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diff --git a/19703.txt b/19703.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e5d3b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/19703.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3030 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Delphine, by George W. Cable + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Madame Delphine + +Author: George W. Cable + +Release Date: November 2, 2006 [EBook #19703] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME DELPHINE *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and The Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + MADAME DELPHINE + BY + GEORGE W. CABLE + +_Author of "Old Creole Days," "The Grandissimes," etc._ + + NEW YORK + COPYRIGHT + BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + 743 AND 745 BROADWAY + 1881 + PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE & CO., + NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK. + + * * * * * + + + + + CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. PAGE +AN OLD HOUSE 1 + +CHAPTER II. +MADAME DELPHINE 7 + +CHAPTER III. +CAPITAINE LEMAITRE 12 + +CHAPTER IV. +THREE FRIENDS 18 + +CHAPTER V. +THE CAP FITS 28 + +CHAPTER VI. +A CRY OF DISTRESS 40 + +CHAPTER VII. +MICHE VIGNEVIELLE 50 + +CHAPTER VIII. +SHE 59 + +CHAPTER IX. +OLIVE 68 + +CHAPTER X. +BIRDS 74 + +CHAPTER XI. +FACE TO FACE 82 + +CHAPTER XII. +THE MOTHER BIRD 90 + +CHAPTER XIII. +TRIBULATION 99 + +CHAPTER XIV. +BY AN OATH 106 + +CHAPTER XV. +KYRIE ELEISON 120 + + * * * * * + + + + + MADAME DELPHINE. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +AN OLD HOUSE. + + +A few steps from the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, brings you to +and across Canal street, the central avenue of the city, and to that +corner where the flower-women sit at the inner and outer edges of the +arcaded sidewalk, and make the air sweet with their fragrant +merchandise. The crowd--and if it is near the time of the carnival it +will be great--will follow Canal street. + +But you turn, instead, into the quiet, narrow way which a lover of +Creole antiquity, in fondness for a romantic past, is still prone to +call the Rue Royale. You will pass a few restaurants, a few auction +rooms, a few furniture warehouses, and will hardly realize that you +have left behind you the activity and clatter of a city of merchants +before you find yourself in a region of architectural decrepitude, where +an ancient and foreign-seeming domestic life, in second stories, +overhangs the ruins of a former commercial prosperity, and upon +everything has settled down a long Sabbath of decay. The vehicles in the +street are few in number, and are merely passing through; the stores are +shrunken into shops; you see here and there, like a patch of bright +mould, the stall of that significant fungus, the Chinaman. Many great +doors are shut and clamped and grown gray with cobweb; many street +windows are nailed up; half the balconies are begrimed and rust-eaten, +and many of the humid arches and alleys which characterize the older +Franco-Spanish piles of stuccoed brick betray a squalor almost oriental. + +Yet beauty lingers here. To say nothing of the picturesque, sometimes +you get sight of comfort, sometimes of opulence, through the unlatched +wicket in some _porte-cochere_--red-painted brick pavement, foliage of +dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming +parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten +window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a +glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and much +similar rich antiquity. + +The faces of the inmates are in keeping; of the passengers in the street +a sad proportion are dingy and shabby; but just when these are putting +you off your guard, there will pass you a woman--more likely two or +three--of patrician beauty. + +Now, if you will go far enough down this old street, you will see, as +you approach its intersection with----. Names in that region elude one +like ghosts. + +However, as you begin to find the way a trifle more open, you will not +fail to notice on the right-hand side, about midway of the square, a +small, low, brick house of a story and a half, set out upon the +sidewalk, as weather-beaten and mute as an aged beggar fallen asleep. +Its corrugated roof of dull red tiles, sloping down toward you with an +inward curve, is overgrown with weeds, and in the fall of the year is +gay with the yellow plumes of the golden-rod. You can almost touch with +your cane the low edge of the broad, overhanging eaves. The batten +shutters at door and window, with hinges like those of a postern, are +shut with a grip that makes one's knuckles and nails feel lacerated. +Save in the brick-work itself there is not a cranny. You would say the +house has the lock-jaw. There are two doors, and to each a single +chipped and battered marble step. Continuing on down the sidewalk, on a +line with the house, is a garden masked from view by a high, close +board-fence. You may see the tops of its fruit-trees--pomegranate, +peach, banana, fig, pear, and particularly one large orange, close by +the fence, that must be very old. + +The residents over the narrow way, who live in a three-story house, +originally of much pretension, but from whose front door hard times have +removed almost all vestiges of paint, will tell you: + +"Yass, de 'ouse is in'abit; 'tis live in." + +And this is likely to be all the information you get--not that they +would not tell, but they cannot grasp the idea that you wish to +know--until, possibly, just as you are turning to depart, your +informant, in a single word and with the most evident non-appreciation +of its value, drops the simple key to the whole matter: + +"Dey's quadroons." + +He may then be aroused to mention the better appearance of the place in +former years, when the houses of this region generally stood farther +apart, and that garden comprised the whole square. + +Here dwelt, sixty years ago and more, one Delphine Carraze; or, as she +was commonly designated by the few who knew her, Madame Delphine. That +she owned her home, and that it had been given her by the then deceased +companion of her days of beauty, were facts so generally admitted as to +be, even as far back as that sixty years ago, no longer a subject of +gossip. She was never pointed out by the denizens of the quarter as a +character, nor her house as a "feature." It would have passed all Creole +powers of guessing to divine what you could find worthy of inquiry +concerning a retired quadroon woman; and not the least puzzled of all +would have been the timid and restive Madame Delphine herself. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +MADAME DELPHINE. + + +During the first quarter of the present century, the free quadroon caste +of New Orleans was in its golden age. Earlier generations--sprung, upon +the one hand, from the merry gallants of a French colonial military +service which had grown gross by affiliation with Spanish-American +frontier life, and, upon the other hand, from comely Ethiopians culled +out of the less negroidal types of African live goods, and bought at the +ship's side with vestiges of quills and cowries and copper wire still in +their head-dresses,--these earlier generations, with scars of battle or +private rencontre still on the fathers, and of servitude on the +manumitted mothers, afforded a mere hint of the splendor that was to +result from a survival of the fairest through seventy-five years devoted +to the elimination of the black pigment and the cultivation of hyperian +excellence and nymphean grace and beauty. Nor, if we turn to the +present, is the evidence much stronger which is offered by the _gens de +couleur_ whom you may see in the quadroon quarter this afternoon, with +"Ichabod" legible on their murky foreheads through a vain smearing of +toilet powder, dragging their chairs down to the narrow gate-way of +their close-fenced gardens, and staring shrinkingly at you as you pass, +like a nest of yellow kittens. + +But as the present century was in its second and third decades, the +_quadroones_ (for we must contrive a feminine spelling to define the +strict limits of the caste as then established) came forth in splendor. +Old travellers spare no terms to tell their praises, their faultlessness +of feature, their perfection of form, their varied styles of +beauty,--for there were even pure Caucasian blondes among them,--their +fascinating manners, their sparkling vivacity, their chaste and pretty +wit, their grace in the dance, their modest propriety, their taste and +elegance in dress. In the gentlest and most poetic sense they were +indeed the sirens of this land, where it seemed "always afternoon"--a +momentary triumph of an Arcadian over a Christian civilization, so +beautiful and so seductive that it became the subject of special +chapters by writers of the day more original than correct as social +philosophers. + +The balls that were got up for them by the male _sang-pur_ were to that +day what the carnival is to the present. Society balls given the same +nights proved failures through the coincidence. The magnates of +government,--municipal, state, federal,--those of the army, of the +learned professions and of the clubs,--in short, the white male +aristocracy in everything save the ecclesiastical desk,--were there. +Tickets were high-priced to insure the exclusion of the vulgar. No +distinguished stranger was allowed to miss them. They were beautiful! +They were clad in silken extenuations from the throat to the feet, and +wore, withal, a pathos in their charm that gave them a family likeness +to innocence. + +Madame Delphine, were you not a stranger, could have told you all about +it; though hardly, I suppose, without tears. + +But at the time of which we would speak (1821-22) her day of splendor +was set, and her husband--let us call him so for her sake--was long +dead. He was an American, and, if we take her word for it, a man of +noble heart and extremely handsome; but this is knowledge which we can +do without. + +Even in those days the house was always shut, and Madame Delphine's +chief occupation and end in life seemed to be to keep well locked up +in-doors. She was an excellent person, the neighbors said,--a very +worthy person; and they were, may be, nearer correct than they knew. +They rarely saw her save when she went to or returned from church; a +small, rather tired-looking, dark quadroone of very good features and a +gentle thoughtfulness of expression which it would take long to +describe: call it a widow's look. + +In speaking of Madame Delphine's house, mention should have been made of +a gate in the fence on the Royal-street sidewalk. It is gone now, and +was out of use then, being fastened once for all by an iron staple +clasping the cross-bar and driven into the post. + +Which leads us to speak of another person. