"No, I wouldn't do that," replied the parson; "though there is people in

Bethesdy who says he is a rascal. He's a powerful smart fool. Why, that

boy's got money, Jools; more money than religion, I reckon. I'm shore he

fallen into mighty bad company"--they passed beyond earshot.

Baptiste and Colossus, instead of going to the tavern kitchen, passed to

the next door and entered the dark rear corner of a low grocery, where,

the law notwithstanding, liquor was covertly sold to slaves. There, in

the quiet company of Baptiste and the grocer, the colloquial powers of

Colossus, which were simply prodigious, began very soon to show

themselves.

"For whilst," said he, "Mahs Jimmy has eddication, you know--whilst he

has eddication, I has 'scretion. He has eddication and I has 'scretion,

an' so we gits along."

He drew a black bottle down the counter, and, laying half his length

upon the damp board, continued:

"As a p'inciple I discredits de imbimin' of awjus liquors. De imbimin'

of awjus liquors, de wiolution of de Sabbaf, de playin' of de fiddle,

and de usin' of by-words, dey is de fo' sins of de conscience; an' if

any man sin de fo' sins of de conscience, de debble done sharp his fork

fo' dat man.--Ain't that so, boss?"

The grocer was sure it was so.

"Neberdeless, mind you"--here the orator brimmed his glass from the

bottle and swallowed the contents with a dry eye--"mind you, a roytious

man, sech as ministers of de gospel and dere body-sarvants, can take a

_leetle_ for de weak stomach."

But the fascinations of Colossus's eloquence must not mislead us; this

is the story of a true Christian; to wit, Parson Jones.

The parson and his new friend ate. But the coffee M. St.-Ange declared

he could not touch; it was too wretchedly bad. At the French Market,

near by, there was some noble coffee. This, however, would have to be

bought, and Parson Jones had scruples.

"You see, Jools, every man has his conscience to guide him, which it

does so in"--

"Oh, yes!" cried St.-Ange, "conscien'; thad is the bez, Posson Jone'.

Certainlee! I am a _Catholique_, you is a _schismatique_; you thing it

is wrong to dring some coffee--well, then, it _is_ wrong; you thing it

is wrong to make the sugah to ged the so large price--well, then, it

_is_ wrong; I thing it is right--well, then, it is right; it is all

'abit; _c'est tout_. What a man thing is right, _is right_; 'tis all

'abit. A man muz nod go again' his conscien'. My faith! do you thing I

would go again' my conscien'? _Mais allons_, led us go and ged some

coffee."

"Jools."

"W'at?"

"Jools, it ain't the drinkin' of coffee, but the buyin' of it on a

Sabbath. You must really excuse me, Jools, it's again' conscience, you

know."

"Ah!" said St.-Ange, "_c'est_ very true. For you it would be a sin,

_mais_ for me it is only 'abit. Rilligion is a very strange; I know a

man one time, he thing it was wrong to go to cock-fight Sunday evening.

I thing it is all 'abit. _Mais_, come, Posson Jone'; I have got one

friend, Miguel; led us go at his house and ged some coffee. Come; Miguel

have no familie; only him and Joe--always like to see friend; _allons_,

led us come yonder."

"Why, Jools, my dear friend, you know," said the shamefaced parson, "I

never visit on Sundays."

"Never w'at?" asked the astounded Creole.

"No," said Jones, smiling awkwardly.

"Never visite?"

"Exceptin' sometimes amongst church-members." said Parson Jones.

"_Mais_," said the seductive St.-Ange, "Miguel and Joe is

church-member'--certainlee! They love to talk about rilligion. Come at

Miguel and talk about some rilligion. I am nearly expire for me coffee."

Parson Jones took his hat from beneath his chair and rose up.

"Jools," said the weak giant, "I ought to be in church right now."

"_Mais_, the church is right yonder at Miguel', yes. Ah!" continued

St.-Ange, as they descended the stairs, "I thing every man muz have the

rilligion he like' the bez--me, I like the _Catholique_ rilligion the

bez--for me it _is_ the bez. Every man will sure go to heaven if he like

his rilligion the bez."

"Jools," said the West-Floridian, laying his great hand tenderly upon

the Creole's shoulder, as they stepped out upon the _banquette_, "do you

think you have any shore hopes of heaven?"

"Yass!" replied St.-Ange; "I am sure-sure. I thing everybody will go to

heaven. I thing you will go, _et_ I thing Miguel will go, _et_

Joe--everybody, I thing--_mais_, hof course, not if they not have been

christen'. Even I thing some niggers will go."

"Jools," said the parson, stopping in his walk--"Jools, I _don't_ want

to lose my niggah."

"Yon will not loose him. With Baptiste he _cannot_ ged loose."

But Colossus's master was not re-assured.

"Now," said he, still tarrying, "this is jest the way; had I of gone to

church"--

"Posson Jone'," said Jules.

"What?"

"I tell you. We goin' to church!"

"Will you?" asked Jones, joyously.

"_Allons_, come along," said Jules, taking his elbow.

They walked down the Rue Chartres, passed several corners, and by and by

turned into a cross street. The parson stopped an instant as they were

turning and looked back up the street.

"W'at you lookin'?" asked his companion.

"I thought I saw Colossus," answered the parson, with an anxious face;

"I reckon 'twa'n't him, though." And they went on.

The street they now entered was a very quiet one. The eye of any chance

passer would have been at once drawn to a broad, heavy, white brick

edifice on the lower side of the way, with a flag-pole standing out like

a bowsprit from one of its great windows, and a pair of lamps hanging

before a large closed entrance. It was a theatre, honey-combed with

gambling-dens. At this morning hour all was still, and the only sign of

life was a knot of little barefoot girls gathered within its narrow

shade, and each carrying an infant relative. Into this place the parson

and M. St.-Ange entered, the little nurses jumping up from the sills to

let them pass in.

A half-hour may have passed. At the end of that time the whole juvenile

company were laying alternate eyes and ears to the chinks, to gather

what they could of an interesting quarrel going on within.

"I did not, saw! I given you no cause of offence, saw! It's not so, saw!

Mister Jools simply mistaken the house, thinkin' it was a

Sabbath-school! No such thing, saw; I _ain't_ bound to bet! Yes, I kin

git out. Yes, without bettin'! I hev a right to my opinion; I reckon I'm

a _white man_, saw! No saw! I on'y said I didn't think you could get the

game on them cards. 'Sno such thing, saw! I do _not_ know how to play! I

wouldn't hev a rascal's money ef I should win it! Shoot, ef you dare!

You can kill me, but you cayn't scare me! No, I shayn't bet! I'll die

first! Yes, saw; Mr. Jools can bet for me if he admires to; I ain't his

mostah."

Here the speaker seemed to direct his words to St.-Ange.

"Saw, I don't understand you, saw. I never said I'd loan you money to

bet for me. I didn't suspicion this from you, saw. No, I won't take any

more lemonade; it's the most notorious stuff I ever drank, saw!"

M. St.-Ange's replies were in _falsetto_ and not without effect; for

presently the parson's indignation and anger began to melt. "Don't ask

me, Jools, I can't help you. It's no use; it's a matter of conscience

with me, Jools."

"_Mais oui!_ 'tis a matt' of conscien' wid me, the same."

"But, Jools, the money's none o' mine, nohow; it belongs to Smyrny, you

know."

"If I could make jus' _one_ bet," said the persuasive St.-Ange, "I would

leave this place, fas'-fas', yes. If I had thing--_mais_ I did not

soupspicion this from you, Posson Jone'"--

"Don't, Jools, don't!"

"No! Posson Jone'."

"You're bound to win?" said the parson, wavering.

"_Mais certainement!_ But it is not to win that I want;'tis me

conscien'--me honor!"

"Well, Jools, I hope I'm not a-doin' no wrong. I'll loan you some of

this money if you say you'll come right out 'thout takin' your

winnin's."

All was still. The peeping children could see the parson as he lifted

his hand to his breast-pocket. There it paused a moment in bewilderment,

then plunged to the bottom. It came back empty, and fell lifelessly at

his side. His head dropped upon his breast, his eyes were for a moment

closed, his broad palms were lifted and pressed against his forehead, a

tremor seized him, and he fell all in a lump to the floor. The children

ran off with their infant-loads, leaving Jules St.-Ange swearing by all

his deceased relatives, first to Miguel and Joe, and then to the lifted

parson, that he did not know what had become of the money "except if"

the black man had got it.

In the rear of ancient New Orleans, beyond the sites of the old rampart,

a trio of Spanish forts, where the town has since sprung up and grown

old, green with all the luxuriance of the wild Creole summer, lay the

Congo Plains. Here stretched the canvas of the historic Cayetano, who

Sunday after Sunday sowed the sawdust for his circus-ring.

But to-day the great showman had fallen short of his printed promise.

The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an

irretrievable sop of every thing. The circus trailed away its bedraggled

magnificence, and the ring was cleared for the bull.

Then the sun seemed to come out and work for the people. "See," said the

Spaniards, looking up at the glorious sky with its great, white fleets

drawn off upon the horizon--"see--heaven smiles upon the bull-fight!"

In the high upper seats of the rude amphitheatre sat the gayly-decked

wives and daughters of the Gascons, from the _métaries_ along the Ridge,

and the chattering Spanish women of the Market, their shining hair

un-bonneted to the sun. Next below were their husbands and lovers in

Sunday blouses, milkmen, butchers, bakers, black-bearded fishermen,

Sicilian fruiterers, swarthy Portuguese sailors, in little woollen caps,

and strangers of the graver sort; mariners of England, Germany, and

Holland. The lowest seats were full of trappers, smugglers, Canadian

_voyageurs_, drinking and singing; _Américains_, too--more's the

shame--from the upper rivers--who will not keep their seats--who ply the

bottle, and who will get home by and by and tell how wicked Sodom is;

broad-brimmed, silver-braided Mexicans, too, with their copper cheeks

and bat's eyes and their tinkling spurred heels. Yonder, in that quieter

section, are the quadroon women in their black lace shawls--and there is

Baptiste; and below them are the turbaned black women, and there is--but

he vanishes--Colossus.

