half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints
+came, attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon
+the old man's tomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more
+distinctly as years went by, that Forever was a trifle long for one
+to confine one's patriotic affection to a small fraction of a great
+country.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the
+police in their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to
+justice?" asked some <i>Am&eacute;ricain</i> or other of 'Polyte
+Grandissime.</p>
+<p>"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neither
+Palmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when
+we cannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no
+police!"</p>
+<p>So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the
+other two were never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the
+Grandissimes to know that in later times, under the gentler
+influences of a higher civilization, their old Spanish-colonial
+ferocity was gradually absorbed by the growth of better traits.
+To-day almost all the savagery that can justly be charged against
+Louisiana must--strange to say--be laid at the door of the
+<i>Am&eacute;ricain</i>. The Creole character has been diluted and
+sweetened.</p>
+<p>One morning early in September, some two weeks after the death
+of Agricola, the same brig which something less than a year before
+had brought the Frowenfelds to New Orleans crossed, outward bound,
+the sharp line dividing the sometimes tawny waters of Mobile Bay
+from the deep blue Gulf, and bent her way toward Europe.</p>
+<p>She had two passengers; a tall, dark, wasted yet handsome man of
+thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, and a woman seemingly
+some three years younger, of beautiful though severe countenance;
+"very elegant-looking people and evidently rich," so the
+brig-master described them,--"had much the look of some of the
+Mississippi River 'Lower Coast' aristocracy." Their appearance was
+the more interesting for a look of mental distress evident on the
+face of each. Brother and sister they called themselves; but, if
+so, she was the most severely reserved and distant sister the
+master of the vessel had ever seen.</p>
+<p>They landed, if the account comes down to us right, at Bordeaux.
+The captain, a fellow of the peeping sort, found pastime in keeping
+them in sight after they had passed out of his care ashore. They
+went to different hotels!</p>
+<p>The vessel was detained some weeks in this harbor, and her
+master continued to enjoy himself in the way in which he had begun.
+He saw his late passengers meet often, in a certain quiet path
+under the trees of the Quinconce. Their conversations were low; in
+the patois they used they could have afforded to speak louder;
+their faces were always grave and almost always troubled. The
+interviews seemed to give neither of them any pleasure. The
+monsieur grew thinner than ever, and sadly feeble.</p>
+<p>"He wants to charter her," the seaman concluded, "but she
+doesn't like his rates."</p>
+<p>One day, the last that he saw them together, they seemed to be,
+each in a way different from the other, under a great strain. He
+was haggard, woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,--with
+"eyes that shone like lamps," as said the observer.</p>
+<p>"She's a-sendin' him 'way to lew-ard," thought he. Finally the
+Monsieur handed her--or rather placed upon the seat near which she
+stood, what she would not receive--a folded and sealed document,
+seized her hand, kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the
+seat, weak and pale, and rose to go, leaving the document behind.
+The mariner picked it up; it was directed to <i>M. Honor&eacute;
+Grandissime, Nouvelle Orl&eacute;ans, &Eacute;tats Unis,
+Am&eacute;rique</i>. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or
+possibly reconsidering, and received it from him.</p>
+<p>"It looked like a last will and testament," the seaman used to
+say, in telling the story.</p>
+<p>The next morning, being at the water's edge and seeing a number
+of persons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered
+down toward it to see how small a thing was required to draw a
+crowd of these Frenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.</p>
+<p>Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited
+for this question to be asked him, in order to state the more
+impressively that he did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux
+packet, and he saw the Madame twice or thrice, apparently living at
+great ease, but solitary, in the rue--. He was free to relate that
+he tried to scrape acquaintance with her, but failed
+ignominiously.</p>
+<p>The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other
+places, including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were
+collected regularly by H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime
+Fr&egrave;res. Rumor said, and tradition repeats, that neither for
+the advancement of a friendless people, nor even for the repair of
+the properties' wear and tear, did one dollar of it ever remain in
+New Orleans; but that once a year Honor&eacute;, "as instructed,"
+remitted to Madame--say Madame Inconnue--of Bordeaux, the
+equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It is averred he
+did this without interruption for twenty years. "Let us see: fifty
+times twenty--one million dollars. That is only a <i>part</i> of
+the <i>pecuniary</i> loss which this sort of thing costs
+Louisiana."</p>
+<p>But we have wandered.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LX"></a>CHAPTER LX</h2>
+<h3>"ALL RIGHT"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The sun is once more setting upon the Place d'Armes. Once more
+the shadows of cathedral and town-hall lie athwart the pleasant
+grounds where again the city's fashion and beauty sit about in the
+sedate Spanish way, or stand or slowly move in and out among the
+old willows and along the white walks. Children are again playing
+on the sward; some, you may observe, are in black, for Agricola.
+You see, too, a more peaceful river, a nearer-seeming and greener
+opposite shore, and many other evidences of the drowsy summer's
+unwillingness to leave the embrace of this seductive land; the
+dreamy quietude of birds; the spreading, folding, re-expanding and
+slow pulsating of the all-prevailing fan (how like the unfolding of
+an angel's wing is ofttimes the broadening of that little
+instrument!); the oft-drawn handkerchief; the pale, cool colors of
+summer costume; the swallow, circling and twittering overhead or
+darting across the sight; the languid movement of foot and hand;
+the reeking flanks and foaming bits of horses; the ear-piercing
+note of the cicada; the dancing butterfly; the dog, dropping upon
+the grass and looking up to his master with roping jaw and lolling
+tongue; the air sweetened with the merchandise of the flower
+<i>marchandes</i>.</p>
+<p>On the levee road, bridles and saddles, whips, gigs, and
+carriages,--what a merry coming and going! We look, perforce,
+toward the old bench where, six months ago, sat Joseph Frowenfeld.
+There is somebody there--a small, thin, weary-looking man, who
+leans his bared head slightly back against the tree, his thin
+fingers knit together in his lap, and his chapeau-bras pressed
+under his arm. You note his extreme neatness of dress, the bright,
+unhealthy restlessness of his eye, and--as a beam from the sun
+strikes them--the fineness of his short red curls. It is Doctor
+Keene.</p>
+<p>He lifts his head and looks forward. Honor&eacute; and
+Frowenfeld are walking arm-in-arm under the furthermost row of
+willows. Honor&eacute; is speaking. How gracefully, in
+correspondence with his words, his free arm or hand--sometimes his
+head or even his lithe form--moves in quiet gesture, while the
+grave, receptive apothecary takes into his meditative mind, as into
+a large, cool cistern, the valued rain-fall of his friend's
+communications. They are near enough for the little doctor easily
+to call them; but he is silent. The unhappy feel so far away from
+the happy. Yet--"Take care!" comes suddenly to his lips, and is
+almost spoken; for the two, about to cross toward the Place d'Armes
+at the very spot where Aurora had once made her narrow escape, draw
+suddenly back, while the black driver of a volante reins up the
+horse he bestrides, and the animal himself swerves and stops.</p>
+<p>The two friends, though startled apart, hasten with lifted hats
+to the side of the volante, profoundly convinced that one, at
+least, of its two occupants is heartily sorry that they were not
+rolled in the dust. Ah, ah! with what a wicked, ill-stifled
+merriment those two ethereal women bend forward in the faintly
+perfumed clouds of their ravishing summer-evening garb, to express
+their equivocal mortification and regret.</p>
+<p>"Oh! I'm so sawry, oh! Almoze runned o'--ah, ha, ha, ha!"</p>
+<p>Aurora could keep the laugh back no longer.</p>
+<p>"An' righd yeh befo' haivry <i>boddie</i>! Ah, ha, ha! 'Sieur
+Grandissime, 'tis <i>me-e-e</i> w'ad know 'ow dad is bad, ha, ha,
+ha! Oh! I assu' you, gen'lemen, id is hawful!"</p>
+<p>And so on.</p>
+<p>By and by Honor&eacute; seemed urging them to do something, the
+thought of which made them laugh, yet was entertained as not
+entirely absurd. It may have been that to which they presently
+seemed to consent; they alighted from the volante, dismissed it,
+and walked each at a partner's side down the grassy avenue of the
+levee. It was as Clotilde with one hand swept her light robes into
+perfect adjustment for the walk, and turned to take the first step
+with Frowenfeld, that she raised her eyes for the merest instant to
+his, and there passed between them an exchange of glance which made
+the heart of the little doctor suddenly burn like a ball of
+fire.</p>
+<p>"Now we're all right," he murmured bitterly to himself, as,
+without having seen him, she took the arm of the apothecary, and
+they moved away.</p>
+<p>Yes, if his irony was meant for this pair, he divined correctly.
+Their hearts had found utterance across the lips, and the future
+stood waiting for them on the threshold of a new existence, to
+usher them into a perpetual copartnership in all its joys and
+sorrows, its disappointments, its imperishable hopes, its aims, its
+conflicts, its rewards; and the true--the great--the everlasting
+God of love was with them. Yes, it had been "all right," now, for
+nearly twenty-four hours--an age of bliss. And now, as they walked
+beneath the willows where so many lovers had walked before them,
+they had whole histories to tell of the tremors, the dismays, the
+misconstructions and longings through which their hearts had come
+to this bliss; how at such a time, thus and so; and after such and
+such a meeting, so and so; no part of which was heard by alien
+ears, except a fragment of Clotilde's speech caught by a small boy
+in unintentioned ambush.</p>
+<p>"--Evva sinze de firze nighd w'en I big-in to nurze you wid de
+fivver."</p>
+<p>She was telling him, with that new, sweet boldness so wonderful
+to a lately accepted lover, how long she had loved him.</p>
+<p>Later on they parted at the <i>porte-coch&egrave;re</i>.
+Honor&eacute; and Aurora had got there before them, and were
+passing on up the stairs. Clotilde, catching, a moment before, a
+glimpse of her face, had seen that there was something wrong;
+weather-wise as to its indications she perceived an impending
+shower of tears. A faint shade of anxiety rested an instant on her
+own face. Frowenfeld could not go in. They paused a little within
+the obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that
+everything <i>was</i> "all right," they--</p>
+<p>God be praised for love's young dream!</p>
+<p>The slippered feet of the happy girl, as she slowly mounted the
+stair alone, overburdened with the weight of her blissful reverie,
+made no sound. As she turned its mid-angle she remembered Aurora.
+She could guess pretty well the source of her trouble;
+Honor&eacute; was trying to treat that hand-clasping at the bedside
+of Agricola as a binding compact; "which, of course, was not fair."
+She supposed they would have gone into the front drawing-room; she
+would go into the back. But she miscalculated; as she silently
+entered the door she saw Aurora standing a little way beyond her,
+close before Honor&eacute;, her eyes cast down, and the trembling
+fan hanging from her two hands like a broken pinion. He seemed to
+be reiterating, in a tender undertone, some question intended to
+bring her to a decision. She lifted up her eyes toward his with a
+mute, frightened glance.</p>
+<p>The intruder, with an involuntary murmur of apology, drew back;
+but, as she turned, she was suddenly and unspeakably saddened to
+see Aurora drop her glance, and, with a solemn slowness whose
+momentous significance was not to be mistaken, silently shake her
+head.</p>
+<p>"Alas!" cried the tender heart of Clotilde. "Alas! M.
+Grandissime!"</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXI"></a>CHAPTER LXI</h2>
+<h3>"NO!"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>If M. Grandissime had believed that he was prepared for the
+supreme bitterness of that moment, he had sadly erred. He could not
+speak. He extended his hand in a dumb farewell, when, all
+unsanctioned by his will, the voice of despair escaped him in a low
+groan. At the same moment, a tinkling sound drew near, and the
+room, which had grown dark with the fall of night, began to
+brighten with the softly widening light of an evening lamp, as a
+servant approached to place it in the front drawing-room.</p>
+<p>Aurora gave her hand and withdrew it. In the act the two
+somewhat changed position, and the rays of the lamp, as the maid
+passed the door, falling upon Aurora's face, betrayed the again
+upturned eyes.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime--"</p>
+<p>They fell.</p>
+<p>The lover paused.</p>
+<p>"You thing I'm crool."</p>
+<p>She was the statue of meekness.</p>
+<p>"Hope has been cruel to me," replied M. Grandissime, "not you;
+that I cannot say. Adieu."</p>
+<p>He was turning.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime--"</p>
+<p>She seemed to tremble.</p>
+<p>He stood still.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime,"--her voice was very tender,--"wad you'
+horry?"</p>
+<p>There was a great silence.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime, you know--teg a chair."</p>
+<p>He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant
+repassed the door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in
+English--having such hazardous things to say. It would conceal
+possible stammerings.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime--you know dad riz'n I--"</p>
+<p>She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was
+still.</p>
+<p>"I have no right to ask the reason," said M. Grandissime. "It is
+yours--not mine."</p>
+<p>Her head went lower.</p>
+<p>"Well, you know,"--she drooped it meditatively to one side, with
+her eyes on the floor,--"'tis bick-ause--'tis bick-ause I thing in
+a few days I'm goin' to die."</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed.</p>
+<p>She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume,
+but her eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of
+half-soliloquy:</p>
+<p>"I 'ave so mudge troub' wit dad hawt."</p>
+<p>She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and
+sighed softly, with a dying languor.</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the
+street below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a
+gilded Mars was driving into battle, a soft note told the
+half-hour. The lady spoke again.</p>
+<p>"Id mague"--she sighed once more--"so strange,--sometime' I
+thing I'm git'n' crezzy."</p>
+<p>Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made
+remained as silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after
+another pause, with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the
+fair speaker resumed with more energy, as befitting the approach to
+an incredible climax:</p>
+<p>"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime,--id mague me fo'gid my hage! I
+thing I'm young!"</p>
+<p>She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his
+own squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she
+went on speaking:</p>
+<p>"An' w'en someboddie git'n' ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n'
+to fill ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me
+to gid marri'd wid 'im--I thing 'e's in love to me." Her fingers
+kept up a little shuffling with the fan. "I thing I'm crezzy. I
+thing I muz be go'n' to die torecklie." She looked up to the
+ceiling with large eyes, and then again at the fan in her lap,
+which continued its spreading and shutting. "An' daz de riz'n,
+'Sieur Grandissime." She waited until it was certain he was about
+to answer, and then interrupted him nervously: "You know, 'Sieur
+Grandissime, id woon be righd! Id woon be de juztiz to <i>you!</i>
+An' you de bez man I evva know in my life, 'Sieur Grandissime!" Her
+hands shook. "A man w'at nevva wan' to gid marri'd wid noboddie in
+'is life, and now trine to gid marri'd juz only to rip-ose de soul
+of 'is oncl'--"</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime uttered an exclamation of protest, and she
+ceased.</p>
+<p>"I asked you," continued he, with low-toned emphasis, "for the
+single and only reason that I want you for my wife."</p>
+<p>"Yez," she quickly replied; "daz all. Daz wad I thing. An' I
+thing daz de rad weh to say, 'Sieur Grandissime. Bick-ause, you
+know, you an' me is too hole to talg aboud dad <i>lovin'</i>, you
+know. An' you godd dad grade <i>rizpeg</i> fo' me, an' me I godd
+dad 'ighez rispeg fo' you; bud--" she clutched the fan and her face
+sank lower still--"bud--" she swallowed--shook her head--"bud--"
+She bit her lip; she could not go on.</p>
+<p>"Aurora," said her lover, bending forward and taking one of her
+hands. "I <i>do</i> love you with all my soul."</p>
+<p>She made a poor attempt to withdraw her hand, abandoned the
+effort, and looked up savagely through a pair of overflowing eyes,
+demanding:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, fo' w'y you di' n' wan' to sesso?"</p>
+<p>M. Grandissime smiled argumentatively.</p>
+<p>"I have said so a hundred times, in every way but in words."</p>
+<p>She lifted her head proudly, and bowed like a queen.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, you see 'Sieur Grandissime, you bin meg one
+mizteg."</p>
+<p>"Bud 'tis corrected in time," exclaimed he, with suppressed but
+eager joyousness.</p>
+<p>"'Sieur Grandissime," she said, with a tremendous solemnity,
+"I'm verrie sawrie; <i>mais</i>--you spogue too lade."</p>
+<p>"No, no!" he cried, "the correction comes in time. Say that,
+lady; say that!"</p>
+<p>His ardent gaze beat hers once more down; but she shook her
+head. He ignored the motion.</p>
+<p>"And you will correct your answer; ah! say that, too!" he
+insisted, covering the captive hand with both his own, and leaning
+forward from his seat.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, 'Sieur Grandissime, you know, dad is so verrie
+unegspeg'."</p>
+<p>"Oh! unexpected!"</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais</i>, I was thing all dad time id was Clotilde wad
+you--"</p>
+<p>She turned her face away and buried her mouth in her
+handkerchief.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" he cried, "mock me no more, Aurore Nancanou!"</p>
+<p>He rose erect and held the hand firmly which she strove to draw
+away:</p>
+<p>"Say the word, sweet lady; say the word!"</p>
+<p>She turned upon him suddenly, rose to her feet, was speechless
+an instant while her eyes flashed into his, and crying out:</p>
+<p>"No!" burst into tears, laughed through them, and let him clasp
+her to his bosom.</p>
+<p class="ctr"><img src="images/gs2491.jpg" width="60%" alt=""></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
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@@ -0,0 +1,14770 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Grandissimes
+
+Author: George Washington Cable
+
+Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12280]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRANDISSIMES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GRANDISSIMES
+
+BY GEORGE W. CABLE
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+ALBERT HERTER
+
+MDCCCXCIX
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. Masked Batteries.
+     II. The Fate of the Immigrant.
+    III. "And who is my Neighbor?"
+     IV. Family Trees.
+      V. A Maiden who will not Marry.
+     VI. Lost Opportunities.
+    VII. Was it Honore Grandissime?
+   VIII. Signed--Honore Grandissime.
+     IX. Illustrating the Tractive Power of Basil.
+      X. "Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+     XI. Sudden Flashes of Light.
+    XII. The Philosophe.
+   XIII. A Call from the Rent-Spectre.
+    XIV. Before Sunset.
+     XV. Rolled in the Dust.
+    XVI. Starlight in the rue Chartres.
+   XVII. That Night.
+  XVIII. New Light upon Dark Places.
+    XIX. Art and Commerce.
+     XX. A very Natural Mistake.
+    XXI. Doctor Keene Recovers his Bullet.
+   XXII. Wars within the Breast.
+  XXIII. Frowenfeld Keeps his Appointment.
+   XXIV. Frowenfeld Makes an Argument.
+    XXV. Aurora as a Historian.
+   XXVI. A Ride and a Rescue.
+  XXVII. The Fete de Grandpere.
+ XXVIII. The Story of Bras-Coupe.
+   XXIX. The Story of Bras-Coupe, Continued.
+    XXX. Paralysis.
+   XXXI. Another Wound in a New Place.
+  XXXII. Interrupted Preliminaries.
+ XXXIII. Unkindest Cut of All.
+  XXXIV. Clotilde as a Surgeon.
+   XXXV. "Fo' wad you Cryne?"
+  XXXVI. Aurora's Last Picayune.
+ XXXVII. Honore Makes some Confessions.
+XXXVIII. Tests of Friendship.
+  XXXIX. Louisiana States her Wants.
+     XL. Frowenfeld Finds Sylvestre.
+    XLI. To Come to the Point.
+   XLII. An Inheritance of Wrong.
+  XLIII. The Eagle Visits the Doves in their Nest.
+   XLIV. Bad for Charlie Keene.
+    XLV. More Reparation.
+   XLVI. The Pique-en-terre Loses One of her Crew.
+  XLVII. The News.
+ XLVIII. An Indignant Family and a Smashed Shop.
+   XLIX. Over the New Store.
+      L. A Proposal of Marriage.
+     LI. Business Changes.
+    LII. Love Lies-a-Bleeding.
+   LIII. Frowenfeld at the Grandissime Mansion.
+    LIV. "Cauldron Bubble".
+     LV. Caught.
+    LVI. Blood for a Blow.
+   LVII. Voudou Cured.
+  LVIII. Dying Words.
+    LIX. Where some Creole Money Goes.
+     LX. "All Right".
+    LXI. "No!".
+
+
+
+
+PHOTOGRAVURES
+
+"They paused a little within the obscurity of the corridor, and just to
+reassure themselves that everything _was_ 'all right'" _Frontispiece_.
+
+"She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted her own mask a
+little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly".
+
+"The daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in many-colored
+robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with girdles of
+serpent-skins and of wampum".
+
+"Aurora,--alas! alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon
+the candle's flame".
+
+"The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
+counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting".
+
+"Silently regarding the intruder with a pair of eyes that sent an icy
+chill through him and fastened him where he stood, lay Palmyre
+Philosophe".
+
+"On their part, they would sit in deep attention, shielding their faces
+from the fire, and responding to enunciations directly contrary to their
+convictions with an occasional 'yes-seh,' or 'ceddenly,' or 'of coze,'
+or,--prettier affirmation still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids".
+
+"Bras-Coupe was practically declaring his independence on a slight rise
+of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and lifted scarce above the
+water in the inmost depths of the swamp".
+
+"'Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me wad dad
+mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma _second word of honor_'--she
+rolled up her fist--'juz wad I thing about dad 'Sieur Frowenfel!'".
+
+"His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his dark,
+frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the other his
+knee, and both trembled violently".
+
+"The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her
+eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost
+all knowledge of place or of human presence".
+
+"They turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in
+a cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where the hospitality
+of Clemence had placed glasses of lemonade".
+
+_In addition to the foregoing, the stories are illustrated with eight
+smaller photogravures from drawings by Mr. Herter_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MASKED BATTERIES
+
+
+It was in the Theatre St. Philippe (they had laid a temporary floor over
+the parquette seats) in the city we now call New Orleans, in the month
+of September, and in the year 1803. Under the twinkle of numberless
+candles, and in a perfumed air thrilled with the wailing ecstasy of
+violins, the little Creole capital's proudest and best were offering up
+the first cool night of the languidly departing summer to the divine
+Terpsichore. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that
+only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. It was like
+hustling her out, it is true, to give a select _bal masque_ at such a
+very early--such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting that
+something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and why not
+this? Everybody knows the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.
+
+And so, to repeat, it was in the Theatre St. Philippe (the oldest, the
+first one), and, as may have been noticed, in the year in which the
+First Consul of France gave away Louisiana. Some might call it "sold."
+Old Agricola Fusilier in the rumbling pomp of his natural voice--for he
+had an hour ago forgotten that he was in mask and domino--called it
+"gave away." Not that he believed it had been done; for, look you, how
+could it be? The pretended treaty contained, for instance, no provision
+relative to the great family of Brahmin Mandarin Fusilier de
+Grandissime. It was evidently spurious.
+
+Being bumped against, he moved a step or two aside, and was going on to
+denounce further the detestable rumor, when a masker--one of four who
+had just finished the contra-dance and were moving away in the column of
+promenaders--brought him smartly around with the salutation:
+
+"_Comment to ye, Citoyen Agricola!_"
+
+"H-you young kitten!" said the old man in a growling voice, and with the
+teased, half laugh of aged vanity as he bent a baffled scrutiny at the
+back-turned face of an ideal Indian Queen. It was not merely the
+_tutoiement_ that struck him as saucy, but the further familiarity of
+using the slave dialect. His French was unprovincial.
+
+"H-the cool rascal!" he added laughingly, and, only half to himself;
+"get into the garb of your true sex, sir, h-and I will guess who
+you are!"
+
+But the Queen, in the same feigned voice as before, retorted:
+
+"_Ah! mo piti fils, to pas connais to zancestres?_ Don't you know your
+ancestors, my little son!"
+
+"H-the g-hods preserve us!" said Agricola, with a pompous laugh muffled
+under his mask, "the queen of the Tchoupitoulas I proudly acknowledge,
+and my great-grandfather, Epaminondas Fusilier, lieutenant of dragoons
+under Bienville; but,"--he laid his hand upon his heart, and bowed to
+the other two figures, whose smaller stature betrayed the gentler
+sex--"pardon me, ladies, neither Monks nor _Filles a la Cassette_ grow
+on our family tree."
+
+The four maskers at once turned their glance upon the old man in the
+domino; but if any retort was intended it gave way as the violins burst
+into an agony of laughter. The floor was immediately filled with
+waltzers and the four figures disappeared.
+
+"I wonder," murmured Agricola to himself, "if that Dragoon can possibly
+be Honore Grandissime."
+
+Wherever those four maskers went there were cries of delight: "Ho, ho,
+ho! see there! here! there! a group of first colonists! One of
+Iberville's Dragoons! don't you remember great-great grandfather
+Fusilier's portrait--the gilded casque and heron plumes? And that one
+behind in the fawn-skin leggings and shirt of birds' skins is an Indian
+Queen. As sure as sure can be, they are intended for Epaminondas and his
+wife, Lufki-Humma!" All, of course, in Louisiana French.
+
+"But why, then, does he not walk with her?"
+
+"Why, because, Simplicity, both of them are men, while the little Monk
+on his arm is a lady, as you can see, and so is the masque that has the
+arm of the Indian Queen; look at their little hands."
+
+In another part of the room the four were greeted with, "Ha, ha, ha!
+well, that is magnificent! But see that Huguenotte Girl on the Indian
+Queen's arm! Isn't that fine! Ha, ha! she carries a little trunk. She is
+a _Fille a la Cassette!_"
+
+Two partners in a cotillion were speaking in an undertone, behind a fan.
+
+"And you think you know who it is?" asked one.
+
+"Know?" replied the other. "Do I know I have a head on my shoulders? If
+that Dragoon is not our cousin Honore Grandissime--well--"
+
+"Honore in mask? he is too sober-sided to do such a thing."
+
+"I tell you it is he! Listen. Yesterday I heard Doctor Charlie Keene
+begging him to go, and telling him there were two ladies, strangers,
+newly arrived in the city, who would be there, and whom he wished him to
+meet. Depend upon it the Dragoon is Honore, Lufki-Humma is Charlie
+Keene, and the Monk and the Huguenotte are those two ladies."
+
+But all this is an outside view; let us draw nearer and see what chance
+may discover to us behind those four masks.
+
+An hour has passed by. The dance goes on; hearts are beating, wit is
+flashing, eyes encounter eyes with the leveled lances of their beams,
+merriment and joy and sudden bright surprises thrill the breast, voices
+are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear is bending with a
+venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there deceived, yonder takes
+prisoners and here surrenders. The very air seems to breathe, to sigh,
+to laugh, while the musicians, with disheveled locks, streaming brows
+and furious bows, strike, draw, drive, scatter from the anguished
+violins a never-ending rout of screaming harmonies. But the Monk and the
+Huguenotte are not on the floor. They are sitting where they have been
+left by their two companions, in one of the boxes of the theater,
+looking out upon the unwearied whirl and flash of gauze and light
+and color.
+
+"Oh, _cherie, cherie!_" murmured the little lady in the Monk's disguise
+to her quieter companion, and speaking in the soft dialect of old
+Louisiana, "now you get a good idea of heaven!"
+
+The _Fille a la Cassette_ replied with a sudden turn of her masked face
+and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry
+laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink
+a little in her chair with a gentle sigh.
+
+"Ah, for shame, tired!" softly laughed the other; then suddenly, with
+her eyes fixed across the room, she seized her companion's hand and
+pressed it tightly. "Do you not see it?" she whispered eagerly, "just by
+the door--the casque with the heron feathers. Ah, Clotilde, I _cannot_
+believe he is one of those Grandissimes!"
+
+"Well," replied the Huguenotte, "Doctor Keene says he is not."
+
+Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the Indian
+Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we understand
+to be particular about those things, had immediately made a memorandum
+of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account.
+
+"If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I would
+have turned about and left him in the midst of the contra-dance!"
+
+Behind them sat unmasked a well-aged pair, "_bredouille_," as they used
+to say of the wall-flowers, with that look of blissful repose which
+marks the married and established Creole. The lady in monk's attire
+turned about in her chair and leaned back to laugh with these. The
+passing maskers looked that way, with a certain instinct that there was
+beauty under those two costumes. As they did so, they saw the _Fille a
+la Cassette_ join in this over-shoulder conversation. A moment later,
+they saw the old gentleman protector and the _Fille a la Cassette_
+rising to the dance. And when presently the distant passers took a final
+backward glance, that same Lieutenant of Dragoons had returned and he
+and the little Monk were once more upon the floor, waiting for
+the music.
+
+"But your late companion?" said the voice in the cowl.
+
+"My Indian Queen?" asked the Creole Epaminondas.
+
+"Say, rather, your Medicine-Man," archly replied the Monk.
+
+"In these times," responded the Cavalier, "a medicine-man cannot dance
+long without professional interruption, even when he dances for a
+charitable object. He has been called to two relapsed patients." The
+music struck up; the speaker addressed himself to the dance; but the
+lady did not respond.
+
+"Do dragoons ever moralize?" she asked.
+
+"They do more," replied her partner; "sometimes, when beauty's enjoyment
+of the ball is drawing toward its twilight, they catch its pleasant
+melancholy, and confess; will the good father sit in the confessional?"
+
+The pair turned slowly about and moved toward the box from which they
+had come, the lady remaining silent; but just as they were entering she
+half withdrew her arm from his, and, confronting him with a rich sparkle
+of the eyes within the immobile mask of the monk, said:
+
+"Why should the conscience of one poor little monk carry all the
+frivolity of this ball? I have a right to dance, if I wish. I give you
+my word, Monsieur Dragoon, I dance only for the benefit of the sick and
+the destitute. It is you men--you dragoons and others--who will not help
+them without a compensation in this sort of nonsense. Why should we
+shrive you when you ought to burn?"
+
+"Then lead us to the altar," said the Dragoon.
+
+"Pardon, sir," she retorted, her words entangled with a musical,
+open-hearted laugh, "I am not going in that direction." She cast her
+glance around the ball-room. "As you say, it is the twilight of the
+ball; I am looking for the evening star,--that is, my little
+Huguenotte."
+
+"Then you are well mated."
+
+"How?"
+
+"For you are Aurora."
+
+The lady gave a displeased start.
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Pardon," said the Cavalier, "if by accident I have hit upon your real
+name--"
+
+She laughed again--a laugh which was as exultantly joyous as it was
+high-bred.
+
+"Ah, my name? Oh no, indeed!" (More work for the Recording Angel.)
+
+She turned to her protectress.
+
+"Madame, I know you think we should be going home."
+
+The senior lady replied in amiable speech, but with sleepy eyes, and the
+Monk began to lift and unfold a wrapping. As the Cavalier' drew it into
+his own possession, and, agreeably to his gesture, the Monk and he sat
+down side by side, he said, in a low tone:
+
+"One more laugh before we part."
+
+"A monk cannot laugh for nothing."
+
+"I will pay for it."
+
+"But with nothing to laugh at?" The thought of laughing at nothing made
+her laugh a little on the spot.
+
+"We will make something to laugh at," said the Cavalier; "we will unmask
+to each other, and when we find each other first cousins, the laugh will
+come of itself."
+
+"Ah! we will unmask?--no! I have no cousins. I am certain we are
+strangers."
+
+"Then we will laugh to think that I paid for the disappointment."
+
+Much more of this childlike badinage followed, and by and by they came
+around again to the same last statement. Another little laugh escaped
+from the cowl.
+
+"You will pay? Let us see; how much will you give to the sick and
+destitute?"
+
+"To see who it is I am laughing with, I will give whatever you ask."
+
+"Two hundred and fifty dollars, cash, into the hands of the managers!"
+
+"A bargain!"
+
+The Monk laughed, and her chaperon opened her eyes and smiled
+apologetically. The Cavalier laughed, too, and said:
+
+"Good! That was the laugh; now the unmasking."
+
+"And you positively will give the money to the managers not later than
+to-morrow evening?"
+
+"Not later. It shall be done without fail."
+
+"Well, wait till I put on my wrappings; I must be ready to run."
+
+This delightful nonsense was interrupted by the return of the _Fille a
+la Cassette_ and her aged, but sprightly, escort, from a circuit of the
+floor. Madame again opened her eyes, and the four prepared to depart.
+The Dragoon helped the Monk to fortify herself against the outer air.
+She was ready before the others. There was a pause, a low laugh, a
+whispered "Now!" She looked upon an unmasked, noble countenance, lifted
+her own mask a little, and then a little more; and then shut it quickly
+down again upon a face whose beauty was more than even those fascinating
+graces had promised which Honore Grandissime had fitly named the
+Morning; but it was a face he had never seen before.
+
+"Hush!" she said, "the enemies of religion are watching us; the
+Huguenotte saw me. Adieu"--and they were gone.
+
+M. Honore Grandissime turned on his heel and very soon left the ball.
+
+"Now, sir," thought he to himself, "we'll return to our senses."
+
+"Now I'll put my feathers on again," says the plucked bird.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE FATE OF THE IMMIGRANT
+
+
+It was just a fortnight after the ball, that one Joseph Frowenfeld
+opened his eyes upon Louisiana. He was an American by birth, rearing and
+sentiment, yet German enough through his parents, and the only son in a
+family consisting of father, mother, self, and two sisters, new-blown
+flowers of womanhood. It was an October dawn, when, long wearied of the
+ocean, and with bright anticipations of verdure, and fragrance, and
+tropical gorgeousness, this simple-hearted family awoke to find the bark
+that had borne them from their far northern home already entering upon
+the ascent of the Mississippi.
+
+We may easily imagine the grave group, as they came up one by one from
+below, that morning of first disappointment, and stood (with a whirligig
+of jubilant mosquitoes spinning about each head) looking out across the
+waste, seeing the sky and the marsh meet in the east, the north, and the
+west, and receiving with patient silence the father's suggestion that
+the hills would, no doubt, rise into view after a while.
+
+"My children, we may turn this disappointment into a lesson; if the good
+people of this country could speak to us now, they might well ask us not
+to judge them or their land upon one or two hasty glances, or by the
+experiences of a few short days or weeks."
+
+But no hills rose. However, by and by they found solace in the
+appearance of distant forest, and in the afternoon they entered a
+land--but such a land! A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic
+cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay.
+
+"The captain told father, when we went to engage passage, that New
+Orleans was on high land," said the younger daughter, with a tremor in
+the voice, and ignoring the remonstrative touch of her sister.
+
+"On high land?" said the captain, turning from the pilot; "well, so it
+is--higher than the swamp, but not higher than the river," and he
+checked a broadening smile.
+
+But the Frowenfelds were not a family to complain. It was characteristic
+of them to recognize the bright as well as the solemn virtues, and to
+keep each other reminded of the duty of cheerfulness. A smile, starting
+from the quiet elder sister, went around the group, directed against the
+abstracted and somewhat rueful countenance of Joseph, whereat he turned
+with a better face and said that what the Creator had pronounced very
+good they could hardly feel free to condemn. The old father was still
+more stout of heart.
+
+"These mosquitoes, children, are thought by some to keep the air pure,"
+he said.
+
+"Better keep out of it after sunset," put in the captain.
+
+After that day and night, the prospect grew less repellent. A gradually
+matured conviction that New Orleans would not be found standing on
+stilts in the quagmire enabled the eye to become educated to a better
+appreciation of the solemn landscape. Nor was the landscape always
+solemn. There were long openings, now and then, to right and left, of
+emerald-green savannah, with the dazzling blue of the Gulf far beyond,
+waving a thousand white-handed good-byes as the funereal swamps slowly
+shut out again the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist
+prairies! How weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and
+yellow sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river!
+The profound stillness and breath reminded the old German, so he said,
+of that early time when the evenings and mornings were the first days of
+the half-built world. The barking of a dog in Fort Plaquemines seemed to
+come before its turn in the panorama of creation--before the earth was
+ready for the dog's master.
+
+But he was assured that to live in those swamps was not entirely
+impossible to man--"if one may call a negro a man." Runaway slaves were
+not so rare in them as one--a lost hunter, for example--might wish. His
+informant was a new passenger, taken aboard at the fort. He
+spoke English.
+
+"Yes, sir! Didn' I had to run from Bras-Coupe in de haidge of de swamp
+be'ine de 'abitation of my cousin Honore, one time? You can hask 'oo you
+like!" (A Creole always provides against incredulity.) At this point he
+digressed a moment: "You know my cousin, Honore Grandissime, w'at give
+two hund' fifty dolla' to de 'ospill laz mont'? An' juz because my
+cousin Honore give it, somebody helse give de semm. Fo' w'y don't he
+give his nemm?"
+
+The reason (which this person did not know) was that the second donor
+was the first one over again, resolved that the little unknown Monk
+should not know whom she had baffled.
+
+"Who was Bras-Coupe?" the good German asked in French.
+
+The stranger sat upon the capstan, and, in the shadow of the cypress
+forest, where the vessel lay moored for a change of wind, told in a
+_patois_ difficult, but not impossible, to understand, the story of a
+man who chose rather to be hunted like a wild beast among those awful
+labyrinths, than to be yoked and beaten like a tame one. Joseph, drawing
+near as the story was coming to a close, overheard the following
+English:
+
+"Friend, if you dislike heated discussion, do not tell that to my son."
+
+The nights were strangely beautiful. The immigrants almost consumed them
+on deck, the mother and daughters attending in silent delight while the
+father and son, facing south, rejoiced in learned recognition of stars
+and constellations hitherto known to them only on globes and charts.
+
+"Yes, my dear son," said the father, in a moment of ecstatic admiration,
+"wherever man may go, around this globe--however uninviting his lateral
+surroundings may be, the heavens are ever over his head, and I am glad
+to find the stars your favorite objects of study."
+
+So passed the time as the vessel, hour by hour, now slowly pushed by the
+wind against the turbid current, now warping along the fragrant
+precincts of orange or magnolia groves or fields of sugar-cane, or
+moored by night in the deep shade of mighty willow-jungles, patiently
+crept toward the end of their pilgrimage; and in the length of time
+which would at present be consumed in making the whole journey from
+their Northern home to their Southern goal, accomplished the distance of
+ninety-eight miles, and found themselves before the little, hybrid city
+of "Nouvelle Orleans." There was the cathedral, and standing beside it,
+like Sancho beside Don Quixote, the squat hall of the Cabildo with the
+calabozo in the rear. There were the forts, the military bakery, the
+hospitals, the plaza, the Almonaster stores, and the busy rue Toulouse;
+and, for the rest of the town, a pleasant confusion of green tree-tops,
+red and gray roofs, and glimpses of white or yellow wall, spreading back
+a few hundred yards behind the cathedral, and tapering into a single
+rank of gardened and belvedered villas, that studded either horn of the
+river's crescent with a style of home than which there is probably
+nothing in the world more maternally homelike.
+
+"And now," said the "captain," bidding the immigrants good-by, "keep out
+of the sun and stay in after dark; you're not 'acclimated,' as they
+call it, you know, and the city is full of the fever."
+
+Such were the Frowenfelds. Out of such a mold and into such a place came
+the young Americain, whom even Agricola Fusilier, as we shall see, by
+and by thought worthy to be made an exception of, and honored with his
+recognition.
+
+The family rented a two-story brick house in the rue Bienville, No. 17,
+it seems. The third day after, at daybreak, Joseph called his father to
+his bedside to say that he had had a chill, and was suffering such pains
+in his head and back that he would like to lie quiet until they passed
+off. The gentle father replied that it was undoubtedly best to do so,
+and preserved an outward calm. He looked at his son's eyes; their pupils
+were contracted to tiny beads. He felt his pulse and his brow; there was
+no room for doubt; it was the dreaded scourge--the fever. We say,
+sometimes, of hearts that they sink like lead; it does not express
+the agony.
+
+On the second day, while the unsated fever was running through every
+vein and artery, like soldiery through the streets of a burning city,
+and far down in the caverns of the body the poison was ransacking every
+palpitating corner, the poor immigrant fell into a moment's sleep. But
+what of that? The enemy that moment had mounted to the brain. And then
+there happened to Joseph an experience rare to the sufferer by this
+disease, but not entirely unknown,--a delirium of mingled pleasures and
+distresses. He seemed to awake somewhere between heaven and earth,
+reclining in a gorgeous barge, which was draped in curtains of
+interwoven silver and silk, cushioned with rich stuffs of every
+beautiful dye, and perfumed _ad nauseam_ with orange-leaf tea. The crew
+was a single old negress, whose head was wound about with a blue Madras
+handkerchief, and who stood at the prow, and by a singular rotary
+motion, rowed the barge with a teaspoon. He could not get his head out
+of the hot sun; and the barge went continually round and round with a
+heavy, throbbing motion, in the regular beat of which certain spirits of
+the air--one of whom appeared to be a beautiful girl and another a
+small, red-haired man,--confronted each other with the continual call
+and response:
+
+"Keep the bedclothes on him and the room shut tight, keep the bedclothes
+on him and the room shut tight,"--"An' don' give 'im some watta, an'
+don' give 'im some watta."
+
+During what lapse of time--whether moments or days--this lasted, Joseph
+could not then know; but at last these things faded away, and there came
+to him a positive knowledge that he was on a sick-bed, where unless
+something could be done for him he should be dead in an hour. Then a
+spoon touched his lips, and a taste of brandy and water went all through
+him; and when he fell into sweet slumber and awoke, and found the
+teaspoon ready at his lips again, he had to lift a little the two hands
+lying before him on the coverlet to know that they were his--they were
+so wasted and yellow. He turned his eyes, and through the white gauze of
+the mosquito-bar saw, for an instant, a strange and beautiful young
+face; but the lids fell over his eyes, and when he raised them again the
+blue-turbaned black nurse was tucking the covering about his feet.
+
+"Sister!"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Where is my mother?"
+
+The negress shook her head.
+
+He was too weak to speak again, but asked with his eyes so persistently,
+and so pleadingly, that by and by she gave him an audible answer. He
+tried hard to understand it, but could not, it being in these words:
+
+"_Li pa' oule vini 'ci--li pas capabe_."
+
+Thrice a day, for three days more, came a little man with a large head
+surrounded by short, red curls and with small freckles in a fine skin,
+and sat down by the bed with a word of good cheer and the air of a
+commander. At length they had something like an extended conversation.
+
+"So you concluded not to die, eh? Yes, I'm the doctor--Doctor Keene. A
+young lady? What young lady? No, sir, there has been no young lady here.
+You're mistaken. Vagary of your fever. There has been no one here but
+this black girl and me. No, my dear fellow, your father and mother can't
+see you yet; you don't want them to catch the fever, do you? Good-bye.
+Do as your nurse tells you, and next week you may raise your head and
+shoulders a little; but if you don't mind her you'll have a backset, and
+the devil himself wouldn't engage to cure you."
+
+The patient had been sitting up a little at a time for several days,
+when at length the doctor came to pay a final call, "as a matter of
+form;" but, after a few pleasantries, he drew his chair up gravely, and,
+in a tender tone--need we say it? He had come to tell Joseph that his
+father, mother, sisters, all, were gone on a second--a longer--voyage,
+to shores where there could be no disappointments and no
+fevers, forever.
+
+"And, Frowenfeld," he said, at the end of their long and painful talk,
+"if there is any blame attached to not letting you go with them, I think
+I can take part of it; but if you ever want a friend,--one who is
+courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to those he likes,--you can
+call for Charlie Keene. I'll drop in to see you, anyhow, from time to
+time, till you get stronger. I have taken a heap of trouble to keep you
+alive, and if you should relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a
+deal of good physic wasted; so keep in the house."
+
+The polite neighbors who lifted their cocked hats to Joseph, as he spent
+a slow convalescence just within his open door, were not bound to know
+how or when he might have suffered. There were no "Howards" or
+"Y.M.C.A.'s" in those days; no "Peabody Reliefs." Even had the neighbors
+chosen to take cognizance of those bereavements, they were not so
+unusual as to fix upon him any extraordinary interests an object of
+sight; and he was beginning most distressfully to realize that "great
+solitude" which the philosopher attributes to towns, when matters took a
+decided turn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"
+
+
+We say matters took a turn; or, better, that Frowenfeld's interest in
+affairs received a new life. This had its beginning in Doctor Keene's
+making himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with
+a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had
+conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon,
+would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess--a game, by the way,
+for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned
+its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor--the truth is, the
+doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who
+cannot easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for one, least of
+all one of their own sex. It may safely be supposed, then, that the
+board often displayed an arrangement of pieces that would have
+bewildered Morphy himself.
+
+"By the by, Frowenfeld," he said one evening, after the one preliminary
+move with which he invariably opened his game, "you haven't made the
+acquaintance of your pretty neighbors next door."
+
+Frowenfeld knew of no specially pretty neighbors next door on either
+side--had noticed no ladies.
+
+"Well, I will take you in to see them some time." The doctor laughed a
+little, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one hand, as
+he laughed.
+
+The convalescent wondered what there could be to laugh at.
+
+"Who are they?" he inquired.
+
+"Their name is De Grapion--oh, De Grapion, says I! their name is
+Nancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women--the brightest,
+the best, and the bravest--that I know in New Orleans." The doctor
+resumed a cigar which lay against the edge of the chess-board, found it
+extinguished, and proceeded to relight it. "Best blood of the province;
+good as the Grandissimes. Blood is a great thing here, in certain odd
+ways," he went on. "Very curious sometimes." He stooped to the floor
+where his coat had fallen, and took his handkerchief from a
+breast-pocket. "At a grand mask ball about two months ago, where I had a
+bewilderingly fine time with those ladies, the proudest old turkey in
+the theater was an old fellow whose Indian blood shows in his very
+behavior, and yet--ha, ha! I saw that same old man, at a quadroon ball a
+few years ago, walk up to the handsomest, best dressed man in the
+house, a man with a skin whiter than his own,--a perfect gentleman as to
+looks and manners,--and without a word slap him in the face."
+
+"You laugh?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+"Laugh? Why shouldn't I? The fellow had no business there. Those balls
+are not given to quadroon _males_, my friend. He was lucky to get out
+alive, and that was about all he did.
+
+"They are right!" the doctor persisted, in response to Frowenfeld's
+puzzled look. "The people here have got to be particular. However, that
+is not what we were talking about. Quadroon balls are not to be
+mentioned in connection. Those ladies--" He addressed himself to the
+resuscitation of his cigar. "Singular people in this country," he
+resumed; but his cigar would not revive. He was a poor story-teller. To
+Frowenfeld--as it would have been to any one, except a Creole or the
+most thoroughly Creoleized Americain--his narrative, when it was done,
+was little more than a thick mist of strange names, places and events;
+yet there shone a light of romance upon it that filled it with color and
+populated it with phantoms. Frowenfeld's interest rose--was allured into
+this mist--and there was left befogged. As a physician, Doctor Keene
+thus accomplished his end,--the mental diversion of his late
+patient,--for in the midst of the mist Frowenfeld encountered and
+grappled a problem of human life in Creole type, the possible
+correlations of whose quantities we shall presently find him revolving
+in a studious and sympathetic mind, as the poet of to-day ponders the
+
+     "Flower in the crannied wall."
+
+The quantities in that problem were the ancestral--the maternal--roots
+of those two rival and hostile families whose descendants--some brave,
+others fair--we find unwittingly thrown together at the ball, and with
+whom we are shortly to have the honor of an unmasked acquaintance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FAMILY TREES
+
+
+In the year 1673, and in the royal hovel of a Tchoupitoulas village not
+far removed from that "Buffalo's Grazing-ground," now better known as
+New Orleans, was born Lufki-Humma, otherwise Red Clay. The mother of Red
+Clay was a princess by birth as well as by marriage. For the father,
+with that devotion to his people's interests presumably common to
+rulers, had ten moons before ventured northward into the territory of
+the proud and exclusive Natchez nation, and had so prevailed with--so
+outsmoked--their "Great Sun," as to find himself, as he finally knocked
+the ashes from his successful calumet, possessor of a wife whose
+pedigree included a long line of royal mothers--fathers being of little
+account in Natchez heraldry--extending back beyond the Mexican origin
+of her nation, and disappearing only in the effulgence of her great
+original, the orb of day himself. As to Red Clay's paternal ancestry, we
+must content ourselves with the fact that the father was not only the
+diplomate we have already found him, but a chief of considerable
+eminence; that is to say, of seven feet stature.
+
+It scarce need be said that when Lufki-Humma was born, the mother arose
+at once from her couch of skins, herself bore the infant to the
+neighboring bayou and bathed it--not for singularity, nor for
+independence, nor for vainglory, but only as one of the heart-curdling
+conventionalities which made up the experience of that most pitiful of
+holy things, an Indian mother.
+
+Outside the lodge door sat and continued to sit, as she passed out, her
+master or husband. His interest in the trivialities of the moment may be
+summed up in this, that he was as fully prepared as some men are in more
+civilized times and places to hold his queen to strict account for the
+sex of her offspring. Girls for the Natchez, if they preferred them, but
+the chief of the Tchoupitoulas wanted a son. She returned from the
+water, came near, sank upon her knees, laid the infant at his feet, and
+lo! a daughter.
+
+Then she fell forward heavily upon her face. It may have been muscular
+exhaustion, it may have been the mere wind of her hasty-tempered
+matrimonial master's stone hatchet as it whiffed by her skull; an
+inquest now would be too great an irony; but something blew out her
+"vile candle."
+
+Among the squaws who came to offer the accustomed funeral howlings, and
+seize mementoes from the deceased lady's scant leavings, was one who had
+in her own palmetto hut an empty cradle scarcely cold, and therefore a
+necessity at her breast, if not a place in her heart, for the
+unfortunate Lufki-Humma; and thus it was that this little waif came to
+be tossed, a droll hypothesis of flesh, blood, nerve and brain, into the
+hands of wild nature with _carte blanche_ as to the disposal of it. And
+now, since this was Agricola's most boasted ancestor--since it appears
+the darkness of her cheek had no effect to make him less white, or
+qualify his right to smite the fairest and most distant descendant of an
+African on the face, and since this proud station and right could not
+have sprung from the squalid surroundings of her birth, let us for a
+moment contemplate these crude materials.
+
+As for the flesh, it was indeed only some of that "one flesh" of which
+we all are made; but the blood--to go into finer distinctions--the
+blood, as distinguished from the milk of her Alibamon foster-mother, was
+the blood of the royal caste of the great Toltec mother-race, which,
+before it yielded its Mexican splendors to the conquering Aztec, throned
+the jeweled and gold-laden Inca in the South, and sent the sacred fire
+of its temples into the North by the hand of the Natchez. For it is a
+short way of expressing the truth concerning Red Clay's tissues to say
+she had the blood of her mother and the nerve of her father, the nerve
+of the true North American Indian, and had it in its finest strength.
+
+As to her infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail of
+straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands
+and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly
+between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an
+Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good fortune her
+impressible little cranium should escape the cradle-straps, the
+shapeliness that nature loves would soon appear. And this very fortune
+befell her. Her father's detestation of an infant that had not consulted
+his wishes as to sex prompted a verbal decree which, among other
+prohibitions, forbade her skull the distortions that ambitious and
+fashionable Indian mothers delighted to produce upon their offspring.
+
+And as to her brain: what can we say? The casket in which Nature sealed
+that brain, and in which Nature's great step-sister, Death, finally laid
+it away, has never fallen into the delighted fingers--and the remarkable
+fineness of its texture will never kindle admiration in the triumphant
+eyes--of those whose scientific hunger drives them to dig for _crania
+Americana_; nor yet will all their learned excavatings ever draw forth
+one of those pale souvenirs of mortality with walls of shapelier contour
+or more delicate fineness, or an interior of more admirable
+spaciousness, than the fair council-chamber under whose dome the mind
+of Lufki-Humma used, about two centuries ago, to sit in frequent
+conclave with high thoughts.
+
+"I have these facts," it was Agricola Fusilier's habit to say, "by
+family tradition; but you know, sir, h-tradition is much more authentic
+than history!"
+
+Listening Crane, the tribal medicine-man, one day stepped softly into
+the lodge of the giant chief, sat down opposite him on a mat of plaited
+rushes, accepted a lighted calumet, and, after the silence of a decent
+hour, broken at length by the warrior's intimation that "the ear of
+Raging Buffalo listened for the voice of his brother," said, in effect,
+that if that ear would turn toward the village play-ground, it would
+catch a murmur like the pleasing sound of bees among the blossoms of the
+catalpa, albeit the catalpa was now dropping her leaves, for it was the
+moon of turkeys. No, it was the repressed laughter of squaws, wallowing
+with their young ones about the village pole, wondering at the
+Natchez-Tchoupitoulas child, whose eye was the eye of the panther, and
+whose words were the words of an aged chief in council.
+
+There was more added; we record only enough to indicate the direction of
+Listening Crane's aim. The eye of Raging Buffalo was opened to see a
+vision: the daughter of the Natchez sitting in majesty, clothed in
+many-colored robes of shining feathers crossed and recrossed with
+girdles of serpent-skins and of wampum, her feet in quilled and painted
+moccasins, her head under a glory of plumes, the carpet of
+buffalo-robes about her throne covered with the trophies of conquest,
+and the atmosphere of her lodge blue with the smoke of embassadors'
+calumets; and this extravagant dream the capricious chief at once
+resolved should eventually become reality. "Let her be taken to the
+village temple," he said to his prime-minister, "and be fed by warriors
+on the flesh of wolves."
+
+The Listening Crane was a patient man; he was the "man that waits" of
+the old French proverb; all things came to him. He had waited for an
+opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had come. Again, he
+waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and others, he died. He had
+heard of a race more powerful than the Natchez--a white race; he waited
+for them; and when the year 1682 saw a humble "black gown" dragging and
+splashing his way, with La Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of
+Louisiana, holding forth the crucifix and backed by French carbines and
+Mohican tomahawks, among the marvels of that wilderness was found this:
+a child of nine sitting, and--with some unostentatious aid from her
+medicine-man--ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of their
+temple. Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition of Listening
+Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's Manitou through
+the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her father's
+fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom, sometimes a
+decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian counselor of
+warriors, and at all times--year after year, until she had reached the
+perfect womanhood of twenty-six--a virgin queen.
+
+On the 11th of March, 1699, two overbold young Frenchmen of M.
+D'Iberville's little exploring party tossed guns on shoulder, and
+ventured away from their canoes on the bank of the Mississippi into the
+wilderness. Two men they were whom an explorer would have been justified
+in hoarding up, rather than in letting out at such risks; a pair to lean
+on, noble and strong. They hunted, killed nothing, were overtaken by
+rain, then by night, hunger, alarm, despair.
+
+And when they had lain down to die, and had only succeeded in falling
+asleep, the Diana of the Tchoupitoulas, ranging the magnolia groves with
+bow and quiver, came upon them in all the poetry of their hope-forsaken
+strength and beauty, and fell sick of love. We say not whether with
+Zephyr Grandissime or Epaminondas Fusilier; that, for the time being,
+was her secret.
+
+The two captives were made guests. Listening Crane rejoiced in them as
+representatives of the great gift-making race, and indulged himself in a
+dream of pipe-smoking, orations, treaties, presents and alliances,
+finding its climax in the marriage of his virgin queen to the king of
+France, and unvaryingly tending to the swiftly increasing aggrandizement
+of Listening Crane. They sat down to bear's meat, sagamite and beans.
+The queen sat down with them, clothed in her entire wardrobe: vest of
+swan's skin, with facings of purple and green from the neck of the
+mallard; petticoat of plaited hair, with embroideries of quills;
+leggings of fawn-skin; garters of wampum; black and green serpent-skin
+moccasins, that rested on pelts of tiger-cat and buffalo; armlets of
+gars' scales, necklaces of bears' claws and alligators' teeth, plaited
+tresses, plumes of raven and flamingo, wing of the pink curlew, and
+odors of bay and sassafras. Young men danced before them, blowing upon
+reeds, hooting, yelling, rattling beans in gourds and touching hands and
+feet. One day was like another, and the nights were made brilliant with
+flambeau dances and processions.
+
+Some days later M. D'Iberville's canoe fleet, returning down the river,
+found and took from the shore the two men, whom they had given up for
+dead, and with them, by her own request, the abdicating queen, who left
+behind her a crowd of weeping and howling squaws and warriors. Three
+canoes that put off in their wake, at a word from her, turned back; but
+one old man leaped into the water, swam after them a little way, and
+then unexpectedly sank. It was that cautious wader but inexperienced
+swimmer, the Listening Crane.
+
+When the expedition reached Biloxi, there were two suitors for the hand
+of Agricola's great ancestress. Neither of them was Zephyr Grandissime.
+(Ah! the strong heads of those Grandissimes.)
+
+They threw dice for her. Demosthenes De Grapion--he who, tradition
+says, first hoisted the flag of France over the little fort--seemed to
+think he ought to have a chance, and being accorded it, cast an
+astonishingly high number; but Epaminondas cast a number higher by one
+(which Demosthenes never could quite understand), and got a wife who had
+loved him from first sight.
+
+Thus, while the pilgrim fathers of the Mississippi Delta with Gallic
+recklessness were taking wives and moot-wives from the ill specimens of
+three races, arose, with the church's benediction, the royal house of
+the Fusiliers in Louisiana. But the true, main Grandissime stock, on
+which the Fusiliers did early, ever, and yet do, love to marry, has kept
+itself lily-white ever since France has loved lilies--as to marriage,
+that is; as to less responsible entanglements, why, of course--
+
+After a little, the disappointed Demosthenes, with due ecclesiastical
+sanction, also took a most excellent wife, from the first cargo of House
+of Correction girls. Her biography, too, is as short as Methuselah's, or
+shorter; she died. Zephyr Grandissime married, still later, a lady of
+rank, a widow without children, sent from France to Biloxi under a
+_lettre de cachet_. Demosthenes De Grapion, himself an only son, left
+but one son, who also left but one. Yet they were prone to early
+marriages.
+
+So also were the Grandissimes, or, as the name is signed in all the old
+notarial papers, the Brahmin Mandarin de Grandissimes. That was one
+thing that kept their many-stranded family line so free from knots and
+kinks. Once the leisurely Zephyr gave them a start, generation followed
+generation with a rapidity that kept the competing De Grapions
+incessantly exasperated, and new-made Grandissime fathers continually
+throwing themselves into the fond arms and upon the proud necks of
+congratulatory grandsires. Verily it seemed as though their family tree
+was a fig-tree; you could not look for blossoms on it, but there,
+instead, was the fruit full of seed. And with all their speed they were
+for the most part fine of stature, strong of limb and fair of face. The
+old nobility of their stock, including particularly the unnamed blood of
+her of the _lettre de cachet_, showed forth in a gracefulness of
+carriage, that almost identified a De Grandissime wherever you saw him,
+and in a transparency of flesh and classic beauty of feature, that made
+their daughters extra-marriageable in a land and day which was bearing a
+wide reproach for a male celibacy not of the pious sort.
+
+In a flock of Grandissimes might always be seen a Fusilier or two;
+fierce-eyed, strong-beaked, dark, heavy-taloned birds, who, if they
+could not sing, were of rich plumage, and could talk, and bite, and
+strike, and keep up a ruffled crest and a self-exalting bad humor. They
+early learned one favorite cry, with which they greeted all strangers,
+crying the louder the more the endeavor was made to appease them:
+"Invaders! Invaders!"
+
+There was a real pathos in the contrast offered to this family line by
+that other which sprang up, as slenderly as a stalk of wild oats, from
+the loins of Demosthenes De Grapion. A lone son following a lone son,
+and he another--it was sad to contemplate, in that colonial beginning of
+days, three generations of good, Gallic blood tripping jocundly along in
+attenuated Indian file. It made it no less pathetic to see that they
+were brilliant, gallant, much-loved, early epauletted fellows, who did
+not let twenty-one catch them without wives sealed with the authentic
+wedding kiss, nor allow twenty-two to find them without an heir. But
+they had a sad aptness for dying young. It was altogether supposable
+that they would have spread out broadly in the land; but they were such
+inveterate duelists, such brave Indian-fighters, such adventurous
+swamp-rangers, and such lively free-livers, that, however numerously
+their half-kin may have been scattered about in an unacknowledged way,
+the avowed name of De Grapion had become less and less frequent in lists
+where leading citizens subscribed their signatures, and was not to be
+seen in the list of managers of the late ball.
+
+It is not at all certain that so hot a blood would not have boiled away
+entirely before the night of the _bal masque_, but for an event which
+led to the union of that blood with a stream equally clear and ruddy,
+but of a milder vintage. This event fell out some fifty-two years after
+that cast of the dice which made the princess Lufki-Humma the mother of
+all the Fusiliers and of none of the De Grapions. Clotilde, the
+Casket-Girl, the little maid who would not marry, was one of an heroic
+sort, worth--the De Grapions maintained--whole swampfuls of Indian
+queens. And yet the portrait of this great ancestress, which served as a
+pattern to one who, at the ball, personated the long-deceased heroine
+_en masque_, is hopelessly lost in some garret. Those Creoles have such
+a shocking way of filing their family relics and records in rat-holes.
+
+One fact alone remains to be stated: that the De Grapions, try to spurn
+it as they would, never could quite suppress a hard feeling in the face
+of the record, that from the two young men, who, when lost in the
+horrors of Louisiana's swamps, had been esteemed as good as dead, and
+particularly from him who married at his leisure,--from Zephyr de
+Grandissime,--sprang there so many as the sands of the Mississippi
+innumerable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A MAIDEN WHO WILL NOT MARRY
+
+
+Midway between the times of Lufki-Humma and those of her proud
+descendant, Agricola Fusilier, fifty-two years lying on either side,
+were the days of Pierre Rigaut, the magnificent, the "Grand Marquis,"
+the Governor, De Vaudreuil. He was the Solomon of Louisiana. For
+splendor, however, not for wisdom. Those were the gala days of license,
+extravagance and pomp. He made paper money to be as the leaves of the
+forest for multitude; it was nothing accounted of in the days of the
+Grand Marquis. For Louis Quinze was king.
+
+Clotilde, orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was one of sixty, the last
+royal allotment to Louisiana, of imported wives. The king's agents had
+inveigled her away from France with fair stories: "They will give you a
+quiet home with some lady of the colony. Have to marry?--not unless it
+pleases you. The king himself pays your passage and gives you a casket
+of clothes. Think of that these times, fillette; and passage free,
+withal, to--the garden of Eden, as you may call it--what more, say you,
+can a poor girl want? Without doubt, too, like a model colonist, you
+will accept a good husband and have a great many beautiful children, who
+will say with pride, 'Me, I am no House-of-Correction-girl stock; my
+mother'--or 'grandmother,' as the case may be--'was a _fille a la
+cassette!_'"
+
+The sixty were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of the
+Ursuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine soldiers of
+the king were well wived and ready to settle upon their riparian
+land-grants. The residuum in the nuns' hands was one stiff-necked little
+heretic, named, in part, Clotilde. They bore with her for sixty days,
+and then complained to the Grand Marquis. But the Grand Marquis, with
+all his pomp, was gracious and kind-hearted, and loved his ease almost
+as much as his marchioness loved money. He bade them try her another
+month. They did so, and then returned with her; she would neither marry
+nor pray to Mary.
+
+Here is the way they talked in New Orleans in those days. If you care to
+understand why Louisiana has grown up so out of joint, note the tone of
+those who governed her in the middle of the last century:
+
+"What, my child," the Grand Marquis said, "you a _fille a la cassette?_
+France, for shame! Come here by my side. Will you take a little advice
+from an old soldier? It is in one word--submit. Whatever is inevitable,
+submit to it. If you want to live easy and sleep easy, do as other
+people do--submit. Consider submission in the present case; how easy,
+how comfortable, and how little it amounts to! A little hearing of mass,
+a little telling of beads, a little crossing of one's self--what is
+that? One need not believe in them. Don't shake your head. Take my
+example; look at me; all these things go in at this ear and out at this.
+Do king or clergy trouble me? Not at all. For how does the king in these
+matters of religion? I shall not even tell you, he is such a bad boy. Do
+you not know that all the _noblesse_, and all the _savants_, and
+especially all the archbishops and cardinals,--all, in a word, but such
+silly little chicks as yourself,--have found out that this religious
+business is a joke? Actually a joke, every whit; except, to be sure,
+this heresy phase; that is a joke they cannot take. Now, I wish you
+well, pretty child; so if you--eh?--truly, my pet, I fear we shall have
+to call you unreasonable. Stop; they can spare me here a moment; I will
+take you to the Marquise: she is in the next room.... Behold," said he,
+as he entered the presence of his marchioness, "the little maid who will
+not marry!"
+
+The Marquise was as cold and hard-hearted as the Marquis was loose and
+kind; but we need not recount the slow tortures of the _fille a la
+cassette's_ second verbal temptation. The colony had to have soldiers,
+she was given to understand, and the soldiers must have wives. "Why, I
+am a soldier's wife, myself!" said the gorgeously attired lady, laying
+her hand upon the governor-general's epaulet. She explained, further,
+that he was rather softhearted, while she was a business woman; also
+that the royal commissary's rolls did not comprehend such a thing as a
+spinster, and--incidentally--that living by principle was rather out of
+fashion in the province just then.
+
+After she had offered much torment of this sort, a definite notion
+seemed to take her; she turned her lord by a touch of the elbow, and
+exchanged two or three business-like whispers with him at a window
+overlooking the Levee.
+
+"Fillette," she said, returning, "you are going to live on the
+sea-coast. I am sending an aged lady there to gather the wax of the wild
+myrtle. This good soldier of mine buys it for our king at twelve livres
+the pound. Do you not know that women can make money? The place is not
+safe; but there are no safe places in Louisiana. There are no nuns to
+trouble you there; only a few Indians and soldiers. You and Madame will
+live together, quite to yourselves, and can pray as you like."
+
+"And not marry a soldier," said the Grand Marquis.
+
+"No," said the lady, "not if you can gather enough myrtle-berries to
+afford me a profit and you a living."
+
+It was some thirty leagues or more eastward to the country of the
+Biloxis, a beautiful land of low, evergreen hills looking out across the
+pine-covered sand-keys of Mississippi Sound to the Gulf of Mexico. The
+northern shore of Biloxi Bay was rich in candleberry-myrtle. In
+Clotilde's day, though Biloxi was no longer the capital of the
+Mississippi Valley, the fort which D'Iberville had built in 1699, and
+the first timber of which is said to have been lifted by Zephyr
+Grandissime at one end and Epaminondas Fusilier at the other, was still
+there, making brave against the possible advent of corsairs, with a few
+old culverines and one wooden mortar.
+
+And did the orphan, in despite of Indians and soldiers and wilderness,
+settle down here and make a moderate fortune? Alas, she never gathered a
+berry! When she--with the aged lady, her appointed companion in exile,
+the young commandant of the fort, in whose pinnace they had come, and
+two or three French sailors and Canadians--stepped out upon the white
+sand of Biloxi beach, she was bound with invisible fetters hand and
+foot, by that Olympian rogue of a boy, who likes no better prey than a
+little maiden who thinks she will never marry.
+
+The officer's name was De Grapion--Georges De Grapion. The Marquis gave
+him a choice grant of land on that part of the Mississippi river "coast"
+known as the Cannes Brulees.
+
+"Of course you know where Cannes Brulees is, don't you?" asked Doctor
+Keene of Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+"Yes," said Joseph, with a twinge of reminiscence that recalled the
+study of Louisiana on paper with his father and sisters.
+
+There Georges De Grapion settled, with the laudable determination to
+make a fresh start against the mortifyingly numerous Grandissimes.
+
+"My father's policy was every way bad," he said to his spouse; "it is
+useless, and probably wrong, this trying to thin them out by duels; we
+will try another plan. Thank you," he added, as she handed his coat back
+to him, with the shoulder-straps cut off. In pursuance of the new plan,
+Madame De Grapion,--the precious little heroine!--before the myrtles
+offered another crop of berries, bore him a boy not much smaller (saith
+tradition) than herself.
+
+Only one thing qualified the father's elation. On that very day Numa
+Grandissime (Brahmin-Mandarin de Grandissime), a mere child, received
+from Governor de Vaudreuil a cadetship.
+
+"Never mind, Messieurs Grandissime, go on with your tricks; we shall
+see! Ha! we shall see!"
+
+"We shall see what?" asked a remote relative of that family. "Will
+Monsieur be so good as to explain himself?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bang! bang!
+
+Alas, Madame De Grapion!
+
+It may be recorded that no affair of honor in Louisiana ever left a
+braver little widow. When Joseph and his doctor pretended to play chess
+together, but little more than a half-century had elapsed since the
+_fille a la cassette_ stood before the Grand Marquis and refused to wed.
+Yet she had been long gone into the skies, leaving a worthy example
+behind her in twenty years of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir and
+resident of the plantation at Cannes Brulees, at the age of--they do
+say--eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of Franco-Spanish
+extraction, and, after a fair length of life divided between campaigning
+under the brilliant young Galvez and raising unremunerative
+indigo crops, had lately lain down to sleep, leaving only two
+descendants--females--how shall we describe them?--a Monk and a _Fille a
+la Cassette_. It was very hard to have to go leaving his family name
+snuffed out and certain Grandissime-ward grievances burning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There are so many Grandissimes," said the weary-eyed Frowenfeld, "I
+cannot distinguish between--I can scarcely count them."
+
+"Well, now," said the doctor, "let me tell you, don't try. They can't
+do it themselves. Take them in the mass--as you would shrimps."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LOST OPPORTUNITIES
+
+
+The little doctor tipped his chair back against the wall, drew up his
+knees, and laughed whimperingly in his freckled hands.
+
+"I had to do some prodigious lying at that ball. I didn't dare let the
+De Grapion ladies know they were in company with a Grandissime."
+
+"I thought you said their name was Nancanou."
+
+"Well, certainly--De Grapion-Nancanou. You see, that is one of their
+charms: one is a widow, the other is her daughter, and both as young and
+beautiful as Hebe. Ask Honore Grandissime; he has seen the little widow;
+but then he don't know who she is. He will not ask me, and I will not
+tell him. Oh, yes; it is about eighteen years now since old De
+Grapion--elegant, high-stepping old fellow--married her, then only
+sixteen years of age, to young Nancanou, an indigo-planter on the Fausse
+Riviere--the old bend, you know, behind Pointe Coupee. The young couple
+went there to live. I have been told they had one of the prettiest
+places in Louisiana. He was a man of cultivated tastes, educated in
+Paris, spoke English, was handsome (convivial, of course), and of
+perfectly pure blood. But there was one thing old De Grapion overlooked:
+he and his son-in-law were the last of their names. In Louisiana a man
+needs kinsfolk. He ought to have married his daughter into a strong
+house. They say that Numa Grandissime (Honore's father) and he had
+patched up a peace between the two families that included even old
+Agricola, and that he could have married her to a Grandissime. However,
+he is supposed to have known what he was about.
+
+"A matter of business called young Nancanou to New Orleans. He had no
+friends here; he was a Creole, but what part of his life had not been
+spent on his plantation he had passed in Europe. He could not leave his
+young girl of a wife alone in that exiled sort of plantation life, so he
+brought her and the child (a girl) down with him as far as to her
+father's place, left them there, and came on to the city alone.
+
+"Now, what does the old man do but give him a letter of introduction to
+old Agricole Fusilier! (His name is Agricola, but we shorten it to
+Agricole.) It seems that old De Grapion and Agricole had had the
+indiscretion to scrape up a mutually complimentary correspondence. And
+to Agricole the young man went.
+
+"They became intimate at once, drank together, danced with the quadroons
+together, and got into as much mischief in three days as I ever did in a
+fortnight. So affairs went on until by and by they were gambling
+together. One night they were at the Piety Club, playing hard, and the
+planter lost his last quarti. He became desperate, and did a thing I
+have known more than one planter to do: wrote his pledge for every
+arpent of his land and every slave on it, and staked that. Agricole
+refused to play. 'You shall play,' said Nancanou, and when the game was
+ended he said: 'Monsieur Agricola Fusilier, you cheated.' You see? Just
+as I have frequently been tempted to remark to my friend, Mr.
+Frowenfeld.
