"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Raoul as that person turned in the front door of the shop after watching Agricola's carriage roll away--he had intended to unburden his mind to the apothecary with all his natural impetuosity; but Frowenfeld's gravity as he turned, with the paper in his hand, induced a different manner. Raoul had learned, despite all the impulses of his nature, to look upon Frowenfeld with a sort of enthusiastic awe. He dropped his voice and said--asking like a child a question he was perfectly able to answer--
"What de matta wid Agricole?"
Frowenfeld, for the moment well-nigh oblivious of his own trouble, turned upon his assistant a look in which elation was oddly blended with solemnity, and replied as he walked by:
"Rush of truth to the heart."
Raoul followed a step.
"'Sieur Frowenfel'--"
The apothecary turned once more. Raoul's face bore an expression of earnest practicability that invited confidence.
"'Sieur Frowenfel', Agricola writ'n' to Sylvestre to stop dat dool?"
"Yes."
"You goin' take dat lett' to Sylvestre?"
"Yes."
"'Sieur Frowenfel', dat de wrong g-way. You got to take it to 'Polyte Brahmin-Mandarin, an' 'e got to take it to Valentine Grandissime, an' 'egot to take it to Sylvestre. You see, you got to know de manner to make. Once 'pon a time I had a diffycultie wid--"
"I see," said Frowenfeld; "where may I find Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin at this time of day?"
Raoul shrugged.
"If the pre-parish-ions are not complitted, you will not find 'im; but if they har complitted--you know 'im?"
"By sight."
"Well, you may fine him at Maspero's, or helse in de front of de Veau-qui-tête, or helse at de Café Louis Quatorze--mos' likely in front of de Veau-qui-tête. You know, dat diffycultie I had, dat arise itseff from de discush'n of one of de mil-littery mov'ments of ca-valry; you know, I--"
"Yes," said the apothecary; "here, Raoul, is some money; please go and buy me a good, plain hat."
"All right." Raoul darted behind the counter and got his hat out of a drawer. "Were at you buy your hats?"
"Anywhere."
"I will go atmyhatter."
As the apothecary moved about his shop awaiting Raoul's return, his own disaster became once more the subject of his anxiety. He noticed that almost every person who passed looked in. "This is the place,"--"That is the man,"--how plainly the glances of passers sometimes speak! The people seemed, moreover, a little nervous. Could even so little a city be stirred about such a petty, private trouble as this of his? No; the city was having tribulations of its own.
New Orleans was in that state of suppressed excitement which, in later days, a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has caused to be described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul perceived it before he had left the shop twenty paces behind. By the time he reached the first corner he was in the swirl of the popular current. He enjoyed it like a strong swimmer. He even drank of it. It was better than wine and music mingled.
"Twelve weeks next Thursday, and no sign of re-cession!" said one of two rapid walkers just in front of him. Their talk was in the French of the province.
"Oh, re-cession!" exclaimed the other angrily. "The cession is a reality. That, at least, we have got to swallow. Incredulity is dead."
The first speaker's feelings could find expression only in profanity.
"The cession--we wash our hands of it!" He turned partly around upon his companion, as they hurried along, and gave his hands a vehement dry washing. "If Incredulity is dead, Non-participation reigns in its stead, and Discontent is prime minister!" He brandished his fist as they turned a corner.
"If we must change, let us be subjects of the First Consul!" said one of another pair whom Raoul met on a crossing.
There was a gathering of boys and vagabonds at the door of a gun-shop. A man inside was buying a gun. That was all.
A group came out of a "coffee-house." The leader turned about upon the rest:
"Ah, bah! cetteAmayrican libetty!"
"See! see! it is this way!" said another of the number, taking two others by their elbows, to secure an audience, "we shall do nothing ourselves; we are just watching that vile Congress. It is going to tear the country all to bits!"
"Ah, my friend, you haven't got theinsidenews," said still another--Raoul lingered to hear him--"Louisiana is going to state her wants! We have the liberty of free speech and are going to use it!"
His information was correct; Louisiana, no longer incredulous of her Americanization, had laid hold of her new liberties and was beginning to run with them, like a boy dragging his kite over the clods. She was about to state her wants, he said.
"And her don't-wants," volunteered one whose hand Raoul shook heartily. "We warn the world. If Congress doesn't take heed, we will not be responsible for the consequences!"