The afternoon is advancing, yet the sport, though loudly demanded, does

not begin. The _Américains_ grow derisive and find pastime in gibes and

raillery They mock the various Latins with their national inflections,

and answer their scowls with laughter. Some of the more aggressive shout

pretty French greetings to the women of Gascony, and one bargeman, amid

peals of applause, stands on a seat and hurls a kiss to the quadroons.

The mariners of England, Germany, and Holland, as spectators, like the

fun, while the Spaniards look black and cast defiant imprecations upon

their persecutors. Some Gascons, with timely caution, pick their women

out and depart, running a terrible fire of gallantries.

In hope of truce, a new call is raised for the bull: "The bull, the

bull!--hush!"

In a tier near the ground a man is standing and calling--standing head

and shoulders above the rest--callimg in the _Américaine_ tongue.

Another man, big and red, named Joe, and a handsome little Creole in

elegant dress and full of laughter, wish to stop him, but the

flat-boatmen, ha-ha-ing and cheering, will not suffer it. Ah, through

some shameful knavery of the men, into whose hands he has fallen, he is

drunk! Even the women can see that; and now he throws his arms wildly

and raises his voice until the whole great circle hears it. He is

preaching!

Ah! kind Lord, for a special providence now! The men of his own

nation--men from the land of the open English Bible and temperance cup

and song are cheering him on to mad disgrace. And now another call for

the appointed sport is drowned by the flat-boatmen singing the ancient

tune of Mear. You can hear the words--

"Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul"

--from ribald lips and throats turned brazen with laughter, from singers

who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus swells to

the accompaniment of a thousand brogans--

"He used to wear an old gray coat

All buttoned down before."

A ribboned man in the arena is trying to be heard, and the Latins raise

one mighty cry for silence. The big red man gets a hand over the

parson's mouth, and the ribboned man seizes his moment.

"They have been endeavoring for hours," he says, "to draw the terrible

animals from their dens, but such is their strength and fierceness,

that"--

His voice is drowned. Enough has been heard to warrant the inference

that the beasts cannot be whipped out of the storm-drenched cages to

which menagerie-life and long starvation have attached them, and from

the roar of indignation the man of ribbons flies. The noise increases.

Men are standing up by hundreds, and women are imploring to be let out

of the turmoil. All at once, like the bursting of a dam, the whole mass

pours down into the ring. They sweep across the arena and over the

showman's barriers. Miguel gets a frightful trampling. Who cares for

gates or doors? They tear the beasts' houses bar from bar, and, laying

hold of the gaunt buffalo, drag him forth by feet, ears, and tail; and

in the midst of the _mêlée_, still head and shoulders above all, wilder,

with the cup of the wicked, than any beast, is the man of God from the

Florida parishes!

In his arms he bore--and all the people shouted at once when they saw

it--the tiger. He had lifted it high up with its back to his breast, his

arms clasped under its shoulders; the wretched brute had curled up

caterpillar-wise, with its long tail against its belly, and through its

filed teeth grinned a fixed and impotent wrath. And Parson Jones was

shouting:

"The tiger and the buffler _shell_ lay down together! You dah to say

they shayn't and I'll comb you with this varmint from head to foot! The

tiger and the buffler _shell_ lay down together. They _shell!_ Now, you,

Joe! Behold! I am here to see it done. The lion and the buffler _shell_

lay down together!"

Mouthing these words again and again, the parson forced his way through

the surge in the wake of the buffalo. This creature the Latins had

secured by a lariat over his head, and were dragging across the old

rampart and into a street of the city.

The northern races were trying to prevent, and there was pommelling and

knocking down, cursing and knife-drawing, until Jules St.-Ange was quite

carried away with the fun, laughed, clapped his hands, and swore with

delight, and ever kept close to the gallant parson.

Joe, contrariwise, counted all this child's-play an interruption. He had

come to find Colossus and the money. In an unlucky moment he made bold

to lay hold of the parson, but a piece of the broken barriers in the

hands of a flat-boatman felled him to the sod, the terrible crowd swept

over him, the lariat was cut and the giant parson hurled the tiger upon

the buffalo's back. In another instant both brutes were dead at the

hands of the mob; Jones was lifted from his feet, and prating of

Scripture and the millennium, of Paul at Ephesus and Daniel in the

"buffler's" den, was borne aloft upon the shoulders of the huzzaing

_Américains_. Half an hour later he was sleeping heavily on the floor of

a cell in the _calaboza_.

When Parson Jones awoke, a bell was somewhere tolling for midnight.

Somebody was at the door of his cell with a key. The lock grated, the

door swung, the turnkey looked in and stepped back, and a ray of

moonlight fell upon M. Jules St.-Ange. The prisoner sat upon the empty

shackles and ring-bolt in the centre of the floor.

"Misty Posson Jone'," said the visitor, softly.

"O Jools!"

"_Mais_, w'at de matter, Posson Jone'?"

"My sins, Jools, my sins!"

"Ah! Posson Jone', is that something to cry, because a man get sometime

a litt' bit intoxicate? _Mais_, if a man keep _all the time_ intoxicate,

I think that is again' the conscien'."

"Jools, Jools, your eyes is darkened--oh I Jools, Where's my pore old

niggah?"

"Posson Jone', never min'; he is wid Baptiste."

"Where?"

"I don' know w'ere--_mais_ he is wid Baptiste. Baptiste is a beautiful

to take care of somebody."

"Is he as good as you, Jools?" asked Parson Jones, sincerely.

Jules was slightly staggered.

"You know, Posson Jone', you know, a nigger cannot be good as a w'ite

man--_mais_ Baptiste is a good nigger."

The parson moaned and dropped his chin into his hands.

"I was to of left for home to-morrow, sun-up, on the Isabella schooner.

Pore Smyrny!" He deeply sighed.

"Posson Jone'," said Jules, leaning against the wall and smiling, "I

swear you is the moz funny man I ever see. If I was you I would say, me,

'Ah! 'ow I am lucky! the money I los', it was not mine, anyhow!' My

faith! shall a man make hisse'f to be the more sorry because the money

he los' is not his? Me, I would say, 'it is a specious providence.'

"Ah! Misty Posson Jone'," he continued, "you make a so droll sermon ad

the bull-ring. Ha! ha! I swear I thing you can make money to preach thad

sermon many time ad the theatre St. Philippe. Hah! you is the moz brave

dat I never see, _mais_ ad the same time the moz rilligious man. Where

I'm goin' to fin' one priest to make like dat? _Mais,_ why you can't

cheer up an' be 'appy? Me, if I should be miserabl' like that I would

kill meself."

The countryman only shook his head.

"_Bien,_ Posson Jone', I have the so good news for you."

The prisoner looked up with eager inquiry.

"Las' evening when they lock' you, I come right off at M. De Blanc's

house to get you let out of de calaboose; M. De Blanc he is the judge.

So soon I was entering--'Ah! Jules, me boy, juz the man to make complete

the game!' Posson Jone', it was a specious providence! I win in t'ree

hours more dan six hundred dollah! Look." He produced a mass of

bank-notes, _bons_, and due-bills.

"And you got the pass?" asked the parson, regarding the money with a

sadness incomprehensible to Jules.

"It is here; it take the effect so soon the daylight."

"Jools, my friend, your kindness is in vain."

The Creole's face became a perfect blank.

"Because," said the parson, "for two reasons: firstly, I hare broken the

laws, and ought to stand the penalty; and secondly--you must really

excuse me, Jools, you know, but the pass has been got onfairly, I'm

afeerd. You told the judge I was innocent; and in neither case it don't

become a Christian (which I hope I can still say I am one) to 'do evil

that good may come.' I muss stay."

M. St.-Ange stood up aghast, and for a moment speechless, at this

exhibition of moral heroism; but an artifice was presently hit upon.

"_Mais_, Posson Jone'!"--in his old _falsetto_--"de order--you cannot

read it, it is in French--compel you to go hout, sir!"

"Is that so?" cried the parson, bounding up with radiant face--"is that

so, Jools?"

The young man nodded, smiling; but, though he smiled, the fountain of

his tenderness was opened. He made the sign of the cross as the parson

knelt in prayer, and even whispered "Hail Mary," etc., quite through,

twice over.

Morning broke in summer glory upon a cluster of villas behind the city,

nestled under live-oaks and magnolias on the banks of a deep bayou, and

known as Suburb St. Jean.

With the first beam came the West-Floridian and the Creole out upon the

bank below the village. Upon the parson's arm hung a pair of antique

saddle-bags. Baptiste limped wearily behind; both his eyes were

encircled with broad, blue rings, and one cheek-bone bore the official

impress of every knuckle of Colossus's left hand. The "beautiful to take

care of somebody" had lost his charge. At mention of the negro he became

wild, and, half in English, half in the "gumbo" dialect, said murderous

things. Intimidated by Jules to calmness, he became able to speak

confidently on one point; he could, would, and did swear that Colossus

had gone home to the Florida parishes; he was almost certain; in fact,

he thought so.

There was a clicking of pulleys as the three appeared upon the bayou's

margin, and Baptiste pointed out, in the deep shadow of a great oak, the

Isabella, moored among the bulrushes, and just spreading her sails for

departure. Moving down to where she lay, the parson and his friend

paused on the bank, loath to say farewell.

"O Jools!" said the parson, "supposin' Colossus ain't gone home! O

Jools, if you'll look him out for me, I'll never forget you--I'll never

forget you, nohow, Jools. No, Jools, I never will believe he taken that

money. Yes, I know all niggahs will steal"--he set foot upon the

gang-plank--"but Colossus wouldn't steal from me. Good-by."

"Misty Posson Jone,'" said St.-Ange, putting his hand on the parson's

arm with genuine affection, "hol' on. You see dis money--w'at I win las'

night? Well, I win' it by a specious providence, ain't it?"

"There's no tellin'," said the humbled Jones. "Providence

'Moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform.'"

"Ah!" cried the Creole, "_c'est_ very true. I ged this money in the

mysterieuze way. _Mais_, if I keep dis money, you know where it goin' be

to-night?"

"I really can't say," replied the parson.

"Goin' to de dev'," said the sweetly-smiling yonng man.

The schooner-captain, leaning against the shrouds, and even Baptiste,

laughed outright.

"O Jools, you mustn't!"