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +CAPITAINE LEMAITRE. + + +He was one of those men that might be any age,--thirty, forty, +forty-five; there was no telling from his face what was years and what +was only weather. His countenance was of a grave and quiet, but also +luminous, sort, which was instantly admired and ever afterward +remembered, as was also the fineness of his hair and the blueness of his +eyes. Those pronounced him youngest who scrutinized his face the +closest. But waiving the discussion of age, he was odd, though not with +the oddness that he who reared him had striven to produce. + +He had not been brought up by mother or father. He had lost both in +infancy, and had fallen to the care of a rugged old military grandpa of +the colonial school, whose unceasing endeavor had been to make "his +boy" as savage and ferocious a holder of unimpeachable social rank as it +became a pure-blooded French Creole to be who could trace his pedigree +back to the god Mars. + +"Remember, my boy," was the adjuration received by him as regularly as +his waking cup of black coffee, "that none of your family line ever kept +the laws of any government or creed." And if it was well that he should +bear this in mind, it was well to reiterate it persistently, for, from +the nurse's arms, the boy wore a look, not of docility so much as of +gentle, _judicial_ benevolence. The domestics of the old man's house +used to shed tears of laughter to see that look on the face of a babe. +His rude guardian addressed himself to the modification of this facial +expression; it had not enough of majesty in it, for instance, or of +large dare-deviltry; but with care these could be made to come. + +And, true enough, at twenty-one (in Ursin Lemaitre), the labors of his +grandfather were an apparent success. He was not rugged, nor was he +loud-spoken, as his venerable trainer would have liked to present him to +society; but he was as serenely terrible as a well-aimed rifle, and the +old man looked upon his results with pride. He had cultivated him up to +that pitch where he scorned to practice any vice, or any virtue, that +did not include the principle of self-assertion. A few touches only were +wanting here and there to achieve perfection, when suddenly the old man +died. Yet it was his proud satisfaction, before he finally lay down, to +see Ursin a favored companion and the peer, both in courtesy and pride, +of those polished gentlemen famous in history, the brothers Lafitte. + +The two Lafittes were, at the time young Lemaitre reached his majority +(say 1808 or 1812), only merchant blacksmiths, so to speak, a term +intended to convey the idea of blacksmiths who never soiled their hands, +who were men of capital, stood a little higher than the clergy, and +moved in society among its autocrats. But they were full of +possibilities, men of action, and men, too, of thought, with already a +pronounced disbelief in the custom-house. In these days of big carnivals +they would have been patented as the dukes of Little Manchac and +Barataria. + +Young Ursin Lemaitre (in full the name was Lemaitre-Vignevielle) had not +only the hearty friendship of these good people, but also a natural turn +for accounts; and as his two friends were looking about them with an +enterprising eye, it easily resulted that he presently connected himself +with the blacksmithing profession. Not exactly at the forge in the +Lafittes' famous smithy, among the African Samsons, who, with their +shining black bodies bared to the waist, made the Rue St. Pierre ring +with the stroke of their hammers; but as a--there was no occasion to +mince the word in those days--smuggler. + +Smuggler--patriot--where was the difference? Beyond the ken of a +community to which the enforcement of the revenue laws had long been +merely so much out of every man's pocket and dish, into the +all-devouring treasury of Spain. At this date they had come under a +kinder yoke, and to a treasury that at least echoed when the customs +were dropped into it; but the change was still new. What could a man be +more than Capitaine Lemaitre was--the soul of honor, the pink of +courtesy, with the courage of the lion, and the magnanimity of the +elephant; frank--the very exchequer of truth! Nay, go higher still: his +paper was good in Toulouse street. To the gossips in the gaming-clubs he +was the culminating proof that smuggling was one of the sublimer +virtues. + +Years went by. Events transpired which have their place in history. +Under a government which the community by and by saw was conducted in +their interest, smuggling began to lose its respectability and to grow +disreputable, hazardous, and debased. In certain onslaughts made upon +them by officers of the law, some of the smugglers became murderers. The +business became unprofitable for a time until the enterprising +Lafittes--thinkers--bethought them of a corrective--"privateering." + +Thereupon the United States Government set a price upon their heads. +Later yet it became known that these outlawed pirates had been offered +money and rank by Great Britain if they would join her standard, then +hovering about the water-approaches to their native city, and that they +had spurned the bribe; wherefore their heads were ruled out of the +market, and, meeting and treating with Andrew Jackson, they were +received as lovers of their country, and as compatriots fought in the +battle of New Orleans at the head of their fearless men, and--here +tradition takes up the tale--were never seen afterward. + +Capitaine Lemaitre was not among the killed or wounded, but he was among +the missing. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THREE FRIENDS. + + +The roundest and happiest-looking priest in the city of New Orleans was +a little man fondly known among his people as Pere Jerome. He was a +Creole and a member of one of the city's leading families. His dwelling +was a little frame cottage, standing on high pillars just inside a tall, +close fence, and reached by a narrow outdoor stair from the green batten +gate. It was well surrounded by crape myrtles, and communicated behind +by a descending stair and a plank-walk with the rear entrance of the +chapel over whose worshippers he daily spread his hands in benediction. +The name of the street--ah! there is where light is wanting. Save the +Cathedral and the Ursulines, there is very little of record concerning +churches at that time, though they were springing up here and there. +All there is certainty of is that Pere Jerome's frame chapel was some +little new-born "down-town" thing, that may have survived the passage of +years, or may have escaped "Paxton's Directory" "so as by fire." His +parlor was dingy and carpetless; one could smell distinctly there the +vow of poverty. His bedchamber was bare and clean, and the bed in it +narrow and hard; but between the two was a dining-room that would tempt +a laugh to the lips of any who looked in. The table was small, but +stout, and all the furniture of the room substantial, made of fine wood, +and carved just enough to give the notion of wrinkling pleasantry. His +mother's and sister's doing, Pere Jerome would explain; they would not +permit this apartment--or department--to suffer. Therein, as well as in +the parlor, there was odor, but of a more epicurean sort, that explained +interestingly the Pere Jerome's rotundity and rosy smile. + +In this room, and about this miniature round table, used sometimes to +sit with Pere Jerome two friends to whom he was deeply attached--one, +Evariste Varrillat, a playmate from early childhood, now his +brother-in-law; the other, Jean Thompson, a companion from youngest +manhood, and both, like the little priest himself, the regretful +rememberers of a fourth comrade who was a comrade no more. Like Pere +Jerome, they had come, through years, to the thick of life's +conflicts,--the priest's brother-in-law a physician, the other an +attorney, and brother-in-law to the lonely wanderer,--yet they loved to +huddle around this small board, and be boys again in heart while men in +mind. Neither one nor another was leader. In earlier days they had +always yielded to him who no longer met with them a certain +chieftainship, and they still thought of him and talked of him, and, in +their conjectures, groped after him, as one of whom they continued to +expect greater things than of themselves. + +They sat one day drawn thus close together, sipping and theorizing, +speculating upon the nature of things in an easy, bold, sophomoric way, +the conversation for the most part being in French, the native tongue of +the doctor and priest, and spoken with facility by Jean Thompson the +lawyer, who was half Americain; but running sometimes into English and +sometimes into mild laughter. Mention had been made of the absentee. + +Pere Jerome advanced an idea something like this: + +"It is impossible for any finite mind to fix the degree of criminality +of any human act or of any human life. The Infinite One alone can know +how much of our sin is chargeable to us, and how much to our brothers or +our fathers. We all participate in one another's sins. There is a +community of responsibility attaching to every misdeed. No human since +Adam--nay, nor Adam himself--ever sinned entirely to himself. And so I +never am called upon to contemplate a crime or a criminal but I feel my +conscience pointing at me as one of the accessories." + +"In a word," said Evariste Varrillat, the physician, "you think we are +partly to blame for the omission of many of your Paternosters, eh?" + +Father Jerome smiled. + +"No; a man cannot plead so in his own defense; our first father tried +that, but the plea was not allowed. But, now, there is our absent +friend. I tell you truly this whole community ought to be recognized as +partners in his