Raoul's hatter was full of the subject. As Mr. Innerarity entered, he was saying good-day to a customer in his native tongue, English, and so continued:
"Yes, under Spain we had a solid, quiet government--Ah! Mr. Innerarity, overjoyed to see you! We were speaking of these political troubles. I wish we might see the last of them. It's a terrible bad mess; corruption to-day--I tell you what--it will be disruption to-morrow. Well, it is no work of ours; we shall merely stand off and see it."
"Mi-frien'," said Raoul, with mingled pity and superiority, "you haven't got dozeinsidenooz; Louisiana is goin' to state w'at she want."
On his way back toward the shop Mr. Innerarity easily learned Louisiana's wants and don't-wants by heart. She wanted a Creole governor; she did not want Casa Calvo invited to leave the country; she wanted the provisions of the Treaty of Cession hurried up; "as soon as possible," that instrument said; she had waited long enough; she did not want "dat trile bi-ju'y"--execrable trash! she wanted anunwatched import trade!she did not want a single additional Américain appointed to office; she wanted the slave trade.
Just in sight of the bareheaded and anxious Frowenfeld, Raoul let himself be stopped by a friend.
The remark was exchanged that the times were exciting.
"And yet," said the friend, "the city was never more peaceable. It is exasperating to see that coward governor looking so diligently after his police and hurrying on the organization of the Américain volunteer militia!" He pointed savagely here and there. "M. Innerarity, I am lost in admiration at the all but craven patience with which our people endure their wrongs! Do my pistols showtoomuch through my coat? Well, good-day; I must go home and clean my gun; my dear friend, one don't know how soon he may have to encounter the Recorder and Register of Land-titles."
Raoul finished his errand.
"'Sieur Frowenfel', excuse me--I take dat lett' to 'Polyte for you if you want." There are times when mere shopkeeping--any peaceful routine--is torture.
But the apothecary felt so himself; he declined his assistant's offer and went out toward the Veau-qui-tête.
The Veau-qui-tête restaurant occupied the whole ground floor of a small, low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco building which still stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter streets, in company with the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It was a favorite rendezvous of the higher classes, convenient to the court-rooms and municipal bureaus. There you found the choicest legal and political gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat and drink.
Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had to move about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not overlooking the object of his search.
As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed rudely as he passed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes on his back.
There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him particularly discordant.
Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant, mention of a certainPointe Canadienne. It was a portion of the Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper title just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles, who in public indignantly denied, and in private tittered over, their complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld passed these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.
Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Américain, in English.
"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other governments we had any quantity!"
"Yes," said the venturesome Américain in retort, "such as it was;assignats, liberanzas, bons--Claiborne will give us better money than that when he starts his bank."
"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father. What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.
A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without turning his eyes.
"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty they give us--all eat out of one trough."
"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man, setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have, is"--he was speaking in French, but gave the want in English--"Representesh'n wizout Taxa--" There his eye fell upon Frowenfeld and followed him with a scowl.
"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wass you sink of a mane w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in ze sem room?"
The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more general than he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did so, to an Américain merchant with whom he had some acquaintance.
"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see me? I thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all, does it sum up?"
A Creole interrupted him with an answer:
"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Pahtitsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"
The voice was like Honoré's. Frowenfeld looked; it was Agamemnon Grandissime.
"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started up the rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he suddenly found himself one of a crowd standing before a newly-posted placard, and at a glance saw it to be one of the inflammatory publications which were a feature of the times, appearing both daily and nightly on walls and fences.
"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it back," said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.
Exchange Alley was oncePassage de la Bourse, and led down (as it now does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to an establishment which seems to have served for a long term of years as a sort of merchants' and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a minimum of china and a maximum of glass: Maspero's--certainly Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we believe, Maspero's the day the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It was a livelier spot than the Veau-qui-tête; it was to that what commerce is to litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping. Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public sentiment in which sanctity signs politicians' memorials and chivalry breaks into the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump of the machinery was in Maspero's.
The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine Grandissime. There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners in front of him; he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in Creole French.
"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know my rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We have"--with a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended palm--"a right to protect them from the attack of interlopers, even if we have to use gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the liberties of even this army of fortune-hunters.Letthem think." He half laughed. "Who cares whether they share our opinions or not? Let them have their own. I had rather they would. But let them hold their tongues. Let them remember they are Yankees. Let them remember they are unbidden guests." All this without the least warmth.