+
+"But, Frowenfeld, you must know, withal the Creoles are such gamblers,
+they never cheat; they play absolutely fair. So Agricole had to
+challenge the planter. He could not be blamed for that; there was no
+choice--oh, now, Frowenfeld, keep quiet! I tell you there was no choice.
+And the fellow was no coward. He sent Agricole a clear title to the real
+estate and slaves,--lacking only the wife's signature,--accepted the
+challenge and fell dead at the first fire.
+
+"Stop, now, and let me finish. Agricole sat down and wrote to the widow
+that he did not wish to deprive her of her home, and that if she would
+state in writing her belief that the stakes had been won fairly, he
+would give back the whole estate, slaves and all; but that if she would
+not, he should feel compelled to retain it in vindication of his honor.
+Now wasn't that drawing a fine point?" The doctor laughed according to
+his habit, with his face down in his hands. "You see, he wanted to
+stand before all creation--the Creator did not make so much
+difference--in the most exquisitely proper light; so he puts the laws of
+humanity under his feet, and anoints himself from head to foot with
+Creole punctilio."
+
+"Did she sign the paper?" asked Joseph.
+
+"She? Wait till you know her! No, indeed; she had the true scorn. She
+and her father sent down another and a better title. Creole-like, they
+managed to bestir themselves to that extent and there they stopped.
+
+"And the airs with which they did it! They kept all their rage to
+themselves, and sent the polite word, that they were not acquainted with
+the merits of the case, that they were not disposed to make the long and
+arduous trip to the city and back, and that if M. Fusilier de
+Grandissime thought he could find any pleasure or profit in owning the
+place, he was welcome; that the widow of _his late friend_ was not
+disposed to live on it, but would remain with her father at the paternal
+home at Cannes Brulees.
+
+"Did you ever hear of a more perfect specimen of Creole pride? That is
+the way with all of them. Show me any Creole, or any number of Creoles,
+in any sort of contest, and right down at the foundation of it all, I
+will find you this same preposterous, apathetic, fantastic, suicidal
+pride. It is as lethargic and ferocious as an alligator. That is why the
+Creole almost always is (or thinks he is) on the defensive. See these De
+Grapions' haughty good manners to old Agricole; yet there wasn't a
+Grandissime in Louisiana who could have set foot on the De Grapion lands
+but at the risk of his life.
+
+"But I will finish the story: and here is the really sad part. Not many
+months ago old De Grapion--'old,' said I; they don't grow old; I call
+him old--a few months ago he died. He must have left everything
+smothered in debt; for, like his race, he had stuck to indigo because
+his father planted it, and it is a crop that has lost money steadily for
+years and years. His daughter and granddaughter were left like babes in
+the wood; and, to crown their disasters, have now made the grave mistake
+of coming to the city, where they find they haven't a friend--not one,
+sir! They called me in to prescribe for a trivial indisposition, shortly
+after their arrival; and I tell you, Frowenfeld, it made me shiver to
+see two such beautiful women in such a town as this without a male
+protector, and even"--the doctor lowered his voice--"without adequate
+support. The mother says they are perfectly comfortable; tells the old
+couple so who took them to the ball, and whose little girl is their
+embroidery scholar; but you cannot believe a Creole on that subject, and
+I don't believe her. Would you like to make their acquaintance?"
+
+Frowenfeld hesitated, disliking to say no to his friend, and then shook
+his head.
+
+"After a while--at least not now, sir, if you please."
+
+The doctor made a gesture of disappointment.
+
+"Um-hum," he said grumly--"the only man in New Orleans I would honor
+with an invitation!--but all right; I'll go alone."
+
+He laughed a little at himself, and left Frowenfeld, if ever he should
+desire it, to make the acquaintance of his pretty neighbors as best
+he could.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WAS IT HONORE GRANDISSIME?
+
+
+A Creole gentleman, on horseback one morning with some practical object
+in view,--drainage, possibly,--had got what he sought,--the evidence of
+his own eyes on certain points,--and now moved quietly across some old
+fields toward the town, where more absorbing interests awaited him in
+the Rue Toulouse; for this Creole gentleman was a merchant, and because
+he would presently find himself among the appointments and restraints of
+the counting-room, he heartily gave himself up, for the moment, to the
+surrounding influences of nature.
+
+It was late in November; but the air was mild and the grass and foliage
+green and dewy. Wild flowers bloomed plentifully and in all directions;
+the bushes were hung, and often covered, with vines of sprightly green,
+sprinkled thickly with smart-looking little worthless berries, whose
+sparkling complacency the combined contempt of man, beast and bird
+could not dim. The call of the field-lark came continually out of the
+grass, where now and then could be seen his yellow breast; the orchard
+oriole was executing his fantasias in every tree; a covey of partridges
+ran across the path close under the horse's feet, and stopped to look
+back almost within reach of the riding-whip; clouds of starlings, in
+their odd, irresolute way, rose from the high bulrushes and settled
+again, without discernible cause; little wandering companies of sparrows
+undulated from hedge to hedge; a great rabbit-hawk sat alone in the top
+of a lofty pecan-tree; that petted rowdy, the mocking-bird, dropped down
+into the path to offer fight to the horse, and, failing in that, flew up
+again and drove a crow into ignominious retirement beyond the plain;
+from a place of flags and reeds a white crane shot upward, turned, and
+then, with the slow and stately beat peculiar to her wing, sped away
+until, against the tallest cypress of the distant forest, she became a
+tiny white speck on its black, and suddenly disappeared, like one
+flake of snow.
+
+The scene was altogether such as to fill any hearty soul with impulses
+of genial friendliness and gentle candor; such a scene as will sometimes
+prepare a man of the world, upon the least direct incentive, to throw
+open the windows of his private thought with a freedom which the
+atmosphere of no counting-room or drawing-room tends to induce.
+
+The young merchant--he was young--felt this. Moreover, the matter of
+business which had brought him out had responded to his inquiring eye
+with a somewhat golden radiance; and your true man of business--he who
+has reached that elevated pitch of serene, good-natured reserve which is
+of the high art of his calling--is never so generous with his
+pennyworths of thought as when newly in possession of some little secret
+worth many pounds.
+
+By and by the behavior of the horse indicated the near presence of a
+stranger; and the next moment the rider drew rein under an immense
+live-oak where there was a bit of paling about some graves, and
+raised his hat.
+
+"Good-morning, sir." But for the silent r's, his pronunciation was
+exact, yet evidently an acquired one. While he spoke his salutation in
+English, he was thinking in French: "Without doubt, this rather
+oversized, bareheaded, interrupted-looking convalescent who stands
+before me, wondering how I should know in what language to address him,
+is Joseph Frowenfeld, of whom Doctor Keene has had so much to say to me.
+A good face--unsophisticated, but intelligent, mettlesome and honest. He
+will make his mark; it will probably be a white one; I will subscribe to
+the adventure.
+
+"You will excuse me, sir?" he asked after a pause, dismounting, and
+noticing, as he did so, that Frowenfeld's knees showed recent contact
+with the turf; "I have, myself, some interest in two of these graves,
+sir, as I suppose--you will pardon my freedom--you have in the
+other four."
+
+He approached the old but newly whitened paling, which encircled the
+tree's trunk as well as the six graves about it. There was in his face
+and manner a sort of impersonal human kindness, well calculated to
+engage a diffident and sensitive stranger, standing in dread of
+gratuitous benevolence or pity.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the convalescent, and ceased; but the other leaned
+against the palings in an attitude of attention, and he felt induced to
+add: "I have buried here my father, mother, and two sisters,"--he had
+expected to continue in an unemotional tone; but a deep respiration
+usurped the place of speech. He stooped quickly to pick up his hat, and,
+as he rose again and looked into his listener's face, the respectful,
+unobtrusive sympathy there expressed went directly to his heart.
+
+"Victims of the fever," said the Creole with great gravity. "How did
+that happen?"
+
+As Frowenfeld, after a moment's hesitation, began to speak, the stranger
+let go the bridle of his horse and sat down upon the turf. Joseph
+appreciated the courtesy and sat down, too; and thus the ice was broken.
+
+The immigrant told his story; he was young--often younger than his
+years--and his listener several years his senior; but the Creole, true
+to his blood, was able at any time to make himself as young as need be,
+and possessed the rare magic of drawing one's confidence without seeming
+to do more than merely pay attention. It followed that the story was
+told in full detail, including grateful acknowledgment of the goodness
+of an unknown friend, who had granted this burial-place on condition
+that he should not be sought out for the purpose of thanking him.
+
+So a considerable time passed by, in which acquaintance grew with
+delightful rapidity.
+
+"What will you do now?" asked the stranger, when a short silence had
+followed the conclusion of the story.
+
+"I hardly know. I am taken somewhat by surprise. I have not chosen a
+definite course in life--as yet. I have been a general student, but have
+not prepared myself for any profession; I am not sure what I shall be."
+
+A certain energy in the immigrant's face half redeemed this childlike
+speech. Yet the Creole's lips, as he opened them to reply, betrayed
+amusement; so he hastened to say:
+
+"I appreciate your position, Mr. Frowenfeld,--excuse me, I believe you
+said that was your father's name. And yet,"--the shadow of an amused
+smile lurked another instant about a corner of his mouth,--"if you would
+understand me kindly I would say, take care--"
+
+What little blood the convalescent had rushed violently to his face, and
+the Creole added:
+
+"I do not insinuate you would willingly be idle. I think I know what you
+want. You want to make up your mind _now_ what you will _do_, and at
+your leisure what you will _be_; eh? To be, it seems to me," he said in
+summing up,--"that to be is not so necessary as to do, eh? or am
+I wrong?"
+
+"No, sir," replied Joseph, still red, "I was feeling that just now. I
+will do the first thing that offers; I can dig."
+
+The Creole shrugged and pouted.
+
+"And be called a _dos brile_--a 'burnt-back.'"
+
+"But"--began the immigrant, with overmuch warmth.
+
+The other interrupted him, shaking his head slowly and smiling as he
+spoke.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, it is of no use to talk; you may hold in contempt the
+Creole scorn of toil--just as I do, myself, but in theory, my-de'-seh,
+not too much in practice. You cannot afford to be _entirely_ different
+from the community in which you live; is that not so?"
+
+"A friend of mine," said Frowenfeld, "has told me I must 'compromise.'"
+
+"You must get acclimated," responded the Creole; "not in body only, that
+you have done; but in mind--in taste--in conversation--and in
+convictions too, yes, ha, ha! They all do it--all who come. They hold
+out a little while--a very little; then they open their stores on
+Sunday, they import cargoes of Africans, they bribe the officials, they
+smuggle goods, they have colored housekeepers. My-de'-seh, the water
+must expect to take the shape of the bucket; eh?"
+
+"One need not be water!" said the immigrant.
+
+"Ah!" said the Creole, with another amiable shrug, and a wave of his
+hand; "certainly you do not suppose that is my advice--that those things
+have my approval."
+
+Must we repeat already that Frowenfeld was abnormally young? "Why have
+they not your condemnation?" cried he with an earnestness that made the
+Creole's horse drop the grass from his teeth and wheel half around.
+
+The answer came slowly and gently.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, my habit is to buy cheap and sell at a profit. My
+condemnation? My-de'-seh, there is no sa-a-ale for it! it spoils the
+sale of other goods my-de'-seh. It is not to condemn that you want; you
+want to suc-_ceed_. Ha, ha, ha! you see I am a merchant, eh? My-de'-seh,
+can _you_ afford not to succeed?"
+
+The speaker had grown very much in earnest in the course of these few
+words, and as he asked the closing question, arose, arranged his horse's
+bridle and, with his elbow in the saddle, leaned his handsome head on
+his equally beautiful hand. His whole appearance was a dazzling
+contradiction of the notion that a Creole is a person of mixed blood.
+
+"I think I can!" replied the convalescent, with much spirit, rising with
+more haste than was good, and staggering a moment.
+
+The horseman laughed outright.
+
+"Your principle is the best, I cannot dispute that; but whether you can
+act it out--reformers do not make money, you know." He examined his
+saddle-girth and began to tighten it. "One can condemn--too
+cautiously--by a kind of--elevated cowardice (I have that fault); but
+one can also condemn too rashly; I remember when I did so. One of the
+occupants of those two graves you see yonder side by side--I think might
+have lived longer if I had not spoken so rashly for his rights. Did you
+ever hear of Bras-Coupe, Mr. Frowenfeld?"
+
+"I have heard only the name."
+
+"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld, _there_ was a bold man's chance to denounce wrong
+and oppression! Why, that negro's death changed the whole channel of my
+convictions."
+
+The speaker had turned and thrown up his arm with frowning earnestness;
+he dropped it and smiled at himself.
+
+"Do not mistake me for one of your new-fashioned Philadelphia
+'_negrophiles_'; I am a merchant, my-de'-seh, a good subject of His
+Catholic Majesty, a Creole of the Creoles, and so forth, and so
+forth. Come!"
+
+He slapped the saddle.
+
+To have seen and heard them a little later as they moved toward the
+city, the Creole walking before the horse, and Frowenfeld sitting in the
+saddle, you might have supposed them old acquaintances. Yet the
+immigrant was wondering who his companion might be. He had not
+introduced himself--seemed to think that even an immigrant might know
+his name without asking. Was it Honore Grandissime? Joseph was tempted
+to guess so; but the initials inscribed on the silver-mounted pommel of
+the fine old Spanish saddle did not bear out that conjecture.
+
+The stranger talked freely. The sun's rays seemed to set all the
+sweetness in him a-working, and his pleasant worldly wisdom foamed up
+and out like fermenting honey.
+
+By and by the way led through a broad, grassy lane where the path turned
+alternately to right and left among some wild acacias. The Creole waved
+his hand toward one of them and said:
+
+"Now, Mr. Frowenfeld, you see? one man walks where he sees another's
+track; that is what makes a path; but you want a man, instead of passing
+around this prickly bush, to lay hold of it with his naked hands and
+pull it up by the roots."
+
+"But a man armed with the truth is far from being barehanded," replied
+the convalescent, and they went on, more and more interested at every
+step,--one in this very raw imported material for an excellent man, the
+other in so striking an exponent of a unique land and people.
+
+They came at length to the crossing of two streets, and the Creole,
+pausing in his speech, laid his hand upon the bridle.
+
+Frowenfeld dismounted.
+
+"Do we part here?" asked the Creole. "Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I hope to
+meet you soon again."
+
+"Indeed, I thank you, sir," said Joseph, "and I hope we shall,
+although--"
+
+The Creole paused with a foot in the stirrup and interrupted him with a
+playful gesture; then as the horse stirred, he mounted and drew in
+the rein.
+
+"I know; you want to say you cannot accept my philosophy and I cannot
+appreciate yours; but I appreciate it more than you think, my-de'-seh."
+
+The convalescent's smile showed much fatigue.
+
+The Creole extended his hand; the immigrant seized it, wished to ask his
+name, but did not; and the next moment he was gone.
+
+The convalescent walked meditatively toward his quarters, with a faint
+feeling of having been found asleep on duty and awakened by a passing
+stranger. It was an unpleasant feeling, and he caught himself more than
+once shaking his head. He stopped, at length, and looked back; but the
+Creole was long since out of sight. The mortified self-accuser little
+knew how very similar a feeling that vanished person was carrying away
+with him. He turned and resumed his walk, wondering who Monsieur might
+be, and a little impatient with himself that he had not asked.
+
+"It is Honore Grandissime; it must be he!" he said.
+
+Yet see how soon he felt obliged to change his mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SIGNED--HONORE GRANDISSIME
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day, having decided what he would "do," he
+started out in search of new quarters. He found nothing then, but next
+morning came upon a small, single-story building in the rue
+Royale,--corner of Conti,--which he thought would suit his plans. There
+were a door and show-window in the rue Royale, two doors in the
+intersecting street, and a small apartment in the rear which would
+answer for sleeping, eating, and studying purposes, and which connected
+with the front apartment by a door in the left-hand corner. This
+connection he would partially conceal by a prescription-desk. A counter
+would run lengthwise toward the rue Royale, along the wall opposite the
+side-doors. Such was the spot that soon became known as
+"Frowenfeld's Corner."
+
+The notice "A Louer" directed him to inquire at numero--rue Conde. Here
+he was ushered through the wicket of a _porte cochere_ into a broad,
+paved corridor, and up a stair into a large, cool room, and into the
+presence of a man who seemed, in some respects, the most remarkable
+figure he had yet seen in this little city of strange people. A strong,
+clear, olive complexion; features that were faultless (unless a
+woman-like delicacy, that was yet not effeminate, was a fault); hair _en
+queue_, the handsomer for its premature streakings of gray; a tall, well
+knit form, attired in cloth, linen and leather of the utmost fineness;
+manners Castilian, with a gravity almost oriental,--made him one of
+those rare masculine figures which, on the public promenade, men look
+back at and ladies inquire about.
+
+Now, who might _this_ be? The rent poster had given no name. Even the
+incurious Frowenfeld would fain guess a little. For a man to be just of
+this sort, it seemed plain that he must live in an isolated ease upon
+the unceasing droppings of coupons, rents, and like receivables. Such
+was the immigrant's first conjecture; and, as with slow, scant questions
+and answers they made their bargain, every new glance strengthened it;
+he was evidently a _rentier_. What, then, was his astonishment when
+Monsieur bent down and made himself Frowenfeld's landlord, by writing
+what the universal mind esteemed the synonym of enterprise and
+activity--the name of Honore Grandissime. The landlord did not see, or
+ignored, his tenant's glance of surprise, and the tenant asked no
+questions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may add here an incident which seemed, when it took place, as
+unimportant as a single fact well could be.
+
+The little sum that Frowenfeld had inherited from his father had been
+sadly depleted by the expenses of four funerals; yet he was still able
+to pay a month's rent in advance, to supply his shop with a scant stock
+of drugs, to purchase a celestial globe and some scientific apparatus,
+and to buy a dinner or two of sausages and crackers; but after this
+there was no necessity of hiding his purse.
+
+His landlord early contracted a fondness for dropping in upon him, and
+conversing with him, as best the few and labored English phrases at his
+command would allow. Frowenfeld soon noticed that he never entered the
+shop unless its proprietor was alone, never sat down, and always, with
+the same perfection of dignity that characterized all his movements,
+departed immediately upon the arrival of any third person. One day, when
+the landlord was making one of these standing calls,--he always stood'
+beside a high glass case, on the side of the shop opposite the
+counter,--he noticed in Joseph's hand a sprig of basil, and spoke of it.
+
+"You ligue?"
+
+The tenant did not understand. "You--find--dad--nize?"
+
+Frowenfeld replied that it had been left by the oversight of a customer,
+and expressed a liking for its odor.
+
+"I sand you," said the landlord,--a speech whose meaning Frowenfeld was
+not sure of until the next morning, when a small, nearly naked black
+boy, who could not speak a word of English, brought to the apothecary a
+luxuriant bunch of this basil, growing in a rough box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ILLUSTRATING THE TRACTIVE POWER OF BASIL
+
+
+On the twenty-fourth day of December, 1803, at two o'clock, P.M., the
+thermometer standing at 79, hygrometer 17, barometer 29.880, sky partly
+clouded, wind west, light, the apothecary of the rue Royale, now
+something more than a month established in his calling, might have been
+seen standing behind his counter and beginning to show embarrassment in
+the presence of a lady, who, since she had got her prescription filled
+and had paid for it, ought in the conventional course of things to have
+hurried out, followed by the pathetically ugly black woman who tarried
+at the door as her attendant; for to be in an apothecary's shop at all
+was unconventional. She was heavily veiled; but the sparkle of her eyes,
+which no multiplication of veils could quite extinguish, her symmetrical
+and well-fitted figure, just escaping smallness, her grace of movement,
+and a soft, joyous voice, had several days before led Frowenfeld to the
+confident conclusion that she was young and beautiful.
+
+For this was now the third time she had come to buy; and, though the
+purchases were unaccountably trivial, the purchaser seemed not so. On
+the two previous occasions she had been accompanied by a slender girl,
+somewhat taller than she, veiled also, of graver movement, a bearing
+that seemed to Joseph almost too regal, and a discernible unwillingness
+to enter or tarry. There seemed a certain family resemblance between her
+voice and that of the other, which proclaimed them--he incautiously
+assumed--sisters. This time, as we see, the smaller, and probably elder,
+came alone.
+
+She still held in her hand the small silver which Frowenfeld had given
+her in change, and sighed after the laugh they had just enjoyed together
+over a slip in her English. A very grateful sip of sweet the laugh was
+to the all but friendless apothecary, and the embarrassment that rushed
+in after it may have arisen in part from a conscious casting about in
+his mind for something--anything--that might prolong her stay an
+instant. He opened his lips to speak; but she was quicker than he, and
+said, in a stealthy way that seemed oddly unnecessary:
+
+"You 'ave some basilic?"
+
+She accompanied her words with a little peeping movement, directing his
+attention, through the open door, to his box of basil, on the floor in
+the rear room.
+
+Frowenfeld stepped back to it, cut half the bunch and returned, with the
+bold intention of making her a present of it; but as he hastened back to
+the spot he had left, he was astonished to see the lady disappearing
+from his farthest front door, followed by her negress.
+
+"Did she change her mind, or did she misunderstand me?" he asked
+himself; and, in the hope that she might return for the basil, he put it
+in water in his back room.
+
+The day being, as the figures have already shown, an unusually mild one,
+even for a Louisiana December, and the finger of the clock drawing by
+and by toward the last hour of sunlight, some half dozen of Frowenfeld's
+townsmen had gathered, inside and out, some standing, some sitting,
+about his front door, and all discussing the popular topics of the day.
+For it might have been anticipated that, in a city where so very little
+English was spoken and no newspaper published except that beneficiary
+of eighty subscribers, the "Moniteur de la Louisiane," the apothecary's
+shop in the rue Royale would be the rendezvous for a select company of
+English-speaking gentlemen, with a smart majority of physicians.
+
+The Cession had become an accomplished fact. With due drum-beatings and
+act-reading, flag-raising, cannonading and galloping of aides-de-camp,
+Nouvelle Orleans had become New Orleans, and Louisiane was Louisiana.
+This afternoon, the first week of American jurisdiction was only
+something over half gone, and the main topic of public debate was still
+the Cession. Was it genuine? and, if so, would it stand?
+
+"Mark my words," said one, "the British flag will be floating over this
+town within ninety days!" and he went on whittling the back of
+his chair.
+
+From this main question, the conversation branched out to the subject of
+land titles. Would that great majority of Spanish titles, derived from
+the concessions of post-commandants and others of minor authority,
+hold good?
+
+"I suppose you know what ---- thinks about it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he has quietly purchased the grant made by Carondelet to the
+Marquis of ----, thirty thousand acres, and now says the grant is two
+hundred _and_ thirty thousand. That is one style of men Governor
+Claiborne is going to have on his hands. The town will presently be as
+full of them as my pocket is of tobacco crumbs,--every one of them with
+a Spanish grant as long as Clark's ropewalk and made up since the rumor
+of the Cession."
+
+"I hear that some of Honore Grandissime's titles are likely to turn out
+bad,--some of the old Brahmin properties and some of the
+Mandarin lands."
+
+"Fudge!" said Dr. Keene.
+
+There was also the subject of rotation in office. Would this provisional
+governor-general himself be able to stand fast? Had not a man better
+temporize a while, and see what Ex-Governor-general Casa Calvo and
+Trudeau were going to do? Would not men who sacrificed old prejudices,
+braved the popular contumely, and came forward and gave in their
+allegiance to the President's appointee, have to take the chances of
+losing their official positions at last? Men like Camille Brahmin, for
+instance, or Charlie Mandarin: suppose Spain or France should get the
+province back, then where would they be?
+
+"One of the things I pity most in this vain world," drawled Doctor
+Keene, "is a hive of patriots who don't know where to swarm."
+
+The apothecary was drawn into the discussion--at least he thought he
+was. Inexperience is apt to think that Truth will be knocked down and
+murdered unless she comes to the rescue. Somehow, Frowenfeld's really
+excellent arguments seemed to give out more heat than light. They were
+merciless; their principles were not only lofty to dizziness, but
+precipitous, and their heights unoccupied, and--to the common
+sight--unattainable. In consequence, they provoked hostility and even
+resentment. With the kindest, the most honest, and even the most modest,
+intentions, he found himself--to his bewilderment and surprise--sniffed
+at by the ungenerous, frowned upon by the impatient, and smiled down by
+the good-natured in a manner that brought sudden blushes of exasperation
+to his face, and often made him ashamed to find himself going over these
+sham battles again in much savageness of spirit, when alone with his
+books; or, in moments of weakness, casting about for such unworthy
+weapons as irony and satire. In the present debate, he had just provoked
+a sneer that made his blood leap and his friends laugh, when Doctor
+Keene, suddenly rising and beckoning across the street, exclaimed:
+
+"Oh! Agricole! Agricole! _venez ici_; we want you."
+
+A murmur of vexed protest arose from two or three.
+
+"He's coming," said the whittler, who had also beckoned.
+
+"Good evening, Citizen Fusilier," said Doctor Keene. "Citizen Fusilier,
+allow me to present my friend, Professor Frowenfeld--yes, you are a
+professor--yes, you are. He is one of your sort, Citizen Fusilier, a man
+of thorough scientific education. I believe on my soul, sir, he knows
+nearly as much as you do!"
+
+The person who confronted the apothecary was a large, heavily built, but
+well-molded and vigorous man, of whom one might say that he was adorned
+with old age. His brow was dark, and furrowed partly by time and partly
+by a persistent, ostentatious frown. His eyes were large, black and
+bold, and the gray locks above them curled short and harsh like the
+front of a bull. His nose was fine and strong, and if there was any
+deficiency in mouth or chin, it was hidden by a beard that swept down
+over his broad breast like the beard of a prophet. In his dress, which
+was noticeably soiled, the fashions of three decades were hinted at; he
+seemed to have donned whatever he thought his friends would most have
+liked him to leave off.
+
+"Professor," said the old man, extending something like the paw of a
+lion, and giving Frowenfeld plenty of time to become thoroughly awed,
+"this is a pleasure as magnificent as unexpected! A scientific man?--in
+Louisiana?" He looked around upon the doctors as upon a
+graduating class.
+
+"Professor, I am rejoiced!" He paused again, shaking the apothecary's
+hand with great ceremony. "I do assure you, sir, I dislike to relinquish
+your grasp. Do me the honor to allow me to become your friend! I
+congratulate my downtrodden country on the acquisition of such a
+citizen! I hope, sir,--at least I might have hoped, had not Louisiana
+just passed into the hands of the most clap-trap government in the
+universe, notwithstanding it pretends to be a republic,--I might have
+hoped that you had come among us to fasten the lie direct upon a late
+author, who writes of us that 'the air of this region is deadly to
+the Muses.'"
+
+"He didn't say that?" asked one of the debaters, with pretended
+indignation.
+
+"He did, sir, after eating our bread!"
+
+"And sucking our sugar-cane, too, no doubt!" said the wag; but the old
+man took no notice.
+
+Frowenfeld, naturally, was not anxious to reply, and was greatly
+relieved to be touched on the elbow by a child with a picayune in one
+hand and a tumbler in the other. He escaped behind the counter and
+gladly remained there.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," asked one of the gossips, "what has the new
+government to do with the health of the Muses?"
+
+"It introduces the English tongue," said the old man, scowling.
+
+"Oh, well," replied the questioner, "the Creoles will soon learn the
+language."
+
+"English is not a language, sir; it is a jargon! And when this young
+simpleton, Claiborne, attempts to cram it down the public windpipe in
+the courts, as I understand he intends, he will fail! Hah! sir, I know
+men in this city who would rather eat a dog than speak English! I speak
+it, but I also speak Choctaw."
+
+"The new land titles will be in English."
+
+"They will spurn his rotten titles. And if he attempts to invalidate
+their old ones, why, let him do it! Napoleon Buonaparte" (Italian
+pronounciation) "will make good every arpent within the next two years.
+_Think so?_ I know it! _How?_ H-I perceive it! H-I hope the yellow fever
+may spare you to witness it."
+
+A sullen grunt from the circle showed the "citizen" that he had presumed
+too much upon the license commonly accorded his advanced age, and by way
+of a diversion he looked around for Frowenfeld to pour new flatteries
+upon. But Joseph, behind his counter, unaware of either the offense or
+the resentment, was blushing with pleasure before a visitor who had
+entered by the side door farthest from the company.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Agricola, "h-my dear friends, you must not expect an
+old Creole to like anything in comparison with _la belle langue_."
+
+"Which language do you call _la belle?_" asked Doctor Keene, with
+pretended simplicity.
+
+The old man bent upon him a look of unspeakable contempt, which nobody
+noticed. The gossips were one by one stealing a glance toward that which
+ever was, is and must be an irresistible lodestone to the eyes of all
+the sons of Adam, to wit, a chaste and graceful complement of--skirts.
+Then in a lower tone they resumed their desultory conversation.
+
+It was the seeker after basil who stood before the counter, holding in
+her hand, with her purse, the heavy veil whose folds had before
+concealed her features.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"OO DAD IS, 'SIEUR FROWENFEL'?"
+
+
+Whether the removal of the veil was because of the milder light of the
+evening, or the result of accident, or of haste, or both, or whether, by
+reason of some exciting or absorbing course of thought, the wearer had
+withdrawn it unconsciously, was a matter that occupied the apothecary as
+little as did Agricola's continued harangue. As he looked upon the fair
+face through the light gauze which still overhung but not obscured it,
+he readily perceived, despite the sprightly smile, something like
+distress, and as she spoke this became still more evident in her hurried
+undertone.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', I want you to sell me doze _basilic_."
+
+As she slipped the rings of her purse apart her fingers trembled.
+
+"It is waiting for you," said Frowenfeld; but the lady did not hear him;
+she was giving her attention to the loud voice of Agricola saying in the
+course of discussion:
+
+"The Louisiana Creole is the noblest variety of enlightened man!"
+
+"Oo dad is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked, softly, but with an excited
+eye.
+
+"That is Mr. Agricola Fusilier," answered Joseph in the same tone, his
+heart leaping inexplicably as he met her glance. With an angry flush
+she looked quickly around, scrutinized the old man in an instantaneous,
+thorough way, and then glanced back at the apothecary again, as if
+asking him to fulfil her request the quicker.
+
+He hesitated, in doubt as to her meaning.
+
+"Wrap it yonder," she almost whispered.
+
+He went, and in a moment returned, with the basil only partially hid in
+a paper covering.
+
+But the lady, muffled again in her manifold veil, had once more lost her
+eagerness for it; at least, instead of taking it, she moved aside,
+offering room for a masculine figure just entering. She did not look to
+see who it might be--plenty of time to do that by accident, by and by.
+There she made a mistake; for the new-comer, with a silent bow of
+thanks, declined the place made for him, moved across the shop, and
+occupied his eyes with the contents of the glass case, his back being
+turned to the lady and Frowenfeld. The apothecary recognized the Creole
+whom he had met under the live-oak.
+
+The lady put forth her hand suddenly to receive the package. As she took
+it and turned to depart, another small hand was laid upon it and it was
+returned to the counter. Something was said in a low-pitched undertone,
+and the two sisters--if Frowenfeld's guess was right--confronted each
+other. For a single instant only they stood so; an earnest and hurried
+murmur of French words passed between them, and they turned together,
+bowed with great suavity, and were gone.
+
+"The Cession is a mere temporary political manoeuvre!" growled M.
+Fusilier.
+
+Frowenfeld's merchant friend came from his place of waiting, and spoke
+twice before he attracted the attention of the bewildered apothecary.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I have been told that--"
+
+Joseph gazed after the two ladies crossing the street, and felt
+uncomfortable that the group of gossips did the same. So did the black
+attendant who glanced furtively back.
+
+"Good-day, Mr. Frowenfeld; I--"
+
+"Oh! how do you do, sir?" exclaimed the apothecary, with great
+pleasantness, of face. It seemed the most natural thing that they should
+resume their late conversation just where they had left off, and that
+would certainly be pleasant. But the man of more experience showed an
+unresponsive expression, that was as if he remembered no conversation
+of any note.
+
+"I have been told that you might be able to replace the glass in this
+thing out of your private stock."
+
+He presented a small, leather-covered case, evidently containing some
+optical instrument. "It will give me a pretext for going," he had said
+to himself, as he put it into his pocket in his counting-room. He was
+not going to let the apothecary know he had taken such a fancy to him.
+
+"I do not know," replied Frowenfeld, as he touched the spring of the
+case; "I will see what I have."
+
+He passed into the back room, more than willing to get out of sight
+till he might better collect himself.
+
+"I do not keep these things for sale," said he as he went.
+
+"Sir?" asked the Creole, as if he had not understood, and followed
+through the open door.
+
+"Is this what that lady was getting?" he asked, touching the remnant of
+the basil in the box.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the apothecary, with his face in the drawer of a table.
+
+"They had no carriage with them." The Creole spoke with his back turned,
+at the same time running his eyes along a shelf of books. Frowenfeld
+made only the sound of rejecting bits of crystal and taking up others.
+"I do not know who they are," ventured the merchant.
+
+Joseph still gave no answer, but a moment after approached, with the
+instrument in his extended hand.
+
+"You had it? I am glad," said the owner, receiving it, but keeping one
+hand still on the books.
+
+Frowenfeld put up his materials.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, are these your books? I mean do you use these books?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Creole stepped back to the door.
+
+"Agricola!"
+
+"_Quoi_!"
+
+"_Vien ici_."
+
+Citizen Fusilier entered, followed by a small volley of retorts from
+those with whom he had been disputing, and who rose as he did. The
+stranger said something very sprightly in French, running the back of
+one finger down the rank of books, and a lively dialogue followed.
+
+"You must be a great scholar," said the unknown by and by, addressing
+the apothecary.
+
+"He is a professor of chimistry," said the old man.
+
+"I am nothing, as yet, but a student," said Joseph, as the three
+returned into the shop; "certainly not a scholar, and still less a
+professor." He spoke with a new quietness of manner that made the
+younger Creole turn upon him a pleasant look.
+
+"H-my young friend," said the patriarch, turning toward Joseph with a
+tremendous frown, "when I, Agricola Fusilier, pronounce you a professor,
+you are a professor. Louisiana will not look to _you_ for your
+credentials; she will look to me!"
+
+He stumbled upon some slight impediment under foot. There were times
+when it took but little to make Agricola stumble.
+
+Looking to see what it was, Joseph picked up a silken purse. There was a
+name embroidered on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SUDDEN FLASHES OF LIGHT
+
+
+The day was nearly gone. The company that had been chatting at the front
+door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried until bedtime, had
+wandered off; however, by stepping toward the light the young merchant
+could decipher the letters on the purse. Citizen Fusilier drew out a
+pair of spectacles, looked over his junior's shoulder, read aloud,
+"_Aurore De G. Nanca_--," and uttered an imprecation.
+
+"Do not speak to me!" he thundered; "do not approach me! she did it
+maliciously!"
+
+"Sir!" began Frowenfeld.
+
+But the old man uttered another tremendous malediction and hurried into
+the street and away.
+
+"Let him pass," said the other Creole calmly.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+"He is getting old." The Creole extended the purse carelessly to the
+apothecary. "Has it anything inside?"
+
+"But a single pistareen."
+
+"That is why she wanted the _basilic_, eh?"
+
+"I do not understand you, sir."
+
+"Do you not know what she was going to do with it?"
+
+"With the basil? No sir."
+
+"May be she was going to make a little tisane, eh?" said the Creole,
+forcing down a smile.
+
+But a portion of the smile would come when Frowenfeld answered, with
+unnecessary resentment:
+
+"She was going to make some proper use of it, which need not concern
+me."
+
+"Without doubt."
+
+The Creole quietly walked a step or two forward and back and looked idly
+into the glass case. "Is this young man in love with her?" he asked
+himself. He turned around.
+
+"Do you know those ladies, Mr. Frowenfeld? Do you visit them at home?"
+
+He drew out his porte-monnaie.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I will pay you for the repair of this instrument; have you change
+for--"
+
+"I will see," said the apothecary.
+
+As he spoke he laid the purse on a stool, till he should light his shop,
+and then went to his till without again taking it.
+
+The Creole sauntered across to the counter and nipped the herb which
+still lay there.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know what some very excellent people do with this?
+They rub it on the sill of the door to make the money come into
+the house."
+
+Joseph stopped aghast with the drawer half drawn.
+
+"Not persons of intelligence and--"
+
+"All kinds. It is only some of the foolishness which they take from the
+slaves. Many of your best people consult the voudou horses."
+
+"Horses?"
+
+"Priestesses, you might call them," explained the Creole, "like Momselle
+Marcelline or 'Zabeth Philosophe."
+
+"Witches!" whispered Frowenfeld.
+
+"Oh no," said the other with a shrug; "that is too hard a name; say
+fortune-tellers. But Mr. Frowenfeld, I wish you to lend me your good
+offices. Just supposing the possi_bil_ity that that lady may be in need
+of money, you know, and will send back or come back for the purse, you
+know, knowing that she most likely lost it here, I ask you the favor
+that you will not let her know I have filled it with gold. In fact, if
+she mentions my name--"
+
+"To confess the truth, sir, I am not acquainted with your name."
+
+The Creole smiled a genuine surprise.
+
+"I thought you knew it." He laughed a little at himself. "We have
+nevertheless become very good friends--I believe? Well, in fact then,
+Mr. Frowenfeld, you might say you do not know who put the money in." He
+extended his open palm with the purse hanging across it. Joseph was
+about to object to this statement, but the Creole, putting on an
+expression of anxious desire, said: "I mean, not by name. It is somewhat
+important to me, Mr. Frowenfeld, that that lady should not know my
+present action. If you want to do those two ladies a favor, you may
+rest assured the way to do it is to say you do not know who put this
+gold." The Creole in his earnestness slipped in his idiom. "You will
+excuse me if I do not tell you my name; you can find it out at any time
+from Agricola. Ah! I am glad she did not see me! You must not tell
+anybody about this little event, eh?"
+
+"No, sir," said Joseph, as he finally accepted the purse. "I shall say
+nothing to any one else, and only what I cannot avoid saying to the lady
+and her sister."
+
+"_'Tis not her sister_" responded the Creole, "_'tis her daughter_."
+
+The italics signify, not how the words were said, but how they sounded
+to Joseph. As if a dark lantern were suddenly turned full upon it, he
+saw the significance of Citizen Fusilier's transport. The fair strangers
+were the widow and daughter of the man whom Agricola had killed in
+duel--the ladies with whom Doctor Keene had desired to make him
+acquainted.
+
+"Well, good evening, Mr. Frowenfeld." The Creole extended his hand (his
+people are great hand-shakers). "Ah--" and then, for the first time, he
+came to the true object of his visit. "The conversation we had some
+weeks ago, Mr. Frowenfeld, has started a train of thought in my
+mind"--he began to smile as if to convey the idea that Joseph would find
+the subject a trivial one--"which has almost brought me to the--"
+
+A light footfall accompanied with the soft sweep of robes cut short his
+words. There had been two or three entrances and exits during the time
+the Creole had tarried, but he had not allowed them to disturb him. Now,
+however, he had no sooner turned and fixed his glance upon this last
+comer, than without so much as the invariable Creole leave-taking of
+"Well, good evening, sir," he hurried out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE PHILOSOPHE
+
+
+The apothecary felt an inward nervous start as there advanced into the
+light of his hanging lamp and toward the spot where he had halted, just
+outside the counter, a woman of the quadroon caste, of superb stature
+and poise, severely handsome features, clear, tawny skin and large,
+passionate black eyes.
+
+"_Bon soi', Miche_." [Monsieur.] A rather hard, yet not repellent smile
+showed her faultless teeth.
+
+Frowenfeld bowed.
+
+"_Mo vien c'erc'er la bourse de Madame_."
+
+She spoke the best French at her command, but it was not understood.
+
+The apothecary could only shake his head.
+
+"_La bourse_" she repeated, softly smiling, but with a scintillation of
+the eyes in resentment of his scrutiny. "_La bourse_" she reiterated.
+
+"Purse?"
+
+"_Oui, Miche_."
+
+"You are sent for it?"
+
+"_Oui, Miche_."
+
+He drew it from his breast pocket and marked the sudden glisten of her
+eyes, reflecting the glisten of the gold in the silken mesh.
+
+"_Oui, c'est ca_," said she, putting her hand out eagerly.
+
+"I am afraid to give you this to-night," said Joseph.
+
+"_Oui_," ventured she, dubiously, the lightning playing deep back in her
+eyes.
+
+"You might be robbed," said Frowenfeld. "It is very dangerous for you to
+be out alone. It will not be long, now, until gun-fire." (Eight o'clock
+P.M.--the gun to warn slaves to be in-doors, under pain of arrest and
+imprisonment.)
+
+The object of this solicitude shook her head with a smile at its
+gratuitousness. The smile showed determination also.
+
+"_Mo pas compren_'," she said.
+
+"Tell the lady to send for it to-morrow."
+
+She smiled helplessly and somewhat vexedly, shrugged and again shook her
+head. As she did so she heard footsteps and voices in the door at
+her back.
+
+"_C'est ca_" she said again with a hurried attempt at extreme
+amiability; "Dat it; _oui_;" and lifting her hand with some rapidity
+made a sudden eager reach for the purse, but failed.
+
+"No!" said Frowenfeld, indignantly.
+
+"Hello!" said Charlie Keene amusedly, as he approached from the door.
+
+The woman turned, and in one or two rapid sentences in the Creole
+dialect offered her explanation.
+
+"Give her the purse, Joe; I will answer for its being all right."
+
+Frowenfeld handed it to her. She started to pass through the door in the
+rue Royale by which Doctor Keene had entered; but on seeing on its
+threshold Agricola frowning upon her, she turned quickly with evident
+trepidation, and hurried out into the darkness of the other street.
+
+Agricola entered. Doctor Keene looked about the shop.
+
+"I tell you, Agricole, you didn't have it with you; Frowenfeld, you
+haven't seen a big knotted walking-stick?"
+
+Frowenfeld was sure no walking-stick had been left there.
+
+"Oh, yes, Frowenfeld," said Doctor Keene, with a little laugh, as the
+three sat down, "I'd a'most as soon trust that woman as if she
+was white."
+
+The apothecary said nothing.
+
+"How free," said Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at the sky
+without, and ending with a philosopher's smile upon his two
+companions,--"how free we people are from prejudice against the negro!"
+
+"The white people," said Frowenfeld, half abstractedly, half
+inquiringly.
+
+"H-my young friend, when we say, 'we people,' we _always_ mean we white
+people. The non-mention of color always implies pure white; and whatever
+is not pure white is to all intents and purposes pure black. When I say
+the 'whole community,' I mean the whole white portion; when I speak of
+the 'undivided public sentiment,' I mean the sentiment of the white
+population. What else could I mean? Could you suppose, sir, the
+expression which you may have heard me use--'my downtrodden
+country'--includes blacks and mulattoes? What is that up yonder in the
+sky? The moon. The new moon, or the old moon, or the moon in her third
+quarter, but always the moon! Which part of it? Why, the shining
+part--the white part, always and only! Not that there is a prejudice
+against the negro. By no means. Wherever he can be of any service in a
+strictly menial capacity we kindly and generously tolerate his
+presence."
+
+Was the immigrant growing wise, or weak, that he remained silent?
+
+Agricola rose as he concluded and said he would go home. Doctor Keene
+gave him his hand lazily, without rising.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he said, with a smile and in an undertone, as Agricola's
+footsteps died away, "don't you know who that woman is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you."
+
+He told him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On that lonely plantation at the Cannes Brulees, where Aurore Nancanou's
+childhood had been passed without brothers or sisters, there had been
+given her, according to the well-known custom of plantation life, a
+little quadroon slave-maid as her constant and only playmate. This maid
+began early to show herself in many ways remarkable. While yet a child
+she grew tall, lithe, agile; her eyes were large and black, and rolled
+and sparkled if she but turned to answer to her name. Her pale yellow
+forehead, low and shapely, with the jet hair above it, the heavily
+pencilled eyebrows and long lashes below, the faint red tinge that
+blushed with a kind of cold passion through the clear yellow skin of the
+cheek, the fulness of the red, voluptuous lips and the roundness of her
+perfect neck, gave her, even at fourteen, a barbaric and magnetic
+beauty, that startled the beholder like an unexpected drawing out of a
+jewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only from high Latin
+ancestry on the one side and--we might venture--Jaloff African on the
+other. To these charms of person she added mental acuteness,
+conversational adroitness, concealed cunning, and noiseless but visible
+strength of will; and to these, that rarest of gifts in one of her
+tincture, the purity of true womanhood.
+
+At fourteen a necessity which had been parleyed with for two years or
+more became imperative, and Aurore's maid was taken from her.
+Explanation is almost superfluous. Aurore was to become a lady and her
+playmate a lady's maid; but not _her_ maid, because the maid had become,
+of the two, the ruling spirit. It was a question of grave debate in the
+mind of M. De Grapion what disposition to make of her.
+
+About this time the Grandissimes and De Grapions, through certain
+efforts of Honore's father (since dead) were making some feeble
+pretences of mutual good feeling, and one of those Kentuckian dealers in
+corn and tobacco whose flatboat fleets were always drifting down the
+Mississippi, becoming one day M. De Grapion's transient guest,
+accidentally mentioned a wish of Agricola Fusilier. Agricola, it
+appeared, had commissioned him to buy the most beautiful lady's maid
+that in his extended journeyings he might be able to find; he wanted to
+make her a gift to his niece, Honore's sister. The Kentuckian saw the
+demand met in Aurore's playmate. M. De Grapion would not sell her.
+(Trade with a Grandissime? Let them suspect he needed money?) No; but he
+would ask Agricola to accept the services of the waiting-maid for, say,
+ten years. The Kentuckian accepted the proposition on the spot and it
+was by and by carried out. She was never recalled to the Cannes Brulees,
+but in subsequent years received her freedom from her master, and in New
+Orleans became Palmyre la Philosophe, as they say in the corrupt French
+of the old Creoles, or Palmyre Philosophe, noted for her taste and skill
+as a hair-dresser, for the efficiency of her spells and the sagacity of
+her divinations, but most of all for the chaste austerity with which she
+practised the less baleful rites of the voudous.
+
+"That's the woman," said Doctor Keene, rising to go, as he concluded
+the narrative,--"that's she, Palmyre Philosophe. Now you get a view of
+the vastness of Agricole's generosity; he tolerates her even though she
+does not present herself in the 'strictly menial capacity.' Reason
+why--_he's afraid of her_."
+
+Time passed, if that may be called time which we have to measure with a
+clock. The apothecary of the rue Royale found better ways of
+measurement. As quietly as a spider he was spinning information into
+knowledge and knowledge into what is supposed to be wisdom; whether it
+was or not we shall see. His unidentified merchant friend who had
+adjured him to become acclimated as "they all did" had also exhorted him
+to study the human mass of which he had become a unit; but whether that
+study, if pursued, was sweetening and ripening, or whether it was
+corrupting him, that friend did not come to see; it was the busy time of
+year. Certainly so young a solitary, coming among a people whose
+conventionalities were so at variance with his own door-yard ethics, was
+in sad danger of being unduly--as we might say--Timonized. His
+acquaintances continued to be few in number.
+
+During this fermenting period he chronicled much wet and some cold
+weather. This may in part account for the uneventfulness of its passage;
+events do not happen rapidly among the Creoles in bad weather. However,
+trade was good.
+
+But the weather cleared; and when it was getting well on into the
+Creole spring and approaching the spring of the almanacs, something did
+occur that extended Frowenfeld's acquaintance without Doctor Keene's
+assistance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A CALL FROM THE RENT-SPECTRE
+
+
+It is nearly noon of a balmy morning late in February. Aurore Nancanou
+and her daughter have only this moment ceased sewing, in the small front
+room of No. 19 rue Bienville. Number 19 is the right-hand half of a
+single-story, low-roofed tenement, washed with yellow ochre, which it
+shares generously with whoever leans against it. It sits as fast on the
+ground as a toad. There is a kitchen belonging to it somewhere among the
+weeds in the back yard, and besides this room where the ladies are,
+there is, directly behind it, a sleeping apartment. Somewhere back of
+this there is a little nook where in pleasant weather they eat. Their
+cook and housemaid is the plain person who attends them on the street.
+Her bedchamber is the kitchen and her bed the floor. The house's only
+other protector is a hound, the aim of whose life is to get thrust out
+of the ladies' apartments every fifteen minutes.
+
+Yet if you hastily picture to yourself a forlorn-looking establishment,
+you will be moving straight away from the fact. Neatness, order,
+excellence, are prevalent qualities in all the details of the main
+house's inward garniture. The furniture is old-fashioned, rich, French,
+imported. The carpets, if not new, are not cheap, either. Bits of
+crystal and silver, visible here and there, are as bright as they are
+antiquated; and one or two portraits, and the picture of Our Lady of
+Many Sorrows, are passably good productions. The brass work, of which
+there is much, is brilliantly burnished, and the front room is bright
+and cheery.
+
+At the street door of this room somebody has just knocked. Aurore has
+risen from her seat. The other still sits on a low chair with her hands
+and sewing dropped into her lap, looking up steadfastly into her
+mother's face with a mingled expression of fondness and dismayed
+expectation. Aurore hesitates beside her chair, desirous of resuming her
+seat, even lifts her sewing from it; but tarries a moment, her alert
+suspense showing in her eyes. Her daughter still looks up into them. It
+is not strange that the dwellers round about dispute as to which is the
+fairer, nor that in the six months during which the two have occupied
+Number 19 the neighbors have reached no conclusion on this subject. If
+some young enthusiast compares the daughter--in her eighteenth year--to
+a bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediately
+retorts that the other--in her thirty-fifth--is the red, red,
+full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. If one says the maiden has the
+dew of youth,--"But!" cry two or three mothers in a breath, "that other
+one, child, will never grow old. With her it will always be morning.
+That woman is going to last forever; ha-a-a-a!--even longer!"
+
+There was one direction in which the widow evidently had the advantage;
+you could see from the street or the opposite windows that she was a
+wise householder. On the day they moved into Number 19 she had been seen
+to enter in advance of all her other movables, carrying into the empty
+house a new broom, a looking-glass, and a silver coin. Every morning
+since, a little watching would have discovered her at the hour of
+sunrise sprinkling water from her side casement, and her opposite
+neighbors often had occasion to notice that, sitting at her sewing by
+the front window, she never pricked her finger but she quickly ran it up
+behind her ear, and then went on with her work. Would anybody but Joseph
+Frowenfeld ever have lived in and moved away from the two-story brick
+next them on the right and not have known of the existence of such
+a marvel?
+
+"Ha!" they said, "she knows how to keep off bad luck, that Madame
+yonder. And the younger one seems not to like it. Girls think themselves
+so smart these days."
+
+Ah, there was the knock again, right there on the street-door, as loud
+as if it had been given with a joint of sugar-cane!
+
+The daughter's hand, which had just resumed the needle, stood still in
+mid-course with the white thread half-drawn. Aurore tiptoed slowly over
+the carpeted floor. There came a shuffling sound, and the corner of a
+folded white paper commenced appearing and disappearing under the door.
+She mounted a chair and peeped through that odd little _jalousie_ which
+formerly was in almost all New Orleans street-doors; but the missive had
+meantime found its way across the sill, and she saw only the
+unpicturesque back of a departing errand-boy. But that was well. She had
+a pride, to maintain which--and a poverty, to conceal which--she felt to
+be necessary to her self-respect; and this made her of necessity a
+trifle unsocial in her own castle. Do you suppose she was going to put
+on the face of having been born or married to this degraded condition
+of things?
+
+Who knows?--the knock might have been from 'Sieur Frowenfel'--ha, ha! He
+might be just silly enough to call so early; or it might have been from
+that _polisson_ of a Grandissime,--which one didn't matter, they were
+all detestable,--coming to collect the rent. That was her original fear;
+or, worse still, it might have been, had it been softer, the knock of
+some possible lady visitor. She had no intention of admitting any
+feminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up indigence. Besides, it
+was Monday. There is no sense in trifling with bad luck. The reception
+of Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save in
+rare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing the
+front walk or the banquette with Venetian red.
+
+Before the daughter could dart up and disengage herself from her work
+her mother had pounced upon the paper. She was standing and reading, her
+rich black lashes curtaining their downcast eyes, her infant waist and
+round, close-fitted, childish arms harmonizing prettily with her mock
+frown of infantile perplexity, and her long, limp robe heightening the
+grace of her posture, when the younger started from her seat with the
+air of determining not to be left at a disadvantage.
+
+But what is that on the dark eyelash? With a sudden additional energy
+the daughter dashes the sewing and chair to right and left, bounds up,
+and in a moment has Aurore weeping in her embrace and has snatched the
+note from her hand.
+
+"_Ah! maman! Ah! ma chere mere_!"
+
+The mother forced a laugh. She was not to be mothered by her daughter;
+so she made a dash at Clotilde's uplifted hand to recover the note,
+which was unavailing. Immediately there arose in colonial French the
+loveliest of contentions, the issue of which was that the pair sat down
+side by side, like two sisters over one love-letter, and undertook to
+decipher the paper. It read as follows:
+
+     "NEW ORLEANS, 20 Feb're, 1804.
+
+     "MADAME NANCANOU: I muss oblige to ass you for rent of that
+     house whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville street
+     whare I do not received thos rent from you not since tree
+     mons and I demand you this is mabe thirteen time. And I give
+     to you notice of 19 das writen in Anglish as the new law
+     requi. That witch the law make necessare only for 15 das, and
+     when you not pay me those rent in 19 das till the tense of
+     Marh I will rekes you to move out. That witch make me to be
+     verry sorry. I have the honor to remain, Madam,
+
+     "Your humble servant,
+     "H. Grandissime.
+     "_per_ Z.F."
+
+There was a short French postscript on the opposite page signed only by
+M. Zenon Francois, explaining that he, who had allowed them in the past
+to address him as their landlord and by his name, was but the landlord's
+agent; that the landlord was a far better-dressed man than he could
+afford to be; that the writing opposite was a notice for them to quit
+the premises they had rented (not leased), or pay up; that it gave the
+writer great pain to send it, although it was but the necessary legal
+form and he only an irresponsible drawer of an inadequate salary, with
+thirteen children to support; and that he implored them to tear off and
+burn up this postscript immediately they had read it.
+
+"Ah, the miserable!" was all the comment made upon it as the two ladies
+addressed their energies to the previous English. They had never
+suspected him of being M. Grandissime.
+
+Their eyes dragged slowly and ineffectually along the lines to the
+signature.
+
+"H. Grandissime! Loog ad 'im!" cried the widow, with a sudden short
+laugh, that brought the tears after it like a wind-gust in a rose-tree.
+She held the letter out before them as if she was lifting something
+alive by the back of the neck, and to intensify her scorn spoke in the
+hated tongue prescribed by the new courts. "Loog ad 'im! dad ridge
+gen'leman oo give so mudge money to de 'ozpill!"
+
+"Bud, _maman_," said the daughter, laying her hand appeasingly upon her
+mother's knee, "_ee_ do nod know 'ow we is poor."
+
+"Ah!" retorted Aurore, "_par example! Non?_ Ee thingue we is ridge, eh?
+Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She cast upon her daughter
+the look of burning scorn intended for Agricola Fusilier. "You wan' to
+tague the pard of dose Grandissime'?"
+
+The daughter returned a look of agony.
+
+"No," she said, "bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee nod
+boun' to ged 'is rend?"
+
+"Boun' to ged--ah! yez ee muz do 'is possible to ged 'is rend. Oh!
+certain_lee_. Ee is ridge, bud ee need a lill money, bad, bad. Fo'
+w'at?" The excited speaker rose to her feet under a sudden inspiration.
+"_Tenez, Mademoiselle!_" She began to make great show of unfastening
+her dress.
+
+"_Mais, comment?_" demanded the suffering daughter.
+
+"Yez!" continued Aurore, keeping up the demonstration, "you wand 'im to
+'ave 'is rend so bad! An' I godd honely my cloze; so you juz tague diz
+to you' fine gen'lemen, 'Sieur Honore Grandissime."
+
+"Ah-h-h-h!" cried the martyr.
+
+"An' you is righd," persisted the tormentor, still unfastening; but the
+daughter's tears gushed forth, and the repentant tease threw herself
+upon her knees, drew her child's head into her bosom and wept afresh.
+
+Half an hour was passed in council; at the end of which they stood
+beneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen fire-dog,
+and no conclusion reached.
+
+"Ah, my child!"--they had come to themselves now and were speaking in
+their peculiar French--"if we had here in these hands but the tenth part
+of what your papa often played away in one night without once getting
+angry! But we have not. Ah! but your father was a fine fellow; if he
+could have lived for you to know him! So accomplished! Ha, ha, ha! I can
+never avoid laughing, when I remember him teaching me to speak English;
+I used to enrage him so!"
+
+The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of discussion.
+There were nineteen days yet allowed them. God knows--by the expiration
+of that time they might be able to pay. With the two music scholars whom
+she then had and three more whom she had some hope to get, she made bold
+to say they could pay the rent.
+
+"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden brightness, "you
+don't need a mask and costume to resemble your great-grandmother, the
+casket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part, that with the one
+embroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and the three others who had
+declined to take lessons, they could easily pay the rent--and how kind
+it was of Monsieur, the aged father of that one embroidery scholar, to
+procure those invitations to the ball! The dear old man! He said he must
+see one more ball before he should die.
+
+Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that her
+daughter was content to admire her silently.
+
+"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you remember the
+evening you treated me so ill?"
+
+The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.
+
+"I did not treat you ill."
+
+"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my purse?"
+
+"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the andiron; her
+eyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse blame yourself. For
+the way you found it again--which was far worse--thank Palmyre. If you
+had not asked her to find it and shared the gold with her we could have
+returned with it to 'Sieur Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let him
+see us. I do not doubt he filled the purse."
+
+"He? He never knew it was empty. It was Nobody who filled it. Palmyre
+says that Papa Lebat--"
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superstitious mention.
+
+The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing the
+unendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the cloud
+hung over but a moment.
+
+"Clotilde," she said, a minute after, turning with a look of sun-bright
+resolve, "I am going to see him."
+
+"To see whom?" asked the other, looking back from the window, whither
+she had gone to recover from a reactionary trembling.
+
+"To whom, my child? Why--"
+
+"You do not expect mercy from Honore Grandissime? You would not ask it?"
+
+"No. There is no mercy in the Grandissime blood; but cannot I demand
+justice? Ha! it is justice that I shall demand!"
+
+"And you will really go and see him?"
+
+"You will see, Mademoiselle," replied Aurore, dropping a broom with
+which she had begun to sweep up some spilled buttons.
+
+"And I with you?"
+
+"No! To a counting-room? To the presence of the chief of that detestable
+race? No!"
+
+"But you don't know where his office is."
+
+"Anybody can tell me."
+
+Preparation began at once. By and by--
+
+"Clotilde."
+
+Clotilde was stooping behind her mother, with a ribbon between her lips,
+arranging a flounce.
+
+"M-m-m."
+
+"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it _is_
+dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go out of his
+sight and she never came back!"
+
+"Hold still!" said Clotilde.
+
+"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key, "haven't I got
+to put it instantly into my pocket if I want the money to come there?
+Well, then!"
+
+The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina to put on
+her shoes.
+
+"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina to be
+seized for the rent?"
+
+"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"
+
+"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you have none?
+Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I cannot pay the
+rent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything happens to me it is M.
+Grandissime who is responsible."
+
+Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the mirror.
+The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels half around and
+looks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and loose ribbons gave her a
+more girlish look than ever.
+
+"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and smites her
+daughter's cheek softly with her palm.
+
+"And you are not afraid to go alone?"
+
+"No; but remember! look at that dog!"
+
+The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the street
+door, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon her lips,
+pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes back,
+and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the buttons and take
+away the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of it, gathers the
+hound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out together--Aurore
+sallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her sewing and await the
+coming of a guitar scholar.
+
+"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from imagining
+that Aurore had set about a little private business which she proposed
+to herself to accomplish before she even started in the direction of M.
+Grandissime's counting-rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BEFORE SUNSET
+
+
+In old times, most of the sidewalks of New Orleans not in the heart of
+town were only a rough, rank turf, lined on the side next the ditch with
+the gunwales of broken-up flatboats--ugly, narrow, slippery objects. As
+Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to anglicize her name--as Aurora
+gained a corner where two of these gunwales met, she stopped and looked
+back to make sure that Clotilde was not watching her. That others had
+noticed her here and there she did not care; that was something beauty
+would have to endure, and it only made her smile to herself.
+
+"Everybody sees I am from the country--walking on the street without a
+waiting-maid."
+
+A boy passed, hushing his whistle, and gazing at the lone lady until his
+turning neck could twist no farther. She was so dewy fresh! After he had
+got across the street he turned to look again. Where could she have
+disappeared?
+
+The only object to be seen on the corner from which she had vanished was
+a small, yellow-washed house much like the one Aurora occupied, as it
+was like hundreds that then characterized and still characterize the
+town, only that now they are of brick instead of adobe. They showed in
+those days, even more than now, the wide contrast between their homely
+exteriors and the often elegant apartments within. However, in this
+house the front room was merely neat. The furniture was of rude, heavy
+pattern, Creole-made, and the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap
+pictures had not come. The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was
+spread and hung with a blue stuff showing through a web of white
+needlework. The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as
+were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass globes on the
+cold andirons. Curtains of blue and white hung at the single window. The
+floor, from habitual scrubbing with the common weed which politeness
+has to call _Helenium autumnale_, was stained a bright, clean yellow.
+On it were, here and there in places, white mats woven of bleached
+palmetto-leaf. Such were the room's appointments; there was but one
+thing more, a singular bit of fantastic carving,--a small table of dark
+mahogany supported on the upward-writhing images of three
+scaly serpents.
+
+Aurora sat down beside this table. A dwarf Congo woman, as black as
+soot, had ushered her in, and, having barred the door, had disappeared,
+and now the mistress of the house entered.
+
+February though it was, she was dressed--and looked comfortable--in
+white. That barbaric beauty which had begun to bud twenty years before
+was now in perfect bloom. The united grace and pride of her movement was
+inspiring but--what shall we say?--feline? It was a femininity without
+humanity,--something that made her, with all her superbness, a creature
+that one would want to find chained. It was the woman who had received
+the gold from Frowenfeld--Palmyre Philosophe.
+
+The moment her eyes fell upon Aurora her whole appearance changed. A
+girlish smile lighted up her face, and as Aurora rose up reflecting it
+back, they simultaneously clapped hands, laughed and advanced joyously
+toward each other, talking rapidly without regard to each other's words.
+
+"Sit down," said Palmyre, in the plantation French of their childhood,
+as they shook hands.
+
+They took chairs and drew up face to face as close as they could come,
+then sighed and smiled a moment, and then looked grave and were silent.
+For in the nature of things, and notwithstanding the amusing familiarity
+common between Creole ladies and the menial class, the unprotected
+little widow should have had a very serious errand to bring her to the
+voudou's house.
+
+"Palmyre," began the lady, in a sad tone.
+
+"Momselle Aurore."
+
+"I want you to help me." The former mistress not only cast her hands
+into her lap, lifted her eyes supplicatingly and dropped them again, but
+actually locked her fingers to keep them from trembling.
+
+"Momselle Aurore--" began Palmyre, solemnly.
+
+"Now, I know what you are going to say--but it is of no use to say it;
+do this much for me this one time and then I will let voudou alone as
+much as you wish--forever!"
+
+"You have not lost your purse _again?_"
+
+"Ah! foolishness, no."
+
+Both laughed a little, the philosophe feebly, and Aurora with an excited
+tremor.
+
+"Well?" demanded the quadroon, looking grave again.
+
+Aurora did not answer.
+
+"Do you wish me to work a spell for you?"
+
+The widow nodded, with her eyes cast down.
+
+Both sat quite still for some time; then the philosophe gently drew the
+landlord's letter from between Aurora's hands.
+
+"What is this?" She could not read in any language.
+
+"I must pay my rent within nineteen days."
+
+"Have you not paid it?"
+
+The delinquent shook her head.
+
+"Where is the gold that came into your purse? All gone?"
+
+"For rice and potatoes," said Aurora, and for the first time she uttered
+a genuine laugh, under that condition of mind which Latins usually
+substitute for fortitude. Palmyre laughed too, very properly.
+
+Another silence followed. The lady could not return the quadroon's
+searching gaze.
+
+"Momselle Aurore," suddenly said Palmyre, "you want me to work a spell
+for something else."
+
+Aurora started, looked up for an instant in a frightened way, and then
+dropped her eyes and let her head droop, murmuring:
+
+"No, I do not."
+
+Palmyre fixed a long look upon her former mistress. She saw that though
+Aurora might be distressed about the rent, there was something else,--a
+deeper feeling,--impelling her upon a course the very thought of which
+drove the color from her lips and made her tremble.
+
+"You are wearing red," said the philosophe.
+
+Aurora's hand went nervously to the red ribbon about her neck.
+
+"It is an accident; I had nothing else convenient."
+
+"Miche Agoussou loves red," persisted Palmyre. (Monsieur Agoussou is
+the demon upon whom the voudous call in matters of love.)
+
+The color that came into Aurora's cheek ought to have suited Monsieur
+precisely.
+
+"It is an accident," she feebly insisted.
+
+"Well," presently said Palmyre, with a pretence of abandoning her
+impression, "then you want me to work you a spell for money, do you?"
+
+Aurora nodded, while she still avoided the quadroon's glance.
+
+"I know better," thought the philosophe. "You shall have the sort you
+want."
+
+The widow stole an upward glance.
+
+"Oh!" said Palmyre, with the manner of one making a decided digression,
+"I have been wanting to ask you something. That evening at the
+pharmacy--was there a tall, handsome gentleman standing by the counter?"
+
+"He was standing on the other side."
+
+"Did you see his face?"
+
+"No; his back was turned."
+
+"Momselle Aurore," said Palmyre, dropping her elbows upon her knees and
+taking the lady's hand as if the better to secure the truth, "was that
+the gentleman you met at the ball?"
+
+"My faith!" said Aurora, stretching her eyebrows upward. "I did not
+think to look. Who was it?"
+
+But Palmyre Philosophe was not going to give more than she got, even to
+her old-time Momselle; she merely straightened back into her chair with
+an amiable face.
+
+"Who do you think he is?" persisted Aurora, after a pause, smiling
+downward and toying with her rings.
+
+The quadroon shrugged.
+
+They both sat in reverie for a moment--a long moment for such sprightly
+natures--and Palmyre's mien took on a professional gravity. She
+presently pushed the landlord's letter under the lady's hands as they
+lay clasped in her lap, and a moment after drew Aurora's glance with her
+large, strong eyes and asked:
+
+"What shall we do?"
+
+The lady immediately looked startled and alarmed and again dropped her
+eyes in silence. The quadroon had to speak again.
+
+"We will burn a candle."
+
+Aurora trembled.
+
+"No," she succeeded in saying.
+
+"Yes," said Palmyre, "you must get your rent money." But the charm which
+she was meditating had no reference to rent money. "She knows that,"
+thought the voudou.
+
+As she rose and called her Congo slave-woman, Aurora made as if to
+protest further; but utterance failed her. She clenched her hands and
+prayed to fate for Clotilde to come and lead her away as she had done at
+the apothecary's. And well she might.
+
+The articles brought in by the servant were simply a little pound-cake
+and cordial, a tumbler half-filled with the _sirop naturelle_ of the
+sugar-cane, and a small piece of candle of the kind made from the
+fragrant green wax of the candleberry myrtle. These were set upon the
+small table, the bit of candle standing, lighted, in the tumbler of
+sirup, the cake on a plate, the cordial in a wine-glass. This feeble
+child's play was all; except that as Palmyre closed out all daylight
+from the room and received the offering of silver that "paid the floor"
+and averted _guillons_ (interferences of outside imps), Aurora,--alas!
+alas!--went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon the candle's
+flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp of good fortune) to
+cast his snare in her behalf around the mind and heart of--she knew
+not whom.
+
+By and by her lips, which had moved at first, were still and she only
+watched the burning wax. When the flame rose clear and long it was a
+sign that Assonquer was enlisted in the coveted endeavor. When the wick
+sputtered, the devotee trembled in fear of failure. Its charred end
+curled down and twisted away from her and her heart sank; but the tall
+figure of Palmyre for a moment came between, the wick was snuffed, the
+flame tapered up again, and for a long time burned, a bright, tremulous
+cone. Again the wick turned down, but this time toward her,--a
+propitious omen,--and suddenly fell through the expended wax and went
+out in the sirup.
+
+The daylight, as Palmyre let it once more into the apartment, showed
+Aurora sadly agitated. In evidence of the innocence of her fluttering
+heart, guilt, at least for the moment, lay on it, an appalling burden.
+
+"That is all, Palmyre, is it not? I am sure that is all--it must be all.
+I cannot stay any longer. I wish I was with Clotilde; I have stayed
+too long."
+
+"Yes; all for the present," replied the quadroon. "Here, here is some
+charmed basil; hold it between your lips as you walk--"
+
+"But I am going to my landlord's office!"
+
+"Office? Nobody is at his office now; it is too late. You would find
+that your landlord had gone to dinner. I will tell you, though, where
+you _must_ go. First go home; eat your dinner; and this evening [the
+Creoles never say afternoon], about a half-hour before sunset, walk down
+Royale to the lower corner of the Place d'Armes, pass entirely around
+the square and return up Royale. Never look behind until you get into
+your house again."
+
+Aurora blushed with shame.
+
+"Alone?" she exclaimed, quite unnerved and tremulous.
+
+"You will seem to be alone; but I will follow behind you when you pass
+here. Nothing shall hurt you. If you do that, the charm will certainly
+work; if you do not--"
+
+The quadroon's intentions were good. She was determined to see who it
+was that could so infatuate her dear little Momselle; and, as on such an
+evening as the present afternoon promised to merge into all New Orleans
+promenaded on the Place d'Armes and the levee, her charm was a very
+practical one.
+
+"And that will bring the money, will it?" asked Aurora.
+
+"It will bring anything you want."
+
+"Possible?"
+
+"These things that _you_ want, Momselle Aurore, are easy to bring. You
+have no charms working against you. But, oh, I wish to God I could work
+the _curse_ I want to work!" The woman's eyes blazed, her bosom heaved,
+she lifted her clenched hand above her head and looked upward, crying:
+"I would give this right hand off at the wrist to catch Agricola
+Fusilier where I could work him a curse! But I shall; I shall some day
+be revenged!" She pitched her voice still higher. "I cannot die till I
+have been! There is nothing that could kill me, I want my revenge so
+bad!" As suddenly as she had broken out, she hushed, unbarred the door,
+and with a stern farewell smile saw Aurora turn homeward.
+
+"Give me something to eat, _cherie_," cried the exhausted lady, dropping
+into Clotilde's chair and trying to die.
+
+"Ah! _maman_, what makes you look so sick?"
+
+Aurora waved her hand contemptuously and gasped.
+
+"Did you see him? What kept you so long--so long?"
+
+"Ask me nothing; I am so enraged with disappointment. He was gone to
+dinner!"
+
+"Ah! my poor mother!"
+
+"And I must go back as soon as I can take a little _sieste_. I am
+determined to see him this very day."
+
+"Ah! my poor mother!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ROLLED IN THE DUST
+
+
+"No, Frowenfeld," said little Doctor Keene, speaking for the
+after-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get the
+air on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you like
+and come home in any condition you think best." And Joseph, tormented
+into this course, put on his hat and went out.
+
+"Hard to move as a cow in the moonlight," continued Doctor Keene, "and
+knows just about as much of the world. He wasn't aware, until I told him
+to-day, that there are two Honore Grandissimes." [Laughter.]
+
+"Why did you tell him?"