moral errors. Among another people, reared under wiser +care and with better companions, how different might he not have been! +How can _we_ speak of him as a law-breaker who might have saved him from +that name?" Here the speaker turned to Jean Thompson, and changed his +speech to English. "A lady sez to me to-day: 'Pere Jerome, 'ow dat is a +dreadfool dat 'e gone at de coas' of Cuba to be one corsair! Aint it?' +'Ah, Madame,' I sez, ''tis a terrible! I'ope de good God will fo'give me +an' you fo' dat!'" + +Jean Thompson answered quickly: + +"You should not have let her say that." + +"_Mais_, fo' w'y?" + +"Why, because, if you are partly responsible, you ought so much the +more to do what you can to shield his reputation. You should have +said,"--the attorney changed to French,--"'He is no pirate; he has +merely taken out letters of marque and reprisal under the flag of the +republic of Carthagena!'" + +"_Ah, bah_!" exclaimed Doctor Varrillat, and both he and his +brother-in-law, the priest, laughed. + +"Why not?" demanded Thompson. + +"Oh!" said the physician, with a shrug, "say id thad way iv you wand." + +Then, suddenly becoming serious, he was about to add something else, +when Pere Jerome spoke. + +"I will tell you what I could have said. I could have said: 'Madame, +yes; 'tis a terrible fo' him. He stum'le in de dark; but dat good God +will mek it a _mo' terrible_ fo' dat man, oohever he is, w'at put 'at +light out!'" + +"But how do you know he is a pirate?" demanded Thompson, aggressively. + +"How do we know?" said the little priest, returning to French. "Ah! +there is no other explanation of the ninety-and-nine stories that come +to us, from every port where ships arrive from the north coast of Cuba, +of a commander of pirates there who is a marvel of courtesy and +gentility----"* + +[*See Gazettes of the period.] + +"And whose name is Lafitte," said the obstinate attorney. + +"And who, nevertheless, is not Lafitte," insisted Pere Jerome. + +"Daz troo, Jean," said Doctor Varrillat. "We hall know daz troo." + +Pere Jerome leaned forward over the board and spoke, with an air of +secrecy, in French. + +"You have heard of the ship which came into port here last Monday. You +have heard that she was boarded by pirates, and that the captain of the +ship himself drove them off." + +"An incredible story," said Thompson. + +"But not so incredible as the truth. I have it from a passenger. There +was on the ship a young girl who was very beautiful. She came on deck, +where the corsair stood, about to issue his orders, and, more beautiful +than ever in the desperation of the moment, confronted him with a small +missal spread open, and, her finger on the Apostles' Creed, commanded +him to read. He read it, uncovering his head as he read, then stood +gazing on her face, which did not quail; and then, with a low bow, said: +'Give me this book and I will do your bidding.' She gave him the book +and bade him leave the ship, and he left it unmolested." + +Pere Jerome looked from the physician to the attorney and back again, +once or twice, with his dimpled smile. + +"But he speaks English, they say," said Jean Thompson. + +"He has, no doubt, learned it since he left us," said the priest. + +"But this ship-master, too, says his men called him Lafitte." + +"Lafitte? No. Do you not see? It is your brother-in-law, Jean Thompson! +It is your wife's brother! Not Lafitte, but" (softly) "Lemaitre! +Lemaitre! Capitaine Ursin Lemaitre!" + +The two guests looked at each other with a growing drollery on either +face, and presently broke into a laugh. + +"Ah!" said the doctor, as the three rose up, "you juz kip dad +cog-an'-bull fo' yo' negs summon." + +Pere Jerome's eyes lighted up-- + +"I goin' to do it!" + +"I tell you," said Evariste, turning upon him with sudden gravity, "iv +dad is troo, I tell you w'ad is sure-sure! Ursin Lemaitre din kyare +nut'n fo' doze creed; _he fall in love_!" + +Then, with a smile, turning to Jean Thompson, and back again to Pere +Jerome: + +"But anny'ow you tell it in dad summon dad 'e kyare fo' dad creed." + +Pere Jerome sat up late that night, writing a letter. The remarkable +effects upon a certain mind, effects which we shall presently find him +attributing solely to the influences of surrounding nature, may find for +some a more sufficient explanation in the fact that this letter was but +one of a series, and that in the rover of doubted identity and +incredible eccentricity Pere Jerome had a regular correspondent. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +THE CAP FITS. + + +About two months after the conversation just given, and therefore +somewhere about the Christmas holidays of the year 1821, Pere Jerome +delighted the congregation of his little chapel with the announcement +that he had appointed to preach a sermon in French on the following +Sabbath--not there, but in the cathedral. + +He was much beloved. Notwithstanding that among the clergy there were +two or three who shook their heads and raised their eyebrows, and said +he would be at least as orthodox if he did not make quite so much of the +Bible and quite so little of the dogmas, yet "the common people heard +him gladly." When told, one day, of the unfavorable whispers, he smiled +a little and answered his informant,--whom he knew to be one of the +whisperers himself,--laying a hand kindly upon his shoulder: + +"Father Murphy,"--or whatever the name was,--"your words comfort me." + +"How is that?" + +"Because--'_Vae quum benedixerint mihi homines_!'"* + +[*"Woe unto me, when all men speak well of me!"] + +The appointed morning, when it came, was one of those exquisite days in +which there is such a universal harmony, that worship rises from the +heart like a spring. + +"Truly," said Pere Jerome to the companion who was to assist him in the +mass, "this is a Sabbath day which we do not have to make holy, but only +to _keep_ so." + +May be it was one of the secrets of Pere Jerome's success as a preacher, +that he took more thought as to how he should feel, than as to what he +should say. + +The cathedral of those days was called a very plain old pile, boasting +neither beauty nor riches; but to Pere Jerome it was very lovely; and +before its homely altar, not homely to him, in the performance of those +solemn offices, symbols of heaven's mightiest truths, in the hearing of +the organ's harmonies, and the yet more eloquent interunion of human +voices in the choir, in overlooking the worshipping throng which knelt +under the soft, chromatic lights, and in breathing the sacrificial odors +of the chancel, he found a deep and solemn joy; and yet I guess the +finest thought of his soul the while was one that came thrice and again: + +"Be not deceived, Pere Jerome, because saintliness of feeling is easy +here; you are the same priest who overslept this morning, and overate +yesterday, and will, in some way, easily go wrong to-morrow and the day +after." + +He took it with him when--the _Veni Creator_ sung--he went into the +pulpit. Of the sermon he preached, tradition has preserved for us only a +few brief sayings, but they are strong and sweet. + +"My friends," he said,--this was near the beginning,--"the angry words +of God's book are very merciful--they are meant to drive us home; but +the tender words, my friends, they are sometimes terrible! Notice these, +the tenderest words of the tenderest prayer that ever came from the lips +of a blessed martyr--the dying words of the holy Saint Stephen, 'Lord, +lay not this sin to their charge.' Is there nothing dreadful in that? +Read it thus: 'Lord, lay not this sin to _their_ charge.' Not to the +charge of them who stoned him? To whose charge then? Go ask the holy +Saint Paul. Three years afterward, praying in the temple at Jerusalem, +he answered that question: 'I stood by and consented.' He answered for +himself only; but the Day must come when all that wicked council that +sent Saint Stephen away to be stoned, and all that city of Jerusalem, +must hold up the hand and say: 'We, also, Lord--we stood by.' Ah! +friends, under the simpler meaning of that dying saint's prayer for the +pardon of his murderers is hidden the terrible truth that we all have a +share in one another's sins." + +Thus Pere Jerome touched his key-note. All that time has spared us +beside may be given in a few sentences. + +"Ah!" he cried once, "if it were merely my own sins that I had to answer +for, I might hold up my head before the rest of mankind; but no, no, my +friends--we cannot look each other in the face, for each has helped the +other to sin. Oh, where is there any room, in this world of common +disgrace, for pride? Even if we had no common hope, a common despair +ought to bind us together and forever silence the voice of scorn!" + +And again, this: + +"Even in the promise to Noe, not again to destroy the race with a flood, +there is a whisper of solemn warning. The moral account of the +antediluvians was closed off and the balance brought down in the year of +the deluge; but the account of those who come after runs on and on, and +the blessed bow of promise itself warns us that God will not stop it +till the Judgment Day! O God, I thank thee that that day must come at +last, when thou wilt destroy the world, and stop the interest on my +account!" + +It was about at this point that Pere Jerome noticed, more particularly +than he had done before, sitting among the worshippers near him, a +small, sad-faced woman, of pleasing features, but dark and faded, who +gave him profound attention. With her was another in better dress, +seemingly a girl still in her teens, though her face and neck were +scrupulously concealed by a heavy veil, and her hands, which were small, +by gloves. + +"Quadroones," thought he, with a stir of deep pity. + +Once, as he uttered some stirring word, he saw the mother and daughter +(if such they were), while they still bent their gaze upon him, clasp +each other's hand fervently in the daughter's lap. It was at these +words: + +"My friends, there are thousands of people in this city of New Orleans +to whom society gives the ten commandments of God with all the _nots_ +rubbed out! Ah! good gentlemen! if God sends the poor weakling to +purgatory for leaving the right path, where ought some of you to go who +strew it with thorns and briers!" + +The movement of the pair was only seen because he watched for it. He +glanced that way again