In 1795 New Orleans was nothing but a mere market town. The cathedral, the
convent of the Ursulines, five or six cafés, and about a hundred houses
were all of it.[6] Can you believe, there were but two dry-goods stores!
And what fabulous prices we had to pay! Pins twenty dollars a paper. Poor
people and children had to make shift with thorns of orange and
_amourette_ [honey locust?]. A needle cost fifty cents, very indifferent
stockings five dollars a pair, and other things accordingly.
On the levee was a little pothouse of the lowest sort; yet from that
unclean and smoky hole was destined to come one of the finest fortunes in
Louisiana. They called the proprietor "Père la Chaise."[7] He was a little
old marten-faced man, always busy and smiling, who every year laid aside
immense profits. Along the crazy walls extended a few rough shelves
covered with bottles and decanters. Three planks placed on boards formed
the counter, with Père la Chaise always behind it. There were two or three
small tables, as many chairs, and one big wooden bench. Here gathered the
city's working-class, and often among them one might find a goodly number
of the city's élite; for the wine and the beer of the old _cabaretier_
were famous, and one could be sure in entering there to hear all the news
told and discussed.
By day the place was quiet, but with evening it became tumultuous. Père la
Chaise, happily, did not lose his head; he found means to satisfy all, to
smooth down quarrels without calling in the police, to get rid of
drunkards, and to make delinquents pay up.
My father knew the place, and never failed to pay it a visit when he went
to New Orleans. Poor, dear father! he loved to talk as much as to travel.
Père la Chaise was acquainted with him. One evening papa entered, sat down
at one of the little tables, and bade Père la Chaise bring a bottle of his
best wine. The place was already full of people, drinking, talking, and
singing. A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven entered almost timidly
and sat down at the table where my father was--for he saw that all the
other places were occupied--and ordered a half-bottle of cider. He was a
Norman gardener. My father knew him by sight; he had met him here several
times without speaking to him. You recognized the peasant at once; and yet
his exquisite neatness, the gentleness of his face, distinguished him from
his kind. Joseph Carpentier was dressed[8] in a very ordinary gray woolen
coat; but his coarse shirt was very white, and his hair, when he took off
his broad-brimmed hat, was well combed and glossy.
As Carpentier was opening his bottle a second frequenter entered the
_cabaret_. This was a man of thirty or thirty-five, with strong features
and the frame of a Hercules. An expression of frankness and gayety
overspread his sunburnt face. Cottonade pantaloons, stuffed into a pair of
dirty boots, and a _vareuse_ of the same stuff made up his dress. His
vareuse, unbuttoned, showed his breast, brown and hairy; and a horrid cap
with long hair covered, without concealing, a mass of red locks that a
comb had never gone through. A long whip, the stock of which he held in
his hand, was coiled about his left arm. He advanced to the counter and
asked for a glass of brandy. He was a drayman named John Gordon--an
Irishman.
But, strange, John Gordon, glass in hand, did not drink; Carpentier, with
his fingers round the neck of the bottle, failed to pour his cider; and my
father himself, his eyes attracted to another part of the room, forgot his
wine. Every one was looking at an individual gesticulating and haranguing
in the middle of the place, to the great amusement of all. My father
recognized him at first sight. He was an Italian about the age of Gordon;
short, thick-set, powerful, swarthy, with the neck of a bull and hair as
black as ebony. He was telling rapidly, with strong gestures, in an almost
incomprehensible mixture of Spanish, English, French, and Italian, the
story of a hunting party that he had made up five years before. This was
Mario Carlo. A Neapolitan by birth, he had for several years worked as a
blacksmith on the plantation of one of our neighbors, M. Alphonse Perret.
Often papa had heard him tell of this hunt, for nothing could be more
amusing than to listen to Carlo. Six young men, with Carlo as sailor and
cook, had gone on a two-months' expedition into the country of the
Attakapas.
"Yes," said the Italian, in conclusion, "game never failed us; deer,
turkeys, ducks, snipe, two or three bears a week. But the sublimest thing
was the rich land. Ah! one must see it to believe it. Plains and forests
full of animals, lakes and bayous full of fish. Ah! fortune is there. For
five years I have dreamed, I have worked, with but one object in view; and
today the end is reached. I am ready to go. I want only two companions to
aid me in the long journey, and those I have come to look for here."
