UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 
 
 I 
 
THE PLEASANT WAYS OF 
 ST. MDARD 
 
 BY 
 
 GRACE KING 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1916, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 Published August, 1916 
 
Co 
 
 The Memory of my Brother 
 BRANCH MILLER KING 
 
 343128 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY . . . . 1 1 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MIMI 47 
 
 PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 77 
 
 WALKING THE RAINBOW 106 
 
 " IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " . . .126 
 
 TOMMY COOK 145 
 
 THE INSTITUT MIMI 157 
 
 CRIBICHE 172 
 
 JERRY 182 
 
 THE SAN ANTONIOS 202 
 
 A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 224 
 
 MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 246 
 
 THE FEAST OF ST. MEDARD 267 
 
 THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR ..... 281 
 
 AT THE VILLA BELLA 316 
 
 THE TURNING OF THE ROAD 332 
 
THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST.MEDARD 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Do you remember, you who can remember as much 
 as fifty years ago, when your ears hardly reached above 
 the dinner table, the stories your elders used to tell over 
 the wine and nuts? stories about their time and their 
 people, their youth and their doings; their ten, twenty, 
 forty years ago. What stupendous elders they were! 
 Truly to the opened eyes of the children looking up 
 to them they were, indeed, as mountains walking or 
 talking. And what stupendous tales they told of those 
 dim prehistoric ages before our birth! What great 
 things they had done in hunting and fishing, riding, and 
 electioneering aye, in fighting too; with the Indians, 
 with the British in 1812, with the Mexicans, with the 
 Spaniards, when they went filibustering to Cuba even 
 in the Revolutionary War, and with Napoleon, or escap 
 ing from the insurrection of the negroes in San Domingo. 
 For what they did not of themselves achieve, their 
 fathers and grandfathers achieved, and it all seemed 
 the same to them in their stories, as it did to their 
 listeners. 
 
 Ah, what fathers and grandfathers they had, and what 
 wonderful men and women they had known! The 
 children who listened then have never met the like of 
 them in their long life since. Yet Heaven knows how 
 patiently they have looked for them, and how gladly 
 they would have welcomed the sight of them. 
 
 3 
 
4 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 What a pleasant world that was, to be sure, into which 
 we were born fifty years ago in New Orleans; what a 
 natural, what a simple world! Then there was but one 
 truth, one right, that of Papa, than whom alone the 
 Father in Heaven above was greater but hardly more 
 feared. That tall, dignified gentleman to whom his wife 
 said " Sir," and his servants " Master," whose frown was 
 a terror to his children, and his caress an awesome favor ; 
 who descended every morning from his silent apart 
 ment, as from a cloud, to breakfast in majesty alone; to 
 whom there was but one easy means of approach, one 
 sure intermediary, Mama, whose sweet nature and 
 angelic presence so enfolded him that the sharp blade of 
 his temper was as safely sheathed in it, as his flashing 
 sword in his ebony walking stick. She was so pale and 
 delicate-looking in her ruffles and laces, with her mys 
 terious retirements to her apartment, through whose 
 hushed and dimmed atmosphere (wherein the furniture 
 took vast and strange proportions) the frightened 
 children at stated intervals were pushed and jerked by 
 whispering nurses to the great lace-curtained bed, and 
 made to kiss some baby or other, some loathesome, red, 
 little baby. It was brought there, we knew, by that 
 hideous, wrinkled purveyor of babies, old Madame 
 Bonnet, who had a wart covered with long hairs on her 
 chin, and whose only tooth stuck out from her upper 
 gum; the very image of the evil fairy, pictured in the 
 Magasin des Enfants, the nursery authority then on 
 fairies. Children would as soon have touched the devil 
 as her, or her covered basket under the foot of the bed, 
 in which she had brought the baby. And so, after the 
 Mama had given them some dragees from the glass bowl 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 on the table at the side of the bed, they would creep out 
 of the room, shrinking as far as possible from the 
 nefarious figure sitting in her low squat chair. 
 
 And do you remember how those great Papas of ours 
 went to war? And how God did not act towards them 
 as they would have acted towards Him, had they been 
 God and He a Southern gentleman? And how they 
 came back from the war those that did come back, alas ! 
 so thin, dirty, ragged, poor, unlike any Papas that 
 respectable children had ever seen before? If they had 
 strutted in buskins of yore, as they had been accused 
 of doing by their enemies, rest assured they footed it 
 now in bare soles. And do you remember what fol 
 lowed? Families uprooted from their past and dragged 
 from country to city, and from city to country, in the 
 attempt to find a foothold in the rushing tide of ruin 
 sweeping over their land. Outlawed fathers, traveling 
 off to Egypt, Mexico, South America, in search of a 
 living for wife and children, even into the enemy s own 
 country. Some of them, with dazzling audacity, chang 
 ing to the politics (or principles, as politics were then 
 called) of the conquerors, for the chance of sharing in 
 their own spoliation. And these, in memory, seemed 
 always to have traveled the farthest from us. Some 
 fathers of families, however, did nothing more ad 
 venturous than to submit to the will of God and His 
 conditions (assuming Him to have been their judge and 
 the arbiter in the war) ; these merely changed their way 
 of living to the new conditions, retiring with their families 
 to the outskirts of the city, where houses were cheap, 
 living simple, and the disturbing temptations of society 
 out of the question. 
 
6 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 These were the ones, in truth, who had the most 
 adventures afterwards in the quest for fortune. A living 
 was a fortune then, setting themselves to work in the 
 primitive fashion of their forefathers, when they faced 
 a new country and new conditions. But in the wilds of 
 a virgin forest and surrounded by savage Indians these 
 had advantages that their descendants learned to envy. 
 
 The fighting the Papas had done in war was nothing 
 to the fighting they did afterwards, for bread and meat; 
 and the bitterness of their defeat there was sweetness 
 compared to the bitterness that came afterwards. 
 Bayonet in hand was easier to them than hat 
 in hand. 
 
 And the delicate luxurious Mamas, who had been so 
 given to the world, reading and weeping over fictional 
 misfortunes there were some of them who lived to weep 
 for the security of food and shelter, once possessed by 
 their slaves. 
 
 Saddest of all these memories, and not the least to 
 be wondered at, the man who once had the most friends 
 was the one who in need found the fewest. The old 
 friends to whom we used to listen over the dinner table, 
 who told such fine tales of adventure, courage, gallantry, 
 wit, that we placed them in our hearts second only to 
 our Papa and third after God, do you remember but 
 who does not remember? how in the struggle for life 
 that followed the tempest of ruin they yielded to the tide 
 of self-interest, veering and swaying from their anchor 
 age, often indeed cutting loose and sailing clear out of 
 sight, leaving their crippled companions behind to shift 
 for themselves? It was considered lucky when the 
 deserter did not also turn betrayer and come back to 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 act the pirate upon his old comrades. Starvation is a 
 great dissolvent of friendship, as the shipwrecked have 
 found more than once. 
 
 Poverty is a land to which no one goes willingly, 
 which all strive instinctively to avoid. There seems 
 to be no rest or ease in it. Who goes there old is 
 buried there. The young spend their lives trying to 
 get out of it. But the way out of it is narrow and 
 steep, like the path to Heaven. It almost seems to 
 be the path to Heaven, so hard is the struggle to get 
 through it. It is white with the bones of those who have 
 died in it, as the way to Jerusalem was once with the 
 bones of the Crusaders. Some, giving up the struggle, 
 settle there, marry, and have children there; little ones 
 who never lose the mark of their nativity. The trampling 
 of the hard-footed necessities has told upon them; their 
 hearts are furrowed by the track of hopes passing into 
 disappointments. They know no other land than 
 poverty, and are haunted by strange misconceptions of 
 the land of the rich; the people who live in it and the 
 people who get to it. 
 
 Who of us, who now inherit want as surely as our 
 fathers did wealth, has not at one time or another made 
 a pilgrimage to that Gibraltar of memory, the home of 
 our childhood, of our Olympian beginnings? Leaving 
 behind us the sordid little rented house in which care 
 and anxiety have whitened the hair and wrinkled the 
 face, we have threaded the streets to stand on the side 
 walk opposite some grim, gaunt, battered old brick 
 mansion, filled with shops below and a mongrel lot of 
 tenants above, trying to fit our past into or upon it. 
 " Is that the balcony," we ask ourselves, " from which 
 
8 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 on gala days we used to look upon a gala world? Did 
 that grim story hold our nursery, where of mornings 
 we used to lie and watch the white angels pictured on the 
 blue tester of our bed, and once caught them in the act 
 of moving their wings? Was it there, when we woke 
 suddenly at night, that the awful flickering of the taper 
 in the corner, now brightening, now darkening the room, 
 frightened us, opening and shutting, opening and shut 
 ting, like the terrible eye of God? Is that the doorway 
 through which our great Past made its entrance and 
 exit? Is that the court-yard where our slaves worked 
 for us? That the building in which they were born to 
 work for us? No, no!" 
 
 To you who have not made that pilgrimage, I say, 
 do not attempt it; you will never find what you seek. 
 Thread the way to it only in memory, if you would 
 find it. And yet, ye who have been in this land we have 
 described, who have buried some of your old ones there, 
 and it may be some of your young ones, who have spent 
 your life trying to get out of it, or helping others dearer 
 than yourself on their way out of it, what think you of 
 it, after all? What in truth found you there in default 
 of the one lack that sent you there? Love, hope, courage, 
 light in darkness, strength in weakness, fortitude under 
 injustice, self-respect in the face of indignity and humili 
 ation did ye not find them growing there, growing 
 naturally, not cultivated artificially as they are of neces 
 sity in that other and upper land? Was less truth to 
 be met there, or more falsehood from others, less self- 
 sacrifice, less wifely devotion or family loyalty, than in 
 the land of your lost inheritance ? Did you find the slim 
 purse less charitable than the fat one, the heart under 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 the shabby cloth less sympathetic than the one under the 
 fine? 
 
 And but there is no use to ask it whatever the land 
 of poverty lacks, it lacks not ideals; the beautiful ones 
 that, as Schiller sings, fly from us one by one with our 
 youthful years, leaving us at last to fare on alone with 
 out them to old age. They, as we know, wing their way 
 more fondly down than up the narrow path, toward the 
 cradle in the hovel, rather than to the one in the palace. 
 
THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 
 
 THE Parish of St. Medard used to be as far away from 
 Canal Street, the center of life in New Orleans, as a 
 slow moving mule could drag a car in an hour s time. 
 It lay in the " faubourg Creole " the lower suburb of the 
 city, the extremity that stretched down the Mississippi 
 River. As cities progress upstream, not down, the other 
 extremity was, ipso facto, as one may say, the American 
 quarter. In it mules and cars traveled faster and 
 distances were shorter than in the faubourg of the 
 descendants of the old French and Spanish population. 
 The limit of St. Medard, in truth the last street in the 
 city, was held fixed by the buildings and grounds of the 
 United States barracks whose tall fence ran in a straight 
 line from the river to the end of the cleared land, almost 
 to the woods in the distance, barring inflexibly any 
 advance in that direction. Beyond the barracks stretched 
 the open country; the rural and ecclesiastical domain of 
 another saint, a region of farms and plantations. 
 
 On a bright May morning of 1865, tne waiting St. 
 Medard car on Canal Street was taking in its usual tale 
 of passengers: Gascon gardeners and dairymen going 
 home from the markets, soldiers on their way to the 
 barracks, Creole residents of the quarter, and gentry 
 
 11 
 
12 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 belonging to the plantations along the river, when there 
 entered it, comers, new to the driver and to his patrons; 
 an American family, father, mother, and four small 
 children followed by their negro servants, a man, his 
 wife, and their three half -grown daughters carrying 
 baskets and bundles innumerable, the awkward bundles 
 and baskets of country people. Curious enough looking, 
 doubtless, they were to the eyes observing them but not 
 unique as specimens of their kind at that date. All 
 over the city, every day, other cars might be seen receiving 
 just such passengers to carry from one home to another, 
 from one condition to another, nay, from one life to 
 another, ferrying them in their jog-trot passages in 
 truth, like so many barks of Charon from a past to a 
 future. 
 
 The father, a tall, thin, erect, scholarly-looking man, 
 singularly handsome of face, was dressed in black broad 
 cloth which, with his clean-shaven face, betokened at 
 that time a gentleman of the profession. His wife, fair 
 of hair and skin, was dressed in the grotesque and 
 obsolete fashion of a half dozen years before. The 
 children wore homespun and alligator hide shoes, the 
 little girls, sunbonnets, the boys, or at least one of them, 
 a palmetto straw hat, the other one was bareheaded. 
 The negroes in their clean, coarse plantation clothes 
 looked dazed and stupid; the woman, murmuring to 
 herself all the time, without knowing it : " My God, 
 my God ! " All sat stiff and rigid, serious and half 
 frightened. 
 
 The clouds of war had at last rolled by and the sun 
 of peace was shining in full force again, but the city was 
 still heavily garrisoned; companies of white and negro 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 13 
 
 soldiers in bright blue uniforms were marching through 
 the streets, orderlies with papers in their belts, dashing 
 by on horseback, officers glittering with golden braid and 
 buttons and epaulettes, strode the sidewalks, dominating 
 the soberly clad civilians in a manner quite out of propor 
 tion to their numbers, bands of newly freed negroes, 
 ragged and dirty, the marks of the soil still upon them, 
 straggled along, leisurely impeding the way of other 
 pedestrians as they gazed about them. Confederate 
 soldiers, still in their shabby gray, were to be seen every 
 where; gaunt, gray, hungry-looking animals, fiercely 
 eying the smartly-dressed soldiery that had conquered 
 them, and now owned their city. 
 
 The sharp eyes of the children, roving restlessly about 
 and springing back in quick rebound from the sight of 
 the soldiers, seemed to see nothing that pleased them, 
 that is nothing they were accustomed to. Even their 
 Mama was as strange to them as everything else in 
 her unnatural costume. They might well ask themselves, 
 looking askance at her, if she were the same Mama they 
 knew on the plantation, who used to go around in a 
 homespun dress and alligator shoes; the dress that they 
 had watched growing as cotton in the fields, and had 
 seen spun, woven, and dyed by their own negro women ; 
 the shoes, from an alligator that they had seen swimming 
 in their own Bayou, and which Jerry, over there, had 
 shot, skinned, and tanned the hide to make into shoes. 
 A sunbonnet then covered the head that now wore the 
 ugly bonnet trimmed with great pink roses and broad 
 blue ribbons. And yet, how often, when the little girls 
 had been ill and restless with fever on the plantation, 
 had their Mama taken her city bonnet as she called it 
 
H THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 out of its careful wrappings and showed it to them as 
 the greatest treat possible. It seemed beautiful to them 
 then, and it always quieted them although it had no 
 effect on the little boys and when she related to them 
 how she had bought it at Florette s and what Florette 
 had said and what Papa had said about it, it was the 
 most interesting story, in truth she could tell them. 
 The little boys never would listen to it but the little girls, 
 even with the fever burning in their veins, could have 
 listened forever to tales about Florette s wonderful shop 
 and the beautiful things she sold. But now when they 
 were on the very Canal Street that their Mama used 
 to talk so winningly about, when their car was standing 
 just in front of Florette s glamorous shop, they did not 
 think of it nor did their Mama remind them of it ! When 
 the car started, children and servants gave a portentous 
 start with it. The plantation ! the plantation ! the fields ! 
 the woods! the negro quarters! the sugar house! the 
 stables! the blacksmith shop! the corn mill! the mules, 
 cows, chickens! the Bayou! the Bayou! . . . The car 
 seemed to wrench their hearts from it all. And from 
 the steamboat, too, which during their five days journey, 
 they had learned to love and now regretted as pas 
 sionately as the plantation. How proud they were to 
 see it steaming up their Bayou and stop at their wharf ! 
 The greatest and grandest thing they had ever seen, 
 greater and grander surely than anything in the world. 
 How strange and small they felt upon it at first and oh ! 
 how curious it was to be nosing their way in and out 
 of bayous and lakes, just missing a snag here or running 
 into a bank there and nearly capsizing in a wind storm, 
 one day in the middle of a lake when the captain cursed 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 15 
 
 so loud that they understood why the crew called him 
 Captain Devil. They could hear him and the mate kick 
 ing and cuffing the crew above the noise of the storm 
 as their Mama held them around her in the cabin. The 
 storm began by blowing off Billy s hat and he had been 
 bareheaded ever since. When they got into the Missis 
 sippi, what a surprise that was ! A hundred times larger 
 it was than their own Bayou, the biggest stream, they had 
 thought, in the world. And what great plantations on 
 both banks ! They did not know that there were such big 
 plantations in the world. Their own plantation had been 
 the biggest in the world to them before. It shrank 
 suddenly to a sorrowfully small one, as small as their 
 steamboat, alongside the great steamboats at the city 
 wharf. They were almost ashamed of the Bayou Belle 
 then and they whispered to one another : " Oh ! I wish 
 she were bigger." 
 
 The father paid no attention to soldiers, negroes, pas 
 sengers, or anything else, so absorbed was he in what 
 he was telling his wife. He had been in the city or 
 according to the expression of the time, back from the 
 war, two weeks; she had arrived that morning from a 
 plantation, so remote and isolated in forest and swamp 
 that news of the progress of the war, even, came to it 
 only in slow, straggling, roundabout ways. She would 
 not have known that it was over if her husband had not 
 hurried to her from his camp with the news. Of what 
 had happened in the city, of the home she had left there, 
 she had heard nothing, since she had left it to its fate 
 at the hand of a victorious enemy. 
 
 Her husband was telling her a strange story indeed, 
 of his adventures since he had parted from her on the 
 
16 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MfeDARD 
 
 plantation, but she was not so much absorbed in it as he. 
 Her blue eyes showed thoughts behind them other than 
 the ones that lighted his dark eyes with heroic fire, and 
 her wan delicate features grew more and more out of 
 harmony with the full-blown, pink roses of the over 
 hanging bonnet brim. Yet she could from time to time 
 cast a look and smile of encouragement to her children 
 and servants and at some call of youth and spirit, raise 
 her long fair neck as proudly as if it bore the august 
 head of her husband instead of her own. 
 
 A skiff here, a pirogue there, by cart, horse, or mule, 
 on foot for many a mile, he had made his way through 
 a country given over to lawlessness, a people demoralized, 
 swarming freed negroes, an insolent soldiery, ruin, 
 wretchedness, and despair, no one knowing what to do 
 or where to begin work again in the uncertainty of what 
 the victorious government intended further as punish 
 ment for the defeated. But the city ! The anticipatory 
 laugh at what was to come revealed a different face from 
 the one that wore habitually a mask of stern hauteur ; a 
 frank, pleasant, companionable face. His wife smiled 
 in anticipation with him. " Such a lot of ruined, ragged, 
 hungry lawyers and ci-devant fine gentlemen! Each one 
 trying to raise a little money, hunting some one to 
 lend enough to pay for a decent suit of clothes, a night s 
 lodging, and a little food; and all being dodged or 
 refused by the smug money-makers among the old 
 friends who had shrewdly stayed at home. Every 
 pocket was buttoned up at the sight of a poor Con 
 federate; and every day new arrivals from the armies 
 or prisons, all about naked or starving, and all clamorous 
 for news and * views of the situation, and every man 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 17 
 
 with a family somewhere to bring back. As I was 
 walking along the street disconsolately, wondering what 
 I should do next, whom should I meet but old Doctor 
 Jahn, hobbling around just as he used to on his gouty 
 feet. 
 
 " Hello ! he said, you re back, are you? 
 
 " Yes/ I said, I m back/ 
 
 " Well, what are you going to do ? 
 
 " I told him, first of all, to bring my family from the 
 plantation, find a home for them, and then go to work 
 to make a living and educate the children; that as far 
 as I could see, we were ruined, but that I had made a 
 fortune once out of my profession and I could do it 
 again. He nodded, smiled, and tapped me on the breast 
 in his way : The first thing of all, my dear fellow, is 
 for you to get out of these God-forsaken clothes and 
 buy yourself a Christian appearance. You know we 
 are great on our Christianity and our appearance now/ 
 So he pulled me along by my arm, to a desk in some 
 office and wrote me a check for a hundred dollars and 
 hurried off. 
 
 " I rushed to a shop before any one could borrow of 
 me and bought these clothes. Egad! I was actually 
 ashamed to pay for them; it looked suspicious for me 
 to have so much money, and the price, twenty-five dollars, 
 seemed tremendous. Then I went straight to the levee 
 and hunted up our old friend, Captain Devlin. For 
 tunately, he was just in with his boat. I gave him fifty 
 dollars and told him to go and fetch you all here. * In 
 old times, he said, it used to be two hundred and 
 fifty dollars and a sugar crop besides. 
 
 The car left the broad street with handsome houses 
 
1 8 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 behind it and entered a different district, that of the 
 class that works for a living and lives for its work; 
 the class of small houses and large families. Block after 
 block of little cottages, hardly higher than the car itself, 
 was passed ; some of them no better than negro cabins on 
 a plantation. Sometimes there would be a garden in 
 front or at the side, and every now and then a cottage 
 of brick and double-sized would be passed, protected 
 from its surroundings by a high brick wall bristling on 
 the top with broken glass; bananas, pomegranates, and 
 crape myrtles stretching up above it. But this seemed a 
 crest of prosperity; for blocks afterwards, the houses 
 diminished in size and appearance, until a very hollow 
 of poverty and squalor was reached. At short intervals, 
 appeared a grocery, a drinking-shop, a bakery, at long 
 ones, the church, school, or convent. On the low wooden 
 steps of the little cottages sat women, sewing or nursing 
 babies; around them on the sidewalk and in the gutters 
 played their innumerable progenies of children, ranging 
 in color, from the fairest skins, through all gradations of 
 foreign complexions. The car went still slower through 
 this quarter, for the streets, which had begun so hand 
 some and broad at the beginning of the journey, grew 
 ever narrower and more crooked. The driver was kept 
 busy with his brakes and the plodding mule strained 
 painfully over the accumulation of turns. 
 
 The husband, however, unconscious of street or gait, 
 pursued his narrative: 
 
 " I thought it was then time to go to my office and 
 see what had become of it. I knew that the building was 
 still standing in its old place and that was about all I 
 had been able to find out about it. I glanced at the names 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 19 
 
 in the doorway; mine was no longer there. I marched 
 upstairs. On my old door was a fine, bright, new sign. 
 What do you think I read on it ? Thomas Cook, 
 Attorney and Counselor-at-Law. 
 
 " Tommy Cook? Little Tommy Cook? " 
 
 " Tommy Cook and no other. 
 
 " I opened the door and walked in. Well, Tommy/ I 
 said, What are you doing here ? 
 
 " He looked up, arose, and without any surprise at 
 seeing me, answered : Taking care of your office as you 
 told me, Sir/ 
 
 " I looked around. * How did you manage it ? 
 I found a way, Sir. 
 
 " You did, did you? 
 
 " I stole it, Sir. 
 
 " Well, that was literally what he did. He took down 
 my name, put up his own. Who was to object, in all 
 the stealing that was going on? And egad! he has 
 business too." 
 
 "Tommy Cook! The little lame boy! Who used to 
 brush your shoes and run your errands, and carry your 
 law-books to court for you ? " 
 
 " Well, he carried them for me this time, famously." 
 
 " But how can he be a lawyer without studying law? " 
 
 " I saw his license framed, hanging on the wall. 
 And that was all I did see in the room different from 
 the day I left it in his charge. The books were all there 
 with the ledgers and papers in the bookcases, just as 
 I left them. 
 
 T was the only way to save them, Sir, he said, to 
 steal them myself. 
 
 " I sat down in my old seat and he stood, as he used 
 
20 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MfiDARD 
 
 to do, waiting for orders. I got all the news I wanted 
 out of him and there is nothing on foot in the city that 
 he does not know all about. I told him that the first 
 thing we had to do was to find a house for you and the 
 children ..." 
 
 You are sure/ she said, interrupting him, hesitating 
 and embarrassed, a flush mounting to her face : " You 
 are sure, there is no hope still for our our home." Her 
 voice faltered. "I . . ." 
 
 He interrupted her. " Not the least in the world. As 
 I told you this morning, it has gone with the rest." 
 
 He dismissed the subject, curtly, decisively, as he had 
 done on the boat ; but there was no dismissing it from her 
 thoughts. She had not forgotten it an instant, since he 
 had announced the fact to her. " I thought, maybe, that 
 Tommy ..." 
 
 " It was one of the first houses seized and confiscated," 
 he interrupted her impatiently, and went on with what 
 he was saying : " We looked for houses until I was tired 
 out. Of course, with everybody coming back and want 
 ing houses, no one I can tell you found the home he had 
 left, if it was worth anything, for rents have gone up 
 tremendously! The whole city seems to have been 
 bought up by sharpers, who hold us in their hands, and 
 squeeze us. At last Tommy found the place we are 
 going to, for sixty dollars a month, and as prices go, it 
 is a bargain." 
 
 She looked at the street they were going through. " I 
 never was in this part of the city before, in my life." 
 
 " Nor I either until I came to look at the house. But 
 we will find living cheap there. Tommy went all over 
 the neighborhood; outside the barracks there is not an 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 21 
 
 American family in it. The barracks is a great draw 
 back, but that is the reason the house is cheap ; otherwise 
 it would have been seventy-five dollars a month instead 
 of sixty. It is worth about twenty. But the soldiers 
 are troublesome only on pay-day, when ladies and 
 children have to keep out of the cars and off the street. 
 I had a time getting the furniture ; everybody was buying 
 just what I was; beds, tables, chairs, and we had to 
 pay for the commonest the price we used to pay for the 
 handsomest. You will find it all in the house, with a 
 stove and some groceries; about all I could think of. 
 We shall have to live economically, and educate the 
 children . . ." and so on and so on. 
 
 He unfolded the map of the future before her in the 
 quiet determination of manner and terse language 
 characteristic of him, as if it were a campaign to be 
 fought again. She let her mind follow his with her 
 characteristic docility, embracing his views, adopting his 
 conclusions, conceding that the great future was his, the 
 husband s, the man s affair; the little future of daily life, 
 hers, the woman s, according to the traditions of con 
 jugal life in which she had been raised. But with all her 
 acquiescence of heart and mind, she had presentiments 
 they were all she ever had to oppose to his clear reason 
 ing. Somewhat like her freed negro servants she was 
 not sure of what she was riding into and she could have 
 murmured with Milly : " My God ! My God ! " without 
 knowing what she was calling on Him for. 
 
 As their hearts had been wrenched from the plantation 
 where they had passed their lives, so was her heart 
 wrenched from the home and the part of the city where 
 she had passed her life, the only home she had ever 
 
22 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 known, to which, for four long years, she had been 
 hoping to return, and for which her heart was now 
 calling out with passionate longing. 
 
 What did Peace mean to her? What could it mean 
 but to return to the past as she left it? The past! It 
 had gone from her as if it had been a spoil of war. And 
 as she saw it in her woman s way, her future, too, had 
 been taken away from her as a spoil of war. She be 
 longed to a period, a childhood, when parents of wealth 
 secured the future of their children, as they called it. 
 She was born into a secured future, so was her husband, 
 so were their children. All of a sudden she was bereft 
 of it. It had disappeared like a meteor from the sky. 
 The prospect she had been looking at all her life was 
 changed ; another and a different one substituted. It was 
 as if for so also it came to her in her confused imagina 
 tion as if her husband, the man to whom she had been 
 married for twelve years, that aristocratic gentleman 
 with classic features and noble expression of countenance, 
 should be divorced at a stroke from her; and a coarse, 
 plain, common man substituted as her lord and master, 
 the father of her children . . . and she had been no 
 surer of her husband than she had been of her future. 
 
 About two-thirds of the route there was a station where 
 passengers were transferred to an older, shabbier car, 
 a stiffer mule and a rougher track. Three uptown cars 
 were the regulated portion of the second car, and there 
 fore it never started until well filled. Our family, being 
 in the last car waited for, found but a poor accommoda 
 tion of seats at their disposition and had to wedge 
 themselves in wherever space could be procured by 
 shoving. An old gentleman with a white beard, who 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 23 
 
 looked like the picture of General Lee, was sitting at the 
 end of the seats; he reached forward and lifted one of 
 the little girls and placed her beside him. As soon as 
 she was seated, she lifted the cover of a little basket on 
 her arm and looking into it with a bright smile, whis 
 pered : " Kitty, Kitty." 
 
 "What s its name?" asked the old gentleman beside 
 her. 
 
 " I just call her Kitty now, because she s a kitten, you 
 know." 
 
 " But what will you call her when she s grown up ? " 
 
 " Oh! I don t know, Kitty still, I reckon." 
 
 " But you wouldn t like to be called Baby, after you 
 are grown up, would you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Mama calls me that now, most of the time." 
 
 " Yes, but you have a name." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! My name is Marian, but they call me Polly, 
 because I talk so much. Even Papa calls me Polly. 
 That s Dickey, I mean Richard, over there and that s 
 Billy with his hat off. His name is William and he s got 
 a dog tied to that string in his hand. Bob is his name, 
 because he s got a bob tail. Papa told Billy not to bring 
 Bob with him, so Billy has to keep him hid under Milly s 
 dress. That s Cicely, leaning against Mama. She has 
 chills and fever. ..." 
 
 Catching her mother s eye and a warning shake of 
 the head, she stopped abruptly, but in a moment after, 
 peeping at her basket and calling, " Kitty," she began 
 again ; " I hate the city, don t you hate the city ? I 
 think the city s so funny, don t you? Everything looks 
 funny in it. Mama looks so funny, and don t Papa 
 look funny? Billy says if he was Papa, he d be ashamed 
 
24 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 to go about in them clothes." She stopped short, 
 frightened, and gave a quick look at her father. " I 
 mean those clothes, I m glad Papa didn t hear that, yes 
 indeed," with a laugh. " He promised us that he would 
 punish us next time we used them for those, like niggers, 
 I mean negroes; and the next time Billy said it, he 
 punished Billy. Billy don t say it no more now when 
 Papa can hear him. And he makes us say saw instead of 
 seen. I think it s funny to say saw for seen, don t you? 
 But we don t say seen any more." . . . 
 
 Again the warning shake of the head stopped her 
 for a moment. 
 
 " Them s Yankees over there. Ain t you glad you 
 ain t a Yankee? They re so ugly, ain t they? I hate 
 em. Don t you hate Yankees? Everybody hates 
 Yankees, I reckon, except Yankees. We re going to live 
 right by the Yankees, and Papa told us this mornin , 
 before he took us off the boat, that he didn t want to 
 hear no more such talk about hatin Yankees and that 
 we mustn t go about tellin people how we hated em. 
 That ladies and gentlemen didn t talk that way, and that 
 we were ladies and gentlemen and he expected us to be 
 have like ladies and gentlemen. But Billy says he s 
 goin to kill every one he sees when he s a man and so 
 is Dickey 
 
 "I would hate to be a Yankee wouldn t you?" she 
 resumed when her mother took her eye from her. " I 
 wouldn t be one, and havin people prayin for me." 
 
 "Praying for Yankees. Who prays for Yankees?" 
 asked the old gentlemen. 
 
 " Mama makes us pray for em because they re our 
 enemies and she says we must forgive em too, and 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 25 
 
 anyhow, the more we hate em the more we must pray 
 for em. Pshaw ! I m glad I m not an enemy to have 
 people forgivin me. Billy says he s goin to train Bob to 
 bark at em," and she laughed gleefully. " I would like 
 to live on a steamboat, wouldn t you ? But you ought to 
 hear the Captain curse! Billy can curse just like him. 
 Billy says he s goin to be a steamboat captain when 
 he s a man. But Dickey ain t. Dickey s goin back to 
 the plantation and I m goin with him. It s too funny in 
 the city. Have you ever been on the Bayou Belle? I 
 tell you we had a bully, I mean a nice, time on her." . . . 
 
 After the Station, the track ran over a rough country 
 road with a deep ditch on each side, crossed by ragged- 
 looking lanes. On the left, beyond the gardens, dairies 
 and open fields, stretched the outline of the forest in the 
 distance. To the right, the river could be seen by 
 glimpses between the great groves of magnolia trees that 
 surrounded the houses facing it. An exhilarating breeze 
 blew fresh and strong from that direction. The children 
 craned their necks to look at the Gascons toiling in their 
 gardens; whole families, from the grandmother in her 
 headkerchief, to little children, raking, hoeing, gathering 
 vegetables and working the great long swinging poles 
 over the wells. 
 
 Even the eyes of the negro servants brightened with 
 intelligence at the familiar sight of it. Billy, who had 
 made his way to the platform, could be heard excitedly 
 imparting his sentiments about cows and gardening to 
 the driver who seemed to welcome any distraction of his 
 attention from the hard, dry, belabored back of his mule 
 no more sensitive to the whip than a painted wooden 
 back would be. 
 
26 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 The Gascons slipped off one by one as the car went 
 along. The negroes left in a body at a path that led 
 to a great brick ruin of a building " the Settlement " 
 they called it. At last, long after patience had come to 
 an end, the journey came to its end also. The soldiers 
 made a bolt for front and rear door ; the other passengers 
 waiting for them to pass. By the time the American 
 family were out of the car with their baskets and bundles, 
 the driver had taken his dram at the corner barroom; 
 for this flower of civilization which had followed the 
 track through the length of the city bloomed here also at 
 the end of it. 
 
 " And now," said the father cheerily, " we must foot 
 it awhile." The sidewalk consisted of a plank fastened 
 upon the ground along which the party could advance 
 only in single file. He took the lead ; wife, children and 
 servants tailing after him, he turning his head and call 
 ing out to them, his handsome face aglow with animation. 
 He was never so animated and eager and never looked 
 so handsome as when leading up to some hard pass, 
 some breach of disappointment. The plank walk ran in 
 front of a row of new, brightly painted little cottages, 
 set so closely together that the lounging men and women 
 on the steps could talk to one another, as if they were 
 seated on a long bench. The women appeared only half 
 dressed in their loose sacques and gowns and with their 
 hair in disorder. The men were soldiers, but they seemed 
 more abashed as the little procession passed in front 
 of them than the women did. 
 
 Across the street was the high fence inclosing the 
 barracks grounds. Soldiers were drilling inside; from 
 the noise, the place seemed filled with them. Further 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 27 
 
 on, towards the river, the officers quarters could be seen 
 through their surrounding groves of trees. Over it all, 
 above trees and buildings, above everything but the blue 
 sky, waved the United States flag. 
 
 The head of the little procession, turning sharply to 
 the right, strode down the opening that served for a 
 street. Its ruts and holes had been baked by the sun 
 to stony hardness; but the little feet stumbled along 
 over it, following the resolute tread in front without 
 lagging or complaining. Children and negroes looked 
 around them joyfully for they were in the country, the 
 dear country again. The low-lying blue heavens over 
 head, flecked with white clouds, was the country sky; 
 the bright, hot sun was the country sun they knew so 
 we^l. The weeds growing rank and wild along the sides 
 of the road, the droning bees, the mosquito hawks, dart 
 ing hither and thither among the leaves and flowers, as 
 well as the breeze that blew fitfully, just as it used to blow 
 over the fields, all that was the country, not the city. 
 The sound of chickens, geese and ducks, the smell of 
 manure; what a glad exchange this was for the long 
 ride in the car! 
 
 Again they were wheeled abruptly, and led alongside 
 an old, swaying fence, with an inside hedge of wild 
 orange whose branches touched the heads of the taller 
 ones among them. At a gate in this fence, stood a little 
 bare-footed boy, who at sight of them, darted away, 
 screaming at the top of his voice : " Madame Joachim ! 
 Madame Joachim ! " And from the end of the street 
 at once, a stout woman hurried forward, her wide blouse 
 volante of calico, flying out behind her, showing her 
 fat feet in white stockings and carpet slippers. Wide as 
 
28 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 the blouse volante was, it fell only comfortably over 
 the rotund parts of her body. Her well oiled curling 
 black hair, drawn back tightly from her swarthy face, 
 glistened in the sun, and her face, as far as it could be 
 seen, wore a smile. She carried a great bunch of keys 
 and after shaking hands all around selected the largest 
 key a ponderous iron one unlocked the gate, threw 
 it open, and stood aside for the family to enter their new 
 .home. XThe house also had suffered a revolution in 
 fortune. Its paint hung upon it in rags, showing the 
 naked wood beneath. The gallery was hidden by the 
 vines that hung over it from the roof, the accumulated 
 luxuriance of years; parterres and paths in the garden 
 were grown together in a tangle of vines and shrubs. 
 Over the outside of the rotting cistern, green moss fol 
 lowed the line of trickling water. 
 
 Madame Joachim, in spite of her size, lightly mounted 
 the steps of the gallery ahead of the newcomers, and 
 taking another monstrous key, unlocked the central one 
 of a row of green batten windows, and with a smaller 
 key, the glass door inside; and again, with a polite 
 gesture, motioned the family to enter before her. 
 
 Without a word, they did so and stood in the dim 
 interior while she went from room to room on either 
 side, opening the glass windows and heavy green shut 
 ters. The clanging of the heavy iron hooks as she let 
 them drop was the only sound heard until all were opened. 
 The bright day illuminated a room at the back and two 
 on each side. In each stood a small allotment of 
 furniture. 
 
 " This," said Madame Joachim, waving her hand with 
 pride to the glistening whitewashed walls and freshly 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 29 
 
 black-painted mantelpiece, " this, as you see, is like new; 
 the rest," with a shrug of the shoulders, " is according 
 to nature." 
 
 She led the way out to the back gallery. Across a 
 large yard, shaded with a fine wild cherry tree, stood a 
 long, low cabin; the kitchen and servants rooms. The 
 fence here was lined with a row of old and gnarled fig 
 trees. " St. Medard," said Madame Joachim, pointing 
 to a small steeple that dominated the sky here, as the 
 flag did in front. Descending the steps and crossing the 
 yard, she opened the doors of the kitchen building, leav 
 ing each key carefully in its keyhole as she had done in 
 the house. 
 
 The little group, instead of following her, remained 
 on the gallery, silent and still; the husband, forgetting 
 to be animated, the wife forgetting to look at his face, 
 the children imitating her, looking ahead of them at 
 nothing. The clear voice of a mocking bird in some 
 near tree alone broke the silence. They were standing 
 as she had left them when Madame, returning across the 
 yard, reached the steps. There, springing forward, she 
 exclaimed : " But that poor child has a chill ! " 
 
 It was so. Cicely, the sickly one, was having a chill, 
 her chill as the children called it. She and every one else 
 had forgotten it in the excitement of the moment, but 
 true to the day and hour as it had been for three months 
 past, it had not forgotten her. The child was clinching 
 her teeth and hands tight to keep them from shivering, 
 but her poor little thin face was ashen, her lips blue and 
 trembling. 
 
 Madame Joachim picked her up like a baby and with 
 her soft swift walk carried her to the nearest bed, 
 
30 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Cicely s face pressing into the great fat breast as into 
 a soft pillow. When she was laid on the bed it was 
 discovered she was crying; she who never cried, whom 
 her Papa always called his Marshal Ney, because she was 
 the bravest of the brave. The little family clustered 
 around her in consternation; most of them feeling like 
 crying too. It was as if this sorrow and disappointment 
 were all of a sudden too much to bear. And whereas, 
 on the plantation, the youngest child would have known 
 what to do for a chill, now they stood as helpless as if 
 they had never seen the miserable thing before. 
 
 It was Madame Joachim who hunted up sheets and 
 spread them over the bare mattress, who undressed the 
 child, and eased a pillow under her head. Then, slipping 
 to the back gallery, and running her practised eye along 
 the fence and selecting a certain hole, she called out in 
 quick, sharp Creole patois : " Cribiche, my son, run fast, 
 get some orange leaves and tell Joachim to make some 
 tisane, as quick as he can, and you bring it ; Courri vile, 
 mo di toi" 
 
 When the tisane came, she gave it herself to Cicely, 
 petting and comforting her, with the sweetest, softest 
 voice in the world. " Never mind, never mind, bah ! 
 What is a chill! Everybody has chills! Now, one more 
 cup, eh ! There, there, see how good it tastes ! By and 
 by, you will take another cup, and you will sweat, and 
 when you sweat, you know, you are most over it, and 
 you will shut your eyes, and you will go to sleep, and 
 when you wake, it will be all gone." She spoke in the 
 soft singsong English of the Creole who has learned the 
 language by ear. The little one obediently closed her 
 eyes, and listening to the mocking bird, and hearing the 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 31 
 
 cowbells and the faint droning of the insects outside, fell 
 into the delusion that she was again on the plantation; 
 delusions are the saving grace of chills. 
 
 Madame Joachim, with her finger on her lip, stepped 
 softly out of the room, and, as she never forgot anything, 
 went to the kitchen to see what was needed there. Milly 
 and her daughters, having kicked off shoes and stockings 
 and some of their stupidity with them, were moving 
 about with something like a servant s activity. A fire 
 had been made in the new stove, water put on to boil, but 
 like all country cooks, when they do not know what else 
 to do, Milly was proceeding to make biscuits. 
 
 " But your soup, my good woman," exclaimed Madame 
 Joachim, amazed at such a want of sense, " put on your 
 soup! don t you see the soup meat there on the table? 
 And the loaf of bread? Get your rice ready to boil! 
 parch your coffee ! " She put on the soup pot herself, 
 poured in water, added the soup meat and looked around. 
 "Ah! The soup vegetables! Cribiche, my son!" she 
 called out of the window, toward the fence, " Cribiche ! 
 run quick over there to Monsieur le Cure and ask him 
 for some onion and some parsley and some carrot for 
 the soup pot ! Run quick, I see him in the garden now ! " 
 
 Cribiche, evidently did not like this commission. It 
 was one thing going to the blacksmith s who had nothing 
 against him and another going to the priest. Joachim 
 feared neither God nor devil, it is true, when he was 
 angry, which he was not now, but the priest . . . 
 Cribiche had his reasons for avoiding him. " But will 
 you go when I tell you," impatiently called Madame 
 Joachim looking out of the window, " or " her threat 
 was vague but effective. Cribiche at once crossed the 
 
32 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 street to the priest s garden where Pere Phileas was hard 
 at work, his cassock twisted up high around his waist. 
 
 Behind the church was the priest s habitation, for it 
 could not be called a house; and behind the house was 
 the vacant ground which he, by no better right than 
 squatter sovereignty, had appropriated for his garden. 
 He did not raise his head but remained bending over his 
 weeds until Cribiche came up close to him, and he would 
 not hear what he was saying until he came very close; 
 then, like a loosened spring, he shot up in the air, seized 
 Cribiche with his left hand, boxed him soundly with his 
 right, and shook him until the boy s clothes cracked. 
 
 " Is this the way you pull up my weeds ? Is this the 
 way you come straight back when I tell you? Is this 
 the way you think you can fool me ? " 
 
 Rough as he was, Joachim with his strap was worse, 
 this was all the consolation Cribiche had. He submitted 
 without a struggle and without an answer, since both were 
 useless. He saw, in truth, that he was himself in fault, 
 he should not have come so near, too near to dodge or 
 run ; the next time, he swore to himself, he would know 
 better. 
 
 When the priest heard the request, he at once went 
 to work to comply with it, and generously, although it 
 was only with parsley, onions, and carrots and a bit of 
 thyme which Madame Joachim had forgotten to ask for. 
 It is* so pleasant to give that it is a wonder people do not 
 more generally yield themselves up to this form of self- 
 indulgence. As for poor old Pere Phileas, he was a very 
 sybarite about giving. His homely, honest face beamed 
 as his knotted fingers pulled up carrots and onions and 
 picked the parsley and thyme. And as he lost no occasion 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 3 3 
 
 of advancing the merits of God with such a partisan of 
 the devil as Cribiche, he spoke to him thus, before hand 
 ing him the bouquet for the soup (who would ever sup 
 pose that only a moment before he had been cuffing and 
 shaking him?) : 
 
 " You see, my son, how good God is ! He sends the 
 friend to those who need one, and he sends the good 
 deed to those who need that; to those who can bestow 
 nothing else, good deeds, my child, are the picayunes of 
 the poor. We are never too poor to give one of them 
 even if we have not a cent in the pocket. The devil 
 can always provide us with money, but it is only God 
 who can provide us with a good deed. And even when 
 one has money, one is always glad to have a friend as 
 one is glad to have the moon of dark nights." 
 
 Cribiche showed as much appreciation for moral lec 
 tures as a snapping turtle for favors bestowed upon his 
 back; and as a snapping turtle under a disagreeable 
 ordeal advances his head out of his shell from time to 
 time to peep with his little shrewd eyes and see if the 
 way is clear, so did Cribiche peep from under his obstinate 
 stolidity and dart his shrewd little glances around. 
 
 The priest accompanied him to the gate and held him 
 by the shoulder, while he added affectionately and gently : 
 " And now when you see the fruit of our labors, my son, 
 are you not glad that you did even a small portion of the 
 work here? See, we can give the vegetables needed for 
 the soup of a neighbor a stranger whom we do not 
 know, who does not know us. Think ! Yesterday, that 
 old house was vacant, silent; today, it is filled with 
 people; and just as we transplant a vegetable from one 
 garden to another, the good God has transplanted our 
 
34 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 new neighbors here, to St. Medard, from whence, we 
 know not, and the old house becomes an object of our 
 good will and friendly services. And we will grow 
 together, henceforth, like plants in the same plot. The 
 difference, the difference, my child, always think of the 
 difference between yesterday and today, . . . and fear 
 and love God, for He alone accomplishes what we think 
 we do in the way of good, as the devil alone accomplishes 
 what is evil, and makes us evil. And be very careful that 
 the devil does not put you up to some mischief to our 
 new neighbors. If he tries to, put him behind you, or 
 you will feel Joachim s strap. Ah! your friend, the 
 devil, never saves you from that, you know. He can 
 lead you into temptation but he cannot save you from the 
 punishment . . . And do not forget to be in time to 
 ring the Angelus." 
 
 But Cicely s chill proved to be not her chill, the one 
 the family had grown accustomed to, that came and went 
 like an easy tempered conqueror. A different and a 
 savage enemy indeed, now invaded her little body. It 
 would not loose its grasp upon her ; and, when the fever 
 came, it raged like a conflagration, consuming remedies 
 as if they were tinder. When called, her face brightened 
 in response and she strove to raise her head. 
 
 " Not yet, not yet, my child " coaxed the mother 
 tenderly, bending over her, " stay in bed a little longer 
 and then you can get up and dress and help us." 
 
 " Cicely loves to work," she explained to Madame 
 Joachim. " She never complains and never gives up, and 
 as soon as her fever is off she is as well as ever, eh, 
 Cicely? . . . For three years she has had chills and 
 fever. I may say she is never without them. Oh, yes! 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 35 
 
 Sometimes we were able to break them and she would 
 be free, but only for a little while. They always came 
 back, they were sure to come back in the Summer. But 
 never mind ! it will soon be over for the day, eh, Cicely ! 
 she added cheerily and turned to her work again. She 
 had taken off her unnatural costume and wore her short 
 homespun gown once more. 
 
 " Cribiche has never been sick in his life," answered 
 Madame Joachim, following her around and working 
 as busily as she. " We have not much sickness down 
 here, a little fever sometimes, and sometimes chills and 
 fever. Oh! if Doctor Botot had to live from his prac 
 tice," dragging the physician into her conversation by 
 the hair of his head, " he would not live down here. No ! 
 he would go uptown among the rich Americans. It is 
 curious, how the rich are always sick. But Botot is a 
 good doctor, why shouldn t I know it ? When he comes to 
 a sick one, the first thing he says is : Where is Madame 
 Joachim ? Send for Madame Joachim/ He lives on the 
 levee in that fine house below the barracks. Oh! I 
 guarantee, he lives with his mother-in-law, old Madame 
 Sereno. She says she is poor, but don t you believe her ; 
 she is rich, very rich, as Doctor Botot knows. He 
 married her daughter, en secondes noces. The first time 
 he married the daughter of old Beaume, old Beaume 
 tranquille, we used to call him, the pharmacien on Eng- 
 hien Street. Botot thought he had money, but he made 
 a mistake, old Beaume did not collect his debts, or that is 
 what they said," shrugging her shoulders; "anyhow he 
 did not leave any money, and when Botot became a 
 widower he married Mademoiselle Marie Sereno. She 
 is the eldest daughter; Mademoiselle Amelie is the 
 
36 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 youngest. Mademoiselle Marie had not much sense; 
 everybody thought she was going into the convent, that 
 it was her vocation. Bah! it is well to say that when 
 one wants an excuse. She is dead now, and the doctor 
 is a widower, but not for long, I promise you. Some 
 people believe that chills and fever won t fool you. Don t 
 you believe that. Chills and fever always fool you if you 
 don t cure them. Botot is a good doctor, but not as 
 good a doctor as he thinks he is. It is always his worst 
 cases that he cures ; as he tells about them. When people 
 die, he says nothing was the matter only they did not take 
 his medicines. But he knows how to cure chills and 
 fever. I have seen him cure them. He is called into the 
 barracks sometimes and it is well for the sick that he is, 
 for the doctor there looks as much like a doctor as 
 Joachim like a priest. It is the season of the year to 
 cure chills and fever." 
 
 " They generally go away in the Winter," said Mrs. 
 Talbot. 
 
 " Go away ! Yes ! But, my God ! They come back again ; 
 if you are there for them to come back to. Sometimes 
 you are not there. To believe what Botot says, and to 
 believe what you know, are cats of a different color. But 
 if he says he can cure chills and fever, you can believe 
 that. . . . You can see him pass here any time, going 
 to church. He goes to church every day, he is very pious. 
 Mademoiselle Marie married him on account of his piety. 
 She also was very pious. You should see him praying in 
 church ! When he puts on his bon St. Joseph air, bon 
 St. Joseph vas ! " . . . 
 
 " He is very rich," Madame Joachim resumed to 
 break the silence, " that is in prospect. Mademoiselle 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 37 
 
 Amelia it is, who will go into the convent. Oh, no! 
 She will not get married . . . She will not meet a doctor 
 as pious as she is. No, no, she will go into the convent, 
 Botot will lead her there himself. And he will fasten 
 the black veil on her, himself, if she wishes. You ask 
 him if Madame Sereno is rich, he will shrug his 
 shoulders. He will say: Who is rich after a war? 
 But listen to me, old Madame Sereno is rich ; she did not 
 lose a cent by the war, not even her niggers. Look at 
 them, they are with her still. Lose her money ! Tra, la, la, 
 the geese in the street know better than that. Other 
 people did but she did not. Not that the Yankees did not 
 find out she was rich; they found out she was rich, 
 just as Botot found out she was rich. Did she go to 
 France? No. Did she hide and pretend she had gone? 
 No. She sent for Louis, her man of affairs : Louis/ she 
 said, see this paper, the Yankees have sent me to sign 
 ... they will come for it in three days/ Then she 
 showed him some money, not paper money, but gold, gold, 
 I tell you. You know, Louis, I could sign this paper; 
 I could take this " host " " , Madame Joachim called it. 
 It is no sin to lie to robbers, but I don t want to 
 be bothered. Here, take this paper and I give you the 
 money; but, you understand me, eh? If I am bothered, 
 I will sign the paper, I will take the host, and I will get 
 absolution for it ; but you Madame Sereno raised her 
 finger, and shook it at Louis you will lose your 
 place. I will give it to Simon. Simon is not a 
 fool. Simon, he was like the tooth-ache to Louis, and 
 that is the way Madame Sereno did, and kept her money 
 and property. God knows if it is true ; but that is what 
 I heard. I heard too that it was not Louis but an 
 
38 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. M&DARD 
 
 American, she sent for. But how did Louis make so 
 much money then ? Doctor Botot is a good doctor. His 
 father was a good doctor for children. Only he was 
 not a doctor but a leecher. They used to send for him 
 and his leeches all over the city." And Madame Joachim 
 with her fingers imitated how leeches were worked into 
 a soft ball of clay. " I have bought leeches from him 
 often, ..." etc., etc. She talked on as unremittingly 
 as she worked. 
 
 At last, the day, that in the morning lay like an 
 unknown coast before the family, drew to a close, and 
 evening began to enfold it. But the future that the 
 father had planned, that the family was to enter upon at 
 once, the very next day, had to be put off. At one time, 
 it seemed indeed as if the family would enter it with one 
 member missing. Cicely did not respond to her name; 
 she was found to be, not asleep, but in a stupor; she 
 could not be aroused. Cribiche had to be summoned 
 from ringing the Angelus to run for the doctor. 
 
 Ah! Now it was seen that there was but one terror 
 in life, only one; and it came from no earthly enemy 
 . . . that there was but one loss that counted in the 
 world . . . but one thing God could grant that was 
 worth praying for! 
 
 The children would creep on tip-toe to the door and 
 peep through at Cicely lying delirious, with half -opened 
 eyes. " Is the fever going down, Mama ? " they would 
 whisper, and when she would shake her head, they would 
 creep softly away, more and more frightened by the look 
 on her face. They had seen her lose battles, armies, a 
 fortune, a home, but they had never before seen her lose 
 a child. 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 39 
 
 In her delirium, Cicely babbled about the plantation; 
 laughing and laughing over her drolleries. 
 
 " Merciful God ! " thought the mother sitting beside 
 her. " What had she there to laugh over ? Sick, sick, 
 sick, all the time, hardly a day, never a week without 
 fever . . . The doctor has no hope, I could see 
 it ... She has fought and fought, but her strength 
 is exhausted. She has no chance ! She is doomed ! Too 
 late! too late! . . . Perhaps a month ago! . . ." 
 She would slip her hand under the sheet to feel the 
 burning body, she would pass cooling cloths over face 
 and hands ..." Nothing but skin and bones "... 
 How she yearned over the emaciated body ! " Her poor 
 little hands, her poor little hands like bird claws." She 
 laid her cheek upon them and the tears gushed from her 
 eyes she who had boasted, that she never would or 
 could give up hope for a child of hers ! 
 
 Her heart rose up in passionate revolt and through her 
 mind raced a mob of thoughts as senseless as Cicely s 
 delirium. 
 
 " I thought, I thought, when the war was over, and 
 peace came, when we could get back to our home and 
 get a doctor, I thought we would then be safe. . . . 
 Would to God we were back on the plantation ! Would 
 to God the war was still going on! Would to God I 
 were still there, in that lonely, gloomy place all by my 
 self ; for there I could still hope, I had still something to 
 look forward to ... night after night watching and 
 nursing my child . . . longing for daylight just to 
 see her clearly again; but never losing courage . . . 
 praying that God would work a miracle and send a 
 doctor down the Bayou when I knew no doctor could 
 
40 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 come ; running to the window to listen, sure that I heard 
 a skiff and that it was bringing a doctor . . . hearing 
 only the rippling of the water under the gunwales that 
 sounded sometimes like the whining of a child in 
 pain . . . God did not send a doctor, but he heard 
 my prayers. He cured my child. He had to cure her, 
 for we had no medicines to give her ! There, her fever 
 always went away at last ! " 
 
 On the other side of the bed sat her husband; his 
 face graver and sterner than ever. 
 
 " He should not have taken us to that fever-stricken 
 place ! " Her gentle thoughts, changed into furies by her 
 grief, knew no bounds in their pitiless course. " He 
 should not have kept us there ! He knew it was a swamp ! 
 He knew it was unhealthy! He knew it, he knew it! 
 Other men could send their families into healthy refuges. 
 Other men could send them to Europe ! " 
 
 To Europe! She had forgotten the scorn and con 
 tempt she once poured upon those patriots who preferred 
 for their children the easy comfort of Europe to the 
 heroic hardships of war; upon the poor-spirited women 
 who could accept the despicable role of flying from 
 danger and from their husbands, of abandoning their 
 country fighting for its life, armies weltering in their 
 blood on the battlefield ! 
 
 " He said the war would not last ! It would soon 
 be over! And we would all be home again. Ah! he 
 always imagines that what he thinks is going to happen ! 
 He thought it was our duty to stay and look after the 
 negroes! He could think of them; he could not think 
 of us! Duty! Duty! Duty is his God! And it costs us 
 the life of our child! . . . She was always delicate 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 41 
 
 and frail but the prettiest and brightest of them all! 
 When she was born, I felt so happy! I never had 
 thought that earth held such happiness as I felt 
 then! . . . And when he came to me, he made me 
 feel so proud ! I would not have changed places with the 
 greatest queen on earth! " 
 
 And now the little, bare, uncomfortable room in St. 
 Medard changed to the great, luxurious, dimly lighted 
 chamber, where in a lace curtained bed, she lay with 
 Cicely at her side. She heard again the soft tread of her 
 husband over the carpet, . . . was it his tread, or the 
 beating of her heart she heard ? She lifted her eyelids, 
 he was there, he was there bending over her . 
 Cicely had ceased her delirious babbling, a gentle calm 
 had fallen over the room, the shaded candle in the corner 
 made a soothing twilight. The long black hours passed, 
 holding the suspensive balance even. The gray dawn 
 came, the light of day fell over the bed. "Cicely! 
 Cicely ! " her father laid his hand on her cooling forehead 
 and called her. The good little thing, who had never 
 known what it was to be disobedient or hold back when 
 she heard her father calling, was seen to strive to answer, 
 but she could not. " Cicely! Cicely! " She heard him, 
 she was wanted, she could not answer. Her heart 
 strained and strained, her thin breast lifted, fell and 
 lifted . . . a^ last a faint moan came through her lips 
 and her eyes opened, she tried to smile. 
 
 " Doctor Botot ! Doctor Botot," exclaimed Madame 
 Joachim. " Did I not tell you that there was no better 
 doctor in the city for fevers than Doctor Botot? " 
 
 " Madame Joachim," said the doctor later. " Well, if 
 you want a good nurse, you send for Madame Joachim. 
 
42 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Joachim/ he added, " Joachim looks like a pirate, but 
 if you ever want good Spanish wine, you send to 
 Joachim." 
 
 Ah! the future could begin now whenever it chose. 
 The land, that the day before lay like an unknown shore 
 before them, they were in it now, and what a beautiful 
 land it was! 
 
 The mother and all the children followed the doctor, 
 as captives a deliverer, surrounding him as he stood on 
 the front gallery, their faces aglow with gratitude and 
 admiration. To a question the mother answered lightly, 
 and pleasantly. " Oh ! where we were living, on the 
 plantation, it was so far from any doctor that we had 
 to learn to doctor ourselves. It took a day to get to the 
 nearest town, and of course a day to return, and then as 
 likely as not, when our messenger got there, the doctor 
 would be away, a day s journey off somewhere. But 
 we had doctor s books and we followed their directions, 
 that is so long as we had medicines, but we got entirely 
 out of medicine." And here she laughed as at a humor 
 ous recollection. " When the quinine gave out we had to 
 use willow bark tea. It was as bitter as quinine anyway 
 and at first it seemed to do Cicely a great deal of good. 
 And there was an old Indian woman doctor ; the Indians 
 were our nearest neighbors, they lived on a mound in the 
 swamp. We sent for her to come every now and then. 
 She brought her herbs with her, and sometimes they did 
 Cicely a great deal of good too." 
 
 " Why did you not come to the city? " asked the doctor. 
 
 " To the city ! But it was in the hands of the enemy ! " 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders. " And you were 
 not in the hands of the enemy, eh? on the plantation? " 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 43 
 
 " It was the swamps all around that gave us chills and 
 fever," she replied simply. 
 
 "You had the chills and fever there too?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! all of us had them, and sometimes," with 
 a smile, " we all had them at the same time. My husband 
 said, when we went there, that the enemy would never 
 find us and they did not until last year ... we were 
 so far away, we could not get letters, we could not get 
 newspapers ..." 
 
 " But you could get the chills there," the doctor inter 
 rupted facetiously. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " with a decided affirmation of the head. 
 
 "And plenty of food?" 
 
 " Oh, no ! at least not at the end. Food became very 
 scarce then. And after the overflow, we had nothing 
 but corn bread and some fat meat. All the cattle, you 
 know, were drowned." 
 
 "You were overflowed?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! Twice, two years in succession. Once for 
 six weeks. When our people cut Grand Levee, you 
 know, to prevent the advance of the enemy, or their 
 retreat, one or the other, I don t know which. All of 
 our section of the country went under water then." 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 " We had food up to that time. But one day, a gunboat 
 passed, that is a steamboat with cannon and soldiers 
 on it. We believe it must have got into our Bayou acci 
 dentally, for no one in that part of the country would 
 have piloted them "... 
 
 " And after that you had no food? " 
 
 " No, the soldiers threw our meal and meat in the 
 Bayou." 
 
44 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " And Cicely was sick then ? " 
 
 " She had just had a hard chill ; it was her day to 
 have it." She paused and as the doctor said nothing, 
 she continued : " We fished up some of the meat out of 
 the Bayou as soon as their backs were turned but after a 
 little while we could not eat it. The soaking in the water 
 spoiled it. It was not very well cured anyway. We 
 cured it ourselves but we did not have salt enough, salt 
 was very scarce." . . . 
 
 The doctor was a handsome man and if nearly as old 
 as his mother-in-law as Madame Joachim said, he did not 
 show his age, unless Madame Sereno was in the 
 neighborhood of forty-five. His short curling black hair 
 and beard, his teeth and eyes were all favorable to his 
 appearance; and if his dark complexion showed lines, 
 they were still far from being wrinkles. He had a 
 genial voice, his linen was fine, his broadcloth well made, 
 his watchchain was massive with a great seal ring and a 
 number of trinkets dangling from the loose end over his 
 waistcoat. 
 
 " Well, keep her quiet," he admonished, " in 
 bed" . . . 
 
 " That," interrupted the mother, hastily, " we will 
 never be able to do. Even her father cannot make Cicely 
 keep in bed after the fever and chill are over." 
 