as he said: + +"O God, be very gentle with those children who would be nearer heaven +this day had they never had a father and mother, but had got their +religious training from such a sky and earth as we have in Louisiana +this holy morning! Ah! my friends, nature is a big-print catechism!" + +The mother and daughter leaned a little farther forward, and exchanged +the same spasmodic hand-pressure as before. The mother's eyes were full +of tears. + +"I once knew a man," continued the little priest, glancing to a side +aisle where he had noticed Evariste and Jean sitting against each other, +"who was carefully taught, from infancy to manhood, this single only +principle of life: defiance. Not justice, not righteousness, not even +gain; but defiance: defiance to God, defiance to man, defiance to +nature, defiance to reason; defiance and defiance and defiance." + +"He is going to tell it!" murmured Evariste to Jean. + +"This man," continued Pere Jerome, "became a smuggler and at last a +pirate in the Gulf of Mexico. Lord, lay not that sin to his charge +alone! But a strange thing followed. Being in command of men of a sort +that to control required to be kept at the austerest distance, he now +found himself separated from the human world and thrown into the solemn +companionship with the sea, with the air, with the storm, the calm, the +heavens by day, the heavens by night. My friends, that was the first +time in his life that he ever found himself in really good company. + +"Now, this man had a great aptness for accounts. He had kept them--had +rendered them. There was beauty, to him, in a correct, balanced, and +closed account. An account unsatisfied was a deformity. The result is +plain. That man, looking out night after night upon the grand and holy +spectacle of the starry deep above and the watery deep below, was sure +to find himself, sooner or later, mastered by the conviction that the +great Author of this majestic creation keeps account of it; and one +night there came to him, like a spirit walking on the sea, the awful, +silent question: 'My account with God--how does it stand?' Ah! friends, +that is a question which the book of nature does not answer. + +"Did I say the book of nature is a catechism? Yes. But, after it answers +the first question with 'God,' nothing but questions follow; and so, one +day, this man gave a ship full of merchandise for one little book which +answered those questions. God help him to understand it! and God help +you, monsieur and you, madame, sitting here in your _smuggled clothes_, +to beat upon the breast with me and cry, 'I, too, Lord--I, too, stood by +and consented.'" + +Pere Jerome had not intended these for his closing words; but just +there, straight away before his sight and almost at the farthest door, a +man rose slowly from his seat and regarded him steadily with a kind, +bronzed, sedate face, and the sermon, as if by a sign of command, was +ended. While the _Credo_ was being chanted he was still there; but when, +a moment after its close, the eye of Pere Jerome returned in that +direction, his place was empty. + +As the little priest, his labor done and his vestments changed, was +turning into the Rue Royale and leaving the cathedral out of sight, he +just had time to understand that two women were purposely allowing him +to overtake them, when the one nearer him spoke in the Creole patois, +saying, with some timid haste: + +"Good-morning, Pere--Pere Jerome; Pere Jerome, we thank the good God for +that sermon." + +"Then, so do I," said the little man. They were the same two that he had +noticed when he was preaching. The younger one bowed silently; she was a +beautiful figure, but the slight effort of Pere Jerome's kind eyes to +see through the veil was vain. He would presently have passed on, but +the one who had spoken before said: + +"I thought you lived in the Rue des Ursulines." + +"Yes; I am going this way to see a sick person." + +The woman looked up at him with an expression of mingled confidence and +timidity. + +"It must be a blessed thing to be so useful as to be needed by the good +God," she said. + +Pere Jerome smiled: + +"God does not need me to look after his sick; but he allows me to do it, +just as you let your little boy in frocks carry in chips." He might have +added that he loved to do it, quite as much. + +It was plain the woman had somewhat to ask, and was trying to get +courage to ask it. + +"You have a little boy?" asked the priest. + +"No, I have only my daughter;" she indicated the girl at her side. Then +she began to say something else, stopped, and with much nervousness +asked: + +"Pere Jerome, what was the name of that man?" + +"His name?" said the priest. "You wish to know his name?" + +"Yes, Monsieur" (or _Miche_, as she spoke it); "it was such a beautiful +story." The speaker's companion looked another way. + +"His name," said Father Jerome,--"some say one name and some another. +Some think it was Jean Lafitte, the famous; you have heard of him? And +do you go to my church, Madame----?" + +"No, Miche; not in the past; but from this time, yes. My name"--she +choked a little, and yet it evidently gave her pleasure to offer this +mark of confidence--"is Madame Delphine--Delphine Carraze." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +A CRY OF DISTRESS. + + +Pere Jerome's smile and exclamation, as some days later he entered his +parlor in response to the announcement of a visitor, were indicative of +hearty greeting rather than surprise. + +"Madame Delphine!" + +Yet surprise could hardly have been altogether absent, for though +another Sunday had not yet come around, the slim, smallish figure +sitting in a corner, looking very much alone, and clad in dark attire, +which seemed to have been washed a trifle too often, was Delphine +Carraze on her second visit. And this, he was confident, was over and +above an attendance in the confessional, where he was sure he had +recognized her voice. + +She rose bashfully and gave her hand, then looked to the floor, and +began a faltering speech, with a swallowing motion in the throat, smiled +weakly and commenced again, speaking, as before, in a gentle, low note, +frequently lifting up and casting down her eyes, while shadows of +anxiety and smiles of apology chased each other rapidly across her face. +She was trying to ask his advice. + +"Sit down," said he; and when they had taken seats she resumed, with +downcast eyes: + +"You know,--probably I should have said this in the confessional, but-- + +"No matter, Madame Delphine; I understand; you did not want an oracle, +perhaps; you want a friend." + +She lifted her eyes, shining with tears, and dropped them again. + +"I"--she ceased. "I have done a"--she dropped her head and shook it +despondingly--"a cruel thing." The tears rolled from her eyes as she +turned away her face. + +Pere Jerome remained silent, and presently she turned again, with the +evident intention of speaking at length. + +"It began nineteen years ago--by"--her eyes, which she had lifted, fell +lower than ever, her brow and neck were suffused with blushes, and she +murmured--"I fell in love." + +She said no more, and by and by Pere Jerome replied: + +"Well, Madame Delphine, to love is the right of every soul. I believe in +love. If your love was pure and lawful I am sure your angel guardian +smiled upon you; and if it was not, I cannot say you have nothing to +answer for, and yet I think God may have said: 'She is a quadroone; all +the rights of her womanhood trampled in the mire, sin made easy to +her--almost compulsory,--charge it to account of whom it may concern." + +"No, no!" said Madame Delphine, looking up quickly, "some of it might +fall upon--" Her eyes fell, and she commenced biting her lips and +nervously pinching little folds in her skirt. "He was good--as good as +the law would let him be--better, indeed, for he left me property, which +really the strict law does not allow. He loved our little daughter very +much. He wrote to his mother and sisters, owning all his error and +asking them to take the child and bring her up. I sent her to them when +he died, which was soon after, and did not see my child for sixteen +years. But we wrote to each other all the time, and she loved me. And +then--at last--" Madame Delphine ceased speaking, but went on diligently +with her agitated fingers, turning down foolish hems lengthwise of her +lap. + +"At last your mother-heart conquered," said Pere Jerome. + +She nodded. + +"The sisters married, the mother died; I saw that even where she was she +did not escape the reproach of her birth and blood, and when she asked +me to let her come--." The speaker's brimming eyes rose an instant. "I +know it was wicked, but--I said, come." + +The tears dripped through her hands upon her dress. + +"Was it she who was with you last Sunday?" + +"Yes." + +"And now you do not know what to do with her?" + +"_Ah! c'est ca, oui!_--that is it." + +"Does she look like you, Madame Delphine?" + +"Oh, thank God, no! you would never believe she was my daughter; she is +white and beautiful!" + +"You thank God for that which is your main difficulty, Madame Delphine." + +"Alas! yes." + +Pere Jerome laid his palms tightly across his knees with his arms bowed +out, and fixed his eyes upon the ground, pondering. + +"I suppose she is a sweet, good daughter?" said he, glancing at Madame +Delphine without changing his attitude. + +Her answer was to raise her eyes rapturously. + +"Which gives us the dilemma in its fullest force," said the priest, +speaking as if to the floor. "She has no more place than if she had +dropped upon a strange planet." He suddenly looked up with a brightness +which almost as quickly passed away, and then he looked down again. His +happy thought was the cloister; but he instantly said to himself: "They +cannot have overlooked that choice, except intentionally--which they +have a right to do." He could do nothing but shake his head. + +"And suppose you should suddenly die," he said; he wanted to get at once +to the worst. + +The woman made a quick gesture, and buried her head in her handkerchief, +with the stifled cry: + +"Oh, Olive, my daughter!" + +"Well, Madame Delphine," said Pere Jerome, more buoyantly, "one thing is +sure: we _must_ find a way out of this trouble." + +"Ah!" she exclaimed, looking heavenward, "if it might be!" + +"But it must be!" said the priest. + +"But how shall it be?" asked the desponding woman. + +"Ah!" said Pere Jerome, with a shrug, "God knows." + +"Yes," said the quadroone, with a quick sparkle in her gentle eye; "and +I know, if God would tell anybody, He would tell you!" + +The priest smiled and rose. + +"Do you think so? Well, leave me to think of it. I will ask Him." + +"And He will tell you!" she replied. "And He will bless you!" She rose +and gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled. "I had such a strange +dream," she said, backing toward the door. + +"Yes?" + +"Yes. I got my troubles all mixed up with your sermon. I dreamed I made +that pirate the guardian of my daughter." + +Pere Jerome smiled also, and shrugged. + +"To you, Madame Delphine, as you are placed, every white man in this +country, on land or on water, is a pirate, and of all pirates, I think +that one is, without doubt, the best." + +"Without doubt," echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawing +backward. Pere Jerome stepped forward and opened the door. + +The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon the +threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting +from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair +where the hat had covered it and dark below, gently stroking back his +very soft, brown locks. Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while +Pere Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger +hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat. Madame Delphine's +eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor +were of white duck. + +"Well, Pere Jerome," she said, in a hurried under-tone, "I am just going +to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!" + +"Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, Madame +Carraze." + +And as she departed, the priest turned to the new-comer and extended +both hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been +addressing the quadroone: + +"Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!" + +They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing +with the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often +mentioning Evariste and often Jean. + +Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to Pere +Jerome's. His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar. She +passed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other, +her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the white +duck shoes passed out. She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonade +suit. + +"Yes," the voice of Pere Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in the +door--"Ah! Madame--" + +"I lef' my para_sol_," said Madame Delphine, in English. + +There was this quiet evidence of a defiant spirit hidden somewhere down +under her general timidity, that, against a fierce conventional +prohibition, she wore a bonnet instead of the turban of her caste, and +carried a parasol. + +Pere Jerome turned and brought it. + +He made a motion in the direction in which the late visitor had +disappeared. + +"Madame Delphine, you saw dat man?" + +"Not his face." + +"You couldn' billieve me iv I tell you w'at dat man pur_pose_ to do!" + +"Is dad so, Pere Jerome?" + +"He's goin' to hopen a bank!" + +"Ah!" said Madame Delphine, seeing she was expected to be astonished. + +Pere Jerome evidently longed to tell something that was best kept +secret; he repressed the impulse, but his heart had to say something. He +threw forward one hand and looking pleasantly at Madame Delphine, with +his lips dropped apart, clenched his extended hand and thrusting it +toward the ground, said in a solemn under-tone: + +"He is God's own banker, Madame Delphine." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +MICHE VIGNEVIELLE. + + +Madame Delphine sold one of the corner lots of her property. She had +almost no revenue, and now and then a piece had to go. As a consequence +of the sale, she had a few large bank-notes sewed up in her petticoat, +and one day--may be a fortnight after her tearful interview with Pere +Jerome--she found it necessary to get one of these changed into small +money. She was in the Rue Toulouse, looking from one side to the other +for a bank which was not in that street at all, when she noticed a small +sign hanging above a door, bearing the name "Vignevielle." She looked +in. Pere Jerome had told her (when she had gone to him to ask where she +should apply for change) that if she could only wait a few days, there +would be a new concern opened in Toulouse street,--it really seemed as +if Vignevielle was the name, if she could judge; it looked to be, and it +was, a private banker's,--"U. L. Vignevielle's," according to a larger +inscription which met her eyes as she ventured in. Behind the counter, +exchanging some last words with a busy-mannered man outside, who, in +withdrawing, seemed bent on running over Madame Delphine, stood the man +in blue cottonade, whom she had met in Pere Jerome's door-way. Now, for +the first time, she saw his face, its strong, grave, human kindness +shining softly on each and every bronzed feature. The recognition was +mutual. He took pains to speak first, saying, in a re-assuring tone, and +in the language he had last heard her use: + +"'Ow I kin serve you, Madame?" + +"Iv you pliz, to mague dad bill change, Miche." + +She pulled from her pocket a wad of dark cotton handkerchief, from which +she began to untie the imprisoned note. Madame Delphine had an +uncommonly sweet voice, and it seemed so to strike Monsieur Vignevielle. +He spoke to her once or twice more, as he waited on her, each time in +English, as though he enjoyed the humble melody of its tone, and +presently, as she turned to go, he said: + +"Madame Carraze!" + +She started a little, but bethought herself instantly that he had heard +her name in Pere Jerome's parlor. The good father might even have said a +few words about her after her first departure; he had such an +overflowing heart. + +"Madame Carraze," said Monsieur Vignevielle, "doze kine of note wad you +'_an_' me juz now is bein' contrefit. You muz tek kyah from doze kine of +note. You see--" He drew from his cash-drawer a note resembling the one +he had just changed for her, and proceeded to point out certain tests of +genuineness. The counterfeit, he said, was so and so. + +"Bud," she exclaimed, with much dismay, "dad was de manner of my bill! +Id muz be--led me see dad bill wad I give you,--if you pliz, Miche." + +Monsieur Vignevielle turned to engage in conversation with an employe +and a new visitor, and gave no sign of hearing Madame Delphine's voice. +She asked a second time, with like result, lingered timidly, and as he +turned to give his attention to a third visitor, reiterated: + +"Miche Vignevielle, I wizh you pliz led----" + +"Madame Carraze," he said, turning so suddenly as to make the frightened +little woman start, but extending his palm with a show of frankness, and +assuming a look of benignant patience, "'ow I kin fine doze note now, +mongs' all de rez? Iv you pliz nod to mague me doze troub'." + +The dimmest shadow of a smile seemed only to give his words a more +kindly authoritative import, and as he turned away again with a manner +suggestive of finality, Madame Delphine found no choice but to depart. +But she went away loving the ground beneath the feet of Monsieur U. L. +Vignevielle. + +"Oh, Pere Jerome!" she exclaimed in the corrupt French of her caste, +meeting the little father on the street a few days later, "you told the +truth that day in your parlor. _Mo conne li a c't heure_. I know him +now; he is just what you called him." + +"Why do you not make him _your_ banker, also, Madame Delphine?" + +"I have done so this very day!" she replied, with more happiness in her +eyes than Pere Jerome had ever before seen there. + +"Madame Delphine," he said, his own eyes sparkling, "make _him_ your +daughter's guardian; for myself, being a priest, it would not be best; +but ask him; I believe he will not refuse you." + +Madame Delphine's face grew still brighter as he spoke. + +"It was in my mind," she said. + +Yet to the timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after +another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks +elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at +length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind Monsieur +Vignevielle's banking-room,--he sitting beside a table, and she, more +timid and demure than ever, having just taken a chair by the door,--she +said, trying, with a little bashful laugh, to make the matter seem +unimportant, and yet with some tremor of voice: + +"Miche Vignevielle, I bin maguing my will." (Having commenced their +acquaintance in English, they spoke nothing else.) + +"'Tis a good idy," responded the banker. + +"I kin mague you de troub' to kib dad will fo' me, Miche Vignevielle?" + +"Yez." + +She looked up with grateful re-assurance; but her eyes dropped again as +she said: + +"Miche Vignevielle----" Here she choked, and began her peculiar motion +of laying folds in the skirt of her dress, with trembling fingers. She +lifted her eyes, and as they met the look of deep and placid kindness +that was in his face, some courage returned, and she said: + +"Miche." + +"Wad you wand?" asked he, gently. + +"If it arrive to me to die----" + +"Yez?" + +Her words were scarcely audible: + +"I wand you teg kyah my lill' girl." + +"You 'ave one lill' gal, Madame Carraze?" + +She nodded with her face down. + +"An' you godd some mo' chillen?" + +"No." + +"I nevva know dad, Madame Carraze. She's a lill' small gal?" + +Mothers forget their daughters' stature. Madame Delphine said: + +"Yez." + +For a few moments neither spoke, and then Monsieur Vignevielle said: + +"I will do dad." + +"Lag she been you' h-own?" asked the mother, suffering from her own +boldness. + +"She's a good lill' chile, eh?" + +"Miche, she's a lill' hangel!" exclaimed Madame Delphine, with a look of +distress. + +"Yez; I teg kyah 'v 'er, lag my h-own. I mague you dad promise." + +"But----" There was something still in the way, Madame Delphine seemed +to think. + +The banker waited in silence. + +"I suppose you will want to see my lill' girl?" + +He smiled; for she looked at him as if she would implore him to decline. + +"Oh, I tek you' word fo' hall dad, Madame Carraze. It mague no differend +wad she loog lag; I don' wan' see 'er." + +Madame Delphine's parting smile--she went very shortly--was gratitude +beyond speech. + +Monsieur Vignevielle returned to the seat he had left, and resumed a +newspaper,--the _Louisiana Gazette_ in all probability,--which he had +laid down upon Madame Delphine's entrance. His eyes fell upon a +paragraph which had previously escaped his notice. There they rested. +Either he read it over and over unwearyingly, or he was lost in thought. +Jean Thompson entered. + +"Now," said Mr. Thompson, in a suppressed tone, bending a little across +the table, and laying one palm upon a package of papers which lay in the +other, "it is completed. You could retire from your business any day +inside of six hours without loss to anybody." (Both here and elsewhere, +let it be understood that where good English is given the words were +spoken in good French.) + +Monsieur Vignevielle raised his eyes and extended the newspaper to the +attorney, who received it and read the paragraph. Its substance was that +a certain vessel of the navy had returned from a cruise in the Gulf of +Mexico and Straits of Florida, where she had done valuable service +against the pirates--having, for instance, destroyed in one fortnight in +January last twelve pirate vessels afloat, two on the stocks, and three +establishments ashore. + +"United States brig _Porpoise_," repeated Jean Thompson. "Do you know +her?" + +"We are acquainted," said Monsieur Vignevielle. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +SHE. + + +A quiet footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neat +garb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, a +silent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane, +walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of Canal +Marigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti--these were +all; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the return +of Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle to the precincts of his birth and early +life. + +But we hardly give the event its right name. It was Capitaine Lemaitre +who had disappeared; it was Monsieur Vignevielle who had come back. The +pleasures, the haunts, the companions, that had once held out their +charms to the impetuous youth, offered no enticements to Madame +Delphine's banker. There is this to be said even for the pride his +grandfather had taught him, that it had always held him above low +indulgences; and though he had dallied with kings, queens, and knaves +through all the mazes of Faro, Rondeau, and Craps, he had done it +loftily; but now he maintained a peaceful estrangement from all. +Evariste and Jean, themselves, found him only by seeking. + +"It is the right way," he said to Pere Jerome, the day we saw him there. +"Ursin Lemaitre is dead. I have buried him. He left a will. I am his +executor." + +"He is crazy," said his lawyer brother-in-law, impatiently. + +"On the contr-y," replied the little priest, "'e 'as come ad hisse'f." + +Evariste spoke. + +"Look at his face, Jean. Men with that kind of face are the last to go +crazy." + +"You have not proved that," replied Jean, with an attorney's obstinacy. +"You should have heard him talk the other day about that newspaper +paragraph. 'I have taken Ursin Lemaitre's head; I have it with me; I +claim the reward, but I desire to commute it to citizenship.' He is +crazy." + +Of course Jean Thompson did not believe what he said; but he said it, +and, in his vexation, repeated it, on the _banquettes_ and at the clubs; +and presently it took the shape of a sly rumor, that the returned rover +was a trifle snarled in his top-hamper. + +This whisper was helped into circulation by many trivial eccentricities +of manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of his transactions +in business. + +"My dear sir!" cried his astounded lawyer, one day, "you are not running +a charitable institution!" + +"How do you know?" said Monsieur Vignevielle. There the conversation +ceased. + +"Why do you not found hospitals and asylums at once," asked the +attorney, at another time, with a vexed laugh, "and get the credit of +it?" + +"And make the end worse than the beginning," said the banker, with a +gentle smile, turning away to a desk of books. + +"Bah!" muttered Jean Thompson. + +Monsieur Vignevielle betrayed one very bad symptom. Wherever he went he +seemed looking for somebody. It may have been perceptible only to those +who were sufficiently interested in him to study his movements; but +those who saw it once saw it always. He never passed an open door or +gate but he glanced in; and often, where it stood but slightly ajar, you +might see him give it a gentle push with his hand or cane. It was very +singular. + +He walked much alone after dark. The _guichinangoes_ (garroters, we +might say), at those times the city's particular terror by night, never +crossed his path. He was one of those men for whom danger appears to +stand aside. + +One beautiful summer night, when all nature seemed hushed in ecstasy, +the last blush gone that told of the sun's parting, Monsieur +Vignevielle, in the course of one of those contemplative, uncompanioned +walks which it was his habit to take, came slowly along the more open +portion of the Rue Royale, with a step which was soft without intention, +occasionally touching the end of his stout cane gently to the ground and +looking upward among his old acquaintances, the stars. + +It was one of those southern nights under whose spell all the sterner +energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the +fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and +escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and +sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by +the genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was still +again, as if the breezes lifted their expectant pinions and lowered them +once more, awaiting the rising of the moon in a silence which fell upon +the fields, the roads, the gardens, the walls, and the suburban and +half-suburban streets, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose. + +Monsieur Vignevielle's steps were bent toward the more central part of +the town, and he was presently passing along a high, close, board-fence, +on the right-hand side of the way, when, just within this inclosure, and +almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a +mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It +may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the +passer's attention, but he paused and looked up. + +And then he remarked something more,--that the air where he had stopped +was filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. He +looked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate just +there. Would he push it, as his wont was? The grass was growing about it +in a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. An +iron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into the +gate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithing +business--an eye which had later received high training as an eye for +fastenings--fell upon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood +had shrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without +falling out. The strange habit asserted itself; he laid his large hand +upon the cross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was +drawn partly open. + +At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door or +gate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image of +whose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it had +met him in his life's path and turned him face about from the way of +destruction. + +The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within the +opening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, a +broad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-trees +and tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell, +the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weeds +stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There, +very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had +tempted him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned +from him in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the +right, and escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely +a door of the house might open upon it. While he still looked, there +fell upon his ear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the +broken shells,--one only, and then all was for a moment still again. Had +he mistaken? No. The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale +glimpse of robes came through the tangle, and then, plainly to view, +appeared an outline--a presence--a form--a spirit--a girl! + +From throat to instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the +medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich +waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two +heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees, +a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her +temples,--her arms, half hid in a snowy mist of sleeve, let down to +guide her spotless skirts free from the dewy touch of the +grass,--straight down the path she came! + +Will she stop? Will she turn aside? Will she espy the dark form in the +deep shade of the orange, and, with one piercing scream, wheel and +vanish? She draws near. She approaches the jasmine; she raises her arms, +the sleeves falling like a vapor down to the shoulders; rises upon +tiptoe, and plucks a spray. O Memory! Can it be? _Can it be?_ Is this +his quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to M. Vignevielle the +unsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she is +now, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon will +shine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to do +that. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neck +and throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mocking-bird cannot +withhold; he breaks into song--she turns--she turns her face--it is she, +it is she! Madame Delphine's daughter is the girl he met on the ship. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +OLIVE. + + +She was just passing seventeen--that beautiful year when the heart of +the maiden still beats quickly with the surprise of her new dominion, +while with gentle dignity her brow accepts the holy coronation of +womanhood. The forehead and temples beneath her loosely bound hair were +fair without paleness, and meek without languor. She had the soft, +lacklustre beauty of the South; no ruddiness of coral, no waxen white, +no pink of shell; no heavenly blue in the glance; but a face that +seemed, in all its other beauties, only a tender accompaniment for the +large, brown, melting eyes, where the openness of child-nature mingled +dreamily with the sweet mysteries of maiden thought. We say no color of +shell on face or throat; but this was no deficiency, that which took +its place being the warm, transparent tint of sculptured ivory. + +This side door-way which led from Madame Delphine's house into her +garden was overarched partly by an old remnant of vine-covered lattice, +and partly by a crape-myrtle, against whose small, polished trunk leaned +a rustic seat. Here Madame Delphine and Olive loved to sit when the +twilights were balmy or the moon was bright. + +"_Cherie_," said Madame Delphine on one of these evenings, "why do you +dream so much?" + +She spoke in the _patois_ most natural to her, and which her daughter +had easily learned. + +The girl turned her face to her mother, and smiled, then dropped her +glance to the hands in her own lap, which were listlessly handling the +end of a ribbon. The mother looked at her with fond solicitude. Her +dress was white again; this was but one night since that in which +Monsieur Vignevielle had seen her at the bush of night-jasmine. He had +not been discovered, but had gone away, shutting the gate, and leaving +it as he had found it. + +Her head was uncovered. Its plaited masses, quite black in the +moonlight, hung down and coiled upon the bench, by her side. Her chaste +drapery was of that revived classic order which the world of fashion was +again laying aside to re-assume the mediaeval bondage of the stay-lace; +for New Orleans was behind the fashionable world, and Madame Delphine +and her daughter were behind New Orleans. A delicate scarf, pale blue, +of lightly netted worsted, fell from either shoulder down beside her +hands. The look that was bent upon her changed perforce to one of gentle +admiration. She seemed the goddess of the garden. + +Olive glanced up. Madame Delphine was not prepared for the movement, and +on that account repeated her question: + +"What are you thinking about?" + +The dreamer took the hand that was laid upon hers between her own palms, +bowed her head, and gave them a soft kiss. + +The mother submitted. Wherefore, in the silence which followed, a +daughter's conscience felt the burden of having withheld an answer, and +Olive presently said, as the pair sat looking up into the sky: + +"I was thinking of Pere Jerome's sermon." + +Madame Delphine had feared so. Olive had lived on it ever since the day +it was preached. The poor mother was almost ready to repent having ever +afforded her the opportunity of hearing it. Meat and drink had become of +secondary value to her daughter; she fed upon the sermon. + +Olive felt her mother's thought and knew that her mother knew her own; +but now that she had confessed, she would ask a question: + +"Do you think, _maman_, that Pere Jerome knows it was I who gave that +missal?" + +"No," said Madame Delphine, "I am sure he does not." + +Another question came more timidly: + +"Do--do you think he knows _him_?" + +"Yes, I do. He said in his sermon he did." + +Both remained for a long time very still, watching the moon gliding in +and through among the small dark-and-white clouds. At last the daughter +spoke again. + +"I wish I was Pere--I wish I was as good as Pere Jerome." + +"My child," said Madame Delphine, her tone betraying a painful summoning +of strength to say what she had lacked the courage to utter,--"my child, +I pray the good God you will not let your heart go after one whom you +may never see in this world!" + +The maiden turned her glance, and their eyes met. She cast her arms +about her mother's neck, laid her cheek upon it for a moment, and then, +feeling the maternal tear, lifted her lips, and, kissing her, said: + +"I will not! I will not!" + +But the voice was one, not of willing consent, but of desperate +resolution. + +"It would be useless, anyhow," said the mother, laying her arm around +her daughter's waist. + +Olive repeated the kiss, prolonging it passionately. + +"I have nobody but you," murmured the girl; "I am a poor quadroone!" + +She threw back her plaited hair for a third embrace, when a sound in the +shrubbery startled them. + +"_Qui ci ca?_" called Madame Delphine, in a frightened voice, as the two +stood up, holding to each other. + +No answer. + +"It was only the dropping of a twig," she whispered, after a long +holding of the breath. But they went into the house and barred it +everywhere. + +It was no longer pleasant to sit up. They retired, and in course of +time, but not soon, they fell asleep, holding each other very tight, and +fearing, even in their dreams, to hear another twig fall. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +BIRDS. + + +Monsieur Vignevielle looked in at no more doors or windows; but if the +disappearance of this symptom was a favorable sign, others came to +notice which were especially bad,--for instance, wakefulness. At +well-nigh any hour of the night, the city guard, which itself dared not +patrol singly, would meet him on his slow, unmolested, sky-gazing walk. + +"Seems to enjoy it," said Jean Thompson; "the worst sort of evidence. If +he showed distress of mind, it would not be so bad; but his +calmness,--ugly feature." + +The attorney had held his ground so long that he began really to believe +it was tenable. + +By day, it is true, Monsieur Vignevielle was at his post in his quiet +"bank." Yet here, day by day, he was the source of more and more vivid +astonishment to those who held preconceived notions of a banker's +calling. As a banker, at least, he was certainly out of balance; while +as a promenader, it seemed to those who watched him that his ruling idea +had now veered about, and that of late he was ever on the quiet alert, +not to find, but to evade, somebody. + +"Olive, my child," whispered Madame Delphine one morning, as the pair +were kneeling side by side on the tiled floor of the church, "yonder is +Miche Vignevielle! If you will only look at once--he is just passing a +little in----. Ah, much too slow again; he stepped out by the side +door." + +The mother thought it a strange providence that Monsieur Vignevielle +should always be disappearing whenever Olive was with her. + +One early dawn, Madame Delphine, with a small empty basket on her arm, +stepped out upon the _banquette_ in front of her house, shut and +fastened the door very softly, and stole out in the direction whence you +could faintly catch, in the stillness of the daybreak, the songs of the +Gascon butchers and the pounding of their meat-axes on the stalls of the +distant market-house. She was going to see if she could find some birds +for Olive,--the child's appetite was so poor; and, as she was out, she +would drop an early prayer at the cathedral. Faith and works. + +"One must venture something, sometimes, in the cause of religion," +thought she, as she started timorously on her way. But she had not gone +a dozen steps before she repented her temerity. There was some one +behind her. + +There should not be anything terrible in a footstep merely because it is +masculine; but Madame Delphine's mind was not prepared to consider that. +A terrible secret was haunting her. Yesterday morning she had found a +shoe-track in the garden. She had not disclosed the discovery to Olive, +but she had hardly closed her eyes the whole night. + +The step behind her now might be the fall of that very shoe. She +quickened her pace, but did not leave the sound behind. She hurried +forward almost at a run; yet it was still there--no farther, no nearer. +Two frights were upon her at once--one for herself, another for Olive, +left alone in the house; but she had but the one prayer--"God protect my +child!" After a fearful time she reached a place of safety, the +cathedral. There, panting, she knelt long enough to know the pursuit +was, at least, suspended, and then arose, hoping and praying all the +saints that she might find the way clear for her return in all haste to +Olive. + +She approached a different door from that by which she had entered, her +eyes in all directions and her heart in her throat. + +"Madame Carraze." + +She started wildly and almost screamed, though the voice was soft and +mild. Monsieur Vignevielle came slowly forward from the shade of the +wall. They met beside a bench, upon which she dropped her basket. + +"Ah, Miche Vignevielle, I thang de good God to mid you!" + +"Is dad so, Madame Carraze? Fo' w'y dad is?" + +"A man was chase me all dad way since my 'ouse!" + +"Yes, Madame, I sawed him." + +"You sawed 'im? Oo it was?" + +"'Twas only one man wad is a foolizh. De people say he's crezzie. +_Mais_, he don' goin' to meg you no 'arm." + +"But I was scare' fo' my lill' girl." + +"Noboddie don' goin' trouble you' lill' gal, Madame Carraze." + +Madame Delphine looked up into the speaker's strangely kind and patient +eyes, and drew sweet re-assurance from them. + +"Madame," said Monsieur Vignevielle, "wad pud you hout so hearly dis +morning?" + +She told him her errand. She asked if he thought she would find +anything. + +"Yez," he said, "it was possible--a few lill' _becassines-de-mer_, ou +somezin' ligue. But fo' w'y you lill' gal lose doze hapetide?" + +"Ah, Miche,"--Madame Delphine might have tried a thousand times again +without ever succeeding half so well in lifting the curtain upon the +whole, sweet, tender, old, old-fashioned truth,--"Ah, Miche, she wone +tell me!" + +"Bud, anny'ow, Madame, wad you thing?" + +"Miche," she replied, looking up again with a tear standing in either +eye, and then looking down once more as she began to speak, "I thing--I +thing she's lonesome." + +"You thing?" + +She nodded. + +"Ah! Madame Carraze," he said, partly extending his hand, "you see? 