FROWENFELD FINDS SYLVESTRE
The Veau-qui-tête restaurant occupied the whole ground floor of a small,
low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco building which still
stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter streets, in company with
the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of
the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept
kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It
was a favorite rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the
court-rooms and municipal bureaus. There you found the choicest legal
and political gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat
and drink.
Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had to move
about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not overlooking the
object of his search.
As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed
rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and
murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes
on his back.
There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever
he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he
saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state
of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him
particularly discordant.
Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in
the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant,
mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_. It was a portion of the
Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants
of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of
Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper
title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city,
Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles,
who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their
complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading
rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed
these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three
with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.
Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Américain, in
English.
"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other
governments we had any quantity!"
"Yes," said the venturesome Américain in retort, "such as it was;
_assignats, liberanzas, bons_--Claiborne will give us better money than
that when he starts his bank."
"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father.
What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he
had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered
curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.
A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been
greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without
turning his eyes.
"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to
be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty
they give us--all eat out of one trough."
"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man,
setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have, is"--he was
speaking in French, but gave the want in English--"Representesh'n wizout
Taxa--" There his eye fell upon Frowenfeld and followed him with
a scowl.
"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wass you sink of a mane
w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in ze
sem room?"
The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more general than
he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did so, to an
Américain merchant with whom he had some acquaintance.
"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see me? I
thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all, does it
sum up?"
A Creole interrupted him with an answer:
"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Pahtitsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"
The voice was like Honoré's. Frowenfeld looked; it was Agamemnon
Grandissime.
"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started up the
rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he suddenly found
himself one of a crowd standing before a newly-posted placard, and at a
glance saw it to be one of the inflammatory publications which were a
feature of the times, appearing both daily and nightly on walls
and fences.
"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it back,"
said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.
Exchange Alley was once _Passage de la Bourse_, and led down (as it now
does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to an establishment which
seems to have served for a long term of years as a sort of merchants'
and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a minimum of china and a maximum of
glass: Maspero's--certainly Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we
believe, Maspero's the day the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It
was a livelier spot than the Veau-qui-tête; it was to that what commerce
is to litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping.
Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public sentiment
in which sanctity signs politicians' memorials and chivalry breaks into
the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump of the machinery was in
Maspero's.
The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine Grandissime.
There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners in front of him;
he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in Creole French.
"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know my
rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We have"--with
a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended palm--"a right to
protect them from the attack of interlopers, even if we have to use
gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the liberties of even this army
of fortune-hunters. _Let_ them think." He half laughed. "Who cares
whether they share our opinions or not? Let them have their own. I had
rather they would. But let them hold their tongues. Let them remember
they are Yankees. Let them remember they are unbidden guests." All this
without the least warmth.
But the answer came aglow with passion, from one of the semicircle, whom
two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It also was in French,
but the apothecary was astonished to hear his own name uttered.
"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see Joseph--"has never
held his tongue. He has given us good reason half a dozen times, with
his too free speech and his high moral whine, to hang him with the
lamppost rope! And now, when we have borne and borne and borne and borne
with him, and he shows up, all at once, in all his rottenness, you say
let him alone! One would think you were defending Honoré Grandissime!"
The back of one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of
the other.
Valentine smiled.
"Honoré Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are talking about.
Not Honoré, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own avowal, is guilty of
affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we have good reason to suspect
of meditating his family's dishonor and embarrassment!" Somebody saw the
apothecary and laid a cautionary touch on Valentine's arm, but he
brushed it off. "As for Professor Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."
"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.
"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you again
what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin and held his
clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he is--he is--"
He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large, white, and
immovable, stood close before him.
"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander, edging
toward a pillar.
The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the
apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blushing mood, and was not
disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made a
sudden, angry change of attitude, and demanded:
"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee clown?
Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"
Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he said:
"Sir, I am not aware that I have ever offered you the slightest injury
or affront; if you wish to finish your conversation with this gentleman,
I will wait till you are through."
The Creole bowed, as a knight who takes up the gage. He turned to
Valentine.
"Valentine, I was sayin' to you dad diz pusson is a cowa'd and a sneak;
I repead thad! I repead id! I spurn you! Go f'om yeh!"
The apothecary stood like a cliff.
It was too much for Creole forbearance. His adversary, with a long snarl
of oaths, sprang forward and with a great sweep of his arm slapped the
apothecary on the cheek. And then--
What a silence!
Frowenfeld had advanced one step; his opponent stood half turned away,
but with his face toward the face he had just struck and his eyes
glaring up into the eyes of the apothecary. The semicircle was
dissolved, and each man stood in neutral isolation, motionless and
silent. For one instant objects lost all natural proportion, and to the
expectant on-lookers the largest thing in the room was the big,
upraised, white fist of Frowenfeld. But in the next--how was this? Could
it be that that fist had not descended?
The imperturbable Valentine, with one preventing arm laid across the
breast of the expected victim and an open hand held restrainingly up for
truce, stood between the two men and said:
"Professor Frowenfeld--one moment--"
Frowenfeld's face was ashen.
"Don't speak, sir!" he exclaimed. "If I attempt to parley I shall break
every bone in his body. Don't speak! I can guess your explanation--he is
drunk. But take him away."
Valentine, as sensible as cool, assisted by the kinsman who had laid a
hand on his arm, shuffled his enraged companion out. Frowenfeld's still
swelling anger was so near getting the better of him that he
unconsciously followed a quick step or two; but as Valentine looked back
and waved him to stop, he again stood still.
"_Professeur_--you know,--" said a stranger, "daz Sylvestre
Grandissime."
Frowenfeld rather spoke to himself than answered:
"If I had not known that, I should have--" He checked himself and left
the place.
* * * * *
While the apothecary was gathering these experiences, the free spirit of
Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in a hen-coop.
One moment after another brought him straggling evidences, now of one
sort, now of another, of the "never more peaceable" state of affairs
without. If only some pretext could be conjured up, plausible or flimsy,
no matter; if only some man would pass with a gun on his shoulder, were
it only a blow-gun; or if his employer were any one but his beloved
Frowenfeld, he would clap up the shutters as quickly as he had already
done once to-day, and be off to the wars. He was just trying to hear
imaginary pistol-shots down toward the Place d'Armes, when the
apothecary returned.
"D' you fin' him?"
"I found Sylvestre."
"'E took de lett'?"
"I did not offer it." Frowenfeld, in a few compact sentences, told his
adventure.
Raoul was ablaze with indignation.
"'Sieur Frowenfel', gimmy dat lett'!" He extended his pretty hand.
Frowenfeld pondered.
"Gimmy 'er!" persisted the artist; "befo' I lose de sight from dat lett'
she goin' to be hanswer by Sylvestre Grandissime, an' 'e goin' to wrat
you one appo-logie! Oh! I goin' mek 'im crah fo' shem!"
"If I could know you would do only as I--"
"I do it!" cried Raoul, and sprang for his hat; and in the end
Frowenfeld let him have his way.
"I had intended seeing him--" the apothecary said.
"Nevvamine to see; I goin' tell him!" cried Raoul, as he crowded his
hat fiercely down over his curls and plunged out.