 And all the children who were standing around listen 
 ing, shook their heads and murmured their doubts about 
 Cicely s staying in bed. " She must stay in bed now," 
 ordered the doctor decisively. Turning around, he went 
 back to Cicely in bed and repeated to her : " She must 
 stay in bed now and when Monsieur le Chill comes again, 
 he will find us in bed to receive him, eh, Cicely? and 
 
A JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY 45 
 
 we will arrange it so that he will not come so often, 
 and then he will not come at all. We know how to get 
 rid of an importunate visitor, eh, Cicely?" He looked 
 down upon her with what Madame Joachim called his 
 " bon St. Joseph " air and Cicely gave in to it, as his 
 wife had done, and his mother-in-law and sister-in-law, 
 and his little patients at the convent gave in to it; all 
 the nervous irritability of her long, wearying illness, 
 disappearing from her thin peaked, wan little face. 
 
 As he walked back to the gallery, his face for a moment 
 looked somber. 
 
 " As my husband says," the mother apologized hastily, 
 " it is the fortunes of war." 
 
 " There are no fortunes of war, Madame," he retorted 
 sharply. " There are no fortunes of war for women 
 and children. It is all misfortunes for them, they are 
 the sufferers ; and their war goes on after the peace, they 
 will be still suffering for it, when the war is forgotten." 
 He stopped abruptly but the children did not hear him, 
 they had stayed with Cicely. 
 
 " Well, you will give her good food now and plenty of 
 it." He told her what to get and where to buy it, the 
 meat from this one, the bread from that one, the milk 
 " Get your milk from Madame San Antonio, yes, from 
 Madame San Antonio, I will tell her about it." 
 
 " We must send them at once to school " the mother 
 pursued the important thought in her mind " the boys 
 to the public school, we think . . . " 
 
 " To the public school ! No, no ! you cannot send them 
 to the public school now, the public schools are de 
 moralized. The niggers go to our public schools now. 
 No, no, you send them to my friend Badeau. Monsieur 
 
46 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 le Colonel Badeau, an old officer in the French army. 
 He teaches well and he maintains discipline. His father 
 was an officer under the great Napoleon, not the little 
 one, and his son believes in the discipline of le petit 
 Caporal. You ask him about le petit Caporal and 
 you will hear some good stories. I will see Badeau, 
 myself for you. The little girls will go to the convent, 
 of course." 
 
 " Oh, no ! We are Protestants, you know." 
 
 " But that makes no difference. Protestants can go 
 to a convent as well as Catholics. A convent is the best 
 place to educate little girls in and those ladies of the 
 Ursulines ..." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure they educate perfectly, but my husband 
 thinks ..." 
 
 " Oh, well ! I understand," he now interrupted her, 
 " then you must send them to Mademoiselle Mimi, 
 Mademoiselle Mimi Pinseau, s-e-a-u; not Pinson, s-o-n; 
 ha, ha, ha. 
 
 " Mimi Pinson est une blonde, 
 Une blonde que Von connait, 
 
 he quoted. " Mademoiselle Mimi is the teacher for you. 
 She has a school, just there," pointing in the direction 
 of the church. " You go to Mademoiselle Mimi, no, no, 
 I will go to her myself and tell her to come to you." 
 
 He descended the steps of the gallery and walked down 
 the garden path murmuring to himself : 
 
 " C est I etui d une perle fine, 
 La robe de Mimi Pinson . . ." 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MIMI lost no time in going to the 
 Americans who, according to Doctor Botot, might need 
 her services; who, she hoped, would need them in some 
 infinitesimal fraction of a degree as much as she needed 
 their money. She walked along hurriedly as if the 
 opportunity were a car she had to catch ; and not a slow 
 mule car that jogged by every fifteen minutes, but a 
 steam train that would flash past out of her sight, never 
 perhaps to be seen again. As she went through the lane, 
 the weeds looked so green, their flowers so saucy, the 
 darting butterflies and bees so gay, the sun so bright, 
 with the breeze blowing from the river with such ex 
 hilarating freshness, that she could not but argue well 
 from such auspices. However, when there was some 
 thing for her to do and a few extra dimes to be made, 
 she cared for auspices, favorable or unfavorable, as 
 little as did Mimi Pinson. Thunder, lightning, and rain 
 would have been just the same to her as flowers, butter 
 flies, and a blue sky, if at the end of the lane was to be 
 found a patron with little girls to teach. Her fingers 
 ran over the scales and exercises, they were always 
 playing in imagination while her mind ran hurriedly over 
 all she could teach the said little girls, the little girls of a 
 lady and requiring more in the way of education than 
 those of her Gascon clients. English and French, music, 
 solfege, history, geography, arithmetic, grammar, litera- 
 
 47 
 
48 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ture, synonyms, mythology, cosmography, drawing, em 
 broidery, and marking in cross stitch, even. In fact there 
 was stored away in her mind a beautiful and expensive 
 education ; everything had been bought for it that money 
 could buy. Some of the articles, it is true, like some of 
 the dresses and finery in her armoires, never had been 
 used or at least worn only once or twice, but they were 
 there, and what she had learned she could teach. To 
 go over her curriculum would be nothing more to her 
 than going through the well learned steps of a quadrille. 
 And she could teach dancing too, for she had learned also 
 that accomplishment so valueless to an ugly woman; 
 for dancing is like marriage, a lady must be invited 
 thereto, and what beau leads out an ugly partner unless 
 ^she be rich? And unfortunately, Mademoiselle Mimi 
 had become poor at the very time when her money, so 
 to speak, might have floated her ugliness into society. 
 
 These thoughts she spoke quite frankly to Mrs. Talbot 
 when their scholastic arrangements had been made, for 
 she was unused to business methods and ignorant of the 
 profits of reserve if not of misinformation. 
 
 The mother, quite as open on her part, went back to 
 her usual starting point, her recent life on the isolated 
 plantation in order properly to introduce her husband s 
 ideas about the education of women, or ladies, as she 
 called them. 
 
 " He has a perfect horror of learned ladies, * blue 
 stockings who quote Latin and Greek and talk algebra 
 and astronomy. They are to him, simply, ladies with 
 big feet. He likes charming ladies, those who are good 
 looking, who dress well, have exquisite manners, who 
 talk well, who have tact. Oh! he is most particular 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 49 
 
 about tact and talking well. He cannot stand stupid 
 ladies. Those who have no tact and cannot talk well, 
 they are monsters to him. The woman who always says 
 the right thing, and does the right thing, and is always 
 dressed the right way, neither too much nor too little, 
 . . . that is his ideal for his daughters. And it seems, 
 he met just such women when he came to New Orleans 
 from Virginia, when he was a young man fresh from 
 the University. He often talks about them." 
 
 " The father proposes, but God disposes," quoted 
 Mademoiselle Mimi. " My father too had an ideal like 
 that, but ..." she shrugged her shoulders signifi 
 cantly. 
 
 Mrs. Talbot looked at her in some confusion, as over 
 a lack of tact on her own part. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi was not, it must be confessed, the 
 realization of an ambitious father s dream for a 
 daughter. She had not a desirable feature in her face, 
 which to begin with, was slightly crusted with the heat, 
 that kept it all Summer inflamed and red. Her eyes were 
 light, round and protuberant ; her hair curled, it is true, 
 but it was thin and scant over the temples where it was 
 most needed, for they were unduly high. Her mouth, 
 like her eyes, was protuberant, and the teeth that might 
 have beautified it were defective and patched with gold 
 in all directions. This, instead of what should have 
 been according to physiologists and physiognomists 
 a long thin, oval face with tender eyes and the soft 
 luxuriant hair of a Saint Cecilia, for instance, with a 
 figure to correspond instead of the one she had with 
 its inelegant appearance of being long-waisted and short- 
 legged at the same time. Alas! 
 
50 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. M&DARD 
 
 It would seem absurd, even to suggest the truth, that 
 Mademoiselle Mimi s face, notwithstanding all the 
 negative votes cast as it were against it, was on the whole 
 agreeable and winning, and stranger still, that, far as 
 she evidently was removed from the charming conversa 
 tionalists of Mr. Talbot s memory, she was, in her way, 
 an interesting talker; for she did not talk to please, a 
 drawback to the charm of the above-mentioned lady con 
 versationalists, any more than she ate to please, and 
 would have been as incapable of telling a lie to adorn her 
 conversation as of telling one to a stranger asking the 
 way of her. 
 
 It was Mrs. Talbot s amiable delusion that all im 
 poverished ladies and gentlemen were in the same box 
 with her husband and herself; that is that their losses 
 came through the fortunes of war as she docilely called 
 the process. And as she seldom reflected when her heart 
 was moved and as it was moved now in Mademoiselle 
 Mimi s direction, she assumed this delusion in her talk, 
 as a matter of course. It produced an instant disclaimer 
 from Mademoiselle Mimi. " Oh, no ! You must not 
 think that! We have no such good luck! There is 
 nothing to be proud of in the way we lost our money! 
 We, simply spent all we had! Threw it away in good 
 eating, good drinking, good living, enjoying ourselves! 
 Dissipated it, in truth and we have not been able to make 
 any more, that is all. We are like the cigale: Nous 
 avons chante tout I etc, et nous travaillons maintenant." 
 
 " Oh ! Oh ! " began Mrs. Talbot again in con 
 fusion . . . 
 
 " No ! No ! It was very polite of you on the contrary," 
 interrupted Mademoiselle Mimi, " to assume that we 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 51 
 
 were distinguished patriots. If you had lived here a 
 little longer, any one would have told you that our 
 poverty antedated the war by a good many years. We 
 came down here not yesterday, but before the war to take 
 refuge from our past ; this is our Terre aux Lepreux/ 
 alluding to the old custom of forcing all lepers to live 
 in one definite locality which became in time named 
 after them. 
 
 There was not much in Mademoiselle Mimi s life that 
 was not known to her neighbors, and that her new 
 friend did not find out later from Madame Joachim 
 and the doctor, and the priest and Cribiche . . . All 
 knew something and each one was willing to make 
 common property of individual collections from hearsay, 
 observation and deduction. The history of St. Medard 
 himself was not better known. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi, as all were glad to proclaim on 
 all occasions supported her father who had dissipated his 
 own and his wife s fortune and thus impoverished the 
 daughter. She supported him by teaching anything she 
 knew to any scholar she could get, and as the expression 
 went, she " held " the organ in the church. But like the 
 priest she was always the last paid creditor in the parish 
 and generally the worst paid for her services; and like 
 him, unfortunately, too often she had to accept pro 
 visions, "nature" as it was naively called, for legal 
 tender. 
 
 Madame Joachim s ultimate reference and repository, 
 God alone knew how much or how little Mademoiselle 
 Mimi made for the Gascons in the parish of St. Medard 
 are no more bigots for truth than Gascons elsewhere; 
 but, as no one did tell, the truth may be looked for any- 
 
52 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 where in the long medium between poor pay and none 
 at all. 
 
 Monsieur Pinseau had been celebrated in his day as a 
 beau, a wit, a gourmet, a farceur, as everything, in short, 
 that passed for charming in the high society not only of 
 New Orleans, but any metropolis of fashion, elegance 
 and good living. Now, he was briefly described as a 
 notorious spendthrift, an old roue, who deserved all 
 the punishment he had received as just penalty for his 
 past sins. He had not married young, he had been too 
 much of a beau for that. The real beau, like the real 
 belle, cares little for marriage; they are lovers of the 
 fragrance of the flower, not of the flower itself, and 
 when either gets married, it is for considerations, one 
 \night say, rather than desires. Monsieur Pinseau made 
 a most considerate marriage, one that showed a sound 
 business ability, such as few believed he possessed. A 
 great folly had been expected of him with all sorts of 
 ineligible ladies; from a pretty, unknown girl met by 
 chance, to a pretty ballet girl met by appointment. But 
 " nenni," as Madame Joachim said, " he had another dog 
 to whip when it came to marriage." He put folly aside 
 before this serious question and married his second 
 cousin, who was known as the richest heiress in 
 Louisiana, and the plainest. Heiresses do not marry 
 for money, and it is they who commit a folly when they 
 marry for love, as the world knows. And the plainer 
 of feature an heiress is, the plainer of intellect, the more 
 surely is she apt to rely upon that unreliable adviser the 
 heart. Whatever were Monsieur Pinseau s feelings in 
 regard to her, she loved him . . . and hence her 
 suffering. 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 53 
 
 When his bride s virgin fortune was placed in his 
 hands, Monsieur Pinseau, with the new accession of 
 means, obtained such an accession of pleasure, that from 
 his own point of view, his marriage might have been 
 called a happy one. Particularly, as before this event 
 he had had moments of unhappiness over the certainty 
 of his happiness. 
 
 But Madame Pinseau, poor Madame Pinseau, as all 
 authorities call her, when the glamor of her situation 
 had worn away sufficiently to allow her the natural use 
 of her eyes, grew wan and ill-tempered, not only for 
 want of love but from seeing her money spent with such 
 open-handed prodigality. Money had been the distinc 
 tion of her family for generations; it was their rock, 
 their fortress, their sure refuge in every time of trouble. 
 When death carried away in due season the reigning 
 head of the family, it was always a consolation to the 
 survivors to feel that the money still lived, that it was 
 left, the family fortune, intact. And Madame Pinseau, 
 the heiress of it, to whom it had come safely, un- 
 diminished, in all the rounded perfection of its rare 
 golden bloom she knew as perhaps no one could know 
 better that a woman s money is " her greatest ornament, 
 and priceless boon in life " ; that, as it has also been poetic- 
 expressed in regard to her innocence, once gone, no 
 repentance ever brought it back. Innocence ! She knew 
 that the Church and Society did accept spurious inno 
 cence, but spurious money, or repentance in lieu of the 
 stamped coin! Never. 
 
 What Providence should have done, according to 
 Madame Joachim, was to despatch Monsieur Pinseau 
 and let Madame live. Unfortunately, Monsieur Pinseau 
 
54 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 was strong and hearty; his wife, nervous, hysterical, 
 sickly ; always in the hands of her physician or when not 
 in his hands, in the hands of her priest. And beyond 
 an accident, Providence seems to have no legitimate way 
 of getting rid of a man of strong constitution; nor save 
 by a miracle, of preserving the life of a weak one. As 
 Madame Joachim complained with bitterness, after kill 
 ing his wife, Monsieur Pinseau was rewarded by having 
 another woman, an angel, to support him. And the 
 prospect was that he would live upon her until she was as 
 old as he was now, which must be sixty or past. And, 
 unfortunately, although he was an invalid, and in 
 capacitated from work, yet he had no suffering to com 
 plain of, that is as far as any one knew, for it was 
 notorious that he never complained of his gout. " But 
 thank God ! " said Madame Joachim, " Mademoiselle 
 Mimi is as strong as he used to be, and has more sense 
 than he ever had." 
 
 Ladies, even the best of them and the most devout, 
 have a way of avoiding confession to a priest who knows 
 them. They say there are reasons why a stranger, or 
 at least not a familiar or an intimate of the family, 
 makes a better confessor. Mademoiselle Mimi was not 
 of this kind. When she came into the parish of St. 
 Medard, she accepted the church and the priest just as 
 she accepted the little house that had been placed at her 
 disposal for a home. Pere Phileas, therefore, was speak 
 ing with the authority of one who has the means of 
 knowing to a certainty whereof he spoke, when in his 
 hard, rough, peasant French he told his flock that al 
 though they talked so surely of one another s affairs, and 
 judged one another with such certainty, and said what 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 55 
 
 God ought to do and ought not to do, that they only 
 knew of life what they could see with their little, 
 miserable, cunning, human eyes ; and what they saw of it 
 was little better than what their corn and cabbages saw 
 of it. But God above saw what life really was. And he 
 would compare what God saw of some of the characters 
 of that little parish, that poor little humble St. Medard, 
 where there had not been found money enough in twenty 
 years to paint the inside of the church, he would com 
 pare such characters, " God s illustrations of life," he 
 called them, with the illustrations that were drawn by the 
 artists of great journals, in which the rich gifts of life: 
 youth, beauty, health, strength, talent, sentiment, piety 
 . . . were disposed of in such a way, that a simple 
 reader might suppose that all these prize qualities had 
 been driven, hissed, hounded from among the poor who 
 are also called the " lower classes," and had, therefore, 
 taken refuge in the " upper classes," as the rich were 
 called; and that vice, only, and crime and ugliness had 
 stayed with the lower classes. No, not like Versailles, 
 he assured them was God s picture gallery. ( He had once 
 been to Versailles when a Seminarist and what he had 
 seen there had made such an impression upon him that 
 he brought it into almost every sermon,) "Not like 
 Versailles, was God s picture gallery." He doubted 
 whether any court beauty would be found in it, but it 
 was not to be doubted, that every poor, honest Christian 
 who lived not for self alone but for others would be 
 found there; that in short, God s beauties, different from 
 those of Louis XIV and Louis XV, would be the ugly 
 ones of the earth; his great ones, the humble and the 
 lowly ones; his rich ones, the poor of the earth. All of 
 
56 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 which, as Pere Phileas intended it to be, was comforting 
 to his parishioners, who for the most part were poor and 
 ugly enough and undistinguished enough to suit any 
 amateur of such works of art. Indeed, the only rich 
 people in it were the San Antonios. 
 
 But to return very far back to our subject, Monsieur 
 Pinseau was really better than his reputation. Although 
 he had spent all his money, he had retained his good 
 qualities, the qualities of his defects, which were usually 
 left out of his description now. He was good-humored, 
 amiable, intelligent, kind-hearted, now, as he had always 
 been. And, in fact, if he had not possessed these good 
 qualities, could he have been the spendthrift that he had 
 proved himself to be? There could not be such a thing 
 as a sordid, mean, stingy spendthrift; or a stupid one, 
 for imagination has been the tempter from Eve down 
 wards. The castaways of the beau monde are as a 
 rule the good fellows who have spent their money in it. 
 Society in the length of human memory has never cast 
 away a bad fellow if he has kept his money. Society 
 can forgive, and has forgiven, even criminals if they 
 are rich. If the rich man slaps it on one cheek, does it 
 not turn the other one also? If he takes its coat, does 
 not Society straightway offer its cloak also? 
 
 But all this wisdom came to Papa Pinseau long, long 
 after he was able to profit by it ; and, it seemed, the less 
 he was able to profit by it, the more abundantly it came 
 to him. He was now almost incapacitated by infirmity, 
 and never again in this world would he be able to apply 
 the knowledge within him ; yet, nevertheless, it rolled in 
 upon him in waves and tides and always from the same 
 source, from his past life. His physical impotence was 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 57 
 
 even more prolific of wisdom than his financial im 
 potence had ever been. His constitution had been his 
 pride and his boast; and he ruined himself when in such 
 full vigor that he might at the time have made his 
 living as a common laborer if he had been an Irishman 
 or a negro; the only common laborers of his halcyon 
 days. But in these halcyon days, ruined gentlemen were 
 far removed from the lot of a common laborer. It was 
 a poor city indeed, and New Orleans was never that, 
 where there was not always a living to be bestowed upon 
 a man of proved incapacity to make one; some super 
 numerary living for a gentleman out of money; a place 
 in a bank or a clerkship in a court or the city government ; 
 a sinecure in a counting-room or a political office. Money 
 was made easily then and it was lost, also, so easily, that 
 the emergency was provided for among gentlemen by a 
 tacit budget. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, it is not every spendthrift 
 who under the first stroke of misfortune becomes wise, 
 who by one illumination, to use the hackneyed illustra 
 tion, is turned from a Saul into a Paul. Wisdom is 
 generally the fruit of many misfortunes. And, here 
 again, it is the good qualities of a good fellow that are 
 turned against him. The qualities, the very qualities that 
 would have made him less agreeable as a comrade, that 
 he abhorred in others, the qualities that no one would 
 think of cultivating in a child; a cross spirit, an un 
 gracious manner, a grudging hand in giving, the very 
 ability to say " no " to a friend ; these, Monsieur Pinseau 
 found out are some of the means and no insignificant 
 ones to regain wealth. And, so, he who could never 
 make two ends meet on twenty thousand a year did no 
 
58 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 better on ten, five, three, two, nor yet one ; and he had all 
 these chances offered to him, one after another. As he 
 himself confessed, the only income within whose limits 
 he could ever keep was that of his daughter. And 
 strange to say, the robust constitution that had stood 
 without a strain all the excesses of the moneyed period 
 began to weaken and finally went to pieces under the 
 regime of sober eating and full sleeping; the remedy 
 for most men had proved the bane for this one. But 
 still a berth might have been found for him in the ship 
 of State or City, for a man does not exhaust all the 
 opportunities of benevolence in ten years, had not the 
 smoldering war between the North and the South, at 
 last broken out. 
 
 Of all his lost opportunities to be deplored, of all his 
 regrets and he should have had of them more than the 
 full measure of a man what Monsieur Pinseau most 
 deplored and regretted was not being able to go into 
 the war and fight. He, who erstwhile had braved every 
 risk of weather and accident in hunting and fishing on 
 the lakes around New Orleans; he, who could no more 
 fly a danger than a temptation; for whom, camp life, 
 camp stories and the wild rush of a charge seemed 
 specially intended; when the great opportunity of his 
 life came, he was crippled in his feet by gout, all but 
 palsied in his hands, and short winded with asthma. 
 If the war and the ruin of his country had come ten 
 years earlier it would have found him a man and not 
 an old woman of sixty; bundled in flannels and coddled 
 with tisanes. 
 
 Then at last, when he could not work, he saw that he 
 might have worked once. Then he watched and strug- 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 59 
 
 gled, as one in mid-ocean watches and struggles, for a 
 floating spar, for something, anything, to do to earn a 
 living. " Autre temps, autre guitarres!" He found 
 that the prerogatives of birth (or berths) were abolished 
 with slavery, and the thing called business competition 
 had taken their place ; and that this was a foot race where 
 the prize goes not to past good qualities but to the fleetest 
 of foot and soundest of wind with no quarter shown 
 to the defeated. Business is hell as well as war to those 
 who wish to make it so it is only a question of the 
 disposition of the commander. All of this in Monsieur 
 Pinseau s life and in Mademoiselle Mimi s confession 
 furnished some of the theories of art advanced in Pere 
 Phileas s sermons. 
 
 The home of the Pinseaus was a long cabin almost 
 resting on the ground with a wide gallery in front over 
 which hung the eaves of a pointed roof, alive with mosses 
 and creepers. One would have said that its back was 
 built against the side of the church, if it were not obvious 
 that the church, on the contrary, as the newer construc 
 tion had been built against it. It might have faced a 
 street, if it had not antedated all streets in St. Medard 
 by half a century. As it was, its end was turned to the 
 street, while its front looked vaguely in the direction 
 where once, in its power and grandeur, stood the master s 
 dwelling. A native of the place would have recognized 
 it at once as one of the dependencies of the old time, 
 built for the accommodation of some of the numerous 
 attendants that then accompanied a family establishment 
 of any pretensions; an overseer s house, or a gardener s 
 lodge, or the cabin of a favorite slave. It was cut off by 
 the street now and separated from its seigniory, which 
 
60 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 shorn of all its appanages and reduced in territory to its 
 surrounding garden and hedge could be seen forlorn and 
 estranged in the distance. 
 
 An old pieux or picket fence inclosed the cabin still, 
 guarding it as jealously from the outside world as in the 
 time when bulldogs added to the strength of its defense. 
 But the aged timbers were tottering beneath the vines for 
 which it served as a trellis, and it bulged from the pressure 
 of the Yuccas inside with their ungainly bulk of dagger- 
 shaped leaves against it. The gate, of more modern 
 date, was of smooth plank which in its best days had 
 been painted green. Over it rose an arch, twined with 
 wistaria and honeysuckle. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi lifted the latch and hurried 
 through, a cartload of news within her. News! They, 
 who know what it is to live year in and year out with 
 no more news than the calendar furnishes, know what 
 a godsend she felt she was bringing to her Papa. 
 
 He was seated on the gallery in his old cane-bottomed 
 chair with his old hunting dog Belle at his feet, just as 
 she had left him an hour ago. A very good-looking old 
 gentleman he was; with his short white hair and white 
 mustache, and his blue eyes, never without a twinkle 
 in them, and his humorous mouth, seldom without a smile 
 on its lips. His face was as handsome as his daughter s 
 was otherwise, and his figure, though somewhat thickened 
 by age and an inert life, showed still what it must have 
 been in its athletic, graceful youth. He wore an old, 
 faded, brown velveteen coat with deep pockets in the 
 sides, a relic from the heroic period of his hunting days; 
 and his linen, which was really linen, showed that it came 
 also from a distant past, being fine pleated, with a collar 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 61 
 
 of its own, a broad rolling one tied up with a careless- 
 looking old scarf. His expression, as he sat there all 
 alone, was so free, frank, and natural that a stranger on 
 seeing him indubitably would have said : " Here is an 
 old gentleman with an agreeable past behind him, a 
 serene future before him and a benign conscience within 
 him; he looks as if he had done nothing but make a 
 pretty garden all his life." 
 
 It was a pretty garden, the one he had made and was 
 now looking upon. There was not a foot in it that had 
 not been turned to account and there was an air of un- 
 trammeled grace about it that made one think of Nature, 
 rather than of an old gentleman, as its author. It was, in 
 truth, what the old-fashioned " keepsake " of a romantic 
 era so poetically purported to be : a garden of senti 
 ments. Monsieur Pinseau s eye, roaming over it, hardly 
 missed a flower that he loved, a shrub that he cared for : 
 japonica, mimosa, sweet olive, Magnolia fuscata, pome 
 granate, for the sake of the rich scarlet blossoms that 
 pretty Creole girls used to wear in their black hair, (the 
 ground under the bush was red with them now, for the 
 pomegranate flower does not fade on the stem but falls 
 in its full beauty) . . . sweet shrub, oleanders, white 
 and pink, and, fair to look upon when the sun first touches 
 them in the morning, rose geraniums, citronelle, crape 
 myrtles, rose colored and white, (their bloom as dainty 
 and fragile as the ball dresses of the pretty dancing 
 Creole girls of Monsieur Pinseau s dancing days) . . . 
 \fasmin; the " Night," of course, hidden in corners, 
 whence its mysterious sweetness steals upon the soft 
 Summer air of moon-lit nights; the Spanish, the star, 
 and the beautiful wild creeper, that twines around the 
 
62 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 great forest trees, and droops down to the clear water 
 of the still bayous bayous that Monsieur Pinseau used to 
 wander under when spring flowered in the woods around 
 the city and in himself latana, purple and yellow, 
 though most people despise it. And of roses all kinds : 
 the great Reine, for its generous fragrance, . . . the 
 The for its romantic loveliness; the Provence, for its 
 air of innocence; the Lamarque, to embower his gallery; 
 the Geant de Bataille, for its name ; the minute Picayune, 
 out of memory of his mother s garden ; there were violets, 
 for another memory, and mignonette, to remind him of 
 Paris, helas! . . . But no fish geraniums were to be 
 seen anywhere; nor prince s feather, that favorite of 
 his Gascon neighbors; nor lilies, neither Joseph nor 
 Easter because of their air of piety (or his wife s) ; 
 no immortelles with their discomforting suggestions; 
 no pansies, or pensees, as they are called in St. 
 Medard, no indeed! for in his garden, as in his life, 
 Monsieur Pinseau indulged his prejudices as far as 
 possible. 
 
 Out of sight and as far back as possible, lay Mademoi 
 selle Mimi s plat, the plat of the Christian virtues as her 
 father called it ; where grew medicinal herbs and season 
 ings: rosemary, balm, sage, thyme, mint, horehound, 
 absinthe, melisse, parsley, anise, . . . with catnip, 
 naturally, for the babies; Mademoiselle Mimi s heart 
 itself was not more prolific of virtues. 
 
 The spot was as bare as a chicken yard when Monsieur 
 Pinseau moved to it, and seeing all that had been accom 
 plished in it by one unassisted pair of maimed hands and 
 halt feet under no other inspiration than poverty and 
 misfortune, surely it might well be set (by the recording 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 63 
 
 angel) against some of the other sowings and plantings 
 of the old gardener s life in the period of other activities 
 and inspirations. 
 
 When Mademoiselle Mimi had anything to say, she 
 did not wait for the formality of an inquiry; and when 
 she began, she talked as easily and naturally as the rain 
 rained. But the rain itself would have found it difficult 
 to keep up its supply of drops from so barren a source of 
 moisture as St. Medard was of news. Nevertheless, 
 when did she ever come in from the street without some 
 interesting report? She herself, it is true, alone knew 
 the twisting and turning and seasoning she had to give 
 to the poor little bits of hearsay gossip in order to 
 convert them into any semblance of appetizing novelty. 
 Less ingenuity would be required for the daily feuilleton 
 of a Paris journal. But, today, for once she could rain 
 down the tale as she had gathered it. 
 
 After repeating what we know, she added : " Madame 
 Talbot has very exalted ideas about education, which 
 come from her husband, a very exalted personage indeed, 
 it seems. It was my husband says this, my husband 
 says that all the time. He desires nothing less than 
 perfection in his daughters, and they are to be trained 
 simply for that. Eh ! Mon Dieu ! " she exclaimed. 
 "How is it, Thou canst keep parents so nai ve?" 
 
 Monsieur Pinseau listened apparently as usual, with 
 his eyes running over his beloved garden, noting what 
 was to be done tomorrow in it. But what he was think 
 ing during his daughter s relation was something like 
 this : " What a miserable little world, or rather, what 
 a miserable little city this is! Even when we get away 
 from the old places, we are always coming upon the 
 
64 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 same people. If the good God would only let us do 
 occasionally what we please! When we need Him and 
 invoke Him He has no difficulty in letting us alone, and 
 yet He is always intruding upon us when we do not 
 need Him, when we want to be let alone." 
 
 He determined to read Voltaire at once. Whenever 
 he felt this way he read Voltaire; he had a complete 
 set, the entire seventy volumes, bought in Paris when 
 he was twenty years old and equipping himself for life. 
 All young men of his age at that date equipped them 
 selves for life in Paris, with, among other things, a full 
 set of Voltaire, bound in calf, the handsome edition. 
 
 In Voltaire, he felt he would find some solace for the 
 contre temps before him. " The reason," he continued 
 thinking, " that we succeed so well when we are young, 
 is that no one knows us. We can make what pretensions 
 we please, who is there to contradict us? Our parents 
 are only too glad to cultivate their own vanity in us, 
 and would without hesitation kick out any servant or 
 teacher that would try to enlighten them. The greatest 
 fools I have known in my life started out as clever 
 children, and those who I thought were the greatest fools 
 in my young days, they turned out to be men of sense." 
 This was indeed a somber reflection to him, for no one 
 could start in life with a greater reputation for cleverness 
 than he achieved as a child ; to the admiration and adora 
 tion of parents and servants. " Providence," he pursued, 
 " treats us like idiots. I come down here in this 
 miserable hole to lose myself; who but a God-forsaken 
 creature like myself or a Gascon, or people who could 
 not get away from here would live here?" a satirical 
 twitch of the lip accompanied his reflective look into the 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 65 
 
 garden. " Whig and Democrat, Democrat and Whig, 
 what the devil does it matter now? I feel like my old 
 Aunt Ahgele when she was dying and some one came 
 and told her that her American son-in-law was going to 
 make Protestants of her grandchildren ; My friend/ she 
 whispered, I am near enough to death to see now how 
 silly all that is. And she had been fighting Protestants 
 all her life. If we could only pass an act of oblivion 
 against our memory when we get old ! " . . .He 
 might just as well wish for an act of oblivion against 
 Belle s fleas. " What asses men can make of them 
 selves in politics ! As if they needed any extra occasion 
 for the purpose ! I had to turn politician and go around 
 playing the fool, making speeches. I, who never could 
 make a speech in my life ; insulting people, fighting duels, 
 carrying torch lights, walking in processions, shouting, 
 hurrahing, for Fildepeau, and against this man Talbot, 
 denouncing Talbot in all times and places, as I would 
 denounce a parricide, spending my money to defeat him 
 as if that were the greatest pleasure my money could 
 buy." No wonder Monsieur Pinseau hated the flower 
 that was named for thought ! . . . " Well, we did 
 defeat him. Talbot was beaten and Fildepeau was 
 elected, and Fildepeau turned out to be the rascal. He 
 is now living in France on the plunder he picked up in 
 politics, and Talbot was the honest man. And what 
 did Talbot want, in the name of politics, to be elected to 
 the legislature for? To have some law passed for the 
 improvement of our criminal courts ! And Fildepeau, he 
 wanted to get there to push the rascality he was 
 interested in. Fildepeau I shall never see again, but 
 Talbot comes down here to live alongside me. Every- 
 
66 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 body else gets killed in the war, but Talbot survives. 
 . . . And Talbot, unlike the elegant, the courtly, the 
 patriotic Fildepeau, does not forget." . . . 
 
 Sad as the fact may be to women, it was not peculiar 
 to Monsieur Pinseau, as other gentlemen can testify, that 
 the nearest thing to remorse that troubled him in the 
 haven of old age came not from his domestic but from 
 his political mistakes. And this episode, in which he 
 saw himself working for Fildepeau, making speeches, 
 walking in processions, and " electioneering," as buying 
 votes was then called, was one of which he was ashamed 
 enough to blush over, even now when any blushing was 
 out of season for him. So instead of listening further to 
 his daughter, he rose abruptly from his chair and hobbled 
 into the garden; as if, suddenly, he saw something amiss 
 there; his old dog Belle as stiffly followed him and 
 Mademoiselle Mimi went into the house. 
 
 It was not here as in the home she had just left. Ruin 
 having come here in the form of bankruptcy had stopped 
 short of destitution. The Pinseaus had emigrated into 
 poverty, so to speak, and had carried some luggage with 
 them. For in the first room Mademoiselle Mimi entered, 
 a low one with whitewashed walls and one small 
 window, were to be found a sofa and some rosewood 
 chairs covered with faded blue and yellow silk that had 
 once stood in her mother s grand salon ; and a gilt-framed 
 oval mirror and its ornaments on the little black wooden 
 mantel. An old velvet carpet covered the rough plank 
 floor and the remnant of a fine lace curtain hung over 
 the little window. In the next room were the mahogany 
 table and chairs and, filling one wall, the sideboard with 
 some cut glass from the old dining-room. Then fol- 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 67 
 
 lowed Mademoiselle Mimi s bedroom, where, as in a cell, 
 stood the great four-posted bedstead of her mother, 
 without its tester the pompous tester of rose-colored 
 satin and rich pendent cords and tassels that had reared 
 itself so haughtily of old, under the high ceilings of 
 wealth and pride. In the next room ; a startling contrast, 
 was the small wooden cot and the plain chairs and table 
 that Monsieur Pinseau had affected in his gilded youthful 
 days, when hardihood, and defiance of soft ease, were 
 his theme and profession ; following the piquant example 
 of royalty and other sybarites of his day. 
 
 The last room in the row was the kitchen, and here 
 also stood an old piece of furniture from a former estate 
 and a former day: the old negress Aglone. Bowed, 
 wrinkled, a mere handful of bones in a loose skin, her 
 clothes hung over her body like rags on a scarecrow, 
 her headkerchief toppled on one side, her eyes were 
 bleared; her mouth, toothless. She did not show her 
 history, and it had been a fine one. 
 
 Among the masters and mistresses of New Orleans it 
 was a general belief that every slave who became the 
 mother of thirteen children purchased, with the birth 
 of her thirteenth child, its freedom and her own. When 
 Aglone bore triumphantly her thirteenth child she was 
 still young, fresh and good-looking, for she was but 
 fifteen when her first child was born. But she bargained 
 with her master to give the freedom she had earned to 
 her eldest child a boy which was done; and accord 
 ing to the law, a piece of property was placed in trust 
 for him as a home, and he was apprenticed to the 
 carpenter s trade; and did well in it as youth and man. 
 When ruin came to her master, Aglone refused the choice 
 
68 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 of being sold with her family in order to remain with 
 him and his family. When again emancipation came 
 and all slaves were freed, Aglone stood to her bargain. 
 She would not accept the freedom she had refused from 
 her master, as a gift from " strangers," as she called 
 them; and given to good and bad alike. It was owing 
 to this obstinacy of the old woman that Mademoiselle 
 Mimi and her father had a servant to follow them in 
 their emigration and that old Aglone still had a home 
 and a family. For her large brood had scattered. Free 
 dom had loosed not merely the shackles but all ties and 
 children ; grandchildren, great-grandchildren were all out 
 of her life now; each working in separate capacity for 
 separate aims. 
 
 She had become very childish, often mistook Mimi 
 for her grandmother; the young mistress for whom she 
 had been bought when both were children ; and often she 
 would call her master " Amedee " or " Dede " as if he 
 were still a little boy. When Mademoiselle Mimi entered 
 the kitchen, Aglone was grumbling as usual, in her creole 
 patois, complaining about Monsieur Pinseau. " Amedee 
 bothers me all the time, he is always coming into the 
 kitchen, he tells me how to do this, how to do that ; but 
 who is the cook? If I am the cook I must do my own 
 way. Why doesn t he keep in his garden and bother with 
 his plants ? I don t want children in my kitchen, Vieu- 
 Maitre always made the children keep out of my kitchen 
 . . . they bother me too much . . . Dede tell me how 
 to cook! No! I will not do what he says, I have been 
 cooking since before he was born. What does he know 
 about cooking ? Ha ! he did not do that in the old gentle 
 man s time ! The old gentleman knew how to make him 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 69 
 
 behave ! The old gentleman did not spoil him, ha ! The 
 old gentleman knew I was a cook ... he taught me 
 himself, ha! and he paid Larose to come and teach me 
 . . . gave him five dollars just to show me how to make 
 a galantine. . . . You could not tell my galantines 
 from the galantines in the fine restaurants and my 
 fricassee of turtle! He, the old gentleman, knew what 
 good cooking was. They don t know what good cooking 
 is now . . . they eat things now that a cook would 
 have been sent to the calaboose for in old times. Ha! 
 the old gentleman never came into my kitchen, he would 
 send for me and he would say * Aglone do this, Aglone 
 do that/ and that was all ..." 
 
 The poor old thing s head shook, her hands trembled, 
 her voice whined shrilly. She could not stand agitation 
 any longer, she was always slightly demented by it. And 
 poor Mademoiselle Mimi, she suffered too. It seemed 
 hard to her that she could never leave the house without 
 finding some trouble on her return; always some dis 
 agreement, some dispute and old Aglone s feelings hurt. 
 She had but one course of reasoning in the matter: 
 " If Papa would only attend to his garden and leave other 
 people s affairs alone! I can manage old Aglone so 
 well; but he, he teases her, he puts her in a temper. 
 He is too meddlesome, that is the truth." And she 
 bitterly reflected, how in books, ladies and gentlemen 
 going into poverty leave all their faults behind them and 
 take only their virtues with them ; at least so far as she 
 could judge from the " Lives of the Saints," the only 
 book she ever had time to read. But not so her father, 
 he went into his place of punishment for past folly, 
 without a single renunciation in fact with all the honors 
 
70 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 of war in his defeat, with his colors flying. How much 
 easier would have been her lot had it been otherwise. 
 If in all these trying experiences, he could have imitated 
 some of those poor saints and martyrs, that he looked 
 down upon. The rich, she admitted, might have what 
 tempers they pleased ; their money, there was no denying 
 it, bought them indulgence. But the poor, the poor must, 
 no other word is possible, the poor must be patient, good, 
 gentle, forbearing, self-denying, long suffering, spiritual, 
 meek, etc., etc. ; not captious about seasonings, truculent 
 over gombos and grillades, sensitive as to the color of a 
 roux. " After all/* she would commune listlessly with 
 herself, going a little aside from the point of her argu 
 ment, " what is sent to us to bear even in the hardest 
 lives? Disease, misfortune, death, privations! I am 
 not a saint, and have I not stood all that, and a sad 
 childhood in addition which Papa certainly never had to 
 stand? But, what of it? What is there in it all 
 that cannot be borne? Nothing! Nothing! Absolutely 
 nothing! But the truth is, we do not seem to be made 
 in the proper way to support the very misfortunes that 
 God himself (who knows all about us, what we can 
 stand and what not) sends." And she would sigh, and 
 as her father invoked Voltaire, she, in certain moments 
 would invoke a certain rebellious thought of her own: 
 " How easy it would have been for God to have made 
 every one good at once ? Then there would be no more 
 trouble for us! We could then all lead the lives He 
 gives us and not mind it. But as it is, He has arranged 
 it so, that we fit in our lives like big feet in little shoes 
 or little feet in big shoes and our tempers are as 
 agreeable as colors that swear at each other. Aglone is 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 71 
 
 obstinate, cross an4 forgetful, that is the fact of it. 
 She has almost forgotten how to cook, and Papa, Papa, 
 of course has not forgotten what good cooking is ... 
 and good Heavens! He has few enough pleasures now 
 and he might at least have his poor food cooked in the 
 way he likes. Of course it would be better if he were 
 like Pere Phileas ; but Pere Phileas was a rude peasant, 
 what can he know about good cooking? He eats only 
 to satisfy his hunger, he knows no more about good 
 cooking than he knows about good music. Ah, if Papa, 
 would only grow indifferent to his tastes, become re 
 ligious, ascetic, as some people do when they grow old ! " 
 But there was no hope for this, as her good sense 
 warned her. Monsieur Pinseau would never gratify her 
 by a growth in this direction. No! On the contrary, he 
 would continue to torment old Aglone and worry her 
 about a salmi or a sauce as if St. Medard were as far 
 from him as St. Peter, and Pere Phileas as the Pope. 
 Old Aglone was very devout; and the only way to get 
 around her obstinacy about her cooking and turn her 
 from her distress was to lure her away from the present, 
 and this could always be done by talking to her of the 
 church, recommending some new saint or prayer or 
 scapulary to her. She confessed every Saturday of her 
 life and took the communion every Sunday : a pure kind 
 ness, this was, on the part of Pere Phileas, which how 
 ever Aglone repaid by scrubbing the church. No one to 
 see her, so old, so decrepit, would imagine she could 
 go over that church upon her knees, scrubbing-brush in 
 hand, rain or shine, hot or cpld, once a week. But she 
 did it, mumbling her prayers all the time, casting her eyes 
 first up to the statue of the Virgin, then down to her 
 
72 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 soft soap and red brick. As with her father Mademoi 
 selle Mimi always took the part of Aglone, so with 
 Aglone, she took the part of her father. What she called 
 the thought in the back of her head she kept to herself. 
 " Poor Papa," she would say to the old negress, " you 
 must remember he is a sick man and all the trouble he 
 has had in his life. And you know how good-hearted 
 he is! He would take the coat off his back and give it 
 to you if he thought you needed it; and after all, all 
 that he asks is a little more pepper or a little less salt, 
 or the garlic, or the onion, or the bay leaf put in, in a 
 different way. He may be wrong, but if he wishes it? 
 My Heavens ! all that seems so little to ask ! If he wanted 
 me to put molasses in the gombo, I would do it; if it 
 gave him pleasure, I wouldn t mind. And what dif 
 ference after all does it make to you? I should not 
 think you would care, so long as you go to church and 
 do your duties there. What would the blessed Virgin 
 say if some one should say to her : * You see that old 
 Aglone down there, that good woman who never forgets 
 her duties to the church, who is always ready to make 
 soup for the sick, chicken or beef no matter which 
 who rises before day and stays up till after midnight 
 to do her work, who scrubs the church out once a week 
 on her knees although her old legs are as stiff as broom 
 sticks with rheumatism . . . well, she does all that, 
 and then she refuses stubbornly to do what her old master 
 asks her about gombo and grillade; her master that she 
 nursed as a little baby and spoiled too/ Oh ! you know 
 it! So that he would run away to you from his own 
 nurse Laloute, who tried to kill you once, you know, just 
 from jealousy over that. You know that yourself ! 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 73 
 
 And who was it, eh? Who nursed you when you were 
 so sick three years ago? Who used to get up in the 
 night and go to you, and give you foot baths with his 
 own hands and made poultices for you and put them 
 on, and give you tisanes, and would not wake me or 
 call me when I did not hear? Who sat by your bed all 
 day keeping the flies and mosquitoes off you? You did 
 not think of gombos and grillades then, you thought you 
 were going to die, and you were glad enough to have 
 him by you ! And now you cannot do what he asks you, 
 some little thing, I don t know what, about parsley or 
 onions, nonsense like that! And when I come home 
 and see you bothered, and hear you grumbling; all my 
 pleasure is destroyed. And what pleasure have I but 
 my comfort here and you, and Papa?" and so on and 
 on ran the little discourse. 
 
 The old woman would listen, charmed by that low 
 sweet voice, her hands would quiet down from their 
 trembling, her head stop shaking; while talking 
 Mademoiselle Mimi would go around the kitchen, putting 
 one thing and another in its place, peering into pots, 
 pans, buckets, and jars, tasting here and there, to see 
 what the old thing had forgotten or overlooked, for she 
 was as blind as she was forgetful. 
 
 And then Mademoiselle Mimi would go and talk to 
 her father while he smoked his pipe in apparent indif 
 ference. The pipe too, belonged to the velveteen jacket 
 days and the rough life of the hunter. 
 
 " Poor old thing ! She tries her best, but she is failing ; 
 she forgets, and pretends that she does intentionally what 
 happens. She is ashamed to confess that she is not as 
 good a cook as she used to be. Sometimes when I peep 
 
74 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 into the kitchen I see her wiping the tears from her 
 poor old face. ... It is hard to live only to please 
 and then not succeed. And what is there in her poor 
 old soul for consolation? And when I think what we 
 would be without her, and what we would have done all 
 these years without her, I am willing to stand her faults 
 which are only the failings of old age, and so, faults 
 that we are all liable to. Suppose she were not here, and 
 that we had to get in somebody else! You know how 
 pleasant that would be! You see what the negroes 
 have become, what they are about us. I would rather 
 do my own work than have one of them; dirty, lazy, 
 thievish, ignorant, insolent, they are not fit to be servants, 
 they are not fit to be even slaves now. Ah ! There will 
 not be any more hereafter like Aglone. I should think 
 the saints in heaven would like to look down upon her 
 . . . she is a saint too in her way ! Up before daylight 
 to make our coffee, and you must acknowledge there is 
 no one in New Orleans can make coffee like her, and 
 out of so little and that of the cheapest quality the 
 quality that once we would have been ashamed to give 
 to our negroes. And she is past eighty ; just think ! She 
 was bought in the time of the Spaniards and was a 
 grown woman working for us at the time of the battle 
 of New Orleans. Don t you remember, how Mere used 
 to tell us of her making coffee then all night long, to send 
 down to the battlefield? Working for us then, she has 
 been working for us ever since. And she would not take 
 her freedom when it was offered to her, but gave it to 
 that selfish Alcibiade, and refused to be sold, when she 
 could have been sold with her family ! And old and blind 
 as she is now, who can market as she does? She makes 
 
MADEMOISELLE MIMI 75 
 
 twenty-five cents go as far as a dollar used to go, you 
 say that yourself. I don t know how she does it. She 
 is more careful of our little money than I am, and in 
 her heart, she is devoted to you, she adores you, there 
 is nothing in the world she would not do for you, I 
 believe it would break her heart if any one else carried 
 you your cup of morning coffee. And you remember 
 what a tragedy it was last year when I hired some one 
 else to iron your shirts, because her poor old eyes could 
 not see well enough to iron them? When I had to call 
 in Pere Phileas to talk religion to her ? But I know she 
 is old and very trying; I have to coax and pet her all 
 the time, my poor old Aglone ! She is too old to work, 
 she ought not to be working. Some of her children or 
 grandchildren ought to support her. They are free now, 
 nothing prevents them. But, in truth she has lived too 
 long with whites, and she could not now live with negroes 
 any more than I could. Her place is with us after all. 
 I beg Pere Phileas not to let her bother him; but you 
 know how he is. He says that the church is her only 
 light in her darkness. He is right, I would do as he 
 does, I would not diminish any light she has. On the 
 contrary, I would give her more of it if possible. As 
 for me, I would like her to think that God and all his 
 angels are always delighted with her; or anything else 
 she chooses to think about them to give herself comfort. 
 I am afraid I should not care so much for them as she 
 does, if I had her life. If I were God, I never would 
 have created negroes; I would have everybody white, 
 and rich besides; and good, even if the virtue of resigna 
 tion should die out of the world in consequence." 
 
 And the old gentleman, although he did smoke his 
 
76 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 pipe in apparent indifference, listened to her words, no 
 matter how often they were repeated, as if he too, like 
 Aglone, were charmed; as if they were an old faint 
 perfume, or an air from an old song. The humorous 
 twinkle would go out of his eyes, and his hands would 
 softly pinch Belle s ears. His wife had never found it 
 out, but his daughter had, that he was very soft-hearted. 
 But he, nevertheless, would be just as cross at dinner 
 when Aglone would bring in some mishap of seasoning 
 which she, in spite of the charming she had received, was 
 as apt as not to do. 
 
 In short, the only way to have the seasoning right and 
 the dinner as it should be and so avoid disagreeable con 
 sequences was for Mademoiselle Mimi to slip into the 
 kitchen, herself, a moment before dinner and season 
 every dish over again. 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 
 
 DURING the first days of evil fortune as many of us 
 know, hopes have a deceitful way of realization, of in 
 carnating themselves as it were, in some mere piece of 
 good luck. Later on in the experience they keep to their 
 proper position in life, always flying well ahead of us, 
 like those birds we can catch only by sprinkling salt on 
 their tails. 
 
 Cicely s recovery was followed by the arrival of what 
 was taken as a herald of the new prosperity coming down 
 the road of the future to her father. An old debt, 
 proscribed by the war, was paid by one who refused to 
 avail himself of his legal acquittance of it. The mother 
 therefore, in the strange and out-of-date costume she 
 had worn on her journey to St. Medard, with her little 
 girls in their sunbonnets and homespun, sat once again 
 in the slow mule car, retracing the route, going back 
 from her Terra-incognita into that fair region of fashion 
 that had lain so bright in her memory, during the stormy 
 gloom of the past four years ; for, as it was but right and 
 proper, the rude and coarse garments of War were to 
 be discarded and seemlier ones for Peace assumed. 
 Surely, none could be too bright and beautiful for it! 
 Nor for an earth whose day could be so radiant, whose 
 sky so blue, foliage so rich, flowers so plenteous and 
 sweet of perfume, and breezes so fresh and pure and 
 playful. The chariot of Apollo and not the slow, dingy 
 mule car, should have been the vehicle for it! 
 
 77 
 
78 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 "What has been lost after all? What has been lost 
 after all?" Any one in the car might have read the 
 thought, that moved her lips to utter the words aloud and 
 lifted her head so proudly, and flashed into her eyes so 
 much light and color, when youth and strength and 
 love gave the answer: Nothing! Nothing! 
 
 " No more fear ! That was the best of all, no more 
 fear." She recalled, that before the war she had never 
 all her life known what fear was . . . how could she? 
 Who on earth was there for her to be afraid of? She 
 never knew what fear was, until the day after the city 
 was captured, when soldiers marched through the streets 
 in all directions searching houses and capturing 
 prisoners ; and a squad of them, with their guns in their 
 hands, entered her house, the room she was in. She 
 had never imagined such a thing! They were looking 
 for her husband! He was not there of course, he had 
 made his escape with all the papers of his office. But 
 she grew so white when the officer questioned her, and 
 became so weak, that he eyed her suspiciously and ac 
 cused her of lying. She was sure he would shoot her 
 husband on the spot if he found him. The bright day, 
 flowers, the breeze, Apollo s chariot, were all driven 
 from her mind, by that hideous day. When the soldiers 
 marched out of the house, she fell into a chair, she 
 could support herself no longer. She knew what fear 
 was then ! It was Gideon, their negro boy, who ran off 
 to the enemy as they entered the city, and told them not 
 only that his master was hidden in the house, but guns 
 and ammunition and gold and silver belonging to the 
 Confederate government. Gideon, the rascal, who was 
 not worth his salt, whom she had saved from so many 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 79 
 
 whippings he had richly earned; and once when her 
 husband had made up his mind to sell him, had pleaded 
 and argued against it, even shedding tears, to save him 
 from being sent among strangers, because she knew that 
 then he would meet the treatment he deserved. She 
 shook her head and looked out of the car window to get 
 rid of the memory. She made up her mind not to think 
 of the past; for even to remember it was to bring it 
 back. She determined to dwell only on her relief from 
 it. But what surer way of remembering it? For, she 
 had not ridden any distance, when her thoughts took 
 up again just where they had left off. " It was good 
 now, not to wake up at night, feeling that the world 
 was full of fighting and bloodshed. And, oh ! above all ! 
 not to hear the guns bombarding Vicksburg! The first 
 time she heard them, her heart stood still. She did not 
 know what it was, and then, knew it was the sound 
 of cannon. Cannon being shot off by men against men. 
 She was alone on the plantation, that lonely plantation, 
 with her children and one hundred and fifty negroes de 
 pendent on her. Even the overseer had gone into the 
 war. She rose from her bed and dressed, saw to the 
 fastenings of the doors, and knelt down and prayed 
 . . . and stayed kneeling until daylight. The next 
 day a swamper passing in his pirogue told her it was 
 the Yankees bombarding Vicksburg. Oh ; Those cannon ! 
 Night after night she heard them! for weeks, months. 
 Even after the place surrendered, she imagined she heard 
 them still . . . still counted the shots as they fell, 
 imagined still, that every shot was killing, killing . . . 
 sending husbands and sons out of life, and mothers and 
 wives into grief that would know no end . . . and 
 
8o THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 she would picture these mothers to herself, these wives 
 . . . until she could not remain on her knees but would 
 pace the floor up and down, up and down, wildly pray 
 ing in that position to God, that her sons might never 
 shed human blood. Many a mother or wife oh! she 
 saw it all ; over and over again, perhaps, the one whose 
 son or husband was killed at that very moment would 
 not know it until the war was over and maybe would be 
 waiting to see her boy or her husband come back, alive 
 and well and strong . . . and he . . .a mangled, 
 shattered corpse! Perhaps, she would read it in some 
 old, soiled, ragged newspaper, such as then was passed 
 along from hand to hand read in such a newspaper, 
 handed to her casually by a passing stranger, . . . 
 what at other times ministers, friends, relations, could 
 not find words kind enough to prepare her for ..." 
 
 Again she shook her head and looked out of the 
 window, but the streets were all so strange she could 
 not tell where she was, how far from her ride s end. 
 
 " Mama," whispered Cicely, plucking at her sleeve, 
 " make Polly stop talking, she is telling everything to 
 that stranger." 
 
 She leaned forward and looked at Polly, who was 
 seated by the friend of her first ride in the car, the old 
 gentleman who looked like General Lee. 
 
 " Oh, we hate the city," she was telling him, " we all 
 hate the city. But we don t mind it." 
 
 " That s right," answered the old gentleman heartily, 
 " it s best not to mind things one hates." 
 
 " Yes, that s what Papa told us," she assented affably. 
 " He told us not to pay any attention to the Yankees, the 
 United States soldiers, I mean ; to walk right along when 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 81 
 
 we met them just as if we didn t see em, them, I mean." 
 " But if you do that, you may forget to hate them." 
 " Oh, no, indeed," confidently, " we would always hate 
 em whether we saw em or not. Everybody hates 
 Yankees, I reckon." 
 
 " Mama, Mama," whispered Cicely again in agony, 
 " please make her stop talking." 
 
 The mother shook her head at Polly, but the stranger 
 smiled when he saw it, as if he were anything but a 
 stranger, and far too much amused to wish the conversa 
 tion arrested. And then, again so strange it seemed 
 in a street car came to the mother s mind, another 
 memory, that clutched and held her fast, struggle as she 
 would to escape it. Another night it was, the night 
 when lying awake for by degrees she grew afraid to 
 sleep at night, she heard a noise on the Bayou, a noise 
 that made her think she was dreaming. She slipped 
 out of her bed and crept to the window and, lifting one 
 little corner of the curtain, peeped through, and saw 
 if she had seen the heavens open and hell itself revealed 
 to her, she could not have been more terrified she saw 
 a vessel gliding stealthily by, down the Bayou, a trans 
 port she could make out the cannon on it. She almost 
 lost consciousness, she was so frightened, she shook as 
 if she had an ague, she could not speak for the chatter 
 ing of her teeth, she clasped her hands together with her 
 utmost strength to stop their trembling, and when there 
 came a muffled knock at her door, she almost screamed. 
 But it was only Jerry who had seen the boat and he 
 had come at once to her in case she too had seen it. 
 She was herself again at once, and quickly ordered him 
 to saddle his master s horse and ride as fast as he could 
 
82 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 through the woods, to the nearest Confederate post and 
 report that he had seen a transport filled with troops. 
 Jerry did not want to leave her, but she told him she 
 was not afraid, and from the window she watched him 
 put off in a skiff and cross the Bayou, the horse swim 
 ming behind, and Jerry pulling easily so as not to awaken 
 the other negroes in the quarters. How light the 
 memory came and went, like a flitting shadow. . . . 
 
 A white crape, hanging from one of the little cottage 
 doors, carried her thoughts back again to the plantation. 
 Everything took her back, there. She could not get 
 away from it rowing as hard as she could against the 
 current of her thoughts, as she used to see the negroes 
 row against the current of the Bayou; and still the cur 
 rent would carry her on. 
 
 She saw now, in a moment, the whole picture of that 
 Summer, that terrible Summer, when the typhoid fever 
 broke out, and ten of the negroes, stalwart men and 
 women, died, one after the other, in spite of all that 
 the doctors books recommended, in spite of all that any 
 one could do. She wore herself out, nursing them and 
 used up all her fine white linen sheets for winding sheets 
 the negroes sheets being unbleached and so coarse 
 not all her sheets, for she had saved two, for herself or 
 her husband or in case one of the children should . . . no, 
 no! she must not remember that. When she did it, how 
 afraid she was that some one would find it out that she 
 was saving two sheets that terror was the worst of all 
 the terrors of the war. The others were nothing in com 
 parison to it the terror that one of them, one of her 
 children or her husband should die like the negroes in 
 helpless misery. That Jerry, the carpenter, should come 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 83 
 
 and measure the corpse for a coffin as she had seen him 
 do so often for the negroes. Ah ! how she used to won 
 der what she would do for she could not control 
 her thoughts then any more than now if she would 
 allow the negroes to come and sing as they did over their 
 own dead. No! she knew that she could not, nor her 
 husband, brave as he was, if he were there. And the 
 coffin would be put into a skiff, and they all, in their 
 skiffs would row down the Bayou, following it, the skiff 
 with the coffin, which was always rowed by the best 
 pullers Lafayette and John Bull. They died too of 
 the typhoid fever, themselves, the last of all. She sat 
 by them to the end, first one and then the other; telling 
 each how good he had been to master, mistress, and the 
 children and that God would be good to them too and 
 forgive them all their sins. But they had no sins at 
 that moment in her eyes ; and they would all meet again, 
 some day, and would all be together in heaven. That 
 was the best consolation for them all that they would 
 all meet again. And they all asked, men and women, 
 that their master, or if he were not there, that she would 
 stand by them until all was over, that is if they were 
 conscious; for some of them went into delirium at the 
 first access of fever and never became sensible. The 
 men would laugh and talk and whistle to their dogs 
 thinking they were at a coon hunt or snap their fingers 
 and try to move their feet thinking they were dancing, 
 crooning their songs about a " yeller gal " or the 
 " paterol " catching them. And she saw herself and her 
 children, in the skiff of mourners, gliding over the dark, 
 deep water of the Bayou. The plantation, bright with 
 the sunset on one bank, the great forest on the other, 
 
84 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 silent, mysterious, dark as if under the very wings of 
 death itself, the tall cypresses, standing in long files 
 like innumerable multitudes of departed shades, far, far 
 as the eye could see and above all; the Bayou and the 
 forest, the blue sky, so serene, so serene . . . and thus, 
 the measured stroke of the oars alone breaking the 
 silence, they would come to the high knoll covered 
 with oak and gum trees, cleared of underbrush, and 
 the open grave 
 
 " Mama, Mama, here we are and everybody is getting 
 out," called the good little Cicely excitedly, pulling at 
 her arm. They were at the end of their route at last. 
 
 She looked around eagerly. Yes, yes ! this was Canal 
 Street! The bells were ringing gaily for twelve o clock 
 and the sun was at its brightest overhead. As she stepped 
 out of the car, she stepped out of the power of the 
 memories that had fascinated her ; like a hideous face she 
 could not avoid and yet wished not to see. Once in the 
 street, and looking about her, her eyes met only pleasant 
 faces, smiling expressions, and show-windows full of 
 pretty things. 
 
 To a stranger, one that is who had traveled and knew 
 the proper standards of comparison, it was an ugly 
 enough street, this, that represented the shopping center 
 and fashionable boulevard of a rich and luxurious city. 
 But she who looked at it was not a stranger and had 
 not traveled. When she looked up and saw the blue sky, 
 just as she remembered it, so close above her and so clear, 
 that as a child she was sure she could see the angels 
 flying in it; and when she saw the irregular line of the 
 roofs so familiar that at any time on the plantation she 
 could have drawn the pattern of it as easily as a scollop 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 8s 
 
 for embroidery; and when she saw all the old names 
 there over the shops : American, French, Spanish, Italian 
 names, that she had learned to spell with her first 
 a, b, c s, and the confectioners shops standing each one 
 on its corner, with orange trees in tubs before it; and 
 the old church, too, like the sky, just where she had 
 left it, and just as she had left it; when she saw all this 
 so beautiful, so supremely beautiful and beyond com 
 parison with anything else in the world as far as she 
 cared, she stood still, and like the daughters of Jerusalem, 
 her mouth was filled with laughter. Her little girls 
 looked at her with astonishment, and almost disapproval ; 
 they laughed that way, but they had never heard her 
 laugh that way before. 
 