+
+"I didn't give him anything but the bare fact. I want to see how long it
+will take him to find out the rest."
+
+The Place d'Armes offered amusement to every one else rather than to the
+immigrant. The family relation, the most noticeable feature of its'
+well-pleased groups, was to him too painful a reminder of his late
+losses, and, after an honest endeavor to flutter out of the inner
+twilight of himself into the outer glare of a moving world, he had given
+up the effort and had passed beyond the square and seated himself upon a
+rude bench which encircled the trunk of a willow on the levee.
+
+The negress, who, resting near by with a tray of cakes before her, has
+been for some time contemplating the three-quarter face of her
+unconscious neighbor, drops her head at last with a small, Ethiopian,
+feminine laugh. It is a self-confession that, pleasant as the study of
+his countenance is, to resolve that study into knowledge is beyond her
+powers; and very pardonably so it is, she being but a _marchande des
+gateaux_ (an itinerant cake-vender), and he, she concludes, a man of
+parts. There is a purpose, too, as well as an admission, in the laugh.
+She would like to engage him in conversation. But he does not notice.
+Little supposing he is the object of even a cake-merchant's attention,
+he is lost in idle meditation.
+
+One would guess his age to be as much as twenty-six. His face is
+beardless, of course, like almost everybody's around him, and of a
+German kind of seriousness. A certain diffidence in his look may tend to
+render him unattractive to careless eyes, the more so since he has a
+slight appearance of self-neglect. On a second glance, his refinement
+shows out more distinctly, and one also sees that he is not shabby. The
+little that seems lacking is woman's care, the brush of attentive
+fingers here and there, the turning of a fold in the high-collared coat,
+and a mere touch on the neckerchief and shirt-frill. He has a decidedly
+good forehead. His blue eyes, while they are both strong and modest, are
+noticeable, too, as betraying fatigue, and the shade of gravity in them
+is deepened by a certain worn look of excess--in books; a most unusual
+look in New Orleans in those days, and pointedly out of keeping with the
+scene which was absorbing his attention.
+
+You might mistake the time for mid-May. Before the view lies the Place
+d'Armes in its green-breasted uniform of new spring grass crossed
+diagonally with white shell walks for facings, and dotted with the
+_elite_ of the city for decorations. Over the line of shade-trees which
+marks its farther boundary, the white-topped twin turrets of St. Louis
+Cathedral look across it and beyond the bared site of the removed
+battery (built by the busy Carondelet to protect Louisiana from herself
+and Kentucky, and razed by his immediate successors) and out upon the
+Mississippi, the color of whose surface is beginning to change with the
+changing sky of this beautiful and now departing day. A breeze, which is
+almost early June, and which has been hovering over the bosom of the
+great river and above the turf-covered levee, ceases, as if it sank
+exhausted under its burden of spring odors, and in the profound calm the
+cathedral bell strikes the sunset hour. From its neighboring garden, the
+convent of the Ursulines responds in a tone of devoutness, while from
+the parapet of the less pious little Fort St. Charles, the evening gun
+sends a solemn ejaculation rumbling down the "coast;" a drum rolls, the
+air rises again from the water like a flock of birds, and many in the
+square and on the levee's crown turn and accept its gentle blowing.
+Rising over the levee willows, and sinking into the streets,--which are
+lower than the water,--it flutters among the balconies and in and out of
+dim Spanish arcades, and finally drifts away toward that part of the sky
+where the sun is sinking behind the low, unbroken line of forest. There
+is such seduction in the evening air, such sweetness of flowers on its
+every motion, such lack of cold, or heat, or dust, or wet, that the
+people have no heart to stay in-doors; nor is there any reason why they
+should. The levee road is dotted with horsemen, and the willow avenue on
+the levee's crown, the whole short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate on
+the right and Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright with
+promenaders, although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight;
+for, so far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of which
+we have already spoken,--the nineteenth of Louisiana's delicious
+February.
+
+Among the throng were many whose names were going to be written large in
+history. There was Casa Calvo,--Sebastian de Casa Calvo de la Puerta y
+O'Farril, Marquis of Casa Calvo,--a man then at the fine age of
+fifty-three, elegant, fascinating, perfect in Spanish courtesy and
+Spanish diplomacy, rolling by in a showy equipage surrounded by a
+clanking body-guard of the Catholic king's cavalry. There was young
+Daniel Clark, already beginning to amass those riches which an age of
+litigation has not to this day consumed; it was he whom the French
+colonial prefect, Laussat, in a late letter to France, had extolled as a
+man whose "talents for intrigue were carried to a rare degree of
+excellence." There was Laussat himself, in the flower of his years, sour
+with pride, conscious of great official insignificance and full of petty
+spites--he yet tarried in a land where his beautiful wife was the "model
+of taste." There was that convivial old fox, Wilkinson, who had plotted
+for years with Miro and did not sell himself and his country to Spain
+because--as we now say--"he found he could do better;" who modestly
+confessed himself in a traitor's letter to the Spanish king as a man
+"whose head may err, but whose heart cannot deceive!" and who brought
+Governor Gayoso to an early death-bed by simply out-drinking him. There
+also was Edward Livingston, attorney-at-law, inseparably joined to the
+mention of the famous Batture cases--though that was later. There also
+was that terror of colonial peculators, the old ex-Intendant Morales,
+who, having quarrelled with every governor of Louisiana he ever saw, was
+now snarling at Casa Calvo from force of habit.
+
+And the Creoles--the Knickerbockers of Louisiana--but time would fail
+us. The Villeres and Destrehans--patriots and patriots' sons; the De La
+Chaise family in mourning for young Auguste La Chaise of
+Kentuckian-Louisianian-San Domingan history; the Livaudaises, _pere et
+fils_, of Haunted House fame, descendants of the first pilot of the
+Belize; the pirate brothers Lafitte, moving among the best; Marigny de
+Mandeville, afterwards the marquis member of Congress; the Davezacs, the
+Mossys, the Boulignys, the Labatuts, the Bringiers, the De Trudeaus, the
+De Macartys, the De la Houssayes, the De Lavilleboeuvres, the Grandpres,
+the Forstalls; and the proselyted Creoles: Etienne de Bore (he was the
+father of all such as handle the sugar-kettle); old man Pitot, who
+became mayor; Madame Pontalba and her unsuccessful suitor, John
+McDonough; the three Girods, the two Graviers, or the lone Julian
+Poydras, godfather of orphan girls. Besides these, and among them as
+shining fractions of the community, the numerous representatives of the
+not only noble, but noticeable and ubiquitous, family of Grandissime:
+Grandissimes simple and Grandissimes compound; Brahmins, Mandarins and
+Fusiliers. One, 'Polyte by name, a light, gay fellow, with classic
+features, hair turning gray, is standing and conversing with this group
+here by the mock-cannon inclosure of the grounds. Another, his cousin,
+Charlie Mandarin, a tall, very slender, bronzed gentleman in a flannel
+hunting-shirt and buckskin leggings, is walking, in moccasins, with a
+sweet lady in whose tasteful attire feminine scrutiny, but such only,
+might detect economy, but whose marked beauty of yesterday is retreating
+and reappearing in the flock of children who are noisily running round
+and round them, nominally in the care of three fat and venerable black
+nurses. Another, yonder, Theophile Grandissime, is whipping his
+stockings with his cane, a lithe youngster in the height of the fashion
+(be it understood the fashion in New Orleans was five years or so behind
+Paris), with a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and giddy laugh, and a
+confession of experiences which these pages, fortunately for their moral
+tone, need not recount. All these were there and many others.
+
+This throng, shifting like the fragments of colored glass in the
+kaleidoscope, had its far-away interest to the contemplative Joseph. To
+them he was of little interest, or none. Of the many passers, scarcely
+an occasional one greeted him, and such only with an extremely polite
+and silent dignity which seemed to him like saying something of this
+sort: "Most noble alien, give you good-day--stay where you are.
+Profoundly yours--"
+
+Two men came through the Place d'Armes on conspicuously fine horses. One
+it is not necessary to describe. The other, a man of perhaps
+thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, was extremely handsome and
+well dressed, the martial fashion of the day showing his tall and finely
+knit figure to much advantage. He sat his horse with an uncommon grace,
+and, as he rode beside his companion, spoke and gave ear by turns with
+an easy dignity sufficient of itself to have attracted popular
+observation. It was the apothecary's unknown friend. Frowenfeld noticed
+them while they were yet in the middle of the grounds. He could hardly
+have failed to do so, for some one close beside his bench in undoubted
+allusion to one of the approaching figures exclaimed:
+
+"Here comes Honore Grandissime."
+
+Moreover, at that moment there was a slight unwonted stir on the Place
+d'Armes. It began at the farther corner of the square, hard by the
+Principal, and spread so quickly through the groups near about, that in
+a minute the entire company were quietly made aware of something going
+notably wrong in their immediate presence. There was no running to see
+it. There seemed to be not so much as any verbal communication of the
+matter from mouth to mouth. Rather a consciousness appeared to catch
+noiselessly from one to another as the knowledge of human intrusion
+comes to groups of deer in a park. There was the same elevating of the
+head here and there, the same rounding of beautiful eyes. Some stared,
+others slowly approached, while others turned and moved away; but a
+common indignation was in the breast of that thing dreadful everywhere,
+but terrible in Louisiana, the Majority. For there, in the presence of
+those good citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothers
+and daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creole
+whom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honore Grandissime, the
+uttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree ever
+transplanted from France to Louisiana, Honore,--the worshiped, the
+magnificent,--in the broad light of the sun's going down, rode side by
+side with the Yankee governor and was not ashamed!
+
+Joseph, on his bench, sat contemplating the two parties to this scandal
+as they came toward him. Their horses' flanks were damp from some
+pleasant gallop, but their present gait was the soft, mettlesome
+movement of animals who will even submit to walk if their masters
+insist. As they wheeled out of the broad diagonal path that crossed the
+square, and turned toward him in the highway, he fancied that the Creole
+observed him. He was not mistaken. As they seemed about to pass the spot
+where he sat, M. Grandissime interrupted the governor with a word and,
+turning his horse's head, rode up to the bench, lifting his hat as
+he came.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+Joseph, looking brighter than when he sat unaccosted, rose and blushed.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you know my uncle very well, I believe--Agricole
+Fusilier--long beard?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."
+
+"Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I shall be much obliged if you will tell
+him--that is, should you meet him this evening--that I wish to see him.
+If you will be so kind?"
+
+"Oh! yes, sir, certainly."
+
+Frowenfeld's diffidence made itself evident in this reiterated phrase.
+
+"I do not know that you will see him, but if you should, you know--"
+
+"Oh, certainly, sir!"
+
+The two paused a single instant, exchanging a smile of amiable reminder
+from the horseman and of bashful but pleased acknowledgment from the one
+who saw his precepts being reduced to practice.
+
+"Well, good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+M. Grandissime lifted his hat and turned. Frowenfeld sat down.
+
+"_Bou zou, Miche Honore!_" called the _marchande_.
+
+"_Comment to ye, Clemence?_"
+
+The merchant waved his hand as he rode away with his companion.
+
+"_Beau Miche, la_," said the _marchande_, catching Joseph's eye.
+
+He smiled his ignorance and shook his head.
+
+"Dass one fine gen'leman," she repeated. "_Mo pa'le Angle_," she added
+with a chuckle.
+
+"You know him?"
+
+"Oh! yass, sah; Mawse Honore knows me, yass. All de gen'lemens knows me.
+I sell de _calas;_ mawnin's sell _calas_, evenin's sell zinzer-cake.
+_You_ know me" (a fact which Joseph had all along been aware of). "Dat
+me w'at pass in rue Royale ev'y mawnin' holl'in' '_Be calas touts
+chauds_,' an' singin'; don't you know?"
+
+The enthusiasm of an artist overcame any timidity she might have been
+supposed to possess, and, waiving the formality of an invitation, she
+began, to Frowenfeld's consternation, to sing, in a loud, nasal voice.
+
+But the performance, long familiar, attracted no public attention, and
+he for whose special delight it was intended had taken an attitude of
+disclaimer and was again contemplating the quiet groups of the Place
+d'Armes and the pleasant hurry of the levee road.
+
+"Don't you know?" persisted the woman. "Yass, sah, dass me; I's
+Clemence."
+
+But Frowenfeld was looking another way.
+
+"You know my boy," suddenly said she.
+
+Frowenfeld looked at her.
+
+"Yass, sah. Dat boy w'at bring you de box of _basilic_ lass Chrismus;
+dass my boy."
+
+She straightened her cakes on the tray and made some changes in their
+arrangement that possibly were important.
+
+"I learned to speak English in Fijinny. Bawn dah."
+
+She looked steadily into the apothecary's absorbed countenance for a
+full minute, then let her eyes wander down the highway. The human tide
+was turning cityward. Presently she spoke again.
+
+"Folks comin' home a'ready, yass."
+
+Her hearer looked down the road.
+
+Suddenly a voice that, once heard, was always known,--deep and pompous,
+as if a lion roared,--sounded so close behind him as to startle him half
+from his seat.
+
+"Is this a corporeal man, or must I doubt my eyes? Hah! Professor
+Frowenfeld!" it said.
+
+"Mr. Fusilier!" exclaimed Frowenfeld in a subdued voice, while he
+blushed again and looked at the new-comer with that sort of awe which
+children experience in a menagerie.
+
+"_Citizen_ Fusilier," said the lion.
+
+Agricola indulged to excess the grim hypocrisy of brandishing the
+catchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a breath that
+was strong with the praise of the "superior liberties of Europe,"--those
+old, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of which America was settled.
+
+Frowenfeld smiled amusedly and apologetically at the same moment.
+
+"I am glad to meet you. I--"
+
+He was going on to give Honore Grandissime's message, but was
+interrupted.
+
+"My young friend," rumbled the old man in his deepest key, smiling
+emotionally and holding and solemning continuing to shake Joseph's hand,
+"I am sure you are. You ought to thank God that you have my
+acquaintance."
+
+Frowenfeld colored to the temples.
+
+"I must acknowledge--" he began.
+
+"Ah!" growled the lion, "your beautiful modesty leads you to misconstrue
+me, sir. You pay my judgment no compliment. I know your worth, sir; I
+merely meant, sir, that in me--poor, humble me--you have secured a
+sympathizer in your tastes and plans. Agricola Fusilier, sir, is not a
+cock on a dunghill, to find a jewel and then scratch it aside."
+
+The smile of diffidence, but not the flush, passed from the young man's
+face, and he sat down forcibly.
+
+"You jest," he said.
+
+The reply was a majestic growl.
+
+"I _never_ jest!" The speaker half sat down, then straightened up again.
+"Ah, the Marquis of Caso Calvo!--I must bow to him, though an honest
+man's bow is more than he deserves."
+
+"More than he deserves?" was Frowenfeld's query.
+
+"More than he deserves!" was the response.
+
+"What has he done? I have never heard--"
+
+The denunciator turned upon Frowenfeld his most royal frown, and
+retorted with a question which still grows wild in Louisiana:
+
+"What"--he seemed to shake his mane--"what has he _not_ done, sir?" and
+then he withdrew his frown slowly, as if to add, "You'll be careful next
+time how you cast doubt upon a public official's guilt."
+
+The marquis's cavalcade came briskly jingling by. Frowenfeld saw within
+the carriage two men, one in citizen's dress, the other in a brilliant
+uniform. The latter leaned forward, and, with a cordiality which struck
+the young spectator as delightful, bowed. The immigrant glanced at
+Citizen Fusilier, expecting to see the greeting returned with great
+haughtiness; instead of which that person uncovered his leonine head,
+and, with a solemn sweep of his cocked hat, bowed half his length. Nay,
+he more than bowed, he bowed down--so that the action hurt Frowenfeld
+from head to foot.
+
+"What large gentlemen was that sitting on the other side?" asked the
+young man, as his companion sat down with the air of having finished
+an oration.
+
+"No gentleman at all!" thundered the citizen. "That fellow" (beetling
+frown), "that _fellow_ is Edward Livingston."
+
+"The great lawyer?"
+
+"The great villain!"
+
+Frowenfeld himself frowned.
+
+The old man laid a hand upon his junior's shoulder and growled
+benignantly:
+
+"My young friend, your displeasure delights me!"
+
+The patience with which Frowenfeld was bearing all this forced a chuckle
+and shake of the head from the _marchande_.
+
+Citizen Fusilier went on speaking in a manner that might be construed
+either as address or soliloquy, gesticulating much and occasionally
+letting out a fervent word that made passers look around and Joseph
+inwardly wince. With eyes closed and hands folded on the top of the
+knotted staff which he carried but never used, he delivered an
+apostrophe to the "spotless soul of youth," enticed by the "spirit of
+adventure" to "launch away upon the unploughed sea of the future!" He
+lifted one hand and smote the back of the other solemnly, once, twice,
+and again, nodding his head faintly several times without opening his
+eyes, as who should say, "Very impressive; go on," and so resumed; spoke
+of this spotless soul of youth searching under unknown latitudes for the
+"sunken treasures of experience"; indulged, as the reporters of our day
+would say, in "many beautiful nights of rhetoric," and finally depicted
+the loathing with which the spotless soul of youth "recoils!"--suiting
+the action to the word so emphatically as to make a pretty little boy
+who stood gaping at him start back--"on encountering in the holy
+chambers of public office the vultures hatched in the nests of ambition
+and avarice!"
+
+Three or four persons lingered carelessly near by with ears wide open.
+Frowenfeld felt that he must bring this to an end, and, like any young
+person who has learned neither deceit nor disrespect to seniors, he
+attempted to reason it down.
+
+"You do not think many of our public men are dishonest!"
+
+"Sir!" replied the rhetorician, with a patronizing smile, "h-you must be
+thinking of France!"
+
+"No, sir; of Louisiana."
+
+"Louisiana! Dishonest? All, sir, all. They are all as corrupt as
+Olympus, sir!"
+
+"Well," said Frowenfeld, with more feeling than was called for, "there
+is one who, I feel sure, is pure. I know it by his face!"
+
+The old man gave a look of stern interrogation.
+
+"Governor Claiborne."
+
+"Ye-e-e g-hods! Claiborne! _Claiborne!_ Why, he is a Yankee!"
+
+The lion glowered over the lamb like a thundercloud.
+
+"He is a Virginian," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"He is an American, and no American can be honest."
+
+"You are prejudiced," exclaimed the young man.
+
+Citizen Fusilier made himself larger.
+
+"What is prejudice? I do not know."
+
+"I am an American myself," said Frowenfeld, rising up with his face
+burning.
+
+The citizen rose up also, but unruffled.
+
+"My beloved young friend," laying his hand heavily upon the other's
+shoulder, "you are not. You were merely born in America."
+
+But Frowenfeld was not appeased.
+
+"Hear me through," persisted the flatterer. "You were merely born in
+America. I, too, was born in America--but will any man responsible for
+his opinion mistake me--Agricola Fusilier--for an American?"
+
+He clutched his cane in the middle and glared around, but no person
+seemed to be making the mistake to which he so scornfully alluded, and
+he was about to speak again when an outcry of alarm coming
+simultaneously from Joseph and the _marchande_ directed his attention to
+a lady in danger.
+
+The scene, as afterward recalled to the mind of the un-American citizen,
+included the figures of his nephew and the new governor returning up
+the road at a canter; but, at the time, he knew only that a lady of
+unmistakable gentility, her back toward him, had just gathered her robes
+and started to cross the road, when there was a general cry of warning,
+and the _marchande_ cried, "_Garde choual!_" while the lady leaped
+directly into the danger and his nephew's horse knocked her to
+the earth!
+
+Though there was a rush to the rescue from every direction, she was on
+her feet before any one could reach her, her lips compressed, nostrils
+dilated, cheek burning, and eyes flashing a lady's wrath upon a
+dismounted horseman. It was the governor. As the crowd had rushed in,
+the startled horses, from whom the two riders had instantly leaped, drew
+violently back, jerking their masters with them and leaving only the
+governor in range of the lady's angry eye.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" he cried, striving to reach her.
+
+She pointed him in gasping indignation to his empty saddle, and, as the
+crowd farther separated them, waved away all permission to apologize and
+turned her back.
+
+"Hah!" cried the crowd, echoing her humor.
+
+"Lady," interposed the governor, "do not drive us to the rudeness of
+leaving--"
+
+"_Animal, vous!_" cried half a dozen, and the lady gave him such a look
+of scorn that he did not finish his sentence.
+
+"Open the way, there," called a voice in French.
+
+It was Honore Grandissime. But just then he saw that the lady had found
+the best of protectors, and the two horsemen, having no choice,
+remounted and rode away. As they did so, M. Grandissime called something
+hurriedly to Frowenfeld, on whose arm the lady hung, concerning the care
+of her; but his words were lost in the short yell of derision sent after
+himself and his companion by the crowd.
+
+Old Agricola, meanwhile, was having a trouble of his own. He had
+followed Joseph's wake as he pushed through the throng; but as the lady
+turned her face he wheeled abruptly away. This brought again into view
+the bench he had just left, whereupon he, in turn, cried out, and,
+dashing through all obstructions, rushed back to it, lifting his ugly
+staff as he went and flourishing it in the face of Palmyre Philosophe.
+
+She stood beside the seat with the smile of one foiled and intensely
+conscious of peril, but neither frightened nor suppliant, holding back
+with her eyes the execution of Agricola's threat against her life.
+
+Presently she drew a short step backward, then another, then a third,
+and then turned and moved away down the avenue of willows, followed for
+a few steps by the lion and by the laughing comment of the _marchande_,
+who stood looking after them with her tray balanced on her head.
+
+"_Ya, ya! ye connais voudou bien!_[1]"
+
+[Footnote 1: "They're up in the voudou arts."]
+
+The old man turned to rejoin his companion. The day was rapidly giving
+place to night and the people were withdrawing to their homes. He
+crossed the levee, passed through the Place d'Armes and on into the
+city without meeting the object of his search. For Joseph and the lady
+had hurried off together.
+
+As the populace floated away in knots of three, four and five, those who
+had witnessed mademoiselle's (?) mishap told it to those who had not;
+explaining that it was the accursed Yankee governor who had designedly
+driven his horse at his utmost speed against the fair victim (some of
+them butted against their hearers by way of illustration); that the
+fiend had then maliciously laughed; that this was all the Yankees came
+to New Orleans for, and that there was an understanding among
+them--"Understanding, indeed!" exclaimed one, "They have instructions
+from the President!"--that unprotected ladies should be run down
+wherever overtaken. If you didn't believe it you could ask the tyrant,
+Claiborne, himself; he made no secret of it. One or two--but they were
+considered by others extravagant--testified that, as the lady fell, they
+had seen his face distorted with a horrid delight, and had heard him
+cry: "Daz de way to knog them!"
+
+"But how came a lady to be out on the levee, at sunset, on foot and
+alone?" asked a citizen, and another replied--both using the French of
+the late province:
+
+"As for being on foot"--a shrug. "But she was not alone; she had a
+_milatraisse_ behind her."
+
+"Ah! so; that was well."
+
+"But--ha, ha!--the _milatraisse_, seeing her mistress out of danger,
+takes the opportunity to try to bring the curse upon Agricola Fusilier
+by sitting down where he had just risen up, and had to get away from him
+as quickly as possible to save her own skull."
+
+"And left the lady?"
+
+"Yes; and who took her to her home at last, but Frowenfeld, the
+apothecary!"
+
+"Ho, ho! the astrologer! We ought to hang that fellow."
+
+"With his books tied to his feet," suggested a third citizen. "It is no
+more than we owe to the community to go and smash his show-window. He
+had better behave himself. Come, gentlemen, a little _taffia_ will do us
+good. When shall we ever get through these exciting times?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+STARLIGHT IN THE RUE CHARTRES
+
+
+"Oh! M'sieur Frowenfel', tague me ad home!"
+
+It was Aurora, who caught the apothecary's arm vehemently in both her
+hands with a look of beautiful terror. And whatever Joseph's astronomy
+might have previously taught him to the contrary, he knew by his senses
+that the earth thereupon turned entirely over three times in
+two seconds.
+
+His confused response, though unintelligible, answered all purposes, as
+the lady found herself the next moment hurrying across the Place d'Armes
+close to his side, and as they by-and-by passed its farther limits she
+began to be conscious that she was clinging to her protector as though
+she would climb up and hide under his elbow. As they turned up the rue
+Chartres she broke the silence.
+
+"Oh!-h!"--breathlessly,--"'h!--M'sieur Frowenf'--you walkin' so faz!"
+
+"Oh!" echoed Frowenfeld, "I did not know what I was doing."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the lady, "me, too, juz de sem lag you!
+_attendez_; wait."
+
+They halted; a moment's deft manipulation of a veil turned it into a
+wrapping for her neck.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', oo dad man was? You know 'im?"
+
+She returned her hand to Frowenfeld's arm and they moved on.
+
+"The one who spoke to you, or--you know the one who got near enough to
+apologize is not the one whose horse struck you!"
+
+"I din know. But oo dad odder one? I saw h-only 'is back, bud I thing it
+is de sem--"
+
+She identified it with the back that was turned to her during her last
+visit to Frowenfeld's shop; but finding herself about to mention a
+matter so nearly connected with the purse of gold, she checked herself;
+but Frowenfeld, eager to say a good word for his acquaintance, ventured
+to extol his character while he concealed his name.
+
+"While I have never been introduced to him, I have some acquaintance
+with him, and esteem him a noble gentleman."
+
+"W'ere you meet him?"
+
+"I met him first," he said, "at the graves of my parents and sisters."
+
+There was a kind of hush after the mention, and the lady made no reply.
+
+"It was some weeks after my loss," resumed Frowenfeld.
+
+"In wad _cimetiere_ dad was?"
+
+"In no cemetery--being Protestants, you know--"
+
+"Ah, yes, sir?" with a gentle sigh.
+
+"The physician who attended me procured permission to bury them on some
+private land below the city."
+
+"Not in de groun'[2]?"
+
+[Footnote 2: Only Jews and paupers are buried in the ground in New
+Orleans.]
+
+"Yes; that was my father's expressed wish when he died."
+
+"You 'ad de fivver? Oo nurse you w'en you was sick?"
+
+"An old hired negress."
+
+"Dad was all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" she said piteously, and laughed in her sleeve.
+
+Who could hope to catch and reproduce the continuous lively thrill which
+traversed the frame of the escaped book-worm as every moment there was
+repeated to his consciousness the knowledge that he was walking across
+the vault of heaven with the evening star on his arm--at least, that he
+was, at her instigation, killing time along the dim, ill-lighted
+_trottoirs_ of the rue Chartres, with Aurora listening sympathetically
+at his side. But let it go; also the sweet broken English with which she
+now and then interrupted him; also the inward, hidden sparkle of her
+dancing Gallic blood; her low, merry laugh; the roguish mental
+reservation that lurked behind her graver speeches; the droll bravados
+she uttered against the powers that be, as with timid fingers he brushed
+from her shoulder a little remaining dust of the late encounter--these
+things, we say, we let go,--as we let butterflies go rather than pin
+them to paper.
+
+They had turned into the rue Bienville, and were walking toward the
+river, Frowenfeld in the midst of a long sentence, when a low cry of
+tearful delight sounded in front of them, some one in long robes glided
+forward, and he found his arm relieved of its burden and that burden
+transferred to the bosom and passionate embrace of another--we had
+almost said a fairer--Creole, amid a bewildering interchange of kisses
+and a pelting shower of Creole French.
+
+A moment after, Frowenfeld found himself introduced to "my dotter,
+Clotilde," who all at once ceased her demonstrations of affection and
+bowed to him with a majestic sweetness, that seemed one instant grateful
+and the next, distant.
+
+"I can hardly understand that you are not sisters," said Frowenfeld, a
+little awkwardly.
+
+"Ah! _ecoutez!_" exclaimed the younger.
+
+"Ah! _par exemple!_" cried the elder, and they laughed down each other's
+throats, while the immigrant blushed.
+
+This encounter was presently followed by a silent surprise when they
+stopped and turned before the door of Number 19, and Frowenfeld
+contrasted the women with their painfully humble dwelling. But therein
+is where your true Creole was, and still continues to be, properly, yea,
+delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as
+the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds;
+and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open
+the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and
+happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of
+snowy lace, as its bright-eyed tenants.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', if you pliz to come in," said Aurora, and the timid
+apothecary would have bravely accepted the invitation, but for a quick
+look which he saw the daughter give the mother; whereupon he asked,
+instead, permission to call at some future day, and received the cordial
+leave of Aurora and another bow from Clotilde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THAT NIGHT
+
+
+Do we not fail to accord to our nights their true value? We are ever
+giving to our days the credit and blame of all we do and mis-do,
+forgetting those silent, glimmering hours when plans--and sometimes
+plots--are laid; when resolutions are formed or changed; when heaven,
+and sometimes heaven's enemies, are invoked; when anger and evil
+thoughts are recalled, and sometimes hate made to inflame and fester;
+when problems are solved, riddles guessed, and things made apparent in
+the dark, which day refused to reveal. Our nights are the keys to our
+days. They explain them. They are also the day's correctors. Night's
+leisure untangles the mistakes of day's haste. We should not attempt to
+comprise our pasts in the phrase, "in those days;" we should rather say
+"in those days and nights."
+
+That night was a long-remembered one to the apothecary of the rue
+Royale. But it was after he had closed his shop, and in his back room
+sat pondering the unusual experiences of the evening, that it began to
+be, in a higher degree, a night of events to most of those persons who
+had a part in its earlier incidents.
+
+That Honore Grandissime whom Frowenfeld had only this day learned to
+know as _the_ Honore Grandissime and the young governor-general were
+closeted together.
+
+"What can you expect, my-de'-seh?" the Creole was asking, as they
+confronted each other in the smoke of their choice tobacco. "Remember,
+they are citizens by compulsion. You say your best and wisest law is
+that one prohibiting the slave-trade; my-de'-seh, I assure you,
+privately, I agree with you; but they abhor your law!
+
+"Your principal danger--at least, I mean difficulty--is this: that the
+Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some through loss of
+office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things,
+will not only hold off from all participation in your government, but
+will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and
+especially all office-holding under it, odious--disreputable--infamous.
+You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can
+face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men
+generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero--the ninety-nine
+will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown
+out early in the day.
+
+"Count O'Reilly, when he established the Spanish power here thirty-five
+years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner's sword; but,
+my-de'-seh, you are here to establish a _free_ government; and how can
+you make it freer than the people wish it? There is your riddle! They
+hold off and say, 'Make your government as free as you can, but do not
+ask us to help you;' and before you know it you have no retainers but a
+gang of shameless mercenaries, who will desert you whenever the
+indignation of this people overbalances their indolence; and you will
+fall the victim of what you may call our mutinous patriotism."
+
+The governor made a very quiet, unappreciative remark about a
+"patriotism that lets its government get choked up with corruption and
+then blows it out with gunpowder!"
+
+The Creole shrugged.
+
+"And repeats the operation indefinitely," he said.
+
+The governor said something often heard, before and since, to the effect
+that communities will not sacrifice themselves for mere ideas.
+
+"My-de'-seh," replied the Creole, "you speak like a true Anglo-Saxon;
+but, sir! how many communities have _committed_ suicide. And this
+one?--why, it is _just_ the kind to do it!"
+
+"Well," said the governor, smilingly, "you have pointed out what you
+consider to be the breakers, now can you point out the channel?"
+
+"Channel? There is none! And you, nor I, cannot dig one. Two great
+forces _may_ ultimately do it, Religion and Education--as I was telling
+you I said to my young friend, the apothecary,--but still I am free to
+say what would be my first and principal step, if I was in your
+place--as I thank God I am not."
+
+The listener asked him what that was.
+
+"Wherever I could find a Creole that I could venture to trust,
+my-de'-seh, I would put him in office. Never mind a little political
+heterodoxy, you know; almost any man can be trusted to shoot away from
+the uniform he has on. And then--"
+
+"But," said the other, "I have offered you--"
+
+"Oh!" replied the Creole, like a true merchant, "me, I am too busy; it
+is impossible! But, I say, I would _compel_, my-de'-seh, this people to
+govern themselves!"
+
+"And pray, how would you give a people a free government and then compel
+them to administer it?"
+
+"My-de'-seh, you should not give one poor Creole the puzzle which
+belongs to your whole Congress; but you may depend on this, that the
+worst thing for all parties--and I say it only because it is worst for
+all--would be a feeble and dilatory punishment of bad faith."
+
+When this interview finally drew to a close the governor had made a
+memorandum of some fifteen or twenty Grandissimes, scattered through
+different cantons of Louisiana, who, their kinsman Honore thought, would
+not decline appointments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain of the Muses were abroad that night. Faintly audible to the
+apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness which is
+yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by night, came from a
+neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and machine-like tune-beat
+of an African dance. There our lately met _marchande_ (albeit she was
+but a guest, fortified against the street-watch with her master's
+written "pass") led the ancient Calinda dance with that well-known song
+of derision, in whose ever multiplying stanzas the helpless satire of a
+feeble race still continues to celebrate the personal failings of each
+newly prominent figure among the dominant caste. There was a new distich
+to the song to-night, signifying that the pride of the Grandissimes must
+find his friends now among the Yankees:
+
+      "Miche Hon're, alle! h-alle!
+      Trouve to zamis parmi les Yankis.
+     Dance calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!
+     Dance calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!
+
+Frowenfeld, as we have already said, had closed his shop, and was
+sitting in the room behind it with one arm on his table and the other on
+his celestial globe, watching the flicker of his small fire and musing
+upon the unusual experiences of the evening. Upon every side there
+seemed to start away from his turning glance the multiplied shadows of
+something wrong. The melancholy face of that Honore Grandissime, his
+landlord, at whose mention Dr. Keene had thought it fair to laugh
+without explaining; the tall, bright-eyed _milatraisse_; old Agricola;
+the lady of the basil; the newly identified merchant friend, now the
+more satisfactory Honore,--they all came before him in his meditation,
+provoking among themselves a certain discord, faint but persistent, to
+which he strove to close his ear. For he was brain-weary. Even in the
+bright recollection of the lady and her talk he became involved among
+shadows, and going from bad to worse, seemed at length almost to gasp in
+an atmosphere of hints, allusions, faint unspoken admissions,
+ill-concealed antipathies, unfinished speeches, mistaken identities and
+whisperings of hidden strife. The cathedral clock struck twelve and was
+answered again from the convent belfry; and as the notes died away he
+suddenly became aware that the weird, drowsy throb of the African song
+and dance had been swinging drowsily in his brain for an unknown
+lapse of time.
+
+The apothecary nodded once or twice, and thereupon rose up and prepared
+for bed, thinking to sleep till morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aurora and her daughter had long ago put out their chamber light. Early
+in the evening the younger had made favorable mention of retiring, to
+which the elder replied by asking to be left awhile to her own thoughts.
+Clotilde, after some tender protestations, consented, and passed through
+the open door that showed, beyond it, their couch. The air had grown
+just cool and humid enough to make the warmth of one small brand on the
+hearth acceptable, and before this the fair widow settled herself to
+gaze beyond her tiny, slippered feet into its wavering flame, and think.
+Her thoughts were such as to bestow upon her face that enhancement of
+beauty that comes of pleasant reverie, and to make it certain that that
+little city afforded no fairer sight,--unless, indeed, it was the figure
+of Clotilde just beyond the open door, as in her white nightdress,
+enriched with the work of a diligent needle, she knelt upon the low
+_prie-Dieu_ before the little family altar, and committed her pure soul
+to the Divine keeping.
+
+Clotilde could not have been many minutes asleep when Aurora changed her
+mind and decided to follow. The shade upon her face had deepened for a
+moment into a look of trouble; but a bright philosophy, which was part
+of her paternal birthright, quickly chased it away, and she passed to
+her room, disrobed, lay softly down beside the beauty already there and
+smiled herself to sleep,--
+
+     "Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
+     As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again."
+
+But she also wakened again, and lay beside her unconscious bedmate,
+occupied with the company of her own thoughts. "Why should these little
+concealments ruffle my bosom? Does not even Nature herself practise
+wiles? Look at the innocent birds; do they build where everybody can
+count their eggs? And shall a poor human creature try to be better than
+a bird? Didn't I say my prayers under the blanket just now?"
+
+Her companion stirred in her sleep, and she rose upon one elbow to bend
+upon the sleeper a gaze of ardent admiration. "Ah, beautiful little
+chick! how guileless! indeed, how deficient in that respect!" She sat
+up in the bed and hearkened; the bell struck for midnight. Was that the
+hour? The fates were smiling! Surely M. Assonquer himself must have
+wakened her to so choice an opportunity. She ought not to despise it.
+Now, by the application of another and easily wrought charm, that
+darkened hour lately spent with Palmyre would have, as it were, its
+colors set.
+
+The night had grown much cooler. Stealthily, by degrees, she rose and
+left the couch. The openings of the room were a window and two doors,
+and these, with much caution, she contrived to open without noise. None
+of them exposed her to the possibility of public view. One door looked
+into the dim front room; the window let in only a flood of moonlight
+over the top of a high house which was without openings on that side;
+the other door revealed a weed-grown back yard, and that invaluable
+protector, the cook's hound, lying fast asleep.
+
+In her night-clothes as she was, she stood a moment in the centre of the
+chamber, then sank upon one knee, rapped the floor gently but audibly
+thrice, rose, drew a step backward, sank upon the other knee, rapped
+thrice, rose again, stepped backward, knelt the third time, the third
+time rapped, and then, rising, murmured a vow to pour upon the ground
+next day an oblation of champagne--then closed the doors and window and
+crept back to bed. Then she knew how cold she had become. It seemed as
+though her very marrow was frozen. She was seized with such an
+uncontrollable shivering that Clotilde presently opened her eyes, threw
+her arm about her mother's neck, and said:
+
+"Ah! my sweet mother, are you so cold?"
+
+"The blanket was all off of me," said the mother, returning the embrace,
+and the two sank into unconsciousness together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Into slumber sank almost at the same moment Joseph Frowenfeld. He awoke,
+not a great while later, to find himself standing in the middle of the
+floor. Three or four men had shouted at once, and three pistol-shots,
+almost in one instant, had resounded just outside his shop. He had
+barely time to throw himself into half his garments when the knocker
+sounded on his street door, and when he opened it Agricola Fusilier
+entered, supported by his nephew Honore on one side and Doctor Keene on
+the other. The latter's right hand was pressed hard against a bloody
+place in Agricola's side.
+
+"Give us plenty of light, Frowenfeld," said the doctor, "and a chair and
+some lint, and some Castile soap, and some towels and sticking-plaster,
+and anything else you can think of. Agricola's about scared to death--"
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld," groaned the aged citizen, "I am basely and
+mortally stabbed!"
+
+"Right on, Frowenfeld," continued the doctor, "right on into the back
+room. Fasten that front door. Here, Agricola, sit down here. That's
+right, Frow., stir up a little fire. Give me--never mind, I'll just cut
+the cloth open."
+
+There was a moment of silent suspense while the wound was being
+reached, and then the doctor spoke again.
+
+"Just as I thought; only a safe and comfortable gash that will keep you
+in-doors a while with your arm in a sling. You are more scared than
+hurt, I think, old gentleman."
+
+"You think an infernal falsehood, sir!"
+
+"See here, sir," said the doctor, without ceasing to ply his dexterous
+hands in his art, "I'll jab these scissors into your back if you say
+that again."
+
+"I suppose," growled the "citizen," "it is just the thing your
+professional researches have qualified you for, sir!"
+
+"Just stand here, Mr. Frowenfeld," said the little doctor, settling down
+to a professional tone, "and hand me things as I ask for them. Honore,
+please hold this arm; so." And so, after a moderate lapse of time, the
+treatment that medical science of those days dictated was
+applied--whatever that was. Let those who do not know give thanks.
+
+M. Grandissime explained to Frowenfeld what had occurred.
+
+"You see, I succeeded in meeting my uncle, and we went together to my
+office. My uncle keeps his accounts with me. Sometimes we look them
+over. We stayed until midnight; I dismissed my carriage. As we walked
+homeward we met some friends coming out of the rooms of the Bagatelle
+Club; five or six of my uncles and cousins, and also Doctor Keene. We
+all fell a-talking of my grandfather's _fete de grandpere_ of next
+month, and went to have some coffee. When we separated, and my uncle and
+my cousin Achille Grandissime and Doctor Keene and myself came down
+Royal street, out from that dark alley behind your shop jumped a little
+man and stuck my uncle with a knife. If I had not caught his arm he
+would have killed my uncle."
+
+"And he escaped," said the apothecary.
+
+"No, sir!" said Agricola, with his back turned.
+
+"I think he did. I do not think he was struck."
+
+"And Mr. ----, your cousin?"
+
+"Achille? I have sent him for a carriage."
+
+"Why, Agricola," said the doctor, snipping the loose ravellings from his
+patient's bandages, "an old man like you should not have enemies."
+
+"I am _not_ an old man, sir!"
+
+"I said _young_ man."
+
+"I am not a _young_ man, sir!"
+
+"I wonder who the fellow was," continued Doctor Keene, as he readjusted
+the ripped sleeve.
+
+"That is _my_ affair, sir; I know who it was."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And yet she insists," M. Grandissime was asking Frowenfeld, standing
+with his leg thrown across the celestial globe, "that I knocked her down
+intentionally?"
+
+Frowenfeld, about to answer, was interrupted by a rap on the door.
+
+"That is my cousin, with the carriage," said M. Grandissime, following
+the apothecary into the shop.
+
+Frowenfeld opened to a young man,--a rather poor specimen of the
+Grandissime type, deficient in stature but not in stage manner.
+
+"_Est il mort_?" he cried at the threshold.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, let me make you acquainted with my cousin, Achille
+Grandissime."
+
+Mr. Achille Grandissime gave Frowenfeld such a bow as we see now only in
+pictures.
+
+"Ve'y 'appe to meck, yo' acquaintenz!"
+
+Agricola entered, followed by the doctor, and demanded in indignant
+thunder-tones, as he entered:
+
+"Who--ordered--that--carriage?"
+
+"I did," said Honore. "Will you please get into it at once."
+
+"Ah! dear Honore!" exclaimed the old man, "always too kind! I go in it
+purely to please you."
+
+Good-night was exchanged; Honore entered the vehicle and Agricola was
+helped in. Achille touched his hat, bowed and waved his hand to Joseph,
+and shook hands with the doctor, and saying, "Well, good-night. Doctor
+Keene," he shut himself out of the shop with another low bow. "Think I
+am going to shake hands with an apothecary?" thought M. Achille.
+
+Doctor Keene had refused Honore's invitation to go with them.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he said, as he stood in the middle of the shop wiping a
+ring with a towel and looking at his delicate, freckled hand, "I
+propose, before going to bed with you, to eat some of your bread and
+cheese. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"I shall be, Doctor," replied the apothecary, "if you will tell me what
+all this means."
+
+"Indeed I will not,--that is, not to-night. What? Why, it would take
+until breakfast to tell what 'all this means,'--the story of that
+pestiferous darky Bras Coupe, with the rest? Oh, no, sir. I would sooner
+not have any bread and cheese. What on earth has waked your curiosity so
+suddenly, anyhow?"
+
+"Have you any idea who stabbed Citizen Fusilier?" was Joseph's response.
+
+"Why, at first I thought it was the other Honore Grandissime; but when I
+saw how small the fellow was, I was at a loss, completely. But, whoever
+it is, he has my bullet in him, whatever Honore may think."
+
+"Will Mr. Fusilier's wound give him much trouble?" asked Joseph, as they
+sat down to a luncheon at the fire.
+
+"Hardly; he has too much of the blood of Lufki-Humma in him. But I need
+not say that; for the Grandissime blood is just as strong. A wonderful
+family, those Grandissimes! They are an old, illustrious line, and the
+strength that was once in the intellect and will is going down into the
+muscles. I have an idea that their greatness began, hundreds of years
+ago, in ponderosity of arm,--of frame, say,--and developed from
+generation to generation, in a rising scale, first into fineness of
+sinew, then, we will say, into force of will, then into power of mind,
+then into subtleties of genius. Now they are going back down the
+incline. Look at Honore; he is high up on the scale, intellectual and
+sagacious. But look at him physically, too. What an exquisite mold! What
+compact strength! I should not wonder if he gets that from the Indian
+Queen. What endurance he has! He will probably go to his business by and
+by and not see his bed for seventeen or eighteen hours. He is the flower
+of the family, and possibly the last one. Now, old Agricola shows the
+downward grade better. Seventy-five, if he is a day, with, maybe,
+one-fourth the attainments he pretends to have, and still less good
+sense; but strong--as an orang-outang. Shall we go to bed?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NEW LIGHT UPON DARK PLACES
+
+
+When the long, wakeful night was over, and the doctor gone, Frowenfeld
+seated himself to record his usual observations of the weather; but his
+mind was elsewhere--here, there, yonder. There are understandings that
+expand, not imperceptibly hour by hour, but as certain flowers do, by
+little explosive ruptures, with periods of quiescence between. After
+this night of experiences it was natural that Frowenfeld should find the
+circumference of his perceptions consciously enlarged. The daylight
+shone, not into his shop alone, but into his heart as well. The face of
+Aurora, which had been the dawn to him before, was now a perfect
+sunrise, while in pleasant timeliness had come in this Apollo of a
+Honore Grandissime. The young immigrant was dazzled. He felt a longing
+to rise up and run forward in this flood of beams. He was unconscious of
+fatigue, or nearly so--would, have been wholly so but for the return by
+and by of that same dim shadow, or shadows, still rising and darting
+across every motion of the fancy that grouped again the actors in last
+night's scenes; not such shadows as naturally go with sunlight to make
+it seem brighter, but a something which qualified the light's perfection
+and the air's freshness.
+
+Wherefore, resolved: that he would compound his life, from this time
+forward, by a new formula: books, so much; observation, so much; social
+intercourse, so much; love--as to that, time enough for that in the
+future (if he was in love with anybody, he certainly did not know it);
+of love, therefore, amount not yet necessary to state, but probably
+(when it should be introduced), in the generous proportion in which
+physicians prescribe _aqua_. Resolved, in other words, without ceasing
+to be Frowenfeld the studious, to begin at once the perusal of this
+newly found book, the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should
+find it a difficult task--not only that much of it was in a strange
+tongue, but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be
+lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn
+fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the
+purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence at
+was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies Nancanou.
+
+As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose
+temperature had just been recorded as 50 deg. F., the apothecary stepped
+half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came blowing upon
+his tired forehead from the north. As he did so, he said to himself:
+
+"How are these two Honore Grandissimes related to each other, and why
+should one be thought capable of attempting the life of Agricola?"
+
+The answer was on its way to him.
+
+There is left to our eyes but a poor vestige of the picturesque view
+presented to those who looked down the rue Royale before the garish day
+that changed the rue Enghien into Ingine street, and dropped the 'e'
+from Royale. It was a long, narrowing perspective of arcades, lattices,
+balconies, _zaguans_, dormer windows, and blue sky--of low, tiled roofs,
+red and wrinkled, huddled down into their own shadows; of canvas awnings
+with fluttering borders, and of grimy lamp-posts twenty feet in height,
+each reaching out a gaunt iron arm over the narrow street and dangling a
+lamp from its end. The human life which dotted the view displayed a
+variety of tints and costumes such as a painter would be glad to take
+just as he found them: the gayly feathered Indian, the slashed and
+tinselled Mexican, the leather-breeched raftsmen, the blue-or
+yellow-turbaned _negresse_, the sugar-planter in white flannel and
+moccasins, the average townsman in the last suit of clothes of the
+lately deceased century, and now and then a fashionable man in that
+costume whose union of tight-buttoned martial severity, swathed throat,
+and effeminate superabundance of fine linen seemed to offer a sort of
+state's evidence against the pompous tyrannies and frivolities of
+the times.
+
+The _marchande des calas_ was out. She came toward Joseph's shop,
+singing in a high-pitched nasal tone this new song:
+
+     "De'tit zozos--ye te assis--
+     De'tit zozos--si la barrier.
+     De'tit zozos, qui zabotte;
+     Qui ca ye di' mo pas conne.
+
+     "Manzeur-poulet vini simin,
+     Croupe si ye et croque ye;
+     Personn' pli' 'tend' ye zabotte--
+     De'tit zozos si la barrier."
+
+"You lak dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down from her
+turbaned head a flat Indian basket of warm rice cakes.
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+She laughed again--more than the questioner could see occasion for.
+
+"Dat mean--two lill birds; dey was sittin' on de fence an' gabblin'
+togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime', an' you can't
+mek out w'at dey sayin', even ef dey know demself? H-ya! Chicken-hawk
+come 'long dat road an' jes' set down an' munch 'em, an' nobody can't no
+mo' hea' deir lill gabblin' on de fence, you know."
+
+Here she laughed again.
+
+Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in
+benevolence.
+
+"Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been
+a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes' _calas_ I's got
+for you."
+
+As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then, lower
+and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop behind
+him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed. She followed the
+new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of the cakes,
+whispered, "Dat's my mawstah," lifted her basket to her head and went
+away. Her master was Frowenfeld's landlord.
+
+Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave
+"Good-morning, sir."
+
+"--m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low bow.
+
+Frowenfeld waited in silence.
+
+The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak,
+smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by
+word through the unfamiliar language:
+
+"Ah lag to teg you apar'."
+
+"See me alone?"
+
+The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.
+
+"Alone," said he.
+
+"Shall we go into my room?"
+
+"_S'il vous plait, m'sieu'_."
+
+Frowenfeld's breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring
+kitchen, stood on the table. It was a frugal one, but more comfortable
+than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of just pride in Creole
+cookery. Joseph deposited his _calas_ with these things and made haste
+to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined.
+
+"Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'."
+
+"I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted
+and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely
+as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.
+
+Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the landlord
+turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before seen the
+common likeness.
+
+"Dez stog," said the sombre man.
+
+"What, sir? Oh!--dead stock? But how can the materials of an education
+be dead stock?"
+
+The landlord shrugged. He would not argue the point. One American trait
+which the Creole is never entirely ready to encounter is this gratuitous
+Yankee way of going straight to the root of things.
+
+"Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean," continued the apothecary;
+"but are men right in measuring such things only by their present
+market value?"
+
+The landlord had no reply. It was little to him, his manner intimated;
+his contemplation dwelt on deeper flaws in human right and wrong;
+yet--but it was needless to discuss it. However, he did speak.
+
+"Ah was elevade in Pariz."
+
+"Educated in Paris," exclaimed Joseph, admiringly. "Then you certainly
+cannot find your education dead stock."
+
+The grave, not amused, smile which was the landlord's only rejoinder,
+though perfectly courteous, intimated that his tenant was sailing over
+depths of the question that he was little aware of. But the smile in a
+moment gave way for the look of one who was engrossed with
+another subject.
+
+"M'sieu'," he began; but just then Joseph made an apologetic gesture and
+went forward to wait upon an inquirer after "Godfrey's Cordial;" for
+that comforter was known to be obtainable at "Frowenfeld's." The
+business of the American drug-store was daily increasing. When
+Frowenfeld returned his landlord stood ready to address him, with the
+air of having decided to make short of a matter.
+
+"M'sieu' ----"
+
+"Have a seat, sir," urged the apothecary.
+
+His visitor again declined, with his uniform melancholy grace. He drew
+close to Frowenfeld.
+
+"Ah wand you mague me one _ouangan_," he said.
+
+Joseph shook his head. He remembered Doctor Keene's expressed suspicion
+concerning the assault of the night before.
+
+"I do not understand you, sir; what is that?"
+
+"You know."
+
+The landlord offered a heavy, persuading smile.
+
+"An unguent? Is that what you mean--an ointment?"
+
+"M'sieu'," said the applicant, with a not-to-be-deceived expression,
+"_vous etes astrologue--magicien--"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+The landlord was grossly incredulous.
+
+"You godd one 'P'tit Albert.'"
+
+He dropped his forefinger upon an iron-clasped book on the table, whose
+title much use had effaced.
+
+"That is the Bible. I do not know what the Tee Albare is!"
+
+Frowenfeld darted an aroused glance into the ever-courteous eyes of his
+visitor, who said without a motion:
+
+"You di'n't gave Agricola Fusilier _une ouangan, la nuit passe_?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Ee was yeh?--laz nighd?"
+
+"Mr. Fusilier was here last night--yes. He had been attacked by an
+assassin and slightly wounded. He was accompanied by his nephew, who, I
+suppose, is your cousin: he has the same name."
+
+Frowenfeld, hoping he had changed the subject, concluded with a
+propitiatory smile, which, however, was not reflected.
+
+"Ma bruzzah," said the visitor.
+
+"Your brother!"
+
+"Ma whide bruzzah; ah ham nod whide, m'sieu'."
+
+Joseph said nothing. He was too much awed to speak; the ejaculation
+that started toward his lips turned back and rushed into his heart, and
+it was the quadroon who, after a moment, broke the silence:
+
+"Ah ham de holdez son of Numa Grandissime."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Frowenfeld, as if he would wave away something
+terrible.
+
+"Nod sell me--_ouangan_?" asked the landlord, again.
+
+"Sir," exclaimed Frowenfeld, taking a step backward, "pardon me if I
+offend you; that mixture of blood which draws upon you the scorn of this
+community is to me nothing--nothing! And every invidious distinction
+made against you on that account I despise! But, sir, whatever may be
+either your private wrongs, or the wrongs you suffer in common with your
+class, if you have it in your mind to employ any manner of secret art
+against the interests or person of any one--"
+
+The landlord was making silent protestations, and his tenant, lost in a
+wilderness of indignant emotions, stopped.
+
+"M'sieu'," began the quadroon, but ceased and stood with an expression
+of annoyance every moment deepening on his face, until he finally shook
+his head slowly, and said with a baffled smile: "Ah can nod
+spig Engliss."
+
+"Write it," said Frowenfeld, lifting forward a chair.
+
+The landlord, for the first time in their acquaintance, accepted a
+seat, bowing low as he did so, with a demonstration of profound
+gratitude that just perceptibly heightened his even dignity. Paper,
+quills, and ink were handed down from a shelf and Joseph retired
+into the shop.
+
+Honore Grandissime, f.m.c. (these initials could hardly have come into
+use until some months later, but the convenience covers the sin of the
+slight anachronism), Honore Grandissime, free man of color, entered from
+the rear room so silently that Joseph was first made aware of his
+presence by feeling him at his elbow. He handed the apothecary--but a
+few words in time, lest we misjudge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father of the two Honores was that Numa Grandissime--that mere
+child--whom the Grand Marquis, to the great chagrin of the De Grapions,
+had so early cadetted. The commission seems not to have been thrown
+away. While the province was still in first hands, Numa's was a shining
+name in the annals of Kerlerec's unsatisfactory Indian wars; and in 1768
+(when the colonists, ill-informed, inflammable, and long ill-governed,
+resisted the transfer of Louisiana to Spain), at a time of life when
+most young men absorb all the political extravagances of their day, he
+had stood by the side of law and government, though the popular cry was
+a frenzied one for "liberty." Moreover, he had held back his whole
+chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had secured
+valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities from that
+really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act of summary
+vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has branded him in
+history as Cruel O'Reilly. But the experience of those days turned Numa
+gray, and withal he was not satisfied with their outcome. In the midst
+of the struggle he had weakened in one manly resolve--against his will
+he married. The lady was a Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare
+intelligence and beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels
+of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would
+never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe
+conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but--as between his
+Maker and himself--he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how.
+But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about
+to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan
+through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly sacrificed a little
+sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with
+the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who
+was then a little toddling boy. It was necessary to save the party--nay,
+that was a slip; we should say, to save the family; this is not a
+parable. Yet Numa loved his wife. She bore him a boy and a girl, twins;
+and as her son grew in physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he
+indulged the hope that--the ambition and pride of all the various
+Grandissimes now centering in this lawful son, and all strife being
+lulled--he should yet see this Honore right the wrongs which he had not
+quite dared to uproot. And Honore inherited the hope and began to make
+it an intention and aim even before his departure (with his half-brother
+the other Honore) for school in Paris, at the early age of fifteen. Numa
+soon after died, and Honore, after various fortunes in Paris, London,
+and elsewhere, in the care, or at least company, of a pious uncle in
+holy orders, returned to the ancestral mansion. The father's will--by
+the law they might have set it aside, but that was not their way--left
+the darker Honore the bulk of his fortune, the younger a competency. The
+latter--instead of taking office, as an ancient Grandissime should have
+done--to the dismay and mortification of his kindred, established
+himself in a prosperous commercial business. The elder bought houses and
+became a _rentier_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The landlord handed the apothecary the following writing:
+
+     MR. JOSEPH FROWENFELD:
+
+     Think not that anybody is to be either poisoned by me nor yet
+     to be made a sufferer by the exercise of anything by me of
+     the character of what is generally known as grigri, otherwise
+     magique. This, sir, I do beg your permission to offer my
+     assurance to you of the same. Ah, no! it is not for that! I
+     am the victim of another entirely and a far differente and
+     dissimilar passion, _i.e._, Love. Esteemed sir, speaking or
+     writing to you as unto the only man of exclusively white
+     blood whom I believe is in Louisiana willing to do my dumb,
+     suffering race the real justice, I love Palmyre la Philosophe
+     with a madness which is by the human lips or tongues not
+     possible to be exclaimed (as, I may add, that I have in the
+     same like manner since exactley nine years and seven months
+     and some days). Alas! heavens! I can't help it in the least
+     particles at all! What, what shall I do, for ah! it is
+     pitiful! She loves me not at all, but, on the other hand, is
+     (if I suspicion not wrongfully) wrapped up head and ears in
+     devotion of one who does not love her, either, so cold and
+     incapable of appreciation is he. I allude to Honore
+     Grandissime.
+
+     Ah! well do I remember the day when we returned--he and
+     me--from the France. She was there when we landed on that
+     levee, she was among that throng of kindreds and domestiques,
+     she shind like the evening star as she stood there (it was
+     the first time I saw her, but she was known to him when at
+     fifteen he left his home, but I resided not under my own
+     white father's roof--not at all--far from that). She cried
+     out "A la fin to vini!" and leap herself with both
+     resplendant arm around his neck and kist him twice on the one
+     cheek and the other, and her resplendant eyes shining with a
+     so great beauty.
+
+     If you will give me a _poudre d'amour_ such as I doubt not
+     your great knowledge enable you to make of a power that
+     cannot to be resist, while still at the same time of a
+     harmless character toward the life or the health of such that
+     I shall succeed in its use to gain the affections of that
+     emperice of my soul, I hesitate not to give you such price as
+     it may please you to nominate up as high as to $l,000--nay,
+     more. Sir, will you do that?
+
+     I have the honor to remain, sir,
+
+     Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
+
+     H. Grandissime.
+
+Frowenfeld slowly transferred his gaze from the paper to his landlord's
+face. Dejection and hope struggled with each other in the gaze that was
+returned; but when Joseph said, with a countenance full of pity, "I have
+no power to help you," the disappointed lover merely looked fixedly for
+a moment in the direction of the street, then lifted his hat toward his
+head, bowed, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+ART AND COMMERCE
+
+
+It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the
+apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit
+in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a short errand. He was
+kept away somewhat longer than he had intended to stay, for, as they
+were coming out of the cathedral, he met Aurora and Clotilde. Both the
+ladies greeted him with a cordiality which was almost inebriating,
+Aurora even extending her hand. He stood but a moment, responding
+blushingly to two or three trivial questions from her; yet even in so
+short a time, and although Clotilde gave ear with the sweetest smiles
+and loveliest changes of countenance, he experienced a lively renewal of
+a conviction that this young lady was most unjustly harboring toward him
+a vague disrelish, if not a positive distrust. That she had some mental
+reservation was certain.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, as he raised his hat for good-day,
+"you din come home yet."
+
+He did not understand until he had crimsoned and answered he knew not
+what--something about having intended every day. He felt lifted he knew
+not where, Paradise opened, there was a flood of glory, and then he was
+alone; the ladies, leaving adieus sweeter than the perfume they carried
+away with them, floated into the south and were gone. Why was it that
+the elder, though plainly regarded by the younger with admiration,
+dependence, and overflowing affection, seemed sometimes to be, one might
+almost say, watched by her? He liked Aurora the better.
+
+On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he received many
+such visitors as the one who had called during his absence, he might be
+permitted to be vain. It was Honore Grandissime, and he had left
+no message.
+
+"Frowenfeld," said his friend, "it would pay you to employ a regular
+assistant."
+
+Joseph was in an abstracted mood.
+
+"I have some thought of doing so."
+
+Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was his
+dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of them leaped
+up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the edge of the
+_trottoir_, brushed that part of their wearing-apparel which always fits
+with great neatness on a Creole, and trooped into the shop. The
+apothecary fell behind his defences, that is to say, his prescription
+desk, and explained to them in a short and spirited address that he did
+not wish to employ any of them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them
+understood not a word of English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They
+bowed gratefully, and said good-day.
+
+Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and though they were
+far from letting him know it, some of them felt it and interchanged
+expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they stopped on the next
+corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had treated them as if they
+all wanted situations. Was this so? Far from it. Only twenty men were
+applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get
+the place. And again, though, as the apothecary had said, none of them
+knew anything about the drug business--no, nor about any other business
+under the heavens--they were all willing that he should teach
+them--except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel
+tarried a moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on
+Frowenfeld's account it was probably as well that he could not qualify,
+since he was expecting from France an important government appointment
+as soon as these troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to
+her former happy condition. But he had a friend--a cousin--whom he would
+recommend, just the man for the position; a splendid fellow; popular,
+accomplished--what? the best trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might
+ever hope to look upon; a "so good fisherman as I never saw! "--the
+marvel of the ball-room--could handle a partner of twice his weight; the
+speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to
+her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left--this way! and
+then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to
+right--"so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and knew
+more comig song!"--the speaker would hasten to secure him before he
+should take some other situation.
+
+The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph made
+shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially met his
+requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger in a book
+which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop floor in deep
+thought. There were two loose threads hanging from the web of incident
+weaving around him which ought to connect somewhere; but where? They
+were the two visits made to his shop by the young merchant, Honore
+Grandissime. He stopped still to think; what "train of thought" could he
+have started in the mind of such a man?
+
+He was about to resume his walk, when there came in, or more strictly
+speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose
+adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and
+clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure Creole. His name, when
+it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a
+Franco-Celtic origin.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in after
+recess, "I 'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window."
+
+He wheeled half around as he spoke and seized from a naked black boy,
+who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper.
+
+Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A
+pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a
+pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols--the property of some ancient
+gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep
+up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation--went
+into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of
+by _tombola_. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral
+education of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any
+sort of evil, that in this drivelling species of gambling he saw nothing
+hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" appeared also articles
+for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for instance, the
+wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little
+bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the
+bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of
+which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild
+waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively
+of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines'
+convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years,
+the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in
+ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by
+"a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come
+to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics
+were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and,
+fortunately, we have a few still left.
+
+The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
+counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting.
+
+He said nothing--with his mouth; but stood at arm's length balancing the
+painting and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph Frowenfeld a look
+more replete with triumph than Caesar's three-worded dispatch.
+
+The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a
+somnambulist. At length he spoke:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union!" replied the Creole, with an
+ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs.
+
+Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy.
+
+"Gran' subjec'!" said the Creole.
+
+"Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary.
+
+"Allegoricon? No, sir! Allegoricon never saw dat pigshoe. If you insist
+to know who make dat pigshoe--de hartis' stan' bif-ore you!"
+
+"It is your work?"
+
+"'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de disting-wish Honore
+Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible' as 'igh as
+yo' head!"
+
+He smote his breast.
+
+"Do you wish to put it in the window?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+"For sale?"
+
+M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying:
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to be too proud, eh? I
+want you to say, 'My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell
+anything; 'tis for egs-hibby-shun'; _mais_--when somebody
+look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of languishing
+covetousness, "'you say, _foudre tonnerre!_ what de dev'!--I take dat
+ris-pon-sibble-ty--you can have her for two hun'red fifty dollah!'
+Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window, his new
+friend following him about spanielwise; "but you had better let me say
+plainly that it is for sale."
+
+"Oh--I don't care--_mais_--my rillation' will never forgive me!
+_Mais_--go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'T is for sale."
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the window, "one
+week ago"--he held up one finger--"what I was doing? Makin' bill of
+ladin', my faith!--for my cousin Honore! an' now, I ham a hartis'! So
+soon I foun' dat, I say, 'Cousin Honore,'"--the eloquent speaker lifted
+his foot and administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick--"I never
+goin' to do anoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu!"
+
+He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of his
+cousin's office.
+
+"Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are making a
+great mistake."
+
+"You tink I hass too much?"
+
+"Well, sir, to be candid, I do; but that is not your greatest mistake."
+
+"What she's worse?"
+
+The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed.
+
+"I would rather not say; it is a passably good example of Creole art;
+there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you ask for it."
+
+"What dat is?"
+
+The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld replied:
+
+"If it could become the means of reminding this community that crude
+ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing else in this
+world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth thousands
+of dollars!"
+
+"You tink she is worse a t'ousand dollah?" asked the Creole, shadow and
+sunshine chasing each other across his face.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+The unwilling critic strove unnecessarily against his smile.
+
+"Ow much you tink?"
+
+"Mr. Innerarity, as an exercise it is worth whatever truth or skill it
+has taught you; to a judge of paintings it is ten dollars' worth of
+paint thrown away; but as an article of sale it is worth what it will
+bring without misrepresentation."
+
+"Two--hun-rade an'--fifty--dollahs or--not'in'!" said the indignant
+Creole, clenching one fist, and with the other hand lifting his hat by
+the front corner and slapping it down upon the counter. "Ha, ha, ha! a
+pase of waint--a wase of paint! 'Sieur Frowenfel', you don' know not'in'
+'bout it! You har a jedge of painting?" he added cautiously.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"_Eh, bien! foudre tonnerre_!--look yeh! you know? 'Sieur Frowenfel'?
+Dat de way de publique halways talk about a hartis's firs' pigshoe. But,
+I hass you to pardon me, Monsieur Frowenfel', if I 'ave speak a lill
+too warm."
+
+"Then you must forgive me if, in my desire to set you right, I have
+spoken with too much liberty. I probably should have said only what I
+first intended to say, that unless you are a person of independent
+means--"
+
+"You t'ink I would make bill of ladin'? Ah! Hm-m!"
+
+"--that you had made a mistake in throwing up your means of support--"
+
+"But 'e 'as fill de place an' don' want me no mo'. You want a
+clerk?--one what can speak fo' lang-widge--French, Eng-lish, Spanish,
+_an'_ Italienne? Come! I work for you in de mawnin' an' paint in de
+evenin'; come!"
+
+Joseph was taken unaware. He smiled, frowned, passed his hand across his
+brow, noticed, for the first time since his delivery of the picture, the
+naked little boy standing against the edge of a door, said, "Why--," and
+smiled again.
+
+"I riffer you to my cousin Honore," said Innerarity.
+
+"Have you any knowledge of this business?"
+
+"I 'ave.'
+
+"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may
+require?"
+
+"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.
+
+"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy,
+took off his coat and fell to work decanting something, with the
+understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date
+if his cousin should recommend him.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day,
+"you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a niggah?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupe!"
+
+We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE
+
+
+MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a few
+hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, a
+microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory,
+a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a
+diving bell, a Creole _veritas_. Before the day had had time to cool,
+his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries
+in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the
+apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to
+carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew
+forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier,
+Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the _lettre de cachet_, Demosthenes
+De Grapion and the _fille a l'hopital_, Georges De Grapion and the
+_fille a la cassette_, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honores,
+young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them
+
+     "Knit hands and beat the ground
+     In a light, fantastic round,"
+
+would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.
+
+"Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny 'istory of
+France an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about de Boulignys,
+de Sauves, de Grandpres, de Lemoynes, de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! De
+Grandissimes is as hole as de dev'! What? De mose of de Creole families
+is not so hold as plenty of my yallah kinfolks!"
+
+The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M. Raoul's
+statements.
+
+But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing before his
+illimitable talking power in order to digest in seclusion the ancestral
+episodes of the Grandissimes and De Grapions, laid pleasant plans for
+the immediate future. To-morrow morning he would leave the shop in
+Raoul's care and call on M. Honore Grandissime to advise with him
+concerning the retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrow
+evening he would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet up
+to the doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening he
+would go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who had
+looked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged in
+Frowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours were
+to be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his "dead stock."
+
+And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly planned,
+there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which, now on this
+side, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous whisper to make
+haste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed, and was gliding
+about, the expectation of a crisis.
+
+Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of Number
+19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen days of grace
+allowed them in which to save their little fortress. For Palmyre's
+assurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-money
+to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it was
+poor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree of
+impracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was,
+nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of any
+really brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps
+they had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing all
+possible ways and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fast
+bearing down upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad
+managers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay;
+could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger;
+could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult their
+convenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soul
+weep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills-payable in their
+orbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs. Their economy knew how to
+avoid what the Creole-African apothegm calls _commerce Man Lizon--qui
+assete pou' trois picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin_ (bought for
+three picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that made
+their very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as
+it was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook's
+leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.
+
+On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime,
+on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an old
+Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop,--this blacksmith's
+shop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied and
+dormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, had
+halted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman
+the whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honore Grandissime.
+
+Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase within
+the archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have thanked a
+prince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm rusks, coming
+from a bakery in the paved court below, rushed through the archway and
+up the stair and accompanied her into the cemetery-like silence of the
+counting-room. There were in the department some fourteen clerks. It was
+a den of Grandissimes. More than half of them were men beyond middle
+life, and some were yet older. One or two were so handsome, under their
+noble silvery locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, for
+instance,--would have thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is the
+head of the house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in the
+silent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the
+room. There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with
+very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a
+privileged loudness.
+
+"H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.
+
+A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silent
+bow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather than care or
+years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.
+
+"Madame,"--in an undertone.
+
+"Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in French.
+
+But the young man responded in English.
+
+"You har one tenant, ent it?"
+
+"Yes, seh."
+
+"Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."
+
+"No, seh; M. Grandissime."
+
+"M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."
+
+"I muz see M. Grandissime."
+
+Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.
+
+The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The quill
+of the sore-eyed man scratched louder--scratch, scratch--as though it
+were trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue Bienville--for a
+moment, and then ceased. The clerk, with one hand behind him and one
+touching the desk, murmured a few words, to which the other, after
+glancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a short, low reply and resumed
+his pen. The clerk returned, came through a gateway in the railing, led
+the way into a rich inner room, and turning with another courtly bow,
+handed her a cushioned armchair and retired.
+
+"After eighteen years," thought Aurora, as she found herself alone. It
+had been eighteen years since any representative of the De Grapion line
+had met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she knew; even that
+representative was only her deceased husband, a mere connection by
+marriage. How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges De
+Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarin
+de Grandissime, she did not remember. There, opposite her on the wall,
+was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M.
+Mandarin himself. She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in her
+veins. "Insolent tribe," she said, without speaking, "we have no more
+men left to fight you; but now wait. See what a woman can do."
+
+These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one object to
+another. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingled
+defiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the apothecary, she
+indulged in a quiet smile. The smile was still there as her glance in
+its gradual sweep reached a small mirror.
+
+She almost leaped from her seat.
+
+Not because that mirror revealed a recess which she had not previously
+noticed; not because behind a costly desk therein sat a youngish man,
+reading a letter; not because he might have been observing her, for it
+was altogether likely that, to avoid premature interruption, he had
+avoided looking up; nor because this was evidently Honore Grandissime;
+but because Honore Grandissime, if this were he, was the same person
+whom she had seen only with his back turned in the pharmacy--the rider
+whose horse ten days ago had knocked her down, the Lieutenant of
+Dragoons who had unmasked and to whom she had unmasked at the ball! Fly!