"Well, den, w'at I shall do wid _it?_"

"Any thing!" answered the parson; "better donate it away to some poor

man"--

"Ah! Misty Posson Jone', dat is w'at I want. You los' five hondred

dollar'--'twas me fault."

"No, it wa'n't, Jools."

"_Mais_, it was!"

"No!"

"It _was_ me fault! I _swear_ it was me fault! _Mais_, here is five

hondred dollar'; I wish you shall take it. Here! I don't got no use for

money.--Oh, my faith! Posson Jone', you must not begin to cry some

more."

Parson Jones was choked with tears. When he found voice he said:

"O Jools, Jools, Jools! my pore, noble, dear, misguidened friend! ef you

hed of hed a Christian raisin'! May the Lord show you your errors

better'n I kin, and bless you for your good intentions--oh, no! I cayn't

touch that money with a ten-foot pole; it wa'n't rightly got; you must

really excuse me, my dear friend, but I cayn't touch it."

St.-Ange was petrified.

"Good-by, dear Jools," continued the parson. "I'm in the Lord's haynds,

and he's very merciful, which I hope and trust you'll find it out.

Good-by!"--the schooner swang slowly off before the breeze--"good-by!"

St.-Ange roused himself.

"Posson Jone'! make me hany'ow _dis_ promise: you never, never, _never_

will come back to New Orleans."

"Ah, Jools, the Lord willin', I'll never leave home again!"

"All right!" cried the Creole; "I thing he's willin'. Adieu, Posson

Jone'. My faith'! you are the so fighting an' moz rilligious man as I

never saw! Adieu! Adieu!"

Baptiste uttered a cry and presently ran by his master toward the

schooner, his hands full of clods.

St.-Ange looked just in time to see the sable form of Colossus of Rhodes

emerge from the vessel's hold, and the pastor of Smyrna and Bethesda

seize him in his embrace.

"O Colossus! you outlandish old nigger! Thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!"

The little Creole almost wept. He ran down the tow-path, laughing and

swearing, and making confused allusion to the entire _personnel_ and

furniture of the lower regions.

By odd fortune, at the moment that St.-Ange further demonstrated his

delight by tripping his mulatto into a bog, the schooner came brushing

along the reedy bank with a graceful curve, the sails flapped, and the

crew fell to poling her slowly along.

Parson Jones was on the deck, kneeling once more in prayer. His hat had

fallen before him; behind him knelt his slave. In thundering tones he

was confessing himself "a plum fool," from whom "the conceit had been

jolted out," and who had been made to see that even his "nigger had the

longest head of the two."

Colossus clasped his hands and groaned.

The parson prayed for a contrite heart.

"Oh, yes!" cried Colossus.

The master acknowledged countless mercies.

"Dat's so!" cried the slave.

The master prayed that they might still be "piled on."

"Glory!" cried the black man, clapping his hands; "pile on!"

"An' now," continued the parson, "bring this pore, backslidin' jackace

of a parson and this pore ole fool nigger back to thar home in peace!"

"Pray fo' de money!" called Colossus.

But the parson prayed for Jules.

"Pray fo' de _money!_" repeated the negro.

"And oh, give thy servant back that there lost money!"

Colossus rose stealthily, and tiptoed by his still shouting master.

St.-Ange, the captain, the crew, gazed in silent wonder at the

strategist. Pausing but an instant over the master's hat to grin an

acknowledgment of his beholders' speechless interest, he softly placed

in it the faithfully-mourned and honestly-prayed-for Smyrna fund; then,

saluted by the gesticulative, silent applause of St.-Ange and the

schooner-men, he resumed his first attitude behind his roaring master.

"Amen!" cried Colossus, meaning to bring him to a close.

"Onworthy though I be"--cried Jones.

"_Amen!_" reiterated the negro.

"A-a-amen!" said Parson Jones.

He rose to his feet, and, stooping to take up his hat, beheld the

well-known roll. As one stunned, he gazed for a moment upon his slave,

who still knelt with clasped hands and rolling eyeballs; but when he

became aware of the laughter and cheers that greeted him from both deck

and shore, he lifted eyes and hands to heaven, and cried like the

veriest babe. And when he looked at the roll again, and hugged and

kissed it, St.-Ange tried to raise a second shout, but choked, and the

crew fell to their poles.

And now up runs Baptiste, covered with slime, and prepares to cast his

projectiles. The first one fell wide of the mark; the schooner swung

round into a long reach of water, where the breeze was in her favor;

another shout of laughter drowned the maledictions of the muddy man; the

sails filled; Colossus of Rhodes, smiling and bowing as hero of the

moment, ducked as the main boom swept round, and the schooner, leaning

slightly to the pleasant influence, rustled a moment over the bulrushes,

and then sped far away down the rippling bayou.

M. Jules St.-Ange stood long, gazing at the receding vessel as it now

disappeared, now re-appeared beyond the tops of the high undergrowth;

but, when an arm of the forest hid it finally from sight, he turned

townward, followed by that fagged-out spaniel, his servant, saying, as

he turned, "Baptiste."

"_Miché?_"

"You know w'at I goin' do wid dis money?"

"_Non, m'sieur._"

"Well, you can strike me dead if I don't goin' to pay hall my debts!

_Allons!_"

He began a merry little song to the effect that his sweetheart was a

wine-bottle, and master and man, leaving care behind, returned to the

picturesque Rue Royale. The ways of Providence are indeed strange. In

all Parson Jones's after-life, amid the many painful reminiscences of

his visit to the City of the Plain, the sweet knowledge was withheld

from him that by the light of the Christian virtue that shone from him

even in his great fall, Jules St.-Ange arose, and went to his father an

honest man.

JEAN-AH POQUELIN.

In the first decade of the present century, when the newly established

American Government was the most hateful thing in Louisiana--when the

Creoles were still kicking at such vile innovations as the trial by

jury, American dances, anti-smuggling laws, and the printing of the

Governor's proclamation in English--when the Anglo-American flood that

was presently to burst in a crevasse of immigration upon the delta had

thus far been felt only as slippery seepage which made the Creole

tremble for his footing--there stood, a short distance above what is now

Canal Street, and considerably back from the line of villas which

fringed the river-bank on Tchoupitoulas Road, an old colonial

plantation-house half in ruin.

It stood aloof from civilization, the tracts that had once been its

indigo fields given over to their first noxious wildness, and grown up

into one of the horridest marshes within a circuit of fifty miles.

The house was of heavy cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, and

spiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier,

when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection of

the blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides

were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like a

gigantic ammunition-wagon stuck in the mud and abandoned by some

retreating army. Around it was a dense growth of low water willows, with

half a hundred sorts of thorny or fetid bushes, savage strangers alike

to the "language of flowers" and to the botanist's Greek. They were hung

with countless strands of discolored and prickly smilax, and the

impassable mud below bristled with _chevaux de frise_ of the dwarf

palmetto. Two lone forest-trees, dead cypresses, stood in the centre of

the marsh, dotted with roosting vultures. The shallow strips of water

were hid by myriads of aquatic plants, under whose coarse and spiritless

flowers, could one have seen it, was a harbor of reptiles, great and

small, to make one shudder to the end of his days.

The house was on a slightly raised spot, the levee of a draining canal.

The waters of this canal did not run; they crawled, and were full of

big, ravening fish and alligators, that held it against all comers.

Such was the home of old Jean Marie Poquelin, once an opulent indigo

planter, standing high in the esteem of his small, proud circle of

exclusively male acquaintances in the old city; now a hermit, alike

shunned by and shunning all who had ever known him. "The last of his

line," said the gossips. His father lies under the floor of the St.

Louis Cathedral, with the wife of his youth on one side, and the wife of

his old age on the other. Old Jean visits the spot daily. His

half-brother--alas! there was a mystery; no one knew what had become of

the gentle, young half brother, more than thirty years his junior, whom

once he seemed so fondly to love, but who, seven years ago, had

disappeared suddenly, once for all, and left no clew of his fate.

They had seemed to live so happily in each other's love. No father,

mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank,

impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious,

book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like mated

birds, one always on the wing, the other always in the nest.

There was no trait in Jean Marie Poquelin, said the old gossips, for

which he was so well known among his few friends as his apparent

fondness for his "little brother." "Jacques said this," and "Jacques

said that;" he "would leave this or that, or any thing to Jacques," for

"Jacques was a scholar," and "Jacques was good," or "wise," or "just,"

or "far-sighted," as the nature of the case required; and "he should ask

Jacques as soon as he got home," since Jacques was never elsewhere to be

seen.

It was between the roving character of the one brother, and the

bookishness of the other, that the estate fell into decay. Jean Marie,

generous gentleman, gambled the slaves away one by one, until none was

left, man or woman, but one old African mute.

The indigo-fields and vats of Louisiana had been generally abandoned as

unremunerative. Certain enterprising men had substituted the culture of

sugar; but while the recluse was too apathetic to take so active a

course, the other saw larger, and, at time, equally respectable profits,

first in smuggling, and later in the African slave-trade. What harm

could he see in it? The whole people said it was vitally necessary, and

to minister to a vital public necessity,--good enough, certainly, and so

he laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the public

regard.

One day old Jean Marie was about to start upon a voyage that was to be

longer, much longer, than any that he had yet made. Jacques had begged

him hard for many days not to go, but he laughed him off, and finally

said, kissing him:

"_Adieu, 'tit frère_."

"No," said Jacques, "I shall go with you."

They left the old hulk of a house in the sole care of the African mute,

and went away to the Guinea coast together.

Two years after, old Poquelin came home without his vessel. He must have

arrived at his house by night. No one saw him come. No one saw "his

little brother;" rumor whispered that he, too, had returned, but he had

never been seen again.

A dark suspicion fell upon the old slave-trader. No matter that the few

kept the many reminded of the tenderness that had ever marked his

bearing to the missing man. The many shook their heads. "You know he has

a quick and fearful temper;" and "why does he cover his loss with

mystery?" "Grief would out with the truth."

"But," said the charitable few, "look in his face; see that expression

of true humanity." The many did look in his face, and, as he looked in

theirs, he read the silent question: "Where is thy brother Abel?" The

few were silenced, his former friends died off, and the name of Jean

Marie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideous

nursery fictions.