 " The first thing," she said briskly, " is shoes." Taking 
 the hand of each one, she crossed the street, through 
 what seemed to their rustic eyes a most perilous throng 
 of vehicles, more than all the plantation carts together 
 in the Grinding time. 
 
 " See," she exclaimed, " Henry Clay s statue, that I 
 have told you about so often! And there s the river! 
 and the levee ! where we landed ! And all the steamboats ! 
 I wonder if the Bayou Belle is there still, don t you?" 
 and they all laughed together. The Bayou Belle ! They 
 had all but forgotten her. 
 
 In a secluded and aristocratic community such as New 
 Orleans had been hitherto, sentiment and tradition have 
 more sway in the patronage of shops, than in the cities 
 where the very restlessness of its progress, as commercial 
 prosperity is called, makes too unstable a soil for such 
 growths, which require above all things, the long con 
 tinuous routine of habit. And among a people too rich 
 
86 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 or too careless to care for price if the quality suits, and 
 where competition, consequently, is a matter of no 
 moment to tradesmen, there grows up between families 
 and their purveyors, be they of hats, or books, con 
 fectionery, laces, or silks a loyalty of patronage and 
 service not to be severed lightly any more than a friend 
 ship. And when ladies have only to select and furnishers 
 to offer agreeably, shopping assumes a different aspect 
 from the sordid bargaining, which, alas! dire necessity 
 forced it to assume at a later day. 
 
 Mrs. Talbot entered the only shoe shop she had ever 
 known, and such, it must be confessed, was its un- 
 progressive character, that she found it just as it was 
 not merely, when she left it, four years before, but as 
 she remembered it from the time she was a little girl. 
 There was the same dark red velvet carpet on the floor, 
 with its great white medallions holding bouquets of 
 flowers; from the ceiling dropped the same chandelier, 
 with its bunches of red glass globes; the low chairs 
 with red velvet cushions for grown customers, and the 
 tall ones to which children were lifted to try on their 
 shoes, were the same to which she had been lifted or 
 later had sat upon as a young lady to try on her first 
 party slippers. And to complete the picture, there was 
 old Gregoire, in his short jacket and long apron and 
 great spectacles, looking as cross and surly as ever. But 
 his stolid face softened into a smile as he recognized 
 her and she would gladly have shaken hands with him. 
 He lifted the little ones to the tall chairs and getting 
 down slowly to his knees in front of them took a shoe 
 off each and held the ugly little things close to his glasses ; 
 then raised his perplexed eyes to the mother. 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 87 
 
 She laughed. " Oh ! We made those on our planta 
 tion! And I can tell you we were very glad to get 
 them! The skin came from one of our own alligators, 
 shot, swimming in our own Bayou, and our own shoe 
 maker tanned it and made the shoes and I," she concluded 
 with pride, " I made the eyelets myself." 
 
 " My God ! " exclaimed the Frenchman, " and they 
 are so bad too." 
 
 He got up as slowly and stiffly as he had got down, 
 and walking the length of the room down one side, 
 opened drawer after drawer, gleaning various kinds of 
 little shoes from them, and came back with them hanging 
 by their strings over his arm. He held them for the 
 mother s inspection : " How thin," she cried in a dismay 
 that rivaled his on seeing the other shoes. " How slight ! 
 Why they would wear out in no time ! They would not 
 last for one walk and the heels are too high ! " 
 
 " They are the shoes that ladies wear," he said, " they 
 are the shoes you always bought yourself before you 
 made them things," looking at the specimens on the 
 floor. 
 
 " Ah ! How countrified and rusty I have become ; " 
 she answered gaily. The old man, without listening to 
 her, commenced to try on the new shoes. Again, in 
 consternation, he held up one of the little feet and looked 
 at it through his spectacles as if to make sure of its 
 identity. 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed the mother apologetically, " I forgot 
 the stockings. I should have bought the stockings first, 
 I am so sorry ! " 
 
 " You had to make your stockings, too, out there? " he 
 asked. 
 
88 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Oh, yes ! we knit them, we all wore knit stockings." 
 
 " Well, the niggers wasn t worth it," he said. 
 
 She looked on while he fitted the shoes, smoothing them 
 carefully with his hands as if they were gloves, looking 
 at them with his head on one side and saying as he always 
 used to do : " They look as well as if they were made 
 to order." 
 
 " And I am going to try a pair of ready made shoes 
 myself," she responded, " instead of going to the ex 
 pense of having them made to order. We must econo 
 mize now, you know." When this was accomplished, 
 however, she went out of the shop in the old way without 
 asking the price of what she bought or giving her 
 address. " And now," she said, " we must go for those 
 stockings before we forget them again." There was 
 but the one place for stockings in her experience, the 
 place where she and her mother before her had always 
 bought their stockings at Sinclair s, the old Scotch 
 man s. His shop was rather small but every article in 
 it was imported and therefore in local opinion, good. 
 
 Old Sinclair was walking up and down the aisle be 
 tween his two counters in his same old morose, abstracted 
 way. He did not recognize her, but the clerk she ad 
 dressed did so at once. 
 
 " You should have seen the way old Gregoire looked 
 at our knit stockings," she explained humorously to 
 him. Those he showed her were fine, soft and firm, 
 and exquisite as of yore in their finish. 
 
 " They are the real lisle thread," she murmured, as 
 she held them in her hand. She said the words as if 
 in a dream, they were so familiar and yet so strange. 
 How important the meaning used to be to her, before 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 89 
 
 she found out what the real knit stocking was! What 
 it was to watch the cotton growing, to have it spun 
 into thread by her own favorite spinner among the 
 negro women, and so particular she was, to see herself 
 to the dyeing, from indigo grown on the plantation and 
 prepared according to a recipe from an old encyclopedia 
 of useful knowledge. And then, the knitting of them 
 in the long Winter evenings by the light of her log 
 fire; the children scattered on the floor around her or 
 perhaps sleeping in their beds which she could see through 
 the open door. If her husband were there, he would be 
 talking to her of what they would do when the war was 
 over. And if he were not there she would be thinking of 
 him; wondering where he was and listening with tense 
 ears while she watched her needles. But the plantation 
 would be all quiet, save for the barking of a dog or 
 the hooting of an owl now and then. And her heart 
 would glow as she would think how her husband would 
 praise her if he knew how tranquil the plantation was, 
 and the work going on so smoothly, and the children 
 so well, and life, after all, so comfortable . . . and 
 an electric current would seem to pass from her heart 
 into her needles, they would click and flash in her hands 
 and the stocking would grow marvelously. On such 
 evenings, she loved to knit ; would knit with poetic fervor 
 thanking God that there were so many stockings for her 
 to knit. Ah ! rough and uncomfortable as they were, the 
 homely knit stocking had an advantage in sentiment 
 and association over the soft lisle thread ones; 
 they were merely a purchase, the others an achieve 
 ment. 
 
 This time, she remembered to ask the price. It did 
 
90 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 not go in one ear and out of the other, as it might have 
 done, for it was too large. 
 
 " That s very dear," she exclaimed, " I mean," with a 
 polite smile, " they are too fine, I want the quality I 
 used to wear. I always paid the same price for them! 
 I have forgotten what it was, but it was not nearly so 
 high." 
 
 " Perhaps," the clerk suggested timidly, " you had 
 better take a cotton stocking." 
 
 " Cotton stockings ! How cotton stockings ? Cheaper 
 lisle thread, you mean. I have never worn cotton stock 
 ings in my life . . . and I never shall." 
 
 " Then, Madam, you must pay the price of these." 
 
 " I suppose, I must, if you say so, but it seems to 
 me, instead of being poorer, we ought to be richer, if 
 we have to pay so much for things." 
 
 The clerk smiled at her foolishness; not old Sinclair, 
 who despite his abstracted manner, was always watching 
 his clerks and listening to what they said to cus 
 tomers. He abruptly and almost violently joined in the 
 conversation. He told the lady, still not recognizing 
 her, that in his opinion, the war had been brought on 
 for this very purpose to enrich the North and ruin the 
 South to increase the price of Northern manufactured 
 goods and force the South to buy them; to raise the 
 tariff higher and higher, and force away foreign com 
 petition and then put their miserable counterfeit sub 
 stitutes for honest fabrics up to the price of the real, 
 genuine article. She would see the day, raising his voice 
 and shaking his head until his wig slipped awry, she 
 would see the day when the tariff would be prohibitive 
 against imports, when there would not be a single im- 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 91 
 
 porting house left in the city, when the whole Southern 
 country would be the monopoly of the Northern manu 
 facturer. 
 
 The old man turned away still talking excitedly to 
 himself. She smiled now at his foolishness and told 
 the clerk out of her wisdom that the day would never 
 come when ladies would ever wear anything but Scotch 
 lisle thread stockings, French silks, and English flannels. 
 The clerk leaned over the counter and watching the back 
 of his employer, said in a low voice : " The old gentleman 
 is not well, he is suffering from great excitement. He 
 has lost a great deal by the war and has a claim now 
 against the government for an invoice of goods that 
 were seized and held when the city was captured. He 
 is going out of business, and back to Scotland. This is 
 our last year." 
 
 She went now to the general furnishing establishment 
 of the city Fortuny s. On the way she pointed out 
 to her little daughters the celebrated place, as she called 
 it, where all the brides used to get their wedding dresses, 
 and where they bought their real lace veils and flounces, 
 and the jeweller, where the diamonds and silver came 
 from. 
 
 In the center of Fortuny s the aisles and counters left 
 a respectful circular space where, when he was in the 
 shop, Fortuny always stood. Where now, stood his 
 viceroy, Volant; a short, square, good-looking old 
 Frenchman, extending to strangers and friends his alert 
 greeting and friendly welcome, with all the shrewdness 
 of a trader and all the bonhomie of a host in his face. 
 
 Before he saw who was approaching he had his smile 
 ready and his " Ah, Madame, I am very glad to see you," 
 
92 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 but when he saw who it was, this was turned into a 
 paternal: " Tiens, is it really you? Our little Madame 
 Talbot ! When did you arrive ? But when did you come 
 back? " he repeated in his strong French accent. 
 
 " Only this month, Monsieur Volant. I ought to say, 
 only this minute," she added brightly, looking around. 
 " And I am out of everything I need, everything, every 
 thing." 
 
 " Then it is not in Paris you have been this long 
 time?" he asked with affected naivete, "in Paris, the 
 Paradise of the ladies, where as Eve did, they learn 
 how to dress themselves." 
 
 "In Paris! In Paradise!" she retorted with real 
 naivete, " I have been in the wilds of Louisiana, Mon 
 sieur Volant, in the swamps, in the war. It does not 
 look here as if you had ever heard of the war; every 
 thing, so rich so beautiful." 
 
 The words died on her lips as her eyes followed the 
 unfolding of silks, holding up of gauzes, the opening 
 out of laces in all directions with here a showcase of 
 fans glittering with spangles and tinsel, there a rustling 
 heap of ribbons and wide sashes, and a never-ceasing 
 procession of shoppers, coming and going, just as they 
 used to do. " Humph," grunted Monsieur Volant, " do 
 not be mistaken, my child, we have been to the war too, 
 we are still there I may say, but," shrugging his shoulders, 
 " you know the proverb, il faut prendre dans la foret 
 de quoi la bruler/ 
 
 " And Monsieur Fortuny? How is he? Is he here?" 
 She asked after the proprietor of the shop according to 
 the polite usage of the ladies of the city. 
 
 " Monsieur Fortuny is here, he departs for France, no 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 93 
 
 later than tomorrow. He is well and looking young, 
 of course. Men of his age always look young when they 
 are well, and old when they are not. Monsieur Fortuny 
 is going away with ideas, he has plans, he is going to 
 enlarge, to beautify, in fact, to astonish his patrons." 
 
 " Then he is not like poor old Sinclair, who talks as 
 if he were ruined." 
 
 " Monsieur Fortuny is a man who would never talk 
 as if he were ruined, Madame; he is a man who could 
 never be ruined, no matter what happened to him. He 
 makes gains out of his losses. The blood of the martyrs, 
 you know, is the seed of the church. Shall I send for 
 him, for you ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, thank you, Monsieur Volant. I shall see him 
 some other time. In fact I am very busy today. I 
 have so much to buy and I know I shall forget half." 
 
 "As the ladies always do. And when one thinks; 
 just a little notebook and pencil a little list a little 
 memorandum a little notebook, no larger than this " 
 he had been putting his hand in his coatpocket and now 
 took out a little notebook to show her, showing the pencil, 
 too. " And you have only to write down one after the 
 other, everything you are going to buy needles, buttons, 
 pins, tape, ribbon, hooks and eyes, cologne, these are the 
 things the ladies forget. They never forget a silk dress, 
 a velvet cloak, a lace flounce." All the time he was talk 
 ing, his eyes were busy watching the clerks and looking 
 down the aisles to see who were coming in and going out. 
 He did not have to walk up and down and pry and 
 listen. Knowing the people under him as well as he did, 
 and the people of the city, and being in addition a keen 
 physiognomist, trained from childhood by the best of 
 
94 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 trainers, necessity, to study faces and learn what lay 
 behind them wherever his eyes reached, he knew what 
 was going on without resorting to the base usages of 
 old Sinclair. 
 
 He always talked to his lady customers as if they were 
 children or at best only on the verge of intelligence. It 
 sounded strange to Mrs. Talbot now after the training 
 she had been undergoing since last she had heard Volant 
 talk, but she went back instinctively to the time and the 
 manner of the time that Volant recalled: the amused 
 attitude of a lady who could not burden her mind with 
 such details as the trouble she gave people or the price 
 of things. 
 
 " A lady comes here," pursued Volant, " and spends 
 her morning shopping for things she cannot wait for; 
 they must be sent to her by a special messenger at once. 
 Well, the messenger is no sooner off with his bundle than 
 here comes a negro boy flying down us Mistress has 
 forgotten pins, please put them in the bundle and he 
 is hardly out of sight when here comes Madame s maid 
 running into the store * Mistress forgot needles, please 
 put them in the bundle/ That is the way it is all the 
 time. It gives them trouble, it gives us trouble . . . 
 and all for want of what ? A little notebook and pencil." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I know it, Monsieur Volant. You are 
 perfectly right. My husband is always telling me the 
 same thing. He thinks too, that ladies should write their 
 accounts in little books so as to know exactly how much 
 they spend; and keep their receipts, too, of the money 
 they pay out. But when money is spent, what is the use 
 of remembering it? On the contrary, the sooner we 
 forget it the better." That is the way, precisely, that 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 95 
 
 she used to talk and feel. " My husband is a real 
 American in his ideas." 
 
 " Our ladies and business methods ! " Monsieur 
 Volant raised his eyes and hands at the absurdity of the 
 connection. " Why, they will not even handle the money 
 in their own purses when they can avoid it. They prefer 
 to charge a paper of pins rather than pay for it and so 
 the clerk has to write it down on a check and the check 
 has to be written down in the account book and that has 
 to be copied in another book. Ah ! You should see the 
 great book upstairs that all the accounts are kept in. 
 There are letters on the margin. He turns until he 
 comes to your letter, and then till he comes to your name 
 and then he writes down : One paper of pins, five cents. 
 
 " That is so." She laughed in a pleased way as if the 
 description were complimentary and Volant laughed in 
 a pleased way also, for it was complimentary in his eyes. 
 What he most liked in " our ladies," as he called them, 
 was their easy, careless extravagance, their utter indif 
 ference to their money and to the trouble they gave. 
 That was being a lady as he saw it. To be hard-working, 
 saving, wrinkling up eyes at a price, drawing down the 
 mouth over a bargain, that was being a woman, being 
 in fact what his own sturdy, common, coarse mother was. 
 
 " When strangers come here, Northerners," he went 
 on, " and they look at their change, and find no pennies, 
 they are amazed. Yes, and some of them are indignant, 
 too. * But you owe me two cents/ they protest, or one 
 cent/ And then we have to explain that we have no 
 smaller coin than five cents; and if we had it we could 
 not make use of it ; our clientele would not take coppers 
 in change." 
 
96 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 "Of course we would not, Monsieur Volant! The 
 idea of carrying around a lot of ugly coppers for the sake 
 of one, two, or three cents ! I like to have things charged 
 too instead of paying for them at once. It is like asking 
 the price of things," she went on easily and inconse- 
 quently, " when I think of it I ask, but the answer goes 
 in one ear and out of the other. I never pay attention 
 to it. But after all, what difference does it make? If 
 one needs a thing, one must have it." 
 
 " And ladies always think they need what they want." 
 
 "Of course," she answered, not seeing his fine irony. 
 
 " It is upon this truth, Madame, that we build our 
 trade. It is our rock," his eyes twinkling maliciously, 
 " and the one who makes most profit in our business, 
 is precisely the one who is most successful in making 
 the ladies believe that what they want is what they need. 
 
 She laughed pleasantly. He was the same Volant that 
 her mother used to chat with just as she was doing 
 now when she was a little girl like Cicely and Polly ; and 
 he looked no older then, than he did at that moment. 
 
 By an effort she recalled all she intended to buy when 
 she left home and a great deal more, many things that 
 she did not know she needed until she saw them. Just 
 as she used to, just as she used to, when sometimes she 
 would go into a shop " en passant " without wanting to 
 buy a thing and these would be very likely the occasions 
 on which she would buy most. But as the clerk always 
 assured her, if she had a thing in the house she could 
 always find a need for it. Many a time when she heard 
 of a case of distress, all that she had to do was to go 
 to an armoire and take out flannel, linen, calico, a shawl, 
 and send them to the unfortunate woman without having 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 97 
 
 to buy a thing. Hats she could not find at Fortuny s. 
 From time immemorial, Florette s was the only place 
 for hats ; that is, since Florette the handsome black-eyed 
 girl who used to take the bonnets to the homes of the 
 ladies, to try them on there (for exclusive ladies would 
 not try on hats or dresses either at a modiste s) since 
 Florette had found the capital, the fates alone knew 
 how or where, to buy out her patron and set herself up 
 in old Victorine s place. A youthful and blooming suc 
 cessor she was to that ancient milliner about whom the 
 old grandmothers used to whisper such interesting stories 
 to one another. But the stories ! the stories ! whatever a 
 woman does seems to contain a story, even to selling 
 bonnets. 
 
 Many a court beauty, however, has received her ad 
 vance in life for no better qualities and no more beautiful 
 black eyes than Florette s. And like many a thus ad 
 vanced beauty, Florette displayed such aptitude in her 
 opportunities, such cleverness, such tact, quickness of 
 tongue, versatility of decorum, that she exorcised her 
 past from the memory of those who knew the truth 
 about it. To people who did not know the truth, and 
 these after all are the only impartial judges in this world, 
 she seemed to have stepped from obscurity into full- 
 fledged divinity, by as natural, simple, and innocent a 
 process as Minerva or Cinderella. She was now well 
 on the way to old age, herself, and by the utmost reach 
 of her art looked no younger than fifty, yet, she was still 
 handsome, still amiable, still the black-eyed, strapping 
 Florette who used to carry bandboxes through the streets, 
 past all the rich gentlemen s offices, even if she had to 
 go out of her way to do so. 
 
98 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 When her old client entered the room, Florette gave 
 an exclamation such as one utters at a calamity. 
 
 " Ah, Madame ! Is it you ? No, it is not you ! No, 
 impossible! Ah, Dieu! Just Heavens! Ah! Ah! No! 
 No! not here! Not out here! In my office, in my 
 office ! " leading the way into a kind of boudoir at the 
 back of her shop. " But when did you arrive ? Three 
 weeks here without coming to see me ! You should have 
 come straight here from the boat. You should not have 
 gone through the streets before coming to see me! I 
 would have sent to the boat to you ! I would have sent 
 Cesar to you ! Cesar ! Cesar ! " she called aloud and 
 when her principal shop woman came, a sedate, plainly 
 dressed woman, with a black silk apron on (Florette had 
 no Florettes about her, we may be sure). Cesar, bring 
 some bonnets for Madame and for the young ladies." 
 
 She took off Madame s bonnet herself and raised her 
 eyes to heaven as she held it up in her hands : " Ah ! 
 war, war, what do you make us suffer! It is what I 
 say all the time; nothing, nothing, is worth a war. If 
 you cannot gain what you want in peace, give it up! 
 The church is right, it is better to forgive your enemies ; 
 you lose less in the end." It is hardly necessary to say 
 that Florette was on good terms with the church. One 
 of the qualities of such women is to disarm their official 
 judges, nay, even their executioners, and she was quite 
 in the position to quote the church, accurately or in 
 accurately. Until Cesar came back with the bandboxes, 
 she continued her subject. 
 
 " Nothing is so old-fashioned, nothing, as an old- 
 fashioned bonnet! Only five years ago, this was the 
 last smile of fashion. The changes, you say, the changes 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 99 
 
 in politics? I assure you the changes in politics are 
 nothing to the changes in fashion. I myself, what 
 do I know, I came from Paris last fall. I go in 
 a month, I may find everything changed. When I 
 left, it was all, Empress Eugenie still ; . . . a graceful, 
 beautiful figure de rigueur; the Andalusian figure, and 
 to be blonde; the hair in curls, en cache peigne." She 
 turned her head to show her luxuriant bunch of artificial 
 curls falling like a waterfall over the top of a comb. 
 Very appropriately, while she was speaking, Henriette, 
 the hair dresser, came in through a back door having 
 finished her duties of combing Florette s shop girls. She 
 was as old as Florette but looked her age. Both dated 
 from the same period of time in the community, but while 
 Florette was carrying bandboxes, Henriette, infinitely 
 better dressed, was carrying only her little straw basket 
 on her arm. Her mistress had apprenticed her to a 
 French coiffeur in the city (all intelligent, young negro 
 maids were then sent to school to a coiffeur) and 
 Henriette had profited so well by her instruction that 
 when her mistress died, she was able to buy her 
 freedom. 
 
 She was perfectly black, a fact of which she was very 
 proud, for it meant incontrovertibly the virtue of her 
 ancestresses and she therefore considered herself as much 
 above mulattoes and quadroons as they thought them 
 selves above her. This consciousness gave her a fine 
 carriage; she held her head high and walked like an 
 African queen! Florette, herself, did not walk more 
 admirably. 
 
 She was dressed, (no one had ever seen her dressed 
 differently), in a purple calico gown, with a black silk 
 
ioo THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 apron, a white kerchief crossed over her bosom; large 
 gold rings in her ears, and on her head, a tignon, of real 
 Madras, from which a loop of soft black wool, made 
 a deep scallop on each side of her face. Here was some 
 more unchanging reality in the apparently universal 
 change. 
 
 "Still here? Still combing, Henriette?" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Talbot, speaking as if after a lapse of fifty, instead 
 of four years. 
 
 " Why should I not be here, Madame? And combing? 
 I have been free and working for my living long before 
 there was any talk of the freedom by the war." Her 
 voice was musical and low in tone, but she shrew a dash 
 of contempt in her words. 
 
 A shop girl came in with a large glossy black box filled 
 with white Spanish lace scarfs. She spoke in an under 
 tone to Florette, showing one or two. 
 
 "A stranger?" asked Florette, in a tone of indif 
 ference. 
 
 " Yes, Madame." 
 
 "An American?" 
 
 " Yes, Madame." 
 
 " The price is marked on it, go by the price." 
 
 " But, Madame," the girl sank her voice to make an 
 explanation. 
 
 " Eh! Ah! he says that, does he? That he can buy it 
 at Fortuny s, eh?" She turned upon the girl with 
 an ominous look in her face. 
 
 " And you, Mademoiselle, repeat that insolence to me 
 instead of putting the box back on the shelf and telling 
 him to go then to Fortuny s? You . . . but I will 
 speak to Madame Cesar about you." The crestfallen girl 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACF : 101 
 
 stumbled and almost fell in her confusion as she left 
 the room. 
 
 During the colloquy, Henriette, in her grave, business 
 like way had undone the hair of the little girls and 
 passed her comb through it, softly feeling the scalp. 
 " This one," she said of Polly, " is thick but you must 
 not cut it so often, it is wrong to cut the hair so often. 
 This one," of Cicely, " has fine hair but thin. You must 
 put some pomade on it. Put it on once a week and rub 
 it in softly. The Americans brush the hair too much and 
 they use too hard a brush. Use a soft brush, not a 
 hard one and do not brush too much. The Creole ladies 
 have softer, prettier hair than the Americans, whose hair 
 is stiff and straight." 
 
 She plaited the little girl s hair again and tied it with 
 a ribbon that she took from her basket and then took 
 out from it a curious little pot of pomade. Florette 
 brought the little pots from Paris but Henriette made the 
 pomade herself. It had been one of her ways of getting 
 rich for she charged for it as Florette did for her goods, 
 not according to value, but to the customer. She rolled 
 the pot in a piece of Florette s especial, heavy, unglazed 
 dark-blue paper and gave it to one of the little girls; 
 saying to the mother who made a gesture toward her 
 purse : " Oh, no, Madame ! pay me the next time you see 
 me." And then, with her customary, ceremonious 
 courtesy and " Je vous salue, Mesdames" she left as 
 she had entered by the back door. 
 
 The messengers from the shop were coming in now 
 with constant interruptions and ladies were being con 
 ducted through the boudoir on their way upstairs to have 
 their dresses fitted on. 
 
102 THE PEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " But who are they ? What are they to be going up 
 stairs in Florette s shop ? " Mrs. Talbot wondered to 
 herself. " And to be so excessively, so obsequiously 
 polite to Florette? Madame Florette this, Madame 
 Florette that, and I beg your pardon, Madame/ Since 
 when, I should like to know, has Florette permitted 
 herself such air and graces with customers? In old days, 
 she would have been well put down in her place for such 
 pretensions, such cool impertinence, in truth." 
 
 Florette tied the bonnet on the lady with her own 
 hands, sparkling as they were with rings, commenting 
 as she looked at the reflection in the oval mirror draped 
 in rose-colored cretonne: " Altogether in your own style; 
 plain and simple as you see, only the absolutely necessary, 
 but elegant; a bow of ribbon, in truth, is all you need, 
 but it must be the proper ribbon, and the proper kind of 
 bow. The imported hats! ... ah, bah! you can be 
 independent of them. I know, I know," nodding her 
 head significantly, " they are not for such as you." And 
 yet Florette would tell another customer that she sold 
 only imported hats and that to be without a becoming 
 bonnet was worse than to be without a becoming soul; 
 that it was the fashion that made the woman; that it 
 was better to go without bread, than the fashion, that; 
 etc., etc. And in spite of her friendliness with the church, 
 she would shrug her shoulders and say : " What will you? 
 It is God s affair ! He created the world and He created 
 women. If He had wished us otherwise, He would have 
 created us otherwise. We in fact are His millinery." 
 
 She placed their hats on the little girls and gave to 
 each her sunbonnet neatly wrapped in paper with the 
 recommendation always to wear it in the sun so as not 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 103 
 
 to get freckled, and presented each one with a cornet 
 of bonbons, tied with ribbon. She was patronized as 
 much for her bonbons as for French fashions, selling 
 them, however, only in her own bonbonnieres which 
 were as costly as her bonnets. But the more they cost, 
 the, more eager were the gentlemen to buy them and the 
 ladies to receive them on New Year s day, and on 
 anniversaries. 
 
 It was now three o clock, the fashionable hour and 
 the banquettes, as sidewalks are called in New Orleans, 
 were well filled. The lane back of the home in St. 
 Medard was not brighter with reds, yellows and pur 
 ples than the street was with the gay colors of dresses 
 and bonnets. Ladies and gentlemen were swarming 
 like bees in and out of the two confectioner shops whose 
 cases of bonbons, crystallized fruits and cakes of all 
 kinds, and their marble-topped tables, and orange trees 
 in green tubs, were prolonged indefinitely by mirrors 
 cunningly draped with curtains like windows. 
 
 How such places dwell in the memory! It had been 
 one of Mrs. Talbot s pleasures on the plantation when 
 cruelly fretted by a spoiled appetite, discontented with 
 a monotonous fare of hominy, bacon, corn bread, and 
 molasses to dream of the sorbets and biscuits, cakes, 
 pates, and bonbons of Felix. And she used to picture 
 herself, when all the tribulations of the war were over 
 and ended (ended as she always ended them with the 
 triumph of the right people), how she and her friends 
 would drop into Felix s again and laugh and talk of 
 their adventures as they would laugh and talk of ad 
 ventures at a masked ball, over the supper table. But 
 it was not she nor her friends who were doing the 
 
104 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 laughing and talking now. She looked around, most of 
 the men were officers in uniform. A few months ago, 
 had they come to the plantation, she would have been 
 frightened to death at the sight of them and very likely, 
 they would have accosted her, pistol in hand, threatening 
 to hang her husband if they caught him ; and she would 
 pray God to keep them from ever catching him, or 
 burning her home as they also threatened. And now, 
 she and they were eating cakes at the same counter! 
 Silver half dollars were raining down on the marble 
 counters, and the argentine laugh of the ladies fell as 
 richly on the ear. For ladies, when in company of 
 officers in uniform, always seem to accentuate their joy 
 by much laughter. 
 
 She bought a bag of cakes to take home with her and 
 this was as near as she came to the fulfilment of her 
 dream on the plantation. But when she was about leaving 
 the place an unexpected pleasure seemed to fall to her. 
 A smile came over her face, the instinctive smile at 
 recognizing a friend among strangers and aliens. Made 
 moiselle Coralie, it was, Mademoiselle Coralie Chepe, 
 her old protegee, dependent and kind of nursery gover 
 ness and companion, not that she had needed either, 
 but Mademoiselle Coralie s troubles were at that time, 
 very great, and her manner of describing them, pathetic. 
 
 And, in fact, it was her necessities not her abilities 
 that had secured to Mademoiselle Coralie her position 
 which included, besides a home and a salary, all that 
 a kind-hearted, rich friend is willing to give to a poor 
 and needy one. Who, save a friend, would have recog 
 nized Mademoiselle Coralie in a fresh silk dress, scintil 
 lating with jet trimmings ; her coquettish little head with 
 
PEACE, GENTLE PEACE 105 
 
 its crisp, curling black hair loaded with a bonnet full of 
 flowers, her black eyes, brimming over with arch looks, 
 her full lips, with smiles, her dark complexion, roseate 
 with cosmetics? No one would have supposed, she was 
 not pretty, she knew so well how to convey the im 
 pression that she was ; even a very ugly black mole on her 
 cheek had been touched, up into a kind of ornament. 
 
 Her old patron extended her hand, stepping forward, 
 but before she had time to call Mademoiselle Coralie s 
 name, she saw that the lady was not she, that is she looked 
 and acted as a stranger would have done. There was 
 no recognition in her face, none at all, and she turned 
 away with her companion, an officer in uniform. 
 
 " That is very strange ! " exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, in 
 voluntarily aloud : " I was sure it was she but she was 
 dressed too fine for Coralie." 
 
 It was not so strange as she found out afterward. 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 
 
 IN spite of the careful attention of friends and the 
 assiduities of talebearers, we live in a woeful state of 
 ignorance as to the true condition of the sentiments of 
 any one about us. And when we interrogate our own 
 judgment, we get no better enlightenment, for un 
 fortunately we are all addicted to the pleasant habit of 
 counting as friends, those whom we like; as enemies, 
 those whom we dislike. 
 
 For that reason alone, and only that reason, Mr. 
 Talbot s memory did not carry Monsieur Pinseau as a 
 friend. The ridiculous attempts at speechmaking and 
 the undignified campaign activities in favor of a political 
 trickster, that rankled so painfully in the Creole gentle 
 man s remembrances of the past, did not trouble the 
 American at all; but the things that Monsieur Pinseau 
 passed over with indulgence, those were the ones that 
 Mr. Talbot s memory recorded with unalterable con 
 demnation. In his own defeat and the triumph of the 
 rival candidate, he attributed nothing whatever to 
 Monsieur Pinseau whom he frankly did not credit with 
 an idea in his head above fast living and extravagant 
 spending of his wife s money of, in short, playing the 
 fool, as he called it and of making associates of men 
 who were also given to that pastime. Which shows 
 among other verities, how much more importance than 
 they deserve we attach to our pitiful efforts to overthrow 
 
 106 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 107 
 
 a good character and reputation. When Mr. Talbot 
 heard his wife s report about Mademoiselle Mimi he was 
 vastly pleased. " All the money in the world," he said 
 enthusiastically, " could not procure better instruction 
 or instruction that agreed better with his ideas." It was 
 what he had hoped, when he had money with which to 
 realize his hopes. " A lady," he explained, " must furnish 
 example as well as precept to her pupils." His objection 
 to most governesses and teachers was that they were such 
 a warning against themselves ; generally, an ugly, forlorn, 
 disappointed, and soured set of women with far more 
 of the furies than the graces about them. A teacher 
 should represent to a little girl what she would like to 
 be, for little girls learn by imitation mostly. 
 
 Mrs. Talbot never contested the opinions of her hus 
 band. Her way of entertaining him was to let him talk 
 to her and to agree with him. As for the reasons of 
 things, she seldom thought of them. The things them 
 selves she was wont to say were as much as she could 
 tackle. 
 
 " Give the little girls a good model," he continued, 
 " and the battle is half won." He would never allow 
 a daughter of his, to [emphasizing his meaning] be 
 taught by a man, for she would end by trying to imitate 
 him and the result would be a hobbledehoy. Made 
 moiselle could teach all that it was essential for a lady to 
 know ; that is, how how to take her place in society and 
 maintain it. 
 
 He smoked his pipe for a few minutes in silence and 
 his wife knew as well as if he had told her that he was 
 thinking of those old salons on Royal, St. Louis, and 
 Chartres streets where as a young man fresh from the 
 
io8 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 University of Virginia he had met the charming society 
 of the ladies whom he had never ceased to admire and 
 whom he had chosen as the models for his daughters. 
 
 The only drawback he could see in Mademoiselle 
 Mimi s school, was Monsieur Pinseau. And he charged 
 his wife not to encourage any intimacy between the two 
 families. He himself had never wished to know the 
 man; had always avoided him and he would not suffer 
 his children to be thrown familiarly into company that 
 he disapproved of. If the world were to be made of 
 such as Monsieur Pinseau was reputed to be, there would 
 be no morality and no law in it. He knew personally 
 nothing against him, except that he went with a set of 
 men that flaunted their follies and so demoralized society. 
 It was always easier to prevent than to break off. He 
 thought that Mademoiselle Mimi had better be told this 
 at the outset, firmly and frankly ; then there could be no 
 misunderstanding in the future. He confided to his 
 wife this flaming sword and even instructed her as to 
 how her delicate hands were to wield it. 
 
 " Do not let your politeness get the better of you. Be 
 firm and decided. There is nothing that a mother should 
 be so decided about as the surroundings of her daughters. 
 Mademoiselle Mimi is a sensible woman and she will 
 understand the importance of maintaining the standards 
 of good society. A man cannot make his assertions in 
 such matters as a woman can. A man represents at 
 best only intellectual force, women, spiritual." After a 
 pause he continued : " If women chose, they could rule 
 the world through Society. We can better get along 
 with a corrupt judiciary than a corrupt Society. Do 
 not hurt her feelings but make your point clear. You 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 109 
 
 can be clear enough when you want. And you had 
 better warn the children a little, let them understand." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I will depend upon you to manage it." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do it in your time, and your own way. Ladies have 
 a gift for such things. A smile, a word, no more; but 
 what a rebuke! A volume couldn t tell more, a pistol 
 shot be more killing." 
 
 He sank deep in his reflections, perhaps over some 
 such pistol shot in his own memory. 
 
 When there was no alternative between doing his 
 will and being disagreeable, his wife was forced to exer 
 cise some of the gifts which she also possessed in common 
 with the charming ladies of his memory. For as much 
 as he knew about them, she knew more. He saw the 
 outside of their gifts, she, the inside machinery. " Tell 
 a daughter," she said to herself, " that her father is an 
 improper acquaintance for little girls who know nothing 
 against him and never will know anything against him! 
 Make Mademoiselle Mimi understand that there must 
 be no intercourse between the two families, because in 
 short, my husband is better than her father; Where? 
 Great heavens! Where? In what salons ancient or 
 modern did ladies say such things one to another ? Per 
 haps in the wilds of Virginia, where my husband was 
 born, but not here in Louisiana, where, thank heaven! 
 I was born. If it were the truth, which it is, Made 
 moiselle Mimi would surely know it better than any one 
 else! How could she help knowing it? What did her 
 whole life mean otherwise : her misfortunes, her labor. , 
 her unselfish devotion? What did it all mean to her if 
 
i io THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 not just that? But tell her so! Make her understand 
 it, which means to make her acknowledge and confess it ! 
 Mademoiselle Mimi would very soon put an end to any 
 such conversation as that! And to save Society! 
 Heavens above! Go around denouncing one another s 
 fathers, brothers, husbands! That would be a feasible 
 way of saving it, eh ? What society would be left ? And 
 what woman would be sure enough of her own father, 
 husband, brother aye, sister and even mother ? " There 
 had been this consideration in some families that she 
 knew of ! " Go around denouncing this one and that ! 
 No ! No ! Women maintain Society by just the opposite 
 plan. Men denounce the criminal but hold on to the 
 crime. Women denounce the crime but hold onto the 
 criminal. That is the difference between them. And 
 Mademoiselle Mimi was right ! A thousand times right ! 
 as a woman." 
 
 Husbands, despite their convictions, and their superior 
 assumptions to the contrary, have really no advantage 
 over other men in knowledge of a woman s mind, or, in 
 short, of the inner determinations of a wife s mind. 
 They can only know in truth, what the wife chooses to 
 tell them, and a discreet wife often chooses to limit her 
 communications of this kind. Wives for example, such 
 as Mr. Talbot admired in the old salons, who were as 
 unlike missionaries as one can possibly conceive. They 
 were not women to brandish moral swords ! They were 
 women on the contrary, like Mademoiselle Mimi. 
 
 So Mrs. Talbot was quite clear, in this at least, that 
 Mademoiselle would be talked to as her husband directed 
 at the Greek Calends and not before. 
 
 The bright glow of sunset shone in the sky. It bright- 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW in 
 
 ened the spire of the little church and seemed almost 
 to give a golden tone to the thin, weak voice of the 
 Angelus bell. A few oranges still glittered amid the 
 dark foliage of the hedge, the sour, bitter kind, not the 
 sweet ones whose flowers so poetically used to symbolize 
 the hopes of brides. ^And the old garden, as an old face 
 does sometimes from inward illumination, flushed under 
 the golden and rose light of the sky, into a flicker of its 
 pristine witchery and beauty. The children were scat 
 tered through it, fondling and caressing it, as if indeed 
 it were an old face. , 
 
 " I have never worked for anything in my life that 
 I did not get it in the end." The husband spoke medi 
 tatively from another mile-stone in his thoughts. This 
 was true, but his wife had never heard him say so before. 
 There never had been any need to say it before. It was 
 taken for granted. Now? 
 
 " But you worked hard for what you wanted/ she 
 responded quickly with her sure instinct of affection. 
 " It was always said about you, that you were the hardest 
 working young lawyer at the bar. I always remember a 
 story Papa told about you. He was passing your office 
 once in the middle of Winter, long past midnight and 
 seeing a light in your office ; all the other windows were 
 black, he went upstairs to see if anything were the matter, 
 opened the door, and there you were over your books, 
 dressed just as you had come from some dinner-party or 
 ball." 
 
 " Well, Talbot, he said disgustedly," her husband 
 took up the story with a laugh, " you must love work. 
 Love, I answered, I love it better than meat and 
 bread. " 
 
ii2 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 His face showed his satisfaction at the memory of 
 it. She possessed the art of recalling such things 
 and repeating them appropriately. Her memory was 
 a treasury to her. She never forgot a face, a 
 name, a good deed, a pleasant speech or a humorous 
 incident. 
 
 Yes," her husband repeated, with gusto, " I always 
 loved to work. I cared in fact for nothing in life that 
 I did not work for. What a man makes up his mind 
 to work for, he can obtain," he added confidently. And 
 then he began to explain his plans again to her. Any one 
 could understand them, they were so simple and natural. 
 It was true he had lost a fortune; everything he had 
 worked for and gained since he had been a lawyer 
 and he did not count in this what he should have in 
 herited from his father who had died during the war and 
 whose estate had been settled in Confederate money. 
 He counted as his own only what he had made, and no 
 man had made more or larger fees than he. He called 
 over, as lawyers never tire of doing, his cases in the past 
 and the briefs, the " historic briefs " he called them, 
 that he had written. Having saved his library, he said, 
 was the greatest piece of good fortune that could happen 
 to him or any lawyer. If that had been lost, he would 
 have considered himself unfortunate. The loss of his 
 plantation would have been nothing in comparison to it. 
 With its accumulation of private notes and records, it was 
 perhaps the most complete in the city, he knew he would 
 not have exchanged it for any he had ever seen. And 
 he was lucky too in having his same old office. He could 
 take up just where he had left off four years ago and 
 as far as he could see, it was only a question of work 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 113 
 
 with him, to catch up on the losses of the war. Fortu 
 nately, litigation could not be captured, confiscated or 
 burned. " The fact is," he concluded, with a frank 
 laugh, " if there is any important lawsuit, there are four 
 or five of us who are bound to be retained on one side 
 or the other." 
 
 The only change he would make from former plans, 
 was that instead of sending his sons to the University 
 of Virginia, as he had intended, he would put them to 
 work just as soon as they knew enough of the requisites 
 that is Latin, Greek, and mathematics, with sufficient 
 science for respectability; which was far more than 
 the greatest Americans had started with fifty years ago. 
 If there was anything in the boys, they could get along 
 on the education he was able to give them. If they could 
 not get along on that, it was a pretty good sign they 
 would not get along on a better. The daughters would 
 suffer less in education, for they could learn easier, all 
 that ladies needed to know, and take more time over it. 
 He had always counted on giving each one her dower 
 when she became of age so that she could marry or not 
 just as she chose. He had seen some unfortunate young 
 girls marry for money, some literally for the means of 
 living. A dower, he feared, would be beyond his reach 
 now. The consequences of the war would fall heavier on 
 the women than on the men. The lives of the men would 
 be changed comparatively little. But the women ... it 
 was slavery alone that had kept them from domestic 
 drudgery ... he shook his head, and repeated, " do 
 mestic drudgery added to family duties." He smoked his 
 pipe a moment and continued with a new variation of his 
 subject, his wife listening without assent or dissent, look- 
 
ii 4 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ing through his telescope whichever way he wanted; 
 either end the right one for her. 
 
 He ran over the list of his friends who like him had 
 broken away from all that had constituted life to them 
 to go into the war. As he gave the name, his wife s ready 
 memory supplied her usual pleasant addenda of reminis 
 cences; how they used to like this one and that one, and 
 how this one and that one used to like him and praise 
 him to her, and all sorts of other items in connection with 
 his friends that he had forgotten ; tossing over her little 
 memories, and rummaging in them as she once would 
 have done in her great bureau drawer of scraps! And 
 like the ladies scraps of that time her bits from memory 
 were all of beautiful quality: silk, velvet, brocade, real 
 embroidery, real lace; buttons and buckles that looked 
 like jewelry, ribbons, ostrich and marabout feathers, all 
 too pretty to throw away but so useless to keep except 
 as souvenirs. The duel that he had prevented, the ugly 
 family quarrel he had stopped, a reconciliation between a 
 husband and wife bent on divorce, the last will and 
 testament he had turned from resentment into forgive 
 ness of injuries, and how he had always stood by the 
 unfortunate. There was not a friend or client he could 
 name that she could not connect with some personal 
 obligation. It was only the good lawyer s usual show 
 ing at that time and the wife s usual version of his 
 services; services that only lawyers and their wives en 
 hance with any glamor of sentimental obligation; for a 
 lawyer s clients have no such glamor in their view of the 
 transaction. 
 
 But it was a pleasant review and a drawer of scraps 
 that any lawyer s wife would be glad to own. Even 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 115 
 
 old Benton, millionaire and miser that he was, had owned 
 to her that the beginning of his great fortune was laid 
 when Talbot was a young law student, and he, Benton, a 
 porter carrying bundles of goods on his back up and 
 down four and five flights of stairs. And there was 
 Tommy Cook, whom he had picked up out of the gutter, 
 for he could never see a bright boy run to waste without 
 stretching out his hand to prevent it ... and . . . 
 and . . . friends, friends, friends, wherever they looked 
 in the past they saw friends and not an enemy. For 
 according to the pleasant weakness already mentioned, 
 they saw in the past none to whom they were not friendly ; 
 forgetting, of course, contradictory experiences. 
 
 " I shall let Tommy Cook keep his desk in the office." 
 
 "What does he want with a desk there?" the wife 
 asked innocently. 
 
 " Well, not to black shoes on, you may be sure. 
 Tommy is a lawyer now." 
 
 " How can he be a lawyer? " 
 
 " By study and work like other men." 
 
 " But I always thought that lawyers had to be gentle 
 men. I have never known a lawyer who was not a 
 gentleman." 
 
 " You have been very lucky then," he answered dryly. 
 
 There was silence between them for a moment, and 
 then he took up the fallen thread of conversation again. 
 " He has a pretty good practice already. He gained a 
 suit for Benton the other day." 
 
 "What! did Benton employ him?" 
 
 " He needed a lawyer and Tommy is about as decent 
 a one as he could find. He has been associated, at least, 
 with the bar." 
 
ii6 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Yes, as bootblack." 
 
 " Some of the others wouldn t have made even decent 
 bootblacks; butlers, and camp followers, mostly." 
 
 She looked disgusted but said nothing. 
 
 " What," she asked, brightening with a sudden inspira 
 tion, " what has become of the Riparian case ? " 
 
 Always before, that is before the war that had 
 separated them from their past; in their talks about the 
 future, they would discuss this case. She had completely 
 forgotten it! What a prominent object it had always 
 been in her husband s horizon! For years his ambition 
 had rested on it. It was to be, in his eyes, the master 
 piece of his profession, to give him fame throughout the 
 legal world. He used to say that if he never gained 
 anything else but that one case he would have secured 
 wealth for himself and his children, so far-reaching 
 would be the effects of a favorable decision. The fee 
 was contingent, but he was as sure of getting it, he used 
 to say, as he was sure the heavens would not fall. 
 
 From the time that he had been called to the bar he 
 had aimed at that case, he had studied and worked his 
 way into it with such consummate patience, and legal 
 keenness, that he was considered the only man in the 
 city who had a perfect record of it in his mind. It was 
 as much his own as any piece of property he could have 
 bought. No matter when it was opened, now or twenty 
 years hence, it could not be opened without his appearing 
 in it as principal counsel. 
 
 "How strange! thought the wife, "that everything 
 else should give way in the South government, states 
 rights, social order and that a great war should be 
 fought and thousands of lives lost, and a mere question 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 117 
 
 of the city s Riparian rights should survive! That like 
 a lighthouse it should still be standing after the storm 
 that has strewn the shore with wrecks ! " This led her 
 to ask about their friend Dalton who, having studied law 
 in her husband s office, had been employed in some minor 
 capacity in this very Riparian case. 
 
 "Dalton? Oh, Dalton went into the war a private, 
 and has come out a major." 
 
 " Well, is he any more human ? any less like a fish 
 cold and slippery ? 
 
 As she had done about the Riparian case, her husband 
 might well have wondered how such an idle and futile 
 prejudice could survive the fierce tempest that had almost 
 engulfed the National Government, and wrecked its 
 apparently indestructible fortunes. He answered quietly : 
 " He is very much improved in appearance and seems 
 full of energy. He will stay in my office and use my 
 library until he is able to set up an independent establish 
 ment." 
 
 A click of the gate s latchet caused them to raise their 
 heads and look in that direction, and as they saw who 
 was coming down the walk toward them, both exclaimed : 
 " Harry Linton ! " Both stepped forward to meet him ; 
 the aunt repeating with a glad smile, " Harry ! Harry ! 
 I was thinking about him only today," She had not seen 
 him since he waved his cap in good-bye to her from the 
 car window when his company left for Virginia : the 
 gay, young nephew, who had lived with them while he 
 studied law with his uncle, whom she loved, it may be 
 said, for his faults, for he had made no display of the 
 family virtues. He was still boyish-looking, and had still 
 the same old irresistible expression of friendliness and 
 
ii8 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 good humor on his round freckled face and in his blue 
 eyes, and his light hair stood out as it used to in thick 
 curls over his head. The only change was a long ugly 
 scar that extended over one side of his face, from fore 
 head to chin, cutting across an eye. He looked taller and 
 showed the effect of drilling in his bearing but he was 
 still shorter than his uncle by a full head. 
 
 They drew their chairs together, the children clustering 
 on the steps in good hearing. 
 
 "Well," said his uncle, "what are you doing?" 
 
 " No, no," protested the aunt. " He must begin 
 from the time he left us and tell us all his adventures. 
 I want to hear the whole story from beginning to 
 end." 
 
 The young fellow laughed and told hurriedly how, 
 after he was wounded in Virginia he had been sent back 
 to Louisiana to recuperate, and then had been transferred 
 to the Louisiana command where, in a desperate fight 
 on Red River, a small company tried to delay the advance 
 of the Federal army, which they succeeded in doing; 
 how he received his wound in the face, and was insensible 
 when he was taken prisoner and brought to New Orleans. 
 After he was discharged from the hospital he was kept 
 in prison until peace was declared. The children crowded 
 upon one another to get nearer to him while he talked 
 along in his gay, bright, reckless way. 
 
 " As soon as I could get out of the city," he continued, 
 " I started for home. I hadn t heard a word from my 
 people for a year and didn t know anything about them 
 except that they had taken refuge in Texas you know 
 our place was just on the line of Banks s march." 
 
 His uncle nodded. 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 119 
 
 " And then, and then? " his aunt s voice quivered with 
 impatience. 
 
 " The chimneys are still standing and that is all that 
 was left to show that there had been a human habitation 
 there." 
 
 "Oh! Oh!" wailed the aunt, "that beautiful old 
 house ! That fine plantation ! " 
 
 Harry was too much amused at the story to come to 
 waste time on the lament. He threw his head back and 
 laughed as at a joke. 
 
 " I wish you could have seen the family come back ! 
 I was lucky enough to get there the day before. I 
 camped during the night in the shelter of my ancestral 
 ruins, that is in the furnace of the sugar house; there 
 were not enough ruins of anything else to shelter a 
 cat," laughing. " I knew they would come straight to 
 the place as quick as they could travel, and I had a 
 presentiment that that would be about as quick as I could 
 get there from the city. Well, I was standing in front 
 of my furnace, looking about for something to look at, 
 when, here they came, just about dusk ! First a broken- 
 down buggy tied with rope, drawn by a limping horse. 
 Elizabeth was in it with Heatherstone. Behind them 
 came a little cart with a kind of cover over it, drawn by 
 an old gray mule. Mother drove that and it seemed 
 filled with children, their heads stuck out in all directions 
 like chickens in a basket." 
 
 All laughed with him at this picture. 
 
 " Heatherstone was shot all to pieces at Mansfield, 
 you know. I had heard that he was wounded but I really 
 did not know until I saw him that he had lost both an 
 arm and a leg." 
 
120 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " An arm and a leg ! Oh, Harry ! " cried his aunt in 
 horror. 
 
 " Yes, and on the hand he has left he has only three 
 fingers. The thumb and forefinger had to be ampu 
 tated." 
 
 "Oh!" . . . 
 
 " How does he stand it ? " asked the uncle, curtly 
 interrupting the soft, sympathetic voice. " He was the 
 last man in the country to play the invalid with success." 
 
 " Invalid ! He an invalid ! whew ..." Harry 
 threw back his head and whistled. " I was fool enough 
 to think I might say something to him to show a little 
 feeling, to express some sort of sympathy and that sort 
 of thing about his being a cripple. By Jove," the young 
 man jumped up to act the scene for them " he turned 
 upon me as if I were a Yankee. Damn it, Sir ! Do you 
 dare sympathize with me, Sir? Damn your sympathy! 
 I don t want any man s damned sympathy! Take your 
 damned sympathy where it is needed, Sir! We don t 
 need it here, Sir. " 
 
 He was a capital mimic and did the scene so well that 
 one saw the tall gaunt figure of his Texan brother-in-law, 
 as well as heard him snarling out his short sentences. 
 " I will let you know, Sir ! I am as good a man now, 
 Sir! as I ever was! I can do without my leg, Sir, and 
 my arm, Sir! The Yankees are welcome to them, Sir? 
 Damn them! My wife, Sir! doesn t need them either! 
 My wife, Sir, at this moment is worth more than any 
 hundred damn Yankees I ever came across, Sir! They 
 didn t shoot off her leg, Sir, or her arm! And you 
 needn t go offering her any of your damned sympathy 
 either, Sir ! She doesn t need it ! " And I took his advice. 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 121 
 
 I didn t sympathize any more with any of them. You 
 would never recognize Elizabeth. She goes stalking 
 about in a pair of her husband s old cavalry boots and an 
 old hat of his, and she ties her skirts up to her knees 
 like the negro women used to do in the fields; and she 
 wears a pistol stuck in her belt. In fact she does every 
 thing she can to make a man out of herself, except curse 
 and smoke. And the more of a man she is, the better her 
 husband likes it. The two are always together; Mother 
 takes care of the children." 
 
 " How is your mother ? " 
 
 Harry sat down and laughed at this memory also. 
 " Mother is not changed a particle, not a shade. She 
 goes stepping around in her old faded calico dress and 
 sunbonnet, just exactly as she used to do at Princeton 
 in that ugly old India shawl of hers and bird of Paradise 
 bonnet. She is just as unbending, just as firm, just as 
 sure of herself, and she keeps Heatherstone, that s the 
 eldest boy, under her thumb just as she used to do me; 
 makes him study of nights and tells him what great 
 things she expects of him, exactly as she used to do with 
 me. Not one of them will own to being hurt by 
 the results of the war. They pooh, pooh, their losses. 
 In fact, they live as if the Yankees were watching and 
 listening to them all the time, and they will die before 
 they gratify them with a regret. I found out," seeing 
 that his audience was waiting in silence for more on 
 the subject, " that Mother and Sister had about fifty 
 dollars in gold." 
 
 " Fifty dollars in gold ! " his aunt exclaimed in amaze 
 ment as if it were a fortune. 
 
 " Yes, fifty dollars in gold." 
 
122 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " How did they manage to save so much? " 
 
 They didn t save it," pausing to enhance his effect, 
 " they made it. 
 
 " Made it ! " ejaculated the aunt in still greater amaze 
 ment. " How could they make money ? " 
 
 " How could they make it ? " For the first time his 
 voice was grave. " Why, they were in some God-forsaken 
 place in Texas where the children were hungry for food 
 and cold for clothes, and they had to make money or 
 beg." 
 
 " But what could they do? " 
 
 " They knit, they spun, they cooked," lowering his 
 voice and speaking slower, " they took in washing and 
 ironing and they planted a little cotton, only a few rows, 
 for the knitting, you know, and at the end of the war 
 they had a little pile of it stuffed into their mattresses. 
 Of course it was as good as gold. And when Heather- 
 stone returned to them he came in a buggy with an old 
 broken-down army horse that the commissary depart 
 ment allowed him, as it was the only way he could travel. 
 The cart and the mule he managed to pick up somewhere ; 
 I believe he gave one of his pistols for them." 
 
 " How many children have they ? " asked his aunt. 
 
 " Five, they lost two. Heatherstone, the eldest, is a 
 fine boy." 
 
 " You did not make up your mind to stay with them? " 
 asked his uncle. 
 
 " The fact is, Uncle, when I went there, it was to 
 stay with them and work on the old plantation; and 
 when I saw Heatherstone, I was determined to do so, 
 for I never felt so sorry for people in my life," looking 
 at his uncle and then at his aunt, " as when I saw them 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 123 
 
 unloading themselves from their buggy and cart. I 
 could have stayed willingly with them and worked like 
 a negro for them the rest of my days. But they wouldn t 
 hear of such a thing; grew indignant at the very idea of 
 it. Heatherstone seemed to take it as a reflection on 
 himself and Sister, and Mother waxed eloquent over 
 my duty to become a great lawyer and chief justice of 
 the state just as she used to do when we all had fortunes. 
 They camped out that night, as they had done nearly 
 every night of their journey from Texas, but by noon the 
 next day they were having a shelter put up around one 
 of the old chimneys. Heatherstone and Elizabeth had 
 gone out about daylight and rooted up some of the old 
 negroes somewhere, and found the lumber. They said 
 they could put up a very comfortable cabin for the fifty 
 dollars and began at once to talk about a garden, 
 chickens and ten acres of cotton. I suppose Heather- 
 stone, the boy, will do the plowing when they get a 
 plow, and I have not the slightest doubt but that 
 Mother and Elizabeth will help in the hoeing and of 
 course all, down to the youngest, will take a hand in the 
 picking." 
 
 In spite of his natural high spirits and his fondness 
 for laughing at his people, his voice grew sad. " As 
 they didn t seem to have thought of me in any of their 
 plans, and in fact, so far as I could see, didn t need me 
 or want me, I concluded that the thing for me to do 
 was to come back to the city and see if I could not make 
 a little money here. They will need ready money and 
 that badly, long before Spring, if I am not much mis 
 taken." 
 
 " Well," said his uncle reflectively, " I do not know 
 
i2 4 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 but what you are right. You selected the bar for your 
 profession, studied for it and were admitted. I do not 
 see any good reason why you should throw away all 
 the time, work, and expense you gave to it. Your four 
 years of soldiering ought not to make you a worse 
 lawyer, on the contrary, it ought to make you a better 
 one." He smoked a few shiffs from his pipe and con 
 cluded with : " And I have always thought, Harry, you 
 ought to make a pretty good lawyer of yourself." 
 
 " I believe, myself," said the young fellow, rising, 
 " that I could at least make a living for my mother and 
 myself at it, if I had a fair chance. There is no telling, 
 however, what the outcome of all this is going to be," 
 he added, with rather a questioning look at his uncle. 
 
 " Oh ! " was the answer, " I fancy, the country will 
 soon settle down and go to work to repair the losses. 
 That is what I am going to do," with a frank laugh. 
 
 " I had thought," the young fellow hesitated, glancing 
 
 furtively at his aunt as he used to do in critical ventures 
 
 with his uncle, " I had thought of trying something else 
 
 . . . to make money a little quicker. Times are 
 
 changed. . . . " 
 
 " But we are not." 
 
 " I don t know about that, Uncle." 
 
 " But I do know." 
 
 " I might get a clerkship somewhere." 
 
 "A clerkship!" 
 
 " Well, it would give me some money at once." 
 
 The mother hastily gathered her children together. 
 " It is their bedtime," she explained with a cheerful voice, 
 but trying to make her nephew see her warning shake 
 of the head. 
 
WALKING THE RAINBOW 125 
 
 " He is no wiser about getting along with his uncle 
 than he was before he went to the war," she said to her 
 self as she left the gallery. But looking back from the 
 room, she saw the two men walking together down the 
 path to the gate, the elder one turning his head toward 
 the younger one; and she knew, as well as if she heard 
 the words, that some of the funds, brought by the 
 herald of prosperity, was to be despatched at once, to 
 the cabin built around the chimney on the ruined plantar 
 tion. 
 
d< 
 
 : 
 
 "IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 
 
 THE bell of the little church roused Sunday betimes in 
 St. Medard. No one, on that day at least, heard the 
 trumpet at the barracks. A thin, clanging, j angling- 
 voiced bell it was, and Cribiche rang it with no more 
 sentiment than an overseer rings his bell on a planta 
 tion to call the negroes to their work. But to the ear 
 that had been longing for a church bell for four years 
 and had heard only the overseer s ; to this ear, the bell of 
 St. Medard, seemed in comparison with all other bells 
 ever heard ; even as the trumpet of an angel in compari 
 son with the trumpet of the barracks. 
 
 From the earliest hour of the mass, one could hear 
 the voices of those who were hurrying to get to the 
 church and have their duty over and done for the day 
 and for the week; gay pleasant voices, that made the 
 pebbly Gascon French sound pretty. And if one peeped 
 through the window, one could see the men, women, and 
 children striding by in their clean Sunday clothes, hoofed, 
 one might say in their Sunday shoes, for in sabots only 
 do Gascon peasants walk lightly and at their ease. 
 
 For mass after mass the gay alarum jingled, until 
 surely, only the dead of conscience as well as of ear could 
 pretend to be deaf to it. Each ringing seemed to catch 
 a different set of sinners or saints, the first netting the 
 poorest and plainest, and each succeeding one ever more 
 worthy game from a worldly point of view. The last one 
 
 126 
 
"IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 127 
 
 for high mass landing the fine people in carriages, or those 
 who walked only the shortest of distances, the ladies, in 
 trailing dresses, in the most delicate of shoes, planters 
 families from the lower coast, and the rich demoiselles 
 San Antonio. These were the parishioners to whom Pere 
 Phileas addressed the sermons that he gleaned, it must be 
 confessed, from the other classes of his congregation. He 
 was not a brilliant priest, as priests go, but he knew as 
 well as any Dominican who ever came from Paris to 
 preach the Lenten sermons at the Cathedral that in 
 order that those who have ears should hear, one must 
 preach the sins of the poor to the rich and the sins of 
 the rich to the poor. And so it was that the hard-work 
 ing, the dairy, and gardening folk who rose at dawn to 
 get to church for the first mass furnished the spiritual 
 exhortation for the leisurely class, who reluctantly left 
 easy beds to catch, as they called it, the last mass. 
 