John Gordon stepped forward, laid a hand upon the speaker's shoulder, and
said:
"My friend, I am your man."
Mario Carlo seized the hand and shook it with all his force.
"You will not repent the step. But"--turning again to the crowd--"we want
one more."
Joseph Carpentier rose slowly and advanced to the two men. "Comrades, I
will be your companion if you will accept me."
Before separating, the three drank together and appointed to meet the next
day at the house of Gordon, the Irishman.
When my father saw Gordon and Carpentier leave the place, he placed his
hand on Mario's shoulder and said in Italian, "My boy, I want to talk with
you."
At that time, as now, parents were very scrupulous as to the society into
which they introduced their children, especially their daughters; and papa
knew of a certain circumstance in Carlo's life to which my mother might
greatly object. But he knew the man had an honest and noble heart. He
passed his arm into the Italian's and drew him to the inn where my father
was stopping, and to his room. Here he learned from Mario that he had
bought one of those great barges that bring down provisions from the West,
and which, when unloaded, the owners count themselves lucky to sell at any
reasonable price. When my father proposed to Mario to be taken as a
passenger the poor devil's joy knew no bounds; but it disappeared when
papa added that he should take his two daughters with him.
The trouble was this: Mario was taking with him in his flatboat his wife
and his four children; his wife and four children were simply--mulattoes.
However, then as now, we hardly noticed those things, and the idea never
entered our minds to inquire into the conduct of our slaves. Suzanne and I
had known Celeste, Mario's wife, very well before her husband bought her.
She had been the maid of Marianne Perret, and on great occasions Marianne
had sent her to us to dress our hair and to prepare our toilets. We were
therefore enchanted to learn that she would be with us on board the
flatboat, and that papa had engaged her services in place of the
attendants we had to leave behind.
It was agreed that for one hundred dollars Mario Carlo would receive all
three of us as passengers, that he would furnish a room simply but
comfortably, that papa would share this room with us, that Mario would
supply our table, and that his wife would serve as maid and laundress. It
remained to be seen now whether our other fellow-travelers were married,
and, if so, what sort of creatures their wives were.
[The next day the four intended travelers met at Gordon's house. Gordon
had a wife, Maggie, and a son, Patrick, aged twelve, as unlovely in
outward aspect as were his parents. Carpentier, who showed himself even
more plainly than on the previous night a man of native refinement,
confessed to a young wife without offspring. Mario told his story of love
and alliance with one as fair of face as he, and whom only cruel law
forbade him to call wife and compelled him to buy his children; and told
the story so well that at its close the father of Françoise silently
grasped the narrator's hand, and Carpentier, reaching across the table
where they sat, gave his, saying:
"You are an honest man, Monsieur Carlo."
"Will your wife think so?" asked the Italian.
"My wife comes from a country where there are no prejudices of race."
Françoise takes the pains to say of this part of the story that it was not
told her and Suzanne at this time, but years afterward, when they were
themselves wives and mothers. When, on the third day, her father saw
Carpentier's wife at the Norman peasant's lodgings, he was greatly
surprised at her appearance and manner, and so captivated by them that he
proposed that their two parties should make one at table during the
projected voyage--a proposition gratefully accepted. Then he left New
Orleans for his plantation home, intending to return immediately, leaving
his daughters in St. James to prepare for the journey and await the
arrival of the flatboat, which must pass their home on its way to the
distant wilds of Attakapas.]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] An extreme underestimate, easy for a girl to make of a scattered town
hidden among gardens and groves.--TRANSLATOR.
[7] Without doubting the existence of the _cabaret_ and the nickname, the
De la Chaise estate, I think, came from a real De la Chaise, true nephew
of Pere la Chaise, the famous confessor of Louis XIV. The nephew was
royal commissary under Bienville, and one of the worthiest fathers of the
colony of Louisiana.--TRANSLATOR.
[8] In all likelihood described here as seen by the writer herself later,
on the journey.--TRANSLATOR.