But the answer came aglow with passion, from one of the semicircle, whom two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It also was in French, but the apothecary was astonished to hear his own name uttered.
"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see Joseph--"has never held his tongue. He has given us good reason half a dozen times, with his too free speech and his high moral whine, to hang him with the lamppost rope! And now, when we have borne and borne and borne and borne with him, and he shows up, all at once, in all his rottenness, you say let him alone! One would think you were defending Honoré Grandissime!" The back of one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of the other.
Valentine smiled.
"Honoré Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are talking about. Not Honoré, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own avowal, is guilty of affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we have good reason to suspect of meditating his family's dishonor and embarrassment!" Somebody saw the apothecary and laid a cautionary touch on Valentine's arm, but he brushed it off. "As for Professor Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."
"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.
"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you again what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin and held his clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he is--he is--"
He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large, white, and immovable, stood close before him.
"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander, edging toward a pillar.
The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blushing mood, and was not disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made a sudden, angry change of attitude, and demanded:
"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee clown? Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"
Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he said:
"Sir, I am not aware that I have ever offered you the slightest injury or affront; if you wish to finish your conversation with this gentleman, I will wait till you are through."
The Creole bowed, as a knight who takes up the gage. He turned to Valentine.
"Valentine, I was sayin' to you dad diz pusson is a cowa'd and a sneak; I repead thad! I repead id! I spurn you! Go f'om yeh!"
The apothecary stood like a cliff.
It was too much for Creole forbearance. His adversary, with a long snarl of oaths, sprang forward and with a great sweep of his arm slapped the apothecary on the cheek. And then--
What a silence!
Frowenfeld had advanced one step; his opponent stood half turned away, but with his face toward the face he had just struck and his eyes glaring up into the eyes of the apothecary. The semicircle was dissolved, and each man stood in neutral isolation, motionless and silent. For one instant objects lost all natural proportion, and to the expectant on-lookers the largest thing in the room was the big, upraised, white fist of Frowenfeld. But in the next--how was this? Could it be that that fist had not descended?
The imperturbable Valentine, with one preventing arm laid across the breast of the expected victim and an open hand held restrainingly up for truce, stood between the two men and said:
"Professor Frowenfeld--one moment--"
Frowenfeld's face was ashen.
"Don't speak, sir!" he exclaimed. "If I attempt to parley I shall break every bone in his body. Don't speak! I can guess your explanation--he is drunk. But take him away."
Valentine, as sensible as cool, assisted by the kinsman who had laid a hand on his arm, shuffled his enraged companion out. Frowenfeld's still swelling anger was so near getting the better of him that he unconsciously followed a quick step or two; but as Valentine looked back and waved him to stop, he again stood still.
"Professeur--you know,--" said a stranger, "daz Sylvestre Grandissime."
Frowenfeld rather spoke to himself than answered:
"If I had not known that, I should have--" He checked himself and left the place.
While the apothecary was gathering these experiences, the free spirit of Raoul Innerarity was chafing in the shop like an eagle in a hen-coop. One moment after another brought him straggling evidences, now of one sort, now of another, of the "never more peaceable" state of affairs without. If only some pretext could be conjured up, plausible or flimsy, no matter; if only some man would pass with a gun on his shoulder, were it only a blow-gun; or if his employer were any one but his beloved Frowenfeld, he would clap up the shutters as quickly as he had already done once to-day, and be off to the wars. He was just trying to hear imaginary pistol-shots down toward the Place d'Armes, when the apothecary returned.
"D' you fin' him?"
"I found Sylvestre."
"'E took de lett'?"
"I did not offer it." Frowenfeld, in a few compact sentences, told his adventure.
Raoul was ablaze with indignation.
"'Sieur Frowenfel', gimmy dat lett'!" He extended his pretty hand.
Frowenfeld pondered.
"Gimmy 'er!" persisted the artist; "befo' I lose de sight from dat lett' she goin' to be hanswer by Sylvestre Grandissime, an' 'e goin' to wrat you one appo-logie! Oh! I goin' mek 'im crah fo' shem!"
"If I could know you would do only as I--"
"I do it!" cried Raoul, and sprang for his hat; and in the end Frowenfeld let him have his way.
"I had intended seeing him--" the apothecary said.
"Nevvamine to see; I goin' tell him!" cried Raoul, as he crowded his hat fiercely down over his curls and plunged out.