+But where? How? It was too late; she had not even time to lower her
+veil. M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter with a
+slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For an
+instant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling blush and a
+distressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she rose, all
+a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the
+inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.
+
+He spoke in Parisian French:
+
+"Please be seated, madame."
+
+She sank down.
+
+"Do you wish to see me?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+She did not see her way out of this falsehood, but--she couldn't say
+yes.
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"Whom do--"
+
+"I wish to see M. Honore Grandissime."
+
+"That is my name, madame."
+
+"Ah!"--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now, and was
+ready for war. "You are not one of his clerks?"
+
+M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: "You little
+honey-bee, you want to sting me, eh?" and then he answered her question.
+
+"No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for."
+
+"The gentleman she was look--" her pride resented the fact.
+"Me!"--thought she--"I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you have
+been longing to meet ever since the ball;" but her look was unmoved
+gravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and handed him the
+rent notice.
+
+"I received that from your office the Monday before last."
+
+There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it was the
+day of the run-over.
+
+Honore Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only half unfolded,
+saw the advisability of calling up all the resources of his sagacity and
+wit in order to answer wisely; and as they answered his call a brighter
+nobility so overspread face and person that Aurora inwardly exclaimed at
+it even while she exulted in her thrust.
+
+"Monday before last?"
+
+She slightly bowed.
+
+"A serious misfortune befell me that day," said M. Grandissime.
+
+"Ah?" replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress, "but
+you have entirely recovered, I suppose."
+
+"It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification for which
+I fear you will accept no apology."
+
+"On the contrary," said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation,
+"it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse."
+
+M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped his
+glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:
+
+"My horse is very well, I thank you."
+
+But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he seemed
+to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.
+
+"He is trying to think how he will get rid of me," thought Aurora; "he
+is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenth
+of March comes we shall be put into the street."
+
+M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift her
+hands.
+
+"I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this notice
+to reach you from my office; I am not the Honore Grandissime for whom
+this is signed."
+
+Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the
+subterfuge she had been anticipating. Had she been at home she would
+have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiled
+meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made an
+unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.
+
+"There are, you know,"--began Honore, with a smile which changed the
+meaning to "You know very well there are"--"two Honore Grandissimes.
+This one who sent you this letter is a man of color--"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.
+
+"If you will entrust this paper to me," said Honore, quietly, "I will
+see him and do now engage that you shall have no further trouble about
+it. Of course, I do not mean that I will pay it, myself; I dare not
+offer to take such a liberty."
+
+Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too far.
+
+Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She neither
+smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiable
+practicality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice as
+she spoke:
+
+"I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his notice
+in the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the matter. I
+shall have to attend to it myself."
+
+"Ah! little enchantress," thought her grave-faced listener, as he gave
+attention, "this, after all--ball and all--is the mood in which you look
+your very, very best"--a fact which nobody knew better than the
+enchantress herself.
+
+He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into the
+counting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some ingenuity
+of his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could not fail to feel
+that they had never before seen quite so fair a couple. But she dropped
+her veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite "No farther," and passed out.
+
+M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave the door
+a soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.
+
+The clerk who had before acted as usher came in and handed him a slip of
+paper with a name written on it. M. Grandissime folded it twice, gazed
+out the window, and finally nodded. The clerk disappeared, and Joseph
+Frowenfeld paused an instant in the door and then advanced, with a
+buoyant good-morning.
+
+"Good-morning," responded M. Grandissime.
+
+He smiled and extended his hand, yet there was a mechanical and
+preoccupied air that was not what Joseph felt justified in expecting.
+
+"How can I serve you, Mr. Frhowenfeld?" asked the merchant, glancing
+through into the counting-room. His coldness was almost all in Joseph's
+imagination, but to the apothecary it seemed such that he was nearly
+induced to walk away without answering. However, he replied:
+
+"A young man whom I have employed refers to you to recommend him."
+
+"Yes, sir? Prhay, who is that?"
+
+"Your cousin, I believe, Mr. Raoul Innerarity."
+
+M. Grandissime gave a low, short laugh, and took two steps toward his
+desk.
+
+"Rhaoul? Oh yes, I rhecommend Rhaoul to you. As an assistant in yo'
+sto'?--the best man you could find."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Joseph, coldly. "Good-morning!" he added turning
+to go.
+
+"Mr. Frhowenfeld," said the other, "do you evva rhide?"
+
+"I used to ride," replied the apothecary, turning, hat in hand, and
+wondering what such a question could mean.
+
+"If I send a saddle-hoss to yo' do' on day aftah to-morrhow evening at
+fo' o'clock, will you rhide out with me for-h about a hour-h and a
+half--just for a little pleasu'e?"
+
+Joseph was yet more astonished than before. He hesitated, accepted the
+invitation, and once more said good-morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+DOCTOR KEENE RECOVERS HIS BULLET
+
+
+It early attracted the apothecary's notice, in observing the
+civilization around him, that it kept the flimsy false bottoms in its
+social errors only by incessant reiteration. As he re-entered the shop,
+dissatisfied with himself for accepting M. Grandissime's invitation to
+ride, he knew by the fervent words which he overheard from the lips of
+his employee that the f.m.c. had been making one of his reconnoisances,
+and possibly had ventured in to inquire for his tenant.
+
+"I t'ink, me, dat hanny w'ite man is a gen'leman; but I don't care if a
+man are good like a h-angel, if 'e har not pu'e w'ite '_ow can_ 'e be a
+gen'leman?"
+
+Raoul's words were addressed to a man who, as he rose up and handed
+Frowenfeld a note, ratified the Creole's sentiment by a spurt of tobacco
+juice and an affirmative "Hm-m."
+
+The note was a lead-pencil scrawl, without date.
+
+     DEAR JOE: Come and see me some time this evening.
+     I am on my back in bed. Want your help in a little
+     matter.   Yours,   Keene.
+
+     I have found out who ---- ----"
+
+Frowenfeld pondered: "I have found out who ---- ----" Ah! Doctor Keene
+had found out who stabbed Agricola.
+
+Some delays occurred in the afternoon, but toward sunset the apothecary
+dressed and went out. From the doctor's bedside in the rue St. Louis, if
+not delayed beyond all expectation, he would proceed to visit the ladies
+at Number 19 rue Bienville. The air was growing cold and threatening
+bad weather.
+
+He found the Doctor prostrate, wasted, hoarse, cross and almost too weak
+for speech. He could only whisper, as his friend approached his pillow:
+
+"These vile lungs!"
+
+"Hemorrhage?"
+
+The invalid held up three small, freckled fingers.
+
+Joseph dared not show pity in his gaze, but it seemed savage not to
+express some feeling, so after standing a moment he began to say:
+
+"I am very sorry--"
+
+"You needn't bother yourself!" whispered the doctor, who lay frowning
+upward. By and by he whispered again.
+
+Frowenfeld bent his ear, and the little man, so merry when well,
+repeated, in a savage hiss:
+
+"Sit down!"
+
+It was some time before he again broke the silence.
+
+"Tell you what I want--you to do--for me."
+
+"Well, sir--"
+
+"Hold on!" gasped the invalid, shutting his eyes with impatience,--"till
+I get through."
+
+He lay a little while motionless, and then drew from under his pillow a
+wallet, and from the wallet a pistol-ball.
+
+"Took that out--a badly neglected wound--last day I saw you." Here a
+pause, an appalling cough, and by and by a whisper: "Knew the bullet in
+an instant." He smiled wearily. "Peculiar size." He made a feeble
+motion. Frowenfeld guessed the meaning of it and handed him a pistol
+from a small table. The ball slipped softly home. "Refused two hundred
+dollars--those pistols"--with a sigh and closed eyes. By and by
+again--"Patient had smart fever--but it will be gone--time you
+get--there. Want you to--take care--t' I get up."
+
+"But, Doctor--"
+
+The sick man turned away his face with a petulant frown; but presently,
+with an effort at self-control, brought it back and whispered:
+
+"You mean you--not physician?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No. No more are half--doc's. You can do it. Simple gun-shot wound in
+the shoulder." A rest. "Pretty wound; ranges"--he gave up the effort to
+describe it. "You'll see it." Another rest. "You see--this matter has
+been kept quiet so far. I don't want any one--else to know--anything
+about it." He sighed audibly and looked as though he had gone to sleep,
+but whispered again, with his eyes closed--"'specially on culprit's
+own account."
+
+Frowenfeld was silent: but the invalid was waiting for an answer, and,
+not getting it, stirred peevishly.
+
+"Do you wish me to go to-night?" asked the apothecary.
+
+"To-morrow morning. Will you--?"
+
+"Certainly, Doctor."
+
+The invalid lay quite still for several minutes, looking steadily at his
+friend, and finally let a faint smile play about his mouth,--a wan
+reminder of his habitual roguery.
+
+"Good boy," he whispered.
+
+Frowenfeld rose and straightened the bedclothes, took a few steps about
+the room, and finally returned. The Doctor's restless eye had followed
+him at every movement.
+
+"You'll go?"
+
+"Yes," replied the apothecary, hat in hand; "where is it?"
+
+"Corner Bienville and Bourbon,--upper river corner,--yellow one-story
+house, doorsteps on street. You know the house?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Good-night. Here!--I wish you would send that black girl in here--as
+you go out--make me better fire--Joe!" the call was a ghostly whisper.
+
+Frowenfeld paused in the door.
+
+"You don't mind my--bad manners, Joe?"
+
+The apothecary gave one of his infrequent smiles.
+
+"No, Doctor."
+
+He started toward Number 19 rue Bienville, but a light, cold sprinkle
+set in, and he turned back toward his shop. No sooner had the rain got
+him there than it stopped, as rain sometimes will do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+WARS WITHIN THE BREAST
+
+
+The next morning came in frigid and gray. The unseasonable numerals
+which the meteorologist recorded in his tables might have provoked a
+superstitious lover of better weather to suppose that Monsieur Danny,
+the head imp of discord, had been among the aerial currents. The
+passionate southern sky, looking down and seeing some six thousand to
+seventy-five hundred of her favorite children disconcerted and
+shivering, tried in vain, for two hours, to smile upon them with a
+little frozen sunshine, and finally burst into tears.
+
+In thus giving way to despondency, it is sad to say, the sky was closely
+imitating the simultaneous behavior of Aurora Nancanou. Never was pretty
+lady in cheerier mood than that in which she had come home from Honore's
+counting-room. Hard would it be to find the material with which to build
+again the castles-in-air that she founded upon two or three little
+discoveries there made. Should she tell them to Clotilde? Ah! and for
+what? No, Clotilde was a dear daughter--ha! few women were capable of
+having such a daughter as Clotilde; but there were things about which
+she was entirely too scrupulous. So, when she came in from that errand
+profoundly satisfied that she would in future hear no more about the
+rent than she might choose to hear, she had been too shrewd to expose
+herself to her daughter's catechising. She would save her little
+revelations for disclosure when they might be used to advantage. As she
+threw her bonnet upon the bed, she exclaimed, in a tone of gentle and
+wearied reproach:
+
+"Why did you not remind me that M. Honore Grandissime, that precious
+somebody-great, has the honor to rejoice in a quadroon half-brother of
+the same illustrious name? Why did you not remind me, eh?"
+
+"Ah! and you know it as well as A, B, C," playfully retorted Clotilde.
+
+"Well, guess which one is our landlord?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"_Ma foi_! how do _I_ know? I had to wait a shameful long time to see
+_Monsieur le prince_,--just because I am a De Grapion, I know. When at
+last I saw him, he says, 'Madame, this is the other Honore Grandissime.'
+There, you see we are the victims of a conspiracy; if I go to the other,
+he will send me back to the first. But, Clotilde, my darling," cried the
+beautiful speaker, beamingly, "dismiss all fear and care; we shall have
+no more trouble about it."
+
+"And how, indeed, do you know that?"
+
+"Something tells it to me in my ear. I feel it! Trust in Providence, my
+child. Look at me, how happy I am; but you--you never trust in
+Providence. That is why we have so much trouble,--because you don't
+trust in Providence. Oh! I am so hungry, let us have dinner."
+
+"What sort of a person is M. Grandissime in his appearance?" asked
+Clotilde, over their feeble excuse for a dinner.
+
+"What sort? Do you imagine I had nothing better to do than notice
+whether a Grandissime is good-looking or not? For all I know to the
+contrary, he is--some more rice, please, my dear."
+
+But this light-heartedness did not last long. It was based on an
+unutterable secret, all her own, about which she still had trembling
+doubts; this, too, notwithstanding her consultation of the dark oracles.
+She was going to stop that. In the long run, these charms and spells
+themselves bring bad luck. Moreover, the practice, indulged in to
+excess, was wicked, and she had promised Clotilde,--that droll little
+saint,--to resort to them no more. Hereafter, she should do nothing of
+the sort, except, to be sure, to take such ordinary precautions against
+misfortune as casting upon the floor a little of whatever she might be
+eating or drinking to propitiate M. Assonquer. She would have liked,
+could she have done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the front
+door-sill an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to Papa
+Lebat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that admit
+suitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would surely have
+licked it up. Ah me! was she forgetting that she was a widow?
+
+She was in poor plight to meet the all but icy gray morning; and, to
+make her misery still greater, she found, on dressing, that an accident
+had overtaken her, which she knew to be a trustworthy sign of love grown
+cold. She had lost--alas! how can we communicate it in English!--a small
+piece of lute-string ribbon, about _so long_, which she used for--not a
+necktie exactly, but--
+
+And she hunted and hunted, and couldn't bear to give up the search, and
+sat down to breakfast and ate nothing, and rose up and searched again
+(not that she cared for the omen), and struck the hound with the broom,
+and broke the broom, and hunted again, and looked out the front window,
+and saw the rain beginning to fall, and dropped into a chair--crying,
+"Oh! Clotilde, my child, my child! the rent collector will be here
+Saturday and turn us into the street!" and so fell a-weeping.
+
+A little tear-letting lightened her unrevealable burden, and she rose,
+rejoicing that Clotilde had happened to be out of eye-and-ear-shot. The
+scanty fire in the fireplace was ample to warm the room; the fire within
+her made it too insufferably hot! Rain or no rain, she parted the
+window-curtains and lifted the sash. What a mark for Love's arrow she
+was, as, at the window, she stretched her two arms upward! And, "right
+so," who should chance to come cantering by, the big drops of rain
+pattering after him, but the knightliest man in that old town, and the
+fittest to perfect the fine old-fashioned poetry of the scene!
+
+"Clotilde," said Aurora, turning from her mirror, whither she had
+hastened to see if her face showed signs of tears (Clotilde was entering
+the room), "we shall never be turned out of this house by Honore
+Grandissime!"
+
+"Why?" asked Clotilde, stopping short in the floor, forgetting Aurora's
+trust in Providence, and expecting to hear that M. Grandissime had been
+found dead in his bed.
+
+"Because I saw him just now; he rode by on horseback. A man with that
+noble face could never _do such a thing_!"
+
+The astonished Clotilde looked at her mother searchingly. This sort of
+speech about a Grandissime? But Aurora was the picture of innocence.
+
+Clotilde uttered a derisive laugh.
+
+"_Impertinente_!" exclaimed the other, laboring not to join in it.
+
+"Ah-h-h!" cried Clotilde, in the same mood, "and what face had he when
+he wrote that letter?"
+
+"What face?"
+
+"Yes, what face?"
+
+"I do not know what face you mean," said Aurora.
+
+"What face," repeated Clotilde, "had Monsieur Honore de Grandissime on
+the day that he wrote--"
+
+"Ah, f-fah!" cried Aurora, and turned away, "you don't know what you are
+talking about! You make me wish sometimes that I were dead!"
+
+Clotilde had gone and shut down the sash, as it began to rain hard and
+blow. As she was turning away, her eye was attracted by an object at
+a distance.
+
+"What is it?" asked Aurora, from a seat before the fire.
+
+"Nothing," said Clotilde, weary of the sensational,--"a man in the
+rain."
+
+It was the apothecary of the rue Royale, turning from that street toward
+the rue Bourbon, and bowing his head against the swirling norther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FROWENFELD KEEPS HIS APPOINTMENT
+
+
+Doctor Keene, his ill-humor slept off, lay in bed in a quiescent state
+of great mental enjoyment. At times he would smile and close his eyes,
+open them again and murmur to himself, and turn his head languidly and
+smile again. And when the rain and wind, all tangled together, came
+against the window with a whirl and a slap, his smile broadened almost
+to laughter.
+
+"He's in it," he murmured, "he's just reaching there. I would give fifty
+dollars to see him when he first gets into the house and sees where
+he is."
+
+As this wish was finding expression on the lips of the little sick man,
+Joseph Frowenfeld was making room on a narrow doorstep for the outward
+opening of a pair of small batten doors, upon which he had knocked with
+the vigorous haste of a man in the rain. As they parted, he hurriedly
+helped them open, darted within, heedless of the odd black shape which
+shuffled out of his way, wheeled and clapped them shut again, swung down
+the bar and then turned, and with the good-natured face that properly
+goes with a ducking, looked to see where he was.
+
+One object--around which everything else instantly became nothing--set
+his gaze. On the high bed, whose hangings of blue we have already
+described, silently regarding the intruder with a pair of eyes that sent
+an icy thrill through him and fastened him where he stood, lay Palmyre
+Philosophe. Her dress was a long, snowy morning-gown, wound loosely
+about at the waist with a cord and tassel of scarlet silk; a
+bright-colored woollen shawl covered her from the waist down, and a
+necklace of red coral heightened to its utmost her untamable beauty.
+
+An instantaneous indignation against Doctor Keene set the face of the
+speechless apothecary on fire, and this, being as instantaneously
+comprehended by the philosophe, was the best of introductions. Yet her
+gaze did not change.
+
+The Congo negress broke the spell with a bristling protest, all in
+African b's and k's, but hushed and drew off at a single word of command
+from her mistress.
+
+In Frowenfeld's mind an angry determination was taking shape, to be
+neither trifled with nor contemned. And this again the quadroon
+discerned, before he was himself aware of it.
+
+"Doctor Keene"--he began, but stopped, so uncomfortable were her eyes.
+
+She did not stir or reply.
+
+Then he bethought him with a start, and took off his dripping hat.
+
+At this a perceptible sparkle of imperious approval shot along her
+glance; it gave the apothecary speech.
+
+"The doctor is sick, and he asked me to dress your wound."
+
+She made the slightest discernible motion of the head, remained for a
+moment silent, and then, still with the same eye, motioned her hand
+toward a chair near a comfortable fire.
+
+He sat down. It would be well to dry himself. He drew near the hearth
+and let his gaze fall into the fire. When he presently lifted his eyes
+and looked full upon the woman with a steady, candid glance, she was
+regarding him with apparent coldness, but with secret diligence and
+scrutiny, and a yet more inward and secret surprise and admiration. Hard
+rubbing was bringing out the grain of the apothecary. But she presently
+suppressed the feeling. She hated men.
+
+But Frowenfeld, even while his eyes met hers, could not resent her
+hostility. This monument of the shame of two races--this poisonous
+blossom of crime growing out of crime--this final, unanswerable white
+man's accuser--this would-be murderess--what ranks and companies would
+have to stand up in the Great Day with her and answer as accessory
+before the fact! He looked again into the fire.
+
+The patient spoke:
+
+"_Eh bi'n, Miche_?" Her look was severe, but less aggressive. The
+shuffle of the old negress's feet was heard and she appeared bearing
+warm and cold water and fresh bandages; after depositing them
+she tarried.
+
+"Your fever is gone," said Frowenfeld, standing by the bed. He had laid
+his fingers on her wrist. She brushed them off and once more turned full
+upon him the cold hostility of her passionate eyes.
+
+The apothecary, instead of blushing, turned pale.
+
+"You--" he was going to say, "You insult me;" but his lips came tightly
+together. Two big cords appeared between his brows, and his blue eyes
+spoke for him. Then, as the returning blood rushed even to his forehead,
+he said, speaking his words one by one;
+
+"Please understand that you must trust me."
+
+She may not have understood his English, but she comprehended,
+nevertheless. She looked up fixedly for a moment, then passively closed
+her eyes. Then she turned, and Frowenfeld put out one strong arm, helped
+her to a sitting posture on the side of the bed and drew the shawl
+about her.
+
+"Zizi," she said, and the negress, who had stood perfectly still since
+depositing the water and bandages, came forward and proceeded to bare
+the philosophe's superb shoulder. As Frowenfeld again put forward his
+hand, she lifted her own as if to prevent him, but he kindly and firmly
+put it away and addressed himself with silent diligence to his task; and
+by the time he had finished, his womanly touch, his commanding
+gentleness, his easy despatch, had inspired Palmyre not only with a
+sense of safety, comfort, and repose, but with a pleased wonder.
+
+This woman had stood all her life with dagger drawn, on the defensive
+against what certainly was to her an unmerciful world. With possibly
+one exception, the man now before her was the only one she had ever
+encountered whose speech and gesture were clearly keyed to that profound
+respect which is woman's first, foundation claim on man. And yet, by
+inexorable decree, she belonged to what we used to call "the happiest
+people under the sun." We ought to stop saying that.
+
+So far as Palmyre knew, the entire masculine wing of the mighty and
+exalted race, three-fourths of whose blood bequeathed her none of its
+prerogatives, regarded her as legitimate prey. The man before her did
+not. There lay the fundamental difference that, in her sight, as soon as
+she discovered it, glorified him. Before this assurance the cold
+fierceness of her eyes gave way, and a friendlier light from them
+rewarded the apothecary's final touch. He called for more pillows, made
+a nest of them, and, as she let herself softly into it, directed his
+next consideration toward his hat and the door.
+
+It was many an hour after he had backed out into the trivial remains of
+the rain-storm before he could replace with more tranquillizing images
+the vision of the philosophe reclining among her pillows, in the act of
+making that uneasy movement of her fingers upon the collar button of her
+robe, which women make when they are uncertain about the perfection of
+their dishabille, and giving her inaudible adieu with the majesty of
+an empress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+FROWENFELD MAKES AN ARGUMENT
+
+
+On the afternoon of the same day on which Frowenfeld visited the house
+of the philosophe, the weather, which had been so unfavorable to his
+late plans, changed; the rain ceased, the wind drew around to the south,
+and the barometer promised a clear sky. Wherefore he decided to leave
+his business, when he should have made his evening weather notes, to the
+care of M. Raoul Innerarity, and venture to test both Mademoiselle
+Clotilde's repellent attitude and Aurora's seeming cordiality at Number
+19 rue Bienville.
+
+Why he should go was a question which the apothecary felt himself but
+partially prepared to answer. What necessity called him, what good was
+to be effected, what was to happen next, were points he would have liked
+to be clear upon. That he should be going merely because he was invited
+to come--merely for the pleasure of breathing their atmosphere--that he
+should be supinely gravitating toward them--this conclusion he
+positively could not allow; no, no; the love of books and the fear of
+women alike protested.
+
+True, they were a part of that book which is pronounced "the proper
+study of mankind,"--indeed, that was probably the reason which he
+sought: he was going to contemplate them as a frontispiece to that
+unwriteable volume which he had undertaken to con. Also, there was a
+charitable motive. Doctor Keene, months before, had expressed a deep
+concern regarding their lack of protection and even of daily provision;
+he must quietly look into that. Would some unforeseen circumstance shut
+him off this evening again from this very proper use of time and
+opportunity?
+
+As he was sitting at the table in his back room, registering his sunset
+observations, and wondering what would become of him if Aurora should be
+out and that other in, he was startled by a loud, deep voice exclaiming,
+close behind him:
+
+"_Eh, bien! Monsieur le Professeur!_"
+
+Frowenfeld knew by the tone, before he looked behind him, that he would
+find M. Agricola Fusilier very red in the face; and when he looked, the
+only qualification he could make was that the citizen's countenance was
+not so ruddy as the red handkerchief in which his arm was hanging.
+
+"What have you there?" slowly continued the patriarch, taking his free
+hand off his fettered arm and laying it upon the page as Frowenfeld
+hurriedly rose, and endeavored to shut the book.
+
+"Some private memoranda," answered the meteorologist, managing to get
+one page turned backward, reddening with confusion and indignation, and
+noticing that Agricola's spectacles were upside down.
+
+"Private! Eh? No such thing, sir! Professor Frowenfeld, allow me" (a
+classic oath) "to say to your face, sir, that you are the most brilliant
+and the most valuable man--of your years--in afflicted Louisiana! Ha!"
+(reading:) "'Morning observation; Cathedral clock, 7 A.M. Thermometer 70
+degrees.' Ha! 'Hygrometer l5'--but this is not to-day's weather? Ah! no.
+Ha! 'Barometer 30.380.' Ha! 'Sky cloudy, dark; wind, south, light.' Ha!
+'River rising.' Ha! Professor Frowenfeld, when will you give your
+splendid services to your section? You must tell me, my son, for I ask
+you, my son, not from curiosity, but out of impatient interest."
+
+"I cannot say that I shall ever publish my tables," replied the "son,"
+pulling at the book.
+
+"Then, sir, in the name of Louisiana," thundered the old man, clinging
+to the book, "I can! They shall be published! Ah! yes, dear Frowenfeld.
+The book, of course, will be in French, eh? You would not so affront the
+most sacred prejudices of the noble people to whom you owe everything as
+to publish it in English? You--ah! have we torn it?"
+
+"I do not write French," said the apothecary, laying the torn edges
+together.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, men are born for each other. What do I behold
+before me? I behold before me, in the person of my gifted young friend,
+a supplement to myself! Why has Nature strengthened the soul of Agricola
+to hold the crumbling fortress of this body until these eyes--which were
+once, my dear boy, as proud and piercing as the battle-steed's--have
+become dim?"
+
+Joseph's insurmountable respect for gray hairs kept him standing, but
+he did not respond with any conjecture as to Nature's intentions, and
+there was a stern silence.
+
+The crumbling fortress resumed, his voice pitched low like the beginning
+of the long roll. He knew Nature's design.
+
+"It was in order that you, Professor Frowenfeld, might become my vicar!
+Your book shall be in French! We must give it a wide scope! It shall
+contain valuable geographical, topographical, biographical, and
+historical notes. It shall contain complete lists of all the officials
+in the province (I don't say territory, I say province) with their
+salaries and perquisites; ah! we will expose that! And--ha! I will write
+some political essays for it. Raoul shall illustrate it. Honore shall
+give you money to publish it. Ah! Professor Frowenfeld, the star of your
+fame is rising out of the waves of oblivion! Come--I dropped in
+purposely to ask you--come across the street and take a glass of
+_taffia_ with Agricola Fusilier."
+
+This crowning honor the apothecary was insane enough to decline, and
+Agricola went away with many professions of endearment, but secretly
+offended because Joseph had not asked about his wound.
+
+All the same the apothecary, without loss of time, departed for the
+yellow-washed cottage, Number 19 rue Bienville.
+
+"To-morrow, at four P.M.," he said to himself, "if the weather is
+favorable, I ride with M. Grandissime."
+
+He almost saw his books and instruments look up at him reproachfully.
+
+The ladies were at home. Aurora herself opened the door, and Clotilde
+came forward from the bright fireplace with a cordiality never before so
+unqualified. There was something about these ladies--in their simple,
+but noble grace, in their half-Gallic, half-classic beauty, in a jocund
+buoyancy mated to an amiable dignity--that made them appear to the
+scholar as though they had just bounded into life from the garlanded
+procession of some old fresco. The resemblance was not a little helped
+on by the costume of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and
+belated by the distance from Paris). Their black hair, somewhat heavier
+on Clotilde's head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted _en
+Grecque_, and adorned only with the spoils of a nosegay given to
+Clotilde by a chivalric small boy in the home of her music scholar.
+
+"We was expectin' you since several days," said Clotilde, as the three
+sat down before the fire, Frowenfeld in a cushioned chair whose
+moth-holes had been carefully darned.
+
+Frowenfeld intimated, with tolerable composure, that matters beyond his
+control had delayed his coming, beyond his intention.
+
+"You gedd'n' ridge," said Aurora, dropping her wrists across each other.
+
+Frowenfeld, for once, laughed outright, and it seemed so odd in him to
+do so that both the ladies followed his example. The ambition to be rich
+had never entered his thought, although in an unemotional, German way,
+he was prospering in a little city where wealth was daily pouring in,
+and a man had only to keep step, so to say, to march into possessions.
+
+"You hought to 'ave a mo' larger sto' an' some clerque," pursued Aurora.
+
+The apothecary answered that he was contemplating the enlargement of his
+present place or removal to a roomier, and that he had already employed
+an assistant.
+
+"Oo it is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+Clotilde turned toward the questioner a remonstrative glance.
+
+"His name," replied Frowenfeld, betraying a slight embarrassment,
+"is--Innerarity; Mr. Raoul Innerarity; he is--"
+
+"Ee pain' dad pigtu' w'at 'angin' in yo' window?"
+
+Clotilde's remonstrance rose to a slight movement and a murmur.
+
+Frowenfeld answered in the affirmative, and possibly betrayed the faint
+shadow of a smile. The response was a peal of laughter from both ladies.
+
+"He is an excellent drug clerk," said Frowenfeld defensively.
+
+Whereat Aurora laughed again, leaning over and touching Clotilde's knee
+with one finger.
+
+"An' excellen' drug cl'--ha, ha, ha! oh!"
+
+"You muz podden uz, M'sieu' Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, with forced
+gravity.
+
+Aurora sighed her participation in the apology; and, a few moments
+later, the apothecary and both ladies (the one as fond of the abstract
+as the other two were ignorant of the concrete) were engaged in an
+animated, running discussion on art, society, climate, education,--all
+those large, secondary _desiderata_ which seem of first importance to
+young ambition and secluded beauty, flying to and fro among these
+subjects with all the liveliness and uncertainty of a game of
+pussy-wants-a-corner.
+
+Frowenfeld had never before spent such an hour. At its expiration, he
+had so well held his own against both the others, that the three had
+settled down to this sort of entertainment: Aurora would make an
+assertion, or Clotilde would ask a question; and Frowenfeld, moved by
+that frankness and ardent zeal for truth which had enlisted the early
+friendship of Dr. Keene, amused and attracted Honore Grandissime, won
+the confidence of the f.m.c., and tamed the fiery distrust and enmity of
+Palmyre, would present his opinions without the thought of a reservation
+either in himself or his hearers. On their part, they would sit in deep
+attention, shielding their faces from the fire, and responding to
+enunciations directly contrary to their convictions with an occasional
+"yes-seh," or "ceddenly," or "of coze," or,--prettier affirmation
+still,--a solemn drooping of the eyelids, a slight compression of the
+lips, and a low, slow declination of the head.
+
+"The bane of all Creole art-effort"--(we take up the apothecary's words
+at a point where Clotilde was leaning forward and slightly frowning in
+an honest attempt to comprehend his condensed English)--"the bane of all
+Creole art-effort, so far as I have seen it, is amateurism."
+
+"Amateu--" murmured Clotilde, a little beclouded on the main word and
+distracted by a French difference of meaning, but planting an elbow on
+one knee in the genuineness of her attention, and responding with a bow.
+
+"That is to say," said Frowenfeld, apologizing for the homeliness of his
+further explanation by a smile, "a kind of ambitious indolence that lays
+very large eggs, but can neither see the necessity for building a nest
+beforehand, nor command the patience to hatch the eggs afterward."
+
+"Of coze," said Aurora.
+
+"It is a great pity," said the sermonizer, looking at the face of
+Clotilde, elongated in the brass andiron; and, after a pause: "Nothing
+on earth can take the place of hard and patient labor. But that, in this
+community, is not esteemed; most sorts of it are contemned; the humbler
+sorts are despised, and the higher are regarded with mingled patronage
+and commiseration. Most of those who come to my shop with their efforts
+at art hasten to explain, either that they are merely seeking pastime,
+or else that they are driven to their course by want; and if I advise
+them to take their work back and finish it, they take it back and never
+return. Industry is not only despised, but has been degraded and
+disgraced, handed over into the hands of African savages."
+
+"Doze Creole' is _lezzy_," said Aurora.
+
+"That is a hard word to apply to those who do not _consciously_ deserve
+it," said Frowenfeld; "but if they could only wake up to the fact,--find
+it out themselves--"
+
+"Ceddenly," said Clotilde.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, leaning her head on one side, "some
+pipple thing it is doze climade; 'ow you lag doze climade?"
+
+"I do not suppose," replied the visitor, "there is a more delightful
+climate in the world."
+
+"Ah-h-h!"--both ladies at once, in a low, gracious tone of
+acknowledgment.
+
+"I thing Louisiana is a paradize-me!" said Aurora. "W'ere you goin' fin'
+sudge a h-air?" She respired a sample of it. "W'ere you goin' fin' sudge
+a so ridge groun'? De weed' in my bag yard is twenny-five feet 'igh!"
+
+"Ah! maman!"
+
+"Twenty-six!" said Aurora, correcting herself. "W'ere you fin' sudge a
+reever lag dad Mississippi? _On dit_," she said, turning to Clotilde,
+"_que ses eaux ont la propriete de contribuer meme a multiplier l'espece
+humaine_--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde turned away an unmoved countenance to hear Frowenfeld.
+
+Frowenfeld had contracted a habit of falling into meditation whenever
+the French language left him out of the conversation.
+
+"Yes," he said, breaking a contemplative pause, "the climate is _too_
+comfortable and the soil too rich,--though I do not think it is entirely
+on their account that the people who enjoy them are so sadly in arrears
+to the civilized world." He blushed with the fear that his talk was
+bookish, and felt grateful to Clotilde for seeming to understand
+his speech.
+
+"W'ad you fin' de rizzon is, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" she asked.
+
+"I do not wish to philosophize," he answered.
+
+"_Mais_, go hon." "_Mais_, go ahade," said both ladies, settling
+themselves.
+
+"It is largely owing," exclaimed Frowenfeld, with sudden fervor, "to a
+defective organization of society, which keeps this community, and will
+continue to keep it for an indefinite time to come, entirely unprepared
+and disinclined to follow the course of modern thought."
+
+"Of coze," murmured Aurora, who had lost her bearings almost at the
+first word.
+
+"One great general subject of thought now is human rights,--universal
+human rights. The entire literature of the world is becoming tinctured
+with contradictions of the dogmas upon which society in this section is
+built. Human rights is, of all subjects, the one upon which this
+community is most violently determined to hear no discussion. It has
+pronounced that slavery and caste are right, and sealed up the whole
+subject. What, then, will they do with the world's literature? They will
+coldly decline to look at it, and will become, more and more as the
+world moves on, a comparatively illiterate people."
+
+"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Clotilde, as Frowenfeld paused--Aurora
+was stunned to silence,--"de Unitee State' goin' pud doze nigga'
+free, aind it?"
+
+Frowenfeld pushed his hair hard back. He was in the stream now, and
+might as well go through.
+
+"I have heard that charge made, even by some Americans. I do not know.
+But there is a slavery that no legislation can abolish,--the slavery of
+caste. That, like all the slaveries on earth, is a double bondage. And
+what a bondage it is which compels a community, in order to preserve its
+established tyrannies, to walk behind the rest of the intelligent world!
+What a bondage is that which incites a people to adopt a system of
+social and civil distinctions, possessing all the enormities and none of
+the advantages of those systems which Europe is learning to despise!
+This system, moreover, is only kept up by a flourish of weapons. We have
+here what you may call an armed aristocracy. The class over which these
+instruments of main force are held is chosen for its servility,
+ignorance, and cowardice; hence, indolence in the ruling class. When a
+man's social or civil standing is not dependent on his knowing how to
+read, he is not likely to become a scholar."
+
+"Of coze," said Aurora, with a pensive respiration, "I thing id is doze
+climade," and the apothecary stopped, as a man should who finds himself
+unloading large philosophy in a little parlor.
+
+"I thing, me, dey hought to pud doze quadroon' free?" It was Clotilde
+who spoke, ending with the rising inflection to indicate the tentative
+character of this daringly premature declaration.
+
+Frowenfeld did not answer hastily.
+
+"The quadroons," said he, "want a great deal more than mere free papers
+can secure them. Emancipation before the law, though it may be a right
+which man has no right to withhold, is to them little more than a
+mockery until they achieve emancipation in the minds and good will of
+the people--'the people,' did I say? I mean the ruling class." He
+stopped again. One must inevitably feel a little silly, setting up
+tenpins for ladies who are too polite, even if able, to bowl them down.
+
+Aurora and the visitor began to speak simultaneously; both apologized,
+and Aurora said:
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', w'en I was a lill girl,"--and Frowenfeld knew that
+he was going to hear the story of Palmyre. Clotilde moved, with the
+obvious intention to mend the fire. Aurora asked, in French, why she did
+not call the cook to do it, and Frowenfeld said, "Let me,"--threw on
+some wood, and took a seat nearer Clotilde. Aurora had the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+AURORA AS A HISTORIAN
+
+
+Alas! the phonograph was invented three-quarters of a century too late.
+If type could entrap one-half the pretty oddities of Aurora's
+speech,--the arch, the pathetic, the grave, the earnest, the
+matter-of-fact, the ecstatic tones of her voice,--nay, could it but
+reproduce the movement of her hands, the eloquence of her eyes, or the
+shapings of her mouth,--ah! but type--even the phonograph--is such an
+inadequate thing! Sometimes she laughed; sometimes Clotilde,
+unexpectedly to herself, joined her; and twice or thrice she provoked a
+similar demonstration from the ox-like apothecary,--to her own intense
+amusement. Sometimes she shook her head in solemn scorn; and, when
+Frowenfeld, at a certain point where Palmyre's fate locked hands for a
+time with that of Bras-Coupe, asked a fervid question concerning that
+strange personage, tears leaped into her eyes, as she said:
+
+"Ah! 'Sieur Frowenfel', iv I tra to tell de sto'y of Bras-Coupe, I goin'
+to cry lag a lill bebby."
+
+The account of the childhood days upon the plantation at Cannes Brulees
+may be passed by. It was early in Palmyre's fifteenth year that that
+Kentuckian, 'mutual friend' of her master and Agricola, prevailed with
+M. de Grapion to send her to the paternal Grandissime mansion,--a
+complimentary gift, through Agricola, to Mademoiselle, his
+niece,--returnable ten years after date.
+
+The journey was made in safety; and, by and by, Palmyre was presented to
+her new mistress. The occasion was notable. In a great chair in the
+centre sat the _grandpere_, a Chevalier de Grandissime, whose business
+had narrowed down to sitting on the front veranda and wearing his
+decorations,--the cross of St. Louis being one; on his right, Colonel
+Numa Grandissime, with one arm dropped around Honore, then a boy of
+Palmyre's age, expecting to be off in sixty days for France; and on the
+left, with Honore's fair sister nestled against her, "Madame Numa," as
+the Creoles would call her, a stately woman and beautiful, a great
+admirer of her brother Agricola. (Aurora took pains to explain that she
+received these minutiae from Palmyre herself in later years.) One other
+member of the group was a young don of some twenty years' age, not an
+inmate of the house, but only a cousin of Aurora on her deceased
+mother's side. To make the affair complete, and as a seal to this tacit
+Grandissime-de-Grapion treaty, this sole available representative of the
+"other side" was made a guest for the evening. Like the true Spaniard
+that he was, Don Jose Martinez fell deeply in love with Honore's sister.
+Then there came Agricola leading in Palmyre. There were others, for the
+Grandissime mansion was always full of Grandissimes; but this was the
+central group.
+
+In this house Palmyre grew to womanhood, retaining without interruption
+the place into which she seemed to enter by right of indisputable
+superiority over all competitors,--the place of favorite attendant to
+the sister of Honore. Attendant, we say, for servant she never seemed.
+She grew tall, arrowy, lithe, imperial, diligent, neat, thorough,
+silent. Her new mistress, though scarcely at all her senior, was yet
+distinctly her mistress; she had that through her Fusilier blood;
+experience was just then beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime
+was a superb variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey. Palmyre
+loved her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be
+the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brulees.
+
+Honore went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre entered the
+house. But even that was not soon enough.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, in her recital, "Palmyre, she never
+tole me dad, _mais_ I am shoe, _shoe_ dad she fall in love wid Honore
+Grandissime. 'Sieur Frowenfel', I thing dad Honore Grandissime is one
+bad man, ent it? Whad you thing, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the best, as
+I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened gentlemen in
+the city," said the apothecary.
+
+"Ah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'! ha, ha!"
+
+"That is my conviction."
+
+The lady went on with her story.
+
+"Hanny'ow, I know she _con_tinue in love wid 'im all doze ten year'
+w'at 'e been gone. She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to wrad dad ledder
+to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo'."
+
+Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene had
+related to Frowenfeld,--her own marriage and removal to Fausse Riviere,
+the visit of her husband to the city, his unfortunate and finally fatal
+affair with Agricola, and the surrender of all her land and slaves to
+that successful duellist.
+
+M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning
+Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment,
+responded favorably to a letter from Honore's sister, irresistible for
+its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain
+Palmyre two years longer; but this response came only after the old
+master and his pretty, stricken Aurora had wept over it until they were
+weak and gentle,--and was not a response either, but only a
+silent consent.
+
+Shortly before the return of Honore--and here it was that Aurora took up
+again the thread of her account--while his mother, long-widowed, reigned
+in the paternal mansion, with Agricola for her manager, Bras-Coupe
+appeared. From that advent, and the long and varied mental sufferings
+which its consequences brought upon her, sprang that second change in
+Palmyre, which made her finally untamable, and ended in a manumission,
+granted her more for fear than for conscience' sake. When Aurora
+attempted to tell those experiences, even leaving Bras-Coupe as much as
+might be out of the recital, she choked with tears at the very start,
+stopped, laughed, and said:
+
+"_C'est tout_--daz all. 'Sieur Frowenfel', oo you fine dad pigtu' to
+loog lag, yonnah, hon de wall?"
+
+She spoke as if he might have overlooked it, though twenty times, at
+least, in the last hour, she had seen him glance at it.
+
+"It is a good likeness," said the apothecary, turning to Clotilde, yet
+showing himself somewhat puzzled in the matter of the costume.
+
+The ladies laughed.
+
+"Daz ma grade-gran'-mamma," said Clotilde.
+
+"Dass one _fille a la cassette_," said Aurora, "my gran'-muzzah; _mais_,
+ad de sem tarn id is Clotilde." She touched her daughter under the chin
+with a ringed finger. "Clotilde is my gran'-mamma."
+
+Frowenfeld rose to go.
+
+"You muz come again, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," said both ladies, in a breath.
+
+What could he say?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A RIDE AND A RESCUE
+
+
+"Douane or Bienville?"
+
+Such was the choice presented by Honore Grandissime to Joseph
+Frowenfeld, as the former on a lively brown colt and the apothecary on a
+nervy chestnut fell into a gentle, preliminary trot while yet in the
+rue Royale, looked after by that great admirer of both, Raoul
+Innerarity.
+
+"Douane?" said Frowenfeld. (It was the street we call Custom-house.)
+
+"It has mud-holes," objected Honore.
+
+"Well, then, the rue du Canal?"
+
+"The canal--I can smell it from here. Why not rue Bienville?"
+
+Frowenfeld said he did not know. (We give the statement for what it is
+worth.)
+
+Notice their route. A spirit of perversity seems to have entered into
+the very topography of this quarter. They turned up the rue Bienville
+(up is toward the river); reaching the levee, they took their course up
+the shore of the Mississippi (almost due south), and broke into a lively
+gallop on the Tchoupitoulas road, which in those days skirted that
+margin of the river nearest the sunsetting, namely, the _eastern_ bank.
+
+Conversation moved sluggishly for a time, halting upon trite topics or
+swinging easily from polite inquiry to mild affirmation, and back again.
+They were men of thought, these two, and one of them did not fully
+understand why he was in his present position; hence some reticence. It
+was one of those afternoons in early March that make one wonder how the
+rest of the world avoids emigrating to Louisiana in a body.
+
+"Is not the season early?" asked Frowenfeld.
+
+M. Grandissime believed it was; but then the Creole spring always seemed
+so, he said.
+
+The land was an inverted firmament of flowers. The birds were an
+innumerable, busy, joy-compelling multitude, darting and fluttering
+hither and thither, as one might imagine the babes do in heaven. The
+orange-groves were in blossom; their dark-green boughs seemed snowed
+upon from a cloud of incense, and a listening ear might catch an
+incessant, whispered trickle of falling petals, dropping "as the
+honey-comb." The magnolia was beginning to add to its dark and shining
+evergreen foliage frequent sprays of pale new leaves and long, slender,
+buff buds of others yet to come. The oaks, both the bare-armed and the
+"green-robed senators," the willows, and the plaqueminiers, were putting
+out their subdued florescence as if they smiled in grave participation
+with the laughing gardens. The homes that gave perfection to this beauty
+were those old, large, belvidered colonial villas, of which you may
+still here and there see one standing, battered into half ruin, high and
+broad, among foundries, cotton-and tobacco-sheds, junk-yards, and
+longshoremen's hovels, like one unconquered elephant in a wreck of
+artillery. In Frowenfeld's day the "smell of their garments was like
+Lebanon." They were seen by glimpses through chance openings in lofty
+hedges of Cherokee-rose or bois-d'arc, under boughs of cedar or
+pride-of-China, above their groves of orange or down their long,
+overarched avenues of oleander; and the lemon and the pomegranate, the
+banana, the fig, the shaddock, and at times even the mango and the
+guava, joined "hands around" and tossed their fragrant locks above the
+lilies and roses. Frowenfeld forgot to ask himself further concerning
+the probable intent of M. Grandissime's invitation to ride; these
+beauties seemed rich enough in good reasons. He felt glad and grateful.
+
+At a certain point the two horses turned of their own impulse, as by
+force of habit, and with a few clambering strides mounted to the top of
+the levee and stood still, facing the broad, dancing, hurrying,
+brimming river.
+
+The Creole stole an amused glance at the elated, self-forgetful look of
+his immigrant friend.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as the delighted apothecary turned with
+unwonted suddenness and saw his smile, "I believe you like this better
+than discussion. You find it easier to be in harmony with Louisiana than
+with Louisianians, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld colored with surprise. Something unpleasant had lately
+occurred in his shop. Was this to signify that M. Grandissime had
+heard of it?
+
+"I am a Louisianian," replied he, as if this were a point assailed.
+
+"I would not insinuate otherwise," said M. Grandissime, with a kindly
+gesture. "I would like you to feel so. We are citizens now of a
+different government from that under which we lived the morning we first
+met. Yet"--the Creole paused and smiled--"you are not, and I am glad you
+are not, what we call a Louisianian."
+
+Frowenfeld's color increased. He turned quickly in his saddle as if to
+say something very positive, but hesitated, restrained himself
+and asked:
+
+"Mr. Grandissime, is not your Creole 'we' a word that does much damage?"
+
+The Creole's response was at first only a smile, followed by a
+thoughtful countenance; but he presently said, with some suddenness:
+
+"My-de'-seh, yes. Yet you see I am, even this moment, forgetting we are
+not a separate people. Yes, our Creole 'we' does damage, and our Creole
+'you' does more. I assure you, sir, I try hard to get my people to
+understand that it is time to stop calling those who come and add
+themselves to the community, aliens, interlopers, invaders. That is what
+I hear my cousins, 'Polyte and Sylvestre, in the heat of discussion,
+called you the other evening; is it so?"
+
+"I brought it upon myself," said Frowenfeld. "I brought it upon myself."
+
+"Ah!" interrupted M. Grandissime, with a broad smile, "excuse me--I am
+fully prepared to believe it. But the charge is a false one. I told them
+so. My-de'-seh--I know that a citizen of the United States in the United
+States has a right to become, and to be called, under the laws governing
+the case, a Louisianian, a Vermonter, or a Virginian, as it may suit his
+whim; and even if he should be found dishonest or dangerous, he has a
+right to be treated just exactly as we treat the knaves and ruffians who
+are native born! Every discreet man must admit that."
+
+"But if they do not enforce it, Mr. Grandissime," quickly responded the
+sore apothecary, "if they continually forget it--if one must surrender
+himself to the errors and crimes of the community as he finds it--"
+
+The Creole uttered a low laugh.
+
+"Party differences, Mr. Frowenfeld; they have them in all countries."
+
+"So your cousins said," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"And how did you answer them?"
+
+"Offensively," said the apothecary, with sincere mortification.
+
+"Oh! that was easy," replied the other, amusedly; "but how?"
+
+"I said that, having here only such party differences as are common
+elsewhere, we do not behave as they elsewhere do; that in most civilized
+countries the immigrant is welcome, but here he is not. I am afraid I
+have not learned the art of courteous debate," said Frowenfeld, with a
+smile of apology.
+
+"'Tis a great art," said the Creole, quietly, stroking his horse's neck.
+"I suppose my cousins denied your statement with indignation, eh?"
+
+"Yes; they said the honest immigrant is always welcome."
+
+"Well, do you not find that true?"
+
+"But, Mr. Grandissime, that is requiring the immigrant to prove his
+innocence!" Frowenfeld spoke from the heart. "And even the honest
+immigrant is welcome only when he leaves his peculiar opinions behind
+him. Is that right, sir?"
+
+The Creole smiled at Frowenfeld's heat.
+
+"My-de'-seh, my cousins complain that you advocate measures fatal to the
+prevailing order of society."
+
+"But," replied the unyielding Frowenfeld, turning redder than ever,
+"that is the very thing that American liberty gives me the
+right--peaceably--to do! Here is a structure of society defective,
+dangerous, erected on views of human relations which the world is
+abandoning as false; yet the immigrant's welcome is modified with the
+warning not to touch these false foundations with one of his fingers."
+
+"Did you tell my cousins the foundations of society here are false?"
+
+"I regret to say I did, very abruptly. I told them they were privately
+aware of the fact."
+
+"You may say," said the ever-amiable Creole, "that you allowed debate to
+run into controversy, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld was silent; he compared the gentleness of this Creole's
+rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated.
+But M. Grandissime spoke with a rallying smile.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, you never make pills with eight corners eh?"
+
+"No, sir." The apothecary smiled.
+
+"No, you make them round; cannot you make your doctrines the same way?
+My-de'-seh, you will think me impertinent; but the reason I speak is
+because I wish very much that you and my cousins would not be offended
+with each other. To tell you the truth, my-de'-seh, I hoped to use you
+with them--pardon my frankness."
+
+"If Louisiana had more men like you, M. Grandissime," cried the
+untrained Frowenfeld, "society would be less sore to the touch."
+
+"My-de'-seh," said the Creole, laying his hand out toward his companion
+and turning his horse in such a way as to turn the other also, "do me
+one favor; remember that it _is_ sore to the touch."
+
+The animals picked their steps down the inner face of the levee and
+resumed their course up the road at a walk.
+
+"Did you see that man just turn the bend of the road, away yonder?" the
+Creole asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you recognize him?"
+
+"It was--my landlord, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Did he not have a conversation with you lately, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir; why do you ask?"
+
+"It has had a bad effect on him. I wonder why he is out here on foot?"
+
+The horses quickened their paces. The two friends rode along in silence.
+Frowenfeld noticed his companion frequently cast an eye up along the
+distant sunset shadows of the road with a new anxiety. Yet, when M.
+Grandissime broke the silence it was only to say:
+
+"I suppose you find the blemishes in our state of society can all be
+attributed to one main defect, Mr. Frowenfeld?"
+
+Frowenfeld was glad of the chance to answer:
+
+"I have not overlooked that this society has disadvantages as well as
+blemishes; it is distant from enlightened centres; it has a language and
+religion different from that of the great people of which it is now
+called to be a part. That it has also positive blemishes of organism--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted the Creole, smiling at the immigrant's sudden
+magnanimity, "its positive blemishes; do they all spring from one
+main defect?"
+
+"I think not. The climate has its influence, the soil has its
+influence--dwellers in swamps cannot be mountaineers."
+
+"But after all," persisted the Creole, "the greater part of our troubles
+comes from--"
+
+"Slavery," said Frowenfeld, "or rather caste."
+
+"Exactly," said M. Grandissime.
+
+"You surprise me, sir," said the simple apothecary. "I supposed you
+were--"
+
+"My-de'-seh," exclaimed M. Grandissime, suddenly becoming very earnest,
+"I am nothing, nothing! There is where you have the advantage of me. I
+am but a _dilettante_, whether in politics, in philosophy, morals, or
+religion. I am afraid to go deeply into anything, lest it should make
+ruin in my name, my family, my property."
+
+He laughed unpleasantly.
+
+The question darted into Frowenfeld's mind, whether this might not be a
+hint of the matter that M. Grandissime had been trying to see him about.
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," he said, "I can hardly believe you would neglect a
+duty either for family, property, or society."
+
+"Well, you mistake," said the Creole, so coldly that Frowenfeld colored.
+
+They galloped on. M. Grandissime brightened again, almost to the degree
+of vivacity. By and by they slackened to a slow trot and were silent.
+The gardens had been long left behind, and they were passing between
+continuous Cherokee-rose hedges on the right and on the left, along that
+bend of the Mississippi where its waters, glancing off three miles above
+from the old De Macarty levee (now Carrollton), at the slightest
+opposition in the breeze go whirling and leaping like a herd of
+dervishes across to the ever-crumbling shore, now marked by the little
+yellow depot-house of Westwego. Miles up the broad flood the sun was
+disappearing gorgeously. From their saddles, the two horsemen feasted on
+the scene without comment.
+
+But presently, M. Grandissime uttered a low ejaculation and spurred his
+horse toward a tree hard by, preparing, as he went, to fasten his rein
+to an overhanging branch. Frowenfeld, agreeable to his beckon, imitated
+the movement.
+
+"I fear he intends to drown himself," whispered M. Grandissime, as they
+hurriedly dismounted.
+
+"Who? Not--"
+
+"Yes, your landlord, as you call him. He is on the flatboat; I saw his
+hat over the levee. When we get on top the levee, we must get right into
+it. But do not follow him into the water in front of the flat; it is
+certain death; no power of man could keep you from going under it."
+
+The words were quickly spoken; they scrambled to the levee's crown. Just
+abreast of them lay a flatboat, emptied of its cargo and moored to the
+levee. They leaped into it. A human figure swerved from the onset of the
+Creole and ran toward the bow of the boat, and in an instant more would
+have been in the river.
+
+"Stop!" said Frowenfeld, seizing the unresisting f.m.c. firmly by the
+collar.
+
+Honore Grandissime smiled, partly at the apothecary's brief speech, but
+much more at his success.
+
+"Let him go, Mr. Frowenfeld," he said, as he came near.
+
+The silent man turned away his face with a gesture of shame.
+
+M. Grandissime, in a gentle voice, exchanged a few words with him, and
+he turned and walked away, gained the shore, descended the levee, and
+took a foot-path which soon hid him behind a hedge.
+
+"He gives his pledge not to try again," said the Creole, as the two
+companions proceeded to resume the saddle. "Do not look after him."
+(Joseph had cast a searching look over the hedge.)
+
+They turned homeward.
+
+"Ah! Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, suddenly, "if the _immygrant_
+has cause of complaint, how much more has _that_ man! True, it is only
+love for which he would have just now drowned himself; yet what an
+accusation, my-de'-seh, is his whole life against that 'caste' which
+shuts him up within its narrow and almost solitary limits! And yet, Mr.
+Frowenfeld, this people esteem this very same crime of caste the holiest
+and most precious of their virtues. My-de'-seh, it never occurs to us
+that in this matter we are interested, and therefore disqualified,
+witnesses. We say we are not understood; that the jury (the civilized
+world) renders its decision without viewing the body; that we are judged
+from a distance. We forget that we ourselves are too _close_ to see
+distinctly, and so continue, a spectacle to civilization, sitting in a
+horrible darkness, my-de'-seh!" He frowned.
+
+"The shadow of the Ethiopian," said the grave apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime's quick gesture implied that Frowenfeld had said the very
+word.
+
+"Ah! my-de'-seh, when I try sometimes to stand outside and look at it, I
+am _ama-aze_ at the length, the blackness of that shadow!" (He was so
+deeply in earnest that he took no care of his English.) "It is the
+_Nemesis_ w'ich, instead of coming afteh, glides along by the side of
+this morhal, political, commercial, social mistake! It blanches,
+my-de'-seh, ow whole civilization! It drhags us a centurhy behind the
+rhes' of the world! It rhetahds and poisons everhy industrhy we
+got!--mos' of all our-h immense agrhicultu'e! It brheeds a thousan'
+cusses that nevva leave home but jus' flutter-h up an' rhoost,
+my-de'-seh, on ow _heads_; an' we nevva know it!--yes, sometimes some of
+us know it."
+
+He changed the subject.
+
+They had repassed the ruins of Fort St. Louis, and were well within the
+precincts of the little city, when, as they pulled up from a final
+gallop, mention was made of Doctor Keene. He was improving; Honore had
+seen him that morning; so, at another hour, had Frowenfeld. Doctor Keene
+had told Honore about Palmyre's wound.
+
+"You was at her house again this morning?" asked the Creole.
+
+"Yes," said Frowenfeld.
+
+M. Grandissime shook his head warningly.
+
+"'Tis a dangerous business. You are almost sure to become the object of
+slander. You ought to tell Doctor Keene to make some other arrangement,
+or presently you, too, will be under the--" he lowered his voice, for
+Frowenfeld was dismounting at the shop door, and three or four
+acquaintances stood around--"under the 'shadow of the Ethiopian.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FETE DE GRANDPERE
+
+
+Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down Esplanade
+street will notice, across on the right, between it and that sorry
+streak once fondly known as Champs Elysees, two or three large, old
+houses, rising above the general surroundings and displaying
+architectural features which identify them with an irrevocable past--a
+past when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear of
+contradiction, express his religious belief that the antipathy he felt
+for the Americain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in his
+ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence. There
+is, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred and
+fifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captain
+governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray as
+a pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank added
+or subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into the
+Bastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, when
+the setting sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectacles
+standing up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there and
+will never come back. These houses are the last remaining--if, indeed,
+they were not pulled down yesterday--of a group that once marked from
+afar the direction of the old highway between the city's walls and the
+suburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier aristocracy of the colony;
+all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons,
+etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings' moneys, with an
+_abandon_ which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.
+
+Among these stood the great mother-mansion of the Grandissimes. Do not
+look for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brick
+pillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground and
+rose on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered in
+the cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinous
+glitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the
+immense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk
+abreast; the great front stairs, descending from the veranda to the
+garden, with a lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps forty
+Grandissimes could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere,
+whence you could see the cathedral, the Ursulines', the governor's
+mansion, and the river, far away, shining between the villas of
+Tchoupitoulas Coast--all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall as
+the flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this _fete de
+grandpere_.
+
+Odd to say, it was not the grandpere's birthday that had passed. For
+weeks the happy children of the many Grandissime branches--the
+Mandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins--had been standing with
+their uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to clap hands and jump,
+and still, from week to week, the appointed day had been made to fall
+back, and fall back before--what think you?--an inability to
+understand Honore.
+
+It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house that her
+best child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long been so. Even in
+Honore's early youth, a scant two years after she had watched him, over
+the tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away,
+a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissime
+of the Grandissimes--an inflexible of the inflexibles--he was found
+"inciting" (so the stately dames and officials who graced her front
+veranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of
+transatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud,
+rekindled by the Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. The
+main difficulty seemed to be that Honore could not be satisfied with a
+clean conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships of
+single households; his longing was, and had ever been--he had inherited
+it from his father--to see one unbroken and harmonious Grandissime
+family gathering yearly under this venerated roof without reproach
+before all persons, classes, and races with whom they had ever had to
+do. It was not hard for the old mansion to forgive him once or twice;
+but she had had to do it often. It seems no over-stretch of fancy to
+say she sometimes gazed down upon his erring ways with a look of patient
+sadness in her large and beautiful windows.
+
+And how had that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short instance:
+when, seven years before this present _fete de grandpere_, he came back
+from Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify),
+though in trouble then--a trouble that sent up the old feud flames
+again--opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all her
+gathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor of
+indiscriminate human freedom that for very shame's sake she hushed them
+up, in the fond hope that he would outgrow such heresies. But he? On top
+of all the rest, he declined a military commission and engaged in
+commerce--"shopkeeping, _parbleu!_"
+
+However, therein was developed a grain of consolation. Honore became--as
+he chose to call it--more prudent. With much tact, Agricola was amiably
+crowded off the dictator's chair, to become, instead, a sort of
+seneschal. For a time the family peace was perfect, and Honore, by a
+touch here to-day and a word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name,
+and all who bore it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as in
+his father's day--that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his very
+soul, as a sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods--as
+in Numa's day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other cession,
+like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her children's
+slave-schooners and the prostration alike of their slave-made crops and
+their Spanish liberties; and just in the fateful moment where Numa would
+have stood by her, Honore had let go. Ah, it was bitter!
+
+"See what foreign education does!" cried a Mandarin de Grandissime of
+the Baton Rouge Coast. "I am sorry now"--derisively--"that I never sent
+_my_ boy to France, am I not? No! No-o-o! I would rather my son should
+never know how to read, than that he should come back from Paris
+repudiating the sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Is
+education better than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends with
+Americains and tell me they--that call a negro 'monsieur'--are as good
+as his father? But that is what we get for letting Honore become a
+merchant. Ha! the degradation! Shaking hands with men who do not believe
+in the slave trade! Shake hands? Yes; associate--fraternize! with
+apothecaries and negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the
+_fete de grandpere_, in the house where he is really the chief--the
+_cacique!_"
+
+No! The family would not come together on the first appointment; no, nor
+on the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his wish; no, nor on
+the third--nor on the fourth.
+
+"_Non, Messieurs_!" cried both youth and reckless age; and, sometimes,
+also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of means, of force and
+of influence, urged on from behind by their proud and beautiful wives
+and daughters.
+
+Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days.
+Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with the
+poetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community recognized
+the supreme domination of "the gentleman" in questions of right and of
+"the ladies" in matters of sentiment. Under such conditions strength
+establishes over weakness a showy protection which is the subtlest of
+tyrannies, yet which, in the very moment of extending its arm over
+woman, confers upon her a power which a truer freedom would only
+diminish; constitutes her in a large degree an autocrat of public
+sentiment and thus accepts her narrowest prejudices and most belated
+errors as veriest need-be's of social life.
+
+The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those who
+boiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a close
+cover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most part, those
+who were holding office under old Spanish commissions, and were daily
+expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. The
+steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family--the timid, the
+apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than
+exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding
+harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so
+much easier--and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying to
+contemplate.
+
+"The Yankee was an inferior animal."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"But Honore had a right to his convictions."
+
+"Yes, that was so, too."
+
+"It looked very traitorous, however."
+
+"Yes, so it did."
+
+"Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honore was advancing the true
+interests of his people."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"It would not do to accept office under the Yankee government."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Yet it would never do to let the Yankees get the offices, either."
+
+"That was true; nobody could deny that."
+
+"If Spain or France got the country back, they would certainly remember
+and reward those who had held out faithfully."
+
+"Certainly! That was an old habit with France and Spain."
+
+"But if they did not get the country back--"
+
+"Yes, that is so; Honore is a very good fellow, and--"
+
+And, one after another, under the mild coolness of Honore's amiable
+disregard, their indignation trickled back from steam to water, and they
+went on drawing their stipends, some in Honore's counting-room, where
+they held positions, some from the provisional government, which had as
+yet made but few changes, and some, secretly, from the cunning
+Casa-Calvo; for, blow the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinity
+of the average Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.
+
+Then, at the right moment, Honore made a single happy stroke, and even
+the hot Grandissimes, they of the interior parishes and they of
+Agricola's squadron, slaked and crumbled when he wrote each a letter
+saying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and that
+it would be well, if they wished to _evade_ them, to write the governor
+at once, surrendering their present commissions. Well! Evade? They would
+evade nothing! Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to
+write to the usurper? They would submit to keep the positions first.
+
+But the next move was Honore's making the whole town aware of his
+apostasy. The great mansion, with the old grandpere sitting out in
+front, shivered. As we have seen, he had ridden through the Place
+d'Armes with the arch-usurper himself. Yet, after all, a Grandissime
+would be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn't
+that glorious--never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? It
+was not everyone who could ride with the governor.
+
+And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that would
+not meet either in January or February, met in the first week of March,
+every constituent one of them.
+
+The feast has been eaten. The garden now is joyous with children and
+the veranda resplendent with ladies. From among the latter the eye
+quickly selects one. She is perceptibly taller than the others; she sits
+in their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you look at her
+there is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make which you would
+not allow. Her hair, once black, now lifted up into a glistening
+snow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful face, while her
+full stature and stately bearing suggest the finer parts of Agricola,
+her brother. It is Madame Grandissime, the mother of Honore.
+
+One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite cousin. On
+her right is her daughter, the widowed senora of Jose Martinez; she has
+wonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful. The commanding
+carriage of the mother is tempered in her to a gentle dignity and calm,
+contrasting pointedly with the animated manners of the courtly matrons
+among whom she sits, and whose continuous conversation takes this
+direction or that, at the pleasure of Madame Grandissime.
+
+But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those children
+who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the front
+stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, which
+every few minutes, at an end of the veranda, appears, wheels and
+disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of
+face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the
+new-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there,
+indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that
+one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of
+their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a
+less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As
+Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole
+stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. There
+is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, and a full red-ripeness of the
+lips would hardly be in keeping; but there is plenty of life in their
+eyes, which glance out between the curtains of their long lashes with a
+merry dancing that keeps time to the prattle of tongues. You are not
+able to get a straight look into them, and if you could you would see
+only your own image cast back in pitiful miniature; but you turn away
+and feel, as you fortify yourself with an inward smile, that they know
+you, you man, through and through, like a little song. And in turning,
+your sight is glad to rest again on the face of Honore's mother. You
+see, this time, that she _is_ his mother, by a charm you had overlooked,
+a candid, serene and lovable smile. It is the wonder of those who see
+that smile that she can ever be harsh.
+
+The playful, mock-martial tread of the delicate Creole feet is all at
+once swallowed up by the sound of many heavier steps in the hall, and
+the fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and nephews of the
+great family come out, not a man of them that cannot, with a little
+care, keep on his feet. Their descendants of the present day sip from
+shallower glasses and with less marked results.
+
+The matrons, rising, offer the chief seat to the first comer, the
+great-grandsire--the oldest living Grandissime--Alcibiade, a shaken but
+unfallen monument of early colonial days, a browned and corrugated
+souvenir of De Vaudreuil's pomps, of O'Reilly's iron rule, of Galvez'
+brilliant wars--a man who had seen Bienville and Zephyr Grandissime.
+With what splendor of manner Madame Fusilier de Grandissime offers, and
+he accepts, the place of honor! Before he sits down he pauses a moment
+to hear out the companion on whose arm he had been leaning. But
+Theophile, a dark, graceful youth of eighteen, though he is recounting
+something with all the oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantly
+silent, bows with grave deference to the ladies, hands the aged
+forefather gracefully to his seat, and turning, recommences the recital
+before one who hears all with the same perfect courtesy--his beloved
+cousin Honore.
+
+Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out. Gallant crew! These are they who
+have been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor (?) to
+understand the opaque motives of Numa's son.
+
+In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, with
+the usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is Colonel Agamemnon
+Brahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's military pride,
+conservator of its military glory, and, after Honore, the most admired
+of the name. Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from
+Frowenfeld's shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon in
+conversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman's nether
+limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which
+the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter,
+grapples the subject of boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who
+prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife
+is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on a
+step, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-looking
+black-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy,
+below. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite down to the
+bottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade. He is a large,
+broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar,
+with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with the
+eye of a hunter--or, it may be, of a sailor.
+
+"Valentine will not marry," says one of two ladies who lean over the
+rail of the veranda above. "I wonder why."
+
+The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shoulders
+and pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to which
+would only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.
+
+Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had retired. Raoul
+was there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way up
+the steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.
+
+"No such thing!" exclaimed his companion.
+
+(The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)
+
+"I give you my sacred word of honor!" cried Raoul.
+
+"That Honore is having all his business carried on in English?" asked
+the incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)
+
+"I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on a stack
+of Bibles that high!"
+
+"Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!"
+
+This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodic
+flirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.
+
+"Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.
+
+"Honore!" called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three persons passed the
+call around the corner of the veranda.
+
+Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By the time he
+arrived, there was a Babel of discussion.
+
+"Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be written
+in English," said Sylvestre.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It is not true, is it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory "Ah!"
+except Honore's mother. She turned upon him a look of silent but intense
+and indignant disappointment.
+
+"Honore!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, "Honore!"
+
+But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens of
+girls.
+
+"Honore!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap of
+writing-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of a
+boot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee?'"
+
+There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.
+
+"Ask Valentine," said Honore.
+
+Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man's only retort was to survey
+the company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to push the ashes
+slowly from his cigar with his little finger. M. Valentine Grandissime,
+of Tchoupitoulas, could not read.
+
+"Show it to Agricola," cried two or three, as that great man came out
+upon the veranda, heavy-eyed, and with tumbled hair.
+
+Sylvestre, spying Agricola's head beyond the ladies, put the question.
+
+"How is it spelled on that paper?" retorted the king of beasts.
+
+"L-a-y--"
+
+"Ignoramus!" growled the old man.
+
+"I did not spell it," cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the paper. But
+Sylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady snatched the paper, two
+or three cried "Give it to Agricola!" and a pretty boy, whom the
+laughter and excitement had lured from the garden, scampered up the
+steps and handed it to the old man.
+
+"Honore!" cried Raoul, "it must not be read. It is one of your private
+matters."
+
+But Raoul's insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a private
+matter brought another laugh.
+
+Honore nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who could not
+understand English, as well as those who could, listened. It was a paper
+Sylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the day of Aurore's visit
+to the counting-room. Agricola read:
+
+     "What is that layde want in thare with Honore?"
+     "Honore is goin giv her bac that proprety--that is
+     Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband."
+
+That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was reading
+aloud--"that is Aurore De Grap--"
+
+At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a sharp
+flash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of silence
+followed and Agricola's thundering voice rolled down upon Sylvestre in a
+succession of terrible imprecations.
+
+It was painful to see the young man's face as, speechless, he received
+this abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile playing about his
+mouth, half of distress and half of defiance, that said as plain as a
+smile could say, "Uncle Agricola, you will have to pay for
+this mistake."
+
+As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward to
+Valentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and passing with a
+courteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola, went into the
+house. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his shoe-buckles, tossed
+his cigar quietly into the grass and passed around a corner of the house
+to meet Sylvestre in the rear.
+
+Honore had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with him, and
+Agricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few male figures
+down in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep up their spirits
+on the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or the waning daylight,
+and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not long before Raoul, who had
+come up upon the veranda, was left alone. He seemed to wait for
+something, as, leaning over the rail while the stars came out, he sang
+to himself, in a soft undertone, a snatch of a Creole song:
+
+     "La pluie--la pluie tombait,
+     Crapaud criait,
+     Moustique chantait--"
+
+The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break
+off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of
+his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black
+shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a
+magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the
+whole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.
+
+In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven dark
+forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars to
+be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did not
+listen. In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft,
+mock-startled "Who is that?" and one of that same sparkling group of
+girls that had lately hung upon Honore came so close to Raoul, in her
+attempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met.
+They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled
+forth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the
+great rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes
+were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire,
+waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each,
+from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.
+
+"But mark," they cried unitedly, "you have got to wind up with the story
+of Bras-Coupe!"
+
+"A song! A song!"
+
+"_Une chanson Creole! Une chanson des negres!_"
+
+"Sing 'ye tole dance la doung y doung doung!'" cried a black-eyed girl.
+
+Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.
+
+"Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on."
+
+But instead he sang them this:
+
+     "_La premier' fois mo te 'oir li,
+     Li te pose au bord so lit;
+     Mo di', Bouzon, bel n'amourese!