The man and his house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck hunters

forsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimes

the hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slow

thumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for a

moment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sport

in wanton haste to assail with their gibes the unoffending, withered old

man who, in rusty attire, sat in the stern of a skiff, rowed homeward by

his white-headed African mute.

"O Jean-ah Poquelin! O Jean-ah! Jean-ah Poquelin!"

It was not necessary to utter more than that. No hint of wickedness,

deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone of

mockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over another

in their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat,

while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling up

his brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, would pour forth

such an unholy broadside of French imprecation and invective as would

all but craze them with delight.

Among both blacks and whites the house was the object of a thousand

superstitions. Every midnight they affirmed, the _feu follet_ came out

of the marsh and ran in and out of the rooms, flashing from window to

window. The story of some lads, whose words in ordinary statements were

worthless, was generally credited, that the night they camped in the

woods, rather than pass the place after dark, they saw, about sunset,

every window blood-red, and on each of the four chimneys an owl sitting,

which turned his head three times round, and moaned and laughed with a

human voice. There was a bottomless well, everybody professed to know,

beneath the sill of the big front door under the rotten veranda; whoever

set his foot upon that threshold disappeared forever in the depth below.

What wonder the marsh grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste.

Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one graceless

dare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards of the house

after nightfall.

* * * * *

The alien races pouring into old New Orleans began to find the few

streets named for the Bourbon princes too strait for them. The wheel of

fortune, beginning to whirl, threw them off beyond the ancient

corporation lines, and sowed civilization and even trade upon the lands

of the Graviers and Girods. Fields became roads, roads streets.

Everywhere the leveller was peering through his glass, rodsmen were

whacking their way through willow-brakes and rose-hedges, and the

sweating Irishmen tossed the blue clay up with their long-handled

shovels.

"Ha! that is all very well," quoth the Jean-Baptistes, fueling the

reproach of an enterprise that asked neither co-operation nor advice of

them, "but wait till they come yonder to Jean Poquelin's marsh; ha! ha!

ha!" The supposed predicament so delighted them, that they put on a mock

terror and whirled about in an assumed stampede, then caught their

clasped hands between their knees in excess of mirth, and laughed till

the tears ran; for whether the street-makers mired in the marsh, or

contrived to cut through old "Jean-ah's" property, either event would be

joyful. Meantime a line of tiny rods, with bits of white paper in their

split tops, gradually extended its way straight through the haunted

ground, and across the canal diagonally.

"We shall fill that ditch," said the men in mud-boots, and brushed close

along the chained and padlocked gate of the haunted mansion. Ah, Jean-ah

Poquelin, those were not Creole boys, to be stampeded with a little hard

swearing.

He went to the Governor. That official scanned the odd figure with no

slight interest. Jean Poquelin was of short, broad frame, with a bronzed

leonine face. His brow was ample and deeply furrowed. His eye, large and

black, was bold and open like that of a war-horse, and his jaws shut

together with the firmness of iron. He was dressed in a suit of

Attakapas cottonade, and his shirt unbuttoned and thrown back from the

throat and bosom, sailor-wise, showed a herculean breast; hard and

grizzled. There was no fierceness or defiance in his look, no harsh

ungentleness, no symptom of his unlawful life or violent temper; but

rather a peaceful and peaceable fearlessness. Across the whole face, not

marked in one or another feature, but as it were laid softly upon the

countenance like an almost imperceptible veil, was the imprint of some

great grief. A careless eye might easily overlook it, but, once seen,

there it hung--faint, but unmistakable.

The Governor bowed.

"_Parlez-vous français_?" asked the figure.

"I would rather talk English, if you can do so," said the Governor.

"My name, Jean Poquelin."

"How can I serve you, Mr. Poquelin?"

"My 'ouse is yond'; _dans le marais là-bas_."

The Governor bowed.

"Dat _marais_ billong to me."

"Yes, sir."

"To me; Jean Poquelin; I hown 'im meself."

"Well, sir?"

"He don't billong to you; I get him from me father."

"That is perfectly true, Mr. Poquelin, as far as I am aware."

"You want to make strit pass yond'?"

"I do not know, sir; it is quite probable; but the city will indemnify

you for any loss you may suffer--you will get paid, you understand."

"Strit can't pass dare."

"You will have to see the municipal authorities about that, Mr.

Poquelin."

A bitter smile came upon the old man's face:

"_Pardon, Monsieur_, you is not _le Gouverneur_?"

"Yes."

"_Mais_, yes. You har _le Gouverneur_--yes. Veh-well. I come to you. I

tell you, strit can't pass at me 'ouse."

"But you will have to see"--

"I come to you. You is _le Gouverneur_. I know not the new laws. I ham a

Fr-r-rench-a-man! Fr-rench-a-man have something _aller au contraire_--he

come at his _Gouverneur_. I come at you. If me not had been bought from

me king like _bossals_ in the hold time, ze king gof--France

would-a-show _Monsieur le Gouverneur_ to take care his men to make strit

in right places. _Mais_, I know; we billong to _Monsieur le Président_.

I want you do somesin for me, eh?"

"What is it?" asked the patient Governor.

"I want you tell _Monsieur le Président_,

strit--can't--pass--at--me--'ouse."

"Have a chair, Mr. Poquelin;" but the old man did not stir. The Governor

took a quill and wrote a line to a city official, introducing Mr.

Poquelin, and asking for him every possible courtesy. He handed it to

him, instructing him where to present it.

"Mr. Poquelin," he said with a conciliatory smile, "tell me, is it your

house that our Creole citizens tell such odd stories about?"

The old man glared sternly upon the speaker, and with immovable features

said:

"You don't see me trade some Guinea nigga'?"

"Oh, no."

"You don't see me make some smuggling"

"No, sir; not at all."

"But, I am Jean Marie Poquelin. I mine me hown bizniss. Dat all right?

Adieu."

He put his hat on and withdrew. By and by he stood, letter in hand,

before the person to whom it was addressed. This person employed an

interpreter.

"He says," said the interpreter to the officer, "he come to make you the

fair warning how you muz not make the street pas' at his 'ouse."

The officer remarked that "such impudence was refreshing;" but the

experienced interpreter translated freely.

"He says: 'Why you don't want?'" said the interpreter.

The old slave-trader answered at some length.

"He says," said the interpreter, again turning to the officer, "the

marass is a too unhealth' for peopl' to live."

"But we expect to drain his old marsh; it's not going to be a marsh."

"_Il dit_"--The interpreter explained in French.

The old man answered tersely.

"He says the canal is a private," said the interpreter.

"Oh! _that_ old ditch; that's to be filled up. Tell the old man we're

going to fix him up nicely."

Translation being duly made, the man in power was amused to see a

thunder-cloud gathering on the old man's face.

"Tell him," he added, "by the time we finish, there'll not be a ghost

left in his shanty."

The interpreter began to translate, but--

"_J' comprends, J' comprends_," said the old man, with an impatient

gesture, and burst forth, pouring curses upon the United States, the

President, the Territory of Orleans, Congress, the Governor and all his

subordinates, striding out of the apartment as he cursed, while the

object of his maledictions roared with merriment and rammed the floor

with his foot.

"Why, it will make his old place worth ten dollars to one," said the

official to the interpreter.

"'Tis not for de worse of de property," said the interpreter.

"I should guess not," said the other, whittling his chair,--"seems to me

as if some of these old Creoles would liever live in a crawfish hole

than to have a neighbor"

"You know what make old Jean Poquelin make like that? I will tell you.

You know"--

The interpreter was rolling a cigarette, and paused to light his tinder;

then, as the smoke poured in a thick double stream from his nostrils, he

said, in a solemn whisper:

"He is a witch."

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other.

"You don't believe it? What you want to bet?" cried the interpreter,

jerking himself half up and thrusting out one arm while he bared it of

its coat-sleeve with the hand of the other. "What you want to bet?"

"How do you know?" asked the official.

"Dass what I goin' to tell you. You know, one evening I was shooting

some _grosbec_. I killed three, but I had trouble to fine them, it was

becoming so dark. When I have them I start' to come home; then I got to

pas' at Jean Poquelin's house."

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other, throwing his leg over the arm of his

chair.

"Wait," said the interpreter. "I come along slow, not making some

noises; still, still"--

"And scared," said the smiling one.

"_Mais_, wait. I get all pas' the 'ouse. 'Ah!' I say; 'all right!' Then

I see two thing' before! Hah! I get as cold and humide, and shake like a

leaf. You think it was nothing? There I see, so plain as can be (though

it was making nearly dark), I see Jean--Marie--Po-que-lin walkin' right

in front, and right there beside of him was something like a man--but

not a man--white like paint!--I dropp' on the grass from scared--they

pass'; so sure as I live 'twas the ghos' of Jacques Poquelin, his

brother!"

"Pooh!" said the listener.

"I'll put my han' in the fire," said the interpreter.

"But did you never think," asked the other, "that that might be Jack

Poquelin, as you call him, alive and well, and for some cause hid away

by his brother?"

"But there har' no cause!" said the other, and the entrance of third

parties changed the subject.

Some months passed and the street was opened. A canal was first dug

through the marsh, the small one which passed so close to Jean

Poquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road,

just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry.

Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattle

roaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundant

undergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and the

flower-de-luce sprang up in the place of reeds; smilax and poison-oak

gave way to the purple-plumed iron-weed and pink spiderwort; the

bindweeds ran everywhere blooming as they ran, and on one of the dead

cypresses a giant creeper hung its green burden of foliage and lifted

its scarlet trumpets. Sparrows and red-birds flitted through the bushes,

and dewberries grew ripe beneath. Over all these came a sweet, dry smell

of salubrity which the place had not known since the sediments of the

Mississippi first lifted it from the sea.

But its owner did not build. Over the willow-brakes, and down the vista

of the open street, bright new houses, some singly, some by ranks, were

prying in upon the old man's privacy. They even settled down toward his

southern side. First a wood-cutter's hut or two, then a market

gardener's shanty, then a painted cottage, and all at once the faubourg

had flanked and half surrounded him and his dried-up marsh.

Ah! then the common people began to hate him. "The old tyrant!" "You

don't mean an old _tyrant_?" "Well, then, why don't he build when the

public need demands it? What does he live in that unneighborly way for?"