It was equally a part of Honoré Grandissime's nature and of his art as a merchant to wear a look of serene leisure. With this look on his face he reëntered his counting-room after his morning visit to Frowenfeld's shop. He paused a moment outside the rail, gave the weak-eyed gentleman who presided there a quiet glance equivalent to a beckon, and, as that person came near, communicated two or three items of intelligence or instruction concerning office details, by which that invaluable diviner of business meanings understood that he wished to be let alone for an hour. Then M. Grandissime passed on into his private office, and, shutting the door behind him, walked briskly to his desk and sat down.
He dropped his elbows upon a broad paper containing some recently written, unfinished memoranda that included figures in column, cast his eyes quite around the apartment, and then covered his face with his palms--a gesture common enough for a tired man of business in a moment of seclusion; but just as the face disappeared in the hands, the look of serene leisure gave place to one of great mental distress. The paper under his elbows, to the consideration of which he seemed about to return, was in the handwriting of his manager, with additions by his own pen. Earlier in the day he had come to a pause in the making of these additions, and, after one or two vain efforts to proceed, had laid down his pen, taken his hat, and gone to see the unlucky apothecary. Now he took up the broken thread. To come to a decision; that was the task which forced from him his look of distress. He drew his face slowly through his palms, set his lips, cast up his eyes, knit his knuckles, and then opened and struck his palms together, as if to say: "Now, come; let me make up my mind."
There may be men who take every moral height at a dash; but to the most of us there must come moments when our wills can but just rise and walk in their sleep. Those who in such moments wait for clear views find, when the issue is past, that they were only yielding to the devil's chloroform.
Honoré Grandissme bent his eyes upon the paper. But he saw neither its figures nor its words. The interrogation, "Surrender Fausse Rivière?" appeared to hang between his eyes and the paper, and when his resolution tried to answer "Yes," he saw red flags; he heard the auctioneer's drum; he saw his kinsmen handing house-keys to strangers; he saw the old servants of the great family standing in the marketplace; he saw kinswomen pawning their plate; he saw his clerks (Brahmins, Mandarins, Grandissimes) standing idle and shabby in the arcade of the Cabildo and on the banquettes of Maspero's and the Veau-qui-tête; he saw red-eyed young men in the Exchange denouncing a man who, they said, had, ostensibly for conscience's sake, but really for love, forced upon the woman he had hoped to marry a fortune filched from his own kindred. He saw the junto of doctors in Frowenfeld's door charitably deciding him insane; he saw the more vengeful of his family seeking him with half-concealed weapons; he saw himself shot at in the rue Royale, in the rue Toulouse, and in the Place d'Armes: and, worst of all, missed.
But he wiped his forehead, and the writing on the paper became, in a measure, visible. He read:
Total mortgages on the lands of all the Grandissimes $--Total present value of same, titles at buyers' risk --Cash, goods, and accounts --Fausse Rivière Plantation account --
There were other items, but he took up the edge of the paper mechanically, pushed it slowly away from him, leaned back in his chair and again laid his hands upon his face.
"Suppose I retain Fausse Rivière," he said to himself, as if he had not said it many times before.
Then he saw memoranda that were not on any paper before him--such a mortgage to be met on such a date; so much from Fausse Rivière Plantation account retained to protect that mortgage from foreclosure; such another to be met on such a date--so much more of same account to protect it. He saw Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, with anguished faces, offering woman's pleadings to deaf constables. He saw the remainder of Aurora's plantation account thrown to the lawyers to keep the question of the Grandissime titles languishing in the courts. He saw the fortunes of his clan rallied meanwhile and coming to the rescue, himself and kindred growing independent of questionable titles, and even Fausse Rivière Plantation account restored, but Aurora and Clotilde nowhere to be found. And then he saw the grave, pale face of Joseph Frowenfeld.
He threw himself forward, drew the paper nervously toward him, and stared at the figures. He began at the first item and went over the whole paper, line by line, testing every extension, proving every addition, noting if possibly any transposition of figures had been made and overlooked, if something was added that should have been subtracted, or subtracted that should have been added. It was like a prisoner trying the bars of his cell.