 " Ah, God ! I cannot thank Thee as I would here, 
 but when I get home where I can go to church with all 
 my children, then will I thank and praise Thee. Oh! 
 Then will I fill the church with my thanksgiving and 
 praise to Thee!" As Sunday after Sunday rolled by 
 on the lonely plantation, this had been the poor mother s 
 vow to herself as she strove with her inadequate words 
 to express what was in her heart toward the One who 
 was leading her through such a valley as, surely, she 
 thought, no woman with four small children had ever 
 been brought through safely before. Not a Sunday 
 passed on the plantation that, after hearing their cate 
 chism and verses and hymns she did not remind the 
 children of what the Sundays were at home, where there 
 were churches and Sunday-schools. 
 
128 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 When the lessons were over, and she and the children 
 would start for their Sunday morning walk, the little girls 
 would still cling to her and beg: "Please, Mama, tell 
 us some more about your Sundays at home," while the 
 boys, of course, took no interest in them but were always 
 trying to slip away on their own adventures. The Sun 
 day walk was always the same, along the road by the 
 Bayou to the woods. She, herself, was always afraid of 
 the woods. Her terror was, that in some incomprehen 
 sible way, she would wander in it out of sight of the 
 Bayou and thus lose her clue to the direction of the 
 home; or that one of the children in their frolics would 
 run away, out of sight and hearing, and get lost. But 
 she cunningly concealed her fears for she never allowed 
 the children to suspect that she was afraid of anything; 
 one of her husband s theories being that women were 
 as brave as men. She, therefore never went far into the 
 woods ; and she could always hold the children and their 
 attention while she turned them homewards by telling 
 them still more about anything she remembered, it made 
 no difference what. She could tell an interesting story as 
 well about one person as another and she could tell, not 
 only her own stories but those her mother had told to her, 
 which she had heard from her grandmother, stories that 
 began, some of them, in the emigration of the Hugue 
 nots to this country, or the Revolutionary War, and all 
 sorts of hair-breadth escapes of Continentals from Tories. 
 
 On the rare occasions, when the father was along, 
 he would tell them hunting stories, for he had been a 
 great hunter in his youth; and the walk with him as 
 guide would go far into the woods to the coulee, a slug 
 gish drain from the swamp whose glassy black water 
 
" IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 129 
 
 held no end of turtles and deadly moccasins. Even 
 the youngest of the children had been taught not to fear 
 these last, however, but to kill them boldly with a blow 
 on the back of the head. In the Autumn, they would 
 walk to a grove of persimmon trees, where, if there 
 had been frost the night before, the ground would be 
 covered with ripe fruit, both the large, full round pink 
 persimmons, shaded with lilac, and the deep red ones 
 that when dried in the sun tasted like prunes the kind, 
 that as the father related, the Indians dried and pounded 
 and made nice bread or cake of. In his youth, out of 
 which he could draw as many wonderful stories as Mama 
 out of hers, he used to go hunting with the Indians, and 
 often spent weeks with them in their villages, as many 
 young men of his day preferred doing instead of travel 
 ing to civilized centers. From the Indians he learned all 
 sorts of curious forest lore : the habits of trees, the tracks 
 of animals, medicinal herbs, and subtle ways of telling 
 the points of the compass by the bark of the trees; all 
 of which he taught the children. 
 
 In the Spring, the walk would be to the sandy spot 
 on the Bayou s bank where the alligators laid their eggs. 
 He always knew the very Sunday when the sand would 
 be marked by their tracks, and following the tracks find 
 the spot where the eggs had been laid and covered. 
 
 Always on coming back from their Sunday walk they 
 would go the rounds of the quarters, stopping first 
 invariably at the cabin of old Aunt Patsy, the most 
 venerable negro on the plantation. Her cabin stood apart 
 from the others and she lived by herself : a silent, morose 
 old woman, but after the master and mistress the most 
 respected person on the place. Often when the mistress 
 
130 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 was surcharged with anxiety, she would go and talk with 
 Aunt Patsy, and never came back without being eased, 
 or without remarking, how Aunt Patsy seemed to know 
 everything about life. On Sundays she was always 
 found ready to receive her visitors sitting in her low 
 white oak chair covered with deer skin. She wore a 
 cap, the only negress on the place who did so, a broad 
 ruffled white cotton cap, tied under her chin. Very 
 black she was; thin and wrinkled and with front teeth 
 that stood out like tusks. On account of her age, she 
 was exempt from work, but she was always busy, never 
 theless, spinning the finest and best knitting cotton and 
 doing the fastest and prettiest knitting. She had no 
 relations, had never borne a child, and her husband had 
 been dead so long that he had become merely a tradition 
 on the place. A boy had been assigned to the duty of 
 cutting wood and fetching water for her, and this was her 
 only connection with her fellow slaves. When she died, 
 her funeral was made a great event. And afterwards the 
 negroes and the white children following their supersti 
 tions (as white children never fail to do) in passing her 
 cabin always looked to see if she might not be still sitting 
 there " anyhow " as they said. 
 
 The other negroes in the quarters would be sitting in 
 front of their cabins; the babies, washed and dressed, 
 lying in their mothers or fathers arms, their bright alert 
 eyes, glancing around and their little hands grabbing at 
 the flies in the air. The other children, in their clean 
 cotonades, with bare legs and feet well scrubbed, would 
 be running around after the chickens that is the hap 
 piest of them the others would be wedged in the vise 
 of a parent s knees, while their stubborn hair was being 
 
"IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 131 
 
 carded, divided and wrapped into stiff wisps with white 
 knitting cotton. Here and there, stretched out in the 
 sun the half -grown boys would be lying asleep, worn 
 out with the exhaustion of having nothing to do. 
 
 After the greetings there would be talk of the weather, 
 and the crops, and gossip about the animals. Sometimes 
 a group of men would be gathered on Jerry s gallery 
 " passing the time of day/ as they called it, in dis 
 cussion generally about the cause of things such as 
 the changes of the seasons, the revolution of the sun 
 or God s ways. And when the master was along, he 
 would step in and join them and answer their questions 
 and make explanations; until all the other negro men 
 would drift in too; and their wives following would sit 
 around on the edge of the gallery to enjoy the enter 
 tainment, commenting freely, and guffawing aloud at 
 the good retorts, as each man put his oar into the con 
 versation whenever he got a chance. Meanwhile the 
 mistress and the little girls would continue their walk to 
 the house and the little boys make off with their black 
 followers at their heels upon some adventure, that seemed 
 to be innocent, but always turned out to be mis 
 chievous 
 
 All this train of reminiscence was put in motion as 
 the car jolted and rumbled along on the way to church. 
 Still, the memories of the plantation forming the back 
 ground of thought in the city, as the memories of the 
 city had formed the background of thought on the 
 plantation ! Mrs. Talbot s face brightened with pride as 
 well as love, at the sight, at last, of her church. The 
 sacred edifice, which during the week seemed to sink 
 into the ground completely lost from sight in the busy 
 
132 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 whirl of life, rose commandingly enough on Sunday 
 when the shop windows were shut and barred and the 
 merry-go-round of fashion-seekers turned off. Its only 
 rival was the drinking shop on the corner. And blatant 
 and brazen though this was on week days, it hung its 
 head sadly enough in shame on Sundays, as if it knew 
 then what it really was not a drinking but a drunkard 
 shop. How could it look otherwise with the fine old 
 church casting its judgment day sentence upon it and 
 with the stream of people passing under the granite 
 portal, with that same judgment day in their minds? 
 
 With her children following her, the mother made her 
 way quickly to her old pew, just as she had pictured to 
 herself doing so often in the past. She could have gone 
 to it blindfolded. A lady was in it who looked with 
 haughty surprise at the intrusion and moved away to the 
 end of the seat. She looked for the old books in the 
 rack ; they were no longer there. When the service began 
 it recalled her to where she was ; but over and over again 
 she asked herself whether she were not still on the planta 
 tion, in the war and only dreaming she was in church, 
 gazing at the window that as a child she had looked 
 upon as a sign in the sky. . . . 
 
 But no, this was not her memory on the plantation! 
 this was not what she saw there on Sundays, far far 
 different from it ! That was not her old minister s face 
 and figure that ever since she could remember she had 
 seen in the pulpit ; whose voice had humanized the gospels 
 and epistles to her. Looking around, she saw none of 
 the starts of surprise and quick cordiality of eyes, that 
 had made the charm of the plantation anticipation. She 
 saw in the old places only drooping women, in mourning 
 
"IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 133 
 
 or shabby clothes, and no men that she knew. When the 
 service was over, there was no hurrying forward with 
 outstretched hands of welcome. Instead of that, the 
 imperious lady in the pew showed unmistakable signs 
 of impatience at her lingering and brushed past her with 
 scant courtesy. And then she saw, that the name on the 
 pew had been changed, her father s and grandfather s 
 name was no longer where it had been since the church 
 was built. As in flight, she hurried out a side door and 
 passed through the small churchyard which still, unlike 
 the pew, held the name of her grandfather on a tablet. 
 She did not linger to point it out to her children, and 
 read the honorable inscription on it, as she had antici 
 pated doing with pride on the plantation ; but rushed out 
 the gate to the car that took her away not so much from 
 her past, as from the future of that past. 
 
 When the early Sunday dinner was over and a long 
 afternoon lay before them, the family went out for the 
 walk that always filled such afternoons on the planta 
 tion. The mistress, going first to give a direction to the 
 servants, found Jerry and all his family sitting on their 
 gallery, in their Sunday clothes, silent and dejected. 
 
 "Haven t you been out at all today, Jerry?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes, Mistress, I went out for a little while." 
 
 " We are going to walk on the levee to see the river, 
 why don t you all go too and sit out there? " 
 
 " I have been there, Mistress." 
 
 " We ve all done seen the river," added Matilda. 
 
 " But now you will see all the people passing." 
 
 " It s no use seeing people, Mistress, if you don t know 
 them." 
 
134 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Well, but talk to them and you will learn to know 
 them." 
 
 Matilda shook her head gloomily. 
 
 " Isn t there any church somewhere tonight that you 
 can go to? " 
 
 " I don t know, Mistress," answered Jerry indif 
 ferently. 
 
 " But you could ask some one." 
 
 " We don t know nobody to ask," Matilda retorted 
 crossly. 
 
 " Oh ! you may be sure there is a church somewhere 
 hereabouts, that you can go to. Wherever there are 
 darkies, there is a church, you know." 
 
 " Church ain t nothing, without you know the niggers 
 in it." 
 
 The four girls sat around stolidly without a word. 
 
 " But Laura, Henrietta, Julia, and Maria would like 
 to go out ; take them to the levee." 
 
 "If it s good enough for Jerry and me here, it s 
 good enough for them." Matilda looked at them with 
 ill-temper. 
 
 They had evidently all been quarreling and there 
 was nothing to do except leave them alone. But 
 the Mistress s kind heart was smitten by their forlorn 
 appearance. 
 
 " They are homesick for the plantation," she told her 
 husband. 
 
 " And for some hard work," he answered. " I told 
 Jerry he must find something to do. He is no more ac 
 customed to idleness than I am. A good carpenter ought 
 to be able to make good wages, and there can hardly be 
 a better carpenter for plain work in the city. And he 
 
"IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY" 135 
 
 must put the girls to work, they ought to make at least 
 their food and clothing." 
 
 "If they are made to work, they will work. Dennis 
 has had them hoeing regularly with the field gang." 
 Dennis was the negro foreman who replaced the white 
 overseer when he went to the war. " And as soon as 
 they were large enough to balance a bucket of water on 
 their heads they carried water to the field hands." 
 
 " Well, there is plenty of work for them in the city ; 
 they will have to be taught, of course, but there is no 
 reason why they cannot learn," the husband said in his 
 decided tone. "Julia is stupid but she is steady; Hen 
 rietta is bright, she will learn easily; but she will turn 
 into a rascal. . . . " 
 
 " Oh! do you think so? " This was said in the tone 
 of the past days when masters and mistresses took upon 
 themselves the failures of character in a slave. " What 
 are you going to do about it ? " 
 
 " I ? I have nothing to do about it. That s Jerry s 
 affair now." 
 
 " But what can Jerry do unless you are behind him ? " 
 
 " Jerry comes of good stock and has been well brought 
 up and he ought to know what to do by himself." 
 
 "Yes, but Jerry was trained by a master; if Jerry 
 were a master. . . . " The levee rising in front, a 
 tall green rampart, interrupted them. They climbed the 
 wooden steps laid against the steep side and on the top, 
 stopped to look at the river, not yet as habituated to it, as 
 were the other saunterers from the neighborhood, who, 
 stretching their necks and laughing and talking to one 
 another, noticed it no more than the public road inside 
 the levee. The great yellow stream rolled majestically 
 
136 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 along; awful in its portent of power and fatefulness. 
 Down the center of its swift current ran a glittering 
 way, shot into the brilliancy of polished jewels, by the 
 sun s rays. Dim and vague, like a foreign land, the 
 opposite bank lay across the vast width of water. 
 
 As usual, the father strode on ahead, the captain. 
 His wife followed next, now walking fast to keep up 
 with him, now slow so as not to leave the children 
 behind; her head ever-turning to look ahead, and then 
 to look behind her; her feet tripping and stumbling in 
 her uneven path and attention. The little path made a 
 subservient detour around a plateau shaded with trees, 
 where the officers of the barracks lounging on benches, 
 were smoking and playing with their dogs. Behind 
 them, facing the road, stood the heavy-looking red brick 
 Spanish buildings of the barracks, with its towers, from 
 whose loopholes protruded the grim muzzles of cannon. 
 Sentries paced in front, squads of soldiers were marching 
 around inside, booted and spurred cavalrymen were 
 galloping up and away from the gateway at whose 
 posts horses bridled and saddled were hitched in readi 
 ness for an alarm. The river, itself, was not more fate- 
 fully portentous in its aspect. But out of sight, it quickly 
 went out of mind and the " nature," as Madame Joachim 
 called the country, that succeeded, was in no wise akin 
 to it in mood. In truth, it seemed as merry and convivial 
 to the eye as the spirits of the holiday-makers, in the 
 dusty road: the bands of boys returning from hunting 
 or fishing frolics ; negro men and women, in their gaudy 
 Sunday finery and gaudy Sunday boisterousness ; noisy 
 Gascons with their noisy families packed in little rattling 
 milk or vegetable carts; antique buggies and chaises, 
 
" IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 137 
 
 with their shabby-looking horses or mules, filled with 
 voluble French chatterers; and every now and then, 
 shining new traps behind spanking teams driven by gay 
 young officers who looked neither to the right nor left 
 greeting no one, greeted by no one. Sprawling on the 
 river-side of the levee and hidden from view, parties 
 of white and negro soldiers were playing cards or 
 throwing dice, or lying outstretched on the grass asleep 
 or drunk. 
 
 Built so as to face the river and dominate it by their 
 elegance, as the barracks did by its fierceness, stately 
 mansions of the ancien regime succeeded memorials of 
 a day when the city s suburb of the elite was expected to 
 grow down stream; and specimens of the elegant archi 
 tecture that is based on the future stability of wealth 
 massive brick and stucco structures surrounded with 
 balconies, upheld by pillars sturdy enough to support the 
 roof of a church; with ceremonious avenues shaded by 
 magnolias or cedars leading up to great gardens whose 
 flower beds were disposed around fountains or white 
 statuettes. And after these, unrolling in the bright sun 
 light like a panorama to the promenaders on the levee, 
 came the plantations, the old and famous plantations as 
 they used to be reckoned, whose musical French and 
 Spanish names bespoke the colonial prestige of their 
 owners. Hedges of wild orange, yucca or banana 
 screened the fences, but every now and then the thick 
 foliage was pierced by little belvideres ; from whence the 
 soft voices of women and the laughter of children 
 sitting within,, to enjoy the view and breezes of the river, 
 would fall like songs of birds from cages upon the 
 road below. Or out on the levee, itself, the families 
 
1 38 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 would be gathered in little pavilions, sitting in pleasant 
 sociability, as the families of these plantations had been 
 doing for generations, looking at the river and at the 
 pleasant view also of their own possessions : mansion, 
 quarters, sugar house, brick kiln, fields of sugar or corn, 
 pastures studded with pecans, cherry trees, or oaks, 
 smithies, warehouses, some of the buildings and appur 
 tenances as aged-looking and out-of-date as the great- 
 grandmothers in their loose gowns, reclining in their 
 rocking-chairs in the pavilions gazing with the pensive- 
 ness of old age at the swift and sure current of the 
 river. 
 
 At one place the stream had undermined its bank and 
 swallowed up a huge horseshoe of land, taking levee and 
 road with it. A new levee, whose fresh earth crumbled 
 under the feet, had been thrown up around the breach; 
 and a new road run, curving boldly into the privacy of a 
 garden, or the symmetrical furrows of a field. A half- 
 mile beyond, the river seemed to drop its booty of soil 
 seized above, and was forming a new bank; the batture, 
 as it is called, could be seen shoaling up bare and glisten 
 ing wet, far outside the levee. 
 
 " There ! " the father stopped suddenly, and turning 
 his back to the river, pointed with fine dramatic effect 
 in the opposite direction, his face beaming with pleasure 
 at the culmination of his carefully guarded surprise. 
 "There it is! The field of the Battle of New Orleans! 
 That is the monument ! " 
 
 As he glanced down to see the effect, he could behold 
 the glow from his face reflected in each little face looking 
 up to him, as the glow of the sunset had been reflected in 
 the surface of the river. And yet what could be more 
 
" IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 139 
 
 commonplace to these children than a battlefield? What 
 else had they heard of for years but of winning and 
 losing battles? Each one of the little band was surely 
 qualified to say " Whatever my ignorance about other 
 things, I at least know war." But now, it was as if they 
 knew it not. Their eyes were gleaming and their little 
 hearts beating as at the sight and sound of martial glory 
 too great for earth to bear the martial glory of poetry 
 and history, not of plain every-day life! Breathless, 
 they ran down the levee after their father, looking, as he 
 looked, nowhere but in front, where rose the tall shaft 
 that commemorated the famous victory. Faster and 
 faster he strode, and they after him, until they reached 
 the steps of the monument and climbing up, could look 
 over the land roundabout ; seeing only a bush here, a tree 
 there, a house in the distance and still farther away the 
 line of the forest. A bare, ugly, desolate scene enough, 
 
 but not so to the little band 
 
 "There were the British headquarters! There Jack 
 son s! Along there ran the ramparts! In that swamp 
 were the Kentuckians! There, next the river, the Bar- 
 ratarians! Away over there, hidden by the woods, the 
 little bayou through which the British army came from 
 the lake to the river ! Across that field advanced Paken- 
 ham ! Over there he fell ! Up the levee came Lambert ! 
 Out there on the river was the Carolina firing hot shot 
 and shell! Down the road we have been walking ran 
 the reinforcements from New Orleans ! " The fine old 
 story sped on and on. . . . As he talked the little 
 boys stretched themselves, taller and taller, and looked 
 before them with the swaggering insolence of Barra- 
 tarians looking at the English, and the little girls heads 
 
140 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 rose higher and stiffer and they curled their lips dis 
 dainfully at the foe, as ladies do in triumph. 
 
 On the other side of the monument, stood Polly s 
 friend of the car, the old gentleman who looked like 
 General Lee, listening rather wistfully. . . . 
 
 " The British marched up to the line of death as if 
 they were on dress parade," the father continued his 
 historical lesson, " and they died in their ranks as they 
 marched. When the smoke lifted, and when the Ameri 
 cans saw them lying in regular lines on the field, the 
 brave red uniforms, and the dashing Tartans of the 
 Highlanders, a great sigh went down the line, a sigh of 
 regret and admiration. ..." 
 
 Polly s sharp eyes, roving around, had detected the 
 old gentleman. Running to him, she caught his hand 
 and drew him forward. The movement was so frank 
 and hearty, that neither he nor the parents could resist 
 it and at once they entered into cordial acquaintanceship 
 with one another. 
 
 He was so tall and erect of figure, so noble of face, so 
 soldierly in his bearing, that the civilian clothes he wore 
 were a poor disguise. One knew at once, rather than 
 guessed, that he had been an officer and had worn the 
 gray, and that in short, he was one of the ruined and 
 defeated Southerners. 
 
 " My father," he said, as he came forward, " was one 
 of the Kentuckians." 
 
 " Was he ? " exclaimed the mother enthusiastically. 
 " A hunter of Kentucky/ And with a smile and a 
 toss of the head, she gave the refrain " Oh, the hunters 
 of Kentucky. My grandfather sang the song at dessert 
 on every anniversary of the battle. And my grand- 
 
" IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 141 
 
 mother used to say that they were the handsomest men 
 she ever saw," glancing involuntarily at the stranger, 
 who in this regard was every inch a Kentuckian, " as 
 they came marching down Royal Street, in their hunt 
 ing shirts and coonskin caps with the tails hanging down 
 behind/ 
 
 " Sharpshooters every man of them," interjected her 
 husband, " hitting a squirrel in the eye, on the top of the 
 tallest tree." . . . 
 
 " She said," continued the wife, " that there were no 
 men in the city to compare with them and all the young 
 ladies fell in love with them and used to dream of them 
 at night; rifles, hunting shirts and all. Oh, the women 
 looked upon them as deliverers. You remember the 
 motto of the British ? " . . . She paused, and as no one 
 answered went on : " My grandmother said the ladies all 
 carried daggers in their belts, and as they sat together 
 in each other s houses, scraping lint and making bandages, 
 they would talk of what they would do in case of the 
 British victory. And one day they became so excited 
 that they sent a messenger to General Jackson, and he 
 answered like the hero he was, The British will never 
 enter the city except over my dead body. "... And 
 still no one took up the conversation, so she carried it a 
 step farther : " My grandfather never approved of 
 General Jackson s course after the battle, but she, my 
 grandmother always defended him. She could never 
 forgive my grandfather for not casting his vote for him 
 for president, she vowed if she had had a hundred votes 
 she would cast them all for him." 
 
 The stranger laughed heartily. 
 
 " After the battle, you know, the ladies all drove down 
 
i 4 2 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 to the field in their carriages carrying their lint and 
 bandages, and refreshments for the wounded, . . . and 
 they brought back the wounded British officers with them 
 and took them in their homes and nursed them. My 
 grandmother had one, a young boy not over eighteen, 
 and so fair that he looked like an angel, she said. He 
 was a gentleman of good family. But all the British 
 officers were gentlemen, of course ; and the young ladies 
 lost their hearts to them, as they had done before to the 
 Kentuckians. For years afterwards, Grandmama s 
 prisoner used to write to her." 
 
 " Would you have liked them as well, if they had 
 whipped you ? " the stranger asked with a twinkle in 
 his eye. 
 
 " Whipped us ! They never could have done that ! 
 We would have burned the city ! We would have fought 
 from house to house! We would have retired to our 
 swamps! No! We never would have surrendered the 
 city." And then as the absurdity of these old hereditary 
 boastings came to her in the light of the present, she 
 stopped short and laughed merrily, " that is the way we 
 used to talk." 
 
 They walked back slowly to the levee and mounted to 
 the path on top just as a large vessel slowly steamed 
 upstream. The children read out the name on the stern. 
 It was from Liverpool. 
 
 The sun was sinking on the opposite side of the river 
 amid clouds of gorgeous splendor. The vague green 
 bank came now into clear vision with its plantation build 
 ings, its groves, and its people walking like ants upon 
 its levee. The rippling current and every eddy along 
 the bank shone in unison with the sky or, indeed, as if 
 
" IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY " 143 
 
 another sun were burning under its depths. The great 
 steamship passed into the circle of illumination and out 
 of it, as the little group watched it from the levee. 
 
 " I should be ashamed to come here, if I was them, 
 wouldn t you ? " Folly s clear voice broke the solemn 
 silence as she twitched the hand of the old gentleman, 
 with free camaraderie. 
 "Ashamed? Why?" 
 " Because we whipped them so." 
 " Whipped them ! Oh ! You mean the British in the 
 battle." 
 
 " Yes, we whipped them right here, where they have 
 to pass by. I wouldn t like that, would you?" 
 " Perhaps they don t know it on the ship." 
 " Don t know it ! I reckon everybody knows when 
 they are whipped. I would hate to be whipped, wouldn t 
 you?" 
 
 " I used to hate it when I was whipped." 
 " Oh ! I don t mean that ! I mean in battle. If I were 
 a man I would never be whipped." 
 
 " What would you do if the other army were stronger." 
 " I don t care if it were stronger, I would whip it." 
 The path on top of the levee following the bending 
 and curving banks produced the effect of a meandering 
 sunset. Now it shone full opposite, now it glowed 
 obliquely behind a distant forest, now the burning disk 
 touched the ripples of the current straight ahead, and the 
 British vessel seemed to be steering into it. Another turn 
 and it had sunken halfway down behind the distant city, 
 whose roofs, steeples, chimneys, and the masts of vessels, 
 were transfigured into the semblance of a heavenly 
 vision for a brief, a flitting moment. Further on the 
 
144 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 bank turned them out of sight of it all, and shadows 
 began to creep over the water, and when next they 
 saw the West, the sun had disappeared, and all its 
 brilliant splendor with it. In the faint rose flush of twi 
 light beamed the evening star ... far away from the 
 little church of St. Medard came the tinkling bell of 
 the Angelus ... the evening gun fired at the barracks. 
 
TOMMY COOK 
 
 OUT of the office, out of the library, down the stairs 
 and out into the street again, Tommy Cook saw himself 
 descending and his little star of fortune with him. 
 
 " Ah, God ! In jest and mockery, I played the thing 
 I felt." 
 
 If he had known the quotation, he could have used it 
 aptly on himself, although, instead of a gladiator, he 
 had been playing only the role of a lawyer. 
 
 Once more he sat at his little table in a corner of Mr. 
 Talbot s law office copying documents and hunting up 
 authorities. The men who came in and went out of it, 
 talked as freely behind his back as if he were not there 
 and took no notice of him except as of yore, to send him 
 out on errands. 
 
 The masters of the State were back again. And al 
 though they were but little better than prisoners in it 
 and although at any moment, and through any window, 
 they could see reminders of their condition in the shape 
 of passing squadrons of soldiery and gangs of freed 
 slaves, arrogant and insolent; although the chief of their 
 Confederacy was still in jail, and all their officers dis 
 franchised; and although they had to confess their past 
 offenses and ask pardon before their late opponents, 
 (like God), would grant forgiveness of them; although 
 their land was devastated, their property destroyed, and 
 their business extinguished ; although their ranks showed 
 
 145 
 
146 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 black gaps where once stood well loved companions, 
 sturdy men and fellow props of the community; and 
 although they, themselves, many of them were maimed 
 of limb, and all of them maimed of members of their 
 family ; they talked as if they meant still to be masters 
 of the State. 
 
 How short a time the war had lasted! It seemed to 
 Tommy Cook but a season ago, hardly long enough for 
 the wearing out of the fine new uniforms they were 
 dressed in, since these gentlemen had departed with their 
 commands, breathing glory and State rights, taking their 
 negro valets along with them to wake them up in the 
 morning, and bring them their coffee, and put the gold 
 buttons in their fine linen shirts. They were dressed 
 shabbily enough now! Not as well as Tommy Cook 
 himself ; but as he observed, they did not seem to know it 
 any more than the one-armed and one-legged knew their 
 condition. 
 
 They will rise up, he predicted, drawing his figure from 
 the only literature he knew the adventures of the buc 
 caneers of the Gulf " they will rise up the first chance 
 they get and seize their ship again and make every one 
 of those on deck now walk the plank." In his experience, 
 the recapture of their ship had never been a difficult feat 
 for pirates. He had done it with them many and many 
 a time in imagination. All that they did was to wait 
 until their captors got to carousing over the spoils and 
 relaxing into the easy carelessness of the triumphant. 
 By the time the right moment of weakness came to them, 
 the dissensions and wounds of the captives were gener 
 ally healed, and it was only a question of knocking down 
 the first man, seizing his arms, killing the second, and so 
 
TOMMY COOK 147 
 
 on un til the former carousers were in the hold of the 
 vessel or in the hold of the sea; for unless they could 
 make partners of their prisoners, wise pirates, as all 
 amateurs of the black flag know, never failed to make 
 fish food of them. And so it happened in truth. The re 
 turned Confederates, who had neither harps left nor 
 willows to hang them on, were no sooner in the safe 
 possession of their conquerors than they began to plot 
 for their own political deliverance, and that of their 
 State. They had found her on their return, under the 
 segis of a new constitution a very different one from 
 that they had amended by the adoption of the ordinance 
 of secession, when they took the State with them out of 
 the Union. A contrite and repentant constitution the 
 new one was; that abjured secession and forswore the 
 Confederacy; that praised God for the Union and sang 
 hallelujah to it in every preamble of every resolution; 
 that tested by an iron-clad oath as it was called so im 
 pregnable was it against the Confederates every mem 
 ber, every officer, every hireling in its pay ; that in short, 
 as far as a constitution could effect it, made the State as 
 obedient to the hand that wielded it, as the command 
 ant General s own sword. It could hardly be otherwise ; 
 as it was the General who had ordered the election, 
 chosen the governor, fixed the election laws and devised 
 the constitution to be adopted; who had indeed, in 
 Tommy Cook s language, created the new government 
 as much as God had created Adam and Eve. 
 
 But when the war ended, and the disbanded soldiers 
 were coming back with amnesties for the past in their 
 pockets and only an oath for future loyalty to the Union, 
 as defined by the results of the war, on their consciences 
 
1 48 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 then was to be seen in all its crudity by the military 
 commander the impossibility of making constitutions for 
 absent citizens, or after bringing a horse to the water, 
 of making him drink as anyone else but he himself 
 wished. It was not the military commander, however, 
 who was responsible for this ignorance about horses; 
 it was the President who knew of no better way of 
 bringing the conquered sisters back into the newly united 
 State than by summoning the people of them to resume 
 their civic duties ; and by an election confirm all that had 
 been done for their national regeneration. 
 
 Tommy Cook was too astute a politician not to foresee 
 what would ensue. 
 
 What the Gulf and its pirates were to Tommy Cook, 
 constitutional law was to the men who talked so freely 
 behind his back in the office. They knew every device, 
 piratical or otherwise, that politicians were wont to 
 practise upon opponents; and clumsy pirates indeed, so 
 they jeered, were the ones who had made the constitu 
 tion they found established on their return. 
 
 The war that had dispossessed them of so much had 
 left all their old boldness intact and their wits as keen 
 as ever. That so long as war does this it is no good as 
 war was an obvious truth to Tommy Cook. It was no 
 hard matter for such men to get hold of the arsenal of 
 the ship, that is the legislature of the State; and it was 
 not long before they were throwing overboard their late 
 captors, with all their sanctimonious adjurations, prayers 
 and preambles; stripping the penitential shift from the 
 state and kicking the test oath out of the way; paying 
 in their proceedings as little regard to the commanding 
 General as he had done to them in his proceedings. And 
 
TOMMY COOK 149 
 
 Louisiana, (a State is in truth all things to all men) 
 so lately cowering and whimpering at the foot of the 
 conqueror, assumed the haughty air of one of her own 
 duelists worsted on the field of honor, paying as a debt 
 of honor, merely, the terms imposed upon her by her 
 defeat, namely passing the required legislative acts; 
 abolishing slavery; repudiating the Confederate debt; 
 and swearing allegiance to the constitution of the United 
 States as interpreted by the victorious side. But as 
 no one underpays, so no one overpays a debt of honor, 
 and beyond the actual terms of surrender, the State did 
 not propose to go. 
 
 And now masters of their craft, the whilom captives, 
 like thrifty pirates, began to look around them and steer 
 their course in search of new fortunes wherewith to 
 repair their past discomfitures and losses. And never, in 
 Tommy Cook s opinion, never in history of pirate or 
 memory of lawyer, had such prizes, in the shape of cases, 
 sailed the sea of litigation. Peace had lifted the stay 
 law that for four years had arrested judicial proceedings 
 all over the country; and the pent-up accumulation of 
 business was sweeping through the old legal channels 
 like the Mississippi in an overflow through its outlets; 
 carrying with it, like the same turbid waters of the 
 Mississippi in an overflow, the disjecta membra of the 
 wreckage of every form of human property, every variety 
 of legal dispute claims of neutrals for damages for 
 property destroyed, for seizure of cotton whose value 
 had risen from five cents to a dollar a pound, a four 
 years harvest of successions to be opened, rights of aliens 
 to deposits confiscated in banks, of minprs clamoring 
 for justice against martial defraudment; old debts to be 
 
150 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 collected or resisted, interventions of foreign creditors 
 or owners to be adjudicated, old accounts which for 
 generations had been dragging their ball and chain of 
 debt and interest between plantation and counting house 
 to be closed, and new ones opened ; new mortgages on the 
 land and its profits, new contracts to be made between 
 the now unshackled labor and the now shackled capital. 
 Hardly a man, woman, or child walked the streets but 
 was a party in some lawsuit or other. And from the 
 results of the war, its sedimentary deposit as it were, 
 seeds of future lawsuits and financial complications 
 were already germinating; seeds strange and foreign 
 to State and city, like the sproutings of plants not 
 indigenous, but whose seeds had been brought 
 down by the Mississippi from another soil and 
 climate. 
 
 Every lawyer, therefore, in fancied political security 
 went to work hunting up clients and cases. The many 
 who had no offices or libraries crowded the offices and 
 used the libraries of the few who had been lucky enough 
 to save them. From their dusty hiding places, there was 
 a taking and shaking out of each one s old business some 
 pieces of the time-worn and justice-scarred veterans of 
 litigation that had followed the steps of the State from 
 the beginning of her history; relics of other wars and 
 other dominations disputed titles and boundary lines; 
 contested marriages and questionable filiations that had 
 been handed down from generation to generation in all 
 their foul-smelling scandal, the el dorado of all young 
 lawyers and limbo of old ones ; the gigantic land claims 
 involving, as the Riparian case, vast interests and fees 
 that meant permanent wealth ; all were being gotten ready 
 
TOMMY COOK 151 
 
 to be taken into court with their monstrous baggage train 
 of papers behind them. 
 
 Tommy Cook s portion of it, as he saw without a 
 doubt in his mind, would be what it had been in the past 
 to carry law books to court or briefs to the printer, 
 copying documents and hunting up authorities the 
 portion of a scullion in the ship. " What he had done 
 for his patron," he might have reflected, " others, more 
 wisely perhaps, had done for themselves ; " and when 
 the absent patron returned from the war, he might have 
 found what Mr. Talbot had found " in re McKenzie," as 
 Tommy Cook put it, that is a breach of trust. 
 
 Sometimes a client of his would come mounting the 
 stairs boldly, and open the door without knocking and 
 enter the room, as clients did with him; but at the sight 
 of the masterful gentlemen talking so eloquently within, 
 a quick retreat would be beaten; and Tommy after a 
 little while would rise and follow him into the street 
 and find him waiting at a corner, with some piece of law 
 business hidden, as it were, under his coat; and they 
 would hurry to some barroom to hold a quick consulta 
 tion, and Tommy would return with the piece of business 
 hidden under his coat, and sit again at his table in the 
 corner, more reflective than ever. 
 
 There was indeed as much work ahead of the lawyers 
 at the opening of peace as there had been fighting at the 
 opening of war; and they were as keen for work now 
 as they were for fighting then. But, unfortunately, they 
 underrated the resources and abilities of their opponents 
 in peace as much as they had underrated them in war, as 
 much indeed as the latter underrated the resources and 
 abilities of the Confederates in political humiliation. 
 
152 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 What was the loss of a State to the masters of Con 
 gress; the loss of a vessel to those who have a fleet at 
 their back? Hardly had the late occupants of the hold 
 of their ship time to clean their conquered deck, and cast 
 their eyes about them, as had been said, " in search of 
 future fortune," when from every quarter of the horizon, 
 they saw the ships of their late foes; every State of the 
 Union bearing down upon them as one ship. The con 
 test was short, and decisive. This time, not only was 
 their State taken from them but their Statehood also; 
 and the terms of the first surrender paled into insipidity 
 before what was now imposed. And then, those sneer 
 ing adepts of constitutional law, assembling daily in Mr. 
 Talbot s office, saw a constitutional ingenuity and dex 
 terity displayed by their despised opponents, that they 
 in their arrogant ignorance never wotted of. Indians, 
 so they said, never used their tomahawks with more re 
 fined skill against their bound prisoners grazing, slicing, 
 drawing blood, striking as near as they could without 
 taking the life that afforded the pleasure of torture 
 than did Congressmen use the keen blades of their wits 
 against the constitution of their country; until that 
 " sacred Ark of the Covenant " as Southerners vener 
 ated it maimed, lopped, and mutilated, was turned to 
 their astonished eyes, into an armed citadel against them ; 
 pierced with rifle holes, for the firing of pains and penal 
 ties at them. And now the whips of serpents became 
 whips of scorpions on the backs of the Southerners. 
 
 Louisiana was made once more a military department ; 
 a Union General was once more put in command; all 
 elective offices were declared vacant ; negroes were given 
 the right of suffrage; the Confederates were disfran- 
 
TOMMY COOK 153 
 
 chised and another election ordered; and the test oath 
 like love in the fable put out of the door to return at 
 the window literally flew to Washington, and came 
 back with all the power of the Federal government be 
 hind it, so increased in venom and force, that in good 
 truth, it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye 
 of a needle than for those whom it was intended to 
 keep out of power to get in. Louisiana had no longer 
 the dignity of even a white penitent, she was legislated 
 out of her complexion and became a black State. 
 
 The wail of Jeremiah was heard in the land : " Our 
 inheritance is turned to strangers, our house to aliens. 
 We are orphans and fatherless . . . our necks are under 
 persecution; we labor and have no rest; servants have 
 rule over us. ... " 
 
 " But there is a woe," responded the lawyers, " that 
 Jeremiah knew not the woe peculiarly oppressive, that 
 comes from the degradation of the bar the prostitution 
 of our courts of justice to political greed. Degrade our 
 profession, and Society is turned adrift." 
 
 Disqualified from Federal offices, disbarred from prac 
 tice in the Federal courts, their own State offices and 
 courts taken possession of and fixed in the hands of the 
 political party that was to be maintained in perpetuity 
 by the votes of the newly enfranchised negroes the old 
 masters of the State were reduced to political slavery 
 under their former slaves, and they, the great men of the 
 bar as they considered themselves to be, were to stand 
 powerless in their humiliation and impoverishment and 
 see strangers, aliens, renegades, any tyro of the law 
 from among the camp followers or from the army over 
 them, happy in their iron-clad qualification draw to 
 
154 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 land the great lawsuits and glittering fees, rushing by 
 on the golden tide. Or as Tommy Cook saw it, as if 
 chained to the masts, the captive pirates should see 
 Spanish galleons, laden with the treasure of Mexico, 
 swooped down upon and carried off by their captor; 
 while they, who could have done it so well, so much 
 better, in fact, were not able to move a hand in the 
 business. 
 
 Pirates themselves could not have expressed their re 
 sentment over their luckless situation in language more 
 suitable to their sentiments than did the lawyers of the 
 State whenever or wherever they met with one another : 
 on the street corners, in the barber shops or in their own 
 offices. For lawyers, it was observed at the time, had 
 learned to curse as well as to fight in the war. " If ever 
 they get possession of the ship again," said Tommy Cook 
 in his thoughts, " they will know hew to keep it." 
 
 Those who had died on the field or in prison could 
 not come back to attend these meetings, of course the 
 war had accomplished that much, at least but " only 
 their bodies were missing," as Tommy Cook put it to 
 himself, " their voices were living if their bodies were 
 not." For as it seemed to him, no counsel they could 
 have given, no curse they could have uttered, not a 
 bitter cry they could have made, was missing from the 
 discussions he heard. From the time that he, a little 
 street ragamuffin, had been able to stand on the outskirts 
 of the crowd at a political meeting, Tommy Cook had 
 heard much about the " voice of the Country," and had 
 been warned over and over again that what he heard was 
 " the voice of the Country." But listen as he might, he 
 had heard the voice of only this or that politician. The 
 
TOMMY COOK 155 
 
 dead had often voted on political questions, as no one 
 knew better than he, but the dead had never spoken, to 
 his knowledge, for or against Whig or Democrat, State 
 or National banks; for or against removing the capital 
 from the city to the country; for or against any of the 
 great, stirring questions of that day as they were speak 
 ing now from battlefields and prison cemeteries on their 
 constitutional rights. 
 
 " Whatever their political differences in the past," 
 mused Tommy Cook, " the dead are all one side now, 
 and they will all vote, and there will be no trouble about 
 their ballots, there will be found no one bold enough to 
 challenge them or cry fraud. So long as voting is 
 allowed in this land, these dead will vote." 
 
 " I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and 
 that is the lamp of experience." 
 
 " No ! Not that way ! Loud and clear ! Pronounce 
 your words distinctly ! " 
 
 " I have but one ..." 
 
 " Hold your head up ! Throw your shoulders back, 
 plant your feet firmly, look straight ahead ! Yes, that s 
 the way ! " 
 
 " I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided 
 and that is . . ." 
 
 " How often have I told you to keep your fingers 
 still!" 
 
 ..." the lamp of experience, I know no way of 
 judging the future but by the past. ..." 
 
 Such was the way the afternoons were passed in St. 
 Medard after the stormy forenoons in the city; the 
 father with unwearied persistence showing his sons how 
 to stand and speak like great orators. That a man must 
 
156 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 be a good speaker was his educational fiat about boys 
 to correspond with the one that has been explained about 
 girls. An awkward, embarrassed man one who mis 
 pronounced words, who did not stand well on his feet, 
 throw his head back and look you fearlessly in the face 
 as if he were not afraid of anything the world could 
 produce against him, who sniffled and stammered this 
 in the boys* mind was the awful counterpart to the stupid 
 ungraceful lady in the little girls minds. 
 
 The little girls followed the speech-making with in 
 tense interest, straightening their shoulders, lifting their 
 heads, and forming the words with their lips. They could 
 have done trfe " lamp of experience " as well or better 
 than the boys; or any of the great speeches they had 
 learned by heart, as they sat by their mother, employed in 
 the feminine accomplishment of sewing. 
 
 " Let us not deceive ourselves." 
 
 " Say that over again," came the quick, stern com 
 mand. " Let us not deceive ourselves." . . . 
 
 " They tell us, Sir, that we are weak." . . . 
 
 " Don t drawl it out in that sing-song way ! " The 
 boys and the little girls all jumped at the loud sudden 
 admonition. 
 
 " Besides, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. 
 There is a just God ..." First one boy and then the 
 other made the usual failure over this sentence. . . . 
 
 " Gentlemen may cry Peace ! Peace ! but there is no 
 peace." . . . 
 
 " Say it again, this way." . . . 
 
 " Forbid it, Almighty God." . . . 
 
 "That s it! Now you have the idea!" 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 
 
 COMPARED with the Ursuline convent, that is if earthly 
 things can be compared to heavenly ones, Mademoiselle 
 Mimi s school might have been called a small, a very 
 small one. But she did not conduct it as such: she con 
 ducted it as if it were the great St. Denis of New Orleans, 
 whose pattern, as its prospectus explained, was the great 
 St. Denis of Paris. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi hardly could do otherwise, as 
 she herself had been educated at the St. Denis of New 
 Orleans and knew no other school; and as she said, she 
 could follow only those examples that the good God 
 had given her. Therefore, her scholars ten or twenty, 
 four or six, as the number might be were called to 
 order by the ringing of a bell at five minutes before nine 
 in the morning, when all went down on their knees, 
 crossed themselves, and recited the Pater. 
 
 The Salle delude, as it was called, was the dining 
 room ; the forms were its chairs. The writing was done 
 on the dining table in the center of which all the copy 
 books were arranged in neat piles. Mademoiselle Mimi 
 had no plantform but she sat as though she were on one, 
 behind a little papier mache table that bore a papier 
 mache desk inlaid with mother of pearl (the old desk 
 of her mother). And it must be confessed that the bell 
 whose ringing ordered the hours of the school was 
 nothing better than a tiny porcelain trifle, shaped like a 
 
158 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 lily with a gilt pistil for clapper and a gilt stem for 
 handle a lamentable falling back indeed from the St. 
 Denis standard. 
 
 The desk was by the window, and the classes stood 
 before it to recite. When the scholars stood properly, 
 it was credited to their account of good marks, as 
 " maintien " ; when improperly, it was marked against 
 them. In the St. Denis system, there was no doubt as to 
 whether one knew one s lesson or not. One was given 
 so many lines to learn by heart. If one could repeat the 
 portion without a mistake, one knew it; if not, not. The 
 system was as clear as the sun to the children, and ex 
 actly as one repeated the lesson one was marked in 
 Mademoiselle Mimi s account-book which was kept as 
 if it were to be produced in evidence on the last day. A 
 " P," in red ink meant Perfect, the value of twelve good 
 marks ; every word missed took one mark from the pos 
 sible twelve and when the whole credit was exhausted, 
 one went into insolvency with a naught, or even a cross ; 
 a bad mark against one. At the end of the month, 
 bankrupts in good marks were put at the foot of the 
 class capitalists at the head ; very much, so Mademoiselle 
 Mimi might say, as God does in his school in the world. 
 When one could not repeat the lesson, one was held not 
 to have studied it. 
 
 " But, Mademoiselle Mimi, I have studied it ; I assure 
 you I have studied it ! " one would cry. 
 
 " Ah ! my child, if you had studied it, you would know 
 it," was the just answer. 
 
 When one did not study at all, was in fact lazy and 
 stupid, one received the fool s cap and was stood in the 
 corner; and when one pretended not to mind this and 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 159 
 
 played the impertinent " faisait I impertinent " in school 
 language, by making grimaces and signs to the other 
 scholars, then old Aglone was called in from the kitchen 
 to pin a dish-cloth to one s tail-coat or frock. Ah ! this 
 hurt ! This cut the pride and brought tears to the dryest- 
 eyed masculine or feminine ! The punishment did not be 
 long to the original St. Denis system it was an addition, 
 or rather an innovation of Mademoiselle Mimi s but it 
 was one whose efficacy she knew by experience, for it 
 was, from time immemorial, the punishment of cooks 
 upon children who came into their kitchen and played 
 the impertinent there. 
 
 Heu! what child would enter, even under compulsion, 
 upon an education if the true size of the undertaking 
 was revealed to it from the first? If for instance, not 
 merely Pelion was piled upon Ossa, but all the moun 
 tains of the world were piled, one upon the other, and 
 the small toddler was conducted to the base and was 
 told : " Now climb, my child, climb ! It is true you will 
 never get to the top, but, no matter, climb away, and 
 keep on climbing." Is it not somewhat as if the mouse 
 were told to engender the mountain ? 
 
 But fortunately, the approaches to education are so 
 cunningly concealed, so insidiously presented, that to 
 the child, it seems only a question of a slate or a primer, 
 today; the multiplication table, tomorrow; and before 
 one knows it, the years gliding by like a snake in the 
 grass, one is at the terrible junction, the Caudine forks 
 of grammar. It was at this point of the height above 
 them that Cicely and Polly were graded by Mademoiselle 
 Mimi, and their first steps in the ascension were taken 
 in learning to prepare their copy books a most important 
 
160 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 step, this, to Mademoiselle Mimi, and one that meant 
 influence upon the rest of their life. They were to take 
 their quire of fool s cap white or blue, the color was 
 not important to fold it leaf by leaf, press it down 
 with Mademoiselle Mimi s pearl ruler (that went with 
 the desk), cut it with her mother of pearl knife, and 
 arrange the tops of the leaves into one " cahier," the 
 bottoms into another. Mademoiselle Mimi, herself, 
 sewed the leaves together, providing thread, needle, and 
 thimble, every day for the purpose ; as Aglone provided 
 dish-cloths for her more sinister function. Mademoiselle 
 Mimi, then, with a tasteful combination of fine and 
 coarse pens and red and black ink, wrote the titles: 
 " Cahier de Verbes" or " D Analyse" or " Synonymes" 
 or " Composition" or " Regies" with date and name 
 and flourishes between ; for she had as pretty a talent for 
 ornamental penmanship as any daughter of the Convent 
 the fountain source in the community of this accom 
 plishment. To impress her scholars with the importance 
 of the cahier in education, to make an object lesson of it, 
 though she was in the plains of ignorance as regards any 
 such educational term, Mademoiselle Mimi would take 
 her little candidates to the small bookcase secretaire in 
 her bedroom, and opening the cabinet underneath, show 
 them the cahier s of her school days. Every one was 
 there; not one was missing; from her first inchoate pot 
 hooks and hangers to the dawn of the ornamental finish 
 ing aforementioned; showing the entire course from 
 the first verb to the last composition on " Spring," 
 " Birds," " Love of Parents," or " Duty to One s Neigh 
 bors," etc., etc. And there too, were her school books 
 all neatly covered with calico, as she exacted that those 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 161 
 
 of her scholars should be, class after class of books, 
 for she had climbed to the topmost pinnacle of the St. 
 Denis mountain. 
 
 It was as if a bank president should open his safe and 
 show to an office boy his stored gold. This was her 
 capital, her stock in trade. She taught her first books to 
 her first scholars as she would be glad to teach her last 
 ones to a graduate, should she ever have one. 
 
 " I will teach all that I have learned myself," she would 
 frankly declare to her patrons. " I do not promise more, 
 for I cannot do more." 
 
 Every Friday she read out the total of each one s good 
 and bad marks for the week. On the last Friday of the 
 month, she collected and redistributed her medals, hung 
 on fresh ribbons ; the medals too being left from her own 
 school days. And the same rule held sway in her institu 
 tion as in St. Denis, and perhaps in the parental institution 
 in Paris: the same scholar, the cleverest one, always 
 obtained the medal, month after month; and the lazy, 
 stupid ones, never, no matter how much more glorious 
 the achievement would have been for them. 
 
 Every day, a verb, a sum in arithmetic, a French and 
 an English dictation, a paragraph of grammar, French 
 and English; so climbed they at the Institut Mimi. 
 Histoire Sainte, Histoire Generate, every other day. 
 Geography, once a week. Friday, recitation of fables 
 and poetry, writing of letters, compositions and " Com 
 pliments," in their season. 
 
 Complements. That was the keynote of the school 
 from every September to January: greetings to the 
 parents on New Year s day. Those who could not write 
 had to learn theirs by heart: " Mon cher Papa" "Ma 
 
1 62 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 chere Maman, void le jour de Van" . . . with the proper 
 bow or courtesy. Those who could write, prepared their 
 surprises on notepaper, scolloped along the edge, with a 
 little pink rose stamped at the top. Instead of four, six 
 months of Fridays would not have been too much prep 
 aration, so difficult are the bows and courtesies, the 
 capitals and spelling of these compliments. It is well that 
 the parents are invariably delighted and surprised with 
 such greetings, otherwise, the time and trouble and the 
 tears shed over them would not have been worth while. 
 
 At twelve o clock came recreation and lunch; at three, 
 prayer again, and the last farewell tinkle of the porce 
 lain bell. 
 
 Monsieur Pinseau, or " Papa Pinseau," as the children 
 called him, sitting, if it were cold, in the next room 
 if it were warm, on the gallery could overhear it all. 
 Sometimes, he had the French paper L Abeille to 
 read, sometimes an American paper. Mademoiselle 
 Mimi always provided him with the one or the other. 
 She cculd see, however, that they interested him but 
 little. He would stop any time on a European despatch 
 if Belle put her head on his knee; and he would turn 
 from the sheet a half dozen times in the morning at the 
 twitching of a leaf outside the window, or to look for 
 the two dear little heads of his friends, the pair of lizards 
 that dwelt in the vines there. By raising his eyes, he 
 could see, on the low whitewashed walls, the portraits 
 of his mother and father ; she, serious and dignified in a 
 turban and muslin kerchief, he, sedate and shrewd, in a 
 high stock and black toupet. The portraits of the 
 parents of his wife hung in his daughter s room. 
 Strange to say, the mother of that rigid saint was painted 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 163 
 
 in the costume of the frivolous world, not decolletee 
 merely, but decorsetee also, and her father showed in his 
 face no sentiment for the ascetic at all. 
 
 Sometimes, while the old gentleman was sunken in 
 reflection, perhaps on this very theme, past distraction by 
 Belle or the lizards or vague thoughts about his flowers, 
 there would come a little touch upon his elbow and a 
 timid voice to his ear : " Monsieur Pinseau, Mademoiselle 
 Mimi vous fait dire comme g a . . . " and he, too, would 
 have to put his hand to the climbing. Because, if the day 
 was ugly (for every now and then there does come an 
 ugly day in New Orleans when the sky is as dark and 
 the rain as pitilessly monotonous as anywhere else) 
 Mademoiselle Mimi would say to herself : " Poor Papa, 
 on such a day as this, what sad thoughts he must have ! " 
 and she would call up a little scholar and send her to 
 Papa Pinseau to ask him to hear her fable. And if the 
 day were fine, the sky blue, the sun radiant, the earth 
 gay, Mademoiselle Mimi would think : " Poor Papa, how 
 sad he must be on such a beautiful day as this." And 
 she would send some little scholar with her reading lesson 
 from Telemaque. The reading lesson was always from 
 Telemaque and the poetry from La Fontaine s fables; 
 for one could not ascend any educational height 
 whatever without them in Mademoiselle Mimi s 
 opinion. 
 
 " Holy, blessed Virgin ! " old Aglone would mutter to 
 herself in the kitchen, " look at that; and you know how 
 he used to hate children ! " 
 
 The little girls (little girls have a keener sense of 
 humor than little boys), when they would come in "La 
 Cigale et la Fourmi" to the conversation: 
 
164 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Que f aisles vous au temps chaudf 
 " Nuit et jour a tout venant, 
 "lie chantais, ne vous deplaise 
 " Vous chanties? J en suis fort aise, 
 " Eh bien, dansez maintenant! " 
 
 When they came to that they would throw back their 
 heads and laugh, showing all their little white teeth; it 
 was always so new and funny to them. But poor Papa 
 Pinseau, he did not laugh. That fable was no longer 
 funny to him. 
 
 The children who had no piano, who, plainly speaking, 
 were too poor to have one, practised on Mademoiselle 
 Mimi s instrument after school hours; and those who 
 lived near enough went in addition on Saturdays, when 
 Mademoiselle Mimi was herself, practising at the church 
 or giving lessons to the Demoiselles San Antonio. 
 
 To go on Saturday, was equivalent to having a lesson 
 from Papa Pinseau who, of course, was always at home, 
 and could no more refrain from meddling with the music 
 than with the cooking in his daughter s absence. And 
 when Mademoiselle Mimi would come through the gate 
 after her morning tasks and would pause a minute to 
 listen to the practising, as music teachers do mechanically 
 even when walking in the street by strange houses, she 
 would hear the scales and five finger exercises being 
 played with as much sentiment of touch, as if they were 
 a " divertissement! 
 
 And although he knew, naturally, no more about the 
 technique of fingering than of pots and pans, if she 
 glanced through the shutters of the window as likely as 
 not, she saw the picture of an old gentleman bending over 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 165 
 
 the pianist, showing her exactly how the wrist should 
 be raised and the little pink palm turned to the best ad 
 vantage of the musician if not of the music and how 
 the fingers may be used to the least detriment of the 
 finger-nails which, on ladies, he would say, should be 
 long, oval, and perfectly transparent; as if he were say 
 ing her soul should be perfectly pure. 
 
 " What is not done gracefully, Mademoiselle, it is not 
 worth while for ladies to do at all." 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi did not need to listen to hear these 
 words any more than she needed to listen to hear the 
 church bell. 
 
 " Eh, Papa ! she would say to him sometimes in her 
 dismay. " The scales and the five-finger exercises ; they 
 are not given to us to make us more attractive, any more 
 than the Ten Commandments are." Sometimes when the 
 New Year s compliments were being prepared, she would 
 be forced by other occupations to confide the rehearsal 
 of them to him, for when the compliments are once 
 started in motion they must be recited or copied every 
 day with the regularity of one s prayer. It is really only 
 their importance that constituted their difficulty; but it 
 is strange, how in copying or reciting them the embar- 
 rassment becomes more and more extreme with the ap 
 proach of the great day they are to honor ; how one trips 
 over the most familiar words, and stumbles over the 
 shortest sentences; and how on the very last day one is 
 just as apt to make the same fault that one started with 
 on the first. And over these failures, what bitter tears 
 can be shed! What depths of anguish sounded by boys 
 and girls alike, neither sex having any advantage over 
 the other in the endurance of shame! 
 
166 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Fortunate it was for the little girls at least, that there 
 was a Papa Pinseau to replace Mademoiselle Mimi, on 
 her Saturday morning absences which may have been 
 prolonged not involuntarily; for if she prided herself on 
 teaching only what she had learned, how could she teach 
 the little girls to step forward and courtesy and smile and 
 look the proper way not to speak of the little boys 
 she who had been taught dancing by a pietist, recom 
 mended by her mother s confessor, a lady whose only 
 grace was her piety. 
 
 With Papa Pinseau it was different ! He knew exactly 
 how the little ones should walk up to the expectant, sur 
 prised parent, the chief attraction of the compliment to 
 the little ones was the perfect surprise they caused year 
 after year, how they should courtesy, how lift the hand 
 palm outward, and then as a climax, the eyes. When 
 he had a good subject, he produced charming results, 
 results entirely beyond the power, because entirely be 
 yond the character, of his daughter. 
 
 The little boys ran off from their rehearsals as soon 
 as possible; but the little girls Ah! how wise was Mr. 
 Talbot in his judgment would hang around him as if 
 fascinated; seeing which, he would fascinate them yet 
 more, just as he used to do with those other little girls, 
 the young ladies of his day. Everything he did pleased 
 them, anything he said amused them. When Made 
 moiselle, as a reward for good behavior, would offer 
 to tell a story of her scholars own choosing, the little 
 girls would cry out unanimously : " Ask Papa Pinseau 
 to tell us about when he was little, and how he went to 
 dancing-school ! " 
 
 His dancing school was a kind of fairyland to them, 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 167 
 
 for as they understood it, the pretty manners of the 
 ladies and gentlemen of his day came from the pretty 
 manners taught in the dancing-school by an old gentle 
 man who was a French nobleman, an emigre, who had 
 been noted for his dancing at the court of Marie Antoi 
 nette. (The little girls would shake their heads in solemn 
 awe at this and repeat " the court of Marie Antoinette.") 
 He gave his lessons in an old court dress with silk stock 
 ings and morocco pumps. Another old nobleman played 
 the violin for him. They lived together in a little room 
 on Toulouse Street, and their Salle de danse was in Royal 
 Street, over a confectionery. All the little boys and 
 girls of good family went to him. The old dancing- 
 master was very particular about the parentage and the 
 feet of his scholars. The little girls must have their 
 slippers made by an old woman on Chartres Street, the 
 boys, by the famous Larose, himself. . . . 
 
 When he was a young man, Monsieur Pinseau was 
 noted for his witty talent of mimicry, and there was 
 nothing he did better or more delightfully than the old 
 dancing-master and the violinist, the little boys in their 
 pumps and wide trousers, and the little girls, long pan 
 talettes and all. Poor Papa Pinseau! his feet were 
 gouty and heavy enough now and he wore carpet slippers, 
 bought at the cheapest shop at the Louisa Street market. 
 
 . . . When the old dancing-master died (now the 
 story became thrilling to the little girls) and his obituary 
 notices were posted on the corners of the streets, so many 
 high-sounding names appeared in it (the confectioner 
 did this) that the whole city became confused and em 
 barrassed over it, and everybody insisted upon going 
 to the funeral at the Cathedral. The little Pinseau was 
 
168 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 taken by his nurse and made to look upon the old 
 dancing-master in his coffin (there is nothing a nurse 
 likes better than such surreptitious enjoyment of for 
 bidden fruit), and he was all surprised to find him, in 
 spite of his great names, still the same little, yellow- 
 wrinkled tyrant of a dancing-master, dressed in the same 
 old knee breeches and darned stockings and pumps with 
 silver buckles. The little boys of the dancing-school 
 followed the hearse dressed as if for their dancing 
 lesson, each one carrying a bouquet (always a sigh of 
 regret followed this termination of the tale). 
 
 It was the old Marquis who taught the ladies of New 
 Orleans how much prettier it was to dance with their 
 eyes cast down. The ex-ballet-dancer who succeeded 
 him could teach only like a ballet-dancer, and the ladies 
 of New Orleans only then began to throw their heads 
 back in dancing and show their eyes as they did their 
 feet; (so ran the warning moral of the tale at which 
 the little girls would cast down their heads and eyes at 
 once). 
 
 Mr. Talbot knew nothing, and even less than nothing, 
 of all this. A point of variance had developed between 
 him and Mademoiselle Mimi. After careful examina 
 tion, he had rejected the histories she taught, although 
 they were written by learned priests, were recommended 
 by Monseigneur the Archbishop, and were, therefore, 
 taught in all schools of the State where religion had 
 any authority. This time he did not intrust any mes 
 sages to his wife, but told Mademoiselle Mimi, himself, 
 what he had to say about her histories; and she, 
 it was all she could do, promised to teach Protestant 
 histories if he desired. 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 169 
 
 " Protestant histories, Madam ! History is history. 
 There is no such thing as Roman Catholic history or 
 Protestant history! Any more than there is Roman 
 Catholic arithmetic or Protestant arithmetic, et tutti 
 quanta . . / 
 
 She listened to him attentively and seemed to be con 
 vinced, but the truth was, being a woman, she disliked 
 lectures and followed his words only sufficiently to know 
 when to place what she had made up her mind, at once, 
 to say to him : " Far from not wanting to act according 
 to your desires, I, on the contrary, shall be only too 
 happy to follow your views on the subject. I beg you 
 to select the histories yourself, that you should like your 
 daughters taught, and I shall teach them. Indeed I con 
 sider it a great privilege to have a gentleman of your 
 education to direct me," etc., etc. 
 
 When she returned home, however, manifold diffi 
 culties presented themselves in the way of her fulfil 
 ling her promise. She had scruples of conscience on the 
 subject, for to be on the good side of the priests and the 
 sisters at the convent, omnipotent secular as well as 
 clerical authorities in the parish, she had asked and 
 followed their advice about text-books and they, some 
 what like the American gentleman, were most firm in 
 their ideas about history. 
 