"The old pirate!" "The old kidnapper!" How easily even the most ultra

Louisianians put on the imported virtues of the North when they could be

brought to bear against the hermit. "There he goes, with the boys after

him! Ah! ha! ha! Jean-ah Poquelin! Ah! Jean-ah! Aha! aha! Jean-ah Marie!

Jean-ah Poquelin! The old villain!" How merrily the swarming Américains

echo the spirit of persecution! "The old fraud," they say--"pretends to

live in a haunted house, does he? We'll tar and feather him some day.

Guess we can fix him."

He cannot be rowed home along the old canal now; he walks. He has broken

sadly of late, and the street urchins are ever at his heels. It is like

the days when they cried: "Go up, thou bald-head," and the old man now

and then turns and delivers ineffectual curses.

To the Creoles--to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans,

Irish, Sicilians, and others--he became an omen and embodiment of public

and private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of their

superstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputed

to his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her.

Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with the

apprehension that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods. The

house was the subject of every bad boy's invention who loved to contrive

ghostly lies. "As long as that house stands we shall have bad luck. Do

you not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going to

seed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see it

raining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin's house. He

keeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Faubourg St. Marie. And why,

the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children call

after him as he passes."

A "Building and Improvement Company," which had not yet got its charter,

"but was going to," and which had not, indeed, any tangible capital yet,

but "was going to have some," joined the "Jean-ah Poquelin" war. The

haunted property would be such a capital site for a market-house! They

sent a deputation to the old mansion to ask its occupant to sell. The

deputation never got beyond the chained gate and a very barren interview

with the African mute. The President of the Board was then empowered

(for he had studied French in Pennsylvania and was considered qualified)

to call and persuade M. Poquelin to subscribe to the company's stock;

but--

"Fact is, gentlemen," he said at the next meeting, "it would take us at

least twelve months to make Mr. Pokaleen understand the rather original

features of our system, and he wouldn't subscribe when we'd done;

besides, the only way to see him is to stop him on the street."

There was a great laugh from the Board; they couldn't help it. "Better

meet a bear robbed of her whelps," said one.

"You're mistaken as to that," said the President. "I did meet him, and

stopped him, and found him quite polite. But I could get no satisfaction

from him; the fellow wouldn't talk in French, and when I spoke in

English he hoisted his old shoulders up, and gave the same answer to

every thing I said."

"And that was--?" asked one or two, impatient of the pause.

"That it 'don't worse w'ile?'"

One of the Board said: "Mr. President, this market-house project, as I

take it, is not altogether a selfish one; the community is to be

benefited by it. We may feel that we are working in the public interest

[the Board smiled knowingly], if we employ all possible means to oust

this old nuisance from among us. You may know that at the time the

street was cut through, this old Poquelann did all he could to prevent

it. It was owing to a certain connection which I had with that affair

that I heard a ghost story [smiles, followed by a sudden dignified

check]--ghost story, which, of course, I am not going to relate; but I

_may_ say that my profound conviction, arising from a prolonged study of

that story, is, that this old villain, John Poquelann, has his brother

locked up in that old house. Now, if this is so, and we can fix it on

him, I merely _suggest_ that we can make the matter highly useful. I

don't know," he added, beginning to sit down, "but that it is an action

we owe to the community--hem!"

"How do you propose to handle the subject?" asked the President.

"I was thinking," said the speaker, "that, as a Board of Directors, it

would be unadvisable for us to authorize any action involving trespass;

but if you, for instance, Mr. President, should, as it were, for mere

curiosity, _request_ some one, as, for instance, our excellent

Secretary, simply as a personal favor, to look into the matter--this is

merely a suggestion."

The Secretary smiled sufficiently to be understood that, while he

certainly did not consider such preposterous service a part of his

duties as secretary, he might, notwithstanding, accede to the

President's request; and the Board adjourned.

Little White, as the Secretary was called, was a mild, kind-hearted

little man, who, nevertheless, had no fear of any thing, unless it was

the fear of being unkind.

"I tell you frankly," he privately said to the President, "I go into

this purely for reasons of my own."

The next day, a little after nightfall, one might have descried this

little man slipping along the rear fence of the Poquelin place,

preparatory to vaulting over into the rank, grass-grown yard, and

bearing himself altogether more after the manner of a collector of rare

chickens than according to the usage of secretaries.

The picture presented to his eye was not calculated to enliven his mind.

The old mansion stood out against the western sky, black and silent. One

long, lurid pencil-stroke along a sky of slate was all that was left of

daylight. No sign of life was apparent; no light at any window, unless

it might have been on the side of the house hidden from view. No owls

were on the chimneys, no dogs were in the yard.

He entered the place, and ventured up behind a small cabin which stood

apart from the house. Through one of its many crannies he easily

detected the African mute crouched before a flickering pine-knot, his

head on his knees, fast asleep.

He concluded to enter the mansion, and, with that view, stood and

scanned it. The broad rear steps of the veranda would not serve him; he

might meet some one midway. He was measuring, with his eye, the

proportions of one of the pillars which supported it, and estimating the

practicability of climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some one

dragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mind

and began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dry

boards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, got

the figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized the

short, broad-shouldered form of old Jean Poquelin.

He sat down upon a billet of wood, and, to escape the stings of a

whining cloud of mosquitoes, shrouded his face and neck in his

handkerchief, leaving his eyes uncovered.

He had sat there but a moment when he noticed a strange, sickening odor,

faint, as if coming from a distance, but loathsome and horrid.

Whence could it come? Not from the cabin; not from the marsh, for it was

as dry as powder. It was not in the air; it seemed to come from the

ground.

Rising up, he noticed, for the first time, a few steps before him a

narrow footpath leading toward the house. He glanced down it--ha! right

there was some one coming--ghostly white!

Quick as thought, and as noiselessly, he lay down at full length against

the cabin. It was bold strategy, and yet, there was no denying it,

little White felt that he was frightened. "It is not a ghost," he said

to himself. "I _know_ it cannot be a ghost;" but the perspiration burst

out at every pore, and the air seemed to thicken with heat. "It is a

living man," he said in his thoughts. "I hear his footstep, and I hear

old Poquelin's footsteps, too, separately, over on the veranda. I am not

discovered; the thing has passed; there is that odor again; what a smell

of death! Is it coming back? Yes. It stops at the door of the cabin. Is

it peering in at the sleeping mute? It moves away. It is in the path

again. Now it is gone." He shuddered. "Now, if I dare venture, the

mystery is solved." He rose cautiously, close against the cabin, and

peered along the path.

The figure of a man, a presence if not a body--but whether clad in some

white stuff or naked the darkness would not allow him to determine--had

turned, and now, with a seeming painful gait, moved slowly from him.

"Great Heaven! can it be that the dead do walk?" He withdrew again the

hands which had gone to his eyes. The dreadful object passed between two

pillars and under the house. He listened. There was a faint sound as of

feet upon a staircase; then all was still except the measured tread of

Jean Poquelin walking on the veranda, and the heavy respirations of the

mute slumbering in the cabin.

The little Secretary was about to retreat; but as he looked once more

toward the haunted Louse a dim light appeared in the crack of a closed

window, and presently old Jean Poquelin came, dragging his chair, and

sat down close against the shining cranny. He spoke in a low, tender

tone in the French tongue, making some inquiry. An answer came from

within. Was it the voice of a human? So unnatural was it--so hollow, so

discordant, so unearthly--that the stealthy listener shuddered again

from head to foot, and when something stirred in some bushes near

by--though it may have been nothing more than a rat--and came scuttling

through the grass, the little Secretary actually turned and fled. As he

left the enclosure he moved with bolder leisure through the bushes; yet

now and then he spoke aloud: "Oh, oh! I see, I understand!" and shut his

eyes in his hands.

How strange that henceforth little White was the champion of Jean

Poquelin! In season and out of season--wherever a word was uttered

against him--the Secretary, with a quiet, aggressive force that

instantly arrested gossip, demanded upon what authority the statement or

conjecture was made; but as he did not condescend to explain his own

remarkable attitude, it was not long before the disrelish and suspicion

which had followed Jean Poquelin so many years fell also upon him.

It was only the next evening but one after his adventure that he made

himself a source of sullen amazement to one hundred and fifty boys, by

ordering them to desist from their wanton hallooing. Old Jean Poquelin,

standing and shaking his cane, rolling out his long-drawn maledictions,

paused and stared, then gave the Secretary a courteous bow and started

on. The boys, save one, from pure astonishment, ceased but a ruffianly

little Irish lad, more daring than any had yet been, threw a big

hurtling clod, that struck old Poquelin between the shoulders and burst

like a shell. The enraged old man wheeled with uplifted staff to give

chase to the scampering vagabond; and--he may have tripped, or he may

not, but he fell full length. Little White hastened to help him up, but

he waved him off with a fierce imprecation and staggering to his feet

resumed his way homeward. His lips were reddened with blood.

Little White was on his way to the meeting of the Board. He would have

given all he dared spend to have staid away, for he felt both too fierce

and too tremulous to brook the criticisms that were likely to be made.

"I can't help it, gentlemen; I can't help you to make a case against the

old man, and I'm not going to."

"We did not expect this disappointment, Mr. White."

"I can't help that, sir. No, sir; you had better not appoint any more

investigations. Somebody'll investigate himself into trouble. No, sir;

it isn't a threat, it is only my advice, but I warn you that whoever

takes the task in hand will rue it to his dying day--which may be

hastened, too."

The President expressed himself "surprised."

"I don't care a rush," answered little White, wildly and foolishly. "I

don't care a rush if you are, sir. No, my nerves are not disordered; my

head's as clear as a bell. No, I'm _not_ excited." A Director remarked

that the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare.

"Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose to

cultivate old Poquelin's society you can have one, too."

"White," called a facetious member, but White did not notice. "White,"

he called again.

"What?" demanded White, with a scowl.

"Did you see the ghost?"

"Yes, sir; I did," cried White, hitting the table, and handing the

President a paper which brought the Board to other business.

The story got among the gossips that somebody (they were afraid to say

little White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheld

something appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnified

and distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletons

walking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the sign

of the cross.

Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to

venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the

house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which

they but half saw--half a sight was enough--sent them tearing back

through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they

fairly dropped down, and cried:

"Was it white?" "No--yes--nearly so--we can't tell--but we saw it." And

one could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had,

whatever it was.

"If that old rascal lived in the country we come from," said certain

Américains, "he'd have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn't

he, Sanders?"

"Well, now he just would."

"And we'd have rid him on a rail, wouldn't we?"

"That's what I allow."

"Tell you what you _could_ do." They were talking to some rollicking

Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing _something_.

"What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl,

and you come out with horns and"--

"_Charivari_?" asked the Creoles.

"Yes, that's it. Why don't you shivaree him?" Felicitous suggestion.

Little White, with his wife beside him, was sitting on their doorsteps

on the sidewalk, as Creole custom had taught them, looking toward the

sunset. They had moved into the lately-opened street. The view was not

attractive on the score of beauty. The houses were small and scattered,

and across the flat commons, spite of the lofty tangle of weeds and

bushes, and spite of the thickets of acacia, they needs must see the

dismal old Poquelin mansion, tilted awry and shutting out the declining

sun. The moon, white and slender, was hanging the tip of its horn over

one of the chimneys.

"And you say," said the Secretary, "the old black man has been going by

here alone? Patty, suppose old Poquelin should be concocting some

mischief; he don't lack provocation; the way that clod hit him the other

day was enough to have killed him. Why, Patty, he dropped as quick as

_that_! No wonder you haven't seen him. I wonder if they haven't heard

something about him up at the drug-store. Suppose I go and see."

"Do," said his wife.

She sat alone for half an hour, watching that sudden going out of the

day peculiar to the latitude.

"That moon is ghost enough for one house," she said, as her husband

returned. "It has gone right down the chimney."

"Patty," said little White, "the drug-clerk says the boys are going to

shivaree old Poquelin to-night. I'm going to try to stop it."

"Why, White," said his wife, "you'd better not. You'll get hurt."

"No, I'll not."

"Yes, you will."

"I'm going to sit out here until they come along. They're compelled to

pass right by here."

"Why, White, it may be midnight before they start; you're not going to

sit out here till then."

"Yes, I am."

"Well, you're very foolish," said Mrs. White in an undertone, looking

anxious, and tapping one of the steps with her foot.

They sat a very long time talking over little family matters.

"What's that?" at last said Mrs. White.

"That's the nine-o'clock gun," said White, and they relapsed into a

long-sustained, drowsy silence.

"Patty, you'd better go in and go to bed," said he at last.

"I'm not sleepy."

"Well, you're very foolish," quietly remarked little White, and again

silence fell upon them.

"Patty, suppose I walk out to the old house and see if I can find out

any thing."

"Suppose," said she, "you don't do any such--listen!"

Down the street arose a great hubbub. Dogs and boys were howling and

barking; men were laughing, shouting, groaning, and blowing horns,

whooping, and clanking cow-bells, whinnying, and howling, and rattling

pots and pans.

"They are coming this way," said little White. "You had better go into

the house, Patty."

"So had you."

"No. I'm going to see if I can't stop them."

"Why, White!"

"I'll be back in a minute," said White, and went toward the noise.

In a few moments the little Secretary met the mob. The pen hesitates on

the word, for there is a respectable difference, measurable only on the

scale of the half century, between a mob and a _charivari_. Little White

lifted his ineffectual voice. He faced the head of the disorderly

column, and cast himself about as if he were made of wood and moved by

the jerk of a string. He rushed to one who seemed, from the size and

clatter of his tin pan, to be a leader. "_Stop these fellows, Bienvenu,

stop them just a minute, till I tell them something_." Bienvenu turned

and brandished his instruments of discord in an imploring way to the

crowd. They slackened their pace, two or three hushed their horns and

joined the prayer of little White and Bienvenu for silence. The throng

halted. The hush was delicious.

"Bienvenu," said little White, "don't shivaree old Poquelin to-night;

he's"--

"My fwang," said the swaying Bienvenu, "who tail you I goin' to

chahivahi somebody, eh? Yon sink bickause I make a little playfool wiz

zis tin pan zat I am _dhonk_?"

"Oh, no, Bienvenu, old fellow, you're all right. I was afraid you might

not know that old Poquelin was sick, you know, but you're not going

there, are you?"

"My fwang, I vay soy to tail you zat you ah dhonk as de dev'. I am

_shem_ of you. I ham ze servan' of ze _publique_. Zese _citoyens_ goin'

to wickwest Jean Poquelin to give to the Ursuline' two hondred fifty

dolla'"--

"_Hé quoi_!" cried a listener, "_Cinq cent piastres, oui_!"

"_Oui_!" said Bienvenu, "and if he wiffuse we make him some lit'

_musique_; ta-ra ta!" He hoisted a merry hand and foot, then frowning,

added: "Old Poquelin got no bizniz dhink s'much w'isky."

"But, gentlemen," said little White, around whom a circle had gathered,

"the old man is very sick."

"My faith!" cried a tiny Creole, "we did not make him to be sick. W'en

we have say we going make _le charivari_, do you want that we hall tell

a lie? My faith! 'sfools!"

"But you can shivaree somebody else," said desperate little White.

"_Oui_" cried Bienvenu, "_et chahivahi_ Jean-ah Poquelin tomo'w!"

"Let us go to Madame Schneider!" cried two or three, and amid huzzas and

confused cries, among which was heard a stentorian Celtic call for

drinks, the crowd again began to move.

"_Cent piastres pour l'hôpital de charité_!"

"Hurrah!"

"One hongred dolla' for Charity Hospital!"

"Hurrah!"

"Whang!" went a tin pan, the crowd yelled, and Pandemonium gaped again.

They were off at a right angle.

Nodding, Mrs. White looked at the mantle-clock.

"Well, if it isn't away after midnight."

The hideous noise down street was passing beyond earshot. She raised a

sash and listened. For a moment there was silence. Some one came to the

door.

"Is that you, White?"

"Yes." He entered. "I succeeded, Patty."

"Did you?" said Patty, joyfully.

"Yes. They've gone down to shivaree the old Dutchwoman who married her

step-daughter's sweetheart. They say she has got to pay a hundred

dollars to the hospital before they stop."

The couple retired, and Mrs. White slumbered. She was awakened by her

husband snapping the lid of his watch.

"What time?" she asked.

"Half-past three. Patty, I haven't slept a wink. Those fellows are out

yet. Don't you hear them?"

"Why, White, they're coming this way!"

"I know they are," said White, sliding out of bed and drawing on his

clothes, "and they're coming fast. You'd better go away from that

window, Patty. My! what a clatter!"

"Here they are," said Mrs. White, but her husband was gone. Two or three

hundred men and boys pass the place at a rapid walk straight down the

broad, new street, toward the hated house of ghosts. The din was

terrific. She saw little White at the head of the rabble brandishing his

arms and trying in vain to make himself heard; but they only shook their

heads laughing and hooting the louder, and so passed, bearing him on

before them.

Swiftly they pass out from among the houses, away from the dim oil lamps

of the street, out into the broad starlit commons, and enter the willowy

jungles of the haunted ground. Some hearts fail and their owners lag

behind and turn back, suddenly remembering how near morning it is. But

the most part push on, tearing the air with their clamor.

Down ahead of them in the long, thicket-darkened way there

is--singularly enough--a faint, dancing light. It must be very near the

old house; it is. It has stopped now. It is a lantern, and is under a

well-known sapling which has grown up on the wayside since the canal was

filled. Now it swings mysteriously to and fro. A goodly number of the

more ghost-fearing give up the sport; but a full hundred move forward at

a run, doubling their devilish howling and banging.

Yes; it is a lantern, and there are two persons under the tree. The

crowd draws near--drops into a walk; one of the two is the old African

mute; he lifts the lantern up so that it shines on the other; the crowd

recoils; there is a hush of all clangor, and all at once, with a cry of

mingled fright and horror from every throat, the whole throng rushes

back, dropping every thing, sweeping past little White and hurrying on,

never stopping until the jungle is left behind, and then to find that

not one in ten has seen the cause of the stampede, and not one of the

tenth is certain what it was.

There is one huge fellow among them who looks capable of any villany. He

finds something to mount on, and, in the Creole _patois_, calls a

general halt. Bienvenu sinks down, and, vainly trying to recline

gracefully, resigns the leadership. The herd gather round the speaker;

he assures them that they have been outraged. Their right peaceably to

traverse the public streets has been trampled upon. Shall such

encroachments be endured? It is now daybreak. Let them go now by the

open light of day and force a free passage of the public highway!

A scattering consent was the response, and the crowd, thinned now and

drowsy, straggled quietly down toward the old house. Some drifted ahead,

others sauntered behind, but every one, as he again neared the tree,

came to a stand-still. Little White sat upon a bank of turf on the

opposite side of the way looking very stern and sad. To each new-comer

he put the same question:

"Did you come here to go to old Poquelin's?"

"Yes."

"He's dead." And if the shocked hearer started away he would say: "Don't

go away."

"Why not?"

"I want you to go to the funeral presently."

If some Louisianian, too loyal to dear France or Spain to understand

English, looked bewildered, some one would interpret for him; and

presently they went. Little White led the van, the crowd trooping after

him down the middle of the way. The gate, that had never been seen

before unchained, was open. Stern little White stopped a short distance

from it; the rabble stopped behind him. Something was moving out from

under the veranda. The many whisperers stretched upward to see. The

African mute came very slowly toward the gate, leading by a cord in the

nose a small brown bull, which was harnessed to a rude cart. On the flat

body of the cart, under a black cloth, were seen the outlines of a long

box.

"Hats off, gentlemen," said little White, as the box came in view, and

the crowd silently uncovered.

"Gentlemen," said little White, "here come the last remains of Jean

Marie Poquelin, a better man, I'm afraid, with all his sins,--yes a

better--a kinder man to his blood--a man of more self-forgetful

goodness--than all of you put together will ever dare to be."

There was a profound hush as the vehicle came creaking through the gate;

but when it turned away from them toward the forest, those in front

started suddenly. There was a backward rush, then all stood still again

staring one way; for there, behind the bier, with eyes cast down and

labored step, walked the living remains--all that was left--of little

Jacques Poquelin, the long-hidden brother--a leper, as white as snow.