Was there no way to make things happen differently? Had he not overlooked some expedient? Was not some financial manoeuvre possible which might compass both desired ends? He left his chair and walked up and down, as Joseph at that very moment was doing in the room where he had left him, came back, looked at the paper, and again walked up and down. He murmured now and then to himself: "Self-denial--that is not the hard work. Penniless myself--thatis play," and so on. He turned by and by and stood looking up at that picture of the man in the cuirass which Aurora had once noticed. He looked at it, but he did not see it. He was thinking--"Her rent is due to-morrow. She will never believe I am not her landlord. She will never go to my half-brother." He turned once more and mentally beat his breast as he muttered: "Why do I not decide?"
Somebody touched the doorknob. Honoré stepped forward and opened it. It was a mortgager.
"Ah! entrez, Monsieur."
He retained the visitor's hand, leading him in and talking pleasantly in French until both had found chairs. The conversation continued in that tongue through such pointless commercial gossip as this:
"So the brigEquinoxis aground at the head of the Passes," said M. Grandissime.
"I have just heard she is off again."
"Aha?"
"Yes; the Fort Plaquemine canoe is just up from below. I understand John McDonough has bought the entire cargo of the schoonerFreedom."
"No, not all; Blanque et Fils bought some twenty boys and women out of the lot. Where is she lying?"
"Right at the head of the Basin."
And much more like this; but by and by the mortgager came to the point with the casual remark:
"The excitement concerning land titles seems to increase rather than subside."
"They must havesomethingto be excited about, I suppose," said M. Grandissime, crossing his legs and smiling. It was tradesman's talk.
"Yes," replied the other; "there seems to be an idea current to-day that all holders under Spanish titles are to be immediately dispossessed, without even process of court. I believe a very slight indiscretion on the part of the Governor-General would precipitate a riot."
"He will not commit any," said M. Grandissime with a quiet gravity, changing his manner to that of one who draws upon a reserve of private information. "There will be no outbreak."
"I suppose not. We do not know, really, that the American Congress will throw any question upon titles; but still--"
"What are some of the shrewdest Americans among us doing?" asked M. Grandissime.
"Yes," replied the mortgager, "it is true they are buying these very titles; but they may be making a mistake?"
Unfortunately for the speaker, he allowed his face an expression of argumentative shrewdness as he completed this sentence, and M. Grandissime, the merchant, caught an instantaneous full view of his motive; he wanted to buy. He was a man whose known speculative policy was to "go in" in moments of panic.
M. Grandissime was again face to face with the question of the morning. To commence selling must be to go on selling. This, as a plan, included restitution to Aurora; but it meant also dissolution to the Grandissimes, for should theirsoldtitles be pronounced bad, then the titles of other lands would be bad; many an asset among M. Grandissime's memoranda would shrink into nothing, and the meagre proceeds of the Grandissime estates, left to meet the strain without the aid of Aurora's accumulated fortune, would founder in a sea of liabilities; while should these titles, after being parted with, turn out good, his incensed kindred, shutting their eyes to his memoranda and despising his exhibits, would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go about the streets of his town the subject of their implacable denunciation, the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So much, should he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter upon that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune which the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if lost at all, only when the family could afford to lose them, and Honoré Grandissime would continue to be Honoré the Magnificent, the admiration of the city and the idol of his clan. But Aurora--and Clotilde--would have to eat the crust of poverty, while their fortunes, even in his hands, must bear all the jeopardy of the scheme. That was all. Retain Fausse Rivière and its wealth, and save the Grandissimes; surrender Fausse Rivière, let the Grandissime estates go, and save the Nancanous. That was the whole dilemma.
"Let me see," said M. Grandissime. "You have a mortgage on one of our Golden Coast plantations. Well, to be frank with you, I was thinking of that when you came in. You know I am partial to prompt transactions--I thought of offering you either to take up that mortgage or to sell you the plantation, as you may prefer. I have ventured to guess that it would suit you to own it."
And the speaker felt within him a secret exultation in the idea that he had succeeded in throwing the issue off upon a Providence that could control this mortgager's choice.
"I would prefer to leave that choice with you," said the coy would-be purchaser; and then the two went coquetting again for another moment.
"I understand that Nicholas Girod is proposing to erect a four-story brick building on the corner of Royale and St. Pierre. Do you think it practicable? Do you think our soil will support such a structure?"
"Pitot thinks it will. Boré says it is perfectly feasible."
So they dallied.
"Well," said the mortgager, presently rising, "you will make up your mind and let me know, will you?"
The chance repetition of those words "make up your mind" touched Honoré Grandissime like a hot iron. He rose with the visitor.