+     L'aut' fois li te si' so la saise
+     Comme vie Madam dans so fauteil,
+     Quand li vive cote soleil.
+
+     So gies ye te plis noir passe la nouitte,
+     So de la lev' plis doux passe la quitte!
+     Tou' mo la vie, zamein mo oir
+     Ein n' amourese zoli comme ca!
+          Mo' blie manze--mo' blie boir'--
+          Mo' blie tout dipi c' temps-la--
+          Mo' blie parle--mo' blie dormi,
+          Quand mo pense apres zami!_"
+
+"And you have heard Bras-Coupe sing that, yourself?"
+
+"Once upon a time," said Raoul, warming with his subject, "we were
+coming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues. We had been three
+days fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador. Bras-Coupe had one pirogue
+with six paddles--"
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried a youth named Baltazar; "sing that, Raoul!"
+
+And he sang that.
+
+"But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out in the
+bayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!"
+
+"That boat song, do you mean, which they sing as a signal to those on
+shore?" He hummed.
+
+[Illustration: Music]
+
+     "De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie,
+     De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie,
+     Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie,
+     Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie,
+     Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie, momza;
+     Momza, momza, momza, momza,
+     Roza, roza, roza-et--momza."
+
+This was followed by another and still another, until the hour began to
+grow late. And then they gathered closer around him and heard the
+promised story. At the same hour Honore Grandissime, wrapping himself in
+a greatcoat and giving himself up to sad and somewhat bitter
+reflections, had wandered from the paternal house, and by and by from
+the grounds, not knowing why or whither, but after a time soliciting, at
+Frowenfeld's closing door, the favor of his company. He had been feeling
+a kind of suffocation. This it was that made him seek and prize the
+presence and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary. He led him out
+to the edge of the river. Here they sat down, and with a laborious
+attempt at a hard and jesting mood, Honore told the same dark story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPE
+
+
+"A very little more than eight years ago," began Honore--but not only
+Honore, but Raoul also; and not only they, but another, earlier on the
+same day,--Honore, the f.m.c. But we shall not exactly follow the words
+of any one of these.
+
+Bras-Coupe, they said, had been, in Africa and under another name, a
+prince among his people. In a certain war of conquest, to which he had
+been driven by _ennui_, he was captured, stripped of his royalty,
+marched down upon the beach of the Atlantic, and, attired as a true son
+of Adam, with two goodly arms intact, became a commodity. Passing out of
+first hands in barter for a looking-glass, he was shipped in good order
+and condition on board the good schooner _Egalite_, whereof Blank was
+master, to be delivered without delay at the port of Nouvelle Orleans
+(the dangers of fire and navigation excepted), unto Blank Blank. In
+witness whereof, He that made men's skins of different colors, but all
+blood of one, hath entered the same upon His book, and sealed it to the
+day of judgment.
+
+Of the voyage little is recorded--here below; the less the better. Part
+of the living merchandise failed to keep; the weather was rough, the
+cargo large, the vessel small. However, the captain discovered there was
+room over the side, and there--all flesh is grass--from time to time
+during the voyage he jettisoned the unmerchantable.
+
+Yet, when the reopened hatches let in the sweet smell of the land,
+Bras-Coupe had come to the upper--the favored--the buttered side of the
+world; the anchor slid with a rumble of relief down through the muddy
+fathoms of the Mississippi, and the prince could hear through the
+schooner's side the savage current of the river, leaping and licking
+about the bows, and whimpering low welcomes home. A splendid picture to
+the eyes of the royal captive, as his head came up out of the hatchway,
+was the little Franco-Spanish-American city that lay on the low,
+brimming bank. There were little forts that showed their whitewashed
+teeth; there was a green parade-ground, and yellow barracks, and
+cabildo, and hospital, and cavalry stables, and custom-house, and a most
+inviting jail, convenient to the cathedral--all of dazzling white and
+yellow, with a black stripe marking the track of the conflagration of
+1794, and here and there among the low roofs a lofty one with
+round-topped dormer windows and a breezy belvidere looking out upon the
+plantations of coffee and indigo beyond the town.
+
+When Bras-Coupe staggered ashore, he stood but a moment among a drove
+of "likely boys," before Agricola Fusilier, managing the business
+adventures of the Grandissime estate, as well as the residents thereon,
+and struck with admiration for the physical beauties of the chieftain (a
+man may even fancy a negro--as a negro), bought the lot, and, both to
+resell him with the rest to some unappreciative 'Cadian, induced Don
+Jose Martinez' overseer to become his purchaser.
+
+Down in the rich parish of St. Bernard (whose boundary line now touches
+that of the distended city) lay the plantation, known before Bras-Coupe
+passed away as La Renaissance. Here it was that he entered at once upon
+a chapter of agreeable surprises. He was humanely met, presented with a
+clean garment, lifted into a cart drawn by oxen, taken to a whitewashed
+cabin of logs, finer than his palace at home, and made to comprehend
+that it was a free gift. He was also given some clean food, whereupon he
+fell sick. At home it would have been the part of piety for the magnate
+next the throne to launch him heavenward at once; but now, healing doses
+were administered, and to his amazement he recovered. It reminded him
+that he was no longer king.
+
+His name, he replied to an inquiry touching that subject, was --------,
+something in the Jaloff tongue, which he by and by condescended to
+render into Congo: Mioko-Koanga; in French Bras-Coupe; the Arm Cut Off.
+Truly it would have been easy to admit, had this been his meaning, that
+his tribe, in losing him, had lost its strong right arm close off at the
+shoulder; not so easy for his high-paying purchaser to allow, if this
+other was his intent: that the arm which might no longer shake the spear
+or swing the wooden sword was no better than a useless stump never to be
+lifted for aught else. But whether easy to allow or not, that was his
+meaning. He made himself a type of all Slavery, turning into flesh and
+blood the truth that all Slavery is maiming.
+
+He beheld more luxury in a week than all his subjects had seen in a
+century. Here Congo girls were dressed in cottons and flannels worth,
+where he came from, an elephant's tusk apiece. Everybody wore
+clothes--children and lads alone excepted. Not a lion had invaded the
+settlement since his immigration. The serpents were as nothing; an
+occasional one coming up through the floor--that was all. True, there
+was more emaciation than unassisted conjecture could explain--a
+profusion of enlarged joints and diminished muscles, which, thank God,
+was even then confined to a narrow section and disappeared with Spanish
+rule. He had no experimental knowledge of it; nay, regular meals, on the
+contrary, gave him anxious concern, yet had the effect--spite of his
+apprehension that he was being fattened for a purpose--of restoring the
+herculean puissance which formerly in Africa had made him the terror of
+the battle.
+
+When one day he had come to be quite himself, he was invited out into
+the sunshine, and escorted by the driver (a sort of foreman to the
+overseer), went forth dimly wondering. They reached a field where some
+men and women were hoeing. He had seen men and women--subjects of
+his--labor--a little--in Africa. The driver handed him a hoe; he
+examined it with silent interest--until by signs he was requested to
+join the pastime.
+
+"What?"
+
+He spoke, not with his lips, but with the recoil of his splendid frame
+and the ferocious expansion of his eyes. This invitation was a cataract
+of lightning leaping down an ink-black sky. In one instant of
+all-pervading clearness he read his sentence--WORK.
+
+Bras-Coupe was six feet five. With a sweep as quick as instinct the back
+of the hoe smote the driver full in the head. Next, the prince lifted
+the nearest Congo crosswise, brought thirty-two teeth together in his
+wildly kicking leg and cast him away as a bad morsel; then, throwing
+another into the branches of a willow, and a woman over his head into a
+draining-ditch, he made one bound for freedom, and fell to his knees,
+rocking from side to side under the effect of a pistol-ball from the
+overseer. It had struck him in the forehead, and running around the
+skull in search of a penetrable spot, tradition--which sometimes
+jests--says came out despairingly, exactly where it had entered.
+
+It so happened that, except the overseer, the whole company were black.
+Why should the trivial scandal be blabbed? A plaster or two made
+everything even in a short time, except in the driver's case--for the
+driver died. The woman whom Bras-Coupe had thrown over his head lived to
+sell _calas_ to Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+Don Jose, young and austere, knew nothing about agriculture and cared as
+much about human nature. The overseer often thought this, but never said
+it; he would not trust even himself with the dangerous criticism. When
+he ventured to reveal the foregoing incidents to the senor he laid all
+the blame possible upon the man whom death had removed beyond the reach
+of correction, and brought his account to a climax by hazarding the
+asserting that Bras-Coupe was an animal that could not be whipped.
+
+"Caramba!" exclaimed the master, with gentle emphasis, "how so?"
+
+"Perhaps senor had better ride down to the quarters," replied the
+overseer.
+
+It was a great sacrifice of dignity, but the master made it.
+
+"Bring him out."
+
+They brought him out--chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, an iron
+yoke on his neck. The Spanish Creole master had often seen the bull,
+with his long, keen horns and blazing eye, standing in the arena; but
+this was as though he had come face to face with a rhinoceros.
+
+"This man is not a Congo," he said.
+
+"He is a Jaloff," replied the encouraged overseer. "See his fine,
+straight nose; moreover, he is a _candio_--a prince. If I whip him he
+will die."
+
+The dauntless captive and fearless master stood looking into each
+other's eyes until each recognized in the other his peer in physical
+courage, and each was struck with an admiration for the other which no
+after difference was sufficient entirely to destroy. Had Bras-Coupe's
+eye quailed but once--just for one little instant--he would have got the
+lash; but, as it was--
+
+"Get an interpreter," said Don Jose; then, more privately, "and come to
+an understanding. I shall require it of you."
+
+Where might one find an interpreter--one not merely able to render a
+Jaloff's meaning into Creole French, or Spanish, but with such a turn
+for diplomatic correspondence as would bring about an "understanding"
+with this African buffalo? The overseer was left standing and thinking,
+and Clemence, who had not forgotten who threw her into the
+draining-ditch, cunningly passed by.
+
+"Ah, Clemence--"
+
+"_Mo pas capabe! Mo pas capabe!_ (I cannot, I cannot!) _Ya, ya, ya! 'oir
+Miche Agricol' Fusilier! ouala yune bon monture, oui!_"--which was to
+signify that Agricola could interpret the very Papa Lebat.
+
+"Agricola Fusilier! The last man on earth to make peace."
+
+But there seemed to be no choice, and to Agricola the overseer went. It
+was but a little ride to the Grandissime place.
+
+"I, Agricola Fusilier, stand as an interpreter to a negro? H-sir!"
+
+"But I thought you might know of some person," said the weakening
+applicant, rubbing his ear with his hand.
+
+"Ah!" replied Agricola, addressing the surrounding scenery, "if I did
+not--who would? You may take Palmyre."
+
+The overseer softly smote his hands together at the happy thought.
+
+"Yes," said Agricola, "take Palmyre; she has picked up as many negro
+dialects as I know European languages."
+
+And she went to the don's plantation as interpreter, followed by
+Agricola's prayer to Fate that she might in some way be overtaken by
+disaster. The two hated each other with all the strength they had. He
+knew not only her pride, but her passion for the absent Honore. He hated
+her, also, for her intelligence, for the high favor in which she stood
+with her mistress, and for her invincible spirit, which was more
+offensively patent to him than to others, since he was himself the chief
+object of her silent detestation.
+
+It was Palmyre's habit to do nothing without painstaking. "When
+Mademoiselle comes to be Senora," thought she--she knew that her
+mistress and the don were affianced--"it will be well to have a Senor's
+esteem. I shall endeavor to succeed." It was from this motive, then,
+that with the aid of her mistress she attired herself in a resplendence
+of scarlet and beads and feathers that could not fail the double purpose
+of connecting her with the children of Ethiopia and commanding the
+captive's instant admiration.
+
+Alas for those who succeed too well! No sooner did the African turn his
+tiger glance upon her than the fire of his eyes died out; and when she
+spoke to him in the dear accents of his native tongue, the matter of
+strife vanished from his mind. He loved.
+
+He sat down tamely in his irons and listened to Palmyre's argument as a
+wrecked mariner would listen to ghostly church-bells. He would give a
+short assent, feast his eyes, again assent, and feast his ears; but when
+at length she made bold to approach the actual issue, and finally
+uttered the loathed word, _Work_, he rose up, six feet five, a statue of
+indignation in black marble.
+
+And then Palmyre, too, rose up, glorying in him, and went to explain to
+master and overseer. Bras-Coupe understood, she said, that he was a
+slave--it was the fortune of war, and he was a warrior; but, according
+to a generally recognized principle in African international law, he
+could not reasonably be expected to work.
+
+"As Senor will remember I told him," remarked the overseer; "how can a
+man expect to plow with a zebra?"
+
+Here he recalled a fact in his earlier experience. An African of this
+stripe had been found to answer admirably as a "driver" to make others
+work. A second and third parley, extending through two or three days,
+were held with the prince, looking to his appointment to the vacant
+office of driver; yet what was the master's amazement to learn at length
+that his Highness declined the proffered honor.
+
+"Stop!" spoke the overseer again, detecting a look of alarm in Palmyre's
+face as she turned away, "he doesn't do any such thing. If Senor will
+let me take the man to Agricola--"
+
+"No!" cried Palmyre, with an agonized look, "I will tell. He will take
+the place and fill it if you will give me to him for his own--but oh,
+messieurs, for the love of God--I do not want to be his wife!"
+
+The overseer looked at the Senor, ready to approve whatever he should
+decide. Bras-Coupe's intrepid audacity took the Spaniard's heart by
+irresistible assault.
+
+"I leave it entirely with Senor Fusilier," he said.
+
+"But he is not my master; he has no right--"
+
+"Silence!"
+
+And she was silent; and so, sometimes, is fire in the wall.
+
+Agricola's consent was given with malicious promptness, and as
+Bras-Coupe's fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he fill his
+office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear veranda of the
+Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one already appointed to
+take place in the grand hall of the same house six months from that
+present day. In the meanwhile Palmyre should remain with Mademoiselle,
+who had promptly but quietly made up her mind that Palmyre should not be
+wed unless she wished to be. Bras-Coupe made no objection, was royally
+worthless for a time, but learned fast, mastered the "gumbo" dialect in
+a few weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for
+gourde dollars. Nevertheless, there were but three persons within as
+many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.
+
+The first was Palmyre. His bearing in her presence was ever one of
+solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in
+himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth being
+there to see. "It was royal!" said the overseer.
+
+The second was not that official. When Bras-Coupe said--as, at stated
+intervals, he did say--"_Mo courri c'ez Agricole Fusilier pou' 'oir
+'namourouse_ (I go to Agricola Fusilier to see my betrothed,)" the
+overseer would sooner have intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws
+than that one lover. He would look after him and shake a prophetic head.
+"Trouble coming; better not deceive that fellow;" yet that was the very
+thing Palmyre dared do. Her admiration for Bras-Coupe was almost
+boundless. She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the
+contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the gigantic
+embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded realization of
+her lifetime longing for terrible strength. But the single deficiency
+in all this impassioned regard was--what so many fairer loves have found
+impossible to explain to so many gentler lovers--an entire absence of
+preference; her heart she could not give him--she did not have it. Yet
+after her first prayer to the Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance,
+to the secret surprise and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated
+content. It was artifice; she knew Agricola's power, and to seem to
+consent was her one chance with him. He might thus be beguiled into
+withdrawing his own consent. That failing, she had Mademoiselle's
+promise to come to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment;
+and that failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain
+hard breast was not too hard. Another element of safety, of which she
+knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brulee. The word had reached
+there that love had conquered--that, despite all hard words, and rancor,
+and positive injury, the Grandissime hand--the fairest of Grandissime
+hands--was about to be laid into that of one who without much stretch
+might be called a De Grapion; that there was, moreover, positive effort
+being made to induce a restitution of old gaming-table spoils. Honore
+and Mademoiselle, his sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were
+striving for this end. Don Jose sent this intelligence to his kinsman as
+glad tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which
+makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre, also,
+was given to the chieftain. The letter that came back to the young
+Spaniard did not blame him so much: _he_ was ignorant of all the facts;
+but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify him that if Palmyre's
+union with Bras-Coupe should be completed, as sure as there was a God in
+heaven, the writer would have the life of the man who knowingly had thus
+endeavored to dishonor one who _shared the blood of the De Grapions_.
+Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to drop
+hints to Don Jose that the engagement of Bras-Coupe and Palmyre need not
+be considered irreversible; but the don was not desirous of
+disappointing his terrible pet. Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a
+little too deeply. She thought the moment had come for herself to insist
+on the match, and thus provoke Agricola to forbid it. To her
+incalculable dismay she saw him a second time reconsider and
+become silent.
+
+The second person who did not fear Bras-Coupe was Mademoiselle. On one
+of the giant's earliest visits to see Palmyre he obeyed the summons
+which she brought him, to appear before the lady. A more artificial man
+might have objected on the score of dress, his attire being a single
+gaudy garment tightly enveloping the waist and thighs. As his eyes fell
+upon the beautiful white lady he prostrated himself upon the ground, his
+arms outstretched before him. He would not move till she was gone. Then
+he arose like a hermit who has seen a vision. "_Bras-Coupe n' pas oule
+oir zombis_ (Bras-Coupe dares not look upon a spirit)." From that hour
+he worshipped. He saw her often; every time, after one glance at her
+countenance, he would prostrate his gigantic length with his face in
+the dust.
+
+The third person who did not fear him was--Agricola? Nay, it was the
+Spaniard--a man whose capability to fear anything in nature or beyond
+had never been discovered.
+
+Long before the end of his probation Bras-Coupe would have slipped the
+entanglements of bondage, though as yet he felt them only as one feels a
+spider's web across the face, had not the master, according to a little
+affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day
+did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal
+swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and
+bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican;
+when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the
+other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew
+nigh[3]. A goodly company had assembled. All things were ready. The
+bride was dressed, the bridegroom had come. On the great back piazza,
+which had been inclosed with sail-cloth and lighted with lanterns, was
+Palmyre, full of a new and deep design and playing her deceit to the
+last, robed in costly garments to whose beauty was added the charm of
+their having been worn once, and once only, by her beloved Mademoiselle.
+
+[Footnote 3: An over-zealous Franciscan once complained bitterly to the
+bishop of Havana, that people were being married in Louisiana in their
+own houses after dark and thinking nothing of it. It is not certain that
+he had reference to the Grandissime mansion; at any rate he was tittered
+down by the whole community.]
+
+But where was Bras-Coupe?
+
+The question was asked of Palmyre by Agricola with a gaze that meant in
+English, "No tricks, girl!"
+
+Among the servants who huddled at the windows and door to see the inner
+magnificence a frightened whisper was already going round.
+
+"We have made a sad discovery, Miche Fusilier," said the overseer.
+"Bras-Coupe is here; we have him in a room just yonder. But--the truth
+is, sir, Bras-Coupe is a voudou."
+
+"Well, and suppose he is; what of it? Only hush; do not let his master
+know it. It is nothing; all the blacks are voudous, more or less."
+
+"But he declines to dress himself--has painted himself all rings and
+stripes, antelope fashion."
+
+"Tell him Agricola Fusilier says, 'dress immediately!'"
+
+"Oh, Miche, we have said that five times already, and his answer--you
+will pardon me--his answer is--spitting on the ground--that you are a
+contemptible _dotchian_ (white trash)."
+
+There is nothing to do but privily to call the very bride--the lady
+herself. She comes forth in all her glory, small, but oh, so beautiful!
+Slam! Bras-Coupe is upon his face, his finger-tips touching the tips of
+her snowy slippers. She gently bids him go and dress, and at once
+he goes.
+
+Ah! now the question may be answered without whispering. There is
+Bras-Coupe, towering above all heads, in ridiculous red and blue
+regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every
+one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the
+thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh,
+Bras-Coupe--heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly
+priest say his say--then her cunning should help her _not to be_ his
+wife, yet to show his mighty arm how and when to strike.
+
+"He is looking for Palmyre," said some, and at that moment he saw her.
+
+"Ho-o-o-o-o!"
+
+Agricola's best roar was a penny trumpet to Bras-Coupe's note of joy.
+The whole masculine half of the indoor company flocked out to see what
+the matter was. Bras-Coupe was taking her hand in one of his and laying
+his other upon her head; and as some one made an unnecessary gesture for
+silence, he sang, beating slow and solemn time with his naked foot and
+with the hand that dropped hers to smite his breast:
+
+     "'_En haut la montagne, zami,
+     Mo pe coupe canne, zami,
+     Pou' fe l'a'zen' zami,
+     Pou' mo baille Palmyre.
+     Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre mo c'ere,
+     Mo l'aime 'ou'--mo l'aime 'ou'_.'"
+
+"_Montagne?_" asked one slave of another, "_qui est ca, montagne? gnia
+pas quic 'ose comme ca dans la Louisiana?_ (What's a mountain?" We
+haven't such things in Louisiana.)"
+
+"_Mein ye gagnein plein montagnes dans l'Afrique_, listen!"
+
+     "'_Ah! Palmyre, Palmyre, mo' piti zozo,'
+     Mo l'aime 'ou'--mo l'aime, l'aime 'ou'_.'"
+
+"Bravissimo!--" but just then a counter-attraction drew the white
+company back into the house. An old French priest with sandalled feet
+and a dirty face had arrived. There was a moment of handshaking with the
+good father, then a moment of palpitation and holding of the breath, and
+then--you would have known it by the turning away of two or three
+feminine heads in tears--the lily hand became the don's, to have and to
+hold, by authority of the Church and the Spanish king. And all was
+merry, save that outside there was coming up as villanous a night as
+ever cast black looks in through snug windows.
+
+It was just as the newly-wed Spaniard, with Agricola and all the guests,
+were concluding the byplay of marrying the darker couple, that the
+hurricane struck the dwelling. The holy and jovial father had made faint
+pretence of kissing this second bride; the ladies, colonels, dons,
+etc.,--though the joke struck them as a trifle coarse--were beginning to
+laugh and clap hands again and the gowned jester to bow to right and
+left, when Bras-Coupe, tardily realizing the consummation of his hopes,
+stepped forward to embrace his wife.
+
+"Bras-Coupe!"
+
+The voice was that of Palmyre's mistress. She had not been able to
+comprehend her maid's behavior, but now Palmyre had darted upon her an
+appealing look.
+
+The warrior stopped as if a javelin had flashed over his head and stuck
+in the wall.
+
+"Bras-Coupe must wait till I give him his wife."
+
+He sank, with hidden face, slowly to the floor.
+
+"Bras-Coupe hears the voice of zombis; the voice is sweet, but the words
+are very strong; from the same sugar-cane comes _sirop_ and _tafia_;
+Bras-Coupe says to zombis, 'Bras-Coupe will wait; but if the _dotchians_
+deceive Bras-Coupe--" he rose to his feet with his eyes closed and his
+great black fist lifted over his head--"Bras-Coupe will call
+Voudou-Magnan!"
+
+The crowd retreated and the storm fell like a burst of infernal
+applause. A whiff like fifty witches flouted up the canvas curtain of
+the gallery and a fierce black cloud, drawing the moon under its cloak,
+belched forth a stream of fire that seemed to flood the ground; a peal
+of thunder followed as if the sky had fallen in, the house quivered, the
+great oaks groaned, and every lesser thing bowed down before the awful
+blast. Every lip held its breath for a minute--or an hour, no one
+knew--there was a sudden lull of the wind, and the floods came down.
+Have you heard it thunder and rain in those Louisiana lowlands? Every
+clap seems to crack the world. It has rained a moment; you peer through
+the black pane--your house is an island, all the land is sea.
+
+However, the supper was spread in the hall and in due time the guests
+were filled. Then a supper was spread in the big hall in the basement,
+below stairs, the sons and daughters of Ham came down like the fowls of
+the air upon a rice-field, and Bras-Coupe, throwing his heels about with
+the joyous carelessness of a smutted Mercury, for the first time in his
+life tasted the blood of the grape. A second, a fifth, a tenth time he
+tasted it, drinking more deeply each time, and would have taken it ten
+times more had not his bride cunningly concealed it. It was like
+stealing a tiger's kittens.
+
+The moment quickly came when he wanted his eleventh bumper. As he
+presented his request a silent shiver of consternation ran through the
+dark company; and when, in what the prince meant as a remonstrative
+tone, he repeated the petition--splitting the table with his fist by way
+of punctuation--there ensued a hustling up staircases and a cramming
+into dim corners that left him alone at the banquet.
+
+Leaving the table, he strode upstairs and into the chirruping and
+dancing of the grand salon. There was a halt in the cotillion and a hush
+of amazement like the shutting off of steam. Bras-Coupe strode straight
+to his master, laid his paw upon his fellow-bridegroom's shoulder and in
+a thunder-tone demanded:
+
+"More!"
+
+The master swore a Spanish oath, lifted his hand and--fell, beneath the
+terrific fist of his slave, with a bang that jingled the candelabra.
+Dolorous stroke!--for the dealer of it. Given, apparently to him--poor,
+tipsy savage--in self-defence, punishable, in a white offender, by a
+small fine or a few days' imprisonment, it assured Bras-Coupe the death
+of a felon; such was the old _Code Noir_. (We have a _Code Noir_ now,
+but the new one is a mental reservation, not an enactment.)
+
+The guests stood for an instant as if frozen, smitten stiff with the
+instant expectation of insurrection, conflagration and rapine (just as
+we do to-day whenever some poor swaggering Pompey rolls up his fist and
+gets a ball through his body), while, single-handed and naked-fisted in
+a room full of swords, the giant stood over his master, making strange
+signs and passes and rolling out in wrathful words of his mother tongue
+what it needed no interpreter to tell his swarming enemies was a voudou
+malediction.
+
+"_Nous sommes grigis!_" screamed two or three ladies, "we are
+bewitched!"
+
+"Look to your wives and daughters!" shouted a Brahmin-Mandarin.
+
+"Shoot the black devils without mercy!" cried a Mandarin-Fusilier,
+unconsciously putting into a single outflash of words the whole Creole
+treatment of race troubles.
+
+With a single bound Bras-Coupe reached the drawing-room door; his gaudy
+regimentals made a red and blue streak down the hall; there was a rush
+of frilled and powdered gentlemen to the rear veranda, an avalanche of
+lightning with Bras-Coupe in the midst making for the swamp, and then
+all without was blackness of darkness and all within was a wild
+commingled chatter of Creole, French, and Spanish tongues,--in the midst
+of which the reluctant Agricola returned his dresssword to its scabbard.
+
+While the wet lanterns swung on crazily in the trees along the way by
+which the bridegroom was to have borne his bride; while Madame
+Grandissime prepared an impromptu bridalchamber; while the Spaniard
+bathed his eye and the blue gash on his cheek-bone; while Palmyre paced
+her room in a fever and wild tremor of conflicting emotions throughout
+the night, and the guests splashed home after the storm as best they
+could, Bras-Coupe was practically declaring his independence on a slight
+rise of ground hardly sixty feet in circumference and lifted scarce
+above the water in the inmost depths of the swamp.
+
+And amid what surroundings! Endless colonnades of cypresses; long,
+motionless drapings of gray moss; broad sheets of noisome waters, pitchy
+black, resting on bottomless ooze; cypress knees studding the surface;
+patches of floating green, gleaming brilliantly here and there; yonder
+where the sunbeams wedge themselves in, constellations of water-lilies,
+the many-hued iris, and a multitude of flowers that no man had named;
+here, too, serpents great and small, of wonderful colorings, and the
+dull and loathsome moccasin sliding warily off the dead tree; in dimmer
+recesses the cow alligator, with her nest hard by; turtles a century
+old; owls and bats, raccoons, opossums, rats, centipedes and creatures
+of like vileness; great vines of beautiful leaf and scarlet fruit in
+deadly clusters; maddening mosquitoes, parasitic insects, gorgeous
+dragon-flies and pretty water-lizards: the blue heron, the snowy crane,
+the red-bird, the moss-bird, the night-hawk and the chuckwill's-widow; a
+solemn stillness and stifled air only now and then disturbed by the call
+or whir of the summer duck, the dismal ventriloquous note of the
+rain-crow, or the splash of a dead branch falling into the clear but
+lifeless bayou.
+
+The pack of Cuban hounds that howl from Don Jose's kennels cannot snuff
+the trail of the stolen canoe that glides through the sombre blue vapors
+of the African's fastnesses. His arrows send no telltale reverberations
+to the distant clearing. Many a wretch in his native wilderness has
+Bras-Coupe himself, in palmier days, driven to just such an existence,
+to escape the chains and horrors of the barracoons; therefore not a whit
+broods he over man's inhumanity, but, taking the affair as a matter of
+course, casts about him for a future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE STORY OF BRAS-COUPE, CONTINUED
+
+
+Bras-Coupe let the autumn pass, and wintered in his den.
+
+Don Jose, in a majestic way, endeavored to be happy. He took his senora
+to his hall, and under her rule it took on for a while a look and
+feeling which turned it from a hunting-lodge into a home. Wherever the
+lady's steps turned--or it is as correct to say wherever the proud tread
+of Palmyre turned--the features of bachelor's-hall disappeared; guns,
+dogs, oars, saddles, nets, went their way into proper banishment, and
+the broad halls and lofty chambers--the floors now muffled with mats of
+palmetto-leaf--no longer re-echoed the tread of a lonely master, but
+breathed a redolence of flowers and a rippling murmur of
+well-contented song.
+
+But the song was not from the throat of Bras-Coupe's "_piti zozo_."
+Silent and severe by day, she moaned away whole nights heaping
+reproaches upon herself for the impulse--now to her, because it had
+failed, inexplicable in its folly--which had permitted her hand to lie
+in Bras-Coupe's and the priest to bind them together.
+
+For in the audacity of her pride, or, as Agricola would have said, in
+the immensity of her impudence, she had held herself consecrate to a
+hopeless love. But now she was a black man's wife! and even he unable
+to sit at her feet and learn the lesson she had hoped to teach him. She
+had heard of San Domingo; for months the fierce heart within her silent
+bosom had been leaping and shouting and seeing visions of fire and
+blood, and when she brooded over the nearness of Agricola and the
+remoteness of Honore these visions got from her a sort of mad consent.
+The lesson she would have taught the giant was Insurrection. But it was
+too late. Letting her dagger sleep in her bosom, and with an undefined
+belief in imaginary resources, she had consented to join hands with her
+giant hero before the priest; and when the wedding had come and gone
+like a white sail, she was seized with a lasting, fierce despair. A wild
+aggressiveness that had formerly characterized her glance in moments of
+anger--moments which had grown more and more infrequent under the
+softening influence of her Mademoiselle's nature--now came back
+intensified, and blazed in her eye perpetually. Whatever her secret love
+may have been in kind, its sinking beyond hope below the horizon had
+left her fifty times the mutineer she had been before--the mutineer who
+has nothing to lose.
+
+"She loves her _candio_" said the negroes.
+
+"Simple creatures!" said the overseer, who prided himself on his
+discernment, "she loves nothing; she hates Agricola; it's a case of hate
+at first sight--the strongest kind."
+
+Both were partly right; her feelings were wonderfully knit to the
+African; and she now dedicated herself to Agricola's ruin.
+
+The senor, it has been said, endeavored to be happy; but now his heart
+conceived and brought forth its first-born fear, sired by
+superstition--the fear that he was bewitched. The negroes said that
+Bras-Coupe had cursed the land. Morning after morning the master looked
+out with apprehension toward the fields, until one night the worm came
+upon the indigo, and between sunset and sunrise every green leaf had
+been eaten up and there was nothing left for either insect or
+apprehension to feed upon.
+
+And then he said--and the echo came back from the Cannes Brulees--that
+the very bottom culpability of this thing rested on the Grandissimes,
+and specifically on their fugleman Agricola, through his putting the
+hellish African upon him. Moreover, fever and death, to a degree unknown
+before, fell upon his slaves. Those to whom life was spared--but to whom
+strength did not return--wandered about the place like scarecrows,
+looking for shelter, and made the very air dismal with the reiteration,
+"_No' ouanga_ (we are bewitched), _Bras-Coupe fe moi des grigis_ (the
+voudou's spells are on me)." The ripple of song was hushed and the
+flowers fell upon the floor.
+
+"I have heard an English maxim," wrote Colonel De Grapion to his
+kinsman, "which I would recommend you to put into practice--'Fight the
+devil with fire.'"
+
+No, he would not recognize devils as belligerents.
+
+But if Rome commissioned exorcists, could not he employ one?
+
+No, he would not! If his hounds could not catch Bras-Coupe, why, let him
+go. The overseer tried the hounds once more and came home with the best
+one across his saddle-bow, an arrow run half through its side.
+
+Once the blacks attempted by certain familiar rum-pourings and nocturnal
+charm-singing to lift the curse; but the moment the master heard the
+wild monotone of their infernal worship, he stopped it with a word.
+
+Early in February came the spring, and with it some resurrection of hope
+and courage. It may have been--it certainly was, in part--because young
+Honore Grandissime had returned. He was like the sun's warmth wherever
+he went; and the other Honore was like his shadow. The fairer one
+quickly saw the meaning of these things, hastened to cheer the young don
+with hopes of a better future, and to effect, if he could, the
+restoration of Bras-Coupe to his master's favor. But this latter effort
+was an idle one. He had long sittings with his uncle Agricola to the
+same end, but they always ended fruitless and often angrily.
+
+His dark half-brother had seen Palmyre and loved her. Honore would
+gladly have solved one or two riddles by effecting their honorable union
+in marriage. The previous ceremony on the Grandissime back piazza need
+be no impediment; all slave-owners understood those things. Following
+Honore's advice, the f.m.c., who had come into possession of his
+paternal portion, sent to Cannes Brulees a written offer, to buy Palmyre
+at any price that her master might name, stating his intention to free
+her and make her his wife. Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to
+settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an
+opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung
+over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He
+referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up
+to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the planter of the
+Cannes Brulees.
+
+But the idea of retreat had left Citizen Fusilier.
+
+"She is already married," said he to M. Honore Grandissime, f.m.c. "She
+is the lawful wife of Bras-Coupe; and what God has joined together let
+no man put asunder. You know it, sirrah. You did this for impudence, to
+make a show of your wealth. You intended it as an insinuation of
+equality. I overlook the impertinence for the sake of the man whose
+white blood you carry; but h-mark you, if ever you bring your Parisian
+airs and self-sufficient face on a level with mine again, h-I will
+slap it."
+
+The quadroon, three nights after, was so indiscreet as to give him the
+opportunity, and he did it--at that quadroon ball to which Dr. Keene
+alluded in talking to Frowenfeld.
+
+But Don Jose, we say, plucked up new spirit..
+
+"Last year's disasters were but fortune's freaks," he said. "See,
+others' crops have failed all about us."
+
+The overseer shook his head.
+
+"_C'est ce maudit cocodri' la bas_ (It is that accursed alligator,
+Bras-Coupe, down yonder in the swamp)."
+
+And by and by the master was again smitten with the same belief. He and
+his neighbors put in their crops afresh. The spring waned, summer
+passed, the fevers returned, the year wore round, but no harvest smiled.
+"Alas!" cried the planters, "we are all poor men!" The worst among the
+worst were the fields of Bras-Coupe's master--parched and shrivelled.
+"He does not understand planting," said his neighbors; "neither does his
+overseer. Maybe, too, it is true as he says, that he is voudoued."
+
+One day at high noon the master was taken sick with fever.
+
+The third noon after--the sad wife sitting by the bedside--suddenly,
+right in the centre of the room, with the door open behind him, stood
+the magnificent, half-nude form of Bras-Coupe. He did not fall down as
+the mistress's eyes met his, though all his flesh quivered. The master
+was lying with his eyes closed. The fever had done a fearful three
+days' work.
+
+"_Mioko-Koanga oule so' femme_ (Bras-Coupe wants his wife)."
+
+The master started wildly and stared upon his slave.
+
+"_Bras-Coupe oule so' femme_!" repeated the black.
+
+"Seize him!" cried the sick man, trying to rise.
+
+But, though several servants had ventured in with frightened faces, none
+dared molest the giant. The master turned his entreating eyes upon his
+wife, but she seemed stunned, and only covered her face with her hands
+and sat as if paralyzed by a foreknowledge of what was coming.
+
+Bras-Coupe lifted his great black palm and commenced:
+
+"_Mo ce voudrai que la maison ci la, et tout ca qui pas femme' ici,
+s'raient encore maudits_! (May this house, and all in it who are not
+women, be accursed)."
+
+The master fell back upon his pillow with a groan of helpless wrath.
+
+The African pointed his finger through the open window.
+
+"May its fields not know the plough nor nourish the herds that overrun
+it."
+
+The domestics, who had thus far stood their ground, suddenly rushed from
+the room like stampeded cattle, and at that moment appeared Palmyre.
+
+"Speak to him," faintly cried the panting invalid.
+
+She went firmly up to her husband and lifted her hand. With an easy
+motion, but quick as lightning, as a lion sets foot on a dog, he caught
+her by the arm.
+
+"_Bras-Coupe oule so' femme_," he said, and just then Palmyre would have
+gone with him to the equator.
+
+"You shall not have her!" gasped the master.
+
+The African seemed to rise in height, and still holding his wife at
+arm's length, resumed his malediction:
+
+"May weeds cover the ground until the air is full of their odor and the
+wild beasts of the forest come and lie down under their cover."
+
+With a frantic effort the master lifted himself upon his elbow and
+extended his clenched fist in speechless defiance; but his brain reeled,
+his sight went out, and when again he saw, Palmyre and her mistress were
+bending over him, the overseer stood awkwardly by, and Bras-Coupe
+was gone.
+
+The plantation became an invalid camp. The words of the voudou found
+fulfilment on every side. The plough went not out; the herds wandered
+through broken hedges from field to field and came up with staring bones
+and shrunken sides; a frenzied mob of weeds and thorns wrestled and
+throttled each other in a struggle for standing-room--rag-weed,
+smart-weed, sneeze-weed, bindweed, iron-weed--until the burning skies of
+midsummer checked their growth and crowned their unshorn tops with rank
+and dingy flowers.
+
+"Why in the name of--St. Francis," asked the priest of the overseer,
+"didn't the senora use her power over the black scoundrel when he stood
+and cursed, that day?"
+
+"Why, to tell you the truth, father," said the overseer, in a discreet
+whisper, "I can only suppose she thought Bras-Coupe had half a right
+to do it."
+
+"Ah, ah, I see; like her brother Honore--looks at both sides of a
+question--a miserable practice; but why couldn't Palmyre use _her_ eyes?
+They would have stopped him."
+
+"Palmyre? Why Palmyre has become the best _monture_ (Plutonian medium)
+in the parish. Agricola Fusilier himself is afraid of her. Sir, I think
+sometimes Bras-Coupe is dead and his spirit has gone into Palmyre. She
+would rather add to his curse than take from it."
+
+"Ah!" said the jovial divine, with a fat smile, "castigation would help
+her case; the whip is a great sanctifier. I fancy it would even make a
+Christian of the inexpugnable Bras-Coupe."
+
+But Bras-Coupe kept beyond the reach alike of the lash and of the Latin
+Bible.
+
+By and by came a man with a rumor, whom the overseer brought to the
+master's sick-room, to tell that an enterprising Frenchman was
+attempting to produce a new staple in Louisiana, one that worms would
+not annihilate. It was that year of history when the despairing planters
+saw ruin hovering so close over them that they cried to heaven for
+succor. Providence raised up Etienne de Bore. "And if Etienne is
+successful," cried the news-bearer, "and gets the juice of the
+sugar-cane to crystallize, so shall all of us, after him, and shall yet
+save our lands and homes. Oh, Senor, it will make you strong again to
+see these fields all cane and the long rows of negroes and negresses
+cutting it, while they sing their song of those droll African numerals,
+counting the canes they cut," and the bearer of good tidings sang them
+for very joy:
+
+[Illustration: music]
+
+     An-o-que, An-o-bia, Bia-tail-la, Que-re-que, Nal-le-oua,
+     Au-mon-de, Au-tap-o-te, Au-pe-to-te, Au-que-re-que, Bo.
+
+"And Honore Grandissime is going to introduce it on his lands," said Don
+Jose.
+
+"That is true," said Agricola Fusilier, coming in. Honore, the
+indefatigable peacemaker, had brought his uncle and his brother-in-law
+for the moment not only to speaking, but to friendly, terms.
+
+The senor smiled.
+
+"I have some good tidings, too," he said; "my beloved lady has borne me
+a son."
+
+"Another scion of the house of Grand--I mean Martinez!" exclaimed
+Agricola. "And now, Don Jose, let me say that _I_ have an item of rare
+intelligence!"
+
+The don lifted his feeble head and opened his inquiring eyes with a
+sudden, savage light in them.
+
+"No," said Agricola, "he is not exactly taken yet, but they are on his
+track."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The police. We may say he is virtually in our grasp."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on a Sabbath afternoon that a band of Choctaws having just played
+a game of racquette behind the city and a similar game being about to
+end between the white champions of two rival faubourgs, the beating of
+tom-toms, rattling of mules' jawbones and sounding of wooden horns drew
+the populace across the fields to a spot whose present name of Congo
+Square still preserves a reminder of its old barbaric pastimes. On a
+grassy plain under the ramparts, the performers of these hideous
+discords sat upon the ground facing each other, and in their midst the
+dancers danced. They gyrated in couples, a few at a time, throwing their
+bodies into the most startling attitudes and the wildest contortions,
+while the whole company of black lookers-on, incited by the tones of the
+weird music and the violent posturing of the dancers, swayed and writhed
+in passionate sympathy, beating their breasts, palms and thighs in time
+with the bones and drums, and at frequent intervals lifting, in that
+wild African unison no more to be described than forgotten, the
+unutterable songs of the Babouille and Counjaille dances, with their
+ejaculatory burdens of "_Aie! Aie! Voudou Magnan!_" and "_Aie Calinda!
+Dance Calinda!_" The volume of sound rose and fell with the augmentation
+or diminution of the dancers' extravagances. Now a fresh man, young and
+supple, bounding into the ring, revived the flagging rattlers, drummers
+and trumpeters; now a wearied dancer, finding his strength going,
+gathered all his force at the cry of "_Dance zisqu'a mort!_" rallied to
+a grand finale and with one magnificent antic fell, foaming at
+the mouth.
+
+The amusement had reached its height. Many participants had been lugged
+out by the neck to avoid their being danced on, and the enthusiasm had
+risen to a frenzy, when there bounded into the ring the blackest of
+black men, an athlete of superb figure, in breeches of "Indienne"--the
+stuff used for slave women's best dresses--jingling with bells, his feet
+in moccasins, his tight, crisp hair decked out with feathers, a necklace
+of alligator's teeth rattling on his breast and a living serpent twined
+about his neck.
+
+It chanced that but one couple was dancing. Whether they had been sent
+there by advice of Agricola is not certain. Snatching a tambourine from
+a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside,
+faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with
+which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally
+leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner's head,
+the multitude howled with rapture.
+
+Ill-starred Bras-Coupe. He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible
+condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as
+"drunk again."
+
+By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some
+design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the
+woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had
+interrupted. The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed
+upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver. Five minutes
+later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a
+quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as
+the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his
+last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt
+tree, face upward upon the turf.
+
+"The runaway slave," said the old French code, continued in force by the
+Spaniards, "the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month
+from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall
+have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on
+the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in
+during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be
+marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder. On the third
+offence he shall die." Bras-Coupe had run away only twice. "But," said
+Agricola, "these 'bossals' must be taught their place. Besides, there is
+Article 27 of the same code: 'The slave who, having struck his master,
+shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment'--a very
+necessary law!" He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a
+glance which he never forgot.
+
+The Spaniard showed himself very merciful--for a Spaniard; he spared the
+captive's life. He might have been more merciful still; but Honore
+Grandissime said some indignant things in the African's favor, and as
+much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he
+would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce
+with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the senora and the hot,
+dry eyes of her maid. Because of these he overlooked the offence against
+his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupe to the law to suffer
+only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by
+attempting to be a free man.
+
+We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupe.
+But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death
+would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us
+not attempt to say.
+
+In the midst of the ancient town, in a part which is now crumbling away,
+stood the Calaboza, with its humid vaults and grated cells, its iron
+cages and its whips; and there, soon enough, they strapped Bras-Coupe
+face downward and laid on the lash. And yet not a sound came from the
+mutilated but unconquered African to annoy the ear of the sleeping city.
+
+("And you suffered this thing to take place?" asked Joseph Frowenfeld of
+Honore Grandissime.
+
+"My-de'-seh!" exclaimed the Creole, "they lied to me--said they would
+not harm him!")
+
+He was brought at sunrise to the plantation. The air was sweet with the
+smell of the weed-grown fields. The long-horned oxen that drew him and
+the naked boy that drove the team stopped before his cabin.
+
+"You cannot put that creature in there," said the thoughtful overseer.
+"He would suffocate under a roof--he has been too long out-of-doors for
+that. Put him on my cottage porch." There, at last, Palmyre burst into
+tears and sank down, while before her, on a soft bed of dry grass,
+rested the helpless form of the captive giant, a cloth thrown over his
+galled back, his ears shorn from his head, and the tendons behind his
+knees severed. His eyes were dry, but there was in them that unspeakable
+despair that fills the eye of the charger when, fallen in battle, he
+gazes with sidewise-bended neck on the ruin wrought upon him. His eye
+turned sometimes slowly to his wife. He need not demand her now--she was
+always by him.
+
+There was much talk over him--much idle talk. He merely lay still under
+it with a fixed frown; but once some incautious tongue dropped the name
+of Agricola. The black man's eyes came so quickly round to Palmyre that
+she thought he would speak; but no; his words were all in his eyes. She
+answered their gleam with a fierce affirmative glance, whereupon he
+slowly bent his head and spat upon the floor.
+
+There was yet one more trial of his wild nature. The mandate came from
+his master's sick-bed that he must lift the curse.
+
+Bras-Coupe merely smiled. God keep thy enemy from such a smile!
+
+The overseer, with a policy less Spanish than his master's, endeavored
+to use persuasion. But the fallen prince would not so much as turn one
+glance from his parted hamstrings. Palmyre was then besought to
+intercede. She made one poor attempt, but her husband was nearer doing
+her an unkindness than ever he had been before; he made a slow sign for
+silence--with his fist; and every mouth was stopped.
+
+At midnight following, there came, on the breeze that blew from the
+mansion, a sound of running here and there, of wailing and
+sobbing--another Bridegroom was coming, and the Spaniard, with much such
+a lamp in hand as most of us shall be found with, neither burning
+brightly nor wholly gone out, went forth to meet Him.
+
+"Bras-Coupe," said Palmyre, next evening, speaking low in his mangled
+ear, "the master is dead; he is just buried. As he was dying,
+Bras-Coupe, he asked that you would forgive him."
+
+The maimed man looked steadfastly at his wife. He had not spoken since
+the lash struck him, and he spoke not now; but in those large, clear
+eyes, where his remaining strength seemed to have taken refuge as in a
+citadel, the old fierceness flared up for a moment, and then, like an
+expiring beacon, went out.
+
+"Is your mistress well enough by this time to venture here?" whispered
+the overseer to Palmyre. "Let her come. Tell her not to fear, but to
+bring the babe--in her own arms, tell her--quickly!"
+
+The lady came, her infant boy in her arms, knelt down beside the bed of
+sweet grass and set the child within the hollow of the African's arm.
+Bras-Coupe turned his gaze upon it; it smiled, its mother's smile, and
+put its hand upon the runaway's face, and the first tears of
+Bras-Coupe's life, the dying testimony of his humanity, gushed from his
+eyes and rolled down his cheek upon the infant's hand. He laid his own
+tenderly upon the babe's forehead, then removing it, waved it abroad,
+inaudibly moved his lips, dropped his arm, and closed his eyes. The
+curse was lifted.
+
+"_Le pauv' dgiab'_!" said the overseer, wiping his eyes and looking
+fieldward. "Palmyre, you must get the priest."
+
+The priest came, in the identical gown in which he had appeared the
+night of the two weddings. To the good father's many tender questions
+Bras-Coupe turned a failing eye that gave no answers; until, at length:
+
+"Do you know where you are going?" asked the holy man.
+
+"Yes," answered his eyes, brightening.
+
+"Where?"
+
+He did not reply; he was lost in contemplation, and seemed looking far
+away.
+
+So the question was repeated.
+
+"Do you know where you are going?"
+
+And again the answer of the eyes. He knew.
+
+"Where?"
+
+The overseer at the edge of the porch, the widow with her babe, and
+Palmyre and the priest bending over the dying bed, turned an eager ear
+to catch the answer.
+
+"To--" the voice failed a moment; the departing hero essayed again;
+again it failed; he tried once more, lifted his hand, and with an
+ecstatic, upward smile, whispered, "To--Africa"--and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+PARALYSIS
+
+
+As we have said, the story of Bras-Coupe was told that day three times:
+to the Grandissime beauties once, to Frowenfeld twice. The fair
+Grandissimes all agreed, at the close; that it was pitiful. Specially,
+that it was a great pity to have hamstrung Bras-Coupe, a man who even in
+his cursing had made an exception in favor of the ladies. True, they
+could suggest no alternative; it was undeniable that he had deserved his
+fate; still, it seemed a pity. They dispersed, retired and went to sleep
+confirmed in this sentiment. In Frowenfeld the story stirred
+deeper feelings.
+
+On this same day, while it was still early morning, Honore Grandissime,
+f.m.c., with more than even his wonted slowness of step and propriety of
+rich attire, had reappeared in the shop of the rue Royale. He did not
+need to say he desired another private interview. Frowenfeld ushered him
+silently and at once into his rear room, offered him a chair (which he
+accepted), and sat down before him.
+
+In his labored way the quadroon stated his knowledge that Frowenfeld had
+been three times to the dwelling of Palmyre Philosophe. Why, he further
+intimated, he knew not, nor would he ask; but _he_--when _he_ had
+applied for admission--had been refused. He had laid open his heart to
+the apothecary's eyes--"It may have been unwisely--"
+
+Frowenfeld interrupted him; Palmyre had been ill for several days;
+Doctor Keene--who, Mr. Grandissime probably knew, was her physician--
+
+The landlord bowed, and Frowenfeld went on to explain that Doctor Keene,
+while attending her, had also fallen sick and had asked him to take the
+care of this one case until he could himself resume it. So there, in a
+word, was the reason why Joseph had, and others had not, been admitted
+to her presence.
+
+As obviously to the apothecary's eyes as anything intangible could be, a
+load of suffering was lifted from the quadroon's mind, as this
+explanation was concluded. Yet he only sat in meditation before his
+tenant, who regarded him long and sadly. Then, seized with one of his
+energetic impulses, he suddenly said:
+
+"Mr. Grandissime, you are a man of intelligence, accomplishments,
+leisure and wealth; why" (clenchings his fists and frowning),
+"why do you not give yourself--your
+time--wealth--attainments--energies--everything--to the cause of the
+downtrodden race with which this community's scorn unjustly compels you
+to rank yourself?"
+
+The quadroon did not meet Frowenfeld's kindled eyes for a moment, and
+when he did, it was slowly and dejectedly.
+
+"He canno' be," he said, and then, seeing his words were not understood,
+he added: "He 'ave no Cause. Dad peop' 'ave no Cause." He went on from
+this with many pauses and gropings after words and idiom, to tell, with
+a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld almost unmanly, the reasons
+why the people, a little of whose blood had been enough to blast his
+life, would never be free by the force of their own arm. Reduced to the
+meanings which he vainly tried to convey in words, his statement was
+this: that that people was not a people. Their cause--was in Africa.
+They upheld it there--they lost it there--and to those that are here the
+struggle was over; they were, one and all, prisoners of war.
+
+"You speak of them in the third person," said Frowenfeld.
+
+"Ah ham nod a slev."
+
+"Are you certain of that?" asked the tenant.
+
+His landlord looked at him.
+
+"It seems to me," said Frowenfeld, "that you--your class--the free
+quadroons--are the saddest slaves of all. Your men, for a little
+property, and your women, for a little amorous attention, let themselves
+be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a paltry bait of sham
+freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous contumely which flattens
+them into the dirt like grass under a slab. I would rather be a runaway
+in the swamps than content myself with such a freedom. As your class
+stands before the world to-day--free in form but slaves in spirit--you
+are--I do not know but I was almost ready to say--a warning to
+philanthropists!"
+
+The free man of color slowly arose.
+
+"I trust you know," said Frowenfeld, "that I say nothing in offence."
+
+"Havery word is tru'," replied the sad man.
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," said the apothecary, as his landlord sank back again
+into his seat, "I know you are a broken-hearted man."
+
+The quadroon laid his fist upon his heart and looked up.
+
+"And being broken-hearted, you are thus specially fitted for a work of
+patient and sustained self-sacrifice. You have only those things to lose
+which grief has taught you to despise--ease, money, display. Give
+yourself to your people--to those, I mean, who groan, or should groan,
+under the degraded lot which is theirs and yours in common."
+
+The quadroon shook his head, and after a moment's silence, answered:
+
+"Ah cannod be one Toussaint l'Ouverture. Ah cannod trah to be. Hiv I
+trah, I h-only s'all soogceed to be one Bras-Coupe."
+
+"You entirely misunderstand me," said Frowenfeld in quick response. "I
+have no stronger disbelief than my disbelief in insurrection. I believe
+that to every desirable end there are two roads, the way of strife and
+the way of peace. I can imagine a man in your place, going about among
+his people, stirring up their minds to a noble discontent, laying out
+his means, sparingly here and bountifully there, as in each case might
+seem wisest, for their enlightenment, their moral elevation, their
+training in skilled work; going, too, among the men of the prouder
+caste, among such as have a spirit of fairness, and seeking to prevail
+with them for a public recognition of the rights of all; using all his
+cunning to show them the double damage of all oppression, both great and
+petty--"
+
+The quadroon motioned "enough." There was a heat in his eyes which
+Frowenfeld had never seen before.
+
+"M'sieu'," he said, "waid till Agricola Fusilier ees keel."
+
+"Do you mean 'dies'?"
+
+"No," insisted the quadroon; "listen." And with slow, painstaking phrase
+this man of strong feeling and feeble will (the trait of his caste)
+told--as Frowenfeld felt he would do the moment he said "listen"--such
+part of the story of Bras-Coupe as showed how he came by his deadly
+hatred of Agricola.
+
+"Tale me," said the landlord, as he concluded the recital, "w'y deen
+Bras Coupe mague dad curze on Agricola Fusilier? Becoze Agricola ees one
+sorcier! Elz 'e bin dade sinz long tamm."
+
+The speaker's gestures seemed to imply that his own hand, if need be,
+would have brought the event to pass.
+
+As he rose to say adieu, Frowenfeld, without previous intention, laid a
+hand upon his visitor's arm.
+
+"Is there no one who can make peace between you?"
+
+The landlord shook his head.
+
+"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."
+
+"I mean," insisted Frowenfeld, "Is there no man who can stand between
+you and those who wrong you, and effect a peaceful reparation?"
+
+The landlord slowly moved away, neither he nor his tenant speaking, but
+each knowing that the one man in the minds of both, as a possible
+peacemaker, was Honore Grandissime.
+
+"Should the opportunity offer," continued Joseph, "may I speak a word
+for you myself?"
+
+The quadroon paused a moment, smiled politely though bitterly, and
+departed repeating again:
+
+"'Tis impossib'. We don' wand."
+
+"Palsied," murmured Frowenfeld, looking after him, regretfully,--"like
+all of them."
+
+Frowenfeld's thoughts were still on the same theme when, the day having
+passed, the hour was approaching wherein Innerarity was exhorted to tell
+his good-night story in the merry circle at the distant Grandissime
+mansion. As the apothecary was closing his last door for the night, the
+fairer Honore called him out into the moonlight.
+
+"Withered," the student was saying audibly to himself, "not in the
+shadow of the Ethiopian, but in the glare of the white man."
+
+"Who is withered?" pleasantly demanded Honore. The apothecary started
+slightly.
+
+"Did I speak? How do you do, sir? I meant the free quadroons."
+
+"Including the gentleman from whom you rent your store?"
+
+"Yes, him especially; he told me this morning the story of Bras-Coupe."
+
+M. Grandissime laughed. Joseph did not see why, nor did the laugh sound
+entirely genuine.
+
+"Do not open the door, Mr Frowenfeld," said the Creole, "Get your
+greatcoat and cane and come take a walk with me; I will tell you the
+same story."
+
+It was two hours before they approached this door again on their return.
+Just before they reached it, Honore stopped under the huge street-lamp,
+whose light had gone out, where a large stone lay before him on the
+ground in the narrow, moonlit street. There was a tall, unfinished
+building at his back.
+
+"Mr Frowenfeld,"--he struck the stone with his cane,--"this stone is
+Bras-Coupe--we cast it aside because it turns the edge of our tools."
+
+He laughed. He had laughed to-night more than was comfortable to a man
+of Frowenfeld's quiet mind.
+
+As the apothecary thrust his shopkey into the lock and so paused to hear
+his companion, who had begun again to speak, he wondered what it could
+be--for M. Grandissime had not disclosed it--that induced such a man as
+he to roam aimlessly, as it seemed, in deserted streets at such chill
+and dangerous hours. "What does he want with me?" The thought was so
+natural that it was no miracle the Creole read it.
+
+"Well," said he, smiling and taking an attitude, "you are a great man
+for causes, Mr. Frowenfeld; but me, I am for results, ha, ha! You may
+ponder the philosophy of Bras-Coupe in your study, but _I_ have got to
+get rid of his results, me. You know them."
+
+"You tell me it revived a war where you had made a peace," said
+Frowenfeld.
+
+"Yes--yes--that is his results; but good night, Mr. Frowenfeld."
+
+"Good night, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+ANOTHER WOUND IN A NEW PLACE
+
+
+Each day found Doctor Keene's strength increasing, and on the morning
+following the incidents last recorded he was imprudently projecting an
+outdoor promenade. An announcement from Honore Grandissime, who had
+paid an early call, had, to that gentleman's no small surprise, produced
+a sudden and violent effect on the little man's temper.
+
+He was sitting alone by his window, looking out upon the levee, when the
+apothecary entered the apartment.
+
+"Frowenfeld," he instantly began, with evident displeasure most
+unaccountable to Joseph, "I hear you have been visiting the Nancanous."
+
+"Yes, I have been there."
+
+"Well, you had no business to go!"
+
+Doctor Keene smote the arm of his chair with his fist.
+
+Frowenfeld reddened with indignation, but suppressed his retort. He
+stood still in the middle of the floor, and Doctor Keene looked out of
+the window.
+
+"Doctor Keene," said the visitor, when his attitude was no longer
+tolerable, "have you anything more to say to me before I leave you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"It is necessary for me, then, to say that in fulfilment of my promise,
+I am going from here to the house of Palmyre, and that she will need no
+further attention after to-day. As to your present manner toward me, I
+shall endeavor to suspend judgment until I have some knowledge of
+its cause."
+
+The doctor made no reply, but went on looking out of the window, and
+Frowenfeld turned and left him.
+
+As he arrived in the philosophe's sick-chamber--where he found her
+sitting in a chair set well back from a small fire--she half-whispered
+"Miche" with a fine, greeting smile, as if to a brother after a week's
+absence. To a person forced to lie abed, shut away from occupation and
+events, a day is ten, three are a month: not merely in the wear and tear
+upon the patience, but also in the amount of thinking and recollecting
+done. It was to be expected, then, that on this, the apothecary's fourth
+visit, Palmyre would have learned to take pleasure in his coming.
+
+But the smile was followed by a faint, momentary frown, as if Frowenfeld
+had hardly returned it in kind. Likely enough, he had not. He was not
+distinctively a man of smiles; and as he engaged in his appointed task
+she presently thought of this.
+
+"This wound is doing so well," said Joseph, still engaged with the
+bandages, "that I shall not need to come again." He was not looking at
+her as he spoke, but he felt her give a sudden start. "What is this?" he
+thought, but presently said very quietly: "With the assistance of your
+slave woman, you can now attend to it yourself."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+When, with a bow, he would have bade her good morning, she held out her
+hand for his. After a barely perceptible hesitation, he gave it,
+whereupon she held it fast, in a way to indicate that there was
+something to be said which he must stay and hear.
+
+She looked up into his face. She may have been merely framing in her
+mind the word or two of English she was about to utter; but an
+excitement shone through her eyes and reddened her lips, and something
+sent out from her countenance a look of wild distress.
+
+"You goin' tell 'im?" she asked.
+
+"Who? Agricola?"
+
+"_Non_!"
+
+He spoke the next name more softly.
+
+"Honore?"
+
+Her eyes looked deeply into his for a moment, then dropped, and she made
+a sign of assent.
+
+He was about to say that Honore knew already, but saw no necessity for
+doing so, and changed his answer.
+
+"I will never tell any one."
+
+"You know?" she asked, lifting her eyes for an instant. She meant to ask
+if he knew the motive that had prompted her murderous intent.
+
+"I know your whole sad history."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, fixedly; then, still holding his hand
+with one of hers, she threw the other to her face and turned away her
+head. He thought she moaned.
+
+Thus she remained for a few moments, then suddenly she turned, clasped
+both hands about his, her face flamed up and she opened her lips to
+speak, but speech failed. An expression of pain and supplication came
+upon her countenance, and the cry burst from her:
+
+"Meg 'im to love me!"
+
+He tried to withdraw his hand, but she held it fast, and, looking up
+imploringly with her wide, electric eyes, cried:
+
+"_Vous pouvez le faire, vous pouvez le faire_ (You can do it, you can do
+it); _vous etes sorcier, mo conne bien vous etes sorcier_ (you are a
+sorcerer, I know)."
+
+However harmless or healthful Joseph's touch might be to the philosophe,
+he felt now that hers, to him, was poisonous. He dared encounter her
+eyes, her touch, her voice, no longer. The better man in him was
+suffocating. He scarce had power left to liberate his right hand with
+his left, to seize his hat and go.
+
+Instantly she rose from her chair, threw herself on her knees in his
+path, and found command of his language sufficient to cry as she lifted
+her arms, bared of their drapery:
+
+"Oh, my God! don' rif-used me--don' rif-used me!"
+
+There was no time to know whether Frowenfeld wavered or not. The thought
+flashed into his mind that in all probability all the care and skill he
+had spent upon the wound was being brought to naught in this moment of
+wild posturing and excitement; but before it could have effect upon his
+movements, a stunning blow fell upon the back of his head, and Palmyre's
+slave woman, the Congo dwarf, under the impression that it was the most
+timely of strokes, stood brandishing a billet of pine and preparing to
+repeat the blow.
+
+He hurled her, snarling and gnashing like an ape, against the farther
+wall, cast the bar from the street door and plunged out, hatless,
+bleeding and stunned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+INTERRUPTED PRELIMINARIES
+
+
+About the same time of day, three gentlemen (we use the term gentlemen
+in its petrified state) were walking down the rue Royale from the
+direction of the Faubourg Ste. Marie.
+
+They were coming down toward Palmyre's corner. The middle one, tall and
+shapely, might have been mistaken at first glance for Honore
+Grandissime, but was taller and broader, and wore a cocked hat, which
+Honore did not. It was Valentine. The short, black-bearded man in
+buckskin breeches on his right was Jean-Baptiste Grandissime, and the
+slight one on the left, who, with the prettiest and most graceful
+gestures and balancings, was leading the conversation, was Hippolyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin, a cousin and counterpart of that sturdy-hearted
+challenger of Agricola, Sylvestre.
+
+"But after all," he was saying in Louisiana French, "there is no spot
+comparable, for comfortable seclusion, to the old orange grove under
+the levee on the Point; twenty minutes in a skiff, five minutes for
+preliminaries--you would not want more, the ground has been measured off
+five hundred times--'are you ready?'--"
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Valentine, tossing his head, "the Yankees would be down
+on us before you could count one."
+
+"Well, then, behind the Jesuits' warehouses, if you insist. I don't
+care. Perdition take such a government! I am almost sorry I went to the
+governor's reception."
+
+"It was quiet, I hear; a sort of quiet ball, all promenading and no
+contra-dances. One quadroon ball is worth five of such."
+
+This was the opinion of Jean-Baptiste.
+
+"No, it was fine, anyhow. There was a contra-dance. The music
+was--tarata joonc, tara, tara--tarata joonc, tararata joonc, tara--oh!
+it was the finest thing--and composed here. They compose as fine things
+here as they do anywhere in the--look there! That man came out of
+Palmyre's house; see how he staggered just then!"
+
+"Drunk," said Jean-Baptiste.
+
+"No, he seems to be hurt. He has been struck on the head. Oho, I tell
+you, gentlemen, that same Palmyre is a wonderful animal! Do you see? She
+not only defends herself and ejects the wretch, but she puts her mark
+upon him; she identifies him, ha, ha, ha! Look at the high art of the
+thing; she keeps his hat as a small souvenir and gives him a receipt for
+it on the back of his head. Ah! but hasn't she taught him a lesson?
+Why, gentlemen,--it is--if it isn't that sorcerer of an apothecary!"
+
+"What?" exclaimed the other two; "well, well, but this is too good!
+Caught at last, ha, ha, ha, the saintly villain! Ah, ha, ha! Will not
+Honore be proud of him now? _Ah! voila un joli Joseph!_ What did I tell
+you? Didn't I _always_ tell you so?"
+
+"But the beauty of it is, he is caught so cleverly. No escape--no
+possible explanation. There he is, gentlemen, as plain as a rat in a
+barrel, and with as plain a case. Ha, ha, ha! Isn't it just glorious?"
+
+And all three laughed in such an ecstasy of glee that Frowenfeld looked
+back, saw them, and knew forthwith that his good name was gone. The
+three gentlemen, with tears of merriment still in their eyes, reached a
+corner and disappeared.
+
+"Mister," said a child, trotting along under Frowenfeld's elbow,--the
+odd English of the New Orleans street-urchin was at that day just
+beginning to be heard--"Mister, dey got some blood on de back of
+you' hade!"
+
+But Frowenfeld hurried on groaning with mental anguish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL
+
+
+It was the year 1804. The world was trembling under the tread of the
+dread Corsican. It was but now that he had tossed away the whole Valley
+of the Mississippi, dropping it overboard as a little sand from a
+balloon, and Christendom in a pale agony of suspense was watching the
+turn of his eye; yet when a gibbering black fool here on the edge of
+civilization merely swings a pine-knot, the swinging of that pine-knot
+becomes to Joseph Frowenfeld, student of man, a matter of greater moment
+than the destination of the Boulogne Flotilla. For it now became for the
+moment the foremost necessity of his life to show, to that minute
+fraction of the earth's population which our terror misnames "the
+world," that a man may leap forth hatless and bleeding from the house of
+a New Orleans quadroon into the open street and yet be pure white
+within. Would it answer to tell the truth? Parts of that truth he was
+pledged not to tell; and even if he could tell it all it was
+incredible--bore all the features of a flimsy lie.
+
+"Mister," repeated the same child who had spoken before, reinforced by
+another under the other elbow, "dey got some _blood_ on de back of
+you' hade."
+
+And the other added the suggestion:
+
+"Dey got one drug-sto', yondah."
+
+Frowenfeld groaned again. The knock had been a hard one, the ground and
+sky went round not a little, but he retained withal a white-hot process
+of thought that kept before him his hopeless inability to explain. He
+was coffined alive. The world (so-called) would bury him in utter
+loathing, and write on his headstone the one word--hypocrite. And he
+should lie there and helplessly contemplate Honore pushing forward those
+purposes which he had begun to hope he was to have had the honor of
+furthering. But instead of so doing he would now be the by-word of
+the street.
+
+"Mister," interposed the child once more, spokesman this time for a
+dozen blacks and whites of all sizes trailing along before and behind,
+"_dey got some blood_ on de back of you' _hade_."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same morning Clotilde had given a music-scholar her appointed
+lesson, and at its conclusion had borrowed of her patroness (how
+pleasant it must have been to have such things to lend!) a little yellow
+maid, in order that, with more propriety, she might make a business
+call. It was that matter of the rent--one that had of late occasioned
+her great secret distress. "It is plain," she had begun to say to
+herself, unable to comprehend Aurora's peculiar trust in Providence,
+"that if the money is to be got I must get it." A possibility had
+flashed upon her mind; she had nurtured it into a project, had submitted
+it to her father-confessor in the cathedral, and received his
+unqualified approval of it, and was ready this morning to put it into
+execution. A great merit of the plan was its simplicity. It was merely
+to find for her heaviest bracelet a purchaser in time, and a price
+sufficient, to pay to-morrow's "maturities." See there again!--to her,
+her little secret was of greater import than the collision of almost any
+pine-knot with almost any head.
+
+It must not be accepted as evidence either of her unwillingness to sell
+or of the amount of gold in the bracelet, that it took the total of
+Clotilde's moral and physical strength to carry it to the shop where she
+hoped--against hope--to dispose of it.
+
+'Sieur Frowenfeld, M. Innerarity said, was out, but would certainly be
+in in a few minutes, and she was persuaded to take a chair against the
+half-hidden door at the bottom of the shop with the little borrowed maid
+crouched at her feet.
+
+She had twice or thrice felt a regret that she had undertaken to wait,
+and was about to rise and go, when suddenly she saw before her Joseph
+Frowenfeld, wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow and smeared with
+blood from his forehead down. She rose quickly and silently, turned sick
+and blind, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair for support.
+Frowenfeld stood an instant before her, groaned, and disappeared through
+the door. The little maid, retreating backward against her from the
+direction of the street-door, drew to her attention a crowd of
+sight-seers which had rushed up to the doors and against which Raoul was
+hurriedly closing the shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CLOTILDE AS A SURGEON
+
+
+Was it worse to stay, or to fly? The decision must be instantaneous. But
+Raoul made it easy by crying in their common tongue, as he slammed a
+massive shutter and shot its bolt:
+
+"Go to him! he is down--I heard him fall. Go to him!"
+
+At this rallying cry she seized her shield--that is to say, the little
+yellow attendant--and hurried into the room. Joseph lay just beyond the
+middle of the apartment, face downward. She found water and a basin, wet
+her own handkerchief, and dropped to her knees beside his head; but the
+moment he felt the small feminine hands he stood up. She took him by
+the arm.
+
+"_Asseyez-vous, Monsieu'_--pliz to give you'sev de pens to seet down,
+'Sieu' Frowenfel'."
+
+She spoke with a nervous tenderness in contrast with her alarmed and
+entreating expression of face, and gently pushed him into a chair.
+
+The child ran behind the bed and burst into frightened sobs, but ceased
+when Clotilde turned for an instant and glared at her.
+
+"Mague yo' 'ead back," said Clotilde, and with tremulous tenderness she
+softly pressed back his brow and began wiping off the blood. "W'ere you
+is 'urted?"
+
+But while she was asking her question she had found the gash and was
+growing alarmed at its ugliness, when Raoul, having made everything
+fast, came in with:
+
+"Wat's de mattah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'? w'at's de mattah wid you? Oo done
+dat, 'Sieur Frowen fel'?"
+
+Joseph lifted his head and drew away from it the small hand and wet
+handkerchief, and without letting go the hand, looked again into
+Clotilde's eyes, and said:
+
+"Go home; oh, go home!"
+
+"Oh! no," protested Raoul, whereupon Clotilde turned upon him with a
+perfectly amiable, nurse's grimace for silence.
+
+"I goin' rad now," she said.
+
+Raoul's silence was only momentary.
+
+"Were you lef you' hat, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?" he asked, and stole an
+artist's glance at Clotilde, while Joseph straightened up, and nerving
+himself to a tolerable calmness of speech, said:
+
+"I have been struck with a stick of wood by a half-witted person under a
+misunderstanding of my intentions; but the circumstances are such as to
+blacken my character hopelessly; but I am innocent!" he cried,
+stretching forward both arms and quite losing his momentary
+self-control.