 " In truth," she confided to her father, " I must, it 
 seems, teach two histories on the same subject. But the 
 very beginning of all histories for small children im 
 presses the belief that there is but one history, and that 
 the one taught is the right one! And we are especially 
 urged to warn them against the other kind, the false 
 histories which poison the mind and corrupt the truth- 
 
THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 How can I in one class teach that Luther was a monster, 
 sent by the devil, a false priest; and in another that he 
 was . . . what I will not repeat all that Mr. Talbot 
 believes about him; to one child, that it was God who 
 gained the battle of Tolbiac, and to another that it 
 wasn t? He objects to that particularly; he cited the 
 battle of Tolbiac himself. Oh, about miracles he was 
 most eloquent. He says that he does not want his 
 children taught that there are such things as miracles in 
 history. But if miracles have happened, what are we 
 going to do about them? Deny them? Ah! It was 
 to the very people that denied them that the miracles 
 came ; the pagans, the blasphemers. How could they ever 
 have been converted without miracles? It may be a 
 difficulty for a man to believe them, but/ with a covert 
 reference to her father s indifference to religion, " for 
 a woman, I assure you nothing seems so natural as a 
 miracle." 
 
 Fortunately, Papa Pinseau had no such scruples, hav 
 ing very little religion. Instead of seeing one right side 
 in every historical question in which he had figured that 
 is in every political question he had seen as many right 
 sides as it was as profitable to as many men to adopt. 
 The right side was the side that got most votes in the 
 ballot-box, that was all and the men in one campaign 
 would vote for one right side, and in the next for another. 
 Constancy and consistency he had found to be as rare 
 in history as in love. So he was well qualified to be 
 come Professor of American History, as the children 
 called history written in English, in the Institut Mimi. 
 He conducted his class of two with, at least, irreproach 
 able tact and grace ; and as difficult situations had always 
 
THE INSTITUT MIMI 171 
 
 been infinitely attractive to him, he did not shun, as 
 Mademoiselle would have done, naive questions when 
 the lesson was over. 
 
 " In history, the great men are the good men, eh, 
 Monsieur Pinseau ? " 
 
 " And the beautiful women are the good women, eh, 
 Monsieur Pinseau?" 
 
 " And when a man is good, he is always great, eh, 
 Monsieur Pinseau ? " 
 
 " Unless he is a great fool," would answer Monsieur 
 Pinseau. 
 
 " And if a man is good, his enemies have to be bad, eh, 
 Monsieur Pinseau ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, the enemies of good people are always the 
 bad people," he would answer placidly. 
 
CRIBICHE 
 
 CRIBICHE, it must be explained, was a gift of God to the 
 neighborhood, as his baptismal name Theodore implied. 
 Both metaphorically and in sober fact, his forlorn ex 
 istence had been laid at the door of every possible parent 
 in the parish, but the metaphorical meaning had pre 
 vented his being accepted anywhere out of charity. Truly 
 when a parent abandons a child, it is abandoned indeed ! 
 After urging its adoption into every Gascon cabin there 
 abouts for the child was like a drop of the very essence 
 of Gascony the priest thought of taking it to an orphan 
 asylum. But he was sensitive to the fine application of 
 God s law, in the parish of St. Medard if not in the 
 world. The child had been left not on the steps of the 
 church, it is true, but in the great ditch in front that 
 drained it, Fortunately, the ditch was dry and there was 
 no rain that night or it might have been drained away 
 with other seepage of the soil. When the priest saw this 
 degrading contempt of the babe for it could have been 
 left on the steps of the church and saw that no one 
 would take it in, but, on the contrary, spurned it as an 
 aspersion of dishonor, he reflected upon the occurrence 
 and upon the world into which, without volition of its 
 own, the baby had been brought. Whenever Pere 
 Phileas reflected upon any of the passing events, even of 
 the insignificant life about him, he always ended by a 
 chronic malady of his, namely: a distortion of vision 
 
 172 
 
CRIBICHE 173 
 
 his eyes seeing, not what actually lay before them, but 
 something else that existed only in his own mind; as 
 we have seen him turn from the simple, ordinary event 
 of strangers moving into the neighborhood to fine-spun 
 theories about God s intentions. Now seeing, as he 
 thought, that God meant something by sending the baby 
 to St. Medard, he gave it the name of Theodore, and 
 although the next inference might have been the nearest 
 orphan asylum, he took charge of it himself. That is, 
 he gave it in charge to the old negress Zizi, who, for a 
 trifle of money and the salvation of her soul, attended to 
 his daily domestic wants. She lived, conveniently, in 
 a far corner of his garden. The charge of a baby is 
 nothing to an old negress. A fine lady would be put to 
 more trouble in selecting lace for a handkerchief than 
 she in assuming the responsibility of a day-old baby. 
 But babies thrive with old negresses, and give them less 
 trouble than they do to fine ladies. Babies, mules, and 
 negroes seem made for one another. Though why this 
 should be so, only the Creator who made them and who 
 knows all things, knows. It may be because, in some 
 things, perhaps in most, babies and mules are alike. 
 
 A healthy baby asks only time and opportunity. This 
 Cribiche received amply. Unfortunately, his having 
 been found in the gutter, though it procured him the 
 name of Theodore from the priest, affixed to him also 
 that of Cribiche, the Creole for ecrevisse, crayfish. 
 Only God and the priest knew him by any other appella 
 tion. He grew with time and profited by his opportuni 
 ties. But if ever the proverb " the nearer the church 
 the farther from God " was verified in this world, it 
 was in this case. Cribiche was as precocious in naughti- 
 
174 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ness as any little negro of the same age. And that is 
 saying a great deal. How quickly time flies! The gift 
 to the parish became ten years old before Pere Phileas 
 had recovered from his surprise at his walking and talk 
 ing; and even then he was stretching his tethers, alas! 
 not toward goodness. 
 
 Pere Phileas s " Imitation " had warned him, how 
 many times the well-thumbed page alone could tell, 
 " Withstand the beginnings, the remedy is applied too 
 late when the evil has grown strong through delay." But 
 when are the beginnings of evil in an infant? That the 
 " Imitation " did not indicate. When the priest was ready 
 to apply the remedy, it was already too late! Indeed, 
 to the simple soul it seemed that even the baptism had 
 been too late ; that evil had entered the child in the very 
 ditch of his nativity. 
 
 Laziness and lying were the temptations to be resisted. 
 Cribiche, however, resisted not them but their opposites. 
 So Joachim was forced to flay his body for him while 
 the priest wrought to cure his soul. But to cure a soul 
 one must catch it; and as well try to catch a bird in a 
 tree when it has gotten away from you. And Cribiche s 
 lessons, and his catechism were, respectfully be it spoken, 
 salt on the tail. As for communion and confirmation he 
 remained in such a state of nature that one could only 
 pray for a miracle to accomplish his salvation. 
 
 Thus while other children climbed and learned at the 
 Institut Mimi, Cribiche roamed at his own free will in the 
 pleasant valley of ignorance. When Pere Phileas would 
 send him to school, that is, take him by the arm and push 
 him inside Mademoiselle Mimi s gate, he had better have 
 said : " Cribiche, my son, my good little son, go not to 
 
CRIBICHE 175 
 
 school to Mademoiselle Mimi, go, on the contrary, and 
 spend the day fishing for perch in the old Mexican Gulf 
 canal. Or go to that little Bayou back of the battle 
 ground, that thou knowest of, and fish there in the shade 
 of the oak trees. Or if thou canst beg, borrow, or steal 
 a gun along that same Bayou, thou wilt find ducks, or 
 in any magnolia tree, " Grassees" eating the magnolia 
 berry to flavor their delicate flesh expressly for the epi 
 cure. Or maybe, you feel like gathering oranges for 
 the traders who are now buying them and you can work 
 for them all day long contentedly, and come home with 
 a dozen for pay. Or go if you will and pick up pecans 
 for the Sisters at the convent ; they are rich and therefore 
 must make more money still by selling their pecans and 
 they will willingly give you your pockets and hands full, 
 for your day s work, and perhaps hang a scapulary on 
 your dirty neck, instead of having you flogged by their 
 gate-keeper and sent to school. Or the Roulaison (sugar 
 grinding) has begun on the coast, and any planter down 
 there will welcome you to put cane on the carrier all day, 
 for the slight payment of letting you eat as much 
 * caramel and Cuite (candied sugar of the cane 
 juice) as you want. ..." 
 
 Pere Phileas had better have told Cribiche to do all 
 this and saved him from the sin of disobedience. For it 
 was what Cribiche would do without fail, slipping out of 
 the school-gate, just as soon as the priest s back was 
 turned ; unless the fancy took him to lie on a grassy spot 
 on the Levee and watch the ships go by; or hide in the 
 corner of some Gascon cafe, the best resort of all on 
 a rainy day, and listen to the talk going on there. 
 Desire of learning was not in him as the priest said 
 
176 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 sadly, nor shame of ignorance. When Cribiche sought 
 Papa Pinseau s society, it was not alas! to improve his 
 accent or diction in French, nor for La Fontaine nor the 
 adventures of Telemaque; but to recount his own ad 
 ventures in hunting and fishing. And if Belle, who lay 
 sleepy and bored through all the wit and wisdom of 
 classic French morality, if she lifted her head at these 
 recitals and listened, and to Cribiche s " pam, pam," as 
 he aimed and shot off his imaginary gun, barked eager 
 exclamations and ran excitedly around the room nosing 
 under chairs and sofas to lie at her master s feet after 
 wards, whining from sheer longing what must the other 
 old hunter have felt? He, indeed, would be the last 
 authority on earth to urge book learning upon Cribiche. 
 The question is, would Cribiche have studied ever had 
 not the misfortunes of war been inflicted upon Mr. 
 Talbot? 
 
 As the sage La Fontaine says : 
 
 . . . on rencontre sa destinee, 
 Souvent par les chemins qu on prend pour I eviter" 
 
 There is an island on the coast below St. Medard 
 called St. Malo. It is peopled by Malays, who do naught 
 else under God s heaven, as the saying of the parish goes, 
 but fish; and, the evil-minded say, play the pirate when 
 chance offers that luck to them. Free as the winds and 
 waves about them ; children of the elements and untamed 
 as they. And there is another place, not far from St. 
 Medard, the Terre aux Boeufs, the home of the Islefios, 
 or " Islingues," as they call themselves ; a narrow strip 
 of land encircled by a Bayou, which itself is surrounded 
 
CRIBICHE 177 
 
 by trembling prairies that separate it from the Gulf of 
 Mexico. These people are also Spanish, brought here 
 by their government a century before as colonists from 
 the Canary Islands, as the Malays were from the Philip 
 pines. But only the historians know this. The people 
 themselves know only that they are Islenos and can live 
 to themselves without hindrance on their Island in 
 Louisiana; the men hunting and fishing all the week 
 and the women sitting in front of their palmetto thatched 
 huts, on the bank of the Bayou, waiting for their men 
 to come back at night. No schools, no churches there 
 only game and fish ; and nothing 1 to do but get these and 
 put them on little ox carts and drive to the nearest shop 
 to buy when they needed them powder, shot, coffee, 
 flour, or clothing. 
 
 Either of these was the road that Cribiche s thoughts 
 usually took to avoid his destiny. They would set out 
 at sight of his primer towards the Malays or Islingues, 
 and instead of seeing his page or slate, he saw with the 
 faculty of children to see not what is, but what they wish 
 he saw the low-lying sky of the Gulf, the foaming 
 waves leaping over the snapper banks, or farther out 
 beyond the sight of land, the blue depths where the 
 silvery pampano is found; or, if the season were Autumn 
 and the hour twilight, he saw the reeds of a Bayou 
 in the trembling prairie, and the flocks of homing ducks, 
 flying within range of an ambush. And bang ! bang ! he 
 would grow as wild under the imagination as under the 
 reality of it. 
 
 " But, my son, why do you jump and start that way? " 
 the good priest would ask. " To learn a lesson, one 
 must be calm and patient." When Pere Phileas could 
 
178 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 get hold of his charge at night, he would bring him into 
 his room and seat him at his table with books and slate. 
 But always, there came an interruption; no one in St. 
 Medard appeared to have time to consult a priest except 
 at night, and the sick always put off sending for him for 
 the consolations of the church until the night too; during 
 the day they seemed to have more confidence in them 
 selves. When thus summoned, the good man could not 
 forbear sighing as he arose. 
 
 " My son," he would say to Cribiche, laying his great 
 hand kindly on the boy s shoulder, " you see how it is 
 ... I cannot do my duty to you, on account of my 
 duty to some one else. . . . You, therefore, must do my 
 duty to yourself, for me. Make yourself study as I 
 would make you study, repeat your lessons to yourself 
 as you would repeat them to me. Be a good boy; when 
 you hear the trumpet go to bed and be sure to say your 
 prayers. As for me, I am going back into the swamp 
 and I may not return before day, the way is dark and 
 difficult. Be careful to put out the light." 
 
 When the trumpet sounded, where was Cribiche? He 
 was, briefly, everywhere that he should not have been, 
 he was nowhere that he should have been. 
 
 As some good folk enjoy their wealth more when con 
 templating the poverty of others and sleep better of a cold 
 rainy night, by contrasting their good, warm bed with 
 the wretched lot of the homeless and shelterless, so 
 Cribiche also whetted his enjoyment of freedom. 
 
 But the good, after all, suffer needlessly from their 
 imagination of the badness of the bad. Many a night, 
 when the poor priest in a panic at the wickedness of the 
 devil was worrying his soul over the whereabouts of the 
 
CRIBICHE 179 
 
 boy, going even to the length of throwing himself on 
 his knees before the Holy Virgin and praying that she, 
 seeing the helplessness of the boy s only earthly guardian, 
 would cast a look after him herself, as after one who 
 had no earthly father or mother to do so, or only such as 
 suspicion gave at that very moment Cribiche would be 
 probably no farther away than Joachim s window, nor 
 more evilly employed than peeping at him and his fat 
 wife, sitting together, gossiping, while the grim cat-o - 
 nine tails, that Joachim as a retired sailor preferred to 
 other instruments of punishment, was hanging innocently 
 on the wall. Or he would be standing and feasting his 
 eyes on the sentry at the barracks who was ever pacing 
 to and fro, to and fro, not daring to stop or laugh and 
 talk or run away for fear of the guardhouse. But best 
 of all, he enjoyed slipping upon the gallery of the 
 Americans and all unsuspected, looking down even as 
 Lazarus may have looked down upon hell upon the 
 torments he, himself, was so well out of ; at boys of his 
 own age and spirit undergoing their purgatory, night 
 after night. There they sat around the dining-room 
 table with their books, illuminated by an oil lamp, study 
 ing under no Pere Phileas, always hoping for the best; 
 but under the real eye of a real father, always prepared 
 for the worst; who ran up his black flag every night, 
 so to speak, and gave no quarter to sleepiness, laziness, 
 or shirking. There were no messages there calling him 
 away. Hour after hour the pale, serious, scholarly man 
 sat unmoved, book in hand, waiting for the balky lessons 
 to be learned and recited to his satisfaction. Light after 
 light in the house would go out, but that lamp burned 
 on even if necessary until midnight; until, if the fancy 
 
i8o THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 be permitted, the slow intelligence of the boys caught 
 light from it. 
 
 Never did the salt waves and winds of the Gulf seem 
 so near to Cribiche; never did fish bite better in the 
 Bayou or ducks fly down in thicker flocks upon the 
 trembling prairie across the red disk of the setting sun ; 
 never did guns pop so briskly as when he looked in upon 
 that scene ; never was the life of Malay or Islingue more 
 tempting, never was his vagrancy more precious to 
 him. 
 
 Was it destiny, or the Virgin Mary, that made Mr. 
 Talbot open the door suddenly one night and catch 
 Cribiche there, and, as he tried to escape, pull him into the 
 room dirty, barefooted, barelegged, open-shirted as he 
 was? What did Cribiche think was going to happen to 
 him? What did he expect? He was audacious, but 
 not impudent, and he looked miserable enough in his 
 confusion as the grip upon his shoulder pushed him into 
 a chair, and a book was shoved before him : " We are 
 all studying here, Cribiche, you must study too." 
 
 We might well ask again with Pere Phileas : Was it 
 not the Virgin Mary who did thus act the part of the 
 wisest and tenderest of mothers in giving the vagabond 
 over to such a master, without doubt, the most elegant 
 scholar in St. Medard? and more; the sole one, before 
 whose eyes the boy trembled. It is not always the most 
 serious who are the least attractive to children; the 
 most severe who are the least respected; the most feared 
 who are the least loved. Cribiche in his heart was more 
 afraid of the tall, pale American gentleman than he was 
 of God, whose fear Pere Phileas had been preaching to 
 him all his life. 
 
CRIBICHE 181 
 
 Just as, when commanded to arise, the dead man did 
 arise, so Cribiche, when commanded to study, did study 
 . . . that night and every night afterward. 
 
 Who else but she, the Virgin Mary, could have done 
 it? 
 
JERRY 
 
 IN the program for the future, it had been agreed be 
 tween Jerry and his master that the two eldest girls 
 should be hired out as servants as soon as possible and 
 that Jerry should seek employment in his trade of car 
 penter. This, with Matilda s wages as cook and with 
 their home provided, would insure not only comfort to 
 the freed slaves but enable them to save something to 
 meet the " emergencies," as they might be called, of their 
 freedom : the illnesses, deaths, and disabling accidents 
 that had been hitherto the master s portion. 
 
 As he had planned for his own life so Mr. Talbot 
 planned for the negro s and did nothing by halves. He 
 carefully explained to the negro that the principles that 
 formed the basis of his dealings with other men and 
 other men s dealings with him were the same truth, 
 honesty, hard work, courage, patience, that he, Jerry, 
 had possessed as a slave ; and that all he had to do now 
 to fulfil his duty to God and man was to continue living 
 in the future as he had done in the past. A good slave 
 was bound to make a good free man. His children were 
 of an age to help him, which was a great advantage; 
 Matilda was an honest, industrious woman; his trade 
 was one in which he was sure to find employment. The 
 master said he had never seen a good carpenter who 
 was not well to do. Jerry listened as he always did to 
 his master, devoutly raising his large intelligent eyes to 
 
 i8a 
 
JERRY 183 
 
 him from time to time ; his great hard hands lying heavily 
 on his knees like hands of bronze. His thick, grizzled 
 wool stood out in even height all over his head, in 
 creasing its size with fine effect; a short grizzled beard 
 covered the lower part of his face ; leaving his large lips 
 bare. His expression was of perfect truth and honesty. 
 
 "I ll do my best, Master; I ll do my best," was the 
 answer he made from time to time. 
 
 " You must not only do your best ; you must see that 
 your family does its best, too," with a slight laugh. 
 You know you are your own overseer and master now." 
 
 The negro did not smile at this. He had a face that 
 seldom smiled; a serious, plodding face. 
 
 " It will seem strange at first being in the city ; but you 
 must not think about the city : your work will be the same 
 in the city that it was in the country. Keep to your work 
 and keep to yourself. The city is full of strange negroes 
 who are up to all kinds of mischief; keep away from 
 them. A lazy negro is a bad negro, as you know yourself. 
 When you see a crowd of lazy negroes, herding together 
 like sheep as they are doing in that old warehouse on 
 the Levee, you may be sure they are doing no good to 
 themselves or to any one else. Keep away from them 
 and keep Matilda and your girls away from them. I 
 cannot do anything to help you in this, you must do it all 
 yourself." 
 
 " I ll do my best, Master." 
 
 " I ll give you a recommendation that is a paper tell 
 ing who you are and what you can do ; guaranteeing you 
 as the good, honest, industrious man you have proved 
 yourself to be. Your character and your capability as 
 a workman are your stock in trade; and I can tell you 
 
1 84 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 many a white man has made a fortune starting with less 
 of that than you have. Show your paper when you ask 
 for work. As I pass in the cars, I see some piled-up 
 lumber on the Levee ; there must be a lumber-yard there 
 or a sawmill; I should think you could find work there. 
 And show your recommendation when you apply for 
 work for Henrietta and Julia. People naturally think 
 that a good man has good daughters. Go over there to 
 the barracks, perhaps some of the officers families need 
 servants. Take any wages they offer. Henrietta and 
 Julia do not know much about housework but they can 
 learn. You had better explain, Jerry, that they have 
 never worked much about a house, and though they look 
 rough and awkward, they will soon learn. You take 
 them yourself, and hire them out and collect their wages 
 as they are both under age just as I would have done 
 once, if I were hiring you out/ 
 
 " Yes, Master, I ll do my best." 
 
 The next morning the father and the two daughters, 
 dressed in their best clothes as if they were going to 
 church, started out on their momentous errand. Jerry 
 had his recommendation in his pocket; but he carried 
 it so well written on his face, that the paper could have 
 been demanded only by a person very ignorant of negro 
 physiognomy. It was not difficult to find situations for 
 the strong, good-looking girls, ignorant and awkward as 
 they were. Although the city was swarming with the 
 disbanded negroes from ruined plantations and homes all 
 over the State, wages were high; servants hard to get, 
 and harder to hold. From the utmost luxuriance and 
 extravagance of retinue, households had fallen to the 
 barest necessities. Freedom from slavery meant free- 
 
JERRY 185 
 
 dom from work or it meant nothing to the negroes. 
 Here and there an old man or woman would be seen 
 toiling stolidly along in the old routine, although the 
 door of their prison stood open before them. Inured to 
 chains, perhaps more at their ease with them than with 
 out (even if the chains were forged of sentiment and 
 affection as some of them seem to have been), they still 
 remained in servitude when servitude grew harder and 
 harder under the changed conditions when, in truth, 
 it became a slavery such as no former state of slavery 
 could be compared with. But these were all old negroes. 
 The young were foot loose. There was nothing to bind 
 them or to constrain them, neither past, present, nor 
 future. They drank to their heart s content from the 
 cup of their new liberty and gave themselves up to the 
 delights of its intoxication. There was no master, over 
 seer, or driver for them now by day; no patrol to de 
 mand passes of them by night. By night and by day 
 they could go now where they pleased, as well as do as 
 they pleased. No one now could force them to work, or 
 keep them at work if they wished to quit. They could 
 leave the baby crying in the cradle, the dinner cooking 
 on the stove, the clothes in the washtub nobody could 
 prevent, nobody could punish them. That was the best 
 of all, they were free henceforth from punishment! 
 They even could be impudent with impunity now to 
 the whites ; to those sacred whites against whom to raise 
 a hand was once a capital crime for a slave. They could 
 have white people arrested now and taken before any 
 provost marshal. And if the whites were not " loyal," 
 as it was called, to the conquerors in the war, the negroes, 
 merely because they were negroes and so loyal could 
 
1 86 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 gain any case against them, would in fact be believed 
 before them. They could now curse white men, aye and 
 even white women, to their faces, and if they were South 
 ern white men and women be only laughed at for their 
 insolence by the people in power. The negro soldiers 
 could shove them out of their way in the cars, push and 
 jostle, soldiering them as one may say, with their white 
 officers standing by, indifferent, if not smiling at them. 
 They, the negroes, had been freed and exalted so their 
 preachers preached to them their owners conquered and 
 abased. They, the negroes, were the victors; to them 
 belonged the spoils and they were ready to claim them. 
 Social equality was granted them; wherever a white 
 man went a black man could go. Whatever a white man 
 did a black man could do. There was nothing now but 
 political equality to obtain, which, on account of their 
 numbers and the disfranchisement of the whites, meant 
 political superiority. And white men, from the victori 
 ous side s political party that had brought on and gained 
 the war, were even now forming parties in the State, to 
 gain this last triumph for them, and with it their vote. 
 There were old ladies still living in the city who, 
 sitting in their quiet rooms, said that they knew all about 
 revolutions : their mothers had related to them what had 
 taken place in the French revolution. WTiatever hap 
 pened, these old ladies shook their heads and predicted 
 something worse. They counseled prudence, submis 
 sion, for they felt the cut of the guillotine still in their 
 blood. There were other old ladies, too, who said they 
 knew all about it : their mothers had fled from the insur 
 rection of the slaves in Santo Domingo, and whatever 
 happened they also predicted something worse, for they 
 
JERRY 187 
 
 felt still in their blood what they could never relate to 
 their children; what they only could describe as "God 
 alone knew what followed "... 
 
 Jerry hired out both his daughters into service in the 
 barracks and secured work for himself as carpenter. 
 
 At night, when the lessons were going on in the 
 master s house, the negroes would be gathered around the 
 flickering light of the fire on their hearthstone and they 
 would turn together, as it were, the page of the day s 
 experience. Not the pages filled with Latin declensions 
 and Greek verbs, that puzzled and saddened the little 
 minds over the way, but mirth-provoking pages to the 
 negroes for at first they experienced nothing but what 
 they could laugh at ; and they laughed at everything that 
 differed from their plantation standard. And more than 
 anything else, they laughed at their own race : " A city 
 nigger was no nigger at all." 
 
 Sometimes the master, coming in to give an order, 
 seeing them thus laughing, talking, and dozing together 
 before their fire, would say wearily to himself : " They 
 are as happy as ever they were." 
 
 But the two elder girls grew more and more like the 
 city niggers that they at first despised and mocked; less 
 like the country niggers they had been so proud to call 
 themselves. Little by little they discarded their planta 
 tion garb : the colonnade gown, heavy rawhide shoes, 
 and headkerchief s ; and little by little assumed hats, 
 calico dresses, and high heel boots. In three months they 
 had traversed the stage from the one costume to the 
 other. To their father these were dubious signs, but to 
 Matilda they were glad tidings. She craved not for 
 herself to go into the Canaan, the Land of Promise, that 
 
i88 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 she heard was lying before all negroes for them to go in 
 and take possession of. She counted upon remaining 
 upon this side of Jordan with Jerry and her white people, 
 in the colonnade gown, headkerchief, and rawhide shoes 
 of the days of her slavery. But she laughed ecstatically 
 to herself over her work when she thought of her 
 daughters in their new finery, as she would have laughed 
 had she heard they wore the robes of salvation, the 
 mystical finery of a negro s dreams during slavery. 
 Salvation : That was the negro s hope in slavery to save 
 their souls and go to God. And as they were slaves, and 
 black, and sinners as well, they indulged, not hopes, but 
 certainties of salvation. The freed negroes soon learned 
 not to worry themselves about salvation. What could 
 heaven give above what they had been given and what 
 was promised them? 
 
 The girls soon lost their places, but Jerry found others 
 for them; and all went well as before except that they 
 came home only once a week instead of every night. 
 They lost the second places before their month ended, 
 and Jerry found situations for the third time. . . . 
 
 After that he lost track of their engagements. They 
 went in and out of their places without reference to him. 
 They told their mother what they chose and she believed 
 what they told her. 
 
 One day it came to Jerry, while he was planing a 
 plank, to throw down his tool and go and see what his 
 daughters were doing. He went off as he was, in his 
 apron and shirt sleeves. 
 
 When he came home after dark Matilda saw that 
 something had happened to him. He came in and sat 
 down and held his head in his two hands and would not 
 
JERRY 189 
 
 speak ; as she had seen a negro man do on the plantation 
 when he came home alone from a frolic that he had gone 
 to with a companion. He said his mate had fallen out 
 of the pirogue and drowned; but the plantation always 
 thought he had thrown him out of the pirogue and 
 drowned him. Matilda could think only of this, as she 
 closed the doors and windows. But Jerry was worn 
 out with hunger, fatigue, and sorrow; that was all. 
 When she won him to talk to her, the tears rolled down 
 his cheeks, and she knew he had not killed anyone. 
 
 He told her how it came to him, when he was working 
 and not thinking of his girls at all, to go and hunt them 
 up. A kind of voice came to him. He threw down his 
 plane, left his work and went, as he was. That was all 
 he knew at first. He walked and walked from place to 
 place, until he got on their traces, and then he tracked 
 them to where they were. They were not in any place 
 . . . they had not been in a place for a month . . . they 
 were at the " Settlement," with the negroes there, both 
 of them. They had lied when they said they were work 
 ing. They were not working . . . they were living with 
 the negroes there living like they lived . . . They had 
 lied to Matilda and to him. . . . 
 
 " Did you see them ? " she asked. 
 
 He had seen them ; he had talked to them and he told 
 Matilda what he had said to them, and what they had 
 said to him, how they had answered him . . . 
 
 When Matilda heard what they said and how they said 
 it her fury stopped her mouth for an instant. Then 
 when she began to talk she was beside herself with pas 
 sion. She swore she would go to the " Settlement " ; she 
 would drag those " nigger girls " out ; she would cut 
 
i 9 o THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 their vitals in two ; she would stamp the life out of them ; 
 she would . . . All the old hideous plantation threats 
 of an African s fury rolled from her hot tongue. 
 
 Jerry shook his head, saying nothing. But when, hav 
 ing talked herself to the point of action, she seized a 
 knife and made a rush for the door, he caught her and 
 held her. She now turned in her frenzy upon him; 
 forgetting everything else. She fought him like a wild 
 animal, tried to use her knife on him. Thin, supple, lithe 
 as an eel, she was a match for him unless he used his 
 full strength upon her. Again and again she almost got 
 through the door. She had reached it, opened it, and 
 was fighting in the crack of it, when at last Jerry, getting 
 between her and the door, gave her a push that sent her 
 to the other side of the room, where she fell against the 
 bed. 
 
 " Go and call Master," he ordered his youngest girl 
 Maria, who was cowering in a corner. 
 
 The master came and the mistress behind him. They 
 had heard only Matilda s garbled accounts of the girls, 
 and thought them still at work. Now they heard the 
 truth as Jerry gave it. Wherever he went, tracking them 
 from one place to the other, from their first situation in 
 an officer s family in the barracks to their last one, he 
 had found but one account of them that they were lazy, 
 impudent, and thievish. From her last place Henrietta 
 had stolen a dress, and her employers were looking for 
 her to have her arrested. He went finally to the " Settle 
 ment," and there found them. They told him they were 
 not going to work any more; that they could make as 
 much money as they wanted without working and that 
 they were free, anyhow, to do as they pleased. When 
 
JERRY 191 
 
 Jerry ordered them to come along with him they were 
 impudent to him; they " sassed " him. When he threat 
 ened to whip them they laughed at him and gave him 
 " the dare " to do it . . . they looked him straight in the 
 face and dared him to touch them. 
 
 Matilda broke out again with her threats. Her master 
 ordered her to be silent. He questioned her; she gave 
 reluctant, surly but respectful answers. 
 
 " What do you want to do about it, Jerry ? " he asked, 
 turning to him. 
 
 " I want to fetch them back and punish them. Such 
 conduct ought to be punished, Master, you know it ought 
 to be punished." 
 
 " But you have tried that. They won t come back. 
 How do you propose to make them come back ? " 
 
 "If I find them/ screamed Matilda, " so help me 
 God, but I ll fetch em back! Let me once lay eyes on 
 them, I ll ..." 
 
 " And if you bring them back," the calm voice of her 
 Master interrupted her, " how long do you think you 
 will keep them here? " 
 
 " I ll keep em ! Just let me get em here, I ll keep 
 em ! " and she began her threats again. 
 
 " Do as you please, Jerry," the master turned to him ; 
 " but," shaking his head, " I can tell you, it is too late 
 now." 
 
 " But I must have my children back, Master," and 
 Matilda began to cry. " I must have them back ! " 
 
 " Don t cry, Mammy ! don t cry ! " called out the little 
 girls, impulsively from the door where they were peep 
 ing in. 
 
 Their father sternly ordered them away. 
 
192 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Master," said Jerry, " I can t let my children stay 
 with thieves and rascals." 
 
 " Have you searched their things ? " 
 
 " No, Sir." 
 
 11 Go at once and search them." 
 
 They ain t got no things to search, Master," whim 
 pered Matilda. " They took all their things away with 
 them." 
 
 She opened the pine chest in which they had brought 
 their clothes from the plantation. 
 
 " Look in their bed. Look under the mattress." This 
 was the traditional hiding-place of the negroes. 
 
 Jerry went into the next room with a light. They 
 heard him turn the mattress up and give an exclamation. 
 " Master, come here ! " he called. 
 
 The turned-up mattress showed a slit and bulging 
 moss. Jerry held in his hand a spool of thread, a hand 
 kerchief, a ribbon. He tore out more moss; a towel, 
 a pair of scissors, a pair of stockings came out with it. 
 
 Matilda started forward, as mother and negro, to 
 stay Jerry from further revelations. 
 
 " Matilda," asked her Master, " how much did you 
 know of this?" 
 
 " Master ! I m no thief, you know I m no thief ! before 
 God . . ." 
 
 " That s enough ! Jerry, try to return what you can of 
 these things. I suspect some of them came from the 
 barracks. And go to that woman and pay for the dress. 
 If you haven t the money, come to me and get it. And 
 let Julia and Henrietta know that if I catch them about 
 here, I will have them arrested and sent to jail." 
 
 Then the master and his wife left the room. Going 
 
JERRY 193 
 
 across the yard, he said to her : " Jerry is honest, but 
 Matilda knew they were stealing." 
 
 The negroes were never the same afterward. Matilda 
 grew sulky and quarrelsome, Jerry silent and morose. 
 Both suffered for the want of their children. On the 
 plantation, during slavery, if Jerry had caught his 
 daughters stealing, he would have whipped them and that 
 would have ended the matter. He would have whipped 
 them if they had been impudent or disrespectful to him. 
 If they had refused to work they would have answered 
 to the overseer. If Matilda had caught them acting 
 badly, she would have whipped them. They had stolen, 
 they had acted badly, they had been impudent and lazy, 
 and they had received no punishment. Even the master 
 did not talk of punishing them but of having them ar 
 rested and sent to jail. Jerry tried to study it out. 
 
 He plodded along in his work. He made good wages 
 and brought them home and locked them in his chest. 
 When Spring came he would go into the garden of an 
 afternoon and work with his master and the two boys 
 planting vegetables; peas, beans, okra, beets. ... At 
 night there was no more talking around the hearth. 
 Matilda sat in the kitchen, smoking her pipe. He sat 
 to himself, smoking his pipe and " studying " as he 
 called it. 
 
 Out of his studying in the past had ^ome great things 
 for the plantation. He seemed to carry everything in 
 his mind that he had ever seen, but he had to " study " 
 to get anything out of it. His master used to go to 
 him as to a book of reference. When the time came 
 on the plantation that the people there had to weave their 
 own cloth or go without clothing, his master said to 
 
194 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 him : " Jerry, do you remember that old loom that Aunt 
 Patsy used to weave on? I can see her now," and he 
 made the motion of flinging the shuttle and working 
 the beam. " I can see the whole thing so distinctly that 
 I believe we could make a loom together, you and I; 
 you were playing around her as much as I in the old 
 time." 
 
 Jerry answered in his cautious way : " I will study it 
 out, Master, and see." He studied it out, knife in hand, 
 whittling from soft cypress a little piece here, a little piece 
 there; fitting them together; looking at them; pulling 
 them apart; whittling again; fitting again; until he 
 showed, at last, his model to his master, and then from it 
 made a loom. How to warp the yarn he studied that 
 out too; and from experiment to experiment, failure 
 after failure, he succeeded in creating from memory 
 both loom and weaving, and all the cloth that was needed 
 on the plantation was made there. He had studied 
 out how to cure and smoke beef, how to dress leather, 
 how to make shoes ... He had even pieced together 
 long hymns, from the fragments carried in his memory 
 from childhood; hymns that all the negroes remem 
 bered but, as they said, could not recall. Anything that 
 had taken place on the plantation since he had been there, 
 give him time to study about, and he could report with 
 perfect accuracy: the number of staves cut at such a 
 time, the bushels of corn raised in such a field, where 
 each certain mule had been bought and the long lists of 
 the different shipments of sugar. He had even studied 
 out how to pull teeth and to bleed people. 
 
 His great useful hands lay idle at his side ; they could 
 not whittle out the thoughts that lay in his head now, 
 
JERRY 195 
 
 could not help him in studying out what was before him 
 this time. 
 
 He would come to his master of an evening as he was 
 sitting on the gallery, to put some of his questions to him. 
 
 " Master, what is it keeps white folks straight ? They 
 ain t got no overseer to whip them." 
 
 " They get their straightening when they are children 
 if they have sensible parents," his master had answered, 
 laughing. " I know what kept me straight and so do 
 you." 
 
 " What keeps you straight now, Master ? " he asked 
 seriously. 
 
 " Myself," answered his master confidently. 
 
 " Master, why can t niggers keep themselves straight, 
 without whipping, like white folks do ? " 
 
 " The good ones do. You kept straight, you have 
 never been whipped since you were a boy." 
 
 Jerry shook his head. " Master, if I had got my 
 deserts, I would have been whipped many a time since 
 I was a man." 
 
 The master laughed at his frankness and responded 
 with the same : " So should I, Jerry, to tell you the 
 truth." 
 
 " Master," persisted the negro, not to be put off : " If 
 white folks needed whipping to keep them straight they 
 would get the whipping if they had to whip one another 
 for it they would get it. But niggers ain t that way. 
 Niggers won t keep each other straight, like white folks 
 do. The white folks kept the niggers straight, the nig 
 gers don t do it for themselves. Master," looking him 
 in the face, " how long would the niggers on the planta 
 tion have kept straight if you hadn t been there or the 
 
ig6 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 overseer? That plantation wouldn t have been a fit 
 place for even niggers to live in, if the niggers had had 
 to look out for the straightness of it, themselves. You 
 know that, Master." 
 
 His master nodded his head and smoked in 
 silence. 
 
 " But, Master, what puzzles me and what I can t study 
 out, no matter how hard I try ; if God wanted us niggers 
 to be like white folks, why didn t he make us like white 
 folks? He wants us to have white folks natures, but 
 he gives us nigger natures. If we go according to our 
 natures, we are bad. We ve got to go according to white 
 folks natures to be good, and when white folks are bad 
 they go according to nigger natures." 
 
 As his master did not reply, perhaps for the best of 
 reasons, Jerry continued : 
 
 " Master, over there, where we all come from, from 
 . . . Africa . . . (even the best of negroes hate to 
 pronounce the name) what sort of folks is the niggers 
 there ? They ain t got no white folks there. Well, what 
 sort of niggers is they there?" He paused for an 
 answer, which did not come. " I asked Marse Billy one 
 day, and he told me they were savages. They go naked, 
 they eat one another. And how we come here is : those 
 niggers over there caught us like chickens and traded 
 us off for rum, or for anything the traders gave 
 them . . . That s how the white folks got us and 
 brought us over here into slavery. Isn t that so, 
 Master?" 
 
 " That s about it, Jerry." 
 
 " Master, did you ever hear of white folks selling 
 their folks to niggers for slaves ? " 
 
JERRY 197 
 
 " Oh ! in old times, Jerry, there were all kinds of 
 slavery. Don t you remember about the children of 
 Israel and the Egyptians?" 
 
 Jerry shook his head dubiously. 
 
 " Well, now, Jerry," his master with cheerful voice 
 questioned him in his turn : " how do you account for it 
 that the negroes are so religious if they do not want to 
 be good? You were all of you always singing hymns 
 and praying and preaching and having revivals down in 
 the quarters. It seemed to me then you were always 
 wanting to be the best people on earth." 
 
 " It s the sinners that need praying for, Master, not 
 the good," he answered with simplicity, and, rising from 
 the step on which he had been seated he added and 
 now there was not a tinge of doubt in his voice, or 
 misgiving in his mind " God will forgive sinners ; He 
 says that, if they repent ... if they repent. That s 
 what makes us repent. Even the greatest white gentle 
 man cannot go to Heaven unless he repents, you know 
 that, Master; but the vilest sinner can, no matter what 
 the color of his skin is. Old master taught us that; 
 and he was right." 
 
 And lifting his head as if with reinforced strength 
 and dignity, he walked back to his gallery. 
 
 What he had studied out, when the first talk of free 
 dom turned his thoughts toward the great subject, had 
 been thrown into confusion by the conduct of his 
 daughters and the talk of the negroes about him. One 
 of the answers he had received oftenest from his girls to 
 his expostulations was : " I m a nigger and I m going to 
 live like a nigger and I m as good as white folks any 
 how." The people at the Settlement repeated it, as they 
 
ig8 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 stood around jeering at him. His fellow workmen at 
 the carpenter shop said the same thing. The black 
 soldiers that he met in the cars said the same thing. 
 Matilda would not mention the absent girls to him and 
 when he talked about them she would not blame them. 
 She, too, was beginning to think that there was a white 
 wrong and a black wrong; a different code of morality 
 for a different skin. 
 
 Jerry, in his trouble, would recur again and again to 
 his old master, the father of the present one, a rigid 
 Presbyterian, who enforced repentance and salvation 
 upon his slaves with far more severity than he enforced 
 work. " Ye shall be holy, for I am holy." There was 
 no distinction allowed by him for color in that command 
 and sinners found small mercy at his hands when delin 
 quencies, like those of Jerry s daughters, came under his 
 jurisdiction. And his slaves when they were submitting 
 to chastisement were made to know that their master be 
 lieved it was a question of their souls, of their salvation 
 from eternal damnation. 
 
 Now, they could damn their souls as they pleased, 
 there was no one to interfere or hinder. On the old 
 plantation, besides being punished, they would have been 
 prevented or hindered. They would have had no chance 
 to be bad even if they had wanted to. And as they lived 
 in the fear of their strict stern master, so he lived, as 
 they knew, in the fear of God. 
 
 Looking up to the stars, which as he thought lighted 
 the Heaven where the old gentleman had gone : " Old 
 Master," whispered Jerry plaintively, " I wish you were 
 here to look after your niggers. God don t look after 
 your niggers as you used to." 
 
JERRY 199 
 
 At last, one dismal, one painful morning, when he 
 came to make the fire in the house, he rapped at the 
 chamber door of his master and mistress, and standing 
 in the cold gray gloom he told them (the words sound 
 ing familiar from old association) that Matilda had 
 run away, not from them, but from him; run away 
 during the night while he slept, taking Maria with her; 
 " run away, like a runaway nigger," he repeated in his 
 humiliation. 
 
 In the blank emptiness and silence that succeeded to 
 his family life he held on to his work and to his house 
 hold tasks; to the fidelity to duty in which he had been 
 raised ; to the future that his master had planned for him, 
 and that he knew God approved of. But he could not 
 forget his wife and his children, although they could 
 forget him. 
 
 He sat up evenings alone in his room, where at first 
 they had been so happy laughing over the ways of " city 
 niggers," wrestling with his nature, as he would have 
 called the struggle, striving for the other nature, accord 
 ing to which negroes had to live to be good. He would 
 hurry through the path to his work and back ; never look 
 ing about him, never stopping, as if afraid he might see 
 or meet some of them. 
 
 In vain ! When Spring came, fresh, as it were to him, 
 from the plantation, bringing the merry voices and 
 laughter of the quarters, the cackling of chickens, bark 
 ing of dogs, the brisk jingling of the harness of the 
 mules as they trotted out to the field with their noisy 
 riders sitting sideways upon their bare backs . . . above 
 it all he heard the voice of Matilda calling to the girls, 
 and the voices of the girls stepping out with their water- 
 
200 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 buckets balanced on their heads; little Maria sitting in 
 her little chair that he had made for her. . . . 
 
 In vain! In vain! One morning as bright a morn 
 ing as Spring could bring he threw down his tools as 
 he had done once before, and started off almost running, 
 hardly knowing what he was doing ; but his feet brought 
 him straight to where his mistress sat alone with her 
 sewing. He told her and as he talked his solid-looking 
 tears rolled over his thick beard down to his blue shirt 
 he told her he had to go to them to Matilda, and to his 
 girls. 
 
 Her good, faithful Jerry! Her friend and servant 
 who had stood by her during the war . . . many a time 
 her only help! He alone of all the plantation knew 
 the hard path she had been set to walk in, and how at 
 times she shrank back in fear, how her feet trembled, 
 and how her heart grew faint. She did not have to tell 
 him. He knew, and she knew that he knew it all. She 
 did not have to tell him. . . . Her tears ran too, straight 
 from her heart to her eyes. Ah! That dreadful future! 
 worse; worse than the war! This had not been in the 
 plan ; no more sorrow had been there, no more partings. 
 
 She told him he was right to go, for she knew that 
 was what he yearned to hear; she told him to go to his 
 wife and his daughters, that God would not abandon him 
 He saw it all ; He would be over him wherever he was, 
 at the Settlement or with his white people. . . . And 
 they would all meet together some day, and be together 
 and never, never part. So she talked as she used to do 
 to the dying on the plantation, and it soothed him as it 
 had always soothed them ; and it soothed her too. 
 
 He had almost gone, when he returned, picked up her 
 
JERRY 201 
 
 dress, and hid his face in it, sobbing : " Master, Mistress, 
 Master, Mistress." 
 
 Later in the day he might have been seen, with his 
 small bundle of clothes over his shoulder, walking up 
 the road to the Settlement. 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 
 
 EVERYBODY in St. Medard knew that the San Antonios 
 had begun their life, that is, of course, their wealth, in a 
 barroom on the river front. But Madame Joachim re 
 membered them even before that, when they kept an 
 oyster-stand on the Levee itself and opened oysters and 
 sold drinks to anybody who came along dagoes, roust 
 abouts, negroes for it was at that time Joachim, him 
 self, was running an oyster-lugger between Barrataria 
 and the city and gaining the appearance that made people 
 think of a pirate whenever they saw him. The oyster- 
 stand grew into a shop, and the shop into a saloon, where 
 fine fresh Barrataria oysters were sold, the best sharpener 
 of the appetite for drink, as drink is the best sharpener 
 of the appetite for oysters. 
 
 After this the classic road to Avernus was not more 
 easy than Tony s to fortune. At that time, Antonia, 
 Maria, and Lisida were crawling around in the mud of 
 the gutter in front of the saloon, " and that," said 
 Madame Joachim, " was the beginning of the Demoi 
 selles San Antonio/ 
 
 The saloon-keeper cannot but grow rich, provided, of 
 course, that he be as sober as his clients are drink-loving. 
 His investment seems to return the surest of earth s 
 profits. But as in other trades and with other staples, 
 the demand must be fostered, the customer encouraged, 
 the consumption stimulated. The weak beginner, the 
 
 202 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 203 
 
 timid irresolute one in constant strife with his tempta 
 tion, he to whom not having the price of a drink means 
 the doing without, he must be tided over his failures of 
 weakness, as cotton and sugar planters at times have 
 to be tided over their failures of strength by their bankers. 
 He has to be helped patiently along with credit until 
 he is trained into a reliable client . . . until the week s 
 earnings, the watch from the pocket, the wedding ring 
 from the finger, the silver from the table, the market 
 money from the wife, the hoard of a saving mother, 
 the loans extorted by lying from friends, the purloinings 
 from the till, until the barkeeper sees it all coming in 
 a safe and sure flow across the bar ; until the once-timid 
 speculator in intoxication at last ceases his struggle with 
 his passion and comes to know no other will but its will ; 
 to have no other hope but to prolong its pleasure ; until 
 every drink taken becomes one more turn of the key 
 winding up the automaton into the regular motion of 
 so many steps away from the saloon, so many steps back ; 
 until Sobriety is the one dread left in the drunkard s 
 mind ; to keep it away his one preoccupation. 
 
 Sobriety, however, does come to him from time to time. 
 
 Any one can see the conscience-driven wretch, in some 
 early hour of the morning, shivering in the hottest Sum 
 mer, outside the door of the saloon. It is the only way 
 remorse ever does come to the drinking shop. Then the 
 bar-keeper gives more credit, unless he is a poor bar 
 keeper indeed. In this way he is necessarily a money 
 lender also, turning the cash from selling drinks into 
 loans for buying them, adding golden links of interest to 
 each end. The process is an endless chain; endless as 
 the weakness and the cunning of man. And not in this 
 
204 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 way alone was money cast upon the waters to come 
 back in its own good or evil time. It was known that 
 Tony, after shaving the pockets of the poor man, shaved 
 the notes of the rich; that when money was needed 
 desperately, more than life more than honor as some 
 times happens when money has to be procured, at no 
 matter what cost, and the transaction covered up like 
 murder, Tony was known vaguely to be the man for the 
 deed; and stocks and bonds, title deeds and mortgages, 
 family secrets and political influence, flowed into his 
 coffers from this source. No one knew how much money 
 he had, only that he always had it to lend. 
 
 " God knows," said Madame Joachim, " how the 
 children got into the Ursuline convent." 
 
 But this was hardly so difficult a piece of knowledge as 
 to warrant an appeal to the Supreme Authority. Any 
 one who has seen the lugger landing and its drinking- 
 shops and drinking-shoppers, and the gutters that serve 
 as drains thereto; and seen at the same time, as one 
 must see, the old Cathedral, hard by, might, without 
 divine omniscience, draw the inference necessary to con 
 nect little girls playing in the gutter with the pure re 
 treat of the Ursuline convent. Particularly when, by 
 one of those facts incomprehensible to logic-loving 
 humanity, the little girls, who for very virtue s sake 
 should have been ugly and repulsive, were on the con 
 trary pretty and attractive too pretty and attractive, 
 despite their degrading condition, to escape the apostolic 
 successors of those shrewd eyes that once before had 
 discerned, non Angli, sed Angeli, in white faces and 
 nude bodies. 
 
 And the same eyes were shrewd enough perhaps to 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 205 
 
 detect that no one has more money to spend on children 
 or the church than the rich bar-keeper, if he can be 
 brought to do so. At any rate Maria, Antonia, and 
 Lisida were taken from the gutter and sent to the con 
 vent, and once in charge of the sisters their parents 
 showed little concern for them. So completely, indeed, 
 did they become children of St. Ursula, so well were they 
 dedicated in advance to her service, that in the expecta 
 tions of the wise in such matters there was no more 
 probability of their ever leaving the convent for the 
 world than for children reared by the devil leaving the 
 world for the convent. 
 
 One child had died a boy. Around him clung what 
 ever of parental love Tony and his wife could feel. All 
 that they did not know of the universe, all that they in 
 their ignorance could not know, would have been easier 
 for them to understand than the fact that the boy they 
 wanted died, and that the girls they did not want lived. 
 No priest or church, assuredly, would ever have gotten 
 their boy from them. When he died their affections, 
 like vines whose trestles have been destroyed, crept hence 
 forward upon the ground. 
 
 Such people do not read newspapers. In fact the 
 wife could not read. National questions were as much 
 above their interest as the stars, which they never looked 
 at. The fish in the deep sea were not more passive under 
 the agitations of the storm overhead than the San 
 Antonios to the muttered threats, finally breaking out, 
 of the war between the North and the South. But, 
 like the fish, in the absence of finer knowledge, they 
 guided themselves by instinct. And although Tony 
 knew only that in a fight the stronger beats the weaker, 
 
206 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 this was an immense superiority of knowledge over that 
 possessed by the majority of the community in which he 
 lived. When war was declared he said no more about 
 it than the oyster in his hands; but he ceased to make 
 personal loans, and turned his securities into gold. He 
 bought Confederate money from the timid for gold, 
 and sold it for gold to the confident; trading on the 
 passion for patriotism as he had traded on the passion 
 for drink. Running like a ferryboat from shore to shore, 
 collecting fares before landing, he plied between hope 
 and fear, working in the same secret and mysterious 
 way that he made his loans, for he was never missed from 
 his bar. While armies were being equipped, and com 
 panies raised, and men were going out from his very 
 bar to die for their country and some of his most 
 drunken clients, those who were the most abject cowards 
 in the morning about facing the world without a drink, 
 did die for it heroically Tony said nothing, but bought 
 cotton. When the ships of the enemy made their ap 
 pearance at the mouth of the river, and the price of 
 cotton fell, like a dropping stone, he bought cotton. 
 During the sharp but futile fight between the enemy s 
 vessels and the forts that guarded the approaches to the 
 city, when the young men were hastening away into the 
 Confederacy, and the old ones stood in the streets listen 
 ing to the guns and counting the minutes between them 
 and ruin, Tony bought cotton, at lower and lower prices. 
 When the enemy s ships passed the forts and all that 
 war could inflict hung in dread over the city, and when 
 seeing itself doomed to capture it fell into the rage of 
 despair that vents itself in wanton violence and destruc 
 tion, Tony, shutting and bolting his barroom, left his 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 207 
 
 wife inside and was seen by her no more for twenty-four 
 hours. While the furious rabble rioted in drunken 
 frenzy; while packs of wild negroes, screaming with 
 delirious joy, rushed through the streets aimlesly like 
 yelping dogs in the night; while stores of powder were 
 being exploded, and millions of dollars of cotton and 
 sugar burned; while warehouses and groceries were 
 thrown open for pillage and whisky and liquor ran in 
 the gutters and stood in pools like water; while boats 
 were being fired and sent down the current in flames, 
 and the bank opposite the city seethed in one conflagra 
 tion, from burning ships and shipyards; while the 
 lurid clouds hung like another fire over the city, and the 
 heavens turned to the blackness of pitch with smoke; 
 while bells rang an unceasing alarm Tony like a rat 
 was slipping in and out of the hiding-place that he alone 
 knew about; an old, empty, abandoned saloon whose 
 batten doors and shutters were covered with the dust 
 and cobwebs of years. But like most saloons it had a 
 back entrance upon an alleyway that had been opened 
 for the purpose of providing back entrances exits they 
 literally were to the buildings, whose needs required 
 at times means of quick and secret evasions. This was 
 where Tony had stored his cotton the building was 
 packed with it. When the enemy s fleet anchored in 
 front of the city and the despair of grief succeeded to 
 the despair of rage; when in truth there was nothing left 
 to be destroyed; when the enemy landed and marched 
 through the streets and had the cobblestones under 
 their feet been human hearts the anguish they caused 
 could not have been greater then Tony returned to his 
 saloon, unlocked the door, and began opening oysters 
 
208 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MfiDARD 
 
 again. When he left it the night before, he counted his 
 dollars by tens of thousands, now he counted them by 
 hundreds of thousands. The great battleships that 
 brought disaster, death, havoc, and ruin to the city, 
 with suspense and dread to last a half century longer, 
 were, in sober truth to him, not battleships at all, but 
 argosies of silver, masted with gold, rigged with silken 
 sails, musical with thrilling flutes and with Cleopatras, 
 aye! with Cleopatras had he wished them, greeting him 
 from damask cushions. 
 
 At the Ursulines convent Spring comes prettier than 
 anywhere else in New Orleans; for she comes bringing 
 not only flowers for the convent garden, but white dresses 
 and blue ribbons for the convent girls; and the Easter 
 lilies, themselves, might envy the young convent girls, 
 as in the early light of a Sunday morning they wend their 
 way, in their white dresses and blue ribbons and white 
 veils, walking two by two, under the bright green trees, 
 to the chapel. The lilies might have envied, and pitied, 
 them too, as the young girls pitied the beautiful lilies on 
 the eve of Easter, with the fate of the gardener s scissors 
 hanging over them. The convent girls knew that the 
 enemy s vessels, thirty or forty of them, were lying in 
 the passes of the river ; but they knew too that their city 
 could never be taken, that their men could never be 
 vanquished, that God was with them and they with God 
 in the present war. The great tocsin of St. Patrick s, 
 as all the church bells of the city, had been given to the 
 Confederate Government, to be made into artillery. 
 Cannon made of consecrated metal, shooting consecrated 
 balls ! The vision of it fired the young hearts with holy 
 flames and made them wish that they might be the ones 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 209 
 
 to serve that ordnance. Every little girl there who had 
 a father, brother, uncle or cousin in the forts that guarded 
 the river and each one had some relative there or 
 elsewhere in the army held her head as high as 
 if she were trying to reach her soaring heart with it, 
 that virgin heart, higher up in the clouds than ever! 
 The poor orphans, the charity scholars and half menials, 
 were never pitied so compassionately as then ; their hard 
 fate and isolated lives in the community were never 
 so sadly considered; their outcast lot, deprived of the 
 glory and honor of defending their country, was 
 apparent even to the convent slaves. 
 
 As for the sisters, never among the Ursulines of 
 Louisiana could there be found a fear for Louisiana be 
 fore the enemy. They too were happy enough in their 
 gentle, pious way, except perhaps the Mother Superior, 
 who must have been too old a denizen of the world of 
 men or of God to have any more hopes or fears left 
 in her heart. She must have cast them away, long ago, 
 as grave-cloths of the soul. 
 
 They were happy enough at the convent, therefore, 
 until the firing began at the forts. At the first shot, 
 confidence was shaken; at the second, it vanished; at 
 the third, the young girls gave a scream that brought the 
 Mother Superior to them in haste. Louder and louder 
 grew the bombardment, fiercer and fiercer the cannon. 
 Sisters and scholars were hurried to the chapel. Once 
 before in dire extremity of battle, when an overwhelming 
 force threatened the city, when the British came to 
 conquer and spoil it, the Sisters had prayed and God 
 had heard them. General Jackson, himself, had come 
 to the convent after the battle and assured them that 
 
210 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 their prayers and the favor of the Almighty had saved 
 the city, not he and his handful of men. The convent 
 could not have prayed more fervently then than now. 
 Every shot that sounded, sped to Heaven with a prayer 
 to avert its ball. " Oh, Thou, Our Lady of Prompt Suc 
 cor, help but this time, once more ! Remember, how first 
 Thou guidedst us through the tempests of the ocean to 
 this country! Remember, how when the conflagration 
 raged in the city, threatening to consume us, Thou 
 turnedst back the flames from the convent door! Re 
 member, oh remember, how once before Thou gavest us 
 the victory ! " But God s face was turned away from 
 them. Our Lady of Prompt Succor could -not succor 
 them this time. 
 
 The bombardment ceased, the event was decided, and 
 still, when praying was all too late, they prayed with 
 frightened lips, the rosary slipping through their icy, 
 trembling fingers. That night they watched the lurid 
 light spread over the city, flaming up, through the rolling 
 smoke. The river itself seemed to be on fire. They 
 could hear the explosions and at times the roar of the 
 voice of the frenzied populace. At last word was brought 
 them that the forts had been passed and that the ships 
 were on their way to the city. 
 
 Throughout the night, white forms glided about the 
 dormitories, from the beds to the windows. In the 
 early gray of dawn, the time when watchers by the 
 sick always look for death, the first gunboat slowly 
 steamed by the convent. Fearful, fearful, fearful ap 
 parition! stopping the breath, freezing the blood. At 
 sight of it, one little girl screamed in agony : " Papa, 
 Papa ! " and fell fainting. The rest could look no more. 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 211 
 
 They ran back to their little beds again and laid their 
 faces upon them and cried. 
 
 And the sisters! The nuns, the white veils and the 
 black veils! Alas! the veils were rent asunder for that 
 once and all the holy mystery of the hearts enshrined 
 behind the pale impassive faces was revealed. They too 
 had fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, in the forts for 
 the Ursulines recruit their ranks, as the Confederate 
 army did theirs, from the best families in Louisiana 
 and of what account are vows and renunciations when 
 the woman s heart is pierced? Of what use are black 
 veils or white veils, when the enemy advances over the 
 corpses of her kin? 
 
 But the Demoiselles San Antonio looked on dry-eyed. 
 They had no one in the contest to weep over. No cannon 
 ball could render them more brotherless or kinless than 
 they were. They winced not at the echoing boom, shrank 
 not from the sight of the passing gunboats as their com 
 panions did. And well might these do so! As those 
 vessels passed before the convent, family, friends, ease, 
 comfort passed out of their lives; leaving behind, be 
 reavement, desolation, poverty, wretchedness! The 
 gaunt specter of war itself, flying over the convent roof, 
 could not have sent down more directly upon their de 
 fenseless heads the thunderbolts of its dire tempest. 
 
 But not upon the Demoiselles San Antonio, whose 
 father was creeping, like a rat, in and out among his 
 cotton bales. Over their heads the golden cornucopia was 
 turned and all the choicest Spring flowers of fortune 
 showered down upon them; luxury, love, and enjoyment 
 of their youth and beauty fell down upon them like the 
 mystical roses upon Sainte Rose de Lima. The moment 
 
212 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 of crucifixion for the others was their moment of trans 
 figuration. 
 
 For one who has lived through the experience it is 
 clear that the true fruits of conquest come not all at once 
 in the moment of victory, but are a succession crop, yield 
 ing gratuitous reapings of profits to the one side as of 
 pains and penalties to the other with unfailing regularity 
 for many years afterward; as the true mortality of a 
 battle is not the number of killed on the field but the 
 resultant roll of the dead in the ensuing years. This 
 could not be apparent at the time to the people of New 
 Orleans, so unused to conquest, who it may be said, 
 despite their vaunted love of fighting and military glory, 
 knew not, as the event proved, what real war was. 
 
 It must have been the surprise of his life to Tony, 
 " a heavenly surprise " he might have called it, to find 
 that when he thought he was at the end he was only at 
 the beginning of his harvest: that his gold and paper 
 money speculations and his cotton buying were but the 
 prelude of what was to follow. He had not dreamed of 
 the wholesale confiscations of property all over the city, 
 the auctioning off of buildings by the block, of houses 
 and stores with their contents for a mere percentage of 
 their value; the secret sales of trembling owners in fear 
 of confiscation; the hidden cotton that still could be 
 touched; the bargains from panic-stricken women, the 
 endless reach of money-making, even beyond this, for 
 any one, like him, who had no scruples about buying 
 and none about compounding with the auctioneer who 
 sold, the officer who seized, the soldier who guarded. 
 San Antonio could compound with all officers, soldiers, 
 white and black, camp-followers, and roughs from the 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 213 
 
 purlieus of other cities. In a way, he knew well that, con 
 querors though they were, they were but men as the con 
 quered had been, men who had the same taste for oysters 
 and liquor. He bought in property of all kinds, spoiling 
 the spoilers and looting the looters of their cotton, houses, 
 silver jewelry, velvets, furniture, libraries, pictures, 
 pianos, carriages, horses, carpets, India shawls, 
 diamonds, laces, the riflings of fine ladies wardrobes, 
 the treasures of baby layettes, for many a soldier came 
 into possession of these so cheaply that anything he sold 
 them for was a profit to him. Runaway slaves brought 
 and sold to him what they had stolen and every runaway 
 then was a thief. Successions of absent Confederates 
 were opened and settled in ways so convenient to money 
 makers, that the corpse went to his tomb not more be 
 reft of worldly goods than the absent heir was when he 
 returned to his heritage. Money, money, money was 
 cast out upon the streets as sugar and liquor had been 
 when the city fell, for any one to pick up and enjoy who 
 did not mind the filth on it. 
 
