But it seemed fated that Feliu's waif should never be
identified;--diligent inquiry and printed announcements alike proved
fruitless. Sea and sand had either hidden or effaced all the records
of the little world they had engulfed: the annihilation of whole
families, the extinction of races, had, in more than one instance,
rendered vain all efforts to recognize the dead. It required the
subtle perception of long intimacy to name remains tumefied and
discolored by corruption and exposure, mangled and gnawed by fishes, by
reptiles, and by birds;--it demanded the great courage of love to look
upon the eyeless faces found sweltering in the blackness of
cypress-shadows, under the low palmettoes of the swamps,--where gorged
buzzards started from sleep, or cottonmouths uncoiled, hissing, at the
coming of the searchers. And sometimes all who had loved the lost were
themselves among the missing. The full roll call of names could never
be made out; extraordinary mistakes were committed. Men whom the world
deemed dead and buried came back, like ghosts,--to read their own
epitaphs.
... Almost at the same hour that Laroussel was questioning the child in
Creole patois, another expedition, searching for bodies along the
coast, discovered on the beach of a low islet famed as a haunt of
pelicans, the corpse of a child. Some locks of bright hair still
adhering to the skull, a string of red beads, a white muslin dress, a
handkerchief broidered with the initials "A.L.B.,"--were secured as
clews; and the little body was interred where it had been found.
And, several days before, Captain Hotard, of the relief-boat Estelle
Brousseaux, had found, drifting in the open Gulf (latitude 26 degrees
43 minutes; longitude 88 degrees 17 minutes),--the corpse of a
fair-haired woman, clinging to a table. The body was disfigured beyond
recognition: even the slender bones of the hands had been stripped by
the nibs of the sea-birds-except one finger, the third of the left,
which seemed to have been protected by a ring of gold, as by a charm.
Graven within the plain yellow circlet was a date,--"JUILLET--1851";
and the names,--"ADELE + JULIEN,"--separated by a cross. The Estelle
carried coffins that day: most of them were already full; but there
was one for Adele.
Who was she?--who was her Julien? ... When the Estelle and many other
vessels had discharged their ghastly cargoes;--when the bereaved of the
land had assembled as hastily as they might for the du y of
identification;--when memories were strained almost to madness in
research of names, dates, incidents--for the evocation of dead words,
resurrection of vanished days, recollection of dear promises,--then, in
the confusion, it was believed and declared that the little corpse
found on the pelican island was the daughter of the wearer of the
wedding ring: Adele La Brierre, nee Florane, wife of Dr. Julien La
Brierre, of New Orleans, who was numbered among the missing.
And they brought dead Adele back,--up shadowy river windings, over
linked brightnesses of lake and lakelet, through many a green
glimmering bayou,--to the Creole city, and laid her to rest somewhere
in the old Saint-Louis Cemetery. And upon the tablet recording her
name were also graven the words--
.....................
Aussi a la memoire de
son mari;
JULIEN RAYMOND LA BRIERRE,
ne a la paroisse St. Landry,
le 29 Mai; MDCCCXXVIII;
et de leur fille,
EULALIE,
agee de 4 as et 5 mois,--
Qui tous perirent
dans la grande tempete qui
balaya L'Ile Derniere, le
10 Aout, MDCCCLVI
..... + .....
Priez pour eux!