+
+"'Sieu' Frowenfel'!" cried Clotilde, tears leaping to her eyes, "I am
+shoe of it!"
+
+"I believe you! I believe you, 'Sieur Frowenfel'!" exclaimed Raoul with
+sincerity.
+
+"You will not believe me," said Joseph. "You will not; it will be
+impossible."
+
+"_Mais_" cried Clotilde, "id shall nod be impossib'!"
+
+But the apothecary shook his head.
+
+"All I can be suspected of will seem probable; the truth only is
+incredible."
+
+His head began to sink and a pallor to overspread his face.
+
+"_Allez, Monsieur, allez_," cried Clotilde to Raoul, a picture of
+beautiful terror which he tried afterward to paint from memory,
+"_appelez_ Doctah Kin!"
+
+Raoul made a dash for his hat, and the next moment she heard, with
+unpleasant distinctness, his impetuous hand slam the shop door and
+lock her in.
+
+"_Baille ma do l'eau_" she called to the little mulattress, who
+responded by searching wildly for a cup and presently bringing a
+measuring-glass full of water.
+
+Clotilde gave it to the wounded man, and he rose at once and stood on
+his feet.
+
+"Raoul."
+
+"'E gone at Doctah Kin."
+
+"I do not need Doctor Keene; I am not badly hurt. Raoul should not have
+left you here in this manner. You must not stay."
+
+"Bud, 'Sieur Frowenfel', I am afred to paz dad gangue!"
+
+A new distress seized Joseph in view of this additional complication.
+But, unmindful of this suggestion, the fair Creole suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"'Sieu' Frowenfel', you har a hinnocen' man! Go, hopen yo' do's an' stan
+juz as you har ub biffo dad crowd and sesso! My God! 'Sieu' Frowenfel',
+iv you cannod stan' ub by you'sev--"
+
+She ceased suddenly with a wild look, as if another word would have
+broken the levees of her eyes, and in that instant Frowenfeld recovered
+the full stature of a man.
+
+"God bless you!" he cried. "I will do it!" He started, then turned again
+toward her, dumb for an instant, and said: "And God reward you! You
+believe in me, and you do not even know me."
+
+Her eyes became wilder still as she looked up into his face with the
+words:
+
+"_Mais_, I does know you--betteh'n you know annyt'in' boud it!" and
+turned away, blushing violently.
+
+Frowenfeld gave a start. She had given him too much light. He recognized
+her, and she knew it. For another instant he gazed at her averted face,
+and then with forced quietness said:
+
+"Please go into the shop."
+
+The whole time that had elapsed since the shutting of the doors had not
+exceeded five minutes; a sixth sufficed for Clotilde and her attendant
+to resume their original position in the nook by the private door and
+for Frowenfeld to wash his face and hands. Then the alert and numerous
+ears without heard a drawing of bolts at the door next to that which
+Raoul had issued, its leaves opened outward, and first the pale hands
+and then the white, weakened face and still bloody hair and apparel of
+the apothecary made their appearance. He opened a window and another
+door. The one locked by Raoul, when unbolted, yielded without a key, and
+the shop stood open.
+
+"My friends," said the trembling proprietor, "if any of you wishes to
+buy anything, I am ready to serve him. The rest will please move away."
+
+The invitation, though probably understood, was responded to by only a
+few at the banquette's edge, where a respectable face or two wore
+scrutinizing frowns. The remainder persisted in silently standing and
+gazing in at the bloody man.
+
+Frowenfeld bore the gaze. There was one element of emphatic satisfaction
+in it--it drew their observation from Clotilde at the other end of the
+shop. He stole a glance backward; she was not there. She had watched her
+chance, safely escaped through the side door, and was gone.
+
+Raoul returned.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', Doctor Keene is took worse ag'in. 'E is in bed; but
+'e say to tell you in dat lill troubl' of dis mawnin' it is himseff w'at
+is inti'lie wrong, an' 'e hass you poddon. 'E says sen' fo' Doctor
+Conrotte, but I din go fo' him; dat ole scoun'rel--he believe in puttin'
+de niggas fre'."
+
+Frowenfeld said he would not consult professional advisers; with a
+little assistance from Raoul, he could give the cut the slight attention
+it needed. He went back into his room, while Raoul turned back to the
+door and addressed the public.
+
+"Pray, Messieurs, come in and be seated." He spoke in the Creole French
+of the gutters. "Come in. M. Frowenfeld is dressing, and desires that
+you will have a little patience. Come in. Take chairs. You will not come
+in? No? Nor you, Monsieur? No? I will set some chairs outside, eh? No?"
+
+They moved by twos and threes away, and Raoul, retiring, gave his
+employer such momentary aid as was required. When Joseph, in changed
+dress, once more appeared, only a child or two lingered to see him, and
+he had nothing to do but sit down and, as far as he felt at liberty to
+do so, answer his assistant's questions.
+
+During the recital, Raoul was obliged to exercise the severest
+self-restraint to avoid laughing,--a feeling which was modified by the
+desire to assure his employer that he understood this sort of thing
+perfectly, had run the same risks himself, and thought no less of a man,
+_providing he was a gentleman_, because of an unlucky retributive knock
+on the head. But he feared laughter would overclimb speech; and, indeed,
+with all expression of sympathy stifled, he did not succeed so
+completely in hiding the conflicting emotion but that Joseph did once
+turn his pale, grave face surprisedly, hearing a snuffling sound,
+suddenly stifled in a drawer of corks. Said Raoul, with an unsteady
+utterance, as he slammed the drawer:
+
+"H-h-dat makes me dat I can't 'elp to laugh w'en I t'ink of dat fool
+yesse'dy w'at want to buy my pigshoe for honly one 'undred dolla'--ha,
+ha ha, ha!"
+
+He laughed almost indecorously.
+
+"Raoul," said Frowenfeld, rising and closing his eyes, "I am going back
+for my hat. It would make matters worse for that person to send it to
+me, and it would be something like a vindication for me to go back to
+the house and get it."
+
+Mr. Innerarity was about to make strenuous objection, when there came in
+one whom he recognized as an attache of his cousin Honore's
+counting-room, and handed the apothecary a note. It contained Honore's
+request that if Frowenfeld was in his shop he would have the goodness to
+wait there until the writer could call and see him.
+
+"I will wait," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+"FO' WAD YOU CRYNE?"
+
+
+Clotilde, a step or two from home, dismissed her attendant, and as
+Aurora, with anxious haste, opened to her familiar knock, appeared
+before her pale and trembling.
+
+"_Ah, ma fille_--"
+
+The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint upon
+her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and there,
+while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to reverie
+before she was called upon to speak. Then Aurora first quietly took
+possession of her hands, and after another tender pause asked in
+English, which was equivalent to whispering:
+
+"Were you was, _cherie?_"
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"
+
+Aurora straightened up with angry astonishment and drew in her breath
+for an emphatic speech, but Clotilde, liberating her own hands, took
+Aurora's, and hurriedly said, turning still paler as she spoke:
+
+"'E godd his 'ead strigue! 'Tis all knog in be'ine! 'E come in
+blidding--"
+
+"In w'ere?" cried Aurora.
+
+"In 'is shob."
+
+"You was in dad shob of 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
+
+"I wend ad 'is shob to pay doze rend."
+
+"How--you wend ad 'is shob to pay--"
+
+Clotilde produced the bracelet. The two looked at each other in silence
+for a moment, while Aurora took in without further explanation
+Clotilde's project and its failure.
+
+"An' 'Sieur Frowenfel'--dey kill 'im? Ah! _Ma chere_, fo' wad you mague
+me to hass all dose question?"
+
+Clotilde gave a brief account of the matter, omitting only her
+conversation with Frowenfeld.
+
+"_Mais_, oo strigue 'im?" demanded Aurora, impatiently.
+
+"Addunno!" replied the other. "Bud I does know 'e is hinnocen'!"
+
+A small scouting-party of tears reappeared on the edge of her eyes.
+
+"Innocen' from wad?"
+
+Aurora betrayed a twinkle of amusement.
+
+"Hev'ryt'in', iv you pliz!" exclaimed Clotilde, with most uncalled-for
+warmth.
+
+"An' you crah bic-ause 'e is nod guiltie?"
+
+"Ah! foolish!"
+
+"Ah, non, my chile, I know fo' wad you cryne: 't is h-only de sighd of
+de blood."
+
+"Oh, sighd of blood!"
+
+Clotilde let a little nervous laugh escape through her dejection.
+
+"Well, then,"--Aurora's eyes twinkled like stars,--"id muz be bic-ause
+'Sieur Frowenfel' bump 'is 'ead--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"'Tis nod tru'!" cried Clotilde; but, instead of laughing, as Aurora had
+supposed she would, she sent a double flash of light from her eyes,
+crimsoned, and retorted, as the tears again sprang from their
+lurking-place, "You wand to mague ligue you don't kyah! But _I_ know! I
+know verrie well! You kyah fifty time' as mudge as me! I know you! I
+know you! I bin wadge you!"
+
+Aurora was quite dumb for a moment, and gazed at Clotilde, wondering
+what could have made her so unlike herself. Then she half rose up, and,
+as she reached forward an arm, and laid it tenderly about her daughter's
+neck, said:
+
+"Ma lill dotter, wad dad meggin you cry? Iv you will tell me wad dad
+mague you cry, I will tell you--on ma _second word of honor_"--she
+rolled up her fist--"juz wad I thing about dad 'Sieur Frowenfel'!"
+
+"I don't kyah wad de whole worl' thing aboud 'im!"
+
+"_Mais_, anny'ow, tell me fo' wad you cryne!"
+
+Clotilde gazed aside for a moment and then confronted her questioner
+consentingly.
+
+"I tole 'im I knowed 'e was h-innocen'."
+
+"Eh, Men, dad was h-only de poli-i-idenez. Wad 'e said?"
+
+"E said I din knowed 'im 'tall."
+
+"An' you," exclaimed Aurora, "it is nod pozzyble dad you--"
+
+"I tole 'im I know 'im bette'n 'e know annyt'in' 'boud id!"
+
+The speaker dropped her face into her mother's lap.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Aurora, "an' wad of dad? I would say dad, me, fo'
+time' a day. I gi'e you my word 'e don godd dad sens' to know wad
+dad mean."
+
+"Ah! don godd sens'!" cried Clotilde, lifting her head up suddenly with
+a face of agony. "'E reg--'e reggo-ni-i-ize me!"
+
+Aurora caught her daughter's cheeks between her hands and laughed all
+over them.
+
+"_Mais_, don you see 'ow dad was luggy? Now, you know?--'e goin' fall
+in love wid you an' you goin' 'ave dad sadizfagzion to rif-use de
+biggis' hand in Noo-'leans. An' you will be h-even, ha, ha! Bud me--you
+wand to know wad I thing aboud 'im? I thing 'e is one--egcellen'
+drug-cl--ah, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde replied with a smile of grieved incredulity.
+
+"De bez in de ciddy!" insisted the other. She crossed the forefinger of
+one hand upon that of the other and kissed them, reversed the cross and
+kissed them again. "_Mais_, ad de sem tam," she added, giving her
+daughter time to smile, "I thing 'e is one _noble gen'leman_. Nod to
+sood me, of coze, _mais, ca fait rien_--daz nott'n; me, I am now a h'ole
+woman, you know, eh? Noboddie can' nevva sood me no mo', nod ivven dad
+Govenno' Cleb-orne."
+
+She tried to look old and jaded.
+
+"Ah, Govenno' Cleb-orne!" exclaimed Clotilde.
+
+"Yass!--Ah, you!--you thing iv a man is nod a Creole 'e bown to be no
+'coun'! I assu' you dey don' godd no boddy wad I fine a so nize
+gen'leman lag Govenno' Cleb-orne! Ah! Clotilde, you godd no lib'ral'ty!"
+
+The speaker rose, cast a discouraged parting look upon her narrow-minded
+companion and went to investigate the slumbrous silence of the kitchen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+AURORA'S LAST PICAYUNE
+
+
+Not often in Aurora's life had joy and trembling so been mingled in one
+cup as on this day. Clotilde wept; and certainly the mother's heart
+could but respond; yet Clotilde's tears filled her with a secret
+pleasure which fought its way up into the beams of her eyes and asserted
+itself in the frequency and heartiness of her laugh despite her sincere
+participation in her companion's distresses and a fearful looking
+forward to to-morrow.
+
+Why these flashes of gladness? If we do not know, it is because we have
+overlooked one of her sources of trouble. From the night of the _bal
+masque_ she had--we dare say no more than that she had been haunted; she
+certainly would not at first have admitted even so much to herself. Yet
+the fact was not thereby altered, and first the fact and later the
+feeling had given her much distress of mind. Who he was whose image
+would not down, for a long time she did not know. This, alone, was
+torture; not merely because it was mystery, but because it helped to
+force upon her consciousness that her affections, spite of her, were
+ready and waiting for him and he did not come after them. That he loved
+her, she knew; she had achieved at the ball an overwhelming victory, to
+her certain knowledge, or, depend upon it, she never would have
+unmasked--never.
+
+But with this torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of loving, but
+the fear of her daughter. This is a world that allows nothing without
+its obverse and reverse. Strange differences are often seen between the
+two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world
+of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds
+herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom,
+and on the other, Stepfather.
+
+Then, all this torture to be hidden under smiles! Worse still, when by
+and by Messieurs Agoussou, Assonquer, Danny and others had been appealed
+to and a Providence boundless in tender compassion had answered in their
+stead, she and her lover had simultaneously discovered each other's
+identity only to find that he was a Montague to her Capulet. And the
+source of her agony must be hidden, and falsely attributed to the rent
+deficiency and their unprotected lives. Its true nature must be
+concealed even from Clotilde. What a secret--for what a spirit--to keep
+from what a companion!--a secret yielding honey to her, but, it might
+be, gall to Clotilde. She felt like one locked in the Garden of Eden all
+alone--alone with all the ravishing flowers, alone with all the lions
+and tigers. She wished she had told the secret when it was small and had
+let it increase by gradual accretions in Clotilde's knowledge day by
+day. At first it had been but a garland, then it had become a chain, now
+it was a ball and chain; and it was oh! and oh! if Clotilde would only
+fall in love herself! How that would simplify matters! More than twice
+or thrice she had tried to reveal her overstrained heart in broken
+sections; but on her approach to the very outer confines of the matter,
+Clotilde had always behaved so strangely, so nervously, in short, so
+beyond Aurora's comprehension, that she invariably failed to make any
+revelation.
+
+And now, here in the very central darkness of this cloud of troubles,
+comes in Clotilde, throws herself upon the defiant little bosom so full
+of hidden suffering, and weeps tears of innocent confession that in a
+moment lay the dust of half of Aurora's perplexities. Strange world! The
+tears of the orphan making the widow weep for joy, if she only dared.
+
+The pair sat down opposite each other at their little dinner-table. They
+had a fixed hour for dinner. It is well to have a fixed hour; it is in
+the direction of system. Even if you have not the dinner, there is the
+hour. Alphonsina was not in perfect harmony with this fixed-hour idea.
+It was Aurora's belief, often expressed in hungry moments with the laugh
+of a vexed Creole lady (a laugh worthy of study), that on the day when
+dinner should really be served at the appointed hour, the cook would
+drop dead of apoplexy and she of fright. She said it to-day, shutting
+her arms down to her side, closing her eyes with her eyebrows raised,
+and dropping into her chair at the table like a dead bird from its
+perch. Not that she felt particularly hungry; but there is a certain
+desultoriness allowable at table more than elsewhere, and which suited
+the hither-thither movement of her conflicting feelings. This is why she
+had wished for dinner.
+
+Boiled shrimps, rice, claret-and-water, bread--they were dining well the
+day before execution. Dining is hardly correct, either, for Clotilde, at
+least, did not eat; they only sat. Clotilde had, too, if not her
+unknown, at least her unconfessed emotions. Aurora's were tossed by the
+waves, hers were sunken beneath them. Aurora had a faith that the rent
+would be paid--a faith which was only a vapor, but a vapor gilded by the
+sun--that is, by Apollo, or, to be still more explicit, by Honore
+Grandissime. Clotilde, deprived of this confidence, had tried to raise
+means wherewith to meet the dread obligation, or, rather, had tried to
+try and had failed. To-day was the ninth, to-morrow, the street. Joseph
+Frowenfeld was hurt; her dependence upon his good offices was gone. When
+she thought of him suffering under public contumely, it seemed to her as
+if she could feel the big drops of blood dropping from her heart; and
+when she recalled her own actions, speeches, and demonstrations in his
+presence, exaggerated by the groundless fear that he had guessed into
+the deepest springs of her feelings, then she felt those drops of blood
+congeal. Even if the apothecary had been duller of discernment than she
+supposed, here was Aurora on the opposite side of the table, reading
+every thought of her inmost soul. But worst of all was 'Sieur
+Frowenfel's indifference. It is true that, as he had directed upon her
+that gaze of recognition, there was a look of mighty gladness, if she
+dared believe her eyes. But no, she dared not; there was nothing there
+for her, she thought,--probably (when this anguish of public disgrace
+should by any means be lifted) a benevolent smile at her and her
+betrayal of interest. Clotilde felt as though she had been laid entire
+upon a slide of his microscope.
+
+Aurora at length broke her reverie.
+
+"Clotilde,"--she spoke in French--"the matter with you is that you have
+no heart. You never did have any. Really and truly, you do not care
+whether 'Sieur Frowenfel' lives or dies. You do not care how he is or
+where he is this minute. I wish you had some of my too large heart. I
+not only have the heart, as I tell you, to think kindly of our enemies,
+those Grandissime, for example"--she waved her hand with the air of
+selecting at random--"but I am burning up to know what is the condition
+of that poor, sick, noble 'Sieur Frowenfel', and I am going to do it!"
+
+The heart which Clotilde was accused of not having gave a stir of deep
+gratitude. Dear, pretty little mother! Not only knowing full well the
+existence of this swelling heart and the significance, to-day, of its
+every warm pulsation, but kindly covering up the discovery with
+make-believe reproaches. The tears started in her eyes; that was
+her reply.
+
+"Oh, now! it is the rent again, I suppose," cried Aurora, "always the
+rent. It is not the rent that worries _me_, it is 'Sieur Frowenfel',
+poor man. But very well, Mademoiselle Silence, I will match you for
+making me do all the talking." She was really beginning to sink under
+the labor of carrying all the sprightliness for both. "Come," she said,
+savagely, "propose something."
+
+"Would you think well to go and inquire?"
+
+"Ah, listen! Go and what? No, Mademoiselle, I think not."
+
+"Well, send Alphonsina."
+
+"What? And let him know that I am anxious about him? Let me tell you, my
+little girl, I shall not drag upon myself the responsibility of
+increasing the self-conceit of any of that sex."
+
+"Well, then, send to buy a picayune's worth of something."
+
+"Ah, ha, ha! An emetic, for instance. Tell him we are poisoned on
+mushrooms, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Clotilde laughed too.
+
+"Ah, no," she said. "Send for something he does not sell."
+
+Aurora was laughing while Clotilde spoke; but as she caught these words
+she stopped with open-mouthed astonishment, and, as Clotilde blushed,
+laughed again.
+
+"Oh, Clotilde, Clotilde, Clotilde!"--she leaned forward over the table,
+her face beaming with love and laughter--"you rowdy! you rascal! You
+are just as bad as your mother, whom you think so wicked! I accept your
+advice. Alphonsina!"
+
+"Momselle!"
+
+The answer came from the kitchen.
+
+"Come go--or, rather,--_vini 'ci courri dans boutique de l'apothecaire_.
+Clotilde," she continued, in better French, holding up the coin to
+view, "look!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The last picayune we have in the world--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+HONORE MAKES SOME CONFESSIONS
+
+
+"Comment ca va, Raoul?" said Honore Grandissime; he had come to the shop
+according to the proposal contained in his note. "Where is Mr.
+Frowenfeld?"
+
+He found the apothecary in the rear room, dressed, but just rising from
+the bed at sound of his voice. He closed the door after him; they shook
+hands and took chairs.
+
+"You have fever," said the merchant. "I have been troubled that way
+myself, some, lately." He rubbed his face all over, hard, with one
+hand,' and looked at the ceiling. "Loss of sleep, I suppose, in both of
+us; in your case voluntary--in pursuit of study, most likely; in my
+case--effect of anxiety." He smiled a moment and then suddenly sobered
+as after a pause he said:
+
+"But I hear you are in trouble; may I ask--"
+
+Frowenfeld had interrupted him with almost the same words:
+
+"May I venture to ask, Mr. Grandissime, what--"
+
+And both were silent for a moment.
+
+"Oh," said Honore, with a gesture. "My trouble--I did not mean to
+mention it; 't is an old matter--in part. You know, Mr. Frowenfeld,
+there is a kind of tree not dreamed of in botany, that lets fall its
+fruit every day in the year--you know? We call it--with reverence--'our
+dead father's mistakes.' I have had to eat much of that fruit; a man who
+has to do that must expect to have now and then a little fever."
+
+"I have heard," replied Frowenfeld, "that some of the titles under which
+your relatives hold their lands are found to be of the kind which the
+State's authorities are pronouncing worthless. I hope this is not
+the case."
+
+"I wish they had never been put into my custody," said M. Grandissime.
+
+Some new thought moved him to draw his chair closer.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, those two ladies whom you went to see the other
+evening--"
+
+His listener started a little:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did they ever tell you their history?"
+
+"No, sir; but I have heard it."
+
+"And you think they have been deeply wronged, eh? Come, Mr. Frowenfeld,
+take right hold of the acacia-bush." M. Grandissime did not smile.
+
+Frowenfeld winced. "I think they have."
+
+"And you think restitution should be made them, no doubt, eh?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"At any cost?"
+
+The questioner showed a faint, unpleasant smile, that stirred something
+like opposition in the breast of the apothecary.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+The next question had a tincture even of fierceness:
+
+"You think it right to sink fifty or a hundred people into poverty to
+lift one or two out?"
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld, slowly, "you bade me study this
+community."
+
+"I adv--yes; what is it you find?"
+
+"I find--it may be the same with other communities, I suppose it is,
+more or less--that just upon the culmination of the moral issue it turns
+and asks the question which is behind it, instead of the question which
+is before it."
+
+"And what is the question before me?"
+
+"I know it only in the abstract."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The apothecary looked distressed.
+
+"You should not make me say it," he objected.
+
+"Nevertheless," said the Creole, "I take that liberty."
+
+"Well, then," said Frowenfeld, "the question behind is Expediency and
+the question in front, Divine Justice. You are asking yourself--"
+
+He checked himself.
+
+"Which I ought to regard," said M. Grandissime, quickly. "Expediency, of
+course, and be like the rest of mankind." He put on a look of bitter
+humor. "It is all easy enough for you, Mr. Frowenfeld, my-de'-seh; you
+have the easy part--the theorizing."
+
+He saw the ungenerousness of his speech as soon as it was uttered, yet
+he did not modify it.
+
+"True, Mr. Grandissime," said Frowenfeld; and after a pause--"but you
+have the noble part--the doing."
+
+"Ah, my-de'-seh!" exclaimed Honore; "the noble part! There is the
+bitterness of the draught! The opportunity to act is pushed upon me, but
+the opportunity to act nobly has passed by."
+
+He again drew his chair closer, glanced behind him and spoke low:
+
+"Because for years I have had a kind of custody of all my kinsmen's
+property interests, Agricola's among them, it is supposed that he has
+always kept the plantation of Aurore Nancanou (or rather of
+Clotilde--who, you know, by our laws is the real heir). That is a
+mistake. Explain it as you please, call it remorse, pride, love--what
+you like--while I was in France and he was managing my mother's
+business, unknown to me he gave me that plantation. When I succeeded him
+I found it and all its revenues kept distinct--as was but proper--from
+all other accounts, and belonging to me. 'Twas a fine, extensive place,
+had a good overseer on it and--I kept it. Why? Because I was a coward. I
+did not want it or its revenues; but, like my father, I would not offend
+my people. Peace first and justice afterwards--that was the principle
+on which I quietly made myself the trustee of a plantation and income
+which you would have given back to their owners, eh?"
+
+Frowenfeld was silent.
+
+"My-de'-seh, recollect that to us the Grandissime name is a treasure.
+And what has preserved it so long? Cherishing the unity of our family;
+that has done it; that is how my father did it. Just or unjust, good or
+bad, needful or not, done elsewhere or not, I do not say; but it is a
+Creole trait. See, even now" (the speaker smiled on one side of his
+mouth) "in a certain section of the territory certain men, Creoles" (he
+whispered, gravely), "_some Grandissimes among them_, evading the United
+States revenue laws and even beating and killing some of the officials:
+well! Do the people at large repudiate those men? My-de'-seh, in no
+wise, seh! No; if they were _Americains_--but a Louisianian--is a
+Louisianian; touch him not; when you touch him you touch all Louisiana!
+So with us Grandissimes; we are legion, but we are one. Now,
+my-de'-seh, the thing you ask me to do is to cast overboard that old
+traditional principle which is the secret of our existence."
+
+"_I_ ask you?"
+
+"Ah, bah! you know you expect it. Ah! but you do not know the uproar
+such an action would make. And no 'noble part' in it, my-de'-seh,
+either. A few months ago--when we met by those graves--if
+I had acted then, my action would have been one of pure--even
+violent--_self_-sacrifice. Do you remember--on the levee, by the Place
+d'Armes--me asking you to send Agricola to me? I tried then to speak of
+it. He would not let me. Then, my people felt safe in their land-titles
+and public offices; this restitution would have hurt nothing but pride.
+Now, titles in doubt, government appointments uncertain, no ready
+capital in reach for any purpose, except that which would have to be
+handed over with the plantation (for to tell you the fact, my-de'-seh,
+no other account on my books has prospered), with matters changed in
+this way, I become the destroyer of my own flesh and blood! Yes, seh!
+and lest I might still find some room to boast, another change moves me
+into a position where it suits me, my-de'-seh, to make the restitution
+so fatal to those of my name. When you and I first met, those ladies
+were as much strangers to me as to you--as far as I _knew_. Then, if I
+had done this thing--but now--now, my-de'-seh, I find myself in love
+with one of them!"
+
+M. Grandissime looked his friend straight in the eye with the frowning
+energy of one who asserts an ugly fact.
+
+Frowenfeld, regarding the speaker with a gaze of respectful attention,
+did not falter; but his fevered blood, with an impulse that started him
+half from his seat, surged up into his head and face; and then--
+
+M. Grandissime blushed.
+
+In the few silent seconds that followed, the glances of the two friends
+continued to pass into each other's eyes, while about Honore's mouth
+hovered the smile of one who candidly surrenders his innermost secret,
+and the lips of the apothecary set themselves together as though he were
+whispering to himself behind them, "Steady."
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld," said the Creole, taking a sudden breath and waving a
+hand, "I came to ask about _your_ trouble; but if you think you have any
+reason to withhold your confidence--"
+
+"No, sir; no! But can I be no help to you in this matter?"
+
+The Creole leaned back smilingly in his chair and knit his fingers.
+
+"No, I did not intend to say all this; I came to offer my help to you;
+but my mind is full--what do you expect? My-de'-seh, the foam must come
+first out of the bottle. You see"--he leaned forward again, laid two
+fingers in his palm and deepened his tone--"I will tell you: this
+tree--'our dead father's mistakes'--is about to drop another rotten
+apple. I spoke just now of the uproar this restitution would make; why,
+my-de'-seh, just the mention of the lady's name at my house, when we
+lately held the _fete de grandpere_, has given rise to a quarrel which
+is likely to end in a duel."
+
+"Raoul was telling me," said the apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime made an affirmative gesture.
+
+"Mr. Frowenfeld, if you--if any one--could teach my people--I mean my
+family--the value of peace (I do not say the duty, my-de'-seh; a
+merchant talks of values); if you could teach them the value of peace, I
+would give you, if that was your price"--he ran the edge of his left
+hand knife-wise around the wrist of his right--"that. And if you would
+teach it to the whole community--well--I think I would not give my head;
+maybe you would." He laughed.
+
+"There is a peace which is bad," said the contemplative apothecary.
+
+"Yes," said the Creole, promptly, "the very kind that I have been
+keeping all this time--and my father before me!"
+
+He spoke with much warmth.
+
+"Yes," he said again, after a pause which was not a rest, "I often see
+that we Grandissimes are a good example of the Creoles at large; we have
+one element that makes for peace; that--pardon the
+self-consciousness--is myself; and another element that makes for
+strife--led by my uncle Agricola; but, my-de'-seh, the peace element is
+that which ought to make the strife, and the strife element is that
+which ought to be made to keep the peace! Mr. Frowenfeld, I propose to
+become the strife-maker; how then, can I be a peacemaker at the same
+time? There is my diffycultie."
+
+"Mr. Grandissime," exclaimed Frowenfeld, "if you have any design in view
+founded on the high principles which I know to be the foundations of all
+your feelings, and can make use of the aid of a disgraced man, use me."
+
+"You are very generous," said the Creole, and both were silent. Honore
+dropped his eyes from Frowenfeld's to the floor, rubbed his knee with
+his palm, and suddenly looked up.
+
+"You are innocent of wrong?"
+
+"Before God."
+
+"I feel sure of it. Tell me in a few words all about it. I ought to be
+able to extricate you. Let me hear it."
+
+Frowenfeld again told as much as he thought he could, consistently with
+his pledges to Palmyre, touching with extreme lightness upon the part
+taken by Clotilde.
+
+"Turn around," said M. Grandissime at the close; "let me see the back of
+your head. And it is that that is giving you this fever, eh?"
+
+"Partly," replied Frowenfeld; "but how shall I vindicate my innocence? I
+think I ought to go back openly to this woman's house and get my hat. I
+was about to do that when I got your note; yet it seems a feeble--even
+if possible--expedient."
+
+"My friend," said Honore, "leave it to me. I see your whole case, both
+what you tell and what you conceal. I guess it with ease. Knowing
+Palmyre so well, and knowing (what you do not) that all the voudous in
+town think you a sorcerer, I know just what she would drop down and beg
+you for--a _ouangan_, ha, ha! You see? Leave it all to me--and your hat
+with Palmyre, take a febrifuge and a nap, and await word from me."
+
+"And may I offer you no help in your difficulty?" asked the apothecary,
+as the two rose and grasped hands.
+
+"Oh!" said the Creole, with a little shrug, "you may do anything you
+can--which will be nothing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+TESTS OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+Frowenfeld turned away from the closing door, caught his head between
+his hands and tried to comprehend the new wildness of the tumult within.
+Honore Grandissime avowedly in love with one of them--_which one_?
+Doctor Keene visibly in love with one of them--_which one_? And he! What
+meant this bounding joy that, like one gorgeous moth among innumerable
+bats, flashed to and fro among the wild distresses and dismays swarming
+in and out of his distempered imagination? He did not answer the
+question; he only knew the confusion in his brain was dreadful. Both
+hands could not hold back the throbbing of his temples; the table did
+not steady the trembling of his hands; his thoughts went hither and
+thither, heedless of his call. Sit down as he might, rise up, pace the
+room, stand, lean his forehead against the wall--nothing could quiet the
+fearful disorder, until at length he recalled Honore's neglected advice
+and resolutely lay down and sought sleep; and, long before he had hoped
+to secure it, it came.
+
+In the distant Grandissime mansion, Agricola Fusilier was casting about
+for ways and means to rid himself of the heaviest heart that ever had
+throbbed in his bosom. He had risen at sunrise from slumber worse than
+sleeplessness, in which his dreams had anticipated the duel of to-morrow
+with Sylvestre. He was trying to get the unwonted quaking out of his
+hands and the memory of the night's heart-dissolving phantasms from
+before his inner vision. To do this he had resort to a very familiar, we
+may say time-honored, prescription--rum. He did not use it after the
+voudou fashion; the voudous pour it on the ground--Agricola was an
+anti-voudou. It finally had its effect. By eleven o'clock he seemed,
+outwardly at least, to be at peace with everything in Louisiana that he
+considered Louisianian, properly so-called; as to all else he was ready
+for war, as in peace one should be. While in this mood, and performing
+at a sideboard the solemn rite of _las onze_, news incidentally reached
+him, by the mouth of his busy second, Hippolyte, of Frowenfeld's
+trouble, and despite 'Polyte's protestations against the principal in a
+pending "affair" appearing on the street, he ordered the carriage and
+hurried to the apothecary's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Frowenfeld awoke, the fingers of his clock were passing the
+meridan. His fever was gone, his brain was calm, his strength in good
+measure had returned. There had been dreams in his sleep, too; he had
+seen Clotilde standing at the foot of his bed. He lay now, for a moment,
+lost in retrospection.
+
+"There can be no doubt about it," said he, as he rose up, looking back
+mentally at something in the past.
+
+The sound of carriage-wheels attracted his attention by ceasing before
+his street door. A moment later the voice of Agricola was heard in the
+shop greeting Raoul. As the old man lifted the head of his staff to tap
+on the inner door, Frowenfeld opened it.
+
+"Fusilier to the rescue!" said the great Louisianian, with a grasp of
+the apothecary's hand and a gaze of brooding admiration.
+
+Joseph gave him a chair, but with magnificent humility he insisted on
+not taking it until "Professor Frowenfeld" had himself sat down.
+
+The apothecary was very solemn. It seemed to him as if in this little
+back room his dead good name was lying in state, and these visitors were
+coming in to take their last look. From time to time he longed for more
+light, wondering why the gravity of his misadventure should seem
+so great.
+
+"H-m-h-y dear Professor!" began the old man. Pages of print could not
+comprise all the meanings of his smile and accent; benevolence,
+affection, assumed knowledge of the facts, disdain of results,
+remembrance of his own youth, charity for pranks, patronage--these were
+but a few. He spoke very slowly and deeply and with this smile of a
+hundred meanings. "Why did you not send for me, Joseph? Sir, whenever
+you have occasion to make a list of the friends who will stand by you,
+_right or wrong_--h-write the name of Citizen Agricola Fusilier at the
+top! Write it large and repeat it at the bottom! You understand me,
+Joseph?--and, mark me,--right or wrong!"
+
+"Not wrong," said Frowenfeld, "at least not in defence of wrong; I could
+not do that; but, I assure you, in this matter I have done--"
+
+"No worse than any one else would have done under the circumstances, my
+dear boy!--Nay, nay, do not interrupt me; I understand you, I understand
+you. H-do you imagine there is anything strange to me in this--at
+my age?"
+
+"But I am--"
+
+"--all right, sir! that is _what_ you are. And you are under the wing of
+Agricola Fusilier, the old eagle; that is _where_ you are. And you are
+one of my brood; that is _who_ you are. Professor, listen to your old
+father. _The--man--makes--the--crime!_ The wisdom of mankind never
+brought forth a maxim of more gigantic beauty. If the different grades
+of race and society did not have corresponding moral and civil
+liberties, varying in degree as they vary--h-why! _this_ community, at
+least, would go to pieces! See here! Professor Frowenfeld is charged
+with misdemeanor. Very well, who is he? Foreigner or native? Foreigner
+by sentiment and intention, or only by accident of birth? Of our mental
+fibre--our aspirations--our delights--our indignations? I answer for
+you, Joseph, yes!--yes! What then? H-why, then the decision! Reached
+how? By apologetic reasonings? By instinct, sir! h-h-that guide of the
+nobly proud! And what is the decision? Not guilty. Professor Frowenfeld,
+_absolvo te!_"
+
+It was in vain that the apothecary repeatedly tried to interrupt this
+speech. "Citizen Fusilier, do you know me no better?"--"Citizen
+Fusilier, if you will but listen!"--such were the fragments of his
+efforts to explain. The old man was not so confident as he pretended to
+be that Frowenfeld was that complete proselyte which alone satisfies a
+Creole; but he saw him in a predicament and cast to him this life-buoy,
+which if a man should refuse, he would deserve to drown.
+
+Frowenfeld tried again to begin.
+
+"Mr. Fusilier--"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier!"
+
+"Citizen, candor demands that I undeceive--"
+
+"Candor demands--h-my dear Professor, let me tell you exactly what she
+demands. She demands that in here--within this apartment--we understand
+each other. That demand is met."
+
+"But--" Frowenfeld frowned impatiently.
+
+"That demand, Joseph, is fully met! I understand the whole matter like
+an eye-witness! Now there is another demand to be met, the demand of
+friendship! In here, candor; outside, friendship; in here, one of our
+brethren has been adventurous and unfortunate; outside"--the old man
+smiled a smile of benevolent mendacity--"outside, nothing has happened."
+
+Frowenfeld insisted savagely on speaking; but Agricola raised his voice,
+and gray hairs prevailed.
+
+"At least, what _has_ happened? The most ordinary thing in the world;
+Professor Frowenfeld lost his footing on a slippery gunwale, fell, cut
+his head upon a protruding spike, and went into the house of Palmyre to
+bathe his wound; but finding it worse than he had at first supposed it,
+immediately hurried out again and came to his store. He left his hat
+where it had fallen, too muddy to be worth recovery. Hippolyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin and others, passing at the time, thought he had met
+with violence in the house of the hair-dresser, and drew some natural
+inferences, but have since been better informed; and the public will
+please understand that Professor Frowenfeld is a white man, a gentleman,
+and a Louisianian, ready to vindicate his honor, and that Citizen
+Agricola Fusilier is his friend!"
+
+The old man looked around with the air of a bull on a hill-top.
+
+Frowenfeld, vexed beyond degree, restrained himself only for the sake
+of an object in view, and contented himself with repeating for the
+fourth or fifth time,--
+
+"I cannot accept any such deliverance."
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, friendship--society--demands it; our circle must
+be protected in all its members. You have nothing to do with it. You
+will leave it with me, Joseph."
+
+"No, no," said Frowenfeld, "I thank you, but--"
+
+"Ah! my dear boy, thank me not; I cannot help these impulses; I belong
+to a warm-hearted race. But"--he drew back in his chair sidewise and
+made great pretence of frowning--"you decline the offices of that
+precious possession, a Creole friend?"
+
+"I only decline to be shielded by a fiction."
+
+"Ah-h!" said Agricola, further nettling his victim by a gaze of stagy
+admiration. "'_Sans peur et sans reproche_'--and yet you disappoint me.
+Is it for naught, that I have sallied forth from home, drawing the
+curtains of my carriage to shield me from the gazing crowd? It was to
+rescue my friend--my vicar--my coadjutor--my son--from the laughs and
+finger-points of the vulgar mass. H-I might as well have stayed at
+home--or better, for my peculiar position to-day rather requires me to
+keep in--"
+
+"No, citizen," said Frowenfeld, laying his hand upon Agricola's arm, "I
+trust it is not in vain that you have come out. There _is_ a man in
+trouble whom only you can deliver."
+
+The old man began to swell with complacency.
+
+"H-why, really--"
+
+"_He_, Citizen, is truly of your kind--"
+
+"He must be delivered, Professor Frowenfeld--"
+
+"He is a native Louisianian, not only by accident of birth but by
+sentiment and intention," said Frowenfeld.
+
+The old man smiled a benign delight, but the apothecary now had the
+upper hand, and would not hear him speak.
+
+"His aspirations," continued the speaker, "his indignations--mount with
+his people's. His pulse beats with yours, sir. He is a part of your
+circle. He is one of your caste."
+
+Agricola could not be silent.
+
+"Ha-a-a-ah! Joseph, h-h-you make my blood tingle! Speak to the point;
+who--"
+
+"I believe him, moreover, Citizen Fusilier, innocent of the charge
+laid--"
+
+"H-innocent? H-of course he is innocent, sir! We will _make_ him inno--"
+
+"Ah! Citizen, he is already under sentence of death!"
+
+"_What?_ A Creole under sentence!" Agricola swore a heathen oath, set
+his knees apart and grasped his staff by the middle. "Sir, we will
+liberate him if we have to overturn the government!"
+
+Frowenfeld shook his head.
+
+"You have got to overturn something stronger than government."
+
+"And pray what--"
+
+"A conventionality," said Frowenfeld, holding the old man's eye.
+
+"Ha, ha! my b-hoy, h-you are right. But we will overturn--eh?"
+
+"I say I fear your engagements will prevent. I hear you take part
+to-morrow morning in--"
+
+Agricola suddenly stiffened.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld, it strikes me, sir, you are taking something of a
+liberty."
+
+"For which I ask pardon," exclaimed Frowenfeld. "Then I may not
+expect--"
+
+The old man melted again.
+
+"But who is this person in mortal peril?"
+
+Frowenfeld hesitated.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," he said, looking first down at the floor and then up
+into the inquirer's face, "on my assurance that he is not only a native
+Creole, but a Grandissime--"
+
+"It is not possible!" exclaimed Agricola.
+
+"--a Grandissime of the purest blood, will you pledge me your aid to
+liberate him from his danger, 'right or wrong'?"
+
+"_Will_ I? H-why, certainly! Who is he?"
+
+"Citizen--it is Sylves--"
+
+Agricola sprang up with a thundering oath.
+
+The apothecary put out a pacifying hand, but it was spurned.
+
+"Let me go! How dare you, sir? How dare you, sir?" bellowed Agricola.
+
+He started toward the door, cursing furiously and keeping his eye fixed
+on Frowenfeld with a look of rage not unmixed with terror.
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," said the apothecary, following him with one palm
+uplifted, as if that would ward off his abuse, "don't go! I adjure you,
+don't go! Remember your pledge, Citizen Fusilier!"
+
+Agricola did not pause a moment; but when he had swung the door
+violently open the way was still obstructed. The painter of "Louisiana
+refusing to enter the Union" stood before him, his head elevated
+loftily, one foot set forward and his arm extended like a tragedian's.
+
+"Stan' bag-sah!"
+
+"Let me pass! Let me pass, or I will kill you!"
+
+Mr. Innerarity smote his bosom and tossed his hand aloft.
+
+"Kill me-firse an' pass aftah!"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier," said Frowenfeld, "I beg you to hear me."
+
+"Go away! Go away!"
+
+The old man drew back from the door and stood in the corner against the
+book-shelves as if all the horrors of the last night's dreams had taken
+bodily shape in the person of the apothecary. He trembled and stammered:
+
+"Ke--keep off! Keep off! My God! Raoul, he has insulted me!" He made a
+miserable show of drawing a weapon. "No man may insult me and live! If
+you are a man, Professor Frowenfeld, you will defend yourself!"
+
+Frowenfeld lost his temper, but his hasty reply was drowned by Raoul's
+vehement speech.
+
+"'Tis not de trute!" cried Raoul. "He try to save you from
+hell-'n'-damnation w'en 'e h-ought to give you a good cuss'n!"--and in
+the ecstasy of his anger burst into tears.
+
+Frowenfeld, in an agony of annoyance, waved him away and he disappeared,
+shutting the door.
+
+Agricola, moved far more from within than from without, had sunk into a
+chair under the shelves. His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell
+down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his
+staff, the other his knee, and both trembled violently. As Frowenfeld,
+with every demonstration of beseeching kindness, began to speak, he
+lifted his eyes and said, piteously:
+
+"Stop! Stop!"
+
+"Citizen Fusilier, it is you who must stop. Stop before God Almighty
+stops you, I beg you. I do not presume to rebuke you. I _know_ you want
+a clear record. I know it better to-day than I ever did before. Citizen
+Fusilier, I honor your intentions--"
+
+Agricola roused a little and looked up with a miserable attempt at his
+habitual patronizing smile.
+
+"H-my dear boy, I overlook"--but he met in
+
+Frowenfeld's eyes a spirit so superior to his dissimulation that the
+smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory and
+apologetic distress. He reached up an arm.
+
+"I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error"--his eyes
+quailed and dropped to the floor--"but I--your arm, my dear Joseph; age
+is creeping upon me." He rose to his feet. "I am feeling really
+indisposed to-day--not at all bright; my solicitude for you, my
+dear b--"
+
+He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the apothecary,
+moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the table stumbled
+into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him. He folded his arms on
+the edge of the board and rested his forehead on them, while Frowenfeld
+sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew paper and pen across the
+table and wrote.
+
+"Are you writing something, Professor?" asked the old man, without
+stirring. His staff tumbled to the floor. The apothecary's answer was a
+low, preoccupied one. Two or three times over he wrote and rejected what
+he had written.
+
+Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid the
+writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and waited.
+
+After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to conceal his
+anguish under a smile.
+
+"I have a sad headache."
+
+He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen which
+Frowenfeld extended toward him.
+
+"What can I do for you, Professor? Sign something? There is nothing I
+would not do for Professor Frowenfeld. What have you written, eh?"
+
+He felt helplessly for his spectacles.
+
+Frowenfeld read:
+
+"_Mr. Sylvestre Grandissime: I spoke in haste_."
+
+He felt himself tremble as he read. Agricola fumbled with the pen,
+lifted his eyes with one more effort at the old look, said, "My dear
+boy, I do this purely to please you," and to Frowenfeld's delight and
+astonishment wrote:
+
+"_Your affectionate uncle, Agricola Fusilier_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+LOUISIANA STATES HER WANTS
+
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Raoul as that person turned in the front door
+of the shop after watching Agricola's carriage roll away--he had
+intended to unburden his mind to the apothecary with all his natural
+impetuosity; but Frowenfeld's gravity as he turned, with the paper in
+his hand, induced a different manner. Raoul had learned, despite all the
+impulses of his nature, to look upon Frowenfeld with a sort of
+enthusiastic awe. He dropped his voice and said--asking like a child a
+question he was perfectly able to answer--
+
+"What de matta wid Agricole?"
+
+Frowenfeld, for the moment well-nigh oblivious of his own trouble,
+turned upon his assistant a look in which elation was oddly blended
+with solemnity, and replied as he walked by:
+
+"Rush of truth to the heart."
+
+Raoul followed a step.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"
+
+The apothecary turned once more. Raoul's face bore an expression of
+earnest practicability that invited confidence.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', Agricola writ'n' to Sylvestre to stop dat dool?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You goin' take dat lett' to Sylvestre?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', dat de wrong g-way. You got to take it to 'Polyte
+Brahmin-Mandarin, an' 'e got to take it to Valentine Grandissime, an'
+'_e_ got to take it to Sylvestre. You see, you got to know de manner to
+make. Once 'pon a time I had a diffycultie wid--"
+
+"I see," said Frowenfeld; "where may I find Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin
+at this time of day?"
+
+Raoul shrugged.
+
+"If the pre-parish-ions are not complitted, you will not find 'im; but
+if they har complitted--you know 'im?"
+
+"By sight."
+
+"Well, you may fine him at Maspero's, or helse in de front of de
+Veau-qui-tete, or helse at de Cafe Louis Quatorze--mos' likely in front
+of de Veau-qui-tete. You know, dat diffycultie I had, dat arise itseff
+from de discush'n of one of de mil-littery mov'ments of ca-valry; you
+know, I--"
+
+"Yes," said the apothecary; "here, Raoul, is some money; please go and
+buy me a good, plain hat."
+
+"All right." Raoul darted behind the counter and got his hat out of a
+drawer. "Were at you buy your hats?"
+
+"Anywhere."
+
+"I will go at _my_ hatter."
+
+As the apothecary moved about his shop awaiting Raoul's return, his own
+disaster became once more the subject of his anxiety. He noticed that
+almost every person who passed looked in. "This is the place,"--"That is
+the man,"--how plainly the glances of passers sometimes speak! The
+people seemed, moreover, a little nervous. Could even so little a city
+be stirred about such a petty, private trouble as this of his? No; the
+city was having tribulations of its own.
+
+New Orleans was in that state of suppressed excitement which, in later
+days, a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has caused to be
+described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul perceived it
+before he had left the shop twenty paces behind. By the time he reached
+the first corner he was in the swirl of the popular current. He enjoyed
+it like a strong swimmer. He even drank of it. It was better than wine
+and music mingled.
+
+"Twelve weeks next Thursday, and no sign of re-cession!" said one of
+two rapid walkers just in front of him. Their talk was in the French of
+the province.
+
+"Oh, re-cession!" exclaimed the other angrily. "The cession is a
+reality. That, at least, we have got to swallow. Incredulity is dead."
+
+The first speaker's feelings could find expression only in profanity.
+
+"The cession--we wash our hands of it!" He turned partly around upon his
+companion, as they hurried along, and gave his hands a vehement dry
+washing. "If Incredulity is dead, Non-participation reigns in its stead,
+and Discontent is prime minister!" He brandished his fist as they
+turned a corner.
+
+"If we must change, let us be subjects of the First Consul!" said one of
+another pair whom Raoul met on a crossing.
+
+There was a gathering of boys and vagabonds at the door of a gun-shop. A
+man inside was buying a gun. That was all.
+
+A group came out of a "coffee-house." The leader turned about upon the
+rest:
+
+"_Ah, bah! cette_ Amayrican libetty!"
+
+"See! see! it is this way!" said another of the number, taking two
+others by their elbows, to secure an audience, "we shall do nothing
+ourselves; we are just watching that vile Congress. It is going to tear
+the country all to bits!"
+
+"Ah, my friend, you haven't got the _inside_ news," said still
+another--Raoul lingered to hear him--"Louisiana is going to state her
+wants! We have the liberty of free speech and are going to use it!"
+
+His information was correct; Louisiana, no longer incredulous of her
+Americanization, had laid hold of her new liberties and was beginning to
+run with them, like a boy dragging his kite over the clods. She was
+about to state her wants, he said.
+
+"And her don't-wants," volunteered one whose hand Raoul shook heartily.
+"We warn the world. If Congress doesn't take heed, we will not be
+responsible for the consequences!"
+
+Raoul's hatter was full of the subject. As Mr. Innerarity entered, he
+was saying good-day to a customer in his native tongue, English, and so
+continued:
+
+"Yes, under Spain we had a solid, quiet government--Ah! Mr. Innerarity,
+overjoyed to see you! We were speaking of these political troubles. I
+wish we might see the last of them. It's a terrible bad mess; corruption
+to-day--I tell you what--it will be disruption to-morrow. Well, it is no
+work of ours; we shall merely stand off and see it."
+
+"Mi-frien'," said Raoul, with mingled pity and superiority, "you haven't
+got doze _inside_ nooz; Louisiana is goin' to state w'at she want."
+
+On his way back toward the shop Mr. Innerarity easily learned
+Louisiana's wants and don't-wants by heart. She wanted a Creole
+governor; she did not want Casa Calvo invited to leave the country; she
+wanted the provisions of the Treaty of Cession hurried up; "as soon as
+possible," that instrument said; she had waited long enough; she did not
+want "dat trile bi-ju'y"--execrable trash! she wanted an _unwatched
+import trade!_ she did not want a single additional Americain appointed
+to office; she wanted the slave trade.
+
+Just in sight of the bareheaded and anxious Frowenfeld, Raoul let
+himself be stopped by a friend.
+
+The remark was exchanged that the times were exciting.
+
+"And yet," said the friend, "the city was never more peaceable. It is
+exasperating to see that coward governor looking so diligently after his
+police and hurrying on the organization of the Americain volunteer
+militia!" He pointed savagely here and there. "M. Innerarity, I am lost
+in admiration at the all but craven patience with which our people
+endure their wrongs! Do my pistols show _too_ much through my coat?
+Well, good-day; I must go home and clean my gun; my dear friend, one
+don't know how soon he may have to encounter the Recorder and Register
+of Land-titles."
+
+Raoul finished his errand.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', excuse me--I take dat lett' to 'Polyte for you if
+you want." There are times when mere shopkeeping--any peaceful
+routine--is torture.
+
+But the apothecary felt so himself; he declined his assistant's offer
+and went out toward the Veau-qui-tete.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+FROWENFELD FINDS SYLVESTRE
+
+
+The Veau-qui-tete restaurant occupied the whole ground floor of a small,
+low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco building which still
+stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter streets, in company with
+the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of
+the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept
+kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It
+was a favorite rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the
+court-rooms and municipal bureaus. There you found the choicest legal
+and political gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat
+and drink.
+
+Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had to move
+about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not overlooking the
+object of his search.
+
+As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed
+rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and
+murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes
+on his back.
+
+There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever
+he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he
+saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state
+of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him
+particularly discordant.
+
+Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in
+the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant,
+mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_. It was a portion of the
+Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants
+of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of
+Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper
+title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city,
+Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles,
+who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their
+complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading
+rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed
+these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three
+with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.
+
+Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Americain, in
+English.
+
+"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other
+governments we had any quantity!"
+
+"Yes," said the venturesome Americain in retort, "such as it was;
+_assignats, liberanzas, bons_--Claiborne will give us better money than
+that when he starts his bank."
+
+"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father.
+What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he
+had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered
+curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.
+
+A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been
+greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without
+turning his eyes.
+
+"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to
+be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty
+they give us--all eat out of one trough."
+
+"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man,
+setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have, is"--he was
+speaking in French, but gave the want in English--"Representesh'n wizout
+Taxa--" There his eye fell upon Frowenfeld and followed him with
+a scowl.
+
+"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wass you sink of a mane
+w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in ze
+sem room?"
+
+The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more general than
+he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did so, to an
+Americain merchant with whom he had some acquaintance.
+
+"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see me? I
+thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all, does it
+sum up?"
+
+A Creole interrupted him with an answer:
+
+"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Pahtitsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"
+
+The voice was like Honore's. Frowenfeld looked; it was Agamemnon
+Grandissime.
+
+"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started up the
+rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he suddenly found
+himself one of a crowd standing before a newly-posted placard, and at a
+glance saw it to be one of the inflammatory publications which were a
+feature of the times, appearing both daily and nightly on walls
+and fences.
+
+"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it back,"
+said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.
+
+Exchange Alley was once _Passage de la Bourse_, and led down (as it now
+does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to an establishment which
+seems to have served for a long term of years as a sort of merchants'
+and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a minimum of china and a maximum of
+glass: Maspero's--certainly Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we
+believe, Maspero's the day the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It
+was a livelier spot than the Veau-qui-tete; it was to that what commerce
+is to litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping.
+Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public sentiment
+in which sanctity signs politicians' memorials and chivalry breaks into
+the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump of the machinery was in
+Maspero's.
+
+The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine Grandissime.
+There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners in front of him;
+he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in Creole French.
+
+"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know my
+rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We have"--with
+a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended palm--"a right to
+protect them from the attack of interlopers, even if we have to use
+gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the liberties of even this army
+of fortune-hunters. _Let_ them think." He half laughed. "Who cares
+whether they share our opinions or not? Let them have their own. I had
+rather they would. But let them hold their tongues. Let them remember
+they are Yankees. Let them remember they are unbidden guests." All this
+without the least warmth.
+
+But the answer came aglow with passion, from one of the semicircle, whom
+two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It also was in French,
+but the apothecary was astonished to hear his own name uttered.
+
+"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see Joseph--"has never
+held his tongue. He has given us good reason half a dozen times, with
+his too free speech and his high moral whine, to hang him with the
+lamppost rope! And now, when we have borne and borne and borne and borne
+with him, and he shows up, all at once, in all his rottenness, you say
+let him alone! One would think you were defending Honore Grandissime!"
+The back of one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of
+the other.
+
+Valentine smiled.
+
+"Honore Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are talking about.
+Not Honore, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own avowal, is guilty of
+affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we have good reason to suspect
+of meditating his family's dishonor and embarrassment!" Somebody saw the
+apothecary and laid a cautionary touch on Valentine's arm, but he
+brushed it off. "As for Professor Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."
+
+"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.
+
+"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you again
+what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin and held his
+clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he is--he is--"
+
+He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large, white, and
+immovable, stood close before him.
+
+"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander, edging
+toward a pillar.
+
+The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the
+apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blushing mood, and was not
+disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made a
+sudden, angry change of attitude, and demanded:
+
+"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee clown?
+Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"
+
+Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he said:
+
+"Sir, I am not aware that I have ever offered you the slightest injury
+or affront; if you wish to finish your conversation with this gentleman,
+I will wait till you are through."
+
+The Creole bowed, as a knight who takes up the gage. He turned to
+Valentine.
+
+"Valentine, I was sayin' to you dad diz pusson is a cowa'd and a sneak;
+I repead thad! I repead id! I spurn you! Go f'om yeh!"
+
+The apothecary stood like a cliff.
+
+It was too much for Creole forbearance. His adversary, with a long snarl
+of oaths, sprang forward and with a great sweep of his arm slapped the
+apothecary on the cheek. And then--
+
+What a silence!
+
+Frowenfeld had advanced one step; his opponent stood half turned away,
+but with his face toward the face he had just struck and his eyes
+glaring up into the eyes of the apothecary. The semicircle was
+dissolved, and each man stood in neutral isolation, motionless and
+silent. For one instant objects lost all natural proportion, and to the
+expectant on-lookers the largest thing in the room was the big,
+upraised, white fist of Frowenfeld. But in the next--how was this? Could
+it be that that fist had not descended?
+
+The imperturbable Valentine, with one preventing arm laid across the
+breast of the expected victim and an open hand held restrainingly up for
+truce, stood between the two men and said:
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld--one moment--"
+
+Frowenfeld's face was ashen.
+
+"Don't speak, sir!" he exclaimed. "If I attempt to parley I shall break
+every bone in his body. Don't speak! I can guess your explanation--he is
+drunk. But take him away."
+
+Valentine, as sensible as cool, assisted by the kinsman who had laid a
+hand on his arm, shuffled his enraged companion out. Frowenfeld's still
+swelling anger was so near getting the better of him that he
+unconsciously followed a quick step or two; but as Valentine looked back
+and waved him to stop, he again stood still.
+
+"_Professeur_--you know,--" said a stranger, "daz Sylvestre
+Grandissime."
+
+Frowenfeld rather spoke to himself than answered:
+
+"If I had not known that, I should have--" He checked himself and left
+the place.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the apothecary was gathering these experiences, the free spirit of
+Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in a hen-coop.
+One moment after another brought him straggling evidences, now of one
+sort, now of another, of the "never more peaceable" state of affairs
+without. If only some pretext could be conjured up, plausible or flimsy,
+no matter; if only some man would pass with a gun on his shoulder, were
+it only a blow-gun; or if his employer were any one but his beloved
+Frowenfeld, he would clap up the shutters as quickly as he had already
+done once to-day, and be off to the wars. He was just trying to hear
+imaginary pistol-shots down toward the Place d'Armes, when the
+apothecary returned.
+
+"D' you fin' him?"
+
+"I found Sylvestre."
+
+"'E took de lett'?"
+
+"I did not offer it." Frowenfeld, in a few compact sentences, told his
+adventure.
+
+Raoul was ablaze with indignation.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', gimmy dat lett'!" He extended his pretty hand.
+
+Frowenfeld pondered.
+
+"Gimmy 'er!" persisted the artist; "befo' I lose de sight from dat lett'
+she goin' to be hanswer by Sylvestre Grandissime, an' 'e goin' to wrat
+you one appo-logie! Oh! I goin' mek 'im crah fo' shem!"
+
+"If I could know you would do only as I--"
+
+"I do it!" cried Raoul, and sprang for his hat; and in the end
+Frowenfeld let him have his way.
+
+"I had intended seeing him--" the apothecary said.
+
+"Nevvamine to see; I goin' tell him!" cried Raoul, as he crowded his
+hat fiercely down over his curls and plunged out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+TO COME TO THE POINT
+
+
+It was equally a part of Honore Grandissime's nature and of his art as a
+merchant to wear a look of serene leisure. With this look on his face he
+reentered his counting-room after his morning visit to Frowenfeld's
+shop. He paused a moment outside the rail, gave the weak-eyed gentleman
+who presided there a quiet glance equivalent to a beckon, and, as that
+person came near, communicated two or three items of intelligence or
+instruction concerning office details, by which that invaluable diviner
+of business meanings understood that he wished to be let alone for an
+hour. Then M. Grandissime passed on into his private office, and,
+shutting the door behind him, walked briskly to his desk and sat down.
+
+He dropped his elbows upon a broad paper containing some recently
+written, unfinished memoranda that included figures in column, cast his
+eyes quite around the apartment, and then covered his face with his
+palms--a gesture common enough for a tired man of business in a moment
+of seclusion; but just as the face disappeared in the hands, the look
+of serene leisure gave place to one of great mental distress. The paper
+under his elbows, to the consideration of which he seemed about to
+return, was in the handwriting of his manager, with additions by his own
+pen. Earlier in the day he had come to a pause in the making of these
+additions, and, after one or two vain efforts to proceed, had laid down
+his pen, taken his hat, and gone to see the unlucky apothecary. Now he
+took up the broken thread. To come to a decision; that was the task
+which forced from him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly
+through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles,
+and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come;
+let me make up my mind."
+
+There may be men who take every moral height at a dash; but to the most
+of us there must come moments when our wills can but just rise and walk
+in their sleep. Those who in such moments wait for clear views find,
+when the issue is past, that they were only yielding to the devil's
+chloroform.
+
+Honore Grandissme bent his eyes upon the paper. But he saw neither its
+figures nor its words. The interrogation, "Surrender Fausse Riviere?"
+appeared to hang between his eyes and the paper, and when his resolution
+tried to answer "Yes," he saw red flags; he heard the auctioneer's drum;
+he saw his kinsmen handing house-keys to strangers; he saw the old
+servants of the great family standing in the marketplace; he saw
+kinswomen pawning their plate; he saw his clerks (Brahmins, Mandarins,
+Grandissimes) standing idle and shabby in the arcade of the Cabildo and
+on the banquettes of Maspero's and the Veau-qui-tete; he saw red-eyed
+young men in the Exchange denouncing a man who, they said, had,
+ostensibly for conscience's sake, but really for love, forced upon the
+woman he had hoped to marry a fortune filched from his own kindred. He
+saw the junto of doctors in Frowenfeld's door charitably deciding him
+insane; he saw the more vengeful of his family seeking him with
+half-concealed weapons; he saw himself shot at in the rue Royale, in the
+rue Toulouse, and in the Place d'Armes: and, worst of all, missed.
+
+But he wiped his forehead, and the writing on the paper became, in a
+measure, visible. He read:
+
+Total mortgages on the lands of all the Grandissimes  $--
+Total present value of same, titles at buyers' risk    --
+Cash, goods, and accounts                              --
+Fausse Riviere Plantation account                      --
+
+There were other items, but he took up the edge of the paper
+mechanically, pushed it slowly away from him, leaned back in his chair
+and again laid his hands upon his face.
+
+"Suppose I retain Fausse Riviere," he said to himself, as if he had not
+said it many times before.
+
+Then he saw memoranda that were not on any paper before him--such a
+mortgage to be met on such a date; so much from Fausse Riviere
+Plantation account retained to protect that mortgage from foreclosure;
+such another to be met on such a date--so much more of same account to
+protect it. He saw Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, with anguished faces,
+offering woman's pleadings to deaf constables. He saw the remainder of
+Aurora's plantation account thrown to the lawyers to keep the question
+of the Grandissime titles languishing in the courts. He saw the fortunes
+of his clan rallied meanwhile and coming to the rescue, himself and
+kindred growing independent of questionable titles, and even Fausse
+Riviere Plantation account restored, but Aurora and Clotilde nowhere to
+be found. And then he saw the grave, pale face of Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+He threw himself forward, drew the paper nervously toward him, and
+stared at the figures. He began at the first item and went over the
+whole paper, line by line, testing every extension, proving every
+addition, noting if possibly any transposition of figures had been made
+and overlooked, if something was added that should have been subtracted,
+or subtracted that should have been added. It was like a prisoner trying
+the bars of his cell.
+
+Was there no way to make things happen differently? Had he not
+overlooked some expedient? Was not some financial manoeuvre possible
+which might compass both desired ends? He left his chair and walked up
+and down, as Joseph at that very moment was doing in the room where he
+had left him, came back, looked at the paper, and again walked up and
+down. He murmured now and then to himself: "_Self_-denial--that is not
+the hard work. Penniless myself--_that_ is play," and so on. He turned
+by and by and stood looking up at that picture of the man in the cuirass
+which Aurora had once noticed. He looked at it, but he did not see it.
+He was thinking--"Her rent is due to-morrow. She will never believe I am
+not her landlord. She will never go to my half-brother." He turned once
+more and mentally beat his breast as he muttered: "Why do I not decide?"
+
+Somebody touched the doorknob. Honore stepped forward and opened it. It
+was a mortgager.
+
+"_Ah! entrez, Monsieur_."
+
+He retained the visitor's hand, leading him in and talking pleasantly in
+French until both had found chairs. The conversation continued in that
+tongue through such pointless commercial gossip as this:
+
+"So the brig _Equinox_ is aground at the head of the Passes," said M.
+Grandissime.
+
+"I have just heard she is off again."
+
+"Aha?"
+
+"Yes; the Fort Plaquemine canoe is just up from below. I understand John
+McDonough has bought the entire cargo of the schooner _Freedom_."
+
+"No, not all; Blanque et Fils bought some twenty boys and women out of
+the lot. Where is she lying?"
+
+"Right at the head of the Basin."
+
+And much more like this; but by and by the mortgager came to the point
+with the casual remark:
+
+"The excitement concerning land titles seems to increase rather than
+subside."
+
+"They must have _something_ to be excited about, I suppose," said M.
+Grandissime, crossing his legs and smiling. It was tradesman's talk.
+
+"Yes," replied the other; "there seems to be an idea current to-day that
+all holders under Spanish titles are to be immediately dispossessed,
+without even process of court. I believe a very slight indiscretion on
+the part of the Governor-General would precipitate a riot."
+
+"He will not commit any," said M. Grandissime with a quiet gravity,
+changing his manner to that of one who draws upon a reserve of private
+information. "There will be no outbreak."
+
+"I suppose not. We do not know, really, that the American Congress will
+throw any question upon titles; but still--"
+
+"What are some of the shrewdest Americans among us doing?" asked M.
+Grandissime.
+
+"Yes," replied the mortgager, "it is true they are buying these very
+titles; but they may be making a mistake?"
+
+Unfortunately for the speaker, he allowed his face an expression of
+argumentative shrewdness as he completed this sentence, and M.
+Grandissime, the merchant, caught an instantaneous full view of his
+motive; he wanted to buy. He was a man whose known speculative policy
+was to "go in" in moments of panic.
+
+M. Grandissime was again face to face with the question of the morning.
+To commence selling must be to go on selling. This, as a plan, included
+restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution to the
+Grandissimes, for should their _sold_ titles be pronounced bad, then the
+titles of other lands would be bad; many an asset among M. Grandissime's
+memoranda would shrink into nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the
+Grandissime estates, left to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's
+accumulated fortune, would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should
+these titles, after being parted with, turn out good, his incensed
+kindred, shutting their eyes to his memoranda and despising his
+exhibits, would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go
+about the streets of his town the subject of their implacable
+denunciation, the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So
+much, should he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter
+upon that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail
+himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune which
+the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if lost at all,
+only when the family could afford to lose them, and Honore Grandissime
+would continue to be Honore the Magnificent, the admiration of the city
+and the idol of his clan. But Aurora--and Clotilde--would have to eat
+the crust of poverty, while their fortunes, even in his hands, must bear
+all the jeopardy of the scheme. That was all. Retain Fausse Riviere and
+its wealth, and save the Grandissimes; surrender Fausse Riviere, let
+the Grandissime estates go, and save the Nancanous. That was the
+whole dilemma.
+
+"Let me see," said M. Grandissime. "You have a mortgage on one of our
+Golden Coast plantations. Well, to be frank with you, I was thinking of
+that when you came in. You know I am partial to prompt transactions--I
+thought of offering you either to take up that mortgage or to sell you
+the plantation, as you may prefer. I have ventured to guess that it
+would suit you to own it."
+
+And the speaker felt within him a secret exultation in the idea that he
+had succeeded in throwing the issue off upon a Providence that could
+control this mortgager's choice.
+
+"I would prefer to leave that choice with you," said the coy would-be
+purchaser; and then the two went coquetting again for another moment.
+
+"I understand that Nicholas Girod is proposing to erect a four-story
+brick building on the corner of Royale and St. Pierre. Do you think it
+practicable? Do you think our soil will support such a structure?"
+
+"Pitot thinks it will. Bore says it is perfectly feasible."
+
+So they dallied.
+
+"Well," said the mortgager, presently rising, "you will make up your
+mind and let me know, will you?"
+
+The chance repetition of those words "make up your mind" touched Honore
+Grandissime like a hot iron. He rose with the visitor.
+
+"Well, sir, what would you give us for our title in case we should
+decide to part with it?"
+
+The two men moved slowly, side by side, toward the door, and in the
+half-open doorway, after a little further trifling, the title was sold.
+
+"Well, good-day," said M. Grandissime. "M. de Brahmin will arrange the
+papers for us to-morrow."
+
+He turned back toward his private desk.
+
+"And now," thought he, "I am acting without resolving. No merit; no
+strength of will; no clearness of purpose; no emphatic decision; nothing
+but a yielding to temptation."
+
+And M. Grandissime spoke truly; but it is only whole men who so
+yield--yielding to the temptation to do right.
+
+He passed into the counting-room, to M. De Brahmin, and standing there
+talked in an inaudible tone, leaning over the upturned spectacles of his
+manager, for nearly an hour. Then, saying he would go to dinner, he went
+out. He did not dine at home nor at the Veau-qui-tete, nor at any of the
+clubs; so much is known; he merely disappeared for two or three hours
+and was not seen again until late in the afternoon, when two or three
+Brahmins and Grandissimes, wandering about in search of him, met him on
+the levee near the head of the rue Bienville, and with an exclamation of
+wonder and a look of surprise at his dusty shoes, demanded to know
+where he had hid himself while they had been ransacking the town in
+search of him.
+
+"We want you to tell us what you will do about our titles."
+
+He smiled pleasantly, the picture of serenity, and replied:
+
+"I have not fully made up my mind yet; as soon as I do so I will let you
+know."
+
+There was a word or two more exchanged, and then, after a moment of
+silence, with a gentle "Eh, bien," and a gesture to which they were
+accustomed, he stepped away backward, they resumed their hurried walk
+and talk, and he turned into the rue Bienville.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+AN INHERITANCE OF WRONG
+
+
+"I tell you," Doctor Keene used to say, "that old woman's a thinker."
+His allusion was to Clemence, the _marchande des calas_. Her mental
+activity was evinced not more in the cunning aptness of her songs than
+in the droll wisdom of her sayings. Not the melody only, but the often
+audacious, epigrammatic philosophy of her tongue as well, sold her
+_calas_ and gingercakes.
+
+But in one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too much on
+her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle at
+Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd aphorisms
+could see that she herself had made a life-study of herself and her
+conditions; but she little thought that others--some with wits and some
+with none--young hare-brained Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like--were
+silently, and for her most unluckily, charging their memories with her
+knowing speeches; and that of every one of those speeches she would
+ultimately have to give account.
+
+Doctor Keene, in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an occasional
+skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering over the price of
+_calas_, he enounced an old current conviction which is not without
+holders even to this day; for we may still hear it said by those who
+will not be decoyed down from the mountain fastnesses of the old
+Southern doctrines, that their slaves were "the happiest people under
+the sun." Clemence had made bold to deny this with argumentative
+indignation, and was courteously informed in retort that she had
+promulgated a falsehood of magnitude.
+
+"W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po' nigga kin
+tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell w'at ain' so--if
+dey know it, aw if dey don' know it--den dat _is_ a big lie!" And she
+laughed to contortion.
+
+"What is that you say?" he demanded, with mock ferocity. "You charge
+white people with lying?"
+
+"Oh, sakes, Mawse Chawlie, no! De people don't mek up dat ah; de debble
+pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de grett cyount'-feiteh?
+Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek an' put some debblemen' on de under
+side, an' one o' his pootiess lies on top; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and 'e
+rub dat lie on 'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess
+licks on dat lie; entel ev'ybody say: 'Oh, how pooty!' An' dey tek it
+fo' good money, yass--and pass it! Dey b'lieb it!"