 From the convent windows, as one looked down the 
 river over the roof of the convent chapel, could be seen 
 the chimneys and the tops of the cedar and magnolia 
 trees of what was known as the old Havel place. The 
 old Havels had fled in a ship to Havana, in the first 
 panic of the invasion, leaving behind what indeed they 
 loved, only less than one another, their home : It was 
 the prettiest one in the parish of St. Medard and no one 
 in the Parish, even the most unworthy, could walk past 
 it on the Levee, without feeling a covetous desire to 
 possess it. The fence that surrounded it was of brick 
 topped by an iron railing of delicate design which at 
 
2i 4 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 regular intervals was upheld by brick pillars that sup 
 ported vases, holding century plants. It was called the 
 " Villa Bella." Its real name was " Isabella," the name 
 of the bride for whom it had been built; but as the 
 bride and her husband and the villa aged, the pretty name 
 in gilded lettering over the gate had become rusted and 
 dimmed and finally lost under the vine that had been 
 planted in the bridal time, to encircle it with roses. 
 
 A broad brick walk, bordered with shrubbery, led to 
 the house whose gallery was floored with white and black 
 marble and instead of a balustrade had pedestals of 
 marble holding vases of growing plants with vines hang 
 ing over the sides. In the center of the garden on one 
 side was a fountain, on the other a sun dial with a setting 
 of flowers in parterres encircling them. Under the 
 magnolia and cedar trees, white plaster casts of nymphs 
 and fawns seemed to be shrinking back in the shade cast 
 by the heavy green branches overhead. 
 
 The old Havels had furnished their house as a young, 
 romantic, bridal couple with taste and fortune would 
 furnish a home for their love with fine lace and satin 
 curtains, with rose wood and mahogany, bronze and 
 marble statuettes, Sevres and Palissy vases; with silver 
 and cut glass candelabra and chandeliers; with pictures 
 and with mirrors everywhere. No matter in which direc 
 tion, at what angle they looked, the bride and her hus 
 band might, by lifting the eyes, see the reflection of 
 their happiness and their luxury. The old Spaniard felt 
 secure in his generosity as he had contributed money 
 to the defense of the city against its invaders. When 
 the invaders triumphed, therefore, the property was con 
 fiscated at once, sold at auction, and bought by Tony. 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 215 
 
 Thus the Demoiselles San Antonio were provided with 
 a home just when they were leaving the convent and 
 needed one. And it was one of the prettiest roses that 
 fell to them from the gilded cornucopia. Heaven, by 
 sending them the tender est of parents, could hardly have 
 benefited them so well as by sending them the sordid, 
 selfish ones they had ; who, to get rid of them, had gladly 
 thrust them out of their drinking saloon home into the 
 pure, holy atmosphere of the Ursuline convent and by 
 never going to see them there, had saved them from the 
 shame that comparison with parents of other scholars 
 would have produced. 
 
 But, the old villa ? Old houses like old families never 
 seem to fall in one clean drop from height to depth, they 
 are always caught by some crag or bush growing on the 
 side of the precipice and there kept gibbeted through 
 their slow decay in no matter what ridiculous posture. 
 The short, quick termination of destruction has no terror 
 for the original owner in comparison with such a tragi 
 comical ending. Had the Villa Bella, however, been 
 closer to the center of the city s life, it might have been 
 caught in a still more ridiculous position, for all its re 
 fined appearance and the tender sentiment of the old 
 couple who in it had watched their young and rosy love 
 grow old, bent, and wrinkled it is true, but yet remaining 
 none the less love to them. 
 
 To their neighbors, particularly to Madame Joachim 
 the San Antonios were no better than masqueraders in 
 the old villa ; like the negroes who of Mardi gras nights 
 go to their balls dressed in the second-hand finery of the 
 whites. There was not one among them who had not a 
 jibe ready when opportunity offered for the slinging of 
 
216 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 one. " No wonder that his daughters were admitted to 
 the Ursuline convent/ sneered they. " No wonder they 
 sing so well." 
 
 " Ah, yes ! They did sing well ; their voices soaring 
 like birds from a cage, out of the house, over the trees, 
 to the public road so that passers-by could not refrain 
 from stopping and listening to them. Even the young 
 American officers from the barracks, sauntering along 
 the Levee with their dogs of an evening, would stop, and 
 had been heard to remark one to another : " How 
 strange it is, one never hears such music from American 
 parvenues! No matter how much money their fathers 
 have they always seem to suffer from an extreme poverty 
 of talent." 
 
 When one wanted to buy five cents worth of milk or 
 eggs or anything that Madame San Antonio had to sell 
 for different from Pere Phileas, she gave nothing one 
 went not through the vine-festooned front portal, but 
 through a distant backgate and ran for fear of the dogs 
 through a path that led to the basement of the house, 
 where Madame San Antonio would be found sitting 
 before a table counting eggs or oranges ; sorting pecans, 
 plaiting garlic, straining vinegar or bottling Merise as 
 the Creoles call Cherry Bounce dressed in the colonnade 
 skirt, calico sacque, and blue check apron of her barroom 
 days ; with a long black pocket tied by a tape around her 
 waist; a perfect market woman. 
 
 " Madame San Antonio, Maman dit comme ca, un 
 picaillon de . . ." and while she counted or measured 
 the little girls would stop and listen to the singing, milk- 
 pitcher or basket in hand, forgetting everything, until 
 like the trump of judgment came to them the thought that 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 217 
 
 they must go. And Madame San Antonio? What was 
 Faust, L Africaine, Charles VI to her ?( for they sang only 
 airs from grand opera, the Demoiselles San Antonio). 
 Madame San Antonio heard them not at all, but went 
 on plunging her hands into this basket and that, this 
 bucket and that, stopping only to blow her nose on her 
 red and yellow cotton handkerchief. And San Antonio? 
 When he came in from his business in the city and took 
 his seat in the basement, his flannel cap pulled over his 
 eyes, and a red handkerchief tied around his neck, he did 
 not seem to hear his daughters any more than his wife 
 did ; any more than when he was in his barroom and they 
 in their convent. 
 
 Three afternoons of the week Mademoiselle Mimi came 
 to practise with the young ladies, and every morning 
 came Madame Doucelet for her day s attendance upon 
 them. This had been arranged by the superior of the 
 convent when she had also advised that the Villa should 
 be substituted for the barroom as a home, when it seemed 
 good to her for the young ladies to leave the convent: 
 their vocation not being that of St. Ursula. 
 
 Madame Doucelet was of the kind always to be found 
 at the doors of convents and churches as other guides are 
 to be found at the doors of museums thin, wrinkled, 
 sallow, somewhat bent, dressed in mourning, of good 
 family, with a name that can serve as passport into 
 society one of those, in short, who seem in every gen 
 eration to be reduced providentially to poverty in order 
 to serve those who are as providentially elevated to 
 wealth. 
 
 She was so shabby, in her old black bonnet and pointed 
 black cachemire shawl pinned tight across her shoulders, 
 
218 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. M&DARD 
 
 and seemed so far removed from the brilliant world of 
 fashion, that no one but that wisest of women a superior 
 of a convent would have suspected her intrinsic merit 
 as an initiator into the mysteries of the manners, dress 
 ing, and customs of good society; her vocation, in fine, 
 in religious parlance, of a worldling. 
 
 " Religion and music," she thus explained herself to 
 Mademoiselle Mimi, " what more can a woman want ? 
 Religion for the soul ; music for the heart." 
 
 The Demoiselles San Antonio possessed these qualifica 
 tions in perfection ; that is if the practice of devotion be 
 called religion, and singing music. As Maria was not 
 so precocious as her younger sisters, and as Lisida was 
 more precocious than her elders, the three went through 
 the gentle curriculum of the convent abreast; and as 
 they entered it together as babies, so they left it together, 
 as young ladies. It may be said, that they were well 
 educated ; for whatever they could learn, the convent had 
 taught them. They were drilled in good qualities, and 
 knew all about them whether they possessed them or not : 
 discretion, truthfulness, patience, industry, obedience, 
 resignation, and the wholesome restraint of the feelings 
 or when this was not possible, that concealment of 
 them which comes from the consciousness that they were 
 always in sight or earshot of a sister, whether they saw 
 her or not. 
 
 Of books, they knew what they studied in classes, or 
 received as prizes ; the pretty gilt and pink, blue or green 
 volumes of pious histories authorized by the church as 
 the proper reward for convent excellence. Of the world 
 outside their schooling they knew only what the sisters 
 told them, and they did not imagine aught else about it, 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 219 
 
 for it was one of the qualities of convent education that 
 the imagination (that cursed seed of damnation, planted 
 by the subtlety of the serpent in the mind of woman in 
 Paradise), since it could not be extirpated, was trained 
 upwards in the harmless direction of Heaven. Their 
 hearts, therefore, had been kept pure, as the saying is, 
 their minds innocent. In short, the convent had done 
 its best for them. It had taught them the only thing they 
 could learn; had cultivated their one talent music 
 and not in a niggardly way either, for when the limit 
 of the convent standard and means had been reached, a 
 professor of singing was procured from the city for them, 
 the best professor there, and they were never excused 
 from practising their piano. 
 
 Madame Doucelet s duty was to accompany the young 
 ladies whenever they went out never to let them go into 
 the street without her had been the charge given her 
 and to teach them how to dress. Slipping in every morn 
 ing, wrapped in her shawl, her reticule clasped tight 
 against her breast, she took them into the city to the 
 shops, showing them, what of course they had never seen 
 before, the infinite devices and inventions for adorning 
 and enhancing the interests of women in the world ; that 
 is their beauty. Showing them, what also they had never 
 seen before, their own capital of beauty and how it could 
 be profitably increased; by vigilance here, enterprise 
 there. The poor idea of the nuns was that a woman s 
 beauty was of her soul and that could only be increased 
 by spiritual adornment. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi, when she took her position at the 
 piano three times a week for the performance of her 
 duty, could observe the progress Madame Doucelet was 
 
220 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 making in the fulfilment of hers: Maria s waist grow 
 ing hebdominally smaller, more corset-like, her com 
 plexion whiter; Antonia s slimness more sinuous and 
 graceful; Lisida s fulness more engaging. The hair 
 of each one had commenced to travel at once from the 
 rigid uniformity of the convent coiffure, for what is 
 hair or coiffure to the soul? Maria s long, thick plaits 
 were wound around her classic head ; Antonia s were un- 
 plaited and coiled loosely. Lisida s hair, which had been 
 her sin almost at the convent, so unmanageable it was 
 and curly and tangled its reproach was turned into its 
 beauty, for its disordered luxuriance was encouraged 
 and even increased and it was carried to the top of her 
 head and held there with a tall comb ; black and brilliant 
 over her black, brilliant eyes ; soft and entrancing as her 
 soft form. As soon as Madame Doucelet laid her small, 
 faded eyes upon the youngest Demoiselle San Antonio, 
 this transformation and other transformations sprang, 
 as it were, before them. 
 
 And as their hair and their figures, so their com 
 plexions, hands, and finger nails. Madame Doucelet in 
 sisted upon long, polished, finger nails as authoritatively 
 as the convent did on fasting and prayer. Long finger 
 nails, she said, denoted a lady that is, one who never 
 worked with her hands for, obviously, one could not 
 work with long finger nails. Even the practising on the 
 piano had to be sacrificed to them, for the lady with long 
 finger nails cannot afford to break them on the piano 
 keys. 
 
 As all these small sums of their capital were being 
 rescued, as it were, from their uselessness, to be turned to 
 profitable account, the convent dresses, which were in- 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 221 
 
 deed only dresses for a soul, not a body, were replaced 
 by the apparel that fashion in truth seems to adopt for 
 the purpose of revenging itself upon the soul for its 
 servile treatment of the body. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi saw skirts grow longer, more 
 flattering to the figure, waists more transparent, more 
 open at the neck, sleeves more charitable to the eye of 
 a lover of beautiful arms, heels higher. Earrings made 
 their appearance, beads, chains. And as all this was 
 observed by Mademoiselle Mimi, three times a week, she 
 observed, too, that each sang better, according as she 
 progressed upward in the teaching of Madame Doucelet. 
 Sometimes, when as it seemed to her, the voice she was 
 accompanying was making a triumphant, exultant escape 
 from the body and all ties of the throat, to soar untram- 
 meled through the greatest difficulties of technique, she 
 would look up and find the eyes of the singer fastened 
 on some mirror (as has already been said the Havels had 
 multiplied mirrors in their pretty salon), where was the 
 reflection of a beautiful, beautifully dressed young lady. 
 
 Ah ! what were the poor nuns, with their feeble imagi 
 nation of the angelic, to this revelation? What more 
 rapturous gaze could the eyes of their pupils turn upon 
 the pictures of the most immaculate saints? 
 
 Madame Doucelet, always in the corner, telling her 
 prayer beads, would dart out every now and then, with 
 her noiseless tread, like a spider out of its web, to put a 
 footstool under Antonia s bronze slippers, to show off 
 her foot; to thrust a bright cushion under Lisida s lan 
 guid head and rumple her hair still a little more ; to lift 
 Maria s arm to the back of her chair and gently lay her 
 shapely head, en profile, on her palm in the pose of a 
 
222 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 listening muse; fastening her ideas on to them, just as 
 a spider fastens the ends of his threads to a leaf or twig, 
 in making a trap. No woman could give more of herself 
 to the work for which she was paid. 
 
 " Where, where?" Mademoiselle would ask herself, 
 from the depths of her ugliness and ignorance, as her 
 short, blunt fingers struck chords and ran trills; " where, 
 in the name of piety, did she learn it all ? " 
 
 But Mademoiselle Mimi, who could not sing for want 
 of a voice, was she not apparently as badly equipped for 
 her role as Madame Doucelet for hers? 
 
 The husband and wife would sit in the basement 
 until the time came for them to go up the backstairs to 
 the servant s room they had selected for their chamber. 
 Here they would sit with shut door, forgetting them 
 selves, and perhaps fancying they were again in their old 
 chamber over the barroom, smelling of oysters, whiskey, 
 and the foul emanations from the gutters. In a corner 
 was the pine bed bought when the wedding ring, the 
 marriage certificate of the ignorant, was bought; there 
 stood also the wooden table with a pail and basin; a 
 clothes chest and two short-legged chairs, as in the old 
 chamber. The one addition to these old friends, the 
 bridal accompaniments of the bed, was a safe with a 
 combination lock. There had been no fireplace in their 
 old room, nor was there one in this one. They would 
 as soon have thought of warming their cow by a fire 
 as themselves. When other folks made a fire in Winter, 
 they tied a woolen scarf around their necks and over their 
 heads; as when other folks drank their coffee out of 
 china or delft cups, they drank theirs out of tin, stirring 
 it with the handle of their iron forks or knives. 
 
THE SAN ANTONIOS 223 
 
 They would sit in their room, silent, inert, until the 
 nine o clock bell rang, when, together with a lighted 
 candle, they would make the round of the pretty house 
 that lay like a sleeping beauty under the spell of a curse. 
 Ah! she would never awake, that beauty, nor find a 
 deliverer tc bear her away out of her doom ! 
 
 They would go back to their room and sit there again, 
 silent and still together one might as well imagine the 
 two magnolia trees in the garden caressing one another, 
 as the husband the wife, or the wife the husband. 
 
 When the gray dawn was about coming on, when in 
 old times the last drunkard would be put out of the bar 
 room to the sidewalk, and they would be free, to fasten 
 and bar their door and creep slowly on their tired feet 
 to their room, to sleep off their day s work not until 
 then did their old methodical habits permit them to go 
 to bed. They were hardly more silent and inscrutable in 
 their sleep than when awake. 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 
 
 THEY talked along pleasantly enough for a while the 
 uncle, aunt, and nephew with the gay frankness and 
 easy humorous comment of family conversation, but 
 there can be no long stretch of pleasantness, even in 
 family intercourse, when there were such ugly obtruding 
 questions as they had in their minds. Questions that 
 were in possession there, like sheriffs in possession of a 
 seized house: how to get along, how to make a living, 
 what to do next in politics to ameliorate the situation; 
 with no better answers to them, as far as they could see, 
 but such as were given by a warring congress, a power 
 less president, and a hating, taunting press closing in 
 pitilessly around them, with articles that were as the 
 spikes of a new and terrible Iron Virgin. The South 
 was at bay, and the conquered Confederates were at 
 bay in the South. 
 
 The mother found herself, suddenly raising her head 
 quickly as a hen does when the fear of a hawk strikes 
 her. And as the hen, even where there is no hawk in 
 sight, yet at the thought of one, hurries her chicks to a 
 shelter, so she gathered her brood together and led 
 them into the next room, and seated them around the 
 dining-table, turned up the lamp in the center of it and 
 carefully took her own place on the side next the door, 
 so that in maintaining order and quiet in one room, she 
 could be ready to make a diversion in the next. She was 
 always afraid for Harry, with his uncle, 
 
 324 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 225 
 
 Her intuitions, however, for once seemed to be at 
 fault. The smooth tones that rolled in to her had a 
 kindly tone (that is, her husband s tone was kindly) and 
 every now and then there came the tapping of the pipe, 
 .showing that it was empty and being refilled: always a 
 good sign. Any guardian angel might have been tempted 
 to wander into inattention. But she was aroused from 
 her thoughts by the ominous words from Harry : " It is 
 no use for me to keep at this sort of a thing, I will hunt 
 a place somewhere ! " And after that the angry murmur 
 of a discussion, and the closing of the door. 
 
 After a few words of pleasant chat with the children, 
 in case they had heard anything, she arose and went into 
 the little parlor. " Why, Harry ! " she exclaimed in 
 ^urprise, " it was your uncle then that went out? " 
 \ " Yes," he replied. 
 
 " I thought it was you," she said simply. After wait 
 ing a moment for him to speak : " What was the matter ? 
 Of course, you did not expect him to approve your giving 
 up your profession?" 
 
 " I," he answered coming out of his silence with an 
 effort. " I Oh, I was fool enough to tell Uncle some 
 unpleasant truths, that was all ! " 
 
 "Why did you do that?" she asked very gently to 
 conceal her displeasure. 
 
 He had twisted himself around in his chair so as to, 
 rest his elbow on the back of it and his head on his hand ; 
 and she saw, now that the light fell on the scarred side 
 of his face, that it was no longer the reckless, good- 
 humored, dare-devil boy s face she remembered, but the 
 face of a man, worn and discouraged, older, harder, the 
 scar wrinkling it into ugliness. How different from the 
 
226 THE PLEASANT WAYS O* ST. MEDARD 
 
 boy who had come to her and her husband fresh from 
 Princeton! How different from the man both had ex 
 pected from the promise of the boy! 
 
 " Why did I do it? Why did I do it? I will tell you 
 why I did it," he raised his voice angrily, the fire of 
 temper shining in his eyes. " I did it because, unless he 
 sees things as they are, unless some one did tell him the 
 truth, unless, unless . . . you will all want for food," 
 he concluded impatiently. 
 
 She arose. " I think your uncle perfectly right not to 
 listen to you." 
 
 " My uncle is a fool not to listen to me." 
 
 She turned to put her hand on the knob of the door 
 to open it. He jumped from his seat and putting his 
 hand on hers loosened its clasp. 
 
 "Don t go off that way, Aunt," he begged. "Just 
 listen to me, let us talk it all over." Then striving to be 
 pleading and affectionate : " At any rate, you ought to 
 know," he continued with unmistakable emphasis. 
 
 When she sat down again, he brought his chair closer 
 to her. " I knew, when I undertook to speak to Uncle 
 about his affairs he would not listen to me. But, whether 
 he listens to me or not, Aunt, the circumstances will 
 remain the same." 
 
 "What circumstances, Harry?" 
 
 He looked at her in surprise. "Why, Aunt, don t 
 you know that we are ruined, that we have lost every 
 thing?" 
 
 " Why, of course, I know that, Harry. We have been 
 whipped in the war and lost everything. But, what of 
 that? We certainly expected to lose everything if we 
 lost our cause." 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 227 
 
 As he had nothing to answer, she went on : " We have 
 all to do our share in the work of getting along. I know 
 that I am willing to do my part. I made up my mind to 
 that. Of course, there are disappointments " her voice 
 faltered a little " the children will suffer . . . but 
 what of that? The experience may be good for 
 them. . . . And at any rate, the circumstances, as you 
 call them, cannot last forever. Your uncle thinks- we 
 have gotten through the worst already, he sees signs of 
 better times ... of renewed prosperity ..." then 
 her calmness suddenly breaking " he made a fortune 
 out of his profession once, and how dare you . . . 
 how dare you ..." At this moment, the door opened 
 and her husband entered. Standing by the mantel and 
 leaning his arm upon it, all traces of his previous irrita 
 tion obliterated from his face and manner, he asked : 
 
 " You are confident that your information is correct, 
 and that the council have engaged Stone to reopen the 
 Riparian case? 
 
 :< Yes," his nephew answered, coolly and formally, 
 "my information is perfectly correct; Stone is the 
 brother of the commanding General; there is another 
 brother in a wholesale house here furnishing army and 
 navy supplies." 
 
 " And," his fingers tapping the mantel softly, " you 
 say he is going to associate other counsel with him." 
 
 "Yes, Dalton; that is decided on." 
 
 " Thank you, that is all I wanted to know. Have you 
 found out any news about the banks ? " 
 
 Harry paused before he answered and then proceeded 
 with a sympathetic inflection in his voice, that he tried 
 to stiffen out of it : "I made it my business to find out if 
 
228 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 there was any change to be made in any of your old 
 banks." 
 
 The fingers on the mantel stopped their tapping, and 
 this little noise withdrawn, a breathless stillness seemed 
 to fall over the room. 
 
 " It is a pull dick, pull devil business in all the banks 
 between directors and presidents as to which man s rela 
 tive should get the places. But the Union men, who are 
 in possession, are to be retained, I hear, for the present, 
 on account of their influence with the courts. As for 
 the Delta, that has been given positively to Fosdick." 
 
 "ToFosdick? Why?" 
 
 " His father-in-law was a Union man, and he pushed 
 Fosdick, who has been pardoned by the government, 
 and . . ." 
 
 His uncle left the room and was heard pacing up and 
 down the gallery outside with firm, measured steps that 
 fell as steadily as the ticking of a clock. 
 
 The Riparian case ! the great feature of all their plans ! 
 the high tower of their future! That upon which they 
 were to depend, even if everything else failed ! The wife 
 looked up as if to certify where she was. The Riparian 
 case, given to another lawyer ! . . . And the Delta, her 
 father s old bank ! What right had Fosdick to that ? 
 
 She listened until the steps reached the farthest end of 
 the gallery: 
 
 " And Mr. Haight s bank, Harry? The Caledonian? " 
 
 " The Caledonian ? Oh, that was given to a friend of 
 Haight s from the West." 
 
 " What ! Did George Haight give to another a posi 
 tion that my husband could have accepted ? He couldn t 
 have known." 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 229 
 
 "Ah! but he did know." 
 
 " I cannot believe it." 
 
 " I told him myself." 
 
 " You told him ? You asked George Haight for a 
 position for my husband ? " 
 
 She looked at him as if he were demented. 
 
 " I not only asked him for it, I plead with him to 
 give it to the husband of his old friend, to the husband 
 of the daughter of his old benefactor, the man who 
 helped him when he needed help, who . . . " 
 
 " Helped him ! Helped him ! " she broke in with indig 
 nant impetuousity. " Made him ! made him ! A stranger ! 
 A friendless lad ! Gave him money to buy decent clothes 
 with . . . found a place for him . . . why, he would 
 have died of yellow fever but for my father! He took 
 him in his own house, found a nurse for him . . . and 
 he ... and he .. ." 
 
 She could not find words to express what she felt. 
 " My husband," she asserted, foolishly, weakly, it must 
 have appeared to the nephew, " is as much above George 
 Haight as heaven is above the earth." 
 
 " Oh, no, Aunt. You are mistaken there ! Haight is 
 as much above your husband now, as gold is above 
 heaven. And he knows it and he wants you to know it 
 [showing that her foolish assertion had not been lost 
 upon him]. He has the money that we are all upon 
 our knees begging to be allowed to work for . . . " 
 
 Her lips curled with scorn, she shook her head, her 
 fingers twitched; she was, evidently, in her mind speak 
 ing to Haight. When she was angry, she showed that 
 she was the daughter of a high-tempered father and 
 could talk as he did when occasion required. 
 
230 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Harry," she turned in a constrained way to him, 
 " what are you going to do when you give up the 
 bar?" 
 
 " As I told Uncle, I shall try and get a clerkship some 
 where; sell pots and pans, groceries, anything to make 
 a living. There is nothing for me to do at the bar. I 
 should die of starvation before I could get a practice 
 now." He laughed scornfully. " There are no political 
 qualifications required to sell pots and pans. And the 
 city is full of that kind of business. Capital is the only 
 necessary qualification for it, and the land of inex 
 haustible armies is the land of inexhaustible capital. . . . 
 We went under to the one now, we must go under to 
 the other." 
 
 " It will break your mother s heart," she said sadly. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 She continued, bitterly: " Tommy Cook, a little raga 
 muffin picked up from the street to be a lawyer! and 
 you ! with your family and education ..." 
 
 Harry held up his hand warningly, " Listen, Aunt," 
 he spoke slowly and distinctly : " when I was brought 
 to the city, Tommy hunted me up, searched for me in 
 the hospital until he found me and did not leave me. 
 He bribed the doctor to look after me, specially, and 
 paid the nurses right and left to get some sort of decent 
 treatment for me; and at the worst part of it, he brought 
 in the best doctor in the city, from the outside, to see me, 
 and I should have died if he hadn t. . . . And when I 
 was strong enough to leave the hospital and go to 
 prison, he stuck by me there; and if I had ever gotten 
 strong enough to escape, he would have helped me out 
 of the city. ..." 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 231 
 
 " And he is helping you now ! " she looked at him 
 with sudden inspiration ; " he is helping you now ! " 
 
 " Yes," speaking still slower, and more impressively : 
 " he is helping me now, I am living with him, I am living 
 upon him." 
 
 " Oh, Harry ! Come and live with us ! Come and 
 stay with us," she cried with tears in her eyes. 
 
 He paid no attention to this. " He is a very much 
 better lawyer than ever I would have been with all my 
 education and family. ... As he will prove it one of 
 these days." He sighed heavily and then continued in 
 a desultory way : " Try to understand things a little . . . 
 it is your duty to do so . . . You talk about doing 
 your part in the poverty ahead ... let your part begin 
 right now and here." He showed that he was listening 
 to the regular steps on the gallery, and every time they 
 passed, the door seemed to expect them to stop, but 
 they continued; going backwards and forwards from 
 one end of the gallery to the other. 
 
 " And Tommy, you know, saved Uncle s library. 
 When the city was captured, he saw that he must save 
 the office and library. If he had not been lame, he 
 would have gone into the army, he would have fought 
 with us and been whipped with us. But, he had not 
 taken an oath to the Confederacy and so he was immune 
 politically, so to speak "... The steps were passing the 
 door again, they did not stop ..." most of the lawyers 
 did not find a book left when they came back. Why, 
 every ship that went North for a year after the capture 
 of the city took a load of books as a regular part of their 
 cargo. Whole libraries were shipped. There were even 
 preachers in the army to steal the libraries of preachers 
 
232 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 . . . but that was not all ; Uncle had accumulated data 
 of all kinds, pamphlets, briefs, invaluable to another 
 lawyer; not to speak of a private journal filled with 
 commentary on the decisions of the Supreme Court in 
 all important cases, a thing that no one else on earth 
 would have had the patience to do. Alone it would 
 furnish good capital for any lawyer to start with. What 
 he wrote about the Riparian case, if Stone could get it 
 would give him more knowledge than he could acquire 
 in ten years study of it." 
 
 She nodded to the look he gave her. 
 
 " And Tommy held on to the business too. He could 
 not help being a lawyer ; always around the courts, listen 
 ing to every case Uncle argued, hunting up his authorities 
 from the time he could read; copying, from the time he 
 could write. Uncle himself used to send him to listen to 
 the reading of the decisions of the Supreme Court ; and he 
 said that Tommy s report was as good as the official one 
 and sometimes better. So he could easily pass an ex 
 amination. He confidently expected to hand over the 
 business with the library to Uncle after the war. He 
 did not foresee. . . . You do not seem to realize, Aunt, 
 that Uncle is practically disbarred from the higher courts ; 
 that if he had all the cases in the world, he could not 
 bring them in a United States court, unless he sent on 
 to Washington for a pardon, which he won t do; and 
 took an oath which he cannot take. Our own courts are 
 in the hands of scalawags, scalawags for judges, scala 
 wags for lawyers. ..." 
 
 " Yes, I know all that," she answered hastily, for her 
 quick ears heard the steps on the gallery turning in 
 toward the door. 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 233 
 
 It opened, and her husband entered, and as before 
 took a position by the mantel. 
 
 " Harry," the name was pronounced absent-mindedly, 
 " where did you get your information about the Riparian 
 case?" 
 
 His nephew grew as embarrassed as if he were making 
 a confession of guilt ; as if he were still a boy before his 
 stern uncle. 
 
 " I saw it in a letter, Sir." 
 
 "A letter to whom?" 
 
 " To Tommy." 
 
 "Who wrote that letter?" 
 
 " Colonel Dalton." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Colonel Dalton ; he wanted Tommy to refresh his 
 mind about some of the points of the case. He offered 
 to engage him as associate in the case." His uncle s arm 
 fell from the mantel, and his face grew white. Without 
 a word he left the room, but instead of walking on the 
 gallery, those inside heard him go down the steps and 
 out of the gate. 
 
 His aunt raised her eyes to Harry : " Dalton ! " she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 The young fellow jumped from his chair as if to fol 
 low his uncle, but hesitated, and sat again by his aunt: 
 "If it had not been Dalton, it would have been some one 
 else," he said heavily, " It is a fight now, Aunt, not for 
 rights, but for life." 
 
 Yes, but Dalton ! Any one rather than he ! I would 
 not have believed it of him . . . Why," she said, the 
 tears coming into her eyes, and her voice trembling, 
 " we were talking about him the other day, and your 
 
234 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 uncle said he could count upon Dalton as upon himself ; 
 that he trusted him more than any friend he had. I 
 was asking him/ she explained weakly, " something 
 about his business and he was telling me what he was 
 relying upon, when the political troubles were past. I do 
 not mind being disappointed myself, . . . but to see him 
 disappointed, deceived. ..." 
 
 " Uncle always trusted those whom he helped along," 
 interrupted the young fellow curtly. 
 
 Your uncle met him only yesterday, and Dalton told 
 him all sorts of pleasant and affectionate things." 
 
 " I met him today. He did not know that I knew 
 about the letter to Tommy Cook and he was full of his 
 admiration of Uncle and his devotion to him. Aunt, 
 Aunt, if you want to serve Uncle, advise, persuade him, 
 . . . Dalton would take him in as associate counsel." 
 
 She shook her head without waiting to hear what he 
 wished her to advise and persuade. 
 
 " But, Aunt, you don t know what hard times may be 
 ahead of you." 
 
 " That would make no difference with your uncle if 
 he thought a principle was involved. He will never 
 ask for a pardon, or for help from Dalton," her lip 
 curled. 
 
 " Think of the children, Aunt, the difference it may 
 make in their lives." 
 
 " That is what I am thinking of Harry ; that is what 
 we both are thinking of all the time : the children. We 
 do not wish our children ever to be ashamed of, ever 
 have to apologize for their father." 
 
 " Ashamed ! apologize ! " he repeated. 
 
 " Ah, Aunt ! " he said bitterly, " an American child 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 235 
 
 is never ashamed of a father that makes money for it, 
 you know that, even if he stole the money. " 
 
 " If I were a child of Colonel Dalton s, I know I 
 would be ashamed of what he is doing now," she re 
 torted angrily. 
 
 " Aunt, mark my words, this transaction will be the 
 making of his fortune. Dalton is a fine lawyer if " he 
 hesitated as lawyers do in saying such a thing about a 
 confrere " he is not a scrupulous one." 
 
 " No, after this I should say not, although your uncle 
 trusted him implicitly." 
 
 " The Dalton children," he continued, " will be reared, 
 educated, and provided for like a gentleman s children. 
 Yours ..." 
 
 " We shall educate our children like a gentleman s 
 children, Harry ! Do not be afraid for that." She raised 
 her head proudly. 
 
 Taps sounded from the barracks, clear and sweet in 
 the night air, and the street, in front, was filled at once 
 with the noise of the feet of running soldiers. And 
 as if this were the cue for their entrance, the children 
 straggled through the room on their way to bed ; yawn 
 ing, sleepy, hair rumpled, feet dragging. Their mother 
 kissed each one good night and watched them go; the 
 boys through the door on one side, the girls through the 
 door on the other. Their cousin watched them also 
 with a strained expression. 
 
 11 They," he said, " are the real victims of the war, they 
 are the real losers." 
 
 " Oh, let us forget our losses, our misfortunes ! " she 
 exclaimed desperately. " Let us go on from where we 
 are as best we can. We can at least be cheerful. I am 
 
236 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 not going to think about it any more than I can help, 
 and rich or poor, we can enjoy our children and one 
 another. As for the future, the future," her voice died 
 away. What could she say about the future? Always 
 changing, still changing! her future of a few hours ago 
 was gone now from her as much as her future before 
 the Confederate war. 
 
 When Harry spoke again, it was from a different 
 direction, and with a gentler voice. 
 
 :{ You see, Aunt, it is not as if I came straight from 
 the Confederacy as you and Uncle did, where you could 
 not help being keyed up all the time to the heroic. I 
 was here for a year before the end of the war, lying for 
 the most part of the time on my back, for even in prison, 
 you know, I was a cripple and half blind. When the 
 worst of my pain was over, I could not sleep, that was 
 my great trouble. I used to long at night for the pain 
 to come again, for that did exhaust me so that it made 
 me sleep. Tommy used to bring me the papers; of 
 course, he could only bring me the papers on one side, 
 and I can tell you, they gave me enough to think about 
 at night when I could not sleep : papers from the North, 
 the East, the West; from Europe." He laid his head 
 in both his hands. " It is a wonder I didn t go crazy. The 
 doctor used to snarl at me : If you go on this way 
 thinking you will go crazy/ and I would snarl back 
 at him : Damn you, I will think and I won t go crazy. 
 So I used to go over and over it all in my mind; and 
 Tommy would come with more news, more papers, more 
 for me to think about, to go crazy over. Aunt, I can 
 see as plainly as I see you sitting there, that we are not 
 at the end but at the beginning of a war." 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 237 
 
 " Harry ! Another war ! Oh, I pray God not." 
 
 " Not another war, Aunt ; the same one. We have 
 gone through one phase of it, that is all. We have been 
 whipped into laying down our arms, that is all. They 
 have not laid theirs down, nor are they going to do so. 
 The victorious side will never lay down its arms, Aunt, 
 never, never! " 
 
 " Your Uncle does not think so, Harry. Your Uncle, 
 argues differently, he maintains the very opposite. He 
 hopes for a good future for us all still, a prosperous 
 future. He says defeat never yet destroyed a good 
 people I mean the good in a people " conscientiously 
 correcting her report of the original words. 
 
 " He does not know, Aunt, he does not know." 
 
 You are dispirited and discouraged, Harry, and I 
 do not wonder. You have not yet recovered from your 
 wounds and your hard time in prison. You must come 
 and live with us and let me nurse you up again." She 
 smiled affectionately at him. 
 
 He seemed not to hear her, for he only shook his 
 head and repeated: 
 
 " Uncle does not know, he does not know the people 
 against us." 
 
 " But, Harry," falling in with his humor, " you used 
 to be devoted to the North. Don t you remember 
 how you used to be always telling us how superior 
 they were up there to the South, oh, in ever so many 
 ways ? " 
 
 " I was thinking of Princeton then ! Yes, I was de 
 voted to Princeton. But I can never think of the people 
 who were over me in the hospital or in prison in the same 
 day as Princeton." 
 
238 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 " Your uncle is very confident of the wisdom of his 
 judgment, and you know he is not a man to be easily 
 mistaken." 
 
 " What did his judgment about Dalton amount to?" 
 
 " Oh, he was simply deceived about Dalton." 
 
 That is it," with rising temper, " he was deceived, 
 and you are all deceived; deceiving yourselves. You 
 don t know the truth, no one among you knows the truth. 
 You are like those idiots in the country strutting around 
 in heroic attitudes, your heads in the clouds." 
 
 "Your uncle ..." 
 
 " We are a ruined people," he interrupted, " it s no 
 use thinking we can come back from the war and take 
 up where we left off and go right on. We can t do it. 
 We have lost our men, we have lost our money, we 
 have lost our place in business. Where one of us stood 
 before there stands now a keen, shrewd, pushing stranger, 
 who does not care a damn for the heroic or for anything 
 but money-making; and we must down that man before 
 we can make a step in advance. This is no Southern talk, 
 no nonsensical sectional prejudice, it is plain common 
 sense. We are in poverty, not as transients, as Uncle 
 thinks, but as permanents. We are in poverty to stay 
 while our masters grow rich over us and rule the land. 
 Make no mistake about that, they are going to rule. 
 We have no rights as freemen now ; but we will gain 
 our political rights, yes, we will gain them. We can 
 show at least that we are not going to live under negro 
 rule ; but to the end of our days we will be outnumbered, 
 outcounted in the nation." 
 
 "Your uncle ..." 
 
 " Never will we get out of the sound of that trumpet 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 239 
 
 over there; out of the sound of what that trumpet 
 means," he declared. 
 
 " Your uncle understands the temper of the country/ 
 his aunt continued firmly. 
 
 " He knows what the men of his class think at 
 the North, the men with his standards and ideals. 
 I know what the other class think and there 
 are nine hundred and ninety-nine of them to one of his 
 class. 
 
 " He and his class have rather proved themselves in 
 the past, I think," she answered proudly. 
 
 " Oh, yes, in that easy little game that they used to 
 call life; when this was not considered the act of a 
 gentleman, nor that, when they acted and talked to one 
 another like dancing-masters. That is the way they tried 
 to carry on the war. Look at Sherman and who blames 
 him?" 
 
 " Well, not his own side," she acknowledged. 
 
 " Remember always that Lee was whipped by . . ." 
 
 " Enough, Harry, enough. I can hear no more to 
 night. You are not well, you ..." 
 
 Still he went on : " Oh ! I know that we could fight 
 for a time for our sentiments, and we will pose and write 
 poetry about them to all eternity; but that trumpet will 
 outstand anything we can do or say. And that trumpet 
 is always going to be in the service of the man with the 
 dollar. The man with the dollar is going to be the man 
 in the country henceforth, his policy will be the national 
 policy. It won t pay to have any other. We shall find 
 in the South that it won t pay us to stick to the South; 
 it won t pay us to stick to our party; it won t pay our 
 children to stick to us but it will pay them to flock to 
 
240 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 the winning side, to be setting Lincoln above Washing 
 ton, Grant above Lee/ 
 
 " Harry, Harry," she sighed in protest. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he proceeded stubbornly. " Have no 
 doubt about it. Money is to be the power in the United 
 States from now on, and the power of the Almighty 
 Himself will not be able to prevail against it." 
 
 You think so now, Harry, you think so, only now." 
 
 " I know so," he insisted. The day will come in this 
 country when it will pay a man who loves his family to 
 steal money and serve out his time in the penitentiary for 
 it, if he has the sense to secure what he stole for his 
 children. Good name and principles ! Bah ! In a com 
 munity such as this is going to be," he went on to his 
 helpless listener, " the daughters of a convict with money 
 would be far better off than the daughters of a poor 
 man with all the principles and honor in the world." 
 
 " I do not believe it, I do not believe it." 
 
 " You will have to acknowledge it some day." 
 
 " You do not understand ..." 
 
 " I do understand," he interrupted her sharply. 
 " There is nothing the matter with my mind that I can 
 not understand. And your children will understand it 
 too in my way when they grow up. They will know by 
 that time what it is to be poor. We can afford to look 
 down on money when we are rich, and consider principles 
 and honor and good name to leave to our children." 
 
 " Society will have something to say," she began with 
 the spirit of a society woman. 
 
 " Society, society," he answered violently. " Society 
 will get on its knees to the daughter of a rascal who has 
 money and turn its back on the daughter of a poor man 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 241 
 
 who has only high principles. Society will flock around 
 the rich rascal s daughter, asking her in marriage; the 
 other will die an old maid unless she herself makes a 
 compromise with principle." 
 
 " Well," obstinately, " religion is always there for 
 women." 
 
 " Religion ! " sneering more bitterly than ever. " Re 
 ligion means church, and the church represents nothing 
 more nor less than the men in the church. And when 
 the church needs money, the church is going to do what 
 the men who make money do when they need it; it is 
 going to be mighty polite to the men who have money to 
 give and will have mighty little use for the other kind 
 of men." 
 
 And so he went on, in his desperate state of dis 
 couragement, pouring out now one, now another of the 
 black thoughts that had come to him in the hospital and 
 prison, " Honor ! pride ! sentiment ! You will live to 
 see the day when the daughters of our heroes of the war 
 are working like menials for their living, when your own 
 daughters will be glad to seek employment at the hands 
 of the scalawags and carpet-baggers of today. My uncle 
 and the men like him will never regain their lost position 
 in the country. While he is standing on his dignity and 
 maintaining his ideals, his means of living will be taken 
 by a shrewder man, one who doesn t know what dignity 
 or ideals means; one of the class who even now are hir 
 ing negro legislators to steal the resources of the State for 
 them, handing over grants and monopolies to insure their 
 fortune for fifty years to come, to gild their way into 
 your society; and into your church! You don t know 
 what is going on ! My uncle doesn t know ! Great God ! 
 
242 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Have you any idea what sort of people our masters are ? 
 Let me tell you ! Let me tell you ! " Jumping from his 
 seat and standing over her he poured out in a torrent 
 of burning words what he had seen and heard, what he 
 had suffered himself and what others about him had 
 suffered ; the cruelties, the horrors that peace for genera 
 tions afterward would be trying to bury deep enough 
 to kill the noxious pestilence of it; the stories and ex 
 periences that it is hard for the heart to restrain and 
 keep out of sight, yet which must be kept out of sight if 
 women are to live at all, and not die under the reverberat 
 ing memory of it. 
 
 " Harry, Harry," his aunt whispered, trembling 
 herself with excitement while trying to be calm : 
 " Hush, hush ! Not so loud ! The children might hear, 
 we do not want them to know, we must protect their 
 memories." 
 
 He sank his voice to a whisper, but flinging aside all 
 effort at self -composure, fiercely, pitilessly gave full rein 
 to his passion. 
 
 " They are the people who send ladies off prisoners to 
 sandy islands in the Gulf, with only men with negroes 
 over them; they are the people who make proclamation 
 ordering their soldiers to insult ladies if they choose 
 to; as" he could not say the word "who put negro 
 soldiers to guard white gentlemen, and ... let them 
 curse their prisoners, they . . ." 
 
 " Yes, yes," she could stand it no longer, and now 
 as in a panic her passion joined his. " When they came 
 to the plantation; when they flung our last bit of food 
 in the Bayou; when they told me they had caught my 
 husband and had him in their boat and were going to 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 243 
 
 hang him before my eyes " her words coming quicker 
 and quicker, and her breath in gasps " when they took 
 my poor little boy and stood him before a file of soldiers 
 and told me they were going to shoot him . . . when 
 they went through the house, cursing, swearing, search 
 ing, searching for God knows what . . . when they 
 dragged the bed clothes off Cicely, who was shivering 
 with a chill with a doctor standing by, and a preacher, 
 who offered me a Testament when . . ." 
 
 " When I lay in the hospital . . / he could not give 
 her time to finish; "with hundreds all around me, 
 wounded, gangrened, dying, the women would come to 
 bring to us any comfort they could think of ... and 
 they would lie, would perjure themselves, they would 
 take devilish oaths, enough to secure their everlasting 
 damnation, if it were counted against them. And negro 
 soldiers searched them, do you understand ? " She 
 shrank back from the comprehension he forced upon her. 
 " Niggers searched their persons ! " He clinched his 
 hands. " And they, the women, stood it f or us ! . . . 
 God! . . . Sometimes I would think I was delirious, 
 that I did not see it, that it could not be ... but no! 
 Look ! " his voice trembled as he pulled up his sleeve and 
 showed his pulse beating furiously in his broad white 
 wrist. " No, it was not delirium ! It was no delirium 
 that made men turn their heads in their beds and hide 
 their faces and sob like children, because they had to 
 see the things they did see and hear what they heard 
 and could not kill and be killed." He was talking wildly 
 and knew it, nevertheless he went on his aunt leaning 
 back in her chair, pale and panting ; her eyes fixed on his 
 face, could not but listen " Oh, I know them ! and the 
 
244 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 President, Mr. Davis, knows them! yes, he knows 
 them. ..." 
 
 At last! At last! returning steps were heard; in the 
 walk, coming up the steps, crossing the gallery. 
 
 She lifted her finger : " Hush, your uncle ! " 
 
 A draught of cold air blew through the opened door; 
 a blessed draught of peace and calm, wafted from the 
 serenity gained in the long walk on the Levee; by the 
 great, swift-flowing river; under the stars. The evil 
 demons that had been holding their sway in the close, hot 
 room slunk back, and vanished, like the devils of a night 
 mare. The wife fled as it were to her husband, grasping 
 his arm and laying her head upon it; the sleeve so cool 
 and redolent of the atmosphere of night! 
 
 The nephew passed his hand wearily over his brow; 
 no strength, no hope, no courage, no youth left in his 
 face. Never could he have looked more injured by 
 battle. 
 
 " You had better go now, Harry," said his uncle in his 
 usual clear, decided tone. " Tomorrow we shall see what 
 we can do. It is too late tonight to talk any more 
 about it." 
 
 Without a word, the young man rose and took his 
 leave. His aunt followed him impulsively, and bade 
 him good-night on the gallery. 
 
 " It is Dalton s treachery that has upset him," she told 
 her husband with the simple conviction of a woman s 
 intuition. " Harry thinks it is the war " she shook her 
 head. " War has not that effect on a soldier. Nothing 
 in the war could hurt him so much. He is too brave to 
 mind what an enemy does; but a friend, a friend ..." 
 Her voice died away. She could have said for herself, 
 
A BAD PART OF THE ROAD 245 
 
 also, that nothing in the war, despite the memories that 
 had roused her passion a few moments before, nothing 
 in the war had hurt her so much. 
 
 " He is demoralized." 
 
 " Demoralized, demoralized ! " she repeated the words. 
 For the first time in her life she heard the word, the 
 ominous word. For the first time in her life such a con 
 dition as demoralization was presented to her intelligence. 
 Was that, too, to be in the future ? As the meaning came 
 clearer and clearer to her, she felt more affrighted than 
 at the weird echo of the guns at Vicksburg; the guns 
 that were killing the bodies of the husbands and brothers 
 and sons of the Southern women. To die was nothing 
 in comparison to living demoralized . . . 
 
 While she was thinking to herself, her husband was 
 following his thoughts aloud : " It is the worst fate 
 that threatens us. If we do not fight it, we will go under 
 in a far more fatal defeat than any army can inflict upon 
 us. To lose confidence in our principles; our honor; 
 ourselves that means to lose our place in the nation." 
 
 He had lost sight of Dalton, and of his treachery. 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 
 
 "Dux what is he up to now, eh?" asked Madame 
 Joachim, peeping through the shutters of the kitchen into 
 the lane. " Ah ! Papa Docteur, some trick, I guarantee." 
 
 The doctor was walking slowly along with the priest, 
 who was scratching himself reflectively through his 
 cassock as he always did when he walked. He had been 
 working in his garden and was bareheaded and held a 
 weed absentmindedly in his left hand. 
 
 "Do you see how painfully the doctor walks?" con 
 tinued Madame Joachim, " and listen to that little cough ; 
 he always coughs when he walks with the cure. In 
 reality, he would be as fat as I am, if he did not keep 
 thin to deceive people, and he would be as strong as 
 Joachim, just as strong. Don t I know him? Oh la, la! 
 He is getting something out of Pere Phileas who is a 
 fool, he is so simple. The good God must love him, for 
 he has not the sense of a chicken. But what is he up to? " 
 
 " Perhaps he is going to get married," suggested the 
 American lady, who in truth did not know how else 
 to answer the reiterated question. 
 
 "But to whom?" 
 
 To Mademoiselle Eulalie." That was evidently the 
 answer for which the question had been trapped. 
 
 " Eulalie ! Non, mon petit docteur! Not Eulalie ; but 
 Maria, but Antonia, but Lisida, yes. But not Eulalie ! " 
 She shook her head, first negatively, then assertively. 
 
 246 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 247 
 
 And she turned it from the window for a moment to 
 relate, once more for, like all persons who like to tell 
 their own stories, she did not care how many times she 
 repeated the same one how the doctor was one of those 
 men who had his way with women and therefore any 
 one of the Demoiselles San Antonio he asked would 
 marry him. It was not the wonder but the scandal of 
 St. Medard how his poor wife had doted upon um and 
 would tell her mother and sister poor Mademoiselle 
 Eulalie at any time that she hated them, just to show 
 off, to greater effect, her love for her husband. She 
 took him into her home (Madame Joachim s hand made 
 a gesture of hospitality) and gave him the best room; 
 which had been her father s, turning her mother out of 
 it. She not only called it his house to her friends but 
 even went so far as to praise his kindness in letting her 
 mother and sister stay there. When he was away from 
 her she suffered the tortures of purgatory from jealousy, 
 and when he was with her she was so much in love that 
 it was as painful to witness as her jealousy. She was 
 diseased when he married her! Long before this sen 
 tence, Madame Joachim was again watching the subject 
 of her discourse through the blinds. " He knew she 
 could not live long ! But he must have known it ! Did 
 he not attend her in the convent ? Every one there knew 
 it, even the sisters! Do they not employ him? And 
 do not they enjoin upon all the faithful to employ him? 
 God knows why. And the Cure? . . . Has not the 
 doctor given a statue of our Lady of Lourdes to the 
 church? Does he not go there, to pray before it? He 
 thinks no one knows it but the Cure, but I know it! I 
 ask you? A doctor, and our Lady of Lourdes, eh?" 
 
248 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 winking both eyes. " Other people, yes, but a doctor! 
 And the poor Cure believes, he believes. Aiel Aiel 
 Women, yes, but a man, a doctor. . . . " 
 
 Cribiche now came creeping up behind the pair until 
 he got close enough to twitch the gown of the priest 
 once, twice, three times, mumbling something. 
 
 " No," answered Pere Phileas, " I refuse. You can 
 not go crayfishing." The boy mumbled again. " It is 
 true as you say r this is a good day for it, and tomorrow 
 is Friday and crayfish are good for fasting, but you 
 cannot go. You must finish your work in the garden. 
 The weeds have taken possession of it. They will choke 
 out all our Spring vegetables. No, my son, go back and 
 pull up weeds. Another time you can go crayfishing." 
 
 " That is the way," Cribiche grumbled in the way of 
 all grumblers, loud enough for everybody to hear except 
 the one interested. " He is always telling me to ask 
 permission : you must not go off without asking per 
 mission/ and when I ask permission, he says no. What 
 is the use of asking permission when he always says no ? 
 I would never go crayfishing if I waited for him to say 
 yes. He is always telling me to pull up weeds ! . . . " 
 In the meantime, the doctor and the priest were leisurely 
 pursuing their conversation and the former his design 
 in the conversation. 
 
 " Listen, listen," whispered Madame Joachim. The 
 pair were nearing the window. 
 
 " Eh, mon Pere," the doctor was saying to the priest 
 in the voice he must have used in his devotions to the 
 Lady of Lourdes. " What do we know, we doctors ? 
 We guess, that is all. Disease, health, life, death? We 
 have invented a little more light to throw upon them, that 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 249 
 
 is all. How can we doctors say what is going to happen ? 
 The old are apt to die, the young to live . . . you can 
 make the calculation as well as any one. Look at the 
 Charity Hospital, a doctor will go in the morning to the 
 bed of a patient who he thinks is on the high road to 
 recovery. He finds the bed empty. But where is my 
 patient, Sister?* he asks. In the dead room, doctor, 
 he died during the night. And again, he goes to the 
 bed of one that he gave up the night before : sent for the 
 priest for him. He is better. In a few days he is well. 
 What can we count on, we scientists, as we call our 
 selves ? " 
 
 The simple Cure looked like a cat that was having its 
 back scratched. " Ah," he answered gently : " It is God 
 alone who makes the dispensation of life and death." 
 
 " Send your poor to me, always, mon Pere. I will 
 do what good I can for them ; but the best is what only 
 you can do, mon Pere." 
 
 " God and the blessed Virgin," corrected the priest. 
 
 " I," continued the doctor, " I give my services gratui 
 tously. Why not ? It is all I have to give. Those who 
 have money give money ; those who have not money give 
 what they possess. We are priests, too, in a way, mon 
 Pere." 
 
 " Servants of God we all are, Monsieur le docteur," 
 answered the priest, forgetting Cribiche. 
 
 " We must do something for the church, Monsieur le 
 Cure. We must do something for St. Medard. The 
 church needs paint, it needs cleaning up." 
 
 Now, it was as if a saucer of milk were presented to 
 the cat. 
 
 " Every Spring, Doctor, I say that to my congrega- 
 
2 5 o THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 tion," the priest rejoined eagerly, stopping his walk short. 
 " Every Spring ! I have a sermon for the purpose and I 
 have preached it over and over again : What, my 
 brothers ? I say. The good God renews the colors of 
 the earth every Spring and you cannot renew the color of 
 your church, once in a lifetime ? Look, I say, at the 
 most miserable garden, at the ugliest, at the muddiest 
 street in the parish and you see every Spring, what? 
 Beautiful flowers! The trees with new leaves! Even 
 the gutters renew their simple vegetation in the Spring! 
 That is what good God prepares for our Easter. And 
 we, what do we prepare for Him? For His Easter? 
 
 He would have gone on to the end of his sermon, for 
 he had repeated it so often that it went off his tongue 
 by itself, but the doctor interrupted him. 
 
 Turning and tapping the priest on the breast, he said 
 impressively : " I shall take a hand in it ! You will see a 
 difference by next Easter. What! The Parish of St. 
 Medard too poor to paint its Church! Bah! " 
 
 " Ah, yes, bah ! " Madame Joachim echoed mock 
 ingly. She saw his schemes as clearly as she saw the 
 great ships go up and down the Mississippi, past the 
 open door of her husband s blacksmith shop. " I will 
 paint the church for you, my good father, and you will 
 praise my generosity, and my piety to everybody, particu 
 larly to the good sisters; so the San Antonios will be 
 bound to hear it ... and you will praise me to my 
 mother-in-law, and to Eulalie above all praise me to 
 them every day, for they are so pious they must see 
 their priest every day. Close their eyes, softly, softly, 
 make them think I am busy attending to the affairs of the 
 church, and not ... oh, yes! and I will paint your 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 251 
 
 church for you. That is, I will make that poor devil 
 Pantin, the painter, do it. He never has any work now, 
 and with his drinking and his consumption, he is always 
 in debt to me. I shall never be able to make my money 
 out of him. I will make him do it ! " 
 
 If, as we have seen, Doctor Botot s subtle schemes 
 could not be hidden, but on the contrary were as clearly 
 seen by Madame Joachim as ships sailing up and down 
 the Mississippi, how much less could the Americans hope 
 that their poverty could be concealed ? But the Doctor s 
 efforts at concealment were child s play, in comparison 
 with their full-grown man and woman struggle. Pov 
 erty, however, is a different sort of secret from love. 
 There is another place in the heart to hide it; a darker 
 corner, a deeper cellar. And there is something in the 
 self-reproach that a confession of it inflicts that bears 
 down the pride in a way different from other con 
 fessions. Even the poorest of women shield their men 
 from the accusation of it. Human patience, indeed, has 
 been burdened, human credulity strained with the reasons 
 that women have invented to account for it. Nothing 
 in one s past, as we know, is more carefully covered over. 
 
 Later on in the day, while the sun was marking off 
 the radiant Autumn hours past the noon, and the quiet 
 of St. Medard was disturbed only by the innocent noise 
 of cattle and chickens, Mrs. Talbot stood under the fig 
 trees of the garden, weeping in humiliation. There was 
 no nook in the house where she could do so unseen. 
 The fig leaves hung close around her ; the place was like 
 a cave; there was not light enough in it to see the 
 creeping things on ground or branch, and the air was 
 dull and heavy. But it was a good retreat. Instinctively, 
 
252 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 she had fled to it when she felt that the time had come 
 when she could no longer restrain her tears, stifle her 
 sobs. It had come to that. She had to weep like a 
 child over what in truth could only be wept over; for 
 there was nothing else to be done. And this thought 
 made her tears and sobs come faster, more uncontrol 
 lably. She looked in her mind all around and about, 
 far and near, on this side and on that; she could see 
 nothing but darkness, desolation, degradation. And 
 even while she wept more and more bitterly, giving up 
 courage in hopeless despair, she would ask herself : 
 " What can I do ? " and exclaim : " I must do something ! 
 I must find something to do ! " 
 
 In such moments, what has been done is much more 
 present to the mind than what can be done. While the 
 future seemed to shut the door in her face, the past 
 brought forward, endlessly, needlessly, all that it could; 
 going farther and farther back to heap an accumulation 
 of memories that only made her tears flow all the faster. 
 There was her childhood, her happy thoughtless child" 
 hood, her indulgent father who spent his money and good 
 humor so generously; the tender grandmother who had 
 replaced her mother. Then before she knew what love 
 was, when she was only dreaming about it, her husband, 
 descending like Jove out of a dazzling cloud, so great, 
 so noble, so superior to all men ! He, the supreme one, 
 whom at the time she could not look at, could not talk to 
 without trembling, he loved her! And then the life 
 that followed: a bright life with a bright light shining 
 upon it ; even under the fig tree she saw and felt it again. 
 
 And then the war. That did not seem now a time of 
 suffering at all. On the contrary, how easy were its 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 253 
 
 struggles and hardships in comparison with what fol 
 lowed! What one suffered then, one suffered gladly, 
 proudly. And afterward, when the family came to the 
 city, the first days, how pleasant all that seemed! And 
 now in detail and more minutely came the events of 
 months, weeks, days, each one greater than years in 
 the farther past. " Harry was right ! Harry was right ! " 
 she cried to herself. " We are doomed ! All has gone 
 from us, even our old selves! What are we now? 
 What friend would recognize us if we had such a thing 
 as a friend left to recognize us ? Friendship ! We have 
 not so much as a church nor a pastor to whom I could 
 go and say :" As a dream within a dream so in imagi 
 nation within imagination, she saw herself speaking to 
 a pastor such as the old pastor of her church had been 
 to whom the poor and suffering always went in their 
 extremities of grief and suffering " My husband is at 
 the end of all his resources. He has tried everything. 
 He cannot, in the conditions that exist, make money 
 during the year to pay our house rent, let alone 
 provide food and clothing for us. His old practice has 
 left him, it is of no use to explain how; he will never 
 get a new one. The times make that impossible. What 
 he makes is from writing briefs for lawyers who do not 
 know enough to write them for themselves. The children 
 are being educated for nothing; we cannot pay for their 
 schooling any longer. If it were not for the boys fishing 
 and hunting, I do not know what we would do for food. 
 I do the cooking and washing. It is a miracle how I get 
 a breakfast and dinner every day and a clean shirt for 
 my husband. I brush and darn his coat and trousers 
 every morning before day, so that he may not know how 
 
254 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 shabby they are. He dares not spend five cents on tobacco, 
 he uses no carfare but walks every day to his office and 
 back. He really has no office. He cannot pay the rent. 
 He has, in truth, only a place in the office of his former 
 office boy. He will soon have to sell his library which 
 he has held to the last minute. Ah, if we could only 
 prevent that ! Great God ! " she exclaimed, losing the 
 thread of her imaginary address, " Great God ! Prevent 
 that! What will he do without his library? Has not 
 his pride been cut enough already without that? Must 
 he became a dependent upon Tommy Cook for his books 
 too? He never complains, but I know what he suffers. 
 He still pretends that it is all natural, that it will all 
 come right in the end. He is always cheerful, he makes 
 the boys study all the same, he still has the same confi 
 dence in his principles. Oh, God! make me suffer if 
 Thou wilt, more and more, but spare him ! " And as 
 her love for her husband wrung her heart, she wrung 
 her hands and moved her head wildly in the dim twilight 
 under the trees, as if trying to see some way out of the 
 darkness in her mind. 
 
 She had tried to help him in secret and private ways. 
 She had gone one morning to see Benson, the millionaire 
 now, whom as a porter she used to speak to out of mere 
 kindness of heart. She went to see him as if he had 
 been one of the most aristocratic, refined men in the city; 
 went to his house, for, a lady going to a man s office, 
 her husband would never have allowed. She thought it 
 out in the car, what she would say to him and what he 
 would say to her. He would naturally speak of her 
 husband and then it would come to pass as she pictured 
 it in her imagination. She could not go on with the 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 255 
 
 humiliating memory of what she had expected. He had 
 not mentioned her husband s name. He had pulled out 
 his watch before she had more than time to speak and 
 had dismissed her. He said he must go to his office. 
 