"Well, sir, what would you give us for our title in case we should decide to part with it?"
The two men moved slowly, side by side, toward the door, and in the half-open doorway, after a little further trifling, the title was sold.
"Well, good-day," said M. Grandissime. "M. de Brahmin will arrange the papers for us to-morrow."
He turned back toward his private desk.
"And now," thought he, "I am acting without resolving. No merit; no strength of will; no clearness of purpose; no emphatic decision; nothing but a yielding to temptation."
And M. Grandissime spoke truly; but it is only whole men who so yield--yielding to the temptation to do right.
He passed into the counting-room, to M. De Brahmin, and standing there talked in an inaudible tone, leaning over the upturned spectacles of his manager, for nearly an hour. Then, saying he would go to dinner, he went out. He did not dine at home nor at the Veau-qui-tête, nor at any of the clubs; so much is known; he merely disappeared for two or three hours and was not seen again until late in the afternoon, when two or three Brahmins and Grandissimes, wandering about in search of him, met him on the levee near the head of the rue Bienville, and with an exclamation of wonder and a look of surprise at his dusty shoes, demanded to know where he had hid himself while they had been ransacking the town in search of him.
"We want you to tell us what you will do about our titles."
He smiled pleasantly, the picture of serenity, and replied:
"I have not fully made up my mind yet; as soon as I do so I will let you know."
There was a word or two more exchanged, and then, after a moment of silence, with a gentle "Eh, bien," and a gesture to which they were accustomed, he stepped away backward, they resumed their hurried walk and talk, and he turned into the rue Bienville.
"I tell you," Doctor Keene used to say, "that old woman's a thinker." His allusion was to Clemence, themarchande des calas. Her mental activity was evinced not more in the cunning aptness of her songs than in the droll wisdom of her sayings. Not the melody only, but the often audacious, epigrammatic philosophy of her tongue as well, sold hercalasand gingercakes.
But in one direction her wisdom proved scant. She presumed too much on her insignificance. She was a "study," the gossiping circle at Frowenfeld's used to say; and any observant hearer of her odd aphorisms could see that she herself had made a life-study of herself and her conditions; but she little thought that others--some with wits and some with none--young hare-brained Grandissimes, Mandarins and the like--were silently, and for her most unluckily, charging their memories with her knowing speeches; and that of every one of those speeches she would ultimately have to give account.
Doctor Keene, in the old days of his health, used to enjoy an occasional skirmish with her. Once, in the course of chaffering over the price ofcalas, he enounced an old current conviction which is not without holders even to this day; for we may still hear it said by those who will not be decoyed down from the mountain fastnesses of the old Southern doctrines, that their slaves were "the happiest people under the sun." Clemence had made bold to deny this with argumentative indignation, and was courteously informed in retort that she had promulgated a falsehood of magnitude.
"W'y, Mawse Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po' nigga kin tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell w'at ain' so--if dey know it, aw if dey don' know it--den datisa big lie!" And she laughed to contortion.
"What is that you say?" he demanded, with mock ferocity. "You charge white people with lying?"
"Oh, sakes, Mawse Chawlie, no! De people don't mek up dat ah; de debble pass it on 'em. Don' you know de debble ah de grett cyount'-feiteh? Ev'y piece o' money he mek he tek an' put some debblemen' on de under side, an' one o' his pootiess lies on top; an' 'e gilt dat lie, and 'e rub dat lie on 'is elbow, an' 'e shine dat lie, an' 'e put 'is bess licks on dat lie; entel ev'ybody say: 'Oh, how pooty!' An' dey tek it fo' good money, yass--and pass it! Dey b'lieb it!"
"Oh," said some one at Doctor Keene's side, disposed to quiz, "you niggers don't know when you are happy."
"Dass so, Mawse--c'est vrai, oui!" she answered quickly: "we donno no mo'n white folks!"
The laugh was against him.
"Mawse Chawlie," she said again, "w'a's dis I yeh 'bout dat Eu'ope country? 's dat true de niggas is all free in Eu'ope!"
Doctor Keene replied that something like that was true.
"Well, now, Mawse Chawlie, I gwan t' ass you a riddle. If dat isso, den fo' w'y I yeh folks bragg'n 'bout de 'stayt o' s'iety in Eu'ope'?"
The mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase brought another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.