Dumb with horror, the cringing crowd gazed upon the walking death. They

watched, in silent awe, the slow _cortége_ creep down the long, straight

road and lessen on the view, until by and by it stopped where a wild,

unfrequented path branched off into the undergrowth toward the rear of

the ancient city.

"They are going to the _Terre aux Lépreux_," said one in the crowd. The

rest watched them in silence.

The little bull was set free; the mute, with the strength of an ape,

lifted the long box to his shoulder. For a moment more the mute and the

leper stood in sight, while the former adjusted his heavy burden; then,

without one backward glance upon the unkind human world, turning their

faces toward the ridge in the depths of the swamp known as the Leper's

Land, they stepped into the jungle, disappeared, and were never seen

again.

TITE POULETTE.

Kristian Koppig was a rosy-faced, beardless young Dutchman. He was one

of that army of gentlemen who, after the purchase of Louisiana, swarmed

from all parts of the commercial world, over the mountains of

Franco-Spanish exclusiveness, like the Goths over the Pyrenees, and

settled down in New Orleans to pick up their fortunes, with the

diligence of hungry pigeons. He may have been a German; the distinction

was too fine for Creole haste and disrelish.

He made his home in a room with one dormer window looking out, and

somewhat down, upon a building opposite, which still stands, flush with

the street, a century old. Its big, round-arched windows in a long,

second-story row, are walled up, and two or three from time to time have

had smaller windows let into them again, with odd little latticed

peep-holes in their batten shutters. This had already been done when

Kristian Koppig first began to look at them from his solitary dormer

window.

All the features of the building lead me to guess that it is a remnant

of the old Spanish Barracks, whose extensive structure fell by

government sale into private hands a long time ago. At the end toward

the swamp a great, oriental-looking passage is left, with an arched

entrance, and a pair of ponderous wooden doors. You look at it, and

almost see Count O'Reilly's artillery come bumping and trundling out,

and dash around into the ancient Plaza to bang away at King St.

Charles's birthday.

I do not know who lives there now. You might stand about on the opposite

_banquette_ for weeks and never find out. I suppose it is a residence,

for it does not look like one. That is the rule in that region.

In the good old times of duels, and bagatelle-clubs, and theatre-balls,

and Cayetano's circus, Kristian Koppig rooming as described, there lived

in the portion of this house, partly overhanging the archway, a palish

handsome woman, by the name--or going by the name--of Madame John. You

would hardly have thought of her being "colored." Though fading, she was

still of very attractive countenance, fine, rather severe features,

nearly straight hair carefully kept, and that vivid black eye so

peculiar to her kind. Her smile, which came and went with her talk, was

sweet and exceedingly intelligent; and something told you, as you looked

at her, that she was one who had had to learn a great deal in this

troublesome life.

"But!"--the Creole lads in the street would say--"--her daughter!"

and there would be lifting of arms, wringing of fingers, rolling of

eyes, rounding of mouths, gaspings and clasping of hands. "So beautiful,

beautiful, beautiful! White?--white like a water lily! White--like a

magnolia!"

Applause would follow, and invocation of all the saints to witness.

And she could sing.

"Sing?" (disdainfully)--"if a mocking-bird can _sing_! Ha!"

They could not tell just how old she was; they "would give her about

seventeen."

Mother and daughter were very fond. The neighbors could hear them call

each other pet names, and see them sitting together, sewing, talking

happily to each other in the unceasing French way, and see them go out

and come in together on their little tasks and errands. "'Tite

Poulette," the daughter was called; she never went out alone.

And who was this Madame John?

"Why, you know!--she was"--said the wig-maker at the corner to Kristian

Koppig--"I'll tell you. You know?--she was"--and the rest atomized off

in a rasping whisper. She was the best yellow-fever nurse in a thousand

yards round; but that is not what the wig-maker said.

A block nearer the river stands a house altogether different from the

remnant of old barracks. It is of frame, with a deep front gallery over

which the roof extends. It has become a den of Italians, who sell fuel

by daylight, and by night are up to no telling what extent of deviltry.

This was once the home of a gay gentleman, whose first name happened to

be John. He was a member of the Good Children Social Club. As his

parents lived with him, his wife would, according to custom, have been

called Madame John but he had no wife. His father died, then his mother;

last of all, himself. As he is about to be off, in comes Madame John,

with 'Tïte Poulette, then an infant, on her arm.

"Zalli," said he, "I am going."

She bowed her head, and wept.

"You have been very faithful to me, Zalli."

She wept on.

"Nobody to take care of you now, Zalli."

Zalli only went on weeping.

"I want to give you this house, Zalli; it is for you and the little

one."

An hour after, amid the sobs of Madame John, she and the "little one"

inherited the house, such as it was. With the fatal caution which

characterizes ignorance, she sold the property and placed the proceeds

in a bank, which made haste to fail. She put on widow's weeds, and wore

them still when 'Tite Poulette "had seventeen," as the frantic lads

would say.

How they did chatter over her. Quiet Kristian Koppig had never seen the

like. He wrote to his mother, and told her so. A pretty fellow at the

corner would suddenly double himself up with beckoning to a knot of

chums; these would hasten up; recruits would come in from two or three

other directions; as they reached the corner their countenances would

quickly assume a genteel severity, and presently, with her mother, 'Tite

Poulette would pass--tall, straight, lithe, her great black eyes made

tender by their sweeping lashes, the faintest tint of color in her

Southern cheek, her form all grace, her carriage a wonder of simple

dignity.

The instant she was gone every tongue was let slip on the marvel of her

beauty; but, though theirs were only the loose New Orleans morals of

over fifty years ago, their unleashed tongues never had attempted any

greater liberty than to take up the pet name, 'Tite Poulette. And yet

the mother was soon to be, as we shall discover, a paid dancer at the

_Salle de Condé_.

To Zalli, of course, as to all "quadroon ladies," the festivities of the

Conde-street ball-room were familiar of old. There, in the happy days

when dear Monsieur John was young, and the eighteenth century old, she

had often repaired under guard of her mother--dead now, alas!--and

Monsieur John would slip away from the dull play and dry society of

Théâtre d'Orléans, and come around with his crowd of elegant friends;

and through the long sweet hours of the ball she had danced, and

laughed, and coquetted under her satin mask, even to the baffling and

tormenting of that prince of gentlemen, dear Monsieur John himself. No

man of questionable blood dare set his foot within the door. Many noble

gentlemen were pleased to dance with her. Colonel De ---- and General

La ----: city councilmen and officers from the Government House. There

were no paid dancers then. Every thing was decorously conducted indeed!

Every girl's mother was there, and the more discreet always left before

there was too much drinking. Yes, it was gay, gay!--but sometimes

dangerous. Ha! more times than a few had Monsieur John knocked down some

long-haired and long-knifed rowdy, and kicked the breath out of him for

looking saucily at her; but that was like him, he was so brave and

kind;--and he is gone!

There was no room for widow's weeds there. So when she put these on, her

glittering eyes never again looked through her pink and white mask, and

she was glad of it; for never, never in her life had they so looked for

anybody but her dear Monsieur John, and now he was in heaven--so the

priest said--and she was a sick-nurse.

Living was hard work; and, as Madame John had been brought up tenderly,

and had done what she could to rear her daughter in the same mistaken

way, with, of course, no more education than the ladies in society got,

they knew nothing beyond a little music and embroidery. They struggled

as they could, faintly; now giving a few private dancing lessons, now

dressing hair, but ever beat back by the steady detestation of their

imperious patronesses; and, by and by, for want of that priceless

worldly grace known among the flippant as "money-sense," these two poor

children, born of misfortune and the complacent badness of the times,

began to be in want.

Kristian Koppig noticed from his dormer window one day a man standing at

the big archway opposite, and clanking the brass knocker on the wicket

that was in one of the doors. He was a smooth man, with his hair parted

in the middle, and his cigarette poised on a tiny gold holder. He waited

a moment, politely cursed the dust, knocked again, threw his slender

sword-cane under his arm, and wiped the inside of his hat with his

handkerchief.

Madame John held a parley with him at the wicket. 'Tite Poulette was

nowhere seen. He stood at the gate while Madame John went up-stairs.

Kristian Koppig knew him. He knew him as one knows a snake. He was the

manager of the _Salle de Condé_. Presently Madame John returned with a

little bundle, and they hurried off together.

And now what did this mean? Why, by any one of ordinary acuteness the

matter was easily understood, but, to tell the truth, Kristian Koppig

was a trifle dull, and got the idea at once that some damage was being

planned against 'Tite Poulette. It made the gentle Dutchman miserable

not to be minding his own business, and yet--

"But the woman certainly will not attempt"--said he to himself--"no, no!

she cannot." Not being able to guess what he meant, I cannot say whether

she could or not. I know that next day Kristian Koppig, glancing eagerly

over the "_Ami des Lois_," read an advertisement which he had always

before skipped with a frown. It was headed, "_Salle de Condé_," and,

being interpreted, signified that a new dance was to be introduced, the

_Danse de Chinois_, and that _a young lady_ would follow it with the

famous "_Danse du Shawl_."

It was the Sabbath. The young man watched the opposite window steadily

and painfully from early in the afternoon until the moon shone bright;

and from the time the moon shone bright until Madame John!--joy!--Madame

John! and not 'Tite Poulette, stepped through the wicket, much dressed

and well muffled, and hurried off toward the _Rue Condé_. Madame John

was the "young lady;" and the young man's mind, glad to return to its

own unimpassioned affairs, relapsed into quietude.

Madame John danced beautifully. It had to be done. It brought some pay,

and pay was bread; and every Sunday evening, with a touch here and there

of paint and powder, the mother danced the dance of the shawl, the

daughter remaining at home alone.

Kristian Koppig, simple, slow-thinking young Dutchman, never noticing

that he staid at home with his window darkened for the very purpose,

would see her come to her window and look out with a little wild,

alarmed look in her magnificent eyes, and go and come again, and again,

until the mother, like a storm-driven bird, came panting home.

Two or three months went by.

One night, on the mother's return, Kristian Koppig coming to his room

nearly at the same moment, there was much earnest conversation, which he

could see, but not hear.