 And she had written to George Haight, written to him 
 as she thought he would like to be written to according 
 to the past; a letter of old friendship and kindly 
 memories and frank humor over the present. Ah, she 
 could have read between the lines of such a letter, had 
 she received it! She in a rich home in New York im- 
 pregnably strong in her wealth and he in despair. But 
 she would not allow her imagination to follow this out 
 either. Haight wrote as he talked; acted as he lived. 
 He was not a gentleman as she had always maintained. 
 God had not made him one, that was all. She despised 
 him in her youth and she despised him now. 
 
 She had ventured to call on the wives of some of the 
 men whom she and her husband used to know and go 
 to the races with, and to the Boudreaux dinners after 
 ward the wives of those who had been skilful enough 
 to go up with the times and not down. Some of them 
 fawned upon her and her husband obsequiously 
 enough in the old days of prosperity. Ah! their wives 
 now had put her well back in her place! The place of 
 the wife of a poor man out of whom nothing can be 
 made. A woman can be even meaner than a man! 
 
 " Where/ she asked herself, " is the generosity to the 
 poor and needy that he used to show, the delicacy, the 
 tact in relieving want ? " 
 
 At this thought, a whole landscape rose magically be 
 fore her filled with the people her husband had been kind 
 to in the past. And even now, when he was an object 
 
256 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 of kindness himself, was he not always finding out those 
 in worse need than he? And if ever, by hook or crook, 
 he gained a small sum of money! was there not always 
 some one to whom a portion of it must go? Some 
 one who even by hook or crook could not gain food for 
 his children, some one always following him " to pick 
 up the stalks of the herbs that he threw away," like the 
 beggar in the Spanish verse. 
 
 All these thoughts and memories did not take in her 
 mind the time that it does to read them now. They came 
 and went in a flash like the thoughts of the drowning. 
 Nervous and sentimental ladies might have spent a day 
 in their beds over a single one of them, but she had only 
 moments to spare, in any one of which she might be 
 discovered, even under the fig tree. It was but a few 
 moments, indeed, from the tears that had forced her to 
 flee into privacy to the moment when she emerged from 
 the tree, calm and composed, strong and determined, 
 with a new project in her brain. 
 
 Coralie, the little governess, whom she had pitied and 
 helped and consequently given her friendship to. After 
 thinking that she had seen her in a confectionery, and 
 finding she was mistaken, she had dropped her from her 
 memory. She seemed to have no more need of her 
 since she could be of no further use to her. But now, 
 Coralie could be of use to the friend that had once 
 served her. A ray of light seemed to fall across her 
 mind ! How foolish not to have thought of her before ! 
 Was her invalid father still alive? her dissipated brother 
 still as much of a sorrow as ever ? And was she as usual, 
 still in dire want, needing everything? 
 
 How distinctly the figure of the little Creole governess 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 257 
 
 came before her, clad in her neat calico dress; the collar 
 and cuffs scalloped in red, her curling, glossy, black hair, 
 in a twist on top of her head, with the pretty fluffy 
 " accroche occurs " on her temples, her rather small black 
 eyes, always wide open and alert, her dark thin skin well 
 dusted with rice powder, perfumed with the faint fra 
 grance of Tonka beans, her yellow hands, with their long 
 pointed finger nails, that were so useful in her em 
 broidery^ Where could any one have found a more 
 gentle, docile, devoted dependent; one more grateful for 
 kindness ; more humble in her confession of need for it ? 
 Never without a pretty speech in her mouth, a compliment 
 of some sort for somebody! She went about the house 
 inaudibly, with her soft footstep; was never in the way 
 but always within the sound of a question, a bidding. It 
 was marvelous, in truth, to the patroness, how the de 
 pendent managed to fix herself so securely in her de 
 pendency in the short space of time at her disposal, 
 and how, indeed, the patroness fell herself into a species 
 of dependency upon her, the dependency of the generous 
 upon the object of generosity. 
 
 Did she live in the same place ? Somewhere, in a back 
 street in a long row of little one-story houses, whose steps 
 came down to the sidewalk, with heavy, green batten 
 shutters. . . . She had gone there once or twice carry 
 ing some delicacy for the sick father. An apothecary 
 shop, she remembered in an indistinct way, stood on 
 the corner. 
 
 Coralie was the last person to whom she said good-bye 
 when she left the city to go into the war as it was called. 
 The details of the hurried departure (for she had been 
 notified only in the morning that a steamboat would be 1 
 
258 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ready that night to take her out of the United States 
 lines) shot into her mind, with microscopic distinctness. 
 Coralie at least did not lose her head, her hands did not 
 tremble, as she folded and packed. She, herself, forgot 
 everything whenever the bell rang or soldiers marched 
 by in the street. 
 
 Armoires and drawers were left standing open, cloth 
 ing was heaped in confusion on the floor, plates and 
 dishes and silver were left on the dining-table, the side 
 board glittered with its crystal, the buffet, with its silver 
 coffee and tea service, and dishes . . . But Coralie was 
 to put all away she was to care for the carelessness 
 of others. Surely, surely, she must have saved some 
 thing for her patroness as Tommy Cook had saved for 
 his patron! The silver forks and spoons how easy to 
 wrap them up and hide them in her trunk! The jewelry, 
 left in the bureau that little box, that had been so care 
 fully tied up, containing the most precious pieces, to take 
 away, and then forgotten at the last moment each 
 trinket in it, chain and locket, ring and bracelet res 
 urrected suddenly in her memory as from the grave, 
 perhaps some of it was saved ! The officers who came to 
 seize the house may have relented and relaxed in their 
 vigilance. 
 
 It was not surprising that Coralie had not found her 
 patroness. Who would have found her in St. Medard? 
 She was waiting, yes, surely, she was waiting until word 
 was sent to her and then and then . . . 
 
 And so in spite of experience and of common sense, 
 Mariana Talbot set out again fresh and bouyant on a 
 new speculation of the imagination; investing in it all 
 the remnant of hope still left in her heart. There was 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 259 
 
 still something to do! Such an experiment as Made 
 moiselle Coralie, still to be tried! 
 
 There is nothing mysterious in the ways of war. On 
 the contrary it carries out its designs in the most open 
 manner possible and by the simplest and most natural 
 means, as we find out afterward always afterward. 
 One of the occupations of peace is to find this out; to 
 see and handle the rude devices by which our undoing in 
 war was accomplished. The surprises of war are indeed 
 much surpassed by those of peace. As has been said, 
 Mademoiselle Coralie received the last good-bye of her 
 patroness, and when the family drove away from their 
 home, of a dark, rainy night, she remained on the front 
 steps, looking after the carriage as long as it was in sight. 
 Then she went into the house, the sole mistress in charge, 
 with what keys could be found in her hand (for house 
 wives were careless in those days about locking up and 
 a key once out of its hole was a key lost and a lock 
 nullified). 
 
 The only directions given her, were to do the best she 
 could when the emergency arrived, that is when the 
 officer and soldiers came the next day to seize and take 
 possession; for to leave the city, and join her husband 
 in the Confederacy, instead of remaining and taking a 
 proffered oath of allegiance to the United States, was 
 construed into an act of enmity by the military authority 
 in command. 
 
 Waiting for an emergency is a trial to the spirit as 
 well as to the body when one is alone in a great empty 
 house. The servants who had not wished to follow 
 their mistress had been dismissed to their freedom; the 
 
260 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 only retainer left of the establishment was an old Irish 
 scrubbing-woman, a supernumerary, and the erstwhile 
 spurned and scoffed of the pampered slaves for her 
 poverty. She was to remain and serve Mademoiselle 
 Coralie and while also awaiting the emergency to prepare 
 the house for it; for although housewives of that time 
 were careless about keys, they were not about cleanliness. 
 
 Mademoiselle Coralie s trunk stood open in her room. 
 She soon filled it and needed another one to hold all 
 that was given her in the last moments when in the 
 hurried packing there had been a constant discarding of 
 articles and : " Coralie, this ought to be useful to you, 
 Coralie, you had better take that." Ladies en route to 
 a war and with the limited amount of luggage allowed by 
 a foe carry only the new and the strong, the serviceable ; 
 not lace-trimmed sacques nor fragile deshabille es, light 
 evening dresses, embroidered petticoats, fichus, sashes, 
 hats, feathers, artificial flowers, the follies, fripperies, 
 and extravagances of many a day s amusement in a 
 pretty shop. They were all as welcome to Mademoiselle 
 Coralie, as the bonbons her mouth had been watering 
 for from infancy. And with what zeal can a woman 
 long for pretty clothing? It can become a passion with 
 her, like drinking to those of the opposite sex. 
 
 The old Irish woman saw her in the solitude of her 
 room before her mirror, trying on hats and veils, laces, 
 and dresses, when from moment to moment, as she knew, 
 the summons might come that announced the arrival 
 of the emergency. But all over the city, the emergency 
 was knocking at the doors of houses, hastening in one 
 direction and perforce lagging in another. Mademoiselle 
 Coralie had ample time to sip at her own beauty in the 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 261 
 
 glass as she tried on each new seasoning of it. And 
 when she had a pause in that pleasure she sought and 
 found the other trunk needed to hold her recent acquisi 
 tions. She chose, the largest one that offered, and thence 
 perhaps came the divergence in her life, for there was 
 space left in her new trunk after packing what she 
 rightfully owned and she sought to fill this space with 
 what? 
 
 If one had a great houseful to choose from, what 
 would one select? When one saw, all about, everything 
 one wanted, and remembered the poor, bare rooms await 
 ing one at the other end of the city and knew that the 
 emergency was on its way that would put an end to 
 choice? In truth, before she had half made her selec 
 tion she needed another trunk, and having begun to 
 collect what she needed she could not stop. The house 
 was deserted, and in a few hours, minutes perhaps, she 
 would no longer have option or opportunity in the matter. 
 It became a race between her and the emergency, a 
 race for possession. Can it be believed that it took 
 only the time from nightfall, when the family departed, 
 until daylight for Mademoiselle Coralie to be on the 
 street engaging a cart to remove her trunks ? She found 
 it as one can generally find a chance to do wrong, no 
 farther than the street corner. Carts were always wait 
 ing in sight of every corner then for surreptitious re 
 movals. High prices were charged but high prices were 
 paid for such services. Mademoiselle Coralie was ac 
 commodated to perfection in man and cart. The former 
 was shrewd, the latter covered; only a half word was 
 necessary to explain the urgency of secrecy and prudence. 
 
 About midday the house was formally seized by the 
 
262 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 military authorities. Mademoiselle Coralie was at her 
 post. She received the officers and transferred the keys 
 to them; her personal trunk was duly examined and she 
 was dismissed. 
 
 On reaching home, did not the little governess regret, 
 in looking back upon her night s work, that she had not 
 taken more ? What were the blankets, the bed linen, the 
 table linen she had, to those she left behind ? the wines, 
 the liqueurs? Perhaps, had she known the ease with 
 which the transaction could be accomplished, her poor 
 old Pleyel piano would have been replaced by a grand 
 one. Why leave velvet rugs behind when there was only 
 matting at home? She could have provided herself with 
 books and pictures; and she was fond of both. But if 
 to Mademoiselle Coralie, who could compare what she 
 took with what she left, the covered wagon brought little ; 
 to her invalid father, and invalid (from bad habits) 
 brother it was much, far more than they had ever hoped 
 to possess, and they adapted themselves to it as naturally 
 as heirs to a rightful legacy. 
 
 The curtains were hung, table covers spread, bibelots 
 disposed of, china and glass awarded to the empty side 
 board, and Mademoiselle Coralie lost little time in don 
 ning some of her new toilettes ; the dainty dressing sacque 
 over the long, full, trailing half-worn moire antique skirt, 
 or the slightly chiffone foulard (bunches of pink roses 
 on blue and salmon stripes over a white ground) or the 
 pretty silk gauze; white with pale pin-dots of green and 
 sprigs of red roses. 
 
 All this, however, turned out to be but a means to an 
 end, not the end in itself. There could be but one end in 
 Mademoiselle Coralie s mind as in the mind of every 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 263 
 
 young woman like her and it is needless to say what that 
 end is, so well is it known, so well was it known even 
 to the gargons of the confectioneries where she munched 
 cakes and candies with the officers of the United States 
 army. 
 
 Men strive no harder for wealth and fame, old women 
 for immortality, than such young women to get married. 
 Everything else in life is subservient and conduces to 
 that one end, and it may be said that they never cease 
 to work for it, even when they are past it. 
 
 Mademoiselle Coralie, having been born in the condi 
 tion to which so many of her sisters had been reduced 
 by a hard turning of fortune, had naught to catch a 
 husband with but art and good luck, notoriously poor 
 servitors of the poor. Always her sorest envy of the 
 rich had been that they could get married " quand meme " 
 as she expressed it; no matter who or what they were. 
 And for such benefits as she and those like her ex 
 pected from marriage, to be married to no matter what 
 or whom, to be married " quand meme " sufficed. What 
 a luxury in her eyes, would have been the decried manage 
 de convenance! What an announcement, as of the 
 Heavenly Father Himself, the : " I will that you become 
 the wife of so and so. Come ! No prayers ! No tears ! 
 Prepare for your wedding!" Ah, only in novels do 
 poor girls find such royal chances in their path! In 
 truth, Mademoiselle Coralie s poverty was so great and 
 her matrimonial chance so meager that they would have 
 warranted any tyrannical interference of this sort. Thus, 
 her plunder was the fulcrum she needed, only that! 
 Would not Archimedes have stolen one if he could not 
 have gotten it any other way? 
 
264 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Had Mademoiselle Coralie been engendered in the 
 bosom of Napoleon Bonaparte s army she could not 
 have known more about conquerors. Yet, perhaps, it 
 may only have been her five minutes interview with the 
 young officer who received the keys from her that re 
 vealed to her that it rested with no one but herself to 
 change her lot from being governess of children to gover 
 ness of men. She very soon traveled up from that young 
 officer to the supreme peak of military state and authority 
 and became gratissima in all military social gatherings; 
 and before her borrowed plumes had received their second 
 wearing out, she was fledged in feathers of her own 
 growing. Handsome as they were, she wore them well. 
 To the manor acquired, as women have proved for ages, 
 passes just as well in demeanor as to the manor born. 
 
 In the course of a year, Mademoiselle Coralie s 
 treasures became her own as much as a kidnapped child 
 would have been. They served her pleasure and 
 furthered her plans. They were shown and cited to 
 substantiate circumstantially the history she had adopted 
 for the satisfaction of her conquerors and herself a 
 history as current in New Orleans as the little song " Au 
 clair de la lune" of flight from San Domingo, escape 
 from massacre, faithful slaves, etc., etc., etc., and the 
 ensuing, long, patiently-borne straitened circumstances 
 of the ancien regime colonial. . . a romance that was 
 new to her audience, who believed and admired it and 
 her for it. Her little bibelots of china, silver, and crystal, 
 the bits of antique coral and tortoiseshell, the real lace, 
 and the few precious relics of old jewelry . . . they were 
 her witnesses; she and they, only, knowing the truth. 
 
 When she saw her old benefactress in the confection- 
 
MADEMOISELLE CORALIE 265 
 
 ery, she acted (as we know) on the flash of the moment 
 with presence of mind. She decided promptly what 
 to do furthermore. She kept her drunken brother on 
 guard at the window of the little house with a well- 
 taught story. But nothing came of the recognition in 
 the confectionery, and the times were such that she could 
 not but grow confident in her immunity. She ripened 
 in it. 
 
 Then came the day that, sitting at the window, whose 
 shutters were turned to command that view of the 
 street that the passersby were denied of the interior 
 of the house (this precaution was almost a necessity, 
 living as she did with visitors to be admitted and visitors 
 to be turned away plausibly) sitting at her crack of 
 observation, her quick eyes, trained to be always on the 
 alert, caught sight of a lady, pausing irresolute before 
 the apothecary shop at the corner; hesitating whether 
 to go in and inquire, or hazard a trial inquiry first. The 
 trial was decided upon; and with confident sureness and 
 a wistful smile of anticipation she approached the little 
 house whose wooden steps came down on the pavement 
 whose shutters were heavy green, as she remembered 
 from the past. The invalid brother it was who answered 
 the knock, he to whom she used to bring wine and deli 
 cacies. His drunken, loud voice demanding her business, 
 would have been enough to convince the inquirer of her 
 mistake, to have sent her off in terror; but that was 
 not enough for the sagacious Mademoiselle Coralie. 
 The inquirer was made to ask her questions in order that 
 she might be told that the people had moved away long 
 ago, and nobody in the neighborhood knew where they 
 had gone to. 
 
266 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 What did the little governess feel when she heard 
 that gentle voice on the outside of her door ? The sweet 
 sorrowful voice, almost breaking from regret and dis 
 appointment? When she saw the thin, graceful figure, 
 so well known in old days, in a shabby dress move 
 slowly away, on tired feet? When the kindest friend 
 she was ever to know in this world was turned away 
 with a lie? 
 
 Could the benefactress of old have looked into that 
 room she would have seen Mademoiselle Coralie shrink 
 ing from her voice as from the voice of a monster listen 
 ing to the passing away of her footsteps, as to passing 
 away from her of a dragon or ogre. 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 THE good thing promised to St. Medard by the doctor 
 came to pass. The church was painted only on the 
 outside, however, the inside being left as the Gascons 
 leave the insides of their cottages when they whitewash 
 the outside. And it was not ready for Easter, as Pere 
 Phileas had piously wished, but again had to suffer com 
 parison with nature in that beautiful season of renova 
 tion. It was only ready for the feast of its patron saint. 
 It now seemed to the simple Pere Phileas, seeking 
 always religious signification in everything, that poor 
 Patin s revolt against thus paying his debt to the doctor, 
 his revengeful delays, his malicious mistakes, his quarrels 
 with the doctor about the quantity of paint to be fur 
 nished and the quality, his dishonesty in using what was 
 furnished, his constant trickiness and cheating, his lies, 
 his wilful sprees of drunkenness and the illnesses that fol 
 lowed, owing to his weak lungs it seemed to the good 
 Cure who like a plodding ass had borne the burden of it 
 all, now that it was all over and past, and he was in a 
 position to look back upon it the only sure way after 
 all of knowing the reasons of the divine will that all 
 these circumstances had been carefully fore-ordained 
 and systematically regulated, one after the other, in order 
 that the good and patient St. Medard, who for so many 
 years had stood from his unworthy parish what Pere 
 Phileas could never cease reproaching it for, that he 
 
 267 
 
268 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 should have the honor of the great accomplishment, and 
 that to him should be paid the compliment of the pro 
 cession with which it was to be celebrated. 
 
 Ah, when it came to the celebration of the event, no 
 one could complain of want of zeal in that parish! The 
 very ones who had shown most energy in avoiding any 
 contribution to the furtherance of the good work were 
 the most eager now to contribute to the celebration of its 
 accomplishment . . . and when it was announced from 
 the pulpit that Monseigneur himself would honor the 
 procession with his presence in it; the procession was 
 formed instantly, so to speak, before the eyes of every 
 Gascon present; each man seeing, not so much Mon 
 seigneur walking in it, as himself and his family, dressed 
 in their finest clothes, while other Gascons in crowds 
 from their dairies and gardens in other parts of the city 
 stood along the way to admire a great and glorious 
 procession about which the people of St. Medard would 
 ever afterward tell great Gascon tales. 
 
 There was no difficulty now in getting the streets and 
 gutters around the church cleaned of the disgraceful 
 weeds against which Pere Phileas had so often tried to 
 start a crusade, which had not been cut since the church 
 was built, according to the sad memory of those who 
 were old enough to remember that event. 
 
 The good St. Medard, if he, as the Cure believed and 
 affirmed, was ever watching the affairs of his parish and 
 knew all that was going on in it, no matter how much 
 pains were taken to conceal things from the eyes of its 
 curate; the good St. Medard must have been amused to 
 see (after the doctor and Patin had wiped out the sin 
 of their neglect) the pride and boasting of his Gascons 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M^DARD 269 
 
 over the painting of the church (poor Patin meanwhile 
 getting drunk and telling his grievances in Pepe s bar 
 room), and how quickly they reversed their former posi 
 tion, they now acting the benefactor, he becoming the 
 beneficiary; and to note the increasing number of peti 
 tions sent to him, and the confidence with which they 
 were despatched, like checks against a full deposit in 
 bank; for cows, calves, mules, gardens, chickens, dry 
 weather or rain, lifting of mortgages, collecting of debts 
 or assistance in avoiding payments of them. . . . Poor 
 Patin was the only one to send in no prayers, to ask for 
 nothing. 
 
 St. Medard, doubtless, did send the beautiful weather 
 needed for the celebration, for it is seldom he does not 
 send a good June to the city whose conviction has grown 
 into the saying that as it rains or shines on St. Medard 
 it will rain or shine for thirty days afterward. And 
 Nature was not behind in her bounty; the supply of 
 flowers surpassed even that of Easter. There was, 
 indeed, such an abundance of them that the way of the 
 procession through the ugly streets was over lilies, roses, 
 magnolias, jasmins, oleanders, crape myrtles; and the 
 four halting places the altars were in appearance great 
 bouquets. So sweetened was the air with their perfume 
 that the way of the incense through it was as truly 
 heavenly as that of Monseigneur, the Archbishop, 
 through the streets. 
 
 It was a pretty procession, and one with which St. 
 Medard, looking down from the blue sky above, as most 
 of the people thought he was doing, might well have been 
 pleased: Monseigneur in front under a canopy, Made 
 moiselle Mimi, singing her best and pushing her choir 
 
270 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 in the back to make them sing their best instead of gaz 
 ing open-mouthed at the canopy over Monseigneur; the 
 Demoiselles San Antonio in their trailing white muslin 
 dresses and shapely arching, high-heeled, bronze bottines, 
 and all the Gascons, each man of them, swaggering along 
 as if St. Medard owed him a big bill for milk or vegetables 
 for which he would be forced to pay in the currency of 
 Paradise; their wives and children trudging after them 
 happy and smiling as Gascon wives and children always 
 are, when their men are good-humored and swaggering 
 that being their idea of Paradise ; old Aglone hobbling 
 along with the negroes at the end; and such a crowd of 
 lookers-on Gascon friends and relatives, negroes from 
 the plantations, soldiers and riff-raff from the barracks; 
 even those who did not believe that St. Medard was 
 watching them from above walked as if they believed it. 
 Few indeed in the parish had not responded to the 
 call of the church bell. Patin, as might be suspected, 
 was not there, nor that pirate, at least in religion, 
 Joachim, nor the old San Antonios, who were doubtless 
 sitting as usual on their low squat chairs in front of 
 their onion-smelling basement room as they had sat in 
 front of their whisky-smelling bar, during many a festi 
 val at the Cathedral. Monsieur Pinseau would be in his 
 old cane chair on his gallery looking at his flowers, with 
 Belle at his feet, paying no more attention to St. Medard 
 than St. Medard did to him except when the old dog 
 would raise her head and howl impatiently at the hysteri 
 cal clamor of the church bell whose rope Cribiche pulled 
 as if he too wished to put St. Medard in his debt and 
 remind him that he was in the parish if not in the 
 procession as well as Monseigneur and the Cure. Made- 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M&DARD 271 
 
 moiselle Mimi, as has been said, was there, and the 
 Demoiselles San Antonio, Madame Joachim, and Aglone, 
 and old Zizi, and the doctor no, not the doctor, not 
 Doctor Botot. He was not there, for, as said Madame 
 Joachim, he had patients or wanted to have them, who 
 did not care for processions any more than for Our 
 Lady of Lourdes ; as he had patients who did. So he 
 arrived only at the last moment, in the greatest haste 
 from the car, just as the procession was receiving Mon- 
 seigneur s benediction from the church porch. 
 
 The Americans, husband and wife, sat on their gallery 
 under the wistaria vine. They could smell the incense 
 and the perfume of the flowers and they could hear the 
 chanting and singing which rose and fell softly as the 
 procession moved along from station to station and 
 when it stopped the muttering of prayers before the altars 
 like the buzzing of bees. But the husband did not seem 
 to hear anything of it nor to know what was going on 
 in the street. With his eyes fixed meditatively on the 
 garden, or on the bright blue sky above, he was follow 
 ing the course of his usual Sunday afternoon thoughts; 
 the future, the prospect before them as he called it ; that 
 thought-worn road over which he and his wife traveled 
 so incessantly. The mud street outside the fence with 
 its ruts, ridges, and hoof holes was not better known to 
 her feet than this one to her mind. 
 
 " There is no need that I can see for discouragement " 
 this was always the burden of his intimate talk with 
 her " the country is recovering from its excitement ; 
 calm judgment is gaining its way by degrees ; prosperity 
 is bound to come with law and order; the best men at 
 the North are taking the lead; the newspapers are com- 
 
272 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ing to their senses ; the worst is over, the worst is over ; 
 we have to be patient only a little longer, there is plenty 
 of business for us so soon as we have a chance to take 
 hold of it ; the children are doing well ; the Summer will 
 be a healthy one, next Winter will be an improvement 
 on the past one; I am confident . . ." The church bell 
 was not more faithful to its ringing than he to his. 
 And she, faithful to her ringing also, answered him in 
 her usual way; seeing what he wanted her to see and 
 even more, adding to his store of confidence all sorts of 
 little things that she had been able to pick up around 
 the home and neighborhood. She must have been 
 gathering them all throughout the week, never passing 
 one by; as the old peasant women in Europe never pass 
 a twig lying on the ground but always pick it up to add 
 to their little store of future fire and warmth. She knew 
 even more of the improvement of the children than he 
 did, and had always ready examples at hand to prove 
 the truth of his observations; the boys always doing 
 what he would like to hear, the little girls what would 
 flatter his aspirations for them; and as their old friends 
 had once bloomed in her conversation, so now did the 
 new ones of St. Medard, the poorest and most miserable 
 material for friendship that could be found, one would 
 think, the sorriest expedients in the way of substitutes 
 for what they had once enjoyed, while the passions that 
 stormed in her heart when she thought of politics and 
 politicians seemed to be but the resting-place of halcyon 
 ideas for her to give him. She found a way even to 
 speak of national honor so as not to offend but rather 
 please his sense of justice. She accepted his prognostica 
 tions for the good ending of the present as she used 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M&DARD 273 
 
 to do those for the good ending of the war . . . strew 
 ing, in fact, their trampled dirt road of a future with 
 flowers, as the Gascons had their streets to hide their 
 ugliness. His empty hand, which could not get over its 
 habit of holding cigar or pipe, moved restlessly along 
 the arm of his chair, his long fingers feeling for some 
 thing. When he noticed this, he would place his hand 
 between his knees to keep it still. And as his mind 
 held to its habit, so did her eyes to an old habit of 
 theirs; the habit of the young wife glancing ever at her 
 husband s face, peeping at her happiness to see if it was 
 still there. But now her eyes, on the contrary, seemed 
 to be ever touching a sore spot to see if it still hurt; 
 looking to see if his hair was really streaked with gray, 
 if those were really wrinkles down the cheeks, if the 
 eyes that once burned with such fire were really heavy- 
 looking and with but one dim light under the drooping 
 lids. In spite of his talk of courage and hope, he looked 
 weary and sad, and as unconsciously as his hand sought 
 his pipe, his lips seemed ever wanting to sigh and to be 
 refraining from it. 
 
 Had he come out of the war looking this way, she 
 would not have been surprised. Wars are waged for 
 the purpose of killing and wounding men or at least 
 wearing out their hope and courage. But no, he came 
 out of the war looking and feeling stronger than when he 
 went in. He could have fought in the war forever, it 
 seemed to his wife at the time. The great cause, the 
 great devotion it exacted, seemed to act on him like the 
 leaves of the plant that the old Choctaw woman who 
 came to see Cicely told her about ; leaves that the Choctaw 
 warriors used to chew when on the war path to keep 
 
274 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 them from feeling wounds, hunger or fatigue; that 
 kept them up without food or drink when they were 
 beaten and had to make their way back to their people 
 through a country swarming with enemies on the watch 
 for them. They had lost the plant somehow, the old 
 squaw said and their descendants had never been able 
 to find it and so they had all died out. She herself, who 
 had spent her life gathering herbs in the forest, had 
 always been looking for it and had never found it. 
 Many a time the wife had wished she could find that 
 plant too. 
 
 " Ah," she said to herself, in her simple way, " who 
 would care for things, if one could stop feeling them ! " 
 
 To entertain her husband she repeated to him the 
 story of the old Choctaw squaw. She could not have 
 had a happier inspiration. It led him from the future 
 to the past, to the Summers he had lived with the Indians, 
 to hunting and fishing adventures, and to the stories he 
 had gathered of their good qualities of friendship, 
 bravery, and stoicism. The children who came in from 
 looking at the procession drew closer and closer to him 
 in their interest as they listened until the trumpet from 
 the barracks sent them to bed. 
 
 To recall any part of youth and pleasure is to recall 
 all of it. And what a pageant memory can furnish when 
 one looks back out of an iron age of poverty to a golden 
 age of youth? 
 
 The trail led in peaceful windings from the Indians 
 to what followed the vacations passed with them and 
 what followed them . . . and on and on, in gentle 
 declivity, until the two memories came together, joined, 
 and became one. 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M^DARD 275 
 
 The graceful wistaria leaves and curling tendrils that 
 earlier in the evening had hung before their eyes like 
 a pretty lace over the blue sky and later over the golden 
 clouds of sunset now, as the moon rose, fell in light, 
 fragile shadows on the wall of the old house. As she 
 listened to her husband in silence, the wife let her eyes 
 follow the tremulous garlandings and trailings as the 
 soft evening breeze played gently over them, thrilling 
 them into motion, until, growing stronger with the moon 
 light, it ended by tossing them up and down, chasing 
 them, running them together and apart in boisterous 
 frolic, so that they rippled, as in irrepressible laughter 
 from one end of the gallery to the other ; the irrepressible 
 laughter of children that begins and ends in nothing 
 while the old wall, growing ever brighter as the full moon 
 shone straighter upon it, shone at last behind the leaves 
 pure white, brightened out of all its dinginess and stains 
 of time and weather. Brightened too by the moonlight, 
 out of all its marring lines of anxiety and care, the 
 husband s face shone too, at last pure white, noble, hand 
 some, fair and smooth as in the day when the two 
 memories joined together and became one. 
 
 They drew near to one another, and talked together, 
 after the two memories became one! In the moonlight, 
 with the fragrance of the flowers offered to St. Medard 
 still in the air, and the soft sound of prayers and chants 
 with the evening breeze playing through the clouds over 
 head and sending the shadowy leaves and tendrils be 
 hind them into ripples of laughter where was the 
 ugly mud road of a future? Where the burdens, cares, 
 anxieties? where the wrinkles, gray hair, dim eyes, and 
 drooping shoulders ? Nowhere in sight, nowhere in feel- 
 
276 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 ing! Brightened out of life as the stains and holes 
 had been brightened out of the old wall; until it too 
 glistened, pure white for thought to play upon, for 
 the heart to make its pretty garlandings and trailings 
 upon. 
 
 Only a pleasant sleep could follow so pleasant an 
 evening. One from which all care and trouble had been 
 filtered, a pure dreamless sleep that flowed on peacefully, 
 illimitably; the sweetest kind of sleep to the weary, the 
 kind that they would abide in forever ; out of which they 
 awake slowly and reluctantly; trying still to hold on to 
 its caressing ease and to float out once again into its 
 great, blissful open of unconsciousness. But while the 
 wife languidly strove to retain it, she heard her husband 
 talking to her; laughing as if they were still sitting in the 
 fragrant moonlight on the gallery. She thought she 
 was still dreaming dreaming that everything else but 
 the dream itself was a dream ; that they were still in the 
 time of youth and love and wealth when they could 
 laugh together over balls and dinners, opera and theater ; 
 the things that rich young people laugh over at night 
 when they come back from them. 
 
 But it was only for a moment that sleep could thus 
 dally with her. Keen-edged reality, cutting into her like 
 a sharp knife, awoke her. Her husband was burning 
 with fever, he was delirious! She would as soon have 
 thought of the universe in delirium, out of its senses 
 as he! She ran through the dark to the room of her 
 boys : " Quick ! quick ! " she called, shaking them roughly. 
 "The doctor! Your father! . . ." Her voice sank to 
 the familiar whisper of the nightmare. She tried to 
 speak aloud but could not. 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M&DARD 277 
 
 The doctor came and sat by him until daylight, humor 
 ing his fancies, listening to his vagaries until he per 
 suaded him to take a potion. At last when sleep visited 
 him, the doctor left, but he went for Madame Joachim 
 and sent her to watch by the bed in his absence. 
 
 How surely, how treacherously do fevers come upon 
 us! There is no foe to humanity that shows more in 
 sidious cunning in slipping into and getting possession 
 of a body, which if only warned in time could so easily, 
 with a mere trifle of defense, defy him : " Did you not 
 notice ? Could you not see ? " When it is too late, it is 
 easy enough to ask questions and as easy to answer them. 
 " Yes, it was noticed, yes, it was seen, this symptom and 
 that; but that was not the enemy expected, watched 
 for ! " When one is attacked by poverty, when one is 
 in full struggle, hand to hand, with poverty, one and 
 that is the misery of it one can think of nothing else 
 but it; there seems nothing else in life but it to think 
 about. And there is so much in poverty that resembles 
 disease; the heavy head, the tired thoughts, disturbed 
 sleep, low spirits, aching limbs, loss of appetite and the 
 painful sense of fatigue all the time! The constant 
 straining of energies, the thinking, thinking, thinking ! the 
 effort to keep up courage in others ; the forced cheerful 
 ness and the work the never-ending work ! Who could 
 sleep at the end of such a day, eat meals that cost so much 
 anxiety? Who could think of caring for self? 
 
 The wife explained all this to the doctor, as if he did 
 not know it already, as if his understanding it would 
 help the patient; telling all, keeping back nothing, as 
 if keeping back anything would hinder the cure. 
 
 "Walking to the city every day and back to save 
 
278 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 carfare; coming in so tired/ she said, looking earnestly 
 in the doctor s face. 
 
 " He was tired/ answered the doctor. 
 
 " He would eat nothing." 
 
 " Ah, he had no appetite," said the doctor. 
 
 " He took only a cup of coffee in the morning," she 
 continued, too intent on her own thoughts to notice his 
 interruptions. " And it seemed hard for him to get up ; 
 often he would go back and sit on the bed and wait." 
 
 " It was hard for him to get up," said the doctor. 
 
 " And then working in the garden every afternoon, 
 every afternoon except Sunday, so that we would at least 
 have vegetables to eat. I am sure his back and limbs 
 ached afterward." 
 
 The doctor nodded. " They did ache." 
 
 " And at night, teaching, teaching, until the boys knew 
 their lessons to his satisfaction. And they were so slow, 
 so stupid ! " she exclaimed passionately. " He wanted 
 them to learn Greek as well as Latin and mathematics. 
 I would see him put his head on his hand while 
 he was trying to drum it into them, as if his head 
 hurt him." 
 
 "Of course, it hurt him," said the doctor. 
 
 " Often I felt like crying out to the boys : Why don t 
 you learn faster ? Can t you learn faster ? I would 
 have learned anything rather than keep him sitting there, 
 so tired, so pale, so patient, so thin, and miserable- 
 looking." 
 
 " He was miserable-looking because he felt miserable," 
 answered the doctor. 
 
 " And then he did not sleep at night, he was so rest 
 less." 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. M^DARD 279 
 
 " Ah, that was the fever. He had fever every night," 
 said the doctor. 
 
 " I would say I was restless and could not sleep, just 
 to let him talk to me and stop thinking of his affairs." 
 
 The doctor nodded. 
 
 " Sometimes we would talk all night long, going over 
 and over everything. He would not say so, but I could 
 see he was discouraged. On the contrary, he would tell 
 me how much hope and confidence he had." 
 
 " And you would tell him the same, eh? " the doctor 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, I never let him see that I was discouraged, that 
 I was not confident and cheerful no matter what hap 
 pened. And no matter what he hoped, there was dis 
 appointment after disappointment." Her voice trembled, 
 she could not help it. " Not a friend, not a friend, but 
 disappointed him! And the one he trusted best, whose 
 honor he was surest of, he " her voice did not tremble 
 now, it grew stronger with temper and her eyes burned, 
 "he he more than disappointed him, he deceived and 
 betrayed him." 
 
 " Ah," said the doctor, " all that goes together." 
 
 " And the house rent always before him ! Do you 
 know how he made the house rent ? " she asked in her 
 despair. " He wrote briefs and prepared arguments for 
 other lawyers who could not write their own briefs in 
 the cases they got, but which my husband could not get. 
 Carpet baggers, scalawags, rapscallions, the scum and 
 refuse of politicians," she flung the words out of her 
 mouth with disgust, " they received the money that he 
 earned." 
 
 The doctor tapped her on the shoulder with his finger 
 
280 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 to draw her attention to himself. " He has had the 
 fever, or/ he could not resist the witticism, " the fever 
 has had him for I cannot tell how long. How long will 
 it hold on to him? That depends upon how long it 
 has had him." He shrugged his shoulders. " Well, it 
 will hold on to him until he, that is we, wear it out. That 
 is what we will have to do now, wear it out ; not let the 
 fever wear us out, eh " he went on, the cunning doctor, 
 putting the patient out of the question. 
 
 " Oh, if that is all," she answered joyfully, the expres 
 sion of her face changing at once, " it will never wear me 
 out ! It will never wear any of us out ! " She changed 
 the form of her assertion because she saw the children 
 peeping from the other room, listening to the doctor s 
 verdict. They shook their heads also and smiled con 
 temptuously at the fever. " It will never wear me out," 
 each one seemed to be declaring. 
 
 And then as always happens in periods of serious 
 illness to the head of a family, a curtain, as it were, fell 
 around the household, shutting it in to itself, shutting 
 out all else; its life moving along whispering and on 
 tiptoe so easily that the hours and their regular habits 
 slipped by unnoticed ; the days and nights succeeding one 
 another as unobtrusively as the ticking of a clock. 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 
 
 ALWAYS in the morning when the fever went down, the 
 sick man s mind would clear. He would call for his 
 coffee and forgetting his illness would struggle to get 
 up, dress, and go to his office : " I have work to do," he 
 would say, " I have a brief to write." But always he fell 
 back to his pillow and after a moment would be rising 
 again, to fall back once more. Passing his hand over 
 his forehead and frowning unconsciously : " I must go 
 to the office," he would repeat to his wife. 
 
 "It is early yet, rest a little while longer," she would 
 answer, pretending to be putting his cuff buttons in his 
 cuffs, while he would look at her with a long gaze, watch 
 ing her movements and drawing confidence from them. 
 
 As the day wore on and he saw himself that he could 
 not get up : " Tomorrow, tomorrow," would be her 
 answer to the mute inquiry of his eyes. Day after day, 
 she repeated her confident : " Tomorrow, tomorrow." 
 
 When he could not see her and thought she had left 
 the room he would shake his head and murmur " Too 
 bad, too bad," and she could see him going in his mind 
 over his business, noting points on his finger until she 
 would draw his attention from it. She could always 
 manage to do this by talking about the children until he 
 would take the pilot wheel again in his hand as she knew 
 he would and tell her what he expected to do in the way 
 of larger plans for them, while pushing them more and 
 
 281 
 
282 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 more in their studies, always reminding her to tell them 
 to bring their books to his bed that night so that he 
 could teach them there and make them read aloud to 
 him as usual. He wanted them to finish Gibbon by 
 Autumn. And he would tell of the other books that he 
 intended to make them read. There was a second-hand 
 Motley he never tired of talking about. It was being 
 held for him by the shopman. 
 
 " A wonderful bargain ! " his voice sounded tri 
 umphant about it, as fine a bargain as the Shakespeare 
 he had bought, which was perfect except for the binding. 
 The boys must read Motley next. They must learn to 
 appreciate the character of William the Silent. Then 
 he would ramble on about William the Silent until he 
 remembered something else the garden perhaps. She 
 must see that they worked in the garden, they must not 
 neglect it. A day s work lost in the season was hard to 
 replace and he would tell her minutely just what beds 
 he was preparing for just what seeds. 
 
 Eagerly he took what was prescribed for him and 
 always with the words : " I must get up tomorrow and 
 go to work. It is only a fever and we know what fevers 
 are." 
 
 There was no danger of the boys not studying or not 
 working in the garden. The thought that he was ill and 
 that all they could do to help him was to study and to 
 work in the garden, effected more in making Latin trans 
 lations clear and Greek verbs endurable, than his presence 
 had ever done. The quieter the house grew, the more 
 settled in its routine of illness through the days and 
 then the passing weeks (for if the fever was as far as 
 ever from wearing them out, they seemed no nearer to 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 283 
 
 wearing it out), the harder the boys pored over their 
 books and worked in the garden ; Cribiche with them. 
 
 Every night he would take his place at the table and 
 study as he too had never studied before; raising his 
 swarthy face from slate or book only to give a look at 
 the chair where the teacher should have been sitting and 
 turning it again more doggedly than ever to his lesson. 
 As he studied, so, too, he worked in the garden with the 
 boys. Potatoes, beans, carrots, turnips, spinach if ever 
 they were offered to heaven in propitiation for past 
 laziness or petition for present favor, they were in those 
 long Summer afternoons by the three boys as the sweat 
 rolled from their faces and soaked through their shirts. 
 
 The little girls were not behind them, although being 
 little girls they had no need to offer propitiation for 
 the past. Nevertheless they worked as if they had; 
 worked indeed like grown women and even harder in 
 their ignorant zeal and passionate determination to do 
 their part toward the cure of their father. No studies 
 for them! No books, no reading aloud, no going to 
 school. When had women time for such things while 
 there was illness in the family ? They took no more time 
 for them than their mother did. They kept themselves 
 awake at night, thinking what they would do the next 
 morning. And often their impatience to be up and about 
 what they had thought of, and their fear of being late, 
 would make them mistake the hour; and slipping easily 
 from their beds so that their mother in the next room 
 could not hear them, they would run across the yard, still 
 in the darkness of night, to the kitchen to light the fire 
 in the stove and drip coffee and boil hominy through the 
 slow gray hours to daylight just as their mother would 
 
284 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 have done, as doubtless she had done many and many 
 a time, before any one else in the house was awake. 
 More and more did they stretch their little steps to 
 follow in the tracks of a grown woman s duties. More 
 and more their little thoughts tried to fill the measure 
 of hers. For there were always others besides the family 
 to be cared for the church door swung not more easily 
 open to the pious than their rickety old backyard gate 
 to the wretched. Always there was some poor woman 
 creeping through for a dose of medicine or bit of linen 
 rag to put on a sore ; some thin, miserable child, begging 
 something for a sick mother or one well known to 
 mendicancy the blind old cripple Zenor, surnamed the 
 Voudou, on account of the malific charms that his ugli 
 ness and deformity had gained him the credit of work 
 ing; and although not a mendicant every day, Jerry 
 would slink through the gate to sit silent and cowed on 
 the kitchen steps ; never asking for anything, but as grate 
 ful as a hungry dog for a cup of coffee and a kind 
 word. He worked no more now and was ashamed to 
 let his master know it, but not his mistress. 
 
 Indeed, their mother was so afraid that they would 
 not know what to do; that some one would come and 
 go away disappointed, (no one knew better than she 
 what it was to go somewhere in hope and return dis 
 appointed) that she was ever slipping from the sick 
 room out to the gallery to warn them against it; and 
 ever remembering something else. Ah, at that time, 
 every want, every need was important to her ; all suffer 
 ing consecrated. She dared not let one prayer to her go 
 unanswered. No! No! Thus one day, the little girls 
 were called in haste to the gallery: "The poor, sick 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 285 
 
 negroes," she whispered hurriedly in a kind of panic. 
 " I forgot them ! They used to come every day, you will 
 hear them outside the window . . . give them something 
 to eat, anything scraps, and some coffee. I used to 
 save it for them . . . drip over the old grounds. . . . 
 They are just out of the hospital . . . they have 
 been ill too." The tears started into her eyes, and 
 her lips trembled, for all her courage, at the word, 
 the sad word, ill. " But they must not come into the 
 yard." 
 
 So the little girls listened for them and the day never 
 passed that they did not hear the shuffling steps in the 
 street stop under the kitchen window and the hoarse 
 whisper : " Mistress, Fse here ! Mistress, won t you give 
 a poor nigger something to eat? For God s sake, Mis 
 tress, I m that hungry. ..." And looking out of the 
 window they would see a trembling negro with ashen 
 face, still shivering from fever, or freshly scarred from 
 smallpox. 
 
 " Here ! Here ! " they would respond, eagerly stretch 
 ing their hands out of the window, as full of pity for the 
 poor wretches most of them boys as their mother had 
 been. 
 
 " Thank you, little Mistress ! God bless you, little Mis 
 tress ! " Some of them would cry like children from 
 weakness as the little girls had seen negro men do on the 
 plantation when they were weak and miserable. 
 
 Although they had always shrunk from the sight of 
 negroes in uniform, and had turned their face away 
 from them in passing, according to the command of 
 their father, they did not now. Nor were they afraid 
 of their diseases, also according to the command of their 
 
286 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 father, who, as much as his little daughters hated 
 Yankees, hated women who ran away from contagion; 
 " as if," he said, " the life of a coward were ever worth 
 preserving." But in their sorrow for their father and 
 their wish to help their mother, the little girls, forgetting 
 their plantation judgment and common sense, gave more 
 and more; and in consequence the file of convalescent 
 negroes outside the window increased daily; their 
 number, however, only seemed to increase the pleasure 
 of the charity. 
 
 It was well that there was a barrel of flour in the 
 kitchen and a sack of coffee; the barrel of flour and sack 
 of coffee that gave their father so much comfort in his 
 clear moments from the fever. " At any rate," he would 
 say over and over again to his wife : " we have a barrel 
 of flour and a sack of coffee in the house." And she 
 would tell him what good flour it was and what fine 
 coffee, and count up how long she expected them to last. 
 He would smile, well pleased, and tell of his good luck 
 that a grocer should pay him in that way for a bit of 
 legal advice. 
 
 Little by little the habit of fever overcame the habit 
 of health ; the effort to rise in the morning grew fainter 
 and he yielded more and more to the force of the disease. 
 Always as the fever mounted, delirium came on and his 
 mind would wander forth from the quiet little room in 
 St. Medard to some other beautiful parish where he 
 seemed to see all the bright moments of his past life 
 blooming like flowers around him. Smiling joyfully, 
 he would stretch out his hand to pluck at them as if he 
 were still a youth, and they the flowers his dreams of the 
 future. Sometimes the flowers seemed to be bits of 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 287 
 
 poetry, flashing upon his eye from all directions: the 
 blossoms he had gathered and stored in his memory 
 when he was young enough to wander in the bright 
 fields of poetry. Then his parched lips would soften 
 and curve and he would repeat verses with all the tender 
 ness and sentiment and musical expression of his Spring 
 time freshness. Sometimes, trivial incidents from the 
 first meeting of their two hearts which his wife with 
 all her gift of memory had forgotten would slip in 
 between two lines of verse. And sometimes, breaking 
 in his weakness through the close reserve of his heart 
 a still more secret word or memory would seem to 
 tremble on his lip, when, she would hastily rise, bend over 
 him and softly, as if she were drawing a sheet up over 
 a sleeping child, hush him ; and after a moment of silence 
 he would be again in the land of his enchantment. . . . 
 In his delirium at least he was happy. This and not 
 what it might have been : the cruel vagaries of the bloody 
 field of war, the carnage, the fury of the onset, the curses 
 of defeat or the anguish of fear, the painful humiliations 
 and the goading phantoms that came with peace this 
 was the blessed change wrought probably by St. Medard 
 and his flower-strewn procession and the pretty play of 
 the breeze and the moon on the gallery. 
 
 Madame Joachim, sitting close to the head of the 
 bed with the mosquito bar veiling her from the patient, 
 kept her eye fixed on the subtle, treacherous fever, fol 
 lowing it through all the windings of its serpent trail. 
 As neither she nor the doctor was sure when it began, 
 how could they tell when it would end, or even where it 
 was in its course, or which one of the fighters was wear 
 ing the other out? They could see the one on the bed; 
 
288 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 they could only guess at the other; and they had there 
 fore to be always ready to meet insidious attack with 
 insidious defense, to set surprise against surprise, am 
 bush against ambush, like the old Indian warriors they 
 were on the warpath. 
 
 But almost as well as these shrewd, untiring ones, 
 did the sick man s care and anxieties those rugged 
 friends serve him, as the days went by and still the 
 fever held on. They worked for him now, as they had 
 once worked against him, going after him, pulling at 
 him and, like faithful dogs, rousing him from the 
 lethargy that was always threatening to creep over him 
 and still him forever. 
 
 "What are you doing for money?" he would ask 
 with a start, suddenly opening his eyes. Or he would 
 stop his poetry to exclaim : " The house rent ! What 
 day of the month is it? " Or he would murmur sadly: 
 " The barrel of flour and the sack of coffee must be 
 giving out by this time." 
 
 When the fever went down, and the delirium rolled 
 away like a cloud from his brain, he would bring a 
 clear mind to bear on his situation and discuss it with 
 the doctor intelligently. The closer he was pressed by 
 his foe, the more convincingly he would reason with 
 the doctor about it. And as the fever, so to speak, cap 
 tured his convictions one by one, he would always find 
 some other defense to fall back upon, just as he had done 
 during the war. But pressed closer and closer, forced 
 further and further back and beaten out of hope after 
 hope, so weak that there seemed but one more stage 
 of weakness to traverse, he could still find yet another 
 one left behind him; still from sources invisible to his 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 289 
 
 watchers call up reinforcements of strength, still manage 
 to keep up the fight. 
 
 " I must not die, Doctor, I cannot afford to die," he 
 would whisper eagerly to his physician when his wife 
 was out of sight and he thought out of the room. 
 " But," confidentially, " I cannot hold out much longer." 
 
 " The fever cannot either," the doctor would answer 
 in his ever high good humor. " You think he has un 
 limited resources too, like the Yankees, eh ? He is worse 
 off than you, I can tell you." The doctor kept his private 
 opinion and his private manner so well to himself that 
 Madame Joachim could only guide her judgment by 
 her experience of him. 
 
 " He is not as good a doctor as he thinks he is," she 
 always declared when questioned, " but he is the best 
 doctor for fevers in the city." 
 
 " Mariana, you will wear yourself out, always sit 
 ting there day and night . . ." he would whisper to 
 his wife. 
 
 If it were night, she would take the shade off the 
 candle; if it were day, open a window, so that he could 
 see her smile while hearing her cheerful voice. Ah! 
 the fever obtained no concessions from her either of 
 courage, hope, or strength ! Before her husband she was 
 the same on the last as on the first of the sixty days of 
 the campaign; and she would tell him the news of the 
 children, the garden, the chickens; and, she would laugh 
 (" A i, Ail 1 would exclaim Madame Joachim to herself 
 hearing her) over his favorite game rooster for he was 
 so prejudiced in favor of game roosters that he would 
 never have any other kind in the yard. She would 
 talk to him of anything, everything as if as if they 
 
2 9 o THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 were still sitting side by side, spying away together at 
 the future, meandering on ! far ahead of them. 
 
 Across the backyard in their domain, the kitchen, the 
 little girls held their outpost against the fever; held it 
 so well that no one in the other part of the garrison had 
 need to think of them. The hot days, passed, increasing 
 their fatigue, diminishing the flour and coffee and ex 
 hausting other provisions; but producing no effect on 
 their supply of courage and determination. However, 
 the help of those who help themselves, according to the 
 proverb, was accorded them. After a while, no matter 
 how early they rose in the morning, nor how fast they 
 ran across the dark yard, they found the fire lighted in 
 the stove, the water boiling, hominy simmering, and the 
 biscuits ready for baking. Old Aglone was always 
 before them. How could the poor old thing, who could 
 barely stand on her feet, manage to slip out of her own 
 home and come into this one so easily that no one heard 
 her? The little girls asked this of each other in wonder 
 every day, when they, for their part, could not lift a 
 damper from the stove without letting it fall, nor ap 
 proach a pot without knocking it over by its long handle. 
 And every day when they fell asleep (and strive as they 
 did against it, with all the good will they possessed, they 
 did fall asleep, no matter where they were, in their chairs 
 or sitting on the gallery steps, every day about eleven 
 o clock when the boys were in front working in the 
 garden, and the yard was so quiet that even the chickens 
 seemed to be keeping still) they always fell asleep with 
 out knowing it, and always awoke, thinking they were in 
 bed with their heads on their soft pillows, opening their 
 eyes and closing them again, dreamingly; pouting or 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 291 
 
 smiling. When at last they did awake they would always 
 see Papa Pinseau, sitting in a chair near them on the 
 gallery with Belle at his feet, looking hard into the upper 
 branches of the wild cherry tree, however much he may 
 have been looking at them before; noting, as he must 
 have done, how pale and thin they were growing; how 
 tired and how red and scarred their little hands were, 
 for when did they ever pour hot water from the kettle 
 without scalding them? They never heard him come 
 in any more than they did Aglone, although his feet 
 were gouty and awkward enough to betray any one. 
 And they never heard him tiptoeing about the kitchen, 
 slily taking little bundles wrapped in paper from his 
 pockets and slipping them into jars (Belle following him 
 sedately) ; peeping into the soup pot, and lifting the 
 cover from the daube; and sitting down afterward and 
 flipping away the flies and mosquitoes from the children 
 with his soft bandanna handkerchief. Poor Papa 
 Pinseau! As he watched the children of Talbot as 
 suredly, he must have thought of the past and of his 
 old political campaign ; of his farcical oratorical attempts 
 against Talbot, and of Talbot s really eloquent outbursts 
 at every mention of Pinseau s frivolous name for no 
 one could deny that Talbot was an orator at least when 
 expressing contempt and indignation. And there was 
 the eloquent, contemptuous Talbot in there fighting for 
 his life with the fever; and he, the frivolous Pinseau, 
 out here on his kitchen gallery watching his children and 
 minding his pots! No wonder that his humorous smile 
 came and went over his lips ! 
 
 When, at last, the little girls would yawn and stretch 
 themselves awake, vowing that they had never been 
 
292 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 asleep at all but awake the whole time and knew when 
 he came in, he would fall in with their humor, and divert 
 them so well that they would forget everything else but 
 himself just like the ladies of old, whom he had 
 diverted. It must be conceded that the eloquent Talbot, 
 however superior he may have been in other things, 
 could not be compared with the frivolous Pinseau, in 
 the ability to please the ladies, old or young. The more 
 the little girls laughed, the more gain did he seem to 
 think it ; and the closer he saw the black cloud descending 
 upon the house across the yard, the more he strove to 
 turn, and the better he succeeded in turning, the eyes 
 of the little girls from it. And then he would go into the 
 kitchen with them (Belle lending herself too, to the 
 humor of the situation) and looking around, they would 
 find the little bundles he had hidden away and would 
 open them. Then he, with all the care and delicacy in 
 the world, would show exactly how to cook the contents 
 of the bundles, touching the seasonings as lightly as if 
 they were jewels; the little girls meanwhile listening and 
 watching with keen interest and enthusiastic appreciation. 
 Gourmets are always the best of cooks and therefore the 
 best teachers of cooks. 
 
 If the haughty Talbot could have seen him then! 
 And his daughters in such society! 
 
 When Papa Pinseau had hobbled away; as surely as 
 the afternoon came, Polly s friend, the old Kentucky 
 gentleman would make his appearance in the street, 
 walking leisurely along, switching the weeds with his 
 cane, carrying a great paper bag, well filled, in his hand. 
 He would push open the back gate as the mendicants did, 
 and entering, take the seat on the gallery that Papa 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 293 
 
 Pinseau had just left. Then the busy little girls would 
 leave him to distribute their charity out of the kitchen 
 window to the negro soldiers, and he would hear the 
 latters soft voices whining out: 
 
 "For God s sake, little Miss!" 
 
 " Ain t you got somethin for a poor hungry nigger, 
 little Miss?" 
 
 " I se starvin , little Miss ! " 
 
 " Dey most killed me in horspital, little Miss ! " 
 
 He would throw back his head and laugh silently to 
 himself, showing his white teeth behind his white beard 
 and mustache, murmuring : " the rascals, the rascals," 
 with a true Kentuckian s enjoyment of a joke. He 
 seemed indeed so amused that smiles hovered about 
 his lips a long time afterward. Like Monsieur Pinseau, 
 he must also have had a comical past to look back 
 upon. 
 
 When the little girls came back to their places, they 
 would all talk about the chickens. He seemed to be as 
 fond of game chickens as their Papa, and could be as 
 much entertained as he by the airs of an old rooster or 
 the antics of a young one. And looking at the chickens, 
 he would relate to them all the circumstances of the vari 
 ous exciting chicken fights of his youth in Kentucky ; and 
 tell them further all about the most beautiful country 
 that God had ever created : its fine horses, its blue grass, 
 and its women, known as the most famous belles in all 
 the world, he told them. The little girls who had never 
 heard of such supremely lovely women in their little 
 lives and could never hear enough about them could, 
 as they listened, again forget the black cloud over the 
 house across the yard. As he described the marvelous 
 
294 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 complexions of these famous belles of his youth, such as 
 no other women in the world had, and their hands like 
 the hands of goddesses, he said he would pull out of his 
 pocket a cake of sweet soap, a pot of cold cream, or a 
 bottle of eau de Cologne, and show the little girls (with 
 the taste and delicacy that Monsieur Pinseau had ex 
 hibited over cooking) how to make their hands like the 
 hands of the Kentucky belles. And so the little girls 
 would wash and rub and cream their hands diligently 
 under his supervision, and wipe them on the fine large 
 linen handkerchiefs he brought fresh every day and 
 always forgot to take away with him; and they would 
 eat the fruit out of his great bag every afternoon every 
 afternoon; they needed no better entertainment. And 
 Polly the chatterbox, who loved talking even more than 
 she did beauty, would relate to him all the happenings 
 of the little house; tell him, in order to keep talking, 
 anything, everything; (so different from the wise little 
 Cicely!) never heeding what she said, for she could no 
 more look where she was going in her talking than in her 
 walking. And so every day he heard the same things: 
 Madame Joachim; Papa Pinseau and his cooking and 
 the little bundles; old Aglone. And every day, without 
 fail, he heard the story of the barrel of flour and sack 
 of coffee how the grocer had given them in payment 
 for legal advice, and how her Papa talked about them in 
 his illness and how they made him believe there was 
 plenty left, as there would have been if they hadn t given 
 so much to the negro soldiers, who came begging more 
 and more because more and more of them fell sick, and 
 the Yankees treated them worse and worse. ... Ah! 
 he was well informed about the negroes and their ill 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 295 
 
 treatment at the hands of their barracks masters ! This 
 part of the conversation must inevitably have come 
 to an end had not another barrel of flour and another 
 sack of coffee been received just in the nick of time : a 
 whole barrel and a whole sack, not half ones as before. 
 Nobody could have enjoyed their surprise with them 
 more than the old gentleman, nor rejoiced more at their 
 relief from the consequences of their charity. He, too, 
 thought it must be the good grocer who sent them, and 
 praised him for it. 
 
 When the time came for him to leave, he turned from 
 the back gate into a little side lane instead of proceeding 
 by the street, and so reached the Levee. As he walked 
 along now, he did not flip at the weeds with his cane, 
 and there was no smile of humorous anticipation on his 
 lips. He bent his head reflectively, and clasped his hands 
 over his cane behind his back, the thoughts that had 
 been amusing him fading from his face. Abstractedly 
 he answered the greeting of the officers on the Levee, 
 and, turning into the donjon-like portals of the barracks, 
 barely noticed the sentinels presenting arms to him. Not 
 so did he leave it. To be the Colonel in command of the 
 barracks and a Kentuckian seemed always a joke to him 
 in the morning, when like a young man he would start 
 out fresh for the continuation of his boyish fun in the 
 mystification of the little girls: his little blossom of 
 romance after the hard war. (Kentuckians can never 
 grow old, or rather even in old age, never cease to be 
 young; and even in old age, can no more live without 
 romance than without jokes). His romance! It was 
 his romance that made him sad now and that made that 
 radiant lady Victory who had crowned the banner he had 
 
296 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 fought under seem now, as he looked upon her, to be 
 weeping. 
 
 All the while in the house the patient was making his 
 struggle for life, his last struggle as it began to appear to 
 him. 
 
 " I cannot hold out much longer," he would whisper 
 wistfully to the doctor who was constantly running in 
 to see him, like a commander constantly running upon 
 the ramparts to watch the foe. 
 
 " Hold out to the end and then still hold out ; that 
 is all you have to do." The graver the situation, the 
 more jocular the doctor became. 
 
 " I am doing my best but my strength is going 
 fast." He seemed hardly to have the breath to say it. 
 
 " No stronghold in history," said the doctor majesti 
 cally, as if he had the whole of history at his finger ends, 
 " would ever have been taken by the enemy if it had 
 held out only a little longer. You, who know history, 
 know that." 
 
 And still he fell every day into delirium; still he 
 came out to meet his anxieties and responsibilities; still 
 he measured his chances in the struggle; still he cal 
 culated; just as he had done when the Confederacy was 
 making its last stand. 
 
 " Where are the boys? " he asked suddenly one after 
 noon. 
 