+
+"Oh," said some one at Doctor Keene's side, disposed to quiz, "you
+niggers don't know when you are happy."
+
+"Dass so, Mawse--_c'est vrai, oui_!" she answered quickly: "we donno no
+mo'n white folks!"
+
+The laugh was against him.
+
+"Mawse Chawlie," she said again, "w'a's dis I yeh 'bout dat Eu'ope
+country? 's dat true de niggas is all free in Eu'ope!"
+
+Doctor Keene replied that something like that was true.
+
+"Well, now, Mawse Chawlie, I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat is _so_,
+den fo' w'y I yeh folks bragg'n 'bout de 'stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope'?"
+
+The mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase brought
+another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.
+
+"I gwan tell you," said the _marchande_; "'t is becyaze dey got a 'fixed
+wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the general ha, ha. "Oh,
+ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"
+
+She made a gesture for attention.
+
+"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n
+loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow de cyaht gotteh
+be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is heel'"--she suited the action
+to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say:
+'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh country gittin' _too_ free!'"
+
+"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks is werry
+kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--dey _wants to b'lieb_ we is. W'y,
+you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem
+weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey
+b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' dey _knows_ dey lak it de bess."
+
+The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see
+the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving,
+with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their
+poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see
+these efforts meet, or seem to meet, some degree of success. Happily man
+cannot so place his brother that his misery will continue unmitigated.
+You may dwarf a man to the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he
+will put out green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the
+dwarfed classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a
+crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.
+
+To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could reach to
+the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one of the
+population. She had certain affections toward people and places; but
+they were not of a consuming sort.
+
+As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are fine and
+keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why? Because we get them
+as we get our old swords and gems and laces--from our grandsires,
+mothers, and all. Refined they are--after centuries of refining. But the
+feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African
+savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and
+blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning,
+nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the
+rest--she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human
+feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her
+childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with
+pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an
+additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her
+since. She had had children, assorted colors--had one with her now, the
+black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and
+there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere
+within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for.
+Husbands--like the Samaritan woman's. We know she was a constant singer
+and laugher.
+
+And so on that day, when Honore Grandissime had advised the
+Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid demonstration
+of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his little capital,
+Clemence went up one street and down another, singing her song and
+laughing her professional merry laugh. How could it be otherwise? Let
+events take any possible turn, how could it make any difference to
+Clemence? What could she hope to gain? What could she fear to lose? She
+sold some of her goods to Casa Calvo's Spanish guard and sang them a
+Spanish song; some to Claiborne's soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle
+with unclean words of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers'
+laughter; some to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious
+comment or two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their
+Americain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and (after going
+home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she sold some more of her
+wares to the excited groups of Creoles to which we have had occasion to
+allude, and from whom, insensible as she was to ribaldry, she was glad
+to escape. The day now drawing to a close, she turned her steps toward
+her wonted crouching-place, the willow avenue on the levee, near the
+Place d'Armes. But she had hardly defined this decision clearly in her
+mind, and had but just turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song
+attracted an ear in a second-story room under whose window she was
+passing. As usual, it was fitted to the passing event:
+
+     "_Apportez moi mo' sabre,
+     Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum_."
+
+"Run, fetch that girl here," said Dr. Keene to the slave woman who had
+just entered his room with a pitcher of water.
+
+"Well, old eavesdropper," he said, as Clemence came, "what is the
+scandal to-day?"
+
+Clemence laughed.
+
+"You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth'n' 'tall 'bout nobody. I'se a
+nigga w'at mine my own business."
+
+"Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on outside."
+
+"I d' no noth'n' 'bout no goin's on; got no time fo' sit down, me; got
+sell my cakes. I don't goin' git mix' in wid no white folks's doin's."
+
+"Hush, you old hypocrite; I will buy all your cakes. Put them out there
+on the table."
+
+The invalid, sitting up in bed, drew a purse from behind his pillow and
+tossed her a large price. She tittered, courtesied and received
+the money.
+
+"Well, well, Mawse Chawlie, 'f you ain' de funni'st gen'leman I knows,
+to be sho!"
+
+"Have you seen Joseph Frowenfeld to-day?" he asked.
+
+"He, he, he! W'at I got do wid Mawse Frowenfel'? I goes on de off side
+o' sich folks--folks w'at cann' 'have deyself no bette'n dat--he, he,
+he! At de same time I did happen, jis chancin' by accident, to see 'im."
+
+"How is he?"
+
+Dr. Keene made plain by his manner that any sensational account would
+receive his instantaneous contempt, and she answered within bounds.
+
+"Well, now, tellin' the simple trufe, he ain' much hurt."
+
+The doctor turned slowly and cautiously in bed.
+
+"Have you seen Honore Grandissime?"
+
+"W'y--das funny you ass me dat. I jis now see 'im dis werry minnit."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Jis gwine into de house wah dat laydy live w'at 'e runned over dat ah
+time."
+
+"Now, you old hag," cried the sick man, his weak, husky voice trembling
+with passion, "you know you're telling me a lie."
+
+"No, Mawse Chawlie," she protested with a coward's frown, "I swah I
+tellin' you de God's trufe!"
+
+"Hand me my clothes off that chair."
+
+"Oh! but, Mawse Chawlie--"
+
+The little doctor cursed her. She did as she was bid, and made as if to
+leave the room.
+
+"Don't you go away."
+
+"But Mawse Chawlie, you' undress'--he, he!"
+
+She was really abashed and half frightened.
+
+"I know that; and you have got to help me put my clothes on."
+
+"You gwan kill yo'se'f, Mawse Chawlie," she said, handling a garment.
+
+"Hold your black tongue."
+
+She dressed him hastily, and he went down the stairs of his
+lodging-house and out into the street. Clemence went in search of
+her master.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE EAGLE VISITS THE DOVES IN THEIR NEST
+
+
+Alphonsina--only living property of Aurora and Clotilde--was called upon
+to light a fire in the little parlor. Elsewhere, although the day was
+declining, few persons felt such a need; but in No. 19 rue Bienville
+there were two chilling influences combined requiring an artificial
+offset. One was the ground under the floor, which was only three inches
+distant, and permanently saturated with water; the other was despair.
+
+Before this fire the two ladies sat down together like watchers, in that
+silence and vacuity of mind which come after an exhaustive struggle
+ending in the recognition of the inevitable; a torpor of thought, a
+stupefaction of feeling, a purely negative state of joylessness sequent
+to the positive state of anguish. They were now both hungry, but in want
+of some present friend acquainted with the motions of mental distress
+who could guess this fact and press them to eat. By their eyes it was
+plain they had been weeping much; by the subdued tone, too, of their
+short and infrequent speeches.
+
+Alphonsina, having made the fire, went out with a bundle. It was
+Aurora's last good dress. She was going to try to sell it.
+
+"It ought not to be so hard," began Clotilde, in a quiet manner of
+contemplating some one else's difficulty, but paused with the saying
+uncompleted, and sighed under her breath.
+
+"But it _is_ so hard," responded Aurora.
+
+"No, it ought not to be so hard--"
+
+"How, not so hard?"
+
+"It is not so hard to live," said Clotilde; "but it is hard to be
+ladies. You understand--" she knit her fingers, dropped them into her
+lap and turned her eyes toward Aurora, who responded with the same
+motions, adding the crossing of her silk-stockinged ankles before
+the fire.
+
+"No," said Aurora, with a scintillation of irrepressible mischief in her
+eyes.
+
+"After all," pursued Clotilde, "what troubles us is not how to make a
+living, but how to get a living without making it."
+
+"Ah! that would be magnificent!" said Aurora, and then added, more
+soberly; "but we are compelled to make a living."
+
+"No."
+
+"No-o? Ah! what do you mean with your 'no'?"
+
+"I mean it is just the contrary; we are compelled not to make a living.
+Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skillful with the
+needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could
+nurse the sick; but I must not. I could be a confectioner, a milliner,
+a dressmaker, a vest-maker, a cleaner of gloves and laces, a dyer, a
+bird-seller, a mattress-maker, an upholsterer, a dancing-teacher, a
+florist--"
+
+"Oh!" softly exclaimed Aurora, in English, "you could be--you know
+w'ad?--an egcellen' drug-cl'--ah, ha, ha!"
+
+"Now--"
+
+But the threatened irruption was averted by a look of tender apology
+from Aurora, in reply to one of martyrdom from Clotilde.
+
+"My angel daughter," said Aurora, "if society has decreed that ladies
+must be ladies, then that is our first duty; our second is to live. Do
+you not see why it is that this practical world does not permit ladies
+to make a living? Because if they could, none of them would ever consent
+to be married. Ha! women talk about marrying for love; but society is
+too sharp to trust them, yet! It makes it _necessary_ to marry. I will
+tell you the honest truth; some days when I get very, very hungry, and
+we have nothing but rice--all because we are ladies without male
+protectors--I think society could drive even me to marriage!--for your
+sake, though, darling; of course, only for your sake!"
+
+"Never!" replied Clotilde; "for my sake, never; for your own sake if you
+choose. I should not care. I should be glad to see you do so if it would
+make you happy; but never for my sake and never for hunger's sake; but
+for love's sake, yes; and God bless thee, pretty maman."
+
+"Clotilde, dear," said the unconscionable widow, "let me assure you,
+once for all,--starvation is preferable. I mean for me, you understand,
+simply for me; that is my feeling on the subject."
+
+Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon her
+deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie, and sighed
+softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and stretched
+out her feet.
+
+"I wish Alphonsina would come back," she said. "Ah!" she added, hearing
+a footfall on the step outside the street door, "there she is."
+
+She arose and drew the bolt. Unseen to her, the person whose footsteps
+she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted to knock, but
+pausing to "makeup his mind." He heard the bolt shoot back, recognized
+the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here again he was robbed of
+volition, rapped.
+
+"That is not Alphonsina!"
+
+The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.
+
+"But you must open it," whispered Clotilde, half rising.
+
+Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson. Clotilde rose
+up quickly. The gentleman lifted his hat.
+
+"Madame Nancanou."
+
+"M. Grandissime?"
+
+"Oui, Madame."
+
+For once, Aurora was in an uncontrollable flutter. She stammered, lost
+her breath, and even spoke worse French than she needed to have done.
+
+"Be pl--pleased, sir--to enter. Clotilde, my daughter--Monsieur
+Grandissime. P-please be seated, sir. Monsieur Grandissime,"--she
+dropped into a chair with an air of vivacity pitiful to behold,--"I
+suppose you have come for the rent." She blushed even more violently
+than before, and her hand stole upward upon her heart to stay its
+violent beating. "Clotilde, dear, I should be glad if you would put the
+fire before the screen; it is so much too warm." She pushed her chair
+back and shaded her face with her hand. "I think the warmer is growing
+weather outside, is it--is it not?"
+
+The struggles of a wounded bird could not have been more piteous.
+Monsieur Grandissime sought to speak. Clotilde, too, nerved by the sight
+of her mother's embarrassment, came to her support, and she and the
+visitor spoke in one breath.
+
+"Maman, if Monsieur--pardon--"
+
+"Madame Nancanou, the--pardon, Mademoiselle--"
+
+"I have presumed to call upon you," resumed M. Grandissime, addressing
+himself now to both ladies at once, "to see if I may enlist you in a
+purely benevolent undertaking in the interest of one who has been
+unfortunate--a common acquaintance--"
+
+"Common acquaint--" interrupted Aurora, with a hostile lighting of her
+eyes.
+
+"I believe so--Professor Frowenfeld." M. Grandissme saw Clotilde start,
+and in her turn falsely accuse the fire by shading her face: but it was
+no time to stop. "Ladies," he continued, "please allow me, for the sake
+of the good it may effect, to speak plainly and to the point."
+
+The ladies expressed acquiescence by settling themselves to hear.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld had the extraordinary misfortune this morning to
+incur the suspicion of having entered a house for the purpose of--at
+least, for a bad design--"
+
+"He is innocent!" came from Clotilde, against her intention; Aurora
+covertly put out a hand, and Clotilde clutched it nervously.
+
+"As, for example, robbery," said the self-recovered Aurora, ignoring
+Clotilde's look of protestation.
+
+"Call it so," responded M. Grandissime. "Have you heard at whose house
+this was?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"It was at the house of Palmyre Philosophe."
+
+"Palmyre Philosophe!" exclaimed Aurora, in low astonishment. Clotilde
+let slip, in a tone of indignant incredulity, a soft "Ah!" Aurora
+turned, and with some hope that M. Grandissime would not understand,
+ventured to say in Spanish, quietly:
+
+"Come, come, this will never do."
+
+And Clotilde replied in the same tongue:
+
+"I know it, but he is innocent."
+
+"Let us understand each other," said their visitor. "There is not the
+faintest idea in the mind of one of us that Professor Frowenfeld is
+guilty of even an intention of wrong; otherwise I should not be here. He
+is a man simply incapable of anything ignoble."
+
+Clotilde was silent. Aurora answered promptly, with the air of one not
+to be excelled in generosity:
+
+"Certainly, he is very incapabl'."
+
+"Still," resumed the visitor, turning especially to Clotilde, "the known
+facts are these, according to his own statement: he was in the house of
+Palmyre on some legitimate business which, unhappily, he considers
+himself on some account bound not to disclose, and by some mistake of
+Palmyre's old Congo woman, was set upon by her and wounded, barely
+escaping with a whole skull into the street, an object of public
+scandal. Laying aside the consideration of his feelings, his reputation
+is at stake and likely to be ruined unless the affair can be explained
+clearly and satisfactorily, and at once, by his friends."
+
+"And you undertake--" began Aurora.
+
+"Madame Nancanou," said Honore Grandissime, leaning toward her
+earnestly, "you know--I must beg leave to appeal to your candor and
+confidence--you know everything concerning Palmyre that I know. You know
+me, and who I am; you know it is not for me to undertake to confer with
+Palmyre. I know, too, her old affection for you; she lives but a little
+way down this street upon which you live; there is still daylight
+enough at your disposal; if you will, you can go to see her, and get
+from her a full and complete exoneration of this young man. She cannot
+come to you; she is not fit to leave her room."
+
+"Cannot leave her room?"
+
+"I am, possibly, violating confidence in this disclosure, but it is
+unavoidable--you have to know: she is not fully recovered from a
+pistol-shot wound received between two and three weeks ago."
+
+"Pistol-shot wound!"
+
+Both ladies started forward with open lips and exclamations of
+amazement.
+
+"Received from a third person--not myself and not Professor
+Frowenfeld--in a desperate attempt made by her to avenge the wrongs
+which she has suffered, as you, Madam, as well as I, are aware, at the
+hands of--"
+
+Aurora rose up with a majestic motion for the speaker to desist.
+
+"If it is to mention the person of whom your allusion reminds me, that
+you have honored us with a call this evening, Monsieur--"
+
+Her eyes were flashing as he had seen them flash in front of the Place
+d'Armes.
+
+"I beg you not to suspect me of meanness," he answered, gently, and with
+a remonstrative smile. "I have been trying all day, in a way unnecessary
+to explain, to be generous."
+
+"I suppose you are incapabl'," said Aurora, following her double
+meaning with that combination of mischievous eyes and unsmiling face of
+which she was master. She resumed her seat, adding: "It is generous for
+you to admit that Palmyre has suffered wrongs."
+
+"It _would_ be," he replied, "to attempt to repair them, seeing that I
+am not responsible for them, but this I cannot claim yet to have done. I
+have asked of you, Madam, a generous act. I might ask another of you
+both jointly. It is to permit me to say without offence, that there is
+one man, at least, of the name of Grandissime who views with regret and
+mortification the yet deeper wrongs which you are even now suffering."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, inwardly ready for fierce tears, but with no
+outward betrayal save a trifle too much grace and an over-bright smile,
+"Monsieur is much mistaken; we are quite comfortable and happy, wanting
+nothing, eh, Clotilde?--not even our rights, ha, ha!"
+
+She rose and let Alphonsina in. The bundle was still in the negress's
+arms. She passed through the room and disappeared in the direction of
+the kitchen.
+
+"Oh! no, sir, not at all," repeated Aurora, as she once more sat down.
+
+"You ought to want your rights," said M. Grandissime. "You ought to have
+them."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+Aurora was really finding it hard to conceal her growing excitement,
+and turned, with a faint hope of relief, toward Clotilde.
+
+Clotilde, looking only at their visitor, but feeling her mother's
+glance, with a tremulous and half-choked voice, said eagerly:
+
+"Then why do you not give them to us?"
+
+"Ah!" interposed Aurora, "we shall get them to-morrow, when the sheriff
+comes."
+
+And, thereupon what did Clotilde do but sit bolt upright, with her hands
+in her lap, and let the tears roll, tear after tear, down her cheeks.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," said Aurora, smiling still, "those that you see are
+really tears. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, I really have to laugh; for I just
+happened to remember our meeting at the masked ball last September. We
+had such a pleasant evening and were so much indebted to you for our
+enjoyment,--particularly myself,--little thinking, you know, that you
+were one of that great family which believes we ought to have our
+rights, you know. There are many people who ought to have their rights.
+There was Bras-Coupe; indeed, he got them--found them in the swamp.
+Maybe Clotilde and I shall find ours in the street. When we unmasked in
+the theatre, you know, I did not know you were my landlord, and you did
+not know that I could not pay a few picayunes of rent. But you must
+excuse those tears; Clotilde is generally a brave little woman, and
+would not be so rude as to weep before a stranger; but she is weak
+to-day--we are both weak to-day, from the fact that we have eaten
+nothing since early morning, although we have abundance of food--for
+want of appetite, you understand. You must sometimes be affected the
+same way, having the care of so much wealth _of all sorts_."
+
+Honore Grandissime had risen to his feet and was standing with one hand
+on the edge of the lofty mantel, his hat in the other dropped at his
+side and his eye fixed upon Aurora's beautiful face, whence her small
+nervous hand kept dashing aside the tears through which she defiantly
+talked and smiled. Clotilde sat with clenched hands buried in her lap,
+looking at Aurora and still weeping.
+
+And M. Grandissime was saying to himself:
+
+"If I do this thing now--if I do it here--I do it on an impulse; I do it
+under constraint of woman's tears; I do it because I love this woman; I
+do it to get out of a corner; I do it in weakness, not in strength; I do
+it without having made up my mind whether or not it is the best thing
+to do."
+
+And then, without intention, with scarcely more consciousness of
+movement than belongs to the undermined tree which settles, roots and
+all, into the swollen stream, he turned and moved toward the door.
+
+Clotilde rose.
+
+"Monsieur Grandissime."
+
+He stopped and looked back.
+
+"We will see Palmyre at once, according to your request."
+
+He turned his eyes toward Aurora.
+
+"Yes," said she, and she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed
+aloud.
+
+She heard his footstep again; it reached the door; the door
+opened--closed; she heard his footstep again; was he gone?
+
+He was gone.
+
+The two women threw themselves into each other's arms and wept.
+Presently Clotilde left the room. She came back in a moment from the
+rear apartment, with a bonnet and veil in her hands.
+
+"No," said Aurora, rising quickly, "I must do it."
+
+"There is no time to lose," said Clotilde. "It will soon be dark."
+
+It was hardly a minute before Aurora was ready to start. A kiss, a
+sorrowful look of love exchanged, the veil dropped over the swollen
+eyes, and Aurora was gone.
+
+A minute passed, hardly more, and--what was this?--the soft patter of
+Aurora's knuckles on the door.
+
+"Just here at the corner I saw Palmyre leaving her house and walking
+down the rue Royale. We must wait until morn--"
+
+Again a footfall on the doorstep, and the door, which was standing ajar,
+was pushed slightly by the force of the masculine knock which followed.
+
+"Allow me," said the voice of Honore Grandissime, as Aurora bowed at the
+door. "I should have handed you this; good-day."
+
+She received a missive. It was long, like an official document; it bore
+evidence of having been carried for some hours in a coat-pocket, and was
+folded in one of those old, troublesome ways in use before the days of
+envelopes. Aurora pulled it open.
+
+"It is all figures; light a candle."
+
+The candle was lighted by Clotilde and held over Aurora's shoulder; they
+saw a heading and footing more conspicuous than the rest of the writing.
+
+The heading read:
+
+     "_Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, owners of Fausse Riviere
+     Plantation, in account with Honore Grandissime_."
+
+The footing read:
+
+     _ "Balance at credit, subject to order of Aurora and Clotilde
+     Nancanou, $105,000.00_."
+
+The date followed:
+
+     "_March_ 9, 1804."
+
+and the signature:
+
+     "_H. Grandissime_."
+
+A small piece of torn white paper slipped from the account to the floor.
+Clotilde's eye followed it, but Aurora, without acknowledgement of
+having seen it, covered it with her foot.
+
+In the morning Aurora awoke first. She drew from under her pillow this
+slip of paper. She had not dared look at it until now. The writing on
+it had been roughly scratched down with a pencil. It read:
+
+     "_Not for love of woman, but in the name of justice and the
+     fear of God_."
+
+"And I was so cruel," she whispered.
+
+Ah! Honore Grandissime, she was kind to that little writing! She did not
+put it back under her pillow; she _kept it warm_, Honore Grandissime,
+from that time forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+BAD FOR CHARLIE KEENE
+
+
+On the same evening of which we have been telling, about the time that
+Aurora and Clotilde were dropping their last tear of joy over the
+document of restitution, a noticeable figure stood alone at the corner
+of the rue du Canal and the rue Chartres. He had reached there and
+paused, just as the brighter glare of the set sun was growing dim above
+the tops of the cypresses. After walking with some rapidity of step, he
+had stopped aimlessly, and laid his hand with an air of weariness upon a
+rotting China-tree that leaned over the ditch at the edge of the
+unpaved walk.
+
+"Setting in cypress," he murmured. We need not concern ourselves as to
+his meaning.
+
+One could think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street was
+the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the open
+plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of live-oak
+and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of these objects
+were already darkening. At one or two points the sky was reflected from
+marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously the old house and
+willow-copse of Jean Poquelin. Down the empty street or road, which
+stretched with arrow-like straightness toward the northwest, the
+draining-canal that gave it its name tapered away between occasional
+overhanging willows and beside broken ranks of rotting palisades, its
+foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding and purpling under the swiftly
+waning light, and ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The
+observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his
+glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed
+quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every
+cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined
+indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of
+ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around. As his eye passed
+them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary view, he sighed
+heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then again--"Dissolution! order of
+the day--"
+
+A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional
+exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling up
+and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by the
+occasional cutting of his fin above the water.
+
+He spoke again:
+
+"It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves."
+
+His speech was French. He straightened up, smote the tree softly with
+his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the very truth
+be told, as belongs by right to a lover. And yet his mind did not
+dwell on love.
+
+He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing hither
+and thither through the deep of his meditations went with him. As he
+turned into the rue Chartres it showed itself thus:
+
+"Right; it is but right;" he shook his head slowly--"it is but right."
+
+In the rue Douane he spoke again:
+
+"Ah! Frowenfeld"--and smiled unpleasantly, with his head down.
+
+And as he made yet another turn, and took his meditative way down the
+city's front, along the blacksmith's shops in the street afterward
+called Old Levee, he resumed, in English, and with a distinctness that
+made a staggering sailor halt and look after him:
+
+"There are but two steps to civilization, the first easy, the second
+difficult; to construct--to reconstruct--ah! there it is! the tearing
+down! The tear'--"
+
+He was still, but repeated the thought by a gesture of distress turned
+into a slow stroke of the forehead.
+
+"Monsieur Honore Grandissime," said a voice just ahead.
+
+"_Eh, bien_?"
+
+At the mouth of an alley, in the dim light of the streep lamp, stood the
+dark figure of Honore Grandissime, f.m.c., holding up the loosely
+hanging form of a small man, the whole front of whose clothing was
+saturated with blood.
+
+"Why, Charlie Keene! Let him down again, quickly--quickly; do not hold
+him so!"
+
+"Hands off," came in a ghastly whisper from the shape.
+
+"Oh, Chahlie, my boy--"
+
+"Go and finish your courtship," whispered the doctor.
+
+"Oh Charlie, I have just made it forever impossible!"
+
+"Then help me back to my bed; I don't care to die in the street."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+MORE REPARATION
+
+
+"That is all," said the fairer Honore, outside Doctor Keene's sick-room
+about ten o'clock at night. He was speaking to the black son of
+Clemence, who had been serving as errand-boy for some hours. He spoke
+in a low tone just without the half-open door, folding again a paper
+which the lad had lately borne to the apothecary of the rue Royale, and
+had now brought back with Joseph's answer written under
+Honore's inquiry.
+
+"That is all," said the other Honore, standing partly behind the first,
+as the eyes of his little menial turned upon him that deprecatory glance
+of inquiry so common to slave children. The lad went a little way down
+the corridor, curled up upon the floor against the wall, and was soon
+asleep. The fairer Honore handed the darker the slip of paper; it was
+received and returned in silence. The question was:
+
+     "_Can you state anything positive concerning the duel_?"
+
+And the reply:
+
+     "_Positively there will be none. Sylvestre my sworn friend for
+     life_."
+
+The half-brothers sat down under a dim hanging lamp in the corridor, and
+except that every now and then one or the other stepped noiselessly to
+the door to look in upon the sleeping sick man, or in the opposite
+direction to moderate by a push with the foot the snoring of Clemence's
+"boy," they sat the whole night through in whispered counsel.
+
+The one, at the request of the other, explained how he had come to be
+with the little doctor in such extremity.
+
+It seems that Clemence, seeing and understanding the doctor's
+imprudence, had sallied out with the resolve to set some person on his
+track. We have said that she went in search of her master. Him she met,
+and though she could not really count him one of the doctor's friends,
+yet, rightly believing in his humanity, she told him the matter. He set
+off in what was for him a quick pace in search of the rash invalid, was
+misdirected by a too confident child and had given up the hope of
+finding him, when a faint sound of distress just at hand drew him into
+an alley, where, close down against a wall, with his face to the earth,
+lay Doctor Keene. The f.m.c. had just raised him and borne him out of
+the alley when Honore came up.
+
+"And you say that, when you would have inquired for him at Frowenfeld's,
+you saw Palmyre there, standing and talking with Frowenfeld? Tell me
+more exactly."
+
+And the other, with that grave and gentle economy of words which made
+his speech so unique, recounted what we amplify:
+
+Palmyre had needed no pleading to induce her to exonerate Joseph. The
+doctors were present at Frowenfeld's in more than usual number. There
+was unusualness, too, in their manner and their talk. They were not
+entirely free from the excitement of the day, and as they talked--with
+an air of superiority, of Creole inflammability, and with some
+contempt--concerning Camille Brahmin's and Charlie Mandarin's efforts to
+precipitate a war, they were yet visibly in a state of expectation.
+Frowenfeld, they softly said, had in his odd way been indiscreet among
+these inflammables at Maspero's just when he could least afford to be
+so, and there was no telling what they might take the notion to do to
+him before bedtime. All that over and above the independent, unexplained
+scandal of the early morning. So Joseph and his friends this evening,
+like Aurora and Clotilde in the morning, were, as we nowadays say of
+buyers and sellers, "apart," when suddenly and unannounced, Palmyre
+presented herself among them. When the f.m.c. saw her, she had already
+handed Joseph his hat and with much sober grace was apologizing for her
+slave's mistake. All evidence of her being wounded was concealed. The
+extraordinary excitement of the morning had not hurt her, and she seemed
+in perfect health. The doctors sat or stood around and gave rapt
+attention to her patois, one or two translating it for Joseph, and he
+blushing to the hair, but standing erect and receiving it at second hand
+with silent bows. The f.m.c. had gazed on her for a moment, and then
+forced himself away. He was among the few who had not heard the morning
+scandal, and he did not comprehend the evening scene. He now asked
+Honore concerning it, and quietly showed great relief when it was
+explained.
+
+Then Honore, breaking a silence, called the attention of the f.m.c. to
+the fact that the latter had two tenants at Number 19 rue Bienville.
+Honore became the narrator now and told all, finally stating that the
+die was cast--restitution made.
+
+And then the darker Honore made a proposition to the other, which, it
+is little to say, was startling. They discussed it for hours.
+
+"So just a condition," said the merchant, raising his whisper so much
+that the rentier laid a hand in his elbow,--"such mere justice," he
+said, more softly, "ought to be an easy condition. God knows"--he lifted
+his glance reverently--"my very right to exist comes after yours. You
+are the elder."
+
+The solemn man offered no disclaimer.
+
+What could the proposition be which involved so grave an issue, and to
+which M. Grandissime's final answer was "I will do it"?
+
+It was that Honore f.m.c. should become a member of the mercantile house
+of H. Grandissime, enlisting in its capital all his wealth. And the one
+condition was that the new style should be _Grandissime Brothers_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+THE PIQUE-EN-TERRE LOSES ONE OF HER CREW
+
+
+Ask the average resident of New Orleans if his town is on an island, and
+he will tell you no. He will also wonder how any one could have got that
+notion,--so completely has Orleans Island, whose name at the beginning
+of the present century was in everybody's mouth, been forgotten. It was
+once a question of national policy, a point of difference between
+Republican and Federalist, whether the United States ought to buy this
+little strip of semi-submerged land, or whether it would not be more
+righteous to steal it. The Kentuckians kept the question at a red heat
+by threatening to become an empire by themselves if one course or the
+other was not taken; but when the First Consul offered to sell all
+Louisiana, our commissioners were quite robbed of breath. They had
+approached to ask a hair from the elephant's tail, and were offered
+the elephant.
+
+For Orleans Island--island it certainly was until General Jackson closed
+Bayou Manchac--is a narrow, irregular, flat tract of forest, swamp,
+city, prairie and sea-marsh, lying east and west, with the Mississippi,
+trending southeastward, for its southern boundary, and for its northern,
+a parallel and contiguous chain of alternate lakes and bayous, opening
+into the river through Bayou Manchac, and into the Gulf through the
+passes of the Malheureuse Islands. On the narrowest part of it stands
+New Orleans. Turning and looking back over the rear of the town, one may
+easily see from her steeples Lake Pontchartrain glistening away to the
+northern horizon, and in his fancy extend the picture to right and left
+till Pontchartrain is linked in the west by Pass Manchac to Lake
+Maurepas, and in the east by the Rigolets and Chef Menteur to
+Lake Borgne.
+
+An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little streams have
+of running away from the big ones. The river makes its own bed and its
+own banks, and continuing season after season, through ages of
+alternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those banks, creates a
+ridge which thus becomes a natural elevated aqueduct. Other slightly
+elevated ridges mark the present or former courses of minor outlets, by
+which the waters of the Mississippi have found the sea. Between these
+ridges lie the cypress swamps, through whose profound shades the clear,
+dark, deep bayous creep noiselessly away into the tall grasses of the
+shaking prairies. The original New Orleans was built on the Mississippi
+ridge, with one of these forest-and-water-covered basins stretching back
+behind her to westward and northward, closed in by Metairie Ridge and
+Lake Pontchartrain. Local engineers preserve the tradition that the
+Bayou Sauvage once had its rise, so to speak, in Toulouse street. Though
+depleted by the city's present drainage system and most likely poisoned
+by it as well, its waters still move seaward in a course almost due
+easterly, and empty into Chef Menteur, one of the watery threads
+of a tangled skein of "passes" between the lakes and the open
+Gulf. Three-quarters of a century ago this Bayou Sauvage (or
+Gentilly--corruption of Chantilly) was a navigable stream of wild and
+sombre beauty.
+
+On a certain morning in August, 1804, and consequently some five months
+after the events last mentioned, there emerged from the darkness of
+Bayou Sauvage into the prairie-bordered waters of Chef Menteur, while
+the morning star was still luminous in the sky above and in the water
+below, and only the practised eye could detect the first glimmer of day,
+a small, stanch, single-masted, broad and very light-draught boat, whose
+innocent character, primarily indicated in its coat of many colors,--the
+hull being yellow below the water line and white above, with tasteful
+stripings of blue and red,--was further accentuated by the peaceful name
+of _Pique-en-terre_ (the Sandpiper).
+
+She seemed, too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she would have
+liked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit this, and in a
+moment more the water was rippling after her swift rudder, as she glided
+away in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes. But when she had left behind
+her the mouth of the passage, she changed her course and, leaving the
+Pointe on her left, bore down toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bent
+upon passing through the Rigolets.
+
+We know not how to describe the joyousness of the effect when at length
+one leaves behind him the shadow and gloom of the swamp, and there
+bursts upon his sight the widespread, flower-decked, bird-haunted
+prairies of Lake Catharine. The inside and outside of a prison scarcely
+furnish a greater contrast; and on this fair August morning the contrast
+was at its strongest. The day broke across a glad expanse of cool and
+fragrant green, silver-laced with a network of crisp salt pools and
+passes, lakes, bayous and lagoons, that gave a good smell, the inspiring
+odor of interclasped sea and shore, and both beautified and perfumed
+the happy earth, laid bare to the rising sun. Waving marshes of wild
+oats, drooping like sated youth from too much pleasure; watery acres hid
+under crisp-growing greenth starred with pond-lilies and rippled by
+water-fowl; broad stretches of high grass, with thousands of ecstatic
+wings palpitating above them; hundreds of thousands of white and pink
+mallows clapping their hands in voiceless rapture, and that amazon queen
+of the wild flowers, the morning-glory, stretching her myriad lines,
+lifting up the trumpet and waving her colors, white, azure and pink,
+with lacings of spider's web, heavy with pearls and diamonds--the gifts
+of the summer night. The crew of the _Pique-en-terre_ saw all these and
+felt them; for, whatever they may have been or failed to be, they were
+men whose heartstrings responded to the touches of nature. One alone of
+their company, and he the one who should have felt them most, showed
+insensibility, sighed laughingly and then laughed sighingly, in the face
+of his fellows and of all this beauty, and profanely confessed that his
+heart's desire was to get back to his wife. He had been absent from her
+now for nine hours!
+
+But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed and left
+astern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the after-larboard-quarter,
+the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far and wide their dazzling white
+and blue, and, as the little boat issues from the deep channel of the
+Rigolets, the white-armed waves catch her and toss her like a merry
+babe. A triumph for the helmsman--he it is who sighs, at intervals of
+tiresome frequency, for his wife. He had, from the very starting-place
+in the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets
+as--wind and tide considered--the most practicable of all the passes.
+Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint
+of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one hereafter
+dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation? He
+knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster,
+much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon which he
+was a little slow and doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebb
+tide--Pass Jean or Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, Chef
+Menteur,--
+
+Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf--the Gulf of Mexico--there
+appears a speck of white. It is known to those on board the
+_Pique-en-terre_, the moment it is descried, as the canvas of a large
+schooner. The opinion, first expressed by the youthful husband, who
+still reclines with the tiller held firmly under his arm, and then by
+another member of the company who sits on the centreboard-well, is
+unanimously adopted, that she is making for the Rigolets, will pass
+Petites Coquilles by eleven o'clock, and will tie up at the little port
+of St. Jean, on the bayou of the same name, before sundown, if the wind
+holds anywise as it is.
+
+On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his glass,
+and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the little sail
+just visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a half-deck, well
+filled with men, in all probability a pleasure party bound to the
+Chandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion, and passes into comments
+on the superior skill of landsmen over seamen in the handling of small
+sailing craft.
+
+By and by the two vessels near each other. They approach within hailing
+distance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the young
+man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from under
+a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner's one
+passenger:
+
+"Hello, Challie Keene."
+
+And the passenger more quietly answers back:
+
+"Hello, Raoul, is that you?"
+
+M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was he.
+
+"You kin hask Sylvestre!" he concluded.
+
+The doctor's eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men, the most
+of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting with
+their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark neglige of
+amateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry in
+their handsome faces which characterizes the Creole with his collar off.
+
+The mettlesome little doctor felt the odds against him in the exchange
+of greetings.
+
+"Ola, Dawctah!"
+
+"_He_, Doctah, _que-ce qui t'apres fe?_"
+
+"_Ho, ho, compere Noyo!_"
+
+"_Comment va_, Docta?"
+
+A light peppering of profanity accompanied each salute.
+
+The doctor put on defensively a smile of superiority to the juniors and
+of courtesy to the others, and responsively spoke their names:
+
+"'Polyte--Sylvestre--Achille--Emile--ah! Agamemnon."
+
+The Doctor and Agamemnon raised their hats.
+
+As Agamemnon was about to speak, a general expostulatory outcry drowned
+his voice. The _Pique-en-terre_ was going about close abreast of the
+schooner, and angry questions and orders were flying at Raoul's head
+like a volley of eggs.
+
+"Messieurs," said Raoul, partially rising but still stooping over the
+tiller, and taking his hat off his bright curls with mock courtesy, "I
+am going back to New Orleans. I would not give _that_ for all the fish
+in the sea; I want to see my wife. I am going back to New Orleans to see
+my wife--and to congratulate the city upon your absence." Incredulity,
+expostulation, reproach, taunt, malediction--he smiled unmoved upon
+them all.
+
+"Messieurs, I _must_ go and see my wife."
+
+Amid redoubled outcries he gave the helm to Camille Brahmin, and
+fighting his way with his pretty feet against half-real efforts to throw
+him overboard, clambered forward to the mast, whence a moment later,
+with the help of the schooner-master's hand, he reached the deck of the
+larger vessel. The _Pique-en-terre_ turned, and with a little flutter
+spread her smooth wing and skimmed away.
+
+"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose third
+finger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom. "W'at you
+got to say to dat?"
+
+The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a thrill
+of anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love affair that
+did not include Clotilde Nancanou.
+
+"Whom have you married?"
+
+"De pritties' gal in de citty."
+
+The questioner controlled himself.
+
+"M-hum," he responded, with a contraction of the eyes.
+
+Raoul waited an instant for some kindlier comment, and finding the hope
+vain, suddenly assumed a look of delighted admiration.
+
+"Hi, yi, yi! Doctah, 'ow you har lookingue fine."
+
+The true look of the doctor was that he had not much longer to live. A
+smile of bitter humor passed over his face, and he looked for a near
+seat, saying:
+
+"How's Frowenfeld?"
+
+Raoul struck an ecstatic attitude and stretched forth his hand as if the
+doctor could not fail to grasp it. The invalid's heart sank like lead.
+
+"Frowenfeld has got her," he thought.
+
+"Well?" said he with a frown of impatience and restraint; and Raoul
+cried:
+
+"I sole my pigshoe!"
+
+The doctor could not help but laugh.
+
+"Shades of the masters!"
+
+"No; 'Louizyanna rif-using to hantre de h-Union.'"
+
+The doctor stood corrected.
+
+The two walked across the deck, following the shadow of the swinging
+sail. The doctor lay down in a low-swung hammock, and Raoul sat upon the
+deck _a la Turque_.
+
+"Come, come, Raoul, tell me, what is the news?"
+
+"News? Oh, I donno. You 'eard concernin' the dool?"
+
+"You don't mean to say--"
+
+"Yesseh!"
+
+"Agricola and Sylvestre?"
+
+"W'at de dev'! No! Burr an' 'Ammiltong; in Noo-Juzzy-las-June. Collonnel
+Burr, 'e--"
+
+"Oh, fudge! yes. How is Frowenfeld?"
+
+"'E's well. Guess 'ow much I sole my pigshoe."
+
+"Well, how much?"
+
+"Two 'ondred fifty." He laid himself out at length, his elbow on the
+deck, his head in his hand. "I believe I'm sorry I sole 'er."
+
+"I don't wonder. How's Honore? Tell me what has happened. Remember, I've
+been away five months."
+
+"No; I am verrie glad dat I sole 'er. What? Ha! I should think so! If
+it have not had been fo' dat I would not be married to-day. You think I
+would get married on dat sal'rie w'at Proffis-or Frowenfel' was payin'
+me? Twenty-five dolla' de mont'? Docta Keene, no gen'leman h-ought to
+git married if 'e 'ave not anny'ow fifty dolla' de mont'! If I wasn' a
+h-artiz I wouldn' git married; I gie you my word!"
+
+"Yes," said the little doctor, "you are right. Now tell me the news."
+
+"Well, dat Cong-ress gone an' make--"
+
+"Raoul, stop. I know that Congress has divided the province into two
+territories; I know you Creoles think all your liberties are lost; I
+know the people are in a great stew because they are not allowed to
+elect their own officers and legislatures, and that in Opelousas and
+Attakapas they are as wild as their cattle about it--"
+
+"We 'ad two big mitting' about it," interrupted Raoul; "my bro'r-in-law
+speak at both of them!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Chahlie Mandarin."
+
+"Glad to hear it," said Doctor Keene,--which was the truth. "Besides
+that, I know Laussat has gone to Martinique; that the Americains have a
+newspaper, and that cotton is two-bits a pound. Now what I want to know
+is, how are my friends? What has Honore done? What has Frowenfeld done?
+And Palmyre,--and Agricole? They hustled me away from here as if I had
+been caught trying to cut my throat. Tell me everything."
+
+And Raoul sank the artist and bridegroom in the historian, and told him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE NEWS
+
+
+"My cousin Honore,--well, you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is 'ole fam'ly."
+
+"How so?" asked Doctor Keene, with a handkerchief over his face to
+shield his eyes from the sun.
+
+"Well,--ce't'nly 'e did! Di'n' 'e gave dat money to Aurora De
+Grapion?--one 'undred five t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de
+money my h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah! w'en I will swear on a
+stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win dat 'abitation
+fair!--If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to see it! I'll swear to
+it! Hah!"
+
+"And have she and her daughter actually got the money?"
+
+"She--an'--heh--daughtah--ac--shilly--got-'at-money-sir! W'at? Dey
+livin' in de rue Royale in mag-_niff_ycen' style on top de drug-sto' of
+Proffis-or Frowenfel'."
+
+"But how, over Frowenfeld's, when Frowenfeld's is a one-story--"
+
+"My dear frien'! Proffis-or Frowenfel' is _moove!_ You rickleck dat big
+new t'ree-story buildin' w'at jus' finished in de rue Royale, a lill mo'
+farther up town from his old shop? Well, we open dare _a big sto'!_ An'
+listen! You think Honore di'n' bitrayed' 'is family? Madame Nancanou an'
+heh daughtah livin' upstair an' rissy-ving de finess soci'ty in de
+Province!--an' _me?_--downstair' meckin' pill! You call dat justice?"
+
+But Doctor Keene, without waiting for this question, had asked one:
+
+"Does Frowenfeld board with them?"
+
+"Psh-sh-sh! Board! Dey woon board de Marquis of Casa Calvo! I don't
+b'lieve dey would board Honore Grandissime! All de king' an' queen' in
+de worl' couldn' board dare! No, sir!--'Owever, you know, I think dey
+are splendid ladies. Me an' my wife, we know them well. An' Honore--I
+think my cousin Honore's a splendid gen'leman, too." After a moment's
+pause he resumed, with a happy sigh, "Well, I don' care, I'm married. A
+man w'at's married, 'e don' care.
+
+"But I di'n' t'ink Honore could ever do lak dat odder t'ing."
+
+"Do he and Joe Frowenfeld visit there?"
+
+"Doctah Keene," demanded Raoul, ignoring the question, "I hask you now,
+plain, don' you find dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honore?"
+
+"What way?"
+
+"W'at? You dunno? You don' yeh 'ow 'e gone partner' wid a nigga?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Doctor Keene drew the handkerchief off his face and half lifted his
+feeble head.
+
+"Yesseh! 'e gone partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honore
+Grandissime, seh!"
+
+The doctor dropped his head again and laid the handkerchief back on his
+face.
+
+"What do the family say to that?"
+
+"But w'at _can_ dey say? It save dem from ruin! At de sem time, me, I
+think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, but it is dat name
+w'at 'e give de h-establishmen'--Grandissime Freres! H-only for 'is
+money we would 'ave catch' dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and
+fedder. Grandissime Freres! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honore no
+mo'. But I t'ink dass wrong. W'at you t'ink, Doctah?"
+
+That evening, at candle-light, Raoul got the right arm of his slender,
+laughing wife about his neck; but Doctor Keene tarried all night in
+suburb St. Jean. He hardly felt the moral courage to face the results of
+the last five months. Let us understand them better ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+AN INDIGNANT FAMILY AND A SMASHED SHOP
+
+
+It was indeed a fierce storm that had passed over the head of Honore
+Grandissime. Taken up and carried by it, as it seemed to him, without
+volition, he had felt himself thrown here and there, wrenched, torn,
+gasping for moral breath, speaking the right word as if in delirium,
+doing the right deed as if by helpless instinct, and seeing himself in
+every case, at every turn, tricked by circumstance out of every vestige
+of merit. So it seemed to him. The long contemplated restitution was
+accomplished. On the morning when Aurora and Clotilde had expected to be
+turned shelterless into the open air, they had called upon him in his
+private office and presented the account of which he had put them in
+possession the evening before. He had honored it on the spot. To the two
+ladies who felt their own hearts stirred almost to tears of gratitude,
+he was--as he sat before them calm, unmoved, handling keen-edged facts
+with the easy rapidity of one accustomed to use them, smiling
+courteously and collectedly, parrying their expressions of
+appreciation--to them, we say, at least to one of them, he was "the
+prince of gentlemen." But, at the same time, there was within him,
+unseen, a surge of emotions, leaping, lashing, whirling, yet ever
+hurrying onward along the hidden, rugged bed of his honest intention.
+
+The other restitution, which even twenty-four hours earlier might have
+seemed a pure self-sacrifice, became a self-rescue. The f.m.c. was the
+elder brother. A remark of Honore made the night they watched in the
+corridor by Doctor Keene's door, about the younger's "right to exist,"
+was but the echo of a conversation they had once had together in
+Europe. There they had practised a familiarity of intercourse which
+Louisiana would not have endured, and once, when speaking upon the
+subject of their common fatherhood, the f.m.c., prone to melancholy
+speech, had said:
+
+"You are the lawful son of Numa Grandissime; I had no right to be born."
+
+But Honore quickly answered:
+
+"By the laws of men, it may be; but by the law of God's justice, you are
+the lawful son, and it is I who should not have been born."
+
+But, returned to Louisiana, accepting with the amiable, old-fashioned
+philosophy of conservatism the sins of the community, he had forgotten
+the unchampioned rights of his passive half-brother. Contact with
+Frowenfeld had robbed him of his pleasant mental drowsiness, and the
+oft-encountered apparition of the dark sharer of his name had become a
+slow-stepping, silent embodiment of reproach. The turn of events had
+brought him face to face with the problem of restitution, and he had
+solved it. But where had he come out? He had come out the beneficiary of
+this restitution, extricated from bankruptcy by an agreement which gave
+the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kinship which had always been
+his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!
+
+Such was the stress within. Then there was the storm without. The
+Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had reached
+them all that Honore had met the question of titles by selling one of
+their largest estates. It was received with wincing frowns, indrawn
+breath, and lifted feet, but without protest, and presently with a smile
+of returning confidence.
+
+"Honore knew; Honore was informed; they had all authorized Honore; and
+Honore, though he might have his odd ways and notions, picked up during
+that unfortunate stay abroad, might safely be trusted to stand by the
+interests of his people."
+
+After the first shock some of them even raised a laugh:
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! Honore would show those Yankees!"
+
+They went to his counting-room and elsewhere, in search of him, to smite
+their hands into the hands of their far-seeing young champion. But, as
+we have seen, they did not find him; none dreamed of looking for him in
+an enemy's camp (19 Bienville) or on the lonely suburban commons,
+talking to himself in the ghostly twilight; and the next morning, while
+Aurora and Clotilde were seated before him in his private office,
+looking first at the face and then at the back of two mighty drafts of
+equal amount on Philadelphia, the cry of treason flew forth to these
+astounded Grandissimes, followed by the word that the sacred fire was
+gone out in the Grandissime temple (counting-room), that Delilahs in
+duplicate were carrying off the holy treasures, and that the
+uncircumcised and unclean--even an f.m.c.--was about to be inducted into
+the Grandissime priesthood.
+
+Aurora and Clotilde were still there, when the various members of the
+family began to arrive and display their outlines in impatient
+shadow-play upon the glass door of the private office; now one, and now
+another, dallied with the doorknob and by and by obtruded their lifted
+hats and urgent, anxious faces half into the apartment; but Honore would
+only glance toward them, and with a smile equally courteous,
+authoritative and fleeting, say:
+
+"Good-morning, Camille" (or Charlie--or Agamemnon, as the case might
+be); "I will see you later; let me trouble you to close the door."
+
+To add yet another strain, the two ladies, like frightened, rescued
+children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him to become the
+custodian and investor of their wealth. Ah, woman! who is a tempter like
+thee? But Honore said no, and showed them the danger of such a course.
+
+"Suppose I should die suddenly. You might have trouble with my
+executors."
+
+The two beauties assented pensively; but in Aurora's bosom a great throb
+secretly responded that as for her, in that case, she should have no use
+for money--in a nunnery.
+
+"Would not Monsieur at least consent to be their financial adviser?"
+
+He hemmed, commenced a sentence twice, and finally said:
+
+"You will need an agent; some one to take full charge of your affairs;
+some person on whose sagacity and integrity you can place the fullest
+dependence."
+
+"Who, for instance?" asked Aurora.
+
+"I should say, without hesitation, Professor Frowenfeld, the apothecary.
+You know his trouble of yesterday is quite cleared up. You had not
+heard? Yes. He is not what we call an enterprising man, but--so much the
+better. Take him all in all, I would choose him above all others;
+if you--"
+
+Aurora interrupted him. There was an ill-concealed wildness in her eye
+and a slight tremor in her voice, as she spoke, which she had not
+expected to betray. The quick, though quiet eye of Honore Grandissime
+saw it, and it thrilled him through.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime, I take the risk; I wish you to take care of my
+money."
+
+"But, Maman," said Clotilde, turning with a timid look to her mother,
+"If Monsieur Grandissime would rather not--"
+
+Aurora, feeling alarmed at what she had said, rose up. Clotilde and
+Honore did the same, and he said:
+
+"With Professor Frowenfeld in charge of your affairs, I shall feel them
+not entirely removed from my care also. We are very good friends."
+
+Clotilde looked at her mother. The three exchanged glances. The ladies
+signified their assent and turned to go, but M. Grandissime
+stopped them.
+
+"By your leave, I will send for him. If you will be seated again--"
+
+They thanked him and resumed their seats; he excused himself, passed
+into the counting-room, and sent a messenger for the apothecary.
+
+M. Grandissime's meeting with his kinsmen was a stormy one. Aurora and
+Clotilde heard the strife begin, increase, subside, rise again and
+decrease. They heard men stride heavily to and fro, they heard hands
+smite together, palms fall upon tables and fists upon desks, heard
+half-understood statement and unintelligible counter-statement and
+derisive laughter; and, in the midst of all, like the voice of a man who
+rules himself, the clear-noted, unimpassioned speech of Honore, sounding
+so loftily beautiful in the ear of Aurora that when Clotilde looked at
+her, sitting motionless with her rapt eyes lifted up, those eyes came
+down to her own with a sparkle of enthusiasm, and she softly said:
+
+"It sounds like St. Gabriel!" and then blushed.
+
+Clotilde answered with a happy, meaning look, which intensified the
+blush, and then leaning affectionately forward and holding the maman's
+eyes with her own, she said:
+
+"You have my consent."
+
+"Saucy!" said Aurora. "Wait till I get my own."
+
+Some of his kinsmen Honore pacified; some he silenced. He invited all to
+withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the
+invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they
+then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing"
+attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous
+cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana.
+You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of
+the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in
+unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by unflinching
+self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride revelling in
+ancestral, perennial rebellion against common sense.
+
+"That is Agricola," whispered Aurora, with lifted head and eyes dilated
+and askance, as one deep-chested voice roared above all others.
+
+Agricola stormed.
+
+"Uncle," Aurora by and by heard Honore say, "shall I leave my own
+counting-room?"
+
+At that moment Joseph Frowenfeld entered, pausing with one hand on the
+outer rail. No one noticed him but Honore, who was watching for him, and
+who, by a silent motion, directed him into the private office.
+
+"H-whe shake its dust from our feet!" said Agricola, gathering some
+young retainers by a sweep of his glance and going out down the stair in
+the arched way, unmoved by the fragrance of warm bread. On the banquette
+he harangued his followers.
+
+He said that in such times as these every lover of liberty should go
+armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians
+had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged
+before juries for asserting the human right of free trade or ridding the
+earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had
+been forged into thumbscrews, and a Congress which had bound itself to
+give them all the rights of American citizens--sorry boon!--was
+preparing to slip their birthright acres from under their feet, and
+leave them hanging, a bait to the vultures of the Americain immigration.
+Yes; the age of trickery! Its apostles, he said, were even then at work
+among their fellow-citizens, warping, distorting, blasting, corrupting,
+poisoning the noble, unsuspecting, confiding Creole mind. For months the
+devilish work had been allowed, by a patient, peace-loving people, to go
+on. But shall it go on forever? (Cries of "No!" "No!") The smell of
+white blood comes on the south breeze. Dessalines and Christophe had
+recommenced their hellish work. Virginia, too, trembles for the safety
+of her fair mothers and daughters. We know not what is being plotted in
+the canebrakes of Louisiana. But we know that in the face of these
+things the prelates of trickery are sitting in Washington allowing
+throats to go unthrottled that talked tenderly about the "negro slave;"
+we know worse: we know that mixed blood has asked for equal rights from
+a son of the Louisiana noblesse, and that those sacred rights have been
+treacherously, pusillanimously surrendered into its possession. Why did
+we not rise yesterday, when the public heart was stirred? The
+forbearance of this people would be absurd if it were not saintly. But
+the time has, come when Louisiana must protect herself! If there is one
+here who will not strike for his lands, his rights and the purity of his
+race, let him speak! (Cries of "We will rise now!" "Give us a leader!"
+"Lead the way!")
+
+"Kinsmen, friends," continued Agricola, "meet me at nightfall before the
+house of this too-long-spared mulatto. Come armed. Bring a few feet of
+stout rope. By morning the gentlemen of color will know their places
+better than they do to-day; h-whe shall understand each other! H-whe
+shall set the negrophiles to meditating."
+
+He waved them away.
+
+With a huzza the accumulated crowd moved off. Chance carried them up the
+rue Royale; they sang a song; they came to Frowenfeld's. It was an
+Americain establishment; that was against it. It was a gossiping place
+of Americain evening loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer's
+den--(we are on an ascending scale); its proprietor had refused
+employment to some there present, had refused credit to others, was an
+impudent condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten
+over the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse
+still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all,
+Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd stopped to
+have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless fellow in the
+throng--he was still singing--said: "Here's the place," and dropped two
+bricks through the glass of the show-window. Raoul, with a cry of
+retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it
+from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off
+struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's
+was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish
+that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the
+Governor's police were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.
+
+Joseph was sitting in M. Grandissime's private office, in council with
+him and the ladies, and Aurora was just saying:
+
+"Well, anny'ow, 'Sieur Frowenfel', ad laz you consen'!" and gathering
+her veil from her lap, when Raoul burst in, all sweat and rage.
+
+"'Sieur Frowenfel', we ruin'! Ow pharmacie knock all in pieces! My
+pigshoe is los'!"
+
+He dropped into a chair and burst into tears.
+
+Shall we never learn to withhold our tears until we are sure of our
+trouble? Raoul little knew the joy in store for him. 'Polyte, it
+transpired the next day, had rushed in after the first volley of
+missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of
+asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and bore
+away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter the
+Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks later Honore
+Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he was "betrothed,"
+purchased this painting and presented it to a club of _natural
+connoisseurs_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+OVER THE NEW STORE
+
+
+The accident of the ladies Nancanou making their new home over
+Frowenfeld's drug-store occurred in the following rather amusing way. It
+chanced that the building was about completed at the time that the
+apothecary's stock in trade was destroyed; Frowenfeld leased the lower
+floor. Honore Grandissime f.m.c. was the owner. He being concealed from
+his enemies, Joseph treated with that person's inadequately remunerated
+employe. In those days, as still in the old French Quarter, it was not
+uncommon for persons, even of wealth, to make their homes over stores,
+and buildings were constructed with a view to their partition in this
+way. Hence, in Chartres and Decatur streets, to-day--and in the
+cross-streets between--so many store-buildings with balconies, dormer
+windows, and sometimes even belvideres. This new building caught the eye
+and fancy of Aurora and Clotilde. The apartments for the store were
+entirely isolated. Through a large _porte-cochere_, opening upon the
+banquette immediately beside and abreast of the store-front, one entered
+a high, covered carriage-way with a tessellated pavement and green
+plastered walls, and reached,--just where this way (corridor, the
+Creoles always called it) opened into a sunny court surrounded with
+narrow parterres,--a broad stairway leading to a hall over the
+"corridor" and to the drawing-rooms over the store. They liked it!
+Aurora would find out at once what sort of an establishment was likely
+to be opened below, and if that proved unexceptionable she would lease
+the upper part without more ado.
+
+Next day she said:
+
+"Clotilde, thou beautiful, I have signed the lease!"
+
+"Then the store below is to be occupied by a--what?"
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Guess a pharmacien!"
+
+Clotilde's lips parted, she was going to smile, when her thought changed
+and she blushed offendedly.
+
+"Not--"
+
+"'Sieur Frowenf--ah, ha, ha, ha!--_ha, ha, ha_!"
+
+Clotilde burst into tears.
+
+Still they moved in--it was written in the bond; and so did the
+apothecary; and probably two sensible young lovers never before nor
+since behaved with such abject fear of each other--for a time. Later,
+and after much oft-repeated good advice given to each separately and to
+both together, Honore Grandissime persuaded them that Clotilde could
+make excellent use of a portion of her means by reenforcing Frowenfeld's
+very slender stock and well filling his rather empty-looking store, and
+so they signed regular articles of copartnership, blushing frightfully.
+
+Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honore not; once Honore had seen the
+ladies' moneys satisfactorily invested, he kept aloof. It is pleasant
+here to remark that neither Aurora nor Clotilde made any waste of their
+sudden acquisitions; they furnished their rooms with much beauty at
+moderate cost, and their _salon_ with artistic, not extravagant,
+elegance, and, for the sake of greater propriety, employed a decayed
+lady as housekeeper; but, being discreet in all other directions, they
+agreed upon one bold outlay--a volante.
+
+Almost any afternoon you might have seen this vehicle on the Terre aux
+Boeuf, or Bayou, or Tchoupitoulas Road; and because of the brilliant
+beauty of its occupants it became known from all other volantes as
+the "meteor."
+
+Frowenfeld's visits were not infrequent; he insisted on Clotdlde's
+knowing just what was being done with her money. Without indulging
+ourselves in the pleasure of contemplating his continued mental
+unfolding, we may say that his growth became more rapid in this season
+of universal expansion; love had entered into his still compacted soul
+like a cupid into a rose, and was crowding it wide open. However, as
+yet, it had not made him brave. Aurora used to slip out of the
+drawing-room, and in some secluded nook of the hall throw up her clasped
+hands and go through all the motions of screaming merriment.
+
+"The little fool!"--it was of her own daughter she whispered this
+complimentary remark--"the little fool is afraid of the fish!"
+
+"You!" she said to Clotilde, one evening after Joseph had gone, "you
+call yourself a Creole girl!"
+
+But she expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blushing girl as a
+blushing man. And then--though they did sometimes digress--Clotilde and
+her partner met to talk "business" in a purely literal sense.
+
+Aurora, after a time, had taken her money into her own keeping.
+
+"You mighd gid robb' ag'in, you know, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," she said.
+
+But when he mentioned Clotilde's fortune as subject to the same
+contingency, Aurora replied:
+
+"Ah! bud Clotilde mighd gid robb'!"
+
+But for all the exuberance of Aurora's spirits, there was a cloud in her
+sky. Indeed, we know it is only when clouds are in the sky that we get
+the rosiest tints; and so it was with Aurora. One night, when she had
+heard the wicket in the _porte-cochere_ shut behind three evening
+callers, one of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she
+expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph
+Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a
+hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept
+again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped her
+face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of the
+penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care
+or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of extraordinary
+expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts. Aurora had been crying of
+nights. Even that same night, Clotilde awoke, opened her eyes and beheld
+her mother risen from the pillow and sitting upright in the bed beside
+her; the moon, shining brightly through the mosquito-bar revealed with
+distinctness her head slightly drooped, her face again in her hands and
+the dark folds of her hair falling about her shoulders, half-concealing
+the richly embroidered bosom of her snowy gown, and coiling in
+continuous abundance about her waist and on the slight summer covering
+of the bed. Before her on the sheet lay a white paper. Clotilde did not
+try to decipher the writing on it; she knew, at sight, the slip that had
+fallen from the statement of account on the evening of the ninth of
+March. Aurora withdrew her hands from her face--Clotilde shut her eyes;
+she heard Aurora put the paper in her bosom.
+
+"Clotilde," she said, very softly.
+
+"Maman," the daughter replied, opening her eyes, reached up her arms and
+drew the dear head down.
+
+"Clotilde, once upon a time I woke this way, and, while you were asleep,
+left the bed and made a vow to Monsieur Danny. Oh! it was a sin! but I
+cannot do those things now; I have been frightened ever since. I shall
+never do so any more. I shall never commit another sin as long as
+I live!"
+
+Their lips met fervently.
+
+"My sweet sweet," whispered Clotilde, "you looked so beautiful sitting
+up with the moonlight all around you!"
+
+"Clotilde, my beautiful daughter," said Aurora, pushing her bedmate from
+her and pretending to repress a smile, "I tell you now, because you
+don't know, and it is my duty as your mother to tell you--the meanest
+wickedness a woman can do in all this bad, bad world is to look ugly
+in bed!"
+
+Clotilde answered nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms,
+turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three
+hours of patient wakefulness, fell asleep.
+
+But at daybreak next morning, he that wrote the paper had not closed his
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
+
+
+There was always some flutter among Frowenfeld's employes when he was
+asked for, and this time it was the more pronounced because he was
+sought by a housemaid from the upper floor. It was hard for these two or
+three young Ariels to keep their Creole feet to the ground when it was
+presently revealed to their sharp ears that the "prof-fis-or" was
+requested to come upstairs.
+
+The new store was an extremely neat, bright, and well-ordered
+establishment; yet to ascend into the drawing-rooms seemed to the
+apothecary like going from the hold of one of those smart old
+packet-ships of his day into the cabin. Aurora came forward, with the
+slippers of a Cinderella twinkling at the edge of her robe. It seemed
+unfit that the floor under them should not be clouds.
+
+"Proffis-or Frowenfel', good-day! Teg a cha'." She laughed. It was the
+pure joy of existence. "You's well? You lookin' verrie well! Halways
+bizzie? You fine dad agriz wid you' healt', 'Sieur Frowenfel'? Yes? Ha,
+ha, ha!" She suddenly leaned toward him across the arm of her chair,
+with an earnest face. "'Sieur Frowenfel', Palmyre wand see you. You don'
+wan' come ad 'er 'ouse, eh?--an' you don' wan' her to come ad yo'
+bureau. You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she drez the hair of Clotilde an'
+mieself. So w'en she tell me dad, I juz say, 'Palmyre, I will sen' for
+Proffis-or Frowenfel' to come yeh; but I don' thing 'e comin'.' You
+know, I din' wan' you to 'ave dad troub'; but Clotilde--ha, ha, ha!
+Clotilde is sudge a foolish--she nevva thing of dad troub' to you--she
+say she thing you was too kine-'arted to call dad troub'--ha, ha, ha! So
+anny'ow we sen' for you, eh!"
+
+Frowenfeld said he was glad they had done so, whereupon Aurora rose
+lightly, saying:
+
+"I go an' sen' her." She started away, but turned back to add: "You
+know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she say she cann' truz nobody bud y'u." She
+ended with a low, melodious laugh, bending her joyous eyes upon the
+apothecary with her head dropped to one side in a way to move a heart
+of flint.
+
+She turned and passed through a door, and by the same way Palmyre
+entered. The philosophe came forward noiselessly and with a subdued
+expression, different from any Frowenfeld had ever before seen. At the
+first sight of her a thrill of disrelish ran through him of which he was
+instantly ashamed; as she came nearer he met her with a deferential bow
+and the silent tender of a chair. She sat down, and, after a moment's
+pause, handed him a sealed letter.
+
+He turned it over twice, recognized the handwriting, felt the disrelish
+return, and said:
+
+"This is addressed to yourself."
+
+She bowed.
+
+"Do you know who wrote it?" he asked.
+
+She bowed again.
+
+"_Oui, Miche_."
+
+"You wish me to open it? I cannot read French."
+
+She seemed to have some explanation to offer, but could not command the
+necessary English; however, with the aid of Frowenfeld's limited
+guessing powers, she made him understand that the bearer of the letter
+to her had brought word from the writer that it was written in English
+purposely that M. Frowenfeld--the only person he was willing should see
+it--might read it. Frowenfeld broke the seal and ran his eye over the
+writing, but remained silent.
+
+The woman stirred, as if to say "Well?" But he hesitated.
+
+"Palmyre," he suddenly said, with a slight, dissuasive smile, "it would
+be a profanation for me to read this."
+
+She bowed to signify that she caught his meaning, then raised her elbows
+with an expression of dubiety, and said:
+
+"'E hask you--"
+
+"Yes," murmured the apothecary. He shook his head as if to protest to
+himself, and read in a low but audible voice:
+
+     "Star of my soul, I approach to die. It is not for me
+     possible to live without Palmyre. Long time have I so done,
+     but now, cut off from to see thee, by imprisonment, as it may
+     be called, love is starving to death. Oh, have pity on the
+     faithful heart which, since ten years, change not, but forget
+     heaven and earth for you. Now in the peril of the life,
+     hidden away, that absence from the sight of you make his
+     seclusion the more worse than death. Halas! I pine! Not other
+     ten years of despair can I commence. Accept this love. If so
+     I will live for you, but if to the contraire, I must die for
+     you. Is there anything at all what I will not give or even do
+     if Palmyre will be my wife? Ah, no, far otherwise, there is
+     nothing!" ...
+
+Frowenfeld looked over the top of the letter. Palmyre sat with her eyes
+cast down, slowly shaking her head. He returned his glance to the page,
+coloring somewhat with annoyance at being made a proposing medium.
+
+"The English is very faulty here," he said, without looking up. "He
+mentions Bras-Coupe." Palmyre started and turned toward him; but he went
+on without lifting his eyes. "He speaks of your old pride and affection
+toward him as one who with your aid might have been a leader and
+deliverer of his people." Frowenfeld looked up. "Do you under--"
+
+"_Allez, Miche_" said she, leaning forward, her great eyes fixed on the
+apothecary and her face full of distress. "_Mo comprend bien_."
+
+"He asks you to let him be to you in the place of Bras-Coupe."
+
+The eyes of the philosophe, probably for the first time since the death
+of the giant, lost their pride. They gazed upon Frowenfeld almost with
+piteousness; but she compressed her lips and again slowly shook
+her head.
+
+"You see," said Frowenfeld, suddenly feeling a new interest, "he
+understands their wants. He knows their wrongs. He is acquainted with
+laws and men. He could speak for them. It would not be insurrection--it
+would be advocacy. He would give his time, his pen, his speech, his
+means, to get them justice--to get them their rights."
+
+She hushed the over-zealous advocate with a sad and bitter smile and
+essayed to speak, studied as if for English words, and, suddenly
+abandoning that attempt, said, with ill-concealed scorn and in the
+Creole patois:
+
+"What is all that? What I want is vengeance!"
+
+"I will finish reading," said Frowenfeld, quickly, not caring to
+understand the passionate speech.
+
+     "Ah, Palmyre! Palmyre! What you love and hope to love you
+     because his heart keep itself free, he is loving another!"
+
+_"Qui ci ca, Miche?"_
+
+Frowenfeld was loth to repeat. She had understood, as her face showed;
+but she dared not believe. He made it shorter:
+
+"He means that Honore Grandissime loves another woman."
+
+"'Tis a lie!" she exclaimed, a better command of English coming with the
+momentary loss of restraint.
+
+The apothecary thought a moment and then decided to speak.
+
+"I do not think so," he quietly said.
+
+"'Ow you know dat?"
+
+She, too, spoke quietly, but under a fearful strain. She had thrown
+herself forward, but, as she spoke, forced herself back into her seat.
+
+"He told me so himself."
+
+The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her
+eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost
+all knowledge of place or of human presence. She walked down the
+drawing-room quite to its curtained windows and there stopped, her face
+turned away and her hand laid with a visible tension on the back of a
+chair. She remained so long that Frowenfeld had begun to think of
+leaving her so, when she turned and came back. Her form was erect, her
+step firm and nerved, her lips set together and her hands dropped easily
+at her side; but when she came close up before the apothecary she was
+trembling. For a moment she seemed speechless, and then, while her eyes
+gleamed with passion, she said, in a cold, clear tone, and in her
+native patois:
+
+"Very well: if I cannot love I can have my revenge." She took the letter
+from him and bowed her thanks, still adding, in the same tongue, "There
+is now no longer anything to prevent."
+
+The apothecary understood the dark speech. She meant that, with no hope
+of Honore's love, there was no restraining motive to withhold her from
+wreaking what vengeance she could upon Agricola. But he saw the folly
+of a debate.
+
+"That is all I can do?" asked he.
+
+"_Oui, merci, Miche_" she said; then she added, in perfect English, "but
+that is not all _I_ can do," and then--laughed.
+
+The apothecary had already turned to go, and the laugh was a low one;
+but it chilled his blood. He was glad to get back to his employments.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+BUSINESS CHANGES
+
+
+We have now recorded some of the events which characterized the five
+months during which Doctor Keene had been vainly seeking to recover his
+health in the West Indies.
+
+"Is Mr. Frowenfeld in?" he asked, walking very slowly, and with a cane,
+into the new drug-store on the morning of his return to the city.
+
+"If Professo' Frowenfel' 's in?" replied a young man in shirt-sleeves,
+speaking rapidly, slapping a paper package which he had just tied, and
+sliding it smartly down the counter. "No, seh."
+
+A quick step behind the doctor caused him to turn; Raoul was just
+entering, with a bright look of business on his face, taking his coat
+off as he came.
+
+"Docta Keene! _Teck_ a chair. 'Ow you like de noo sto'? See? Fo'
+counters! T'ree clerk'! De whole interieure paint undre mie h-own
+direction! If dat is not a beautiful! eh? Look at dat sign."
+
+He pointed to some lettering in harmonious colors near the ceiling at
+the farther end of the house. The doctor looked and read:
+
+     MANDARIN, AG'T, APOTHECARY.
+
+"Why not Frowenfeld?" he asked.
+
+Raoul shrugged.
+
+"'Tis better dis way."
+
+That was his explanation.
+
+"Not the De Brahmin Mandarin who was Honore's manager?"
+
+"Yes. Honore was n' able to kip 'im no long-er. Honore is n' so rich lak
+befo'."
+
+"And Mandarin is really in charge here?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Profess-or Frowenfel' all de time at de ole corner, w'ere 'e
+_con_tinue to keep 'is private room and h-use de ole shop fo' ware'ouse.
+'E h-only come yeh w'en Mandarin cann' git 'long widout 'im."
+
+"What does he do there? _He's_ not rich."
+
+Raoul bent down toward the doctor's chair and whispered the dark secret:
+
+"Studyin'!"
+
+Doctor Keene went out.
+
+Everything seemed changed to the returned wanderer. Poor man! The
+changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one
+broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes
+fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to
+the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of
+the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of
+strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. The people
+he met on the street were more or less familiar to his memory, but many
+that should have recognized him failed to do so, and others were made to
+notice him rather by his cough than by his face. Some did not know he
+had been away. It made him cross.
+
+He had walked slowly down beyond the old Frowenfeld corner and had just
+crossed the street to avoid the dust of a building which was being torn
+down to make place for a new one, when he saw coming toward him,
+unconscious of his proximity, Joseph Frowenfeld.