"'Tite Poulette," said Madame John, "you are seventeen."

"True, Maman."

"Ah! my child, I see not how you are to meet the future." The voice

trembled plaintively.

"But how, Maman?"

"Ah! you are not like others; no fortune, no pleasure, no friend."

"Maman!"

"No, no;--I thank God for it; I am glad you are not; but you will be

lonely, lonely, all your poor life long. There is no place in this world

for us poor women. I wish that we were either white or black!"--and the

tears, two "shining ones," stood in the poor quadroon's eyes.

Tha daughter stood up, her eyes flashing.

"God made us, Maman," she said with a gentle, but stately smile.

"Ha!" said the mother, her keen glance darting through her tears, "Sin

made _me_, yes."

"No," said 'Tite Poulette, "God made us. He made us Just as we are; not

more white, not more black."

"He made you, truly!" said Zalli. "You are so beautiful; I believe it

well." She reached and drew the fair form to a kneeling posture. "My

sweet, white daughter!"

Now the tears were in the girl's eyes. "And could I be whiter than I

am?" she asked.

"Oh, no, no! 'Tite Poulette," cried the other; "but if we were only

_real white!_--both of us; so that some gentleman might come to see me

and say 'Madame John, I want your pretty little chick. She is so

beautiful. I want to take her home. She is so good--I want her to be my

wife.' Oh, my child, my child, to see that I would give my life--I would

give my soul! Only you should take me along to be your servant. I walked

behind two young men to-night; they ware coming home from their office;

presently they began to talk about you."

'Tite Poulette's eyes flashed fire.

"No, my child, they spoke only the best things One laughed a little at

times and kept saying 'Beware!' but the other--I prayed the Virgin to

bless him, he spoke such kind and noble words. Such gentle pity; such a

holy heart! 'May God defend her,' he said, _chérie_; he said, 'May God

defend her, for I see no help for her.' The other one laughed and left

him. He stopped in the door right across the street. Ah, my child, do

you blush? Is that something to bring the rose to your cheek? Many fine

gentlemen at the ball ask me often, 'How is your daughter, Madame

John?'".

The daughter's face was thrown into the mother's lap, not so well

satisfied, now, with God's handiwork. Ah, how she wept! Sob, sob, sob;

gasps and sighs and stifled ejaculations, her small right hand clinched

and beating on her mother's knee; and the mother weeping over her.

Kristian Koppig shut his window. Nothing but a generous heart and a

Dutchman's phlegm could have done so at that moment. And even thou,

Kristian Koppig!--for the window closed very slowly.

He wrote to his mother, thus:

"In this wicked city, I see none so fair as the poor girl who lives

opposite me, and who, alas! though so fair, is one of those whom the

taint of caste has cursed. She lives a lonely, innocent life in the

midst of corruption, like the lilies I find here in the marshew, and I

have great pity for her. 'God defend her,' I said to-night to a fellow

clerk, 'I see no help for her.' I know there is a natural, and I think

proper, horror of mixed blood (excuse the mention, sweet mother), and I

feel it, too; and yet if she were in Holland today, not one of a hundred

suitors would detect the hidden blemish."

In such strain this young man wrote on trying to demonstrate the utter

impossibility of his ever loving the lovable unfortunate, until the

midnight tolling of the cathedral clock sent him to bed.

About the same hour Zalli and 'Tite Poulette were kissing good-night.

"'Tite Poulette, I want you to promise me one thing."

"Well, Maman?"

"If any gentleman should ever love you and ask you to marry,--not

knowing, you know,--promise me you will not tell him you are not white."

"It can never be," said 'Tite Poulette.

"But if it should," said Madame John pleadingly.

"And break the law?" asked 'Tite Poulette, impatiently.

"But the law is unjust," said the mother.

"But it is the law!"

"But you will not, dearie, will you?"

"I would surely tell him!" said the daughter.

When Zalli, for some cause, went next morning to the window, she

started.

"'Tite Poulette!"--she called softly without moving. The daughter came.

The young man, whose idea of propriety had actuated him to this display,

was sitting in the dormer window, reading. Mother and daughter bent a

steady gaze at each other. It meant in French, "If he saw us last

night!"--

"Ah! dear," said the mother, her face beaming with fun--

"What can it be, Maman?"

"He speaks--oh! ha, ha!--he speaks--such miserable French!"

It came to pass one morning at early dawn that Zalli and 'Tite Poulette,

going to mass, passed a café, just as--who should be coming out but

Monsieur, the manager of the _Salle de Condé_. He had not yet gone to

bed. Monsieur was astonished. He had a Frenchman's eye for the

beautiful, and certainly there the beautiful was. He had heard of Madame

John's daughter, and had hoped once to see her, but did not but could

this be she?

They disappeared within the cathedral. A sudden pang of piety moved him;

he followed. 'Tite Poulette was already kneeling in the aisle. Zalli,

still in the vestibule, was just taking her hand from the font of

holy-water.

"Madame John," whispered the manager.

She courtesied.

"Madame John, that young lady--is she your daughter?"

"She--she--is my daughter," said Zalli, with somewhat of alarm in her

face, which the manager misinterpreted.

"I think not, Madame John." He shook his head, smiling as one too wise

to be fooled.

"Yes, Monsieur, she is my daughter."

"O no, Madame John, it is only make-believe, I think."

"I swear she is, Monsieur de la Rue."

"Is that possible?" pretending to waver, but convinced in his heart of

hearts, by Zalli's alarm, that she was lying. "But how? Why does she not

come to our ball-room with you?"

Zalli, trying to get away from him, shrugged and smiled. "Each to his

taste, Monsieur; it pleases her not."

She was escaping, but he followed one step more. "I shall come to see

you, Madame John."

She whirled and attacked him with her eyes. "Monsieur must not give

himself the trouble!" she said, the eyes at the same time adding, "Dare

to come!" She turned again, and knelt to her devotions. The manager

dipped in the font, crossed himself, and departed.

Several weeks went by, and M. de la Rue had not accepted the fierce

challenge of Madame John's eyes. One or two Sunday nights she had

succeeded in avoiding him, though fulfilling her engagement in the

_Salle_; but by and by pay-day,--a Saturday,--came round, and though the

pay was ready, she was loath to go up to Monsieur's little office.

It was an afternoon in May. Madame John came to her own room, and, with

a sigh, sank into a chair. Her eyes were wet.

"Did you go to his office, dear mother?" asked 'Tite Poulette.

"I could not," she answered, dropping her face in her hands.

"Maman, he has seen me at the window!"

"While I was gone?" cried the mother.

"He passed on the other side of the street. He looked up purposely, and

saw me." The speaker's cheeks were burning red.

Zalli wrung her hands.

"It is nothing, mother; do not go near him."

"But the pay, my child."

"The pay matters not."

"But he will bring it here; he wants the chance."

That was the trouble, sure enough.

About this time Kristian Koppig lost his position in the German

importing house where, he had fondly told his mother, he was

indispensable.

"Summer was coming on," the senior said, "and you see our young men are

almost idle. Yes, our engagement _was_ for a year, but ah--we could not

foresee"--etc., etc., "besides" (attempting a parting flattery), "your

father is a rich gentleman, and you can afford to take the summer easy.

If we can ever be of any service to you," etc., etc.

So the young Dutchman spent the afternoons at his dormer window reading

and glancing down at the little casement opposite, where a small, rude

shelf had lately been put out, holding a row of cigar-boxes with

wretched little botanical specimens in them trying to die. 'Tite

Poulette was their gardener; and it was odd to see,--dry weather or

wet,--how many waterings per day those plants could take. She never

looked up from her task; but I know she performed it with that

unacknowledged pleasure which all girls love and deny, that of being

looked upon by noble eyes.

On this peculiar Saturday afternoon in May, Kristian Koppig had been

witness of the distressful scene over the way. It occurred to 'Tite

Poulette that such might be the case, and she stepped to the casement to

shut it. As she did so, the marvellous delicacy of Kristian Koppig moved

him to draw in one of his shutters. Both young heads came out at one

moment, while at the same instant--

"Rap, rap, rap, rap, rap!" clanked the knocker on the wicket. The black

eyes of the maiden and the blue over the way, from looking into each

other for the first time in life, glanced down to the arched doorway

upon Monsieur the manager. Then the black eyes disappeared within, and

Kristian Koppig thought again, and re-opening his shutter, stood up at

the window prepared to become a bold spectator of what might follow.

But for a moment nothing followed.

"Trouble over there," thought the rosy Dutchman, and waited. The manager

waited too, rubbing his hat and brushing his clothes with the tips of

his kidded fingers.

"They do not wish to see him," slowly concluded the spectator.

"Rap, rap, rap, rap, rap!" quoth the knocker, and M. de la Rue looked up

around at the windows opposite and noticed the handsome young Dutchman

looking at him.

"Dutch!" said the manager softly, between his teeth.

"He is staring at me," said Kristian Koppig to himself;--"but then I am

staring at him, which accounts for it."

A long pause, and then another long rapping.

"They want him to go away," thought Koppig.

"Knock hard!" suggested a street youngster, standing by.

"Rap, rap"--The manager had no sooner recommenced than several neighbors

looked out of doors and windows.

"Very bad," thought our Dutchman; "somebody should make him go off. I

wonder what they will do."

The manager stepped into the street, looked up at the closed window,

returned to the knocker, and stood with it in his hand.

"They are all gone out, Monsieur," said the street-youngster.

"You lie!" said the cynosure of neighboring eyes.

"Ah!" thought Kristian Koppig; "I will go down and ask him"--Here his

thoughts lost outline; he was only convinced that he had somewhat to say

to him, and turned to go down stairs. In going he became a little vexed

with himself because he could not help hurrying. He noticed, too, that

his arm holding the stair-rail trembled in a silly way, whereas he was

perfectly calm. Precisely as he reached the street-door the manager

raised the knocker; but the latch clicked and the wicket was drawn

slightly ajar.

Inside could just be descried Madame John. The manager bowed, smiled,

talked, talked on, held money in his hand, bowed, smiled, talked on,

flourished the money, smiled, bowed, talked on and plainly persisted in

some intention to which Madame John was steadfastly opposed.