 " Ah, he has noticed that I have kept the children 
 out of the room," his wife said exultantly to herself. 
 " I knew it, the fever was weakening only the body ! " 
 And as if she had heard a piece of good news, she hurried 
 out and called the boys in. 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 297 
 
 They were always within call now, never leaving the 
 garden except to go to their books on the gallery. They 
 never even undressed when they went to bed, but threw 
 themselves down in their clothes in case they were 
 wanted; always determined to keep awake, but always, 
 poor boys, going to sleep. 
 
 They snatched up their books and hastened at the call, 
 stumbling over their own feet and dropping one book 
 after the other from their trembling hands. Their 
 mother stood at the head of the bed, holding the mosquito 
 netting in her hands as a screen, her eyes fixed upon 
 them, her head firm and erect. They needed her look 
 and gesture; for their knees trembled as much as their 
 hands when they reached the bed. She prompting them, 
 they opened a book, turned the leaves, and showed the 
 marks of their lessons; then clearing their voices, their 
 words running together from nervousness, they told 
 how fast they were getting through Gibbon, and, poor 
 boys! how much interested they were in it. At that 
 moment indeed, trying to keep back their tears at the 
 sight of their father emaciated, weak, strange, and 
 changed beyond all recognition they would have sworn 
 devotion to any book ; even to that secret horror of their 
 minds the Bible, their Sunday imposition. 
 
 " Study/ Their father s whisper, so low and faint, 
 frightened them as much as his appearance. " Work. * 
 Then with a great effort he repeated the word: 
 " Work." His eyes closed. After a pause that seemed 
 never-ending, he opened them, and a glance of his old 
 warmth lighted them, as, looking beyond his sons toward 
 the door, he whispered : " Cribiche." 
 
 It was Cribiche, barefooted as usual, and dirty; his 
 
298 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 blue colonnade trousers hanging by one suspender, his 
 shirt unbuttoned. Cribiche did not go to his bed at 
 all of nights. He lay on the gallery outside, close to the 
 window of the sick room, where, like a sleeping watch 
 dog, he could hear every movement within. He had 
 more nerve than the sons and therefore could come for 
 ward steadily. He spoke in a voice that the wife herself 
 might have envied, laying by the sick one s hands some 
 birds he had killed for him. Every day he had managed 
 to kill some and bring them. 
 
 "Study work " The feeble lips tried to add 
 
 something else as he looked at the three, but he could only 
 murmur indistinctly, and the eyelids dropped again over 
 the struggling eyes. The boys started to withdraw, but 
 by some divine inspiration they were enabled to under 
 stand the meaning of their mother s eyes, her lips, the 
 movement of her head. They put the question that she, 
 with divine intuition, had guessed. 
 
 " Is there anything we can do for you, Father? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," came the eager answer, dissipating the 
 lethargy that was creeping over him. " Tommy Cook 
 Tommy Cook." 
 
 They started as they were, without hats, without car 
 fare, but the latter made no difference; they could run 
 faster than the mule car could travel. They ran all the 
 long way into the city, looking neither to the right nor 
 to the left, but straight ahead, with their message before 
 their eyes. 
 
 Pere Phileas was working in his garden. There was 
 always as much work for him to do in it as in the parish ; 
 the devil being as busy with his tares in the one as in 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 299 
 
 the other, and the rich soil growing the one, as prolifically 
 as the rich Gascon nature the other. It is not surprising 
 that his garden often appeared to the priest like a parish, 
 his parish like a garden; and that he pulled up weeds 
 as if they were sins and tried to pull up sins as if they 
 were weeds. The bright afternoon sun shone from its 
 blue heavens, benignantly over him, shedding its warmth, 
 impartially, as is its wont over the good and the bad alike ; 
 over that which has to be removed for the welfare of 
 the rest, as over that which has to be kept for the welfare 
 of the rest. And so were his thoughts doubtless running 
 along, in company with his busy hands, when his arm 
 was pulled violently. " Mon Pere! Mon Pere!" 
 Cribiche s voice and hands trembled with excitement, 
 his breath came in gasps : " Mon Pere, pray for him ! 
 Quick! Quick! pray for him! The priest straightened 
 himself up, and put his hand on the small of his back, 
 which was where the weeds at least hurt him most. 
 
 Cribiche pulled at his arm again, and repeated his 
 hurried : " Pray for him ! Pray for him, quick ! " And 
 he looked across the street at the cottage of the 
 Americans, so quiet and peaceable behind its trees. " He 
 will die he looks like he will die ! " 
 
 The priest turned as if to go to his work again, saying 
 calmly : 
 
 You will lose a good friend, my son." 
 
 " But," replied the boy eagerly, " if you pray for him, 
 Mon Pere, if you pray for him " 
 
 The priest shook his head thoughtfully : " Ah, you 
 remember now that there is a good God in heaven ! But 
 where is your friend the devil? Your master that you 
 serve so well ? Why do you not go to him ? " 
 
300 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Cribiche looked at him angrily : " You pray for any 
 body, for any rascal and thief and . . ." 
 
 The priest interrupted him : " Yes, the rascal, the thief, 
 the good-for-nothing ... I pray for them ! " 
 
 " Mon Pere, if you saw him, you would pray for 
 him." Cribiche s trembling lips related what had just 
 taken place ; the priest, listened willingly ; he liked to hear 
 any version of what was going on about him in the 
 parish. 
 
 "Why do you not pray for him yourself, my son? 
 When you want something, it is better to ask for it 
 yourself." 
 
 "Mon Pere ..." 
 
 "If you want your good friend to live and if he 
 dies, I do not know what will become of you but the 
 devil knows the friend that you love so much . . ." 
 added the priest vindictively, " that you love so much 
 and work for so hard . . . but," softening his voice : " if 
 you want your good friend to live, pray for him your 
 self." 
 
 " Mon Pere," cried Cribiche desperately : " They will 
 listen to you, they won t listen to me ! " 
 
 " And why," asked the priest softly, very softly, " why 
 will they not listen to you? " 
 
 Cribiche gave a wild look of despair at the bright sky 
 above, where dwelt his offended God. 
 
 " Mon Pere, I can t, I can t ... I don t know any 
 prayers." 
 
 " But why, my son ? " 
 
 " I don t know any prayers." 
 
 " And why do you not know any prayers, my son ? " 
 
 The boy leaned hopelessly against the arm he had 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 301 
 
 shaken, and sobbed, as if he had been born a child who 
 could afford to cry and had been granted a parent s 
 bosom to cry upon. 
 
 "He will die. He will die!" 
 
 The priest had never seen him cry like a child before. 
 
 " That is as God wills, my son." 
 
 He put his arm around Cribiche s shoulder, and bent 
 his head over him. 
 
 " My son, if you want your good friend to live, you 
 must pray for him yourself." 
 
 " I don t know any prayers," came the answer through 
 sobs, as Cribiche pressed his head closer against the 
 priest. " They won t listen to me, they will listen to you. 
 If you pray, maybe God, maybe God ..." 
 
 The good priest had reached the end of his simple 
 comedy. " My child," he said in a different tone, laying 
 his hand tenderly on the bushy black head of Cribiche : 
 " Go and make what prayer you can. When they see 
 you up there " (the priest fixed his eyes on the blue 
 above) " trying to pray, they may be sorry for you 
 and . . . Go, go, you will find out what to pray . . . 
 God knows all, my child, remember that, He knows 
 all ... And when he sees you on your knees praying, 
 you, his poor little orphan, who knows? Who 
 knows? . . . Tell Him you will fulfil your duties to 
 Him. You will go to confession; you will make your 
 Communion; you will not neglect the church. All this 
 for love of the good friend He has sent you, whose 
 suffering has taught you in your grief the way to the 
 One who alone can help us poor mortals in our struggle 
 with sorrow and death. Tell Him " the father was 
 going on much longer, with his eyes directed above, 
 
302 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 when he was recalled by seeing the black eyes of Cribiche 
 fixed upon him and his lips, his impudent, lawless lips, 
 repeating the words after him. " Go, my child," pushing 
 him gently, " the prayers of a child are always listened 
 to and God may grant you what he would not grant 
 others. Go, and when I come in, I will pray too." 
 
 Cribiche ran away in the direction of the church as 
 hastily as the boys were running in the direction of the 
 city. 
 
 Tommy Cook sat alone in the office. He had it all 
 to himself once more, as in the days when a bloody war 
 separated its owner from it. The great bookcases with 
 their tightly packed shelves of calf-skin volumes, the 
 heavy mahogany ar moire, filled with the tin boxes of 
 litigation as he called it, seemed once more to be floating 
 like a derelict ship upon the Gulf, a prize for the nearest 
 captor at hand. The Confederate lawyers, dropping in 
 day after day to ask news of their sick friend, grew more 
 and more polite of manner to Tommy Cook, more and 
 more considerate of tone to him. As Tommy Cook saw, 
 they were getting ready for the floating prize. The 
 enterprising among them did not limit their interest to 
 the life of their friend; but would casually extend it 
 to the eventuality of his death; glancing at the armoire 
 of litigation ; the business of which though in ruins, like 
 the plantations of the State, would revive like them and 
 flower into money again when the political condition of 
 the South was restored to its proper statu quo, as they 
 classically expressed their domination of it. That was 
 the land of Canaan toward whose possession they were 
 fighting their way with all the ruse and artifice of ac- 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 303 
 
 complished politicians added to the determined courage 
 of the tried warriors they were ; stepping over the bodies 
 of their friends and comrades who fell from among them 
 by the way; leaving them behind as they had learned to 
 leave the bodies of friends behind, on the other battle 
 fields. But only their bodies, only their bodies, as Tommy 
 Cook observed to himself ; not the business that the dead 
 man might have in his pocket. That was looked after 
 as they were looking after their friend Talbot s business, 
 to carry it along with them into the land of Canaan. 
 It would flower there, they knew, as well for one pos 
 sessor as another. 
 
 So Tommy Cook, in imagination, saw his old patron 
 stepped over and left behind, as in his memory many 
 another good man had been. After a season of cold, 
 heat, rain, and sunshine, a skeleton of a name would be 
 all that would be left of him. In a little while that too 
 would have disappeared and all the work that he had 
 done and all that he had prepared to do, all his accumu 
 lation of study, thought, books, and papers, would serve 
 the ambition and fortune of another whose business and 
 interest it would be to see that their friend Talbot was 
 well and surely forgotten. Tommy Cook had learend 
 the modus operandi of it, as he called the process. The 
 place he occupied was the best possible one for the 
 picking-up of such knowledge. And in his experience, 
 as in that of others, it was ever the best man who was 
 the easiest forgotten. The longest remembered were the 
 men who had enriched the community with their money, 
 not with their lives; whose lives had indeed to be ran 
 somed from the contempt of posterity by their money. 
 
 As he sat thus in the office, in communion with him- 
 
3 o 4 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 self, the two boys, hot, bareheaded, dusty, and out of 
 breath, ran in to him with their summons. 
 
 Although he was dressed in black like a lawyer, was 
 clean shaven of any beard he might have had, and would 
 have been taken, by any one who did not know him, for 
 a respectable young professional Tommy Cook, in the 
 eyes of the house he entered, was still only, little Tommy 
 Cook, the errand boy of the office ; one who sat in the hall 
 and waited for answers and (being white and in a menial 
 position) was looked on with disdain by the negro slave 
 who opened the door to his polite ring. In his own eyes 
 too, he must have been only the little street ragamuffin 
 and newspaper boy who had been jerked up one day 
 from his dice throwing with other ragamuffins on the 
 pavement and made to go upstairs to the office. He 
 must have been still only that in his own eyes, as he 
 entered the sick room and saw his patron on the bed 
 sleeping, and as he sat there waiting for him to wake. 
 
 " As if any one," the poor wife thought, " could wake 
 from such a still white sleep." 
 
 What would Tommy Cook have been at the present 
 moment if that skeleton hand had not caught him up 
 from his gambling and had not caned him, too, when 
 ever he was caught at it afterward? What would he 
 have been now if the inexorable will of that corpselike 
 head had not forced him to learn his letters ; and then to 
 write; and then to go to school? His patron was a 
 young lawyer at that time, just admitted to the bar. He 
 slept in a room adjoining the office. And Tommy, who 
 had been given a closet adjoining the room, would wake 
 up at night and see him many a time, still in the evening 
 dress of dinner or ball, sitting at the office table, studying 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 305 
 
 and reading. That was before he was married. Tommy 
 had known him longer than his wife. He had been 
 picked up out of the gutters at ten and he was now 
 twenty-five. Fifteen years he had been living under this 
 patron, and with him ; serving him, watching him, copy 
 ing him, trying to please him, hunting up authorities 
 for him as soon as he could read, taking down notes for 
 him as soon as he could write distinctly, learning to know 
 his affairs even better than he knew them himself. For 
 Tommy lived closer to earth and had a mind that could 
 creep into little business holes and places that the mind 
 of a gentleman could not condescend to. 
 
 As he sat at the foot of the bed, he looked indeed 
 more like the poor little fellow he had been than the 
 lawyer he had become; for he had never outgrown his 
 thin, starved face, and the small sad, bright eyes that 
 had first attracted the attention of the handsome young 
 lawyer passing by on the sidewalk. His black hair was 
 plastered down now with pomatum instead of hanging 
 over his eyes, and his face was clean and white; that, 
 with his clothes, made the only difference, after all, in 
 his appearance. He sat crouched down in his chair, 
 with his narrow shoulders bent, just as he used to sit in 
 the hall waiting for answers. 
 
 From under his half-closed lids the eyes of the sick 
 man looked at him, with a soft, gentle, fixed gaze, as at 
 something in a dream; one of the dreams of his long, 
 long sleep. 
 
 " Hello, Tommy, is that you? " 
 
 The words slipped in the faintest breath of a whisper 
 through the immovable lips. 
 
 Tommy gave a start at the sound of the old familiar 
 
306 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 greeting, faint though it was, and uttered as in a dream. 
 But it was his patron s old familiar greeting and no 
 one else s; the greeting of the days when his patron was 
 a young lawyer and lived in the office room. 
 
 He came around to the side of the bed. 
 
 Yes, Sir," he answered as he used to do, when he 
 stood cap in hand at the office table. 
 
 " Tommy," but the weak voice gave out and only a 
 sigh followed. 
 
 " Yes, Sir." 
 
 By a great effort, the weak lids were raised and the 
 anxious eyes looked slowly around the room; seeing no 
 one but Tommy : " Tommy," he whispered. Tommy 
 bent over him. " I cannot hold out much longer my 
 strength is almost gone." The words fell slowly, with 
 long pauses separating them, but the will behind them 
 forced them out. " Stay here in the house, until " 
 
 "Yes, Sir." 
 
 How well Tommy knew his patron! His voice was 
 as clear and steady as if he were being sent to court on 
 an errand. But he bent still closer over the thin white 
 face and watched the closed eyes. The lids slowly 
 struggled open again and the great eyes looked into 
 Tommy s bright eyes above. 
 
 " My library," he sighed a long trembling sigh that 
 cut the heart of one to hear it. " Sell it at once to 
 
 pay give the money to my wife. My business " 
 
 another long sigh. 
 
 " Would you like to see some of your friends, Sir? " 
 
 " No, no," he tried to shake his head. 
 
 Ah, Tommy ! Where would you go to find a friend for 
 him ? One that he could trust ? 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 307 
 
 " My family food food." 
 
 The words were inarticulate. He felt them to be so, 
 for he opened his eyes and fixed them upon Tommy with 
 a look so piercing that the boy fell upon his knees and 
 putting his ugly little face close to the god-like head 
 on the pillow said steadily : " I will attend to everything, 
 Sir. I will look after the office and the business as I 
 looked after them when you were in the war, when I 
 was keeping them for you against your coming back. 
 I will keep them for you, just the same now, Sir, as if 
 you were coming back. And if you were to come back, 
 Sir, you would find me there, Sir, just as you found me 
 before taking care of your office, looking after your 
 interests for you until you came back." 
 
 Looking at the thin face and closed eyes under 
 him, Tommy ventured yet further, whispering close 
 into the ear on the pillow ! " You know, Sir, there 
 is no one on this earth owes as much to you as I do; 
 there is no one would work for you as I would. You 
 know that and you know me, don t you, Sir ? You ought 
 to know me, Sir. You picked me up out of the gutter, 
 and if there is any good in me you put in there, and if 
 you cannot trust me now, Sir, you had better have left 
 me a dog in the gutter. And I wish to God you had left 
 me a dog in the gutter if you cannot trust me now." 
 
 He said it simply. The ragamuffin who had learned 
 so much about life had never learned the fine language 
 of sentiment. He who could mimic so inimitably could 
 not mimic that. He had shed no tears since his drunken 
 mother had been taken by death from beating him; 
 but they came to his eyes now. As he talked, he wiped 
 them away with his finger. Like his patron, he thought 
 
308 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 no one was in the room ; no one, he thought, heard him ; 
 no one saw him, his patron s eyes being still closed. 
 
 It was true, all true. If he could not trust Tommy, 
 whom could he trust ? Since he had picked him up from 
 the gutter, he had always found the boy sitting in some 
 corner of the office whenever he entered it : a thin, puny, 
 miserable little cripple boy, always eager to do something 
 for him. When indeed had Tommy not gladly responded 
 to his call like a dog to a whistle? Cold, rain, hunger, 
 fatigue when had Tommy ever felt them if his patron 
 required a service? When had he ever asked for any 
 thing for himself ? A reward ? Between them there had 
 never been a question of such a thing. And what was 
 there in life worse than the sad misery, the hard work, 
 the contempt and humiliation that had been Tommy s 
 portion in it? Yet, he had borne it all with a laugh. 
 Who had ever heard him complain of his lot or of his 
 thin undersized body, his crippled foot ? And during the 
 war, when he could have done so easily what others had 
 done, made a position and fortune for himself out of the 
 loot of conquest; when his patron was absent, dead for 
 all he knew what had he done? He had sat in the 
 office protecting its interests and studying to make a 
 lawyer of himself. He had succeeded too. Where, among 
 all the ardent gentlemen fighting in the State for their 
 politics and their bread, was there a better one? And 
 if there was a book left in the office to sell now, if there 
 was a dollar now to be made out of it for wife or child, 
 to whom was it owing? 
 
 If all this passed through the mind of her who stood 
 behind the head of the bed hearing, seeing all, pressing 
 her hands upon her heart to keep it still must it not 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 309 
 
 have passed through his mind also? He, who was 
 so much more just, so much more sensitive to merit 
 than she was, so much more piteous of struggling 
 humanity ! 
 
 Did he see himself, picking up the boy as Jove might 
 have picked up a boor s brat? (For no Jove could 
 indeed have been more self-confident than he was at that 
 time.) There must have been some sudden revival of 
 the forgotten thrill of the old, intimate, and subtle tie 
 that daily companionship weaves between man and boy; 
 or it may have been only the picture of the office con 
 jured up so vividly before him by Tommy s words: the 
 office, with all it contained of his past and all that he had 
 thought it contained of his future, as he saw it before 
 him at that time. There was the business so faithfully 
 worked for; the knowledge so patiently acquired, the 
 foundations of fortune and reputation so conscientiously 
 laid to last forever ! Or perhaps it was the bitter waters 
 of defeat that overwhelmed him : the surrender, so much 
 worse than the one that had made the oldest and strongest 
 soldiers in the army shed tears. For he was alone in 
 this humiliation; all by himself in this surrender; and 
 perhaps worst shame and humiliation of all perhaps 
 he was to die in this second defeat perhaps, not be 
 allowed to fight his way out of it, but was to lie, a corpse 
 in a graveyard while other men marched to the redemp 
 tion of their land and of themselves. Or, it may have 
 been only mortal weakness, for life is sweet and to die 
 is a sorrow to the best of us. But, as Tommy was 
 wiping the tears from his eyes, a tear forced itself from 
 under the lid of the eye beneath him and rolled down the 
 long, white cheek. 
 
3io THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 Tommy, awed, slipped away into silence and into his 
 place at the foot of the bed. 
 
 Ah, there is no departure in life that cannot be better 
 prepared for than the one for which so much prepara 
 tion is needed. At the last, when there is so much to 
 be said and when (as we think about it in health) no 
 words are quite important enough for the saying of it, 
 the mind is too drowsy with the sleep that is coming on 
 to care for anything but that, and the lips hurry over the 
 words as if wanting only to be done and quit with them 
 forever. 
 
 The sick one seemed to feel all this and he strove to 
 keep his eyes open and his mind awake so that if he had 
 to depart, he might not do so, leaving disorder behind 
 him. 
 
 " Mariana ! Mariana ! " The sweet musical name fell 
 from his stiff dry lips, like the poetry learned in his 
 youth. He repeated it over and over again, as if it were 
 cooling drops to his parched mouth. 
 
 "Mariana!" 
 
 Madame Joachim thought that the fever was coming 
 on again and delirium taking possession of his mind ; but 
 his eyes instead of closing as in delirium were wide gpen 
 and filled with meaning, the meaning that he wanted to 
 put in his incoherent sentences. 
 
 " Mariana !" 
 
 "Here I am; here I am beside youl" his wife 
 answered in her pleasant natural voice; almost gay it 
 sounded in the still, little room. Had the fever been in 
 reality the impersonation that the doctor and Madame 
 Joachim liked to imagine, what would he have thought 
 of that voice from that shadow of a woman ! 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 
 
 "Mariana!" 
 
 " I am here." 
 
 "Yes, I see you, I hear you. Always the same; 
 always by me night and day . . . always the same ..." 
 
 Of all that he had in his sleepy mind to say, that he 
 saw so clearly must be said, this was all he could utter. 
 
 "Mariana!" 
 
 " I am here, close to you." 
 
 " Yes, always the same, day and night, day and night." 
 
 He stopped the foolish words slipping through his lips 
 as in delirium. He opened his eyes wide, and gave a 
 long, a longing look into hers. He seemed to try to 
 brace his mind; but what he wanted to say seemed to 
 wander crookedly before him ; he followed his meaning, 
 nevertheless, forcing himself to go on, word by word. 
 
 " Mariana, my wife, when I had to leave you in the 
 city, in the power of the enemy, I told you to come out 
 to me, on the plantation. You came, I knew you would, 
 you came to me. When I had to leave you alone, on the 
 plantation, alone, all alone, with the children no neigh 
 bors, no friends, alone in the swamp alone I was 
 not afraid I was sure of you. In all the sickness in 
 all the danger, I was not afraid I was sure of you. 
 When I used to come creeping through the swamps, 
 in the night I knew I would find you there always 
 found you there, awake, sitting up waiting for me 
 awake, waiting ready to open the door, for me." 
 
 The perspiration broke out on his white forehead, 
 moistening his hair; but he forced himself on, word by 
 ;word. 
 
 " In the army, before a battle men were afraid on 
 account of their wives and their children they would 
 
312 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 nearly go crazy thinking what would happen to them 
 afterward I was not afraid, I was sure of my wife. 
 Mariana ! " 
 
 " I am here, I am here close to you." 
 
 " I was not afraid, I was sure of her, sure of her/ he 
 repeated triumphantly. " Always brave, always cheer 
 ful, never cast down never discouraged never tired 
 I, often but you never, never you! braver than I 
 better than I, better than I " Like slow gathering drops 
 from a wound the words grew fainter, more sluggish. 
 He had got to the end. 
 
 " My husband ! My husband ! You, not I ! My God ! 
 It was you, not I ! " 
 
 The poor woman had risen from her knees; pale, 
 trembling, at last at the end of her strength and fortitude. 
 She wanted to scream the words aloud. She thought she 
 was screaming them; but no! She did not disturb his 
 repose. She stood, holding on to the post of the bed 
 to keep from falling, she leaned her head against it, 
 to stop the whirling in it; but she let no word, no sound, 
 pass her lips. 
 
 "Mariana! ..." 
 
 But here the doctor came into the room, noisily as 
 ever. 
 
 " Well, my friend, and how are you ? Better, 
 eh?" 
 
 Doctors have little originality, or care little for variety 
 in their salutations. This one had been used day after 
 day, week after week, and always in the same loud voice, 
 as if there were nothing so proper for a fever as a 
 loud, unconcerned voice. But he always roused his 
 patient. 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 313 
 
 " I cannot hold out " the breath hardly holding out 
 to whisper it. " I have to give up." 
 
 " Not yet! Not yet," responded the doctor cheerfully. 
 " You must not give up, you must make the fever give 
 up, eh?" 
 
 He made a sign to Madame Joachim, to open the 
 window near the bed for more light. 
 
 " No strength ..." the words barely fluttered from 
 the lips. 
 
 " You think you are badly off, eh? " asked the doctor. 
 " Well, you should see the fever ! He is worse off than 
 you," bending close, " I can tell you. He could not take 
 another case now if I gave it to him. But," laying his 
 finger on the pulse, and turning his ear upon the heart, 
 "but you ..." 
 
 " My God ! " exclaimed Madame Joachim to herself, 
 " how can he lie so ! " 
 
 The wife winced in pain at the word case. 
 
 " I tell you what to do," he said to Madame Joachim, 
 and speaking louder still so there could be no doubt 
 about the patient s hearing. (She knew that maneuver 
 of his so well.) " You go to Joachim, and you tell him 
 to give you a bottle of his good Spanish wine." He 
 described the bottle to her. " And you catch your oldest 
 and toughest chicken you know the kind for soup, 
 eh ? And you put it on. We ll show that fever ! " 
 he declared as if he had merely been playing with it 
 hitherto. 
 
 Out on the kitchen gallery, Papa Pinseau sat through 
 the afternoon putting off his dinner from hour to hour; 
 and with him sat the other old gentleman, the Kentuckian, 
 Polly s friend. As Papa Pinseau had encroached upon 
 
3H THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 his time, so he encroached upon Papa Pinseau s; coming 
 in the morning, and sitting through the day. He too 
 put off his dinner ; but what did dinner matter to an old 
 soldier and an old hunter? And all day on the kitchen 
 step sat Jerry; looking toward the house, rising only to 
 separate the young roosters when they fought too noisily. 
 On the front gallery steps were Tommy Cook, and 
 the two boys, and Cribiche ; all of them waiting for what 
 no one mentioned, however much each one was thinking 
 of it. But the little girls ! The only change in them was 
 that they ran about the kitchen more excitedly than ever, 
 answering more decidedly than ever " Papa s better " 
 to any inquiry about him, as they had answered steadily 
 from the first day, holding their heads higher than ever 
 as they felt the craven spirit of uneasiness gaining 
 ground about them. The longer the fever lasted, the 
 more determined were they not to give in to it. The 
 old gentlemen on the gallery must have seen this in their 
 pity. 
 
 When it was dark, they took their leave, and the little 
 girls went to bed, to whisper what they would do the 
 next day. But the Kentuckian, went away only to wait 
 until he thought it was safe for him to return and take 
 his place on the gallery again; sitting bolt upright in his 
 chair throughout the night; looking up at the stars, like 
 a soldier at the door of his tent. 
 
 The doctor remained also, instead of going home when 
 his day s duties were over; and like the good soldier he 
 too was, sat on watch by the side of his patient. 
 
 Then the routine of so many long nights held the 
 house as usual ; no sound but the clock ticking away the 
 hours; no motion but the soft easy swaying of the fan 
 
THE FAITHFUL WARRIOR 315 
 
 over the bed; now and then a drink of water given; at 
 certain intervals, a potion of medicine; the shade taken 
 from the light and put back again no one speaking, all 
 watching the patient, alone, oblivious and uncon 
 cerned. 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 
 
 ON such long Summer afternoons the young San 
 Antonio ladies were at their happiest. The roses in their 
 garden were not fonder of warmth and brightness than 
 they; nor did the roses make a richer show of beauty 
 and color than they nor a sweeter dispensation of fra 
 grance when the time came for them to emerge from 
 their chambers, in their thin, trailing white organdie 
 dresses; all ruffles and lace, breathing the subtile scent 
 of French perfumes around them (Madame Doucelet 
 herself was subtile to extreme about perfumes; the dis 
 cretion of one as she called it the indiscretion of 
 another. ) 
 
 Even Madame Doucelet, who strained her eyes to 
 discover defects in the young ladies in order that she 
 might have the pleasure of something to correct, even 
 she, could find no fault with them, externally. As she 
 saw it only original flaws remained; the mistakes of 
 their Creator, who, Madame Doucelet was forced to con 
 fess despite her carefully acquired piety made more 
 failures than successes in the production of perfect female 
 beauty. The hair, the complexion, the neck and the 
 arms, so naively exposed under the thin muslin; the 
 waist, the hands, the feet; the walking, the standing, 
 the sitting; God alone, who knew the truth, would have 
 taken them for the daughters of Tony, the barkeeper, 
 and of the market-woman, downstairs, in her short 
 
 316 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 317 
 
 colonnade skirt and loose sacque, sorting onions and 
 garlic. 
 
 And, never did the demoiselles San Antonio sing so 
 well, so near the complete beauty of their voices, as on 
 these long, Summer afternoons, in their fine thin dresses, 
 with their throats bare and free, looking at their reflec 
 tion in the glass, and listening to their notes, soaring as 
 has been said like escaping birds through the open 
 windows into the soft, fragrant atmosphere outside; 
 to listening admirers on the Levee. 
 
 " Love, love, always love," Mademoiselle Minii would 
 exclaim to herself, wearied of the everlasting amorous 
 refrain of the words and timing her measure to the 
 vocalization above her : " Love, love, always love ! Mon 
 Dieu, how monotonous ! " 
 
 She herself was not at her best on these warm after 
 noons. The perspiration rolled from her red face, and 
 the cadenzas, runs, arpeggios, and trills grew more and 
 more slippery under her moist fingers. The toilettes of 
 expectation, as she called them, suited well the theme 
 of the singing, that seemed to be always seeking, seeking 
 something, until the something was found, and the 
 doctor came into the room. 
 
 Madame Doucelet must have noticed it too; but not 
 philosophically as Mademoiselle Mimi did. There was 
 no philosophy in the mind of Madame Doucelet; no 
 theories, no generalizations, no reasoning, no deductions. 
 They were not necessary to such an expert as she. What 
 she saw she saw with her eyes and not with her mind, 
 as Mademoiselle Mimi did; and she had good eyes for 
 seeing a long way off. From the beginning of her official 
 duties, she had seen, with the same eyes that saw a car 
 
318 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 coming, the equivalent of what was now before her ; saw 
 it clearly. She wondered, how long it would be before 
 the young ladies themselves saw it. But, as she kept 
 telling herself in private, to ease her restrained feelings, 
 they were stupid in the extreme; stupid for all their 
 beauty and singing. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi knew when the doctor entered the 
 room, for she felt then as if her accompaniment were 
 the reins of race horses, so hard did the fresh, gushing, 
 thrilling voices pull against it, bounding ahead in all 
 the grace and strength of youth and joyousness through 
 variations, roulades, trills, as if they were nothing. Each 
 one at times rising on her toes and throwing her head 
 back so that the pearly notes might be seen throbbing in 
 the pearly throat ; each one going back to her seat after 
 ward, and extending foot or curving arm as Madame 
 Doucelet had prescribed ; or leaning back in their chairs, 
 the accomplishment that Lisida possessed to such per 
 fection of charm that her soft hair would always seem 
 to be almost falling from the tall comb to curl and glisten 
 on the bright yellow cushion behind her; the hair that 
 grew so prettily around face and neck. 
 
 Past forty, neither tall nor handsome, and with a face 
 of the most ordinary type (but such prosaic indices of 
 personality were the last things noticed or thought of, 
 in the emotion that the doctor knew how to produce; 
 the emotion, as it seemed to the observant Mademoiselle 
 Mimi, that came from the sensation of being called by 
 something unseen, unknown; and of following, follow 
 ing, that call in a charm of mystery and glamor) it did 
 not need even the presence of the doctor to produce this 
 effect. Long before he made his appearance, the effect 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 319 
 
 began to be felt. Mademoiselle Mimi saw it approach 
 ing, with the hour, with the minute; with the sound of 
 the step, the opening of the door; seeing at the same 
 time, each one of the three young ladies recede as it 
 were, further and further back into herself ; farther and 
 farther and farther away from her sisters; away from 
 even the consciousness of their presence each one 
 separately and alone in her own way to follow the call 
 that each one thought she alone heard; following it, 
 out, beyond personality, self, into forgetfulness of 
 them, of everything, save that she was following some 
 thing unseen ; but felt, moving ahead of her, calling, call 
 ing, so that one could not help following when once she 
 had heard it and begun to follow it. This was the effect 
 the doctor knew how to produce upon the young 
 ladies. 
 
 All the while, he would be walking leisurely up the 
 Levee toward the Villa Bella. As he approached it, he 
 would look at the fine old iron fence with its interlaced 
 design and brick pillars holding their vases of century 
 plants on high. As he passed up the broad walk, his quick, 
 shrewd, black eyes glanced at the handsome old garden, 
 on each side, with its parterres and fountains and palms ; 
 and at the white statuettes that appeared as if they were 
 fleeing from pursuit into the dark shadows of the mag 
 nolia trees. And as he mounted the steps of the balcony 
 with its pedestals and vases of growing plants, and 
 walked over the black and white marble pavement, his 
 eyes grew ever larger and softer with their gratification 
 at so much that they liked to look upon. 
 
 He did not stop to ring the bell ; but with the bonhomie 
 natural to him in the home of little girls he had known 
 
320 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 all their lives, in the convent; he entered without 
 ceremony among them as their old doctor; and as such 
 was familiar, almost paternal with them: calling them 
 " ma jolie brune," or " ma gentille blonde," or tapping 
 "ma petite Lisida, 3 on the cheek as he used to do to 
 all the pretty young girls at the convent ; throwing him 
 self into one of the great low satin jauteuils, leaning his 
 head back to enjoy the music; asking for the "Air de 
 sommeil" from 1 Africaine, or the Jewel Song from 
 Faust, "Ah! si 3 1 me voyait ainsi," or the "Ah! Dieu, si 
 j etais coquette " from the Huguenots, or the " Rosine 
 aria " from the " Barbier" that Lisida sang so deliciously, 
 almost like Patti, he said, or any other compliment that 
 came to him ; for it was all the same to him what they 
 sang. Notwithstanding her educational formula for 
 young ladies, one might as well suspect Madame Doucelet 
 as the doctor of caring for music. 
 
 Never forgetting herself an instant, she was always on 
 the alert to fetch a fan, or a glas of sirop and water; 
 open or close a window; advance a footstool, or a 
 pillow, as this one or that one of the young ladies needed 
 the attention to accentuate something in attitude or ex 
 pression that Madame Doucelet thought complimentary. 
 It must indeed have been a pleasure to her to note the 
 efficiency of her delicate training upon the doctor; to 
 note it as she did, with her sharp little eyes peering from 
 the dim veil she managed at certain moments to throw 
 over them. 
 
 The eyes of the doctor too, would peep out from under 
 his closed lids, now at the foot, now at the arm, now 
 at the hair ! And now, as if at last he could not resist 
 the temptation any longer, he would rise and go from one 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 321 
 
 to the other, Maria, Antonia, Lisida, to make the most 
 insignificant of remarks to her in the manner of a man 
 who has his way with women. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mimi played not more skilfully on the 
 piano than he on the instrument he best liked to practise 
 on. But Mademoiselle Mimi knew nothing of her art in 
 comparison with what he knew of his. No one, without 
 turning one s back on her, could forget Mademoiselle 
 Mimi in her music, as she sat at the piano; but no one 
 remembered the doctor in his performance, although he 
 was before one s eyes. 
 
 " Love, love," thought Mademoiselle Mimi playing 
 away. " Love, always love ! Do they never get tired 
 of singing of love? " and while meditating thus as usual 
 upon music and love, people and life, she thought she 
 heard for in truth she did not listen to the singing 
 after the doctor came in, no fear of false notes or 
 measures then she thought she heard something like an 
 animal crying ; but nobody else heard it and she went on 
 playing, until she heard the sound again : something like 
 an animal, but calling. 
 
 " It is poor old Aglone," she said to herself. " He 
 is dead; Mr. Talbot is dead." And in a flash she saw it 
 all before her; the little girls with her father in the 
 backyard; the end of life in the front room. " Aglone 
 has come for me ; that is her poor old voice, calling from 
 the back, instead of ringing the bell in front, which she 
 won t do, because she despises the rich dagoes." 
 
 By this time, she had risen from the piano, seized her 
 gloves and portfolio, and was hurrying out of the salon, 
 making a sign to the doctor, who, quick as she at an 
 inference, followed. They hurried through the hall and 
 
322 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 down the steps, the back ones, hearing the cries still 
 clearer. 
 
 " That stupid Aglone ! " exclaimed Mademoiselle Mimi 
 impatiently, this time aloud. The doctor who had no 
 thought of this kind to mislead him arrived before her 
 at the truth. He pushed by her and ran down the steps 
 and found the San Antonio woman trying to give an 
 alarm; to call assistance to her husband who was lying 
 on the brick pavement of the basement. 
 
 She had seen him leave the car and watched him as he 
 walked across the open pasture land, into which the 
 evening sun was slanting its rays; still as hot as at 
 midday. But when had Tony ever noticed the sun or 
 its heat? His wife saw he did not walk straight and 
 that he staggered every now and then. She wondered 
 at it, for Tony, whose business it was to make men drunk, 
 did not himself drink. He was too good a barkeeper, 
 as we have seen, for that. He staggered forward, as far 
 as the brick pavement, and there fell like a log and lay 
 unconscious, breathing heavily. 
 
 His wife was rubbing his hands, calling to him and 
 crying aloud; the cries of an animal, more than of a 
 woman who has given birth to daughters with beautiful 
 voices. Her daughters, hearing her cries, at last, ran 
 frightened into one of the corners of the salon and 
 crouched down, shutting their eyes and stopping their 
 ears. 
 
 Madame Doucelet hastened downstairs, and after one 
 glance at the prostrate body ran for the priest. 
 
 By the time the doctor was ready to go to his fever 
 patient, the priest had expedited the departing soul, the 
 heavy breathing had ceased, and Tony lay on his wife s 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 323 
 
 long table in a clean blue shirt with a crucifix on his 
 breast and candles burning at his head. 
 
 Ah, Death that, like a skeleton with finger on lip, 
 had been moving so stealthily around the cottage of the 
 Americans, put on a different aspect when he visited the 
 Villa Bella ! 
 
 When Tony was out on the hot Levee, chaffering 
 with oystermen about his September supply, Death had 
 him then, and could have taken him; but he played with 
 him, like a cat with a mouse ; letting him out of his grasp 
 to catch him again. When Tony took the car to go 
 home, and sank into a corner seat; drunken as the 
 driver and the passengers thought him Death was 
 watching him all the time, opening and shutting his hand 
 over him. Death let him reach his gate, which the 
 driver of the car had to open for him and help him to 
 get through, watched him staggering toward the house, 
 let him reach the threshold, but there the play closed. 
 Death caught him and this time held him. As the doctor 
 and the priest walked away together from the Villa 
 Bella, the doctor began gently to speak of the San 
 Antonios. Pere Phileas, evidently, never imagined be 
 fore who and what they were; that is, what great wealth 
 they possessed and what good Catholics they were and 
 all else that the doctor unfolded about them with the 
 agile hand of a surgeon at the operating table the 
 probable and possible consequences to St. Medard of the 
 union of this great wealth with the great faith. 
 
 " Tony," proceeded the doctor, from his initial base, 
 " made money, we shall not ask how ; he is not account 
 able to us now. He accumulated a fortune; we ask 
 ourselves wherefore seeing that as for himself and his 
 
324 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 wife, for poor, hard-working people they were born and 
 poor, hard-working people they lived." 
 
 The doctor shook his head reflectively and improvised 
 (at least the priest thought he improvised) further along. 
 
 " He made money and he stored it in one bank and 
 another, and in that safe in his and his wife s room ; that 
 safe which her eyes never forgot, not for a moment did 
 she lose sight of. Of course, you do not know it, but 
 that is the reason that she never left the house ; never left 
 the place where she could sit and watch the room the 
 safe was in. She is sitting by her husband s body now ; 
 but she sits so as to keep watch on that safe. In banks 
 and in that safe he stored it," the doctor reverted to 
 the beginning of his sentence, for he was as neat in his 
 oratory as in his bandaging. " More in the safe than 
 in the banks, for good reasons, doubtless. It is a mis 
 take to suppose that he was only the vulgar common 
 dago he appeared to be. No, he was what we call a 
 financier; in truth, mon Phe, a great financier; and as 
 a priest guards the mysteries of his faith, so the financier 
 guards the mysteries of his wealth. All wealth, like all 
 religions, has its mysteries, its inexplicable . . . But 
 we. see now, you see it too, mon Pere " the doctor 
 paused significantly. " The daughters in the convent 
 carefully preserved in their piety and innocence ..." 
 (but the doctor did not dwell upon the convent; for it 
 has always been notorious in St. Medard that the church 
 and the convent cast, at the best, only cross-eyed looks 
 at one another) ..." storing good intentions while 
 their father stored wealth. And now ; just as they reach 
 the perfection of their piety, and the full bloom of their 
 youth and sentiments ah, when it comes to sentiments, 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 325 
 
 it is only the young who are bold and strong and daring. 
 A young girl can put the strongest man to shame when 
 it comes to expressing sentiments. Yes, the young dare 
 anything that the heart bids, they do not know what 
 prudence, what caution means . . ." 
 
 Pere Phileas, as he strained his mind to follow intel 
 ligently so many flights and so many tracks at once, could 
 not but thank God in his heart, that while he was attend 
 ing to Tony s soul, and only to that; so wise and sure a 
 ministrant was at hand to think of what seemed in truth 
 of so much more importance of the wealth that the soul 
 had been obliged to leave; the wealth, which the doctor 
 gave him to infer had been accumulated in a mysterious 
 way for the eventual profiting, so at least the priest con 
 strued it, of the church in St. Medard; the poor little 
 church of poor little St. Medard and not of the rich 
 convent of the rich Ursulines as might have been ex 
 pected. 
 
 " What they need now, the San Antonios," the doctor 
 turned in the path and faced the priest impressively, 
 " what they need now, mon Pere, after the consolations 
 of the church, is a good lawyer, an honest one. Think 
 of it, money in banks all over the city, and that safe 
 full of securities, bonds, stocks, banknotes, who knows? 
 Gold and jewels, too, perhaps and that old woman 
 she is not really old, she and Tony were both younger 
 than people thought that old woman who cannot read 
 or write, who never talks, who hardly knows her 
 daughters ; while they do not know her at all. I do not 
 know if there is a will. I expect not. Such people 
 do not make wills. (The doctor s sentences grew 
 laconic as he approached the nucleus around which he 
 
326 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 had been revolving.) If there is no will, you know the 
 public administrator will put his hands to it! and you 
 know who the public administrator is ! A negro ! And if 
 he were only a negro, no more than that ! But in addi 
 tion there is a politician, a white carpet-bagger, behind 
 the negro ; that is what the public administrator is ; negro, 
 carpet-bagger; carpet-bagger, negro; that is what our 
 government is from governor down. Negro in front; 
 carpet-bagger behind. Carpet-bagger in front ; negro be 
 hind. Whew ! " the doctor blew out his breath as if that 
 was what he feared Tony s fortune would amount to in 
 the hands of the public administrator. 
 
 " A good lawyer could arrange it all ... " 
 
 " A good lawyer/ continued the doctor. " A good 
 lawyer ! But Madame San Antonio ! will she ever think 
 of such a thing? Never. She will sit watching her 
 safe; selling her picayune worth of milk; and onions 
 . . . and . . . Ah, if she had only a good lawyer? A 
 lawyer like our friend over there," he nodded toward the 
 sick room. 
 
 " But," began Pere Phileas again, with pardonable 
 curiosity. "But ..." 
 
 " A good American lawyer, an American lawyer could 
 manage it, an honest one with a reputation. You know 
 he has a great reputation uptown our friend over there 
 one to make a public administrator afraid." The 
 doctor, too astute not to foresee the question and 
 evade it, paid no attention to the attempted inter 
 ruption. 
 
 " She must be protected the widow in her rights, 
 and the daughters in their heritage," pursued the doctor, 
 scratching his head reflectively. " What Tony left be- 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 327 
 
 longs to them the fortune he made in spite of the 
 question of how he made it. Money, mon Pere, as you 
 of the church know, is like running water, it purifies itself 
 in its course." 
 
 " But," the priest eagerly availed himself of the open 
 ing afforded by the pause, " if . . . " 
 
 " He could manage it ; he could save that fortune and 
 put it in the good course, as we may say. It is not the 
 good course the public administrator will put it in, of 
 that we may be sure. And our friend, here . . . " They 
 were close to the gate; he thought a moment, and then 
 went on briskly : " Another lawyer, even one with a 
 great reputation, might do but there is always danger 
 with lawyers ! Even with those of the best reputation at 
 the bar." (Which showed that he knew lawyers at least 
 as well as lawyers knew doctors.) " They have a way 
 of managing a rich succession, of settling them, as the 
 kings of France used to settle an inconvenient personage, 
 by shutting him up in the Bastille and keeping him there 
 until he died. Eh, mon Pere? " (He gave an interroga 
 tory end to his phrase in deference to Pere Phileas s 
 knowledge of the kings of France.) "The lawyer, he 
 only shuts up the succession in court until he eats it up 
 with his costs, and his fees, and a little borrowed here, 
 and loaned there, at ten, twenty, fifty per cent, profit 
 not to the estate, oh, no ! to their own pocket. . . . Ah, 
 mon Pere, you know this world and you know the other ; 
 but you do not know lawyers. But," taking the priest s 
 arm genially, " there are good lawyers to be found if one 
 takes the trouble to look for them. St. Medard has one 
 here one would say he has brought one here for the 
 purpose, his purpose why should we not say it? . . . 
 
328 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. M^DARD 
 
 and a good lawyer could arrange it all as easily as you 
 could a case of disquieted conscience. 
 
 Poor Pere Phileas! What case of conscience had he 
 ever arranged? From all that he had ever seen of a 
 conscience disquieted or otherwise among his flock, he 
 might affirm that Gascons were born without them. He 
 could frighten them with hell ; yes, if that could be called 
 arranging cases of conscience. 
 
 They were now at the gate of the cottage and at the 
 end of their conversation. " When you are praying for 
 Tony, Father, pray to St. Medard for his family, that 
 they may not fall into the hands of the wrong 
 lawyer. . . . Good-bye then to their money, and," he 
 reiterated, " their pious intentions." 
 
 The good Pere Phileas who was docile enough in 
 listening to advice and accepting assistance in behalf of 
 his parish, and who was not one to shut his eyes to any 
 light held out to him whereby the affairs of St. Medard 
 might be bettered was not so simple; however, as to be 
 put off any longer when he had an important question 
 to ask; one all the more important since he saw what 
 great results the answer included. Firmly, therefore, he 
 opened his mouth to put his question for the third time. 
 The wily doctor, however, again eluded him for the third 
 time, by anticipating his direct words : " What can one 
 say? As long as there is life, well, there is life . . . 
 a fever? " he shrugged his shoulders. " It kills or it goes 
 away, there is no other alternative." He could not 
 hazard anything more definite, not willing, like the good 
 doctor he was, to run the risk of having his judgment 
 reversed by the event. " Nevertheless," deftly mingling 
 his science with piety : " we doctors must always hope, 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 329 
 
 mon Pere, as you good priests must pray, no matter 
 what we fear. Our hopes are our prayers, is not that 
 so?" 
 
 After this, he entered the sick room as has been 
 described, himself to pass the night on watch. 
 
 " What has happened? But what has happened?" 
 The question gathered slowly in Madame Joachim s 
 mind from a thousand minute sources; imperceptible 
 ones to any mind but one who depends on observation for 
 knowledge. "What has happened?" she repeated con 
 tinually to herself during the night as she watched the 
 doctor, watching his patient. She could not have ex 
 plained, to herself, the reasons that formed such a ques 
 tion, any more than she could have explained the reasons 
 of the formation of the clouds that passed over the sky. 
 
 But why should she bother herself with explanations? 
 She did not need them as, to quote her own words, she 
 knew what she knew, for the doctor no more carried a 
 face for people to read, than the sky, one for people 
 to understand. So, as the night went on, she asked her 
 self, whenever she looked at him, not " Has anything 
 happened?" but "What has happened?" Finally, as 
 one tired of walking in a dark tunnel, she chose her 
 moment, and softly leaving the room on her fat feet, 
 she went to Cribiche on the gallery. 
 
 " My son," she whispered, shaking her head signifi 
 cantly : " Go find out what has happened. Something 
 has happened, run quick and bring me the answer." 
 
 The longer Cribiche tarried on his errand the better 
 satisfied she was. 
 
 When he returned with his report, she took him to the 
 far end of the gallery. He was breathless with running, 
 
330 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 and beside himself with amazement, excitement, and ex 
 ultation at what he had discovered. 
 
 " Eh, Madame Joachim ! It is Tony ! But it is Tony 
 who is dead ! " 
 
 He closed his eyes and folded his hands on his breast 
 to show how Tony looked ; as he told of the crucifix, the 
 clean shirt, the candles; Madame Tony on one side, 
 Madame Doucelet on the other, praying. He had seen 
 it all. " Dead ! He is dead ! Madame Joachim ! Eh, 
 but St. Medard has sense," winking in the dark at her 
 and laughing. " St. Medard knows what he is about ! 
 He has sense ; he jerked Tony up ! And Tony was fooled ! 
 Tony was fooled this time!" He laughed and jeered: 
 " Blow, San Antonio ! Blow ! Blow, San Antonio ! 
 Blow," mimicking the prayer of the Italian luggermen to 
 their patron saint when their luggers are becalmed. 
 
 " A . . . h H . . . a! " was all that Madame Joachim 
 answered. When she went back to the sick room, she 
 had emerged from her tunnel and was in the clear light 
 of day. 
 
 " Lisida, Maria, Antonia, which shall it be? Maria, 
 Antonia, Lisida? " She knew now what the doctor was 
 thinking about, what had made her sure that something 
 had happened. 
 
 Madame Doucelet put her young ladies to bed and 
 stayed with them until they went to sleep because they 
 were afraid to be left alone. They did not keep her long, 
 and when she left the room, she left it until the time 
 for the chapel bell of the convent to ring in the morning. 
 Convent girls know how to sleep soundly. 
 
 Then, Madame Doucelet went downstairs with her 
 prayer beads. She could pray a night through by a 
 
AT THE VILLA BELLA 33 1 
 
 corpse, as easily as her young ladies could sleep upstairs. 
 Her poverty had made many things easy to her; had 
 taught her to be useful to others, in many ways; in 
 superintending funerals and mourning, as well as shop 
 ping, and the training of young ladies. And now, she 
 could pray by this corpse almost happily, animated with 
 the perfect faith that makes prayer a satisfaction, that 
 sees clearly as through a glass, that what is prayed for 
 is sure to arrive. Now, she could look ahead as far as 
 she cared to the point where she expected to find what 
 she never for a moment of the day forgot; what she 
 was ever seeking, ever, without intermission, no matter 
 what she appeared to be doing; what, it had been her 
 vocation to seek, as she would have phrased it, through 
 her long life of poverty money; the money that would 
 free her henceforth to do nothing but her pleasure, that 
 is live undisturbed by word or torment in her little 
 room in St. Anthony s alley (where she could almost 
 touch the Cathedral from her window) go to church 
 and pray. There was nothing now ahead of her to 
 prevent her seeing that point clearly ; nothing at all. The 
 abject wife and mother, sitting on the other side of the 
 corpse, too stupid in her grief and bewilderment even to 
 weep; she was nothing to Madame Doucelet, no obstacle 
 in the way of anything she saw ahead of her or the young 
 ladies. The young ladies, far from being an obstacle, 
 were to be her means to the end the goal in view. 
 
 The prayer beads ran faster and faster through her 
 fingers; the prayers, faster and faster through her lips, 
 as she thought of all that was ahead of her and the young 
 ladies her means to her end. The doctor, himself, was 
 not more absorbed in his meditation than she in hers. 
 
THE TURNING OF THE ROAD 
 
 WHEN daylight came into the sick room, and the shaded 
 lamp was extinguished, and the windows were thrown 
 wide open, the patient opened his eyes and followed the 
 doctor going the rounds of his inspection. His lips were 
 too weak to speak, but not his eyes. 
 
 " Sonnez clairons, tambours battez! " The loud voice 
 of the commander called his officers to his side. " What 
 did I tell you? He has gone! Our enemy has gone! 
 Ha! We held out too long for him! No, he will not 
 come back ! His ultimatum was * You go or I go ! and 
 we bluffed him ! He has gone ! " 
 
 How prosaic the scene! The shabby little room with 
 its cheap furniture; the disordered bed; the ugly details 
 of illness ; the worn, tired wife ; Madame Joachim in her 
 rumpled blouse volante; the doctor, despite his good 
 qualities as doctor, so loud of voice, so offensive of 
 manner; the children s towzled heads peeping through the 
 door; all so commonplace. But no stage however 
 heroic, no circumstances however resplendent, no per 
 sonages however exalted, no language ever invented by 
 dramatist, could have produced a moment of greater 
 effect than the one in the little room, among the poor 
 accessories of St. Medard. To one of the personages, 
 Heaven itself could not have opened a more beautiful, 
 radiant vision than what she saw then. And what did 
 she see ? Only an ugly little dirt road of a future opening 
 
 332 
 
THE TURNING OF THE ROAD 333 
 
 out again before her, twisting its way along, with all its 
 ruts and weeds, its ugliness and roughness ; but in it she, 
 the wife, and all the family, trudging along hopefully 
 after their head. 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha, ha ! " laughed the doctor, over the joke 
 that was to come. " The fever will not be ready for 
 another case soon, I warrant you, but you ? Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 They stood around the bed, sipping the cups of black 
 coffee that old Aglone herself brought them. She had 
 sat up all night too, in the kitchen, in case (that respon 
 sibility of the cook in the hour of danger) they needed 
 black coffee during the night. Were the doctor the be 
 liever he wished the devout to take him for, he must 
 have believed that the Lady of Lourdes, or St. Medard, 
 both being beholden to him, had placed Tommy Cook 
 there on the gallery, in the early morning light, for their 
 own grateful purposes. 
 
 And Tommy, after his long night on the gallery, look 
 ing at the brilliant August stars above him, and ponder 
 ing over life and death and the even graver question of 
 people making a living ; when he saw the rich succession 
 falling down so close to his patron s hand, like a planet 
 as it were out of the clear heavens; he might have be 
 lieved something equally as probable, could he have 
 believed in anything but his patron s principles and his 
 own sharpness. This sharpness as he decided even 
 while the doctor was speaking to him, as he spoke the 
 evening before to the priest the sharpness must be 
 called into service at once (as it had been called into 
 service to save the library during the war) before Tony s 
 death was known through the papers to a whole bar of 
 greedy lawyers a rich succession makes even the richest 
 
334 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 lawyer greedy. After the sharpness had secured the suc 
 cession, it could wait until the principles were well enough 
 to proceed upon it. 
 
 A good succession! That was a prize worth captur 
 ing ! And not many of that kind sailed the sea of litiga 
 tion. Such a succession as Tony s would indeed furnish 
 a living to any lawyer, for any number of years, until, 
 at least and that was all Tommy cared for the State 
 was restored to her status quo, and his patron to his. 
 
 The name of Talbot seemed to brighten out again on 
 the office sign as he thought of it, and the faces of the 
 inquiring lawyer friends grow dim. As he and the doctor 
 walked along together, the doctor seemed to be treading 
 on air, so elated was he. And he was not vague as when 
 talking to the priest, but as man to man, clear and to the 
 point. No lawyer could have made himself clearer as 
 he told off the points that rose before his mind: the 
 ignorant widow who would necessarily be always in tute 
 lage to her legal adviser whom in the end she would 
 follow as blindly as she had followed Tony, the 
 daughters as ignorant for all their education as the 
 mother, completely in the hands of an unscrupulous 
 sharper (so he diagnosed the case of Madame Doucelet) 
 who he was confident had already planned to stir up 
 trouble, very likely had a lawyer already engaged for 
 the purpose and so they came to the house from whose 
 doorpost a long black crape was floating in the breeze. 
 
 In the presence of death, what an intruder Time 
 seems to be ? Who then pays any regard to him or to his 
 paltry trade of minutes? He is treated, indeed, then, 
 no better than a peddler, singing " Rabais! Rabais! " 
 So short a while from daylight ! And yet, Tommy found 
 
THE TURNING OF THE ROAD 335 
 
 what looked like mid-day at the Villa Bella. Servants 
 were sweeping, Madame Doucelet was throwing open 
 the windows of the salon, and directing the pinning of 
 sheets over the mirrors and the pictures, and the arrang 
 ing of the chairs. She surely was a woman of inex 
 haustible enterprise and activity in funeral emergencies. 
 Tony, she had decided, must be brought up into the 
 handsome drawing-room that he had entered so seldom 
 in life, and he must have a funeral that befitted, not his 
 past but the future of his daughters; and no one knew 
 better than Madame Doucelet what that future required 
 in the way of the conventional. Madame Doucelet had, 
 herself, bargained with the undertaker for a handsome 
 coffin with silver handles and silver candelabra to stand 
 around it holding wax candles. Tony, in short, was to 
 lie like some rich respectable merchant amid the pretty 
 furniture, ornaments, laces, and frescoes, that the old 
 Spaniards had gathered together for their own life and 
 death; a symbol himself, indeed, among symbols! 
 
 When the young ladies heard that the coffin was to 
 be brought upstairs and put there just over the hall from 
 their chamber, they were more frightened than ever. 
 They wanted to run out of the house, they frantically 
 pleaded with Madame Doucelet to let them go to the 
 convent for the day, or just for the funeral. They 
 caught hold of her dress and held on to it (strong young 
 women as they were) when she wanted to leave them. 
 Ah, yes! They were frightened enough then to forget 
 even their looking-glasses. When Madame Doucelet did 
 leave them for she was going over her opportunity with 
 a microscope as it were they buried their heads in their 
 pillows and stopped their ears to keep from hearing what 
 
336 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. M&DARD 
 
 was going on. There is no power on earth that would 
 have induced them to look out of the windows or doors, 
 so afraid they were of seeing the coffin brought in. 
 
 Madame San Antonio was still in her same place, 
 sitting by her husband, almost as dead-looking as he; 
 too stunned still even to replace the flickering candles in 
 the sockets of the candlesticks. The doctor, himself, did 
 it when he came in. But she was not so stupid, and 
 ignorant, as she seemed to be ; as the clever people about 
 her thought her to be. She had lived with Tony too long 
 to be that, at least about business. She had been saving 
 and holding on to money too long to forget it, even 
 now. Indeed, she would have sold five cents of milk or 
 eggs that very morning if any one had come to buy. 
 
 Tony had been forced to learn much about the law 
 and therefore was not inexperienced in lawyers. How 
 could he be? The law being to the barkeeper what the 
 devil is to the righteous. The path of his money-making 
 had been little more than one long dodging of it; one 
 continuous flight from the pursuing jaws ever seeking 
 to devour him. Many a time driven to bay by the legal 
 condottiere sent by the city against him he had been 
 forced (though all unknowing in his ignorance) to adopt 
 the distinguished expedient of famous illicit money- 
 getters of picturesque past ages : to subsidize those forces 
 sent against him the lawyers. He found that he could 
 always afford to pay them more than their clients could. 
 Whatever Tony knew, his wife knew, silent as he was. 
 Wives of such husbands gain their knowledge, as 
 parasites do their growth, from the tree they live on. 
 
 Tommy had little trouble with her. He felt with her 
 none of the embarrassment that intimidated him with a 
 
THE TURNING OF THE ROAD 337 
 
 lady; lifted by long inheritance of refinement, far, far 
 above his standing ground in human nature. He could 
 talk to her as he could have talked to his mother. 
 
 The priest? The doctor? Could St. Medard himself 
 have opened the old woman s safe any easier than he 
 did? Or have confided more trustfully to him the 
 handling of the papers whereby the precious succession 
 was to be secured from the hands of one who would 
 not put it in the good way ? 
 
 It has been explained that the one grief of the bar 
 keeper and his wife was the loss of a son, whose life 
 was a trellis upon which they were training their affection 
 and ambition to climb, and how, in their despair at his 
 death, they let their affection and ambition grovel hence 
 forward on the ground ; and how in their ignorance, they 
 could never understand why the son whom they loved, 
 and wanted, should be taken from them; and how the 
 daughters they did not want should live. One cannot 
 speak surely about a father ; but a mother even though 
 she spend her life groveling on the earth alongside of a 
 husband when she loses a son that she loves she loses 
 him not from her heart; his life is never dissevered from 
 the life that conceived him. From year to year she 
 follows his growth, from birthday to birthday counts his 
 age ; and her best dream is that she is still carrying him 
 in her arms, suckling him at her breast. And when in 
 after life she meets one of the age the son might be; 
 who talks to her mayhap in the voice he might have had ; 
 who takes her hand, her onion-smelling hand, as he 
 might have done; in her loneliness, with only three fine 
 daughters upstairs . . . (But all this is, it must be, con 
 jectural) ... In sober truth, all that can be said by one 
 
338 THE PLEASANT WAYS OF ST. MEDARD 
 
 who knows only the outside of a woman s or a mother s 
 heart is ; that as easily as the undertaker s men lifted the 
 corpse and laid it in the coffin, so was the corpse s suc 
 cession lifted by Tommy and laid where no other lawyer 
 but his patron could get it ; and well out of the reach of 
 the public administrator. 
 
 And by the time that Tony s hearse had accomplished 
 its slow journey to the Louisa Street Cemetery, Tommy 
 had towed his prize safely to the office and anchored it 
 in the armoir of litigation. And Tony, who had laid up 
 treasures nowhere but on earth, entered the other world 
 as great a pauper as he had entered this one. 
 
 "And now," said Tommy succinctly to himself, as 
 he sat in the office, waiting for the appearance of the kind 
 inquirers of his patron s health, " now, the country is 
 safe." 
 
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