+
+"Doctor Keene!" said Frowenfeld, with almost the enthusiasm of Raoul.
+
+The doctor was very much quieter.
+
+"Hello, Joe."
+
+They went back to the new drug-store, sat down in a pleasant little rear
+corner enclosed by a railing and curtains, and talked.
+
+"And did the trip prove of no advantage to you?"
+
+"You see. But never mind me; tell me about Honore; how does that row
+with his family progress?"
+
+"It still continues; the most of his people hold ideas of justice and
+prerogative that run parallel with family and party lines, lines of
+caste, of custom and the like they have imparted their bad feeling
+against him to the community at large; very easy to do just now, for the
+election for President of the States comes on in the fall, and though we
+in Louisiana have little or nothing to do with it, the people are
+feverish."
+
+"The country's chill-day," said Doctor Keene; "dumb chill, hot fever."
+
+"The excitement is intense," said Frowenfeld. "It seems we are not to
+be granted suffrage yet; but the Creoles have a way of casting votes in
+their mind. For example, they have voted Honore Grandissime a traitor;
+they have voted me an encumbrance; I hear one of them casting that
+vote now."
+
+Some one near the front of the store was talking excitedly with Raoul:
+
+"An'--an'--an' w'at are the consequence? The consequence are that we
+smash his shop for him an' 'e 'ave to make a noo-start with a Creole
+partner's money an' put 'is sto' in charge of Creole'! If I know he is
+yo' frien'? Yesseh! Valuable citizen? An' w'at we care for valuable
+citizen? Let him be valuable if he want; it keep' him from gettin' the
+neck broke; but--he mus'-tek-kyeh--'ow--he--talk'! He-mus'-tek-kyeh 'ow
+he stir the 'ot blood of Louisyanna!"
+
+"He is perfectly right," said the little doctor, in his husky undertone;
+"neither you nor Honore is a bit sound, and I shouldn't wonder if they
+would hang you both, yet; and as for that darkey who has had the
+impudence to try to make a commercial white gentleman of himself--it may
+not be I that ought to say it, but--he will get his deserts--sure!"
+
+"There are a great many Americans that think as you do," said
+Frowenfeld, quietly.
+
+"But," said the little doctor, "what did that fellow mean by your Creole
+partner? Mandarin is in charge of your store, but he is not your
+partner, is he? Have you one?"
+
+"A silent one," said the apothecary
+
+"So silent as to be none of my business?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, who is it, then?"
+
+"It is Mademoiselle Nancanou."
+
+"Your partner in business?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,--"
+
+The insinuation conveyed in the doctor's manner was very trying, but
+Joseph merely reddened.
+
+"Purely business, I suppose," presently said the doctor, with a ghastly
+ironical smile. "Does the arrangem'--" his utterance failed him--"does
+it end there?"
+
+"It ends there."
+
+"And you don't see that it ought either not to have begun, or else ought
+not to have ended there?"
+
+Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:
+
+"And who takes care of Aurora's money?"
+
+"Herself."
+
+"Exclusively?"
+
+They both smiled more good-naturedly.
+
+"Exclusively."
+
+"She's a coon;" and the little doctor rose up and crawled away,
+ostensibly to see another friend, but really to drag himself into his
+bedchamber and lock himself in. The next day--the yellow fever was bad
+again--he resumed the practice of his profession.
+
+"'Twill be a sort of decent suicide without the element of
+pusillanimity," he thought to himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
+
+
+When Honore Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had returned to the city
+in a very feeble state of health, he rose at once from the desk where he
+was sitting and went to see him; but it was on that morning when the
+doctor was sitting and talking with Joseph, and Honore found his chamber
+door locked. Doctor Keene called twice, within the following two days,
+upon Honore at his counting-room; but on both occasions Honore's chair
+was empty. So it was several days before they met. But one hot morning
+in the latter part of August,--the August days were hotter before the
+cypress forest was cut down between the city and the lake than they are
+now,--as Doctor Keene stood in the middle of his room breathing
+distressedly after a sad fit of coughing, and looking toward one of his
+windows whose closed sash he longed to see opened, Honore knocked at
+the door.
+
+"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why, Honore,--well, it
+serves you right for stopping to knock. Sit down."
+
+Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other; and, after a pause,
+Doctor Keene said:
+
+"Honore, you are pretty badly stove."
+
+M. Grandissime smiled.
+
+"Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more complimentary to you; you might
+look more sick."
+
+"Oh, I have resumed my trade," replied Doctor Keene.
+
+"So I have heard; but, Charlie, that is all in favor of the people who
+want a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind killing him; I
+should advise you not to do it."
+
+"You mean" (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) "if I
+should ask your advice. I am going to get well, Honore."
+
+His visitor shrugged.
+
+"So much the better. I do confess I am tempted to make use of you in
+your official capacity, right now. Do you feel strong enough to go with
+me in your gig a little way?"
+
+"A professional call?"
+
+"Yes, and a difficult case; also a confidential one."
+
+"Ah! confidential!" said the little man, in his painful, husky irony.
+"You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our 'professor'
+into, eh?"
+
+"Possibly a worse one," replied the amiable Creole.
+
+"And I must be mum, eh?"
+
+"I would prefer."
+
+"Shall I need any instruments? No?"--with a shade of disappointment on
+his face.
+
+He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street door.
+
+"How are affairs about town?" he asked, as he made some slight
+preparation for the street.
+
+"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private difficulty
+between a Creole and an Americain drew instantly half the street
+together to take sides strictly according to belongings and without
+asking a question. My-de'-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a war
+of human acids and alkalies."
+
+They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who drove
+turned, by Honore's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it,
+passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river
+again and entered the rue Conde. The route was circuitous. They stopped
+at the carriage-door of a large brick house. The wicket was opened by
+Clemence. They alighted without driving in.
+
+"Hey, old witch," said the doctor, with mock severity; "not hung yet?"
+
+The houses of any pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the closely
+built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American
+plan. Honore led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellated
+carriage-hall, on one side of which were the drawing-rooms, closed and
+darkened. They turned at the bottom, ascended a broad, iron-railed
+staircase to the floor above, and halted before the open half of a
+glazed double door with a clumsy iron latch. It was the entrance to two
+spacious chambers, which were thrown into one by folded doors.
+
+The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his eyebrows--the
+rooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable largeness and heaviness,
+lofty sobriety, abundance of finely wrought brass mounting, motionless
+richness of upholstery, much silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a soft
+semi-obscurity--such were the characteristics. The long windows of the
+farther apartment could be seen to open over the street, and the air
+from behind, coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in the
+paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and
+cavernous.
+
+"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own bedchamber?" the
+doctor whispered.
+
+"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly answered
+Honore. "Agricole and some others ransacked this house one night last
+March--the day I announced the new firm; but of course, then, he was
+not here."
+
+They entered, and the figure of Honore Grandissime, f.m.c., came into
+view in the centre of the farther room, reclining in an attitude of
+extreme languor on a low couch, whither he had come from the high bed
+near by, as the impression of his form among its pillows showed. He
+turned upon the two visitors his slow, melancholy eyes, and, without an
+attempt to rise or speak, indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, an
+invitation to be seated.
+
+"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and drawing
+it close to the side of the couch.
+
+The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless hand, which
+had not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but sank idly back
+upon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and its nails
+slightly blue.
+
+"Lie still," said the doctor, reassuringly, as the rentier began to lift
+the one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the couch and the
+hand which hung out of sight across a large, linen-covered cushion.
+
+By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon acquainted
+himself with the case before him. It was a very plain one. By and by he
+rubbed his face and red curls and suddenly said:
+
+"You will not take my prescription."
+
+The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.
+
+"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his wont, and,
+as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little
+satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty.
+I'll give Honore the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription
+to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling;
+they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He
+rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at
+Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It
+will give you an object for going out."
+
+The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching the
+bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in a
+direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the
+paved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had
+placed glasses of lemonade.
+
+"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurable
+organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; still
+your--your patient--"
+
+"My half-brother," said Honore.
+
+"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the question
+the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will kill
+him _soon_, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutely
+nothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."
+
+"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honore, with something of the
+doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be killed by it."
+
+"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in reverie,
+gazed upon the glass which he was slowly turning around with his
+attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However,
+one _may_ love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, and
+yet not die."
+
+"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said Honore with
+gentle gravity.
+
+"Yes," said the other, still toying with his glass.
+
+He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met and
+remained steadfastly fixed each upon each.
+
+"You've got it bad," said Doctor Keene, mechanically.
+
+"And you?" retorted the Creole.
+
+"It isn't going to kill me."
+
+"It has not killed me. And," added M. Grandissime, as they passed
+through the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in mind the
+numberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and sons and
+daughters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die of love,
+my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."
+
+This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but he took
+no advantage of it.
+
+"Honore," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside the
+doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a chance for you,
+why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon you are making? Why,
+sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak spot your action has
+shown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from our
+transcendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that
+would have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have
+a chance to do something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the
+'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"
+
+"Hush!" said Honore; "do you suppose I have not temptation enough
+already?"
+
+He began to move away.
+
+"Honore," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made a
+mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"
+
+Honore nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden new
+thought.
+
+"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you are
+prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."
+
+"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straight
+up and down manly thing."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+The doctor stepped into his gig--
+
+"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION
+
+
+One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and consequently
+earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes were set all
+a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another of their number
+had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to the enemy,"--a phrase
+first applied by him to Honore.
+
+"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had asked on
+that earlier occasion.
+
+"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!" replied
+Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Americains in matters of business
+and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a
+race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest
+prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert,
+imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a
+listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most
+time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but
+Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked
+out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his case an
+act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I simply do not
+understand them! _H-you_ know, Professor Frowenfeld, what he has done!
+You know how ignominiously he has surrendered the key of a moral
+position which for the honor of the Grandissime-Fusilier name we have
+felt it necessary to hold against our hereditary enemies!
+And--you--know--" here Agricola actually dropped all artificiality and
+spoke from the depths of his feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has
+joined himself in business h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do?
+What can we say? It is Honore Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell!
+He is gone over to the enemy.'"
+
+The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul Innerarity.
+Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such part as he could
+understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with ever-broadening
+admiration. We know how devoted he became to the interests and fame of
+"Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had married. Not to divide his
+generous heart he took rooms opposite the drug-store, resolved that
+"Frowenfeld's" should be not only the latest closed but the earliest
+opened of all the pharmacies in New Orleans.
+
+This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his bride fell
+suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of Aurora and Clotilde
+could not be so near to trouble and not know it, and before Raoul was
+nearly enough recovered from the shock of this peril to remember that he
+was a Grandissime, these last two of the De Grapions had hastened across
+the street to the small, white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of
+universal human love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame
+Innerarity recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could
+pay such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four
+became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward
+Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed her
+all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to be, for
+him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily inaccessible; but
+Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was delighted with Aurora.
+He told her in confidence that "Profess-or Frowenfel'" was the best man
+in the world; but she boldly said, taking pains to speak with a
+tear-and-a-half of genuine gratitude,--"Egcep' Monsieur Honore
+Grandissime," and he assented, at first with hesitation and then with
+ardor. The four formed a group of their own; and it is not certain that
+this was not the very first specimen ever produced in the Crescent City
+of that social variety of New Orleans life now distinguished as
+Uptown Creoles.
+
+Almost the first thing acquired by Raoul in the camp of the enemy was a
+certain Aurorean audacity; and on the afternoon to which we allude,
+having told Frowenfeld a rousing fib to the effect that the
+multitudinous inmates of the maternal Grandissime mansion had insisted
+on his bringing his esteemed employer to see them, he and his bride had
+the hardihood to present him on the front veranda.
+
+The straightforward Frowenfeld was much pleased with his reception. It
+was not possible for such as he to guess the ire with which his presence
+was secretly regarded. New Orleans, let us say once more, was small, and
+the apothecary of the rue Royale locally famed; and what with curiosity
+and that innate politeness which it is the Creole's boast that he cannot
+mortify, the veranda, about the top of the great front stair, was well
+crowded with people of both sexes and all ages. It would be most
+pleasant to tarry once more in description of this gathering of nobility
+and beauty; to recount the points of Creole loveliness in midsummer
+dress; to tell in particular of one and another eye-kindling face,
+form, manner, wit; to define the subtle qualities of Creole air and sky
+and scene, or the yet more delicate graces that characterize the music
+of Creole voice and speech and the light of Creole eyes; to set forth
+the gracious, unaccentuated dignity of the matrons and the ravishing
+archness of their daughters. To Frowenfeld the experience seemed all
+unreal. Nor was this unreality removed by conversation on grave
+subjects; for few among either the maturer or the younger beauty could
+do aught but listen to his foreign tongue like unearthly strangers in
+the old fairy tales. They came, however, in the course of their talk to
+the subject of love and marriage. It is not certain that they entered
+deeper into the great question than a comparison of its attendant
+Anglo-American and Franco-American conventionalities; but sure it is
+that somehow--let those young souls divine the method who can--every
+unearthly stranger on that veranda contrived to understand Frowenfeld's
+English. Suddenly the conversation began to move over the ground of
+inter-marriage between hostile families. Then what eyes and ears! A
+certain suspicion had already found lodgement in the universal
+Grandissime breast, and every one knew in a moment that, to all intents
+and purposes, they were about to argue the case of Honore and Aurora.
+
+The conversation became discussion, Frowenfeld, Raoul and Raoul's little
+seraph against the whole host, chariots, horse and archery. Ah! such
+strokes as the apothecary dealt! And if Raoul and "Madame Raoul" played
+parts most closely resembling the blowing of horns and breaking of
+pitchers, still they bore themselves gallantly. The engagement was
+short; we need not say that nobody surrendered; nobody ever gives up the
+ship in parlor or veranda debate: and yet--as is generally the case in
+such affairs--truth and justice made some unacknowledged headway. If
+anybody on either side came out wounded--this to the credit of the
+Creoles as a people--the sufferer had the heroic good manners not to say
+so. But the results were more marked than this; indeed, in more than one
+or two candid young hearts and impressible minds the wrongs and rights
+of sovereign true love began there on the spot to be more generously
+conceded and allowed. "My-de'-seh," Honore had once on a time said to
+Frowenfeld, meaning that to prevail in conversational debate one should
+never follow up a faltering opponent, "you mus' _crack_ the egg, not
+smash it!" And Joseph, on rising to take his leave, could the more
+amiably overlook the feebleness of the invitation to call again, since
+he rejoiced, for Honore's sake, in the conviction that the egg
+was cracked.
+
+Agricola, the Grandissimes told the apothecary, was ill in his room, and
+Madame de Grandissime, his sister--Honore's mother--begged to be excused
+that she might keep him company. The Fusiliers were a very close order;
+or one might say they garrisoned the citadel.
+
+But Joseph's rising to go was not immediately upon the close of the
+discussion; those courtly people would not let even an unwelcome guest
+go with the faintest feeling of disrelish for them. They were casting
+about in their minds for some momentary diversion with which to add a
+finishing touch to their guest's entertainment, when Clemence appeared
+in the front garden walk and was quickly surrounded by bounding
+children, alternately begging and demanding a song. Many of even the
+younger adults remembered well when she had been "one of the hands on
+the place," and a passionate lover of the African dance. In the same
+instant half a dozen voices proposed that for Joseph's amusement
+Clemence should put her cakes off her head, come up on the veranda and
+show a few of her best steps.
+
+"But who will sing?"
+
+"Raoul!"
+
+"Very well; and what shall it be?"
+
+"'Madame Gaba.'"
+
+No, Clemence objected.
+
+"Well, well, stand back--something better than 'Madame Gaba.'"
+
+Raoul began to sing and Clemence instantly to pace and turn, posture,
+bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp, wheel, lift
+her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with crossed ankles, smite
+her palms, march, circle, leap,--an endless improvisation of rhythmic
+motion to this modulated responsive chant:
+
+     Raoul. "_Mo pas l'aimein ca_."
+
+     Clemence. "_Miche Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+     He. "_Ye donne vingt cinq sous pou' manze poule_."
+
+     She. "_Miche Igenne, dit--dit--dit--_"
+
+     He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ca!_"
+
+     She. "_Miche Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+     He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ca!_"
+
+     She. "_Miche Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
+
+Frowenfeld was not so greatly amused as the ladies thought he should
+have been, and was told that this was not a fair indication of what he
+would see if there were ten dancers instead of one.
+
+How much less was it an indication of what he would have seen in that
+mansion early the next morning, when there was found just outside of
+Agricola's bedroom door a fresh egg, not cracked, according to Honore's
+maxim, but smashed, according to the lore of the voudous. Who could have
+got in in the night? And did the intruder get in by magic, by outside
+lock-picking, or by inside collusion? Later in the morning, the children
+playing in the basement found--it had evidently been accidentally
+dropped, since the true use of its contents required them to be
+scattered in some person's path--a small cloth bag, containing a
+quantity of dogs' and cats' hair, cut fine and mixed with salt
+and pepper.
+
+"Clemence?"
+
+"Pooh! Clemence. No! But as sure as the sun turns around the
+world--Palmyre Philosophe!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+"CAULDRON BUBBLE"
+
+
+The excitement and alarm produced by the practical threat of voudou
+curses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was quite another;
+and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of voudou charms was
+found in the four corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissime
+family were ignorant of how they could have come there. Let us examine
+these terrible engines of mischief. In one corner was an acorn drilled
+through with two holes at right angles to each other, a small feather
+run through each hole; in the second a joint of cornstalk with a cavity
+scooped from the middle, the pith left intact at the ends, and the space
+filled with parings from that small callous spot near the knee of the
+horse, called the "nail;" in the third corner a bunch of parti-colored
+feathers; something equally meaningless in the fourth. No thread was
+used in any of them. All fastening was done with the gum of trees. It
+was no easy task for his kindred to prevent Agricola, beside himself
+with rage and fright, from going straight to Palmyre's house and
+shooting her down in open day.
+
+"We shall have to watch our house by night," said a gentleman of the
+household, when they had at length restored the Citizen to a condition
+of mind which enabled them to hold him in a chair.
+
+"Watch this house?" cried a chorus. "You don't suppose she comes near
+here, do you? She does it all from a distance. No, no; watch
+_her_ house."
+
+Did Agricola believe in the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No,
+and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to the
+levee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed,
+re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast a
+picayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the imp
+of death thus placated, must have been a sort of spiritual Cheap John.
+
+Several more nights passed. The house of Palmyre, closely watched,
+revealed nothing. No one came out, no one went in, no light was seen.
+They should have watched in broad daylight. At last, one midnight,
+'Polyte Grandissime stepped cautiously up to one of the batten doors
+with an auger, and succeeded, without arousing any one, in boring a
+hole. He discovered a lighted candle standing in a glass of water.
+
+"Nothing but a bedroom light," said one.
+
+"Ah, bah!" whispered the other; "it is to make the spell work strong."
+
+"We will not tell Agricola first; we had better tell Honore," said
+Sylvestre.
+
+"You forget," said 'Polyte, "that I no longer have any acquaintance with
+Monsieur Honore Grandissime."
+
+They told Agamemnon; and it would have gone hard with the
+"_milatraise_" but for the additional fact that suspicion had fastened
+upon another person; but now this person in turn had to be identified.
+It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola, but to wait and
+seek further developments. Agricola, having lost all ability to sleep in
+the mansion, moved into a small cottage in a grove near the house. But
+the very next morning, he turned cold with horror to find on his
+doorstep a small black-coffined doll, with pins run through the heart, a
+burned-out candle at the head and another at the feet.
+
+"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the old man
+as he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate. "What if I
+should tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnight
+to-night, you will see the real author of this mischief--eh?"
+
+"And why to-night?"
+
+"Because the moon rises at midnight."
+
+There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds under
+the ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would say now, in Congo Square,
+from three pistols--Agricola's, 'Polyte's, and the weapon of an
+ill-defined, retreating figure answering the description of the person
+who had stabbed Agricola the preceding February. "And yet," said
+'Polyte, "I would have sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."
+
+Through Raoul these events came to the ear of Frowenfield. It was about
+the time that Raoul's fishing party, after a few days' mishaps, had
+returned home. Palmyre, on several later dates, had craved further
+audiences and shown other letters from the hidden f.m.c. She had heard
+them calmly, and steadfastly preserved the one attitude of refusal. But
+it could not escape Frowenfeld's notice that she encouraged the sending
+of additional letters. He easily guessed the courier to be Clemence; and
+now, as he came to ponder these revelations of Raoul, he found that
+within twenty-four hours after every visit of Clemence to the house of
+Palmyre, Agricola suffered a visitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+CAUGHT
+
+
+The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it is yet
+summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two hundred yards
+northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in which Agricola had
+made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of which we have spoken,
+stood one of these trees, whose leaves were beginning to lie thickly
+upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and luxuriant hedge of
+Cherokee-rose started from this tree and stretched toward the northwest
+across the level country, until it merged into the green confusion of
+gardened homes in the vicinity of Bayou St. Jean, or, by night, into the
+common obscurity of a starlit perspective. When an unclouded moon shone
+upon it, it cast a shadow as black as velvet.
+
+Under this fig-tree, some three hours later than that at which Honore
+bade Joseph good-night, a man was stooping down and covering something
+with the broad, fallen leaves.
+
+"The moon will rise about three o'clock," thought he. "That, the hour of
+universal slumber, will be, by all odds, the time most likely to bring
+developments."
+
+He was the same person who had spent the most of the day in a
+blacksmith's shop in St. Louis street, superintending a piece of
+smithing. Now that he seemed to have got the thing well hid, he turned
+to the base of the tree and tried the security of some attachment. Yes,
+it was firmly chained. He was not a robber; he was not an assassin; he
+was not an officer of police; and what is more notable, seeing he was a
+Louisianian, he was not a soldier nor even an ex-soldier; and this
+although, under his clothing, he was encased from head to foot in a
+complete suit of mail. Of steel? No. Of brass? No. It was all one
+piece--_a white skin_; and on his head he wore an invisible helmet--the
+name of Grandissime. As he straightened up and withdrew into the grove,
+you would have recognized at once--by his thick-set, powerful frame,
+clothed seemingly in black, but really, as you might guess, in blue
+cottonade, by his black beard and the general look of a seafarer--a
+frequent visitor at the Grandissime mansion, a country member of that
+great family, one whom we saw at the _fete de grandpere_.
+
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime was a man of few words, no
+sentiments, short methods; materialistic, we might say; quietly
+ferocious; indifferent as to means, positive as to ends, quick of
+perception, sure in matters of saltpetre, a stranger at the
+custom-house, and altogether--_take him right_--very much of a
+gentleman. He had been, for a whole day, beset with the idea that the
+way to catch a voudou was--to catch him; and as he had caught numbers of
+them on both sides of the tropical and semi-tropical Atlantic, he
+decided to try his skill privately on the one who--his experience told
+him--was likely to visit Agricola's doorstep to-night. All things being
+now prepared, he sat down at the root of a tree in the grove, where the
+shadow was very dark, and seemed quite comfortable. He did not strike at
+the mosquitoes; they appeared to understand that he did not wish to
+trifle. Neither did his thoughts or feelings trouble him; he sat and
+sharpened a small penknife on his boot.
+
+His mind--his occasional transient meditation--was the more comfortable
+because he was one of those few who had coolly and unsentimentally
+allowed Honore Grandissime to sell their lands. It continued to grow
+plainer every day that the grants with which theirs were classed--grants
+of old French or Spanish under-officials--were bad. Their sagacious
+cousin seemed to have struck the right standard, and while those titles
+which he still held on to remained unimpeached, those that he had
+parted with to purchasers--as, for instance, the grant held by this
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime--could be bought back now for half
+what he had got for it. Certainly, as to that, the Capitain might well
+have that quietude of mind which enabled him to find occupation in
+perfecting the edge of his penknife and trimming his nails in the dark.
+
+By and by he put up the little tool and sat looking out upon the
+prospect. The time of greatest probability had not come, but the voudou
+might choose not to wait for that; and so he kept watch. There was a
+great stillness. The cocks had finished a round and were silent. No dog
+barked. A few tiny crickets made the quiet land seem the more deserted.
+Its beauties were not entirely overlooked--the innumerable host of stars
+above, the twinkle of myriad fireflies on the dark earth below. Between
+a quarter and a half-mile away, almost in a line with the Cherokee
+hedge, was a faint rise of ground, and on it a wide-spreading live-oak.
+There the keen, seaman's eye of the Capitain came to a stop, fixed upon
+a spot which he had not noticed before. He kept his eye on it, and
+waited for the stronger light of the moon.
+
+Presently behind the grove at his back she rose; and almost the first
+beam that passed over the tops of the trees, and stretched across the
+plain, struck the object of his scrutiny. What was it? The ground, he
+knew; the tree, he knew; he knew there ought to be a white paling
+enclosure about the trunk of the tree: for there were buried--ah!--he
+came as near laughing at himself as ever he did in his life; the
+apothecary of the rue Royale had lately erected some marble headstones
+there, and--
+
+"Oh! my God!"
+
+While Capitain Jean-Baptiste had been trying to guess what the
+tombstones were, a woman had been coming toward him in the shadow of the
+hedge. She was not expecting to meet him; she did not know that he was
+there; she knew she had risks to run, but was ignorant of what they
+were; she did not know there was anything under the fig-tree which she
+so nearly and noiselessly approached. One moment her foot was lifted
+above the spot where the unknown object lay with wide-stretched jaws
+under the leaves, and the next, she uttered that cry of agony and
+consternation which interrupted the watcher's meditation. She was caught
+in a huge steel-trap.
+
+Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime remained perfectly still. She fell, a
+snarling, struggling, groaning heap, to the ground, wild with pain and
+fright, and began the hopeless effort to draw the jaws of the trap apart
+with her fingers.
+
+"_Ah! bon Dieu, bon Dieu!_ Quit a-_bi-i-i-i-tin' me_! Oh! Lawd 'a'
+mussy! Ow-ow-ow! lemme go! Dey go'n' to kyetch an' hang me! Oh! an' I
+hain' done nutt'n' 'gainst _no_body! Ah! _bon Dieu! ein pov' vie
+negresse_! Oh! Jemimy! I cyan' gid dis yeh t'ing loose--oh! m-m-m-m! An'
+dey'll tra to mek out't I voudou' Mich-Agricole! An' I did n' had
+nutt'n' do wid it! Oh Lawd, oh _Lawd_, you'll be mighty good ef you
+lemme loose! I'm a po' nigga! Oh! dey had n' ought to mek it so
+_pow_'ful!"
+
+Hands, teeth, the free foot, the writhing body, every combination of
+available forces failed to spread the savage jaws, though she strove
+until hands and mouth were bleeding.
+
+Suddenly she became silent; a thought of precaution came to her; she
+lifted from the earth a burden she had dropped there, struggled to a
+half-standing posture, and, with her foot still in the trap, was
+endeavoring to approach the end of the hedge near by, to thrust this
+burden under it, when she opened her throat in a speechless ecstasy of
+fright on feeling her arm grasped by her captor.
+
+"O-o-o-h! Lawd! o-o-oh! Lawd!" she cried, in a frantic, husky whisper,
+going down upon her knees, "_Oh, Miche! pou' l'amou' du bon Dieu! Pou'
+l'amou du bon Dieu ayez pitie d'ein pov' negresse! Pov' negresse,
+Miche_, w'at nevva done nutt'n' to nobody on'y jis sell _calas_! I iss
+comin' 'long an' step inteh dis-yeh bah-trap by acci_dent_! Ah! _Miche,
+Miche_, ple-e-ease be good! _Ah! mon Dieu_!--an' de Lawd'll reward
+you--'deed 'E will, _Miche_!"
+
+"_Qui ci ca?_" asked the Capitain, sternly, stooping and grasping her
+burden, which she had been trying to conceal under herself.
+
+"Oh, Miche, don' trouble dat! Please jes tek dis yeh trap offen me--da's
+all! Oh, don't, mawstah, ple-e-ease don' spill all my wash'n' t'ings!
+'Tain't nutt'n' but my old dress roll' up into a ball. Oh, please--now,
+you see? nutt'n' but a po' nigga's dr--_oh! fo' de love o' God, Miche
+Jean-Baptiste, don' open dat ah box! Y'en a rien du tout la-dans, Miche
+Jean-Baptiste; du tout, du tout_! Oh, my God! _Miche_, on'y jis teck
+dis-yeh t'ing off'n my laig, ef yo' _please_, it's bit'n' me lak a
+_dawg_!--if you _please, Miche_! Oh! you git kill' if you open dat ah
+box, Mawse Jean-Baptiste! _Mo' parole d'honneur le plus sacre_--I'll
+kiss de cross! Oh, _sweet Miche Jean, laisse moi aller_! Nutt'n' but
+some dutty close _la-dans_." She repeated this again and again, even
+after Capitain Jean-Baptiste had disengaged a small black coffin from
+the old dress in which it was wrapped. "_Rien du tout, Miche_; nutt'n'
+but some wash'n' fo' one o' de boys."
+
+He removed the lid and saw within, resting on the cushioned bottom, the
+image, in myrtle-wax, moulded and painted with some rude skill, of a
+negro's bloody arm cut off near the shoulder--a _bras coupe_--with a
+dirk grasped in its hand.
+
+The old woman lifted her eyes to heaven; her teeth chattered; she gasped
+twice before she could recover utterance. "_Oh, Miche_ Jean-Baptiste, I
+di' n' mek dat ah! _Mo' te pas fe ca_! I swea' befo' God! Oh, no, no,
+no! 'Tain' nutt'n' nohow but a lill play-toy, _Miche_. Oh, sweet _Miche
+Jean_, you not gwan to kill me? I di' n' mek it! It was--ef you lemme
+go, I tell you who mek it! Sho's I live I tell you, _Miche Jean_--ef you
+lemme go! Sho's God's good to me--ef you lemme go! Oh, God A'mighty,
+_Miche Jean_, sho's God's good to me."
+
+She was becoming incoherent.
+
+Then Capitain Jean-Baptiste Grandissime for the first time spoke at
+length:
+
+"Do you see this?" he spoke the French of the Atchafalaya. He put his
+long flintlock pistol close to her face. "I shall take the trap off; you
+will walk three feet in front of me; if you make it four I blow your
+brains out; we shall go to Agricole. But right here, just now, before I
+count ten, you will tell me who sent you here; at the word ten, if I
+reach it, I pull the trigger. One--two--three--"
+
+"Oh, _Miche_, she gwan to gib me to de devil wid _houdou_ ef I tell
+you--Oh, good _Lawdy_!"
+
+But he did not pause.
+
+"Four--five--six--seven--eight--"
+
+"Palmyre!" gasped the negress, and grovelled on the ground.
+
+The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed in her
+arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the mansion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to Frowenfeld,
+rose up from where he had all this time lain, close against the hedge,
+and glided off down its black shadow to warn the philosophe.
+
+When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old
+table-knife with its end ground to a point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+BLOOD FOR A BLOW
+
+
+It seems to be one of the self-punitive characteristics of tyranny,
+whether the tyrant be a man, a community, or a caste, to have a
+pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence lay in irons,
+it is barely now, that our South is casting off a certain apprehensive
+tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest provocation active, and
+now and then violent, concerning her "blacks." This fear, like others
+similar elsewhere in the world, has always been met by the same one
+antidote--terrific cruelty to the tyrant's victim. So we shall presently
+see the Grandissime ladies, deeming themselves compassionate, urging
+their kinsmen to "give the poor wretch a sound whipping and let her go."
+Ah! what atrocities are we unconsciously perpetrating North and South
+now, in the name of mercy or defence, which the advancing light of
+progressive thought will presently show out in their enormity?
+
+Agricola slept late. He had gone to his room the evening before much
+incensed at the presumption of some younger Grandissimes who had brought
+up the subject, and spoken in defence, of their cousin Honore. He had
+retired, however, not to rest, but to construct an engine of offensive
+warfare which would revenge him a hundred-fold upon the miserable
+school of imported thought which had sent its revolting influences to
+the very Grandissime hearthstone; he wrote a "_Phillipique Generale
+contre la Conduite du Gouvernement de la Louisiane_" and a short but
+vigorous chapter in English on "The Insanity of Educating the Masses."
+This accomplished, he had gone to bed in a condition of peaceful
+elation, eager for the next day to come that he might take these mighty
+productions to Joseph Frowenfeld, and make him a present of them for
+insertion in his book of tables.
+
+Jean-Baptiste felt no need of his advice, that he should rouse him; and,
+for a long time before the old man awoke, his younger kinsmen were
+stirring about unwontedly, going and coming through the hall of the
+mansion, along its verandas and up and down its outer flight of stairs.
+Gates were opening and shutting, errands were being carried by negro
+boys on bareback horses, Charlie Mandarin of St. Bernard parish and an
+Armand Fusilier from Faubourg Ste. Marie had on some account come--as
+they told the ladies--"to take breakfast;" and the ladies, not yet
+informed, amusedly wondering at all this trampling and stage whispering,
+were up a trifle early. In those days Creole society was a ship, in
+which the fair sex were all passengers and the ruder sex the crew. The
+ladies of the Grandissime mansion this morning asked passengers'
+questions, got sailors' answers, retorted wittily and more or less
+satirically, and laughed often, feeling their constrained
+insignificance. However, in a house so full of bright-eyed children,
+with mothers and sisters of all ages as their confederates, the secret
+was soon out, and before Agricola had left his little cottage in the
+grove the topic of all tongues was the abysmal treachery and
+_ingratitude_ of negro slaves. The whole tribe of Grandissime believed,
+this morning, in the doctrine of total depravity--of the negro.
+
+And right in the face of this belief, the ladies put forth the
+generously intentioned prayer for mercy. They were answered that they
+little knew what frightful perils they were thus inviting upon
+themselves.
+
+The male Grandissimes were not surprised at this exhibition of weak
+clemency in their lovely women; they were proud of it; it showed the
+magnanimity that was natural to the universal Grandissime heart, when
+not restrained and repressed by the stern necessities of the hour. But
+Agricola disappointed them. Why should he weaken and hesitate, and
+suggest delays and middle courses, and stammer over their proposed
+measures as "extreme"? In very truth, it seemed as though that
+drivelling, woman-beaten Deutsch apotheke--ha! ha! ha!--in the rue
+Royale had bewitched Agricola as well as Honore. The fact was, Agricola
+had never got over the interview which had saved Sylvestre his life.
+
+"Here, Agricole," his kinsmen at length said, "you see you are too old
+for this sort of thing; besides, it would be bad taste for you, who
+might be presumed to harbor feelings of revenge, to have a voice in
+this council." And then they added to one another: "We will wait until
+'Polyte reports whether or not they have caught Palmyre; much will
+depend on that."
+
+Agricola, thus ruled out, did a thing he did not fully understand; he
+rolled up the "_Philippique Generale_" and "The Insanity of Educating
+the Masses," and, with these in one hand and his staff in the other, set
+out for Frowenfeld's, not merely smarting but trembling under the
+humiliation of having been sent, for the first time in his life, to the
+rear as a non-combatant.
+
+He found the apothecary among his clerks, preparing with his own hands
+the "chalybeate tonic" for which the f.m.c. was expected to call. Raoul
+Innerarity stood at his elbow, looking on with an amiable air of having
+been superseded for the moment by his master.
+
+"Ha-ah! Professor Frowenfeld!"
+
+The old man nourished his scroll.
+
+Frowenfeld said good-morning, and they shook hands across the counter;
+but the old man's grasp was so tremulous that the apothecary looked at
+him again.
+
+"Does my hand tremble, Joseph? It is not strange; I have had much to
+excite me this morning."
+
+"Wat's de mattah?" demanded Raoul, quickly.
+
+"My life--which I admit, Professor Frowenfeld, is of little value
+compared with such a one as yours--has been--if not attempted, at least
+threatened."
+
+"How?" cried Raoul.
+
+"H-really, Professor, we must agree that a trifle like that ought not to
+make old Agricola Fusilier nervous. But I find it painful, sir, very
+painful. I can lift up this right hand, Joseph, and swear I never gave a
+slave--man or woman--a blow in my life but according to my notion of
+justice. And now to find my life attempted by former slaves of my own
+household, and taunted with the righteous hamstringing of a dangerous
+runaway! But they have apprehended the miscreants; one is actually in
+hand, and justice will take its course; trust the Grandissimes for
+that--though, really, Joseph, I assure you, I counselled leniency."
+
+"Do you say they have caught her?" Frowenfeld's question was sudden and
+excited; but the next moment he had controlled himself.
+
+"H-h-my son, I did not say it was a 'her'!"
+
+"Was it not Clemence? Have they caught her?"
+
+"H-yes--"
+
+The apothecary turned to Raoul.
+
+"Go tell Honore Grandissime."
+
+"But, Professor Frowenfeld--" began Agricola.
+
+Frowenfeld turned to repeat his instruction, but Raoul was already
+leaving the store.
+
+Agricola straightened up angrily.
+
+"Pro-hofessor Frowenfeld, by what right do you interfere?"
+
+"No matter," said the apothecary, turning half-way and pouring the
+tonic into a vial.
+
+"Sir," thundered the old lion, "h-I demand of you to answer! How dare
+you insinuate that my kinsmen may deal otherwise than justly?"
+
+"Will they treat her exactly as if she were white, and had threatened
+the life of a slave?" asked Frowenfeld from behind the desk at the end
+of the counter.
+
+The old man concentrated all the indignation of his nature in the reply.
+
+"No-ho, sir!"
+
+As he spoke, a shadow approaching from the door caused him to turn. The
+tall, dark, finely clad form of the f.m.c, in its old soft-stepping
+dignity and its sad emaciation, came silently toward the spot where
+he stood.
+
+Frowenfeld saw this, and hurried forward inside the counter with the
+preparation in his hand.
+
+"Professor Frowenfeld," said Agricola, pointing with his ugly staff, "I
+demand of you, as a keeper of a white man's pharmacy, to turn that
+negro out."
+
+"Citizen Fusilier!" exclaimed the apothecary; "Mister Grandis--"
+
+He felt as though no price would be too dear at that moment to pay for
+the presence of the other Honore. He had to go clear to the end of the
+counter and come down the outside again to reach the two men. They did
+not wait for him. Agricola turned upon the f.m.c.
+
+"Take off your hat!"
+
+A sudden activity seized every one connected with the establishment as
+the quadroon let his thin right hand slowly into his bosom, and answered
+in French, in his soft, low voice:
+
+"I wear my hat on my head."
+
+Frowenfeld was hurrying toward them; others stepped forward, and from
+two or three there came half-uttered exclamations of protest; but
+unfortunately nothing had been done or said to provoke any one to rush
+upon them, when Agricola suddenly advanced a step and struck the f.m.c.
+on the head with his staff. Then the general outcry and forward rush
+came too late; the two crashed together and fell, Agricola above, the
+f.m.c. below, and a long knife lifted up from underneath sank to its
+hilt, once--twice--thrice,--in the old man's back.
+
+The two men rose, one in the arms of his friends, the other upon his own
+feet. While every one's attention was directed toward the wounded man,
+his antagonist restored his dagger to its sheath, took up his hat and
+walked away unmolested. When Frowenfeld, with Agricola still in his
+arms, looked around for the quadroon, he was gone.
+
+Doctor Keene, sent for instantly, was soon at Agricola's side.
+
+"Take him upstairs; he can't be moved any further."
+
+Frowenfeld turned and began to instruct some one to run upstairs and
+ask permission, but the little doctor stopped him.
+
+"Joe, for shame! you don't know those women better than that? Take the
+old man right up!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+VOUDOU CURED
+
+
+"Honore," said Agricola, faintly, "where is Honore!"
+
+"He has been sent for," said Doctor Keene and the two ladies in a
+breath.
+
+Raoul, bearing the word concerning Clemence, and the later messenger
+summoning him to Agricola's bedside, reached Honore within a minute of
+each other. His instructions were quickly given, for Raoul to take his
+horse and ride down to the family mansion, to break gently to his mother
+the news of Agricola's disaster, and to say to his kinsmen with
+imperative emphasis, not to touch the _marchande des calas_ till he
+should come. Then he hurried to the rue Royale.
+
+But when Raoul arrived at the mansion he saw at a glance that the news
+had outrun him. The family carriage was already coming round the bottom
+of the front stairs for three Mesdames Grandissime and Madame Martinez.
+The children on all sides had dropped their play, and stood about,
+hushed and staring. The servants moved with quiet rapidity. In the hall
+he was stopped by two beautiful girls.
+
+"Raoul! Oh, Raoul, how is he now? Oh! Raoul, if you could only stop
+them! They have taken old Clemence down into the swamp--as soon as they
+heard about Agricole--Oh, Raoul, surely that would be cruel! She nursed
+me--and me--when we were babies!"
+
+"Where is Agamemnon?"
+
+"Gone to the city."
+
+"What did he say about it?"
+
+"He said they were doing wrong, that he did not approve their action,
+and that they would get themselves into trouble: that he washed his
+hands of it."
+
+"Ah-h-h!" exclaimed Raoul, "wash his hands! Oh, yes, wash his hands?
+Suppose we all wash our hands? But where is Valentine? Where is Charlie
+Mandarin?"
+
+"Ah! Valentine is gone with Agamemnon, saying the same thing, and
+Charlie Mandarin is down in the swamp, the worst of all of them!"
+
+"But why did you let Agamemnon and Valentine go off that way, you?"
+
+"Ah! listen to Raoul! What can a woman do?"
+
+"What can a woman--Well, even if I was a woman, I would do something!"
+
+He hurried from the house, leaped into the saddle and galloped across
+the fields toward the forest.
+
+Some rods within the edge of the swamp, which, at this season, was
+quite dry in many places, on a spot where the fallen dead bodies of
+trees overlay one another and a dense growth of willows and vines and
+dwarf palmetto shut out the light of the open fields, the younger and
+some of the harsher senior members of the Grandissime family were
+sitting or standing about, in an irregular circle whose centre was a big
+and singularly misshapen water-willow. At the base of this tree sat
+Clemence, motionless and silent, a wan, sickly color in her face, and
+that vacant look in her large, white-balled, brown-veined eyes, with
+which hope-forsaken cowardice waits for death. Somewhat apart from the
+rest, on an old cypress stump, half-stood, half-sat, in whispered
+consultation, Jean-Baptiste Grandissime and Charlie Mandarin.
+
+"_Eh bien_, old woman," said Mandarin, turning, without rising, and
+speaking sharply in the negro French, "have you any reason to give why
+you should not be hung to that limb over your head?"
+
+She lifted her eyes slowly to his, and made a feeble gesture of
+deprecation.
+
+"_Mo te pas fe cette bras_, Mawse Challie--I di'n't mek dat ahm; no
+'ndeed I di'n', Mawse Challie. I ain' wuth hangin', gen'lemen; you'd
+oughteh jis gimme fawty an' lemme go. I--I--I--I di'n' 'ten' no hawm to
+Mawse-Agricole; I wa'n't gwan to hu't nobody in God's worl'; 'ndeed I
+wasn'. I done tote dat old case-knife fo' twenty year'--_mo po'te ca
+dipi vingt ans_. I'm a po' ole _marchande des calas; mo courri_ 'mongs'
+de sojer boys to sell my cakes, you know, and da's de onyest reason why
+I cyah dat ah ole fool knife." She seemed to take some hope from the
+silence with which they heard her. Her eye brightened and her voice took
+a tone of excitement. "You'd oughteh tek me and put me in calaboose, an'
+let de law tek 'is co'se. You's all nice gen'lemen--werry nice
+gen'lemen, an' you sorter owes it to yo'sev's fo' to not do no sich
+nasty wuck as hangin' a po' ole nigga wench; 'deed you does. 'Tain' no
+use to hang me; you gwan to kyetch Palmyre yit; _li courri dans marais;_
+she is in de swamp yeh, sum'ers; but as concernin' me, you'd oughteh jis
+gimme fawty an lemme go. You mus'n't b'lieve all dis-yeh nonsense 'bout
+insurrectionin'; all fool-nigga talk. W'at we want to be insurrectionin'
+faw? We de happies' people in de God's worl'!" She gave a start, and
+cast a furtive glance of alarm behind her. "Yes, we is; you jis' oughteh
+gimme fawty an' lemme go! Please, gen'lemen! God'll be good to you, you
+nice, sweet gen'lemen!"
+
+Charlie Mandarin made a sign to one who stood at her back, who responded
+by dropping a rawhide noose over her head. She bounded up with a cry of
+terror; it may be that she had all along hoped that all was
+make-believe. She caught the noose wildly with both hands and tried to
+lift it over her head.
+
+"Ah! no, mawsteh, you cyan' do dat! It's ag'in' de law! I's 'bleeged to
+have my trial, yit. Oh, no, no! Oh, good God, no! Even if I is a nigga!
+You cyan' jis' murdeh me hyeh in de woods! _Mo dis la zize_! I tell de
+judge on you! You ain' got no mo' biznis to do me so 'an if I was a
+white 'oman! You dassent tek a white 'oman out'n de Pa'sh Pris'n an' do
+'er so! Oh, sweet mawsteh, fo' de love o' God! Oh, Mawse Challie, _pou'
+l'amou' du bon Dieu n'fe pas ca_! Oh, Mawse 'Polyte, is you gwan to let
+'em kill ole Clemence? Oh, fo' de mussy o' Jesus Christ, Mawse 'Polyte,
+leas' of all, _you_! You dassent help to kill me, Mawse 'Polyte! You
+knows why! Oh God, Mawse 'Polyte, you knows why! Leas' of all you, Mawse
+'Polyte! Oh, God 'a' mussy on my wicked ole soul! I aint fitt'n to die!
+Oh, gen'lemen, I kyan' look God in de face! _Oh, Miches, ayez pitie de
+moin! Oh, God A'mighty ha' mussy on my soul_! Oh, gen'lemen, dough yo'
+kinfolks kyvvah up yo' tricks now, dey'll dwap f'um undeh you some day!
+_Sole leve la, li couche la_! Yo' tu'n will come! Oh, God A'mighty! de
+God o' de po' nigga wench! Look down, oh God, look down an' stop dis yeh
+foolishness! Oh, God, fo' de love o' Jesus! _Oh, Miches, y'en a ein
+zizement_! Oh, yes, deh's a judgmen' day! Den it wont be a bit o' use to
+you to be white! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, fo', fo', fo', de, de, _love 0'
+God! Oh_!"
+
+They drew her up.
+
+Raoul was not far off. He heard the woman's last cry, and came threshing
+through the bushes on foot. He saw Sylvestre, unconscious of any
+approach, spring forward, jerk away the hands that had drawn the thong
+over the branch, let the strangling woman down and loosen the noose. Her
+eyes, starting out with horror, turned to him; she fell on her knees and
+clasped her hands. The tears were rolling down Sylvestre's face.
+
+"My friends, we must not do this! You _shall_ not do it!"
+
+He hurled away, with twice his natural strength, one who put out a hand.
+
+"No, sirs!" cried Raoul, "you shall not do it! I come from Honore! Touch
+her who dares!"
+
+He drew a weapon.
+
+"Monsieur Innerarity," said 'Polyte, "_who is_ Monsieur Honore
+Grandissime? There are two of the name, you know,--partners--brothers.
+Which of--but it makes no difference; before either of them sees this
+assassin she is going to be a lump of nothing!"
+
+The next word astonished every one. It was Charlie Mandarin who spoke.
+
+"Let her go!"
+
+"Let her go!" said Jean-Baptiste Grandissime; "give her a run for life.
+Old woman, rise up. We propose to let you go. Can you run? Never mind,
+we shall see. Achille, put her upon her feet. Now, old woman, run!"
+
+She walked rapidly, but with unsteady feet, toward the fields.
+
+"Run! If you don't run I will shoot you this minute!"
+
+She ran.
+
+"Faster!"
+
+She ran faster.
+
+"Run!"
+
+"Run!"
+
+"Run, Clemence! Ha, ha, ha!" It was so funny to see her scuttling and
+tripping and stumbling. "_Courri! courri, Clemence! c'est pou to' vie!_
+ha, ha, ha--"
+
+A pistol-shot rang out close behind Raoul's ear; it was never told who
+fired it. The negress leaped into the air and fell at full length to the
+ground, stone dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+DYING WORDS
+
+
+Drivers of vehicles in the rue Royale turned aside before two slight
+barriers spanning the way, one at the corner below, the other at that
+above, the house where the aged high-priest of a doomed civilization lay
+bleeding to death. The floor of the store below, the pavement of the
+corridor where stood the idle volante, were covered with straw, and
+servants came and went by the beckoning of the hand.
+
+"This way," whispered a guide of the four ladies from the Grandissime
+mansion. As Honore's mother turned the angle half-way up the muffled
+stair, she saw at the landing above, standing as if about to part, yet
+in grave council, a man and a woman, the fairest--she noted it even in
+this moment of extreme distress--she had ever looked upon. He had
+already set one foot down upon the stair, but at sight of the ascending
+group drew back and said:
+
+"It is my mother;" then turned to his mother and took her hand; they had
+been for months estranged, but now they silently kissed.
+
+"He is sleeping," said Honore. "Maman, Madame Nancanou."
+
+The ladies bowed--the one looking very large and splendid, the other
+very sweet and small. There was a single instant of silence, and Aurora
+burst into tears.
+
+For a moment Madame Grandissime assumed a frown that was almost a
+reminder of her brother's, and then the very pride of the Fusiliers
+broke down. She uttered an inaudible exclamation, drew the weeper firmly
+into her bosom, and with streaming eyes and choking voice, but yet with
+majesty, whispered, laying her hand on Aurora's head:
+
+"Never mind, my child; never mind; never mind."
+
+And Honore's sister, when she was presently introduced, kissed Aurora
+and murmured:
+
+"The good God bless thee! It is He who has brought us together."
+
+"Who is with him just now?" whispered the two other ladies, while Honore
+and his mother stood a moment aside in hurried consultation.
+
+"My daughter," said Aurora, "and--"
+
+"Agamemnon," suggested Madame Martinez.
+
+"I believe so," said Aurora.
+
+Valentine appeared from the direction of the sick-room and beckoned to
+Honore. Doctor Keene did the same and continued to advance.
+
+"Awake?" asked Honore.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Alas! my brother!" said Madame Grandissime, and started forward,
+followed by the other women.
+
+"Wait," said Honore, and they paused. "Charlie," he said, as the little
+doctor persistently pushed by him at the head of the stair.
+
+"Oh, there's no chance, Honore, you'd as well all go in there."
+
+They gathered into the room and about the bed. Madame Grandissime bent
+over it.
+
+"Ah! sister," said the dying man, "is that you? I had the sweetest dream
+just now--just for a minute." He sighed. "I feel very weak. Where is
+Charlie Keene?"
+
+He had spoken in French; he repeated his question in English. He thought
+he saw the doctor.
+
+"Charlie, if I must meet the worst I hope you will tell me so; I am
+fully prepared. Ah! excuse--I thought it was--
+
+"My eyes seem dim this evening. _Est-ce-vous_, Honore? Ah, Honore, you
+went over to the enemy, did you?--Well,--the Fusilier blood would
+al--ways--do as it pleased. Here's your old uncle's hand, Honore. I
+forgive you, Honore--my noble-hearted, foolish--boy." He spoke feebly,
+and with great nervousness.
+
+"Water."
+
+It was given him by Aurora. He looked in her face; they could not be
+sure whether he recognized her or not. He sank back, closed his eyes,
+and said, more softly and dreamily, as if to himself, "I forgive
+everybody. A man must die--I forgive--even the enemies--of Louisiana."
+
+He lay still a few moments, and then revived excitedly. "Honore! tell
+Professor Frowenfeld to take care of that _Philippique Generale_. 'Tis a
+grand thing, Honore, on a grand theme! I wrote it myself in one evening.
+Your Yankee Government is a failure, Honore, a drivelling failure. It
+may live a year or two, not longer. Truth will triumph. The old
+Louisiana will rise again. She will get back her trampled rights. When
+she does, remem'--" His voice failed, but he held up one finger firmly
+by way of accentuation.
+
+There was a stir among the kindred. Surely this was a turn for the
+better. The doctor ought to be brought back. A little while ago he was
+not nearly so strong. "Ask Honore if the doctor should not come." But
+Honore shook his head. The old man began again.
+
+"Honore! Where is Honore? Stand by me, here, Honore; and sister?--on
+this other side. My eyes are very poor to-day. Why do I perspire so?
+Give me a drink. You see--I am better now; I have ceased--to throw up
+blood. Nay, let me talk." He sighed, closed his eyes, and opened them
+again suddenly. "Oh, Honore, you and the Yankees--you and--all--going
+wrong--education--masses--weaken--caste--indiscr'--quarrels settl'--by
+affidav'--Oh! Honore."
+
+"If he would only forget," said one, in an agonized whisper, "that
+_philippique generale_!"
+
+Aurora whispered earnestly and tearfully to Madame Grandissime. Surely
+they were not going to let him go thus! A priest could at least do no
+harm. But when the proposition was made to him by his sister, he said:
+
+"No;--no priest. You have my will, Honore,--in your iron box. Professor
+Frowenfeld,"--he changed his speech to English,--"I have written you an
+article on--" his words died on his lips.
+
+"Joseph, son, I do not see you. Beware, my son, of the doctrine of equal
+rights--a bottomless iniquity. Master and man--arch and pier--arch
+above--pier below." He tried to suit the gesture to the words, but both
+hands and feet were growing uncontrollably restless.
+
+"Society, Professor,"--he addressed himself to a weeping girl,--"society
+has pyramids to build which make menials a necessity, and Nature
+furnishes the menials all in dark uniform. She--I cannot tell you--you
+will find--all in the _Philippique Generale_. Ah! Honore, is it--"
+
+He suddenly ceased.
+
+"I have lost my glasses."
+
+Beads of sweat stood out upon his face. He grew frightfully pale. There
+was a general dismayed haste, and they gave him a stimulant.
+
+"Brother," said the sister, tenderly.
+
+He did not notice her.
+
+"Agamemnon! Go and tell Jean-Baptiste--" his eyes drooped and flashed
+again wildly.
+
+"I am here, Agricole," said the voice of Jean-Baptiste, close beside the
+bed.
+
+"I told you to let--that negress--"
+
+"Yes, we have let her go. We have let all of them go."
+
+"All of them," echoed the dying man, feebly, with wandering eyes.
+Suddenly he brightened again and tossed his arms. "Why, there you were
+wrong, Jean-Baptiste; the community must be protected." His voice sank
+to a murmur. "He would not take off--'you must remem'--" He was silent.
+"You must remem'--those people are--are not--white people." He ceased a
+moment. "Where am I going?" He began evidently to look, or try to look,
+for some person; but they could not divine his wish until, with piteous
+feebleness, he called:
+
+"Aurore De Grapion!"
+
+So he had known her all the time.
+
+Honore's mother had dropped on her knees beside the bed, dragging Aurora
+down with her.
+
+They rose together.
+
+The old man groped distressfully with one hand. She laid her own in it.
+
+"Honore!
+
+"What could he want?" wondered the tearful family. He was feeling about
+with the other hand.
+
+"Hon'--Honore"--his weak clutch could scarcely close upon his nephew's
+hand.
+
+"Put them--put--put them--"
+
+What could it mean? The four hands clasped.
+
+"Ah!" said one, with fresh tears, "he is trying to speak and cannot."
+
+But he did.
+
+"Aurora De Gra--I pledge'--pledge'--pledged--this union--to your
+fa'--father--twenty--years--ago."
+
+The family looked at each other in dejected amazement. They had never
+known it.
+
+"He is going," said Agamemnon; and indeed it seemed as though he was
+gone; but he rallied.
+
+"Agamemnon! Valentine! Honore! patriots! protect the race! Beware of
+the"--that sentence escaped him. He seemed to fancy himself haranguing a
+crowd; made another struggle for intelligence, tried once, twice, to
+speak, and the third time succeeded:
+
+"Louis'--Louisian'--a--for--ever!" and lay still.
+
+They put those two words on his tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES
+
+
+And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the mason who
+cut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,
+half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints came,
+attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon the old man's
+tomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more distinctly as years went
+by, that Forever was a trifle long for one to confine one's patriotic
+affection to a small fraction of a great country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the police
+in their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to justice?" asked
+some _Americain_ or other of 'Polyte Grandissime.
+
+"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neither
+Palmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when we
+cannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no police!"
+
+So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the other two
+were never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the Grandissimes to
+know that in later times, under the gentler influences of a higher
+civilization, their old Spanish-colonial ferocity was gradually absorbed
+by the growth of better traits. To-day almost all the savagery that can
+justly be charged against Louisiana must--strange to say--be laid at
+the door of the _Americain_. The Creole character has been diluted and
+sweetened.
+
+One morning early in September, some two weeks after the death of
+Agricola, the same brig which something less than a year before had
+brought the Frowenfelds to New Orleans crossed, outward bound, the sharp
+line dividing the sometimes tawny waters of Mobile Bay from the deep
+blue Gulf, and bent her way toward Europe.
+
+She had two passengers; a tall, dark, wasted yet handsome man of
+thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, and a woman seemingly some
+three years younger, of beautiful though severe countenance; "very
+elegant-looking people and evidently rich," so the brig-master described
+them,--"had much the look of some of the Mississippi River 'Lower Coast'
+aristocracy." Their appearance was the more interesting for a look of
+mental distress evident on the face of each. Brother and sister they
+called themselves; but, if so, she was the most severely reserved and
+distant sister the master of the vessel had ever seen.
+
+They landed, if the account comes down to us right, at Bordeaux. The
+captain, a fellow of the peeping sort, found pastime in keeping them in
+sight after they had passed out of his care ashore. They went to
+different hotels!
+
+The vessel was detained some weeks in this harbor, and her master
+continued to enjoy himself in the way in which he had begun. He saw his
+late passengers meet often, in a certain quiet path under the trees of
+the Quinconce. Their conversations were low; in the patois they used
+they could have afforded to speak louder; their faces were always grave
+and almost always troubled. The interviews seemed to give neither of
+them any pleasure. The monsieur grew thinner than ever, and
+sadly feeble.
+
+"He wants to charter her," the seaman concluded, "but she doesn't like
+his rates."
+
+One day, the last that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each in
+a way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard,
+woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,--with "eyes that shone
+like lamps," as said the observer.
+
+"She's a-sendin' him 'way to lew-ard," thought he. Finally the Monsieur
+handed her--or rather placed upon the seat near which she stood, what
+she would not receive--a folded and sealed document, seized her hand,
+kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the seat, weak and pale,
+and rose to go, leaving the document behind. The mariner picked it up;
+it was directed to _M. Honore Grandissime, Nouvelle Orleans, Etats Unis,
+Amerique_. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or possibly
+reconsidering, and received it from him.
+
+"It looked like a last will and testament," the seaman used to say, in
+telling the story.
+
+The next morning, being at the water's edge and seeing a number of
+persons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered down toward
+it to see how small a thing was required to draw a crowd of these
+Frenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.
+
+Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited for this
+question to be asked him, in order to state the more impressively that
+he did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux packet, and he saw the Madame
+twice or thrice, apparently living at great ease, but solitary, in the
+rue--. He was free to relate that he tried to scrape acquaintance with
+her, but failed ignominiously.
+
+The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other places,
+including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were collected regularly
+by H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime Freres. Rumor said, and
+tradition repeats, that neither for the advancement of a friendless
+people, nor even for the repair of the properties' wear and tear, did
+one dollar of it ever remain in New Orleans; but that once a year
+Honore, "as instructed," remitted to Madame--say Madame Inconnue--of
+Bordeaux, the equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It is
+averred he did this without interruption for twenty years. "Let us see:
+fifty times twenty--one million dollars. That is only a _part_ of the
+_pecuniary_ loss which this sort of thing costs Louisiana."
+
+But we have wandered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+"ALL RIGHT"
+
+
+The sun is once more setting upon the Place d'Armes. Once more the
+shadows of cathedral and town-hall lie athwart the pleasant grounds
+where again the city's fashion and beauty sit about in the sedate
+Spanish way, or stand or slowly move in and out among the old willows
+and along the white walks. Children are again playing on the sward;
+some, you may observe, are in black, for Agricola. You see, too, a more
+peaceful river, a nearer-seeming and greener opposite shore, and many
+other evidences of the drowsy summer's unwillingness to leave the
+embrace of this seductive land; the dreamy quietude of birds; the
+spreading, folding, re-expanding and slow pulsating of the
+all-prevailing fan (how like the unfolding of an angel's wing is
+ofttimes the broadening of that little instrument!); the oft-drawn
+handkerchief; the pale, cool colors of summer costume; the swallow,
+circling and twittering overhead or darting across the sight; the
+languid movement of foot and hand; the reeking flanks and foaming bits
+of horses; the ear-piercing note of the cicada; the dancing butterfly;
+the dog, dropping upon the grass and looking up to his master with
+roping jaw and lolling tongue; the air sweetened with the merchandise of
+the flower _marchandes_.
+
+On the levee road, bridles and saddles, whips, gigs, and
+carriages,--what a merry coming and going! We look, perforce, toward the
+old bench where, six months ago, sat Joseph Frowenfeld. There is
+somebody there--a small, thin, weary-looking man, who leans his bared
+head slightly back against the tree, his thin fingers knit together in
+his lap, and his chapeau-bras pressed under his arm. You note his
+extreme neatness of dress, the bright, unhealthy restlessness of his
+eye, and--as a beam from the sun strikes them--the fineness of his short
+red curls. It is Doctor Keene.
+
+He lifts his head and looks forward. Honore and Frowenfeld are walking
+arm-in-arm under the furthermost row of willows. Honore is speaking. How
+gracefully, in correspondence with his words, his free arm or
+hand--sometimes his head or even his lithe form--moves in quiet gesture,
+while the grave, receptive apothecary takes into his meditative mind, as
+into a large, cool cistern, the valued rain-fall of his friend's
+communications. They are near enough for the little doctor easily to
+call them; but he is silent. The unhappy feel so far away from the
+happy. Yet--"Take care!" comes suddenly to his lips, and is almost
+spoken; for the two, about to cross toward the Place d'Armes at the very
+spot where Aurora had once made her narrow escape, draw suddenly back,
+while the black driver of a volante reins up the horse he bestrides, and
+the animal himself swerves and stops.
+
+The two friends, though startled apart, hasten with lifted hats to the
+side of the volante, profoundly convinced that one, at least, of its two
+occupants is heartily sorry that they were not rolled in the dust. Ah,
+ah! with what a wicked, ill-stifled merriment those two ethereal women
+bend forward in the faintly perfumed clouds of their ravishing
+summer-evening garb, to express their equivocal mortification
+and regret.
+
+"Oh! I'm so sawry, oh! Almoze runned o'--ah, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Aurora could keep the laugh back no longer.
+
+"An' righd yeh befo' haivry _boddie_! Ah, ha, ha! 'Sieur Grandissime,
+'tis _me-e-e_ w'ad know 'ow dad is bad, ha, ha, ha! Oh! I assu' you,
+gen'lemen, id is hawful!"
+
+And so on.
+
+By and by Honore seemed urging them to do something, the thought of
+which made them laugh, yet was entertained as not entirely absurd. It
+may have been that to which they presently seemed to consent; they
+alighted from the volante, dismissed it, and walked each at a partner's
+side down the grassy avenue of the levee. It was as Clotilde with one
+hand swept her light robes into perfect adjustment for the walk, and
+turned to take the first step with Frowenfeld, that she raised her eyes
+for the merest instant to his, and there passed between them an exchange
+of glance which made the heart of the little doctor suddenly burn like a
+ball of fire.
+
+"Now we're all right," he murmured bitterly to himself, as, without
+having seen him, she took the arm of the apothecary, and they
+moved away.
+
+Yes, if his irony was meant for this pair, he divined correctly. Their
+hearts had found utterance across the lips, and the future stood waiting
+for them on the threshold of a new existence, to usher them into a
+perpetual copartnership in all its joys and sorrows, its
+disappointments, its imperishable hopes, its aims, its conflicts, its
+rewards; and the true--the great--the everlasting God of love was with
+them. Yes, it had been "all right," now, for nearly twenty-four
+hours--an age of bliss. And now, as they walked beneath the willows
+where so many lovers had walked before them, they had whole histories to
+tell of the tremors, the dismays, the misconstructions and longings
+through which their hearts had come to this bliss; how at such a time,
+thus and so; and after such and such a meeting, so and so; no part of
+which was heard by alien ears, except a fragment of Clotilde's speech
+caught by a small boy in unintentioned ambush.
+
+"--Evva sinze de firze nighd w'en I big-in to nurze you wid de fivver."
+
+She was telling him, with that new, sweet boldness so wonderful to a
+lately accepted lover, how long she had loved him.
+
+Later on they parted at the _porte-cochere_. Honore and Aurora had got
+there before them, and were passing on up the stairs. Clotilde,
+catching, a moment before, a glimpse of her face, had seen that there
+was something wrong; weather-wise as to its indications she perceived an
+impending shower of tears. A faint shade of anxiety rested an instant on
+her own face. Frowenfeld could not go in. They paused a little within
+the obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that
+everything _was_ "all right," they--
+
+God be praised for love's young dream!
+
+The slippered feet of the happy girl, as she slowly mounted the stair
+alone, overburdened with the weight of her blissful reverie, made no
+sound. As she turned its mid-angle she remembered Aurora. She could
+guess pretty well the source of her trouble; Honore was trying to treat
+that hand-clasping at the bedside of Agricola as a binding compact;
+"which, of course, was not fair." She supposed they would have gone into
+the front drawing-room; she would go into the back. But she
+miscalculated; as she silently entered the door she saw Aurora standing
+a little way beyond her, close before Honore, her eyes cast down, and
+the trembling fan hanging from her two hands like a broken pinion. He
+seemed to be reiterating, in a tender undertone, some question intended
+to bring her to a decision. She lifted up her eyes toward his with a
+mute, frightened glance.
+
+The intruder, with an involuntary murmur of apology, drew back; but, as
+she turned, she was suddenly and unspeakably saddened to see Aurora drop
+her glance, and, with a solemn slowness whose momentous significance
+was not to be mistaken, silently shake her head.
+
+"Alas!" cried the tender heart of Clotilde. "Alas! M. Grandissime!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+"NO!"
+
+
+If M. Grandissime had believed that he was prepared for the supreme
+bitterness of that moment, he had sadly erred. He could not speak. He
+extended his hand in a dumb farewell, when, all unsanctioned by his
+will, the voice of despair escaped him in a low groan. At the same
+moment, a tinkling sound drew near, and the room, which had grown dark
+with the fall of night, began to brighten with the softly widening light
+of an evening lamp, as a servant approached to place it in the front
+drawing-room.
+
+Aurora gave her hand and withdrew it. In the act the two somewhat
+changed position, and the rays of the lamp, as the maid passed the door,
+falling upon Aurora's face, betrayed the again upturned eyes.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--"
+
+They fell.
+
+The lover paused.
+
+"You thing I'm crool."
+
+She was the statue of meekness.
+
+"Hope has been cruel to me," replied M. Grandissime, "not you; that I
+cannot say. Adieu."
+
+He was turning.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--"
+
+She seemed to tremble.
+
+He stood still.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime,"--her voice was very tender,--"wad you' horry?"
+
+There was a great silence.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime, you know--teg a chair."
+
+He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant repassed the
+door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in English--having
+such hazardous things to say. It would conceal possible stammerings.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime--you know dad riz'n I--"
+
+She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was still.
+
+"I have no right to ask the reason," said M. Grandissime. "It is
+yours--not mine."
+
+Her head went lower.
+
+"Well, you know,"--she drooped it meditatively to one side, with her
+eyes on the floor,--"'tis bick-ause--'tis bick-ause I thing in a few
+days I'm goin' to die."
+
+M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed.
+
+She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume, but her
+eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of half-soliloquy:
+
+"I 'ave so mudge troub' wit dad hawt."
+
+She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and sighed
+softly, with a dying languor.
+
+M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the street
+below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a gilded Mars
+was driving into battle, a soft note told the half-hour. The lady
+spoke again.
+
+"Id mague"--she sighed once more--"so strange,--sometime' I thing I'm
+git'n' crezzy."
+
+Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made remained as
+silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after another pause,
+with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the fair speaker resumed
+with more energy, as befitting the approach to an incredible climax:
+
+"Some day', 'Sieur Grandissime,--id mague me fo'gid my hage! I thing I'm
+young!"
+
+She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his own
+squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she went
+on speaking:
+
+"An' w'en someboddie git'n' ti'ed livin' wid 'imsev an' big'n' to fill
+ole, an' wan' someboddie to teg de care of 'im an' wan' me to gid
+marri'd wid 'im--I thing 'e's in love to me." Her fingers kept up a
+little shuffling with the fan. "I thing I'm crezzy. I thing I muz be
+go'n' to die torecklie." She looked up to the ceiling with large eyes,
+and then again at the fan in her lap, which continued its spreading and
+shutting. "An' daz de riz'n, 'Sieur Grandissime." She waited until it
+was certain he was about to answer, and then interrupted him nervously:
+"You know, 'Sieur Grandissime, id woon be righd! Id woon be de juztiz to
+_you!_ An' you de bez man I evva know in my life, 'Sieur Grandissime!"
+Her hands shook. "A man w'at nevva wan' to gid marri'd wid noboddie in
+'is life, and now trine to gid marri'd juz only to rip-ose de soul of
+'is oncl'--"
+
+M. Grandissime uttered an exclamation of protest, and she ceased.
+
+"I asked you," continued he, with low-toned emphasis, "for the single
+and only reason that I want you for my wife."
+
+"Yez," she quickly replied; "daz all. Daz wad I thing. An' I thing daz
+de rad weh to say, 'Sieur Grandissime. Bick-ause, you know, you an' me
+is too hole to talg aboud dad _lovin'_, you know. An' you godd dad grade
+_rizpeg_ fo' me, an' me I godd dad 'ighez rispeg fo' you; bud--" she
+clutched the fan and her face sank lower still--"bud--" she
+swallowed--shook her head--"bud--" She bit her lip; she could not go on.
+
+"Aurora," said her lover, bending forward and taking one of her hands.
+"I _do_ love you with all my soul."
+
+She made a poor attempt to withdraw her hand, abandoned the effort, and
+looked up savagely through a pair of overflowing eyes, demanding:
+
+"_Mais_, fo' w'y you di' n' wan' to sesso?"
+
+M. Grandissime smiled argumentatively.
+
+"I have said so a hundred times, in every way but in words."
+
+She lifted her head proudly, and bowed like a queen.
+
+"_Mais_, you see 'Sieur Grandissime, you bin meg one mizteg."
+
+"Bud 'tis corrected in time," exclaimed he, with suppressed but eager
+joyousness.
+
+"'Sieur Grandissime," she said, with a tremendous solemnity, "I'm verrie
+sawrie; _mais_--you spogue too lade."
+
+"No, no!" he cried, "the correction comes in time. Say that, lady; say
+that!"
+
+His ardent gaze beat hers once more down; but she shook her head. He
+ignored the motion.
+
+"And you will correct your answer; ah! say that, too!" he insisted,
+covering the captive hand with both his own, and leaning forward
+from his seat.
+
+"_Mais_, 'Sieur Grandissime, you know, dad is so verrie unegspeg'."
+
+"Oh! unexpected!"
+
+"_Mais_, I was thing all dad time id was Clotilde wad you--"
+
+She turned her face away and buried her mouth in her handkerchief.
+
+"Ah!" he cried, "mock me no more, Aurore Nancanou!"
+
+He rose erect and held the hand firmly which she strove to draw away:
+
+"Say the word, sweet lady; say the word!"
+
+She turned upon him suddenly, rose to her feet, was speechless an
+instant while her eyes flashed into his, and crying out:
+
+"No!" burst into tears, laughed through them, and let him clasp her to
+his bosom.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Grandissimes, by George Washington Cable
+
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