"I gwan tell you," said themarchande; "'t is becyaze dey got a 'fixed wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the general ha, ha. "Oh, ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"
She made a gesture for attention.
"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow de cyaht gotteh be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is heel'"--she suited the action to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say: 'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh country gittin'toofree!'"
"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks is werry kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--deywants to b'liebwe is. W'y, you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' deyknowsdey lak it de bess."
The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving, with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see these efforts meet, or seem to meet, some degree of success. Happily man cannot so place his brother that his misery will continue unmitigated. You may dwarf a man to the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he will put out green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the dwarfed classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.
To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could reach to the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one of the population. She had certain affections toward people and places; but they were not of a consuming sort.
As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are fine and keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why? Because we get them as we get our old swords and gems and laces--from our grandsires, mothers, and all. Refined they are--after centuries of refining. But the feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, thirst, drowning, nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the rest--she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings. She remembered her mother. They had been separated in her childhood, in Virginia when it was a province. She remembered, with pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her since. She had had children, assorted colors--had one with her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for. Husbands--like the Samaritan woman's. We know she was a constant singer and laugher.
And so on that day, when Honoré Grandissime had advised the Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid demonstration of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his little capital, Clemence went up one street and down another, singing her song and laughing her professional merry laugh. How could it be otherwise? Let events take any possible turn, how could it make any difference to Clemence? What could she hope to gain? What could she fear to lose? She sold some of her goods to Casa Calvo's Spanish guard and sang them a Spanish song; some to Claiborne's soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle with unclean words of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers' laughter; some to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious comment or two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their Américain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and (after going home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she sold some more of her wares to the excited groups of Creoles to which we have had occasion to allude, and from whom, insensible as she was to ribaldry, she was glad to escape. The day now drawing to a close, she turned her steps toward her wonted crouching-place, the willow avenue on the levee, near the Place d'Armes. But she had hardly defined this decision clearly in her mind, and had but just turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song attracted an ear in a second-story room under whose window she was passing. As usual, it was fitted to the passing event:
"Apportez moi mo' sabre,Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum."
"Run, fetch that girl here," said Dr. Keene to the slave woman who had just entered his room with a pitcher of water.
"Well, old eavesdropper," he said, as Clemence came, "what is the scandal to-day?"
Clemence laughed.
"You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth'n' 'tall 'bout nobody. I'se a nigga w'at mine my own business."
"Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on outside."
"I d' no noth'n' 'bout no goin's on; got no time fo' sit down, me; got sell my cakes. I don't goin' git mix' in wid no white folks's doin's."
"Hush, you old hypocrite; I will buy all your cakes. Put them out there on the table."
The invalid, sitting up in bed, drew a purse from behind his pillow and tossed her a large price. She tittered, courtesied and received the money.
"Well, well, Mawse Chawlie, 'f you ain' de funni'st gen'leman I knows, to be sho!"
"Have you seen Joseph Frowenfeld to-day?" he asked.
"He, he, he! W'at I got do wid Mawse Frowenfel'? I goes on de off side o' sich folks--folks w'at cann' 'have deyself no bette'n dat--he, he, he! At de same time I did happen, jis chancin' by accident, to see 'im."
"How is he?"
Dr. Keene made plain by his manner that any sensational account would receive his instantaneous contempt, and she answered within bounds.
"Well, now, tellin' the simple trufe, he ain' much hurt."
The doctor turned slowly and cautiously in bed.
"Have you seen Honoré Grandissime?"
"W'y--das funny you ass me dat. I jis now see 'im dis werry minnit."
"Where?"
"Jis gwine into de house wah dat laydy live w'at 'e runned over dat ah time."
"Now, you old hag," cried the sick man, his weak, husky voice trembling with passion, "you know you're telling me a lie."
"No, Mawse Chawlie," she protested with a coward's frown, "I swah I tellin' you de God's trufe!"
"Hand me my clothes off that chair."
"Oh! but, Mawse Chawlie--"
The little doctor cursed her. She did as she was bid, and made as if to leave the room.
"Don't you go away."
"But Mawse Chawlie, you' undress'--he, he!"
She was really abashed and half frightened.
"I know that; and you have got to help me put my clothes on."
"You gwan kill yo'se'f, Mawse Chawlie," she said, handling a garment.
"Hold your black tongue."
She dressed him hastily, and he went down the stairs of his lodging-house and out into the street. Clemence went in search of her master.