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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: 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
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GRANDISSIMES ***
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