MICHÉ VIGNEVIELLE.
Madame Delphine sold one of the corner lots of her property. She had
almost no revenue, and now and then a piece had to go. As a consequence
of the sale, she had a few large bank-notes sewed up in her petticoat,
and one day--maybe a fortnight after her tearful interview with Père
Jerome--she found it necessary to get one of these changed into small
money. She was in the Rue Toulouse, looking from one side to the other
for a bank which was not in that street at all, when she noticed a small
sign hanging above a door, bearing the name "Vignevielle." She looked
in. Père Jerome had told her (when she had gone to him to ask where she
should apply for change) that if she could only wait a few days, there
would be a new concern opened in Toulouse Street,--it really seemed as
if Vignevielle was the name, if she could judge; it looked to be, and it
was, a private banker's,--"U.L. Vignevielle's," according to a larger
inscription which met her eyes as she ventured in. Behind the counter,
exchanging some last words with a busy-mannered man outside, who, in
withdrawing, seemed bent on running over Madame Delphine, stood the man
in blue cottonade, whom she had met in Père Jerome's doorway. Now, for
the first time, she saw his face, its strong, grave, human kindness
shining softly on each and every bronzed feature. The recognition was
mutual. He took pains to speak first, saying, in a re-assuring tone, and
in the language he had last heard her use: "'Ow I kin serve you,
Madame?"
"Iv you pliz, to mague dad bill change, Miché."
She pulled from her pocket a wad of dark cotton handkerchief, from which
she began to untie the imprisoned note. Madame Delphine had an
uncommonly sweet voice, and it seemed so to strike Monsieur Vignevielle.
He spoke to her once or twice more, as he waited on her, each time in
English, as though he enjoyed the humble melody of its tone, and
presently, as she turned to go, he said:
"Madame Carraze!"
She started a little, but bethought herself instantly that he had heard
her name in Père Jerome's parlor. The good father might even have said a
few words about her after her first departure; he had such an
overflowing heart. "Madame Carraze," said Monsieur Vignevielle, "doze
kine of note wad you '_an_' me juz now is bein' contrefit. You muz tek
kyah from doze kine of note. You see"--He drew from his cash-drawer a
note resembling the one he had just changed for her, and proceeded to
point out certain tests of genuineness. The counterfeit, he said, was so
and so.
"Bud," she exclaimed, with much dismay, "dad was de manner of my bill!
Id muz be--led me see dad bill wad I give you,--if you pliz, Miché."
Monsieur Vigneville turned to engage in conversation with an employé and
a new visitor, and gave no sign of hearing Madame Delphine's voice. She
asked a second time, with like result, lingered timidly, and as he
turned to give his attention to a third visitor, reiterated:
"Miché Vignevielle, I wizh you pliz led"--
"Madame Carraze," he said, turning so suddenly as to make the frightened
little woman start, but extending his palm with a show of frankness, and
assuming a look of benignant patience, "'ow I kin fine doze note now,
mongs' all de rez? Iv you p'iz nod to mague me doze troub'."
The dimmest shadow of a smile seemed only to give his words a more
kindly authoritative import, and as he turned away again with a manner
suggestive of finality, Madame Delphine found no choice but to depart.
But she went away loving the ground beneath the feet of Monsieur U.L.
Vignevielle.
"Oh, Père Jerome!" she exclaimed in the corrupt French of her caste,
meeting the little father on the street a few days later, "you told the
truth that day in your parlor. _Mo conné li à c't heure_. I know him
now; he is just what you called him."
"Why do you not make him _your_ banker, also, Madame Delphine?"
"I have done so this very day!" she replied, with more happiness in her
eyes than Père Jerome had ever before seen there.
"Madame Delphine," he said, his own eyes sparkling, "make _him_ your
daughter's guardian; for myself, being a priest, it would not be best;
but ask him; I believe he will not refuse you."
Madame Delphine's face grew still brighter as he spoke.
"It was in my mind," she said.
Yet to the timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after
another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks
elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at
length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind Monsieur
Vignevielle's banking-room,--he sitting beside a table, and she, more
timid and demure than ever, having just taken a chair by the door,--she
said, trying, with a little bashful laugh, to make the matter seem
unimportant, and yet with some tremor of voice:
"Miché Vignevielle, I bin maguing my will." (Having commenced their
acquaintance in English, they spoke nothing else.)
"'Tis a good idy," responded the banker.
"I kin mague you de troub' to kib dad will fo' me Miché Vignevielle?"
"Yez."
She looked up with grateful re-assurance; but her eyes dropped again as
she said:
"Miché Vignevielle"--Here she choked, and began her peculiar motion of
laying folds in the skirt of her dress, with trembling fingers. She
lifted her eyes, and as they met the look of deep and placid kindness
that was in his face, some courage returned, and she said:
"Miché."
"Wad you wand?" asked he, gently.
"If it arrive to me to die"--
"Yez?"
Her words were scarcely audible:
"I wand you teg kyah my lill' girl."
"You 'ave one lill' gal, Madame Carraze?"
She nodded with her face down.
"An' you godd some mo' chillen?"
"No."
"I nevva know dad, Madame Carraze. She's a lill small gal?"
Mothers forget their daughters' stature. Madame Delphine said:
"Yez." For a few moments neither spoke, and then Monsieur Vignevielle
said:
"I will do dad."
"Lag she been you' h-own?" asked the mother, suffering from her own
boldness.
"She's a good lill' chile, eh?"
"Miché, she's a lill' hangel!" exclaimed Madame Delphine, with a look of
distress.
"Yez; I teg kyah 'v 'er, lag my h-own. I mague you dad promise."
"But"--There was something still in the way, Madame Delphine seemed to
think.
The banker waited in silence.
"I suppose you will want to see my lill' girl?"
He smiled; for she looked at him as if she would implore him to decline.
"Oh, I tek you' word fo' hall dad, Madame Carraze. It mague no differend
wad she loog lag; I don' wan' see 'er."
Madame Delphine's parting smile--she went very shortly--was gratitude
beyond speech.
Monsieur Vignevielle returned to the seat he had left, and resumed a
newspaper,--the _Louisiana Gazette_ in all probability,--which he had
laid down upon Madame Delphine's entrance. His eyes fell upon a
paragraph which had previously escaped his notice. There they rested.
Either he read it over and over unwearyingly, or he was lost in thought.
Jean Thompson entered.
"Now," said Mr. Thompson, in a suppressed tone bending a little across
the table, and laying one palm upon a package of papers which lay in the
other, "it is completed. You could retire, from your business any day
inside of six hours without loss to anybody." (Both here and elsewhere,
let it be understood that where good English is given the words were
spoken in good French.)
Monsieur Vignevielle raised his eyes and extended the newspaper to the
attorney, who received it and read the paragraph. Its substance was that
a certain vessel of the navy had returned from a cruise in the Gulf of
Mexico and Straits of Florida, where she had done valuable service
against the pirates--having, for instance, destroyed in one fortnight in
January last twelve pirate vessels afloat, two on the stocks, and three
establishments ashore.
"United States brig _Porpoise_" repeated Jean Thompson. "Do you know
her?"
"We are acquainted," said Monsieur Vignevielle.