'Tis +impossible to mague you' owze shud so tighd to priv-en dad. Madame, I +med one mizteg." + +"Ah, _non_, Miche!" + +"Yez. There har nod one poss'bil'ty fo' me to be dad guardian of you' +daughteh!" + +Madame Delphine started with surprise and alarm. + +"There is ondly one wad can be," he continued. + +"But oo, Miche?" + +"God." + +"Ah, Miche Vignevielle----" She looked at him appealingly. + +"I don' goin' to dizzerd you, Madame Carraze," he said. + +She lifted her eyes. They filled. She shook her head, a tear fell, she +bit her lip, smiled, and suddenly dropped her face into both hands, sat +down upon the bench and wept until she shook. + +"You dunno wad I mean, Madame Carraze?" + +She did not know. + +"I mean dad guardian of you' daughteh godd to fine 'er now one 'uzban'; +an' noboddie are hable to do dad egceb de good God 'imsev. But, Madame, +I tell you wad I do." + +She rose up. He continued: + +"Go h-open you' owze; I fin' you' daughteh dad' uzban'." + +Madame Delphine was a helpless, timid thing; but her eyes showed she was +about to resent this offer. Monsieur Vignevielle put forth his hand--it +touched her shoulder--and said, kindly still, and without eagerness. + +"One w'ite man, Madame; 'tis prattycabble. I _know_ 'tis prattycabble. +One w'ite jantleman, Madame. You can truz me. I goin' fedge 'im. +H-ondly you go h-open you' owze." + +Madame Delphine looked down, twining her handkerchief among her fingers. + +He repeated his proposition. + +"You will come firz by you'se'f?" she asked. + +"Iv you wand." + +She lifted up once more her eye of faith. That was her answer. + +"Come," he said, gently, "I wan' sen' some bird ad you' lill' gal." + +And they went away, Madame Delphine's spirit grown so exaltedly bold +that she said as they went, though a violent blush followed her words: + +"Miche Vignevielle, I thing Pere Jerome mighd be ab'e to tell you +someboddie." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +FACE TO FACE. + + +Madame Delphine found her house neither burned nor rifled. + +"_Ah! ma piti sans popa_! Ah! my little fatherless one!" Her faded +bonnet fell back between her shoulders, hanging on by the strings, and +her dropped basket, with its "few lill' _becassines-de-mer_" dangling +from the handle, rolled out its okra and soup-joint upon the floor. "_Ma +piti_! kiss!--kiss!--kiss!" + +"But is it good news you have, or bad?" cried the girl, a fourth or +fifth time. + +"_Dieu sait, ma c'ere; mo pas conne!_"--God knows, my darling; I cannot +tell! + +The mother dropped into a chair, covered her face with her apron, and +burst into tears, then looked up with an effort to smile, and wept +afresh. + +"What have you been doing?" asked the daughter, in a long-drawn, +fondling tone. She leaned forward and unfastened her mother's +bonnet-strings. "Why do you cry?" + +"For nothing at all, my darling; for nothing--I am such a fool." + +The girl's eyes filled. The mother looked up into her face and said: + +"No, it is nothing, nothing, only that--" turning her head from side to +side with a slow, emotional emphasis, "Miche Vignevielle is the +best--_best_ man on the good Lord's earth!" + +Olive drew a chair close to her mother, sat down and took the little +yellow hands into her own white lap, and looked tenderly into her eyes. +Madame Delphine felt herself yielding; she must make a show of telling +something: + +"He sent you those birds!" + +The girl drew her face back a little. The little woman turned away, +trying in vain to hide her tearful smile, and they laughed together, +Olive mingling a daughter's fond kiss with her laughter. + +"There is something else," she said, "and you shall tell me." + +"Yes," replied Madame Delphine, "only let me get composed." + +But she did not get so. Later in the morning she came to Olive with the +timid yet startling proposal that they would do what they could to +brighten up the long-neglected front room. Olive was mystified and +troubled, but consented, and thereupon the mother's spirits rose. + +The work began, and presently ensued all the thumping, the trundling, +the lifting and letting down, the raising and swallowing of dust, and +the smells of turpentine, brass, pumice and woollen rags that go to +characterize a housekeeper's _emeute_; and still, as the work +progressed, Madame Delphine's heart grew light, and her little black +eyes sparkled. + +"We like a clean parlor, my daughter, even though no one is ever coming +to see us, eh?" she said, as entering the apartment she at last sat +down, late in the afternoon. She had put on her best attire. + +Olive was not there to reply. The mother called but got no answer. She +rose with an uneasy heart, and met her a few steps beyond the door that +opened into the garden, in a path which came up from an old latticed +bower. Olive was approaching slowly, her face pale and wild. There was +an agony of hostile dismay in the look, and the trembling and appealing +tone with which, taking the frightened mother's cheeks between her +palms, she said: + +"_Ah! ma mere, qui vini 'ci ce soir?_"--Who is coming here this evening? + +"Why, my dear child, I was just saying, we like a clean----" + +But the daughter was desperate: + +"Oh, tell me, my mother, _who_ is coming?" + +"My darling, it is our blessed friend, Miche Vignevielle!" + +"To see me?" cried the girl. + +"Yes." + +"Oh, my mother, what have you done?" + +"Why, Olive, my child," exclaimed the little mother, bursting into +tears, "do you forget it is Miche Vignevielle who has promised to +protect you when I die?" + +The daughter had turned away, and entered the door; but she faced around +again, and extending her arms toward her mother, cried: + +"How can--he is a white man--I am a poor----" + +"Ah! _cherie_" replied Madame Delphine, seizing the outstretched hands, +"it is there--it is there that he shows himself the best man alive! He +sees that difficulty; he proposes to meet it; he says he will find you a +suitor!" + +Olive freed her hands violently, motioned her mother back, and stood +proudly drawn up, flashing an indignation too great for speech; but the +next moment she had uttered a cry, and was sobbing on the floor. + +The mother knelt beside her and threw an arm about her shoulders. + +"Oh, my sweet daughter, you must not cry! I did not want to tell you at +all! I did not want to tell you! It isn't fair for you to cry so hard. +Miche Vignevielle says you shall have the one you wish, or none at all, +Olive, or none at all." + +"None at all! none at all! None, none, none!" + +"No, no, Olive," said the mother, "none at all. He brings none with him +to-night, and shall bring none with him hereafter." + +Olive rose suddenly, silently declined her mother's aid, and went alone +to their chamber in the half-story. + + * * * * * + +Madame Delphine wandered drearily from door to window, from window to +door, and presently into the newly-furnished front room which now seemed +dismal beyond degree. There was a great Argand lamp in one corner. How +she had labored that day to prepare it for evening illumination! A +little beyond it, on the wall, hung a crucifix. She knelt under it, with +her eyes fixed upon it, and thus silently remained until its outline was +undistinguishable in the deepening shadows of evening. + +She arose. A few minutes later, as she was trying to light the lamp, an +approaching step on the sidewalk seemed to pause. Her heart stood +still. She softly laid the phosphorus-box out of her hands. A shoe +grated softly on the stone step, and Madame Delphine, her heart beating +in great thuds, without waiting for a knock, opened the door, bowed low, +and exclaimed in a soft perturbed voice: + +"Miche Vignevielle!" + +He entered, hat in hand, and with that almost noiseless tread which we +have noticed. She gave him a chair and closed the door; then hastened, +with words of apology, back to her task of lighting the lamp. But her +hands paused in their work again,--Olive's step was on the stairs; then +it came off the stairs; then it was in the next room, and then there was +the whisper of soft robes, a breath of gentle perfume, and a snowy +figure in the door. She was dressed for the evening. + +"Maman?" + +Madame Delphine was struggling desperately with the lamp, and at that +moment it responded with a tiny bead of light. + +"I am here, my daughter." + +She hastened to the door, and Olive, all unaware of a third presence, +lifted her white arms, laid them about her mother's neck, and, ignoring +her effort to speak, wrested a fervent kiss from her lips. The crystal +of the lamp sent out a faint gleam; it grew; it spread on every side; +the ceiling, the walls lighted up; the crucifix, the furniture of the +room came back into shape. + +"Maman!" cried Olive, with a tremor of consternation. + +"It is Miche Vignevielle, my daughter----" + +The gloom melted swiftly away before the eyes of the startled maiden, a +dark form stood out against the farther wall, and the light, expanding +to the full, shone clearly upon the unmoving figure and quiet face of +Capitaine Lemaitre. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +THE MOTHER BIRD. + + +One afternoon, some three weeks after Capitaine Lemaitre had called on +Madame Delphine, the priest started to make a pastoral call and had +hardly left the gate of his cottage, when a person, overtaking him, +plucked his gown: + +"Pere Jerome----" + +He turned. + +The face that met his was so changed with excitement and distress that +for an instant he did not recognize it. + +"Why, Madame Delphine----" + +"Oh, Pere Jerome! I wan' see you so bad, so bad! _Mo oule dit +quic'ose_,--I godd some' to tell you." + +The two languages might be more successful than one, she seemed to +think. + +"We had better go back to my parlor," said the priest, in their native +tongue. + +They returned. + +Madame Delphine's very step was altered,--nervous and inelastic. She +swung one arm as she walked, and brandished a turkey-tail fan. + +"I was glad, yass, to kedge you," she said, as they mounted the front, +outdoor stair; following her speech with a slight, unmusical laugh, and +fanning herself with unconscious fury. + +"_Fe chaud_," she remarked again, taking the chair he offered and +continuing to ply the fan. + +Pere Jerome laid his hat upon a chest of drawers, sat down opposite her, +and said, as he wiped his kindly face: + +"Well, Madame Carraze?" + +Gentle as the tone was, she started, ceased fanning, lowered the fan to +her knee, and commenced smoothing its feathers. + +"Pere Jerome----" She gnawed her lip +and shook her head. + +"Well?" + +She burst into tears. + +The priest rose and loosed the curtain of one of the windows. He did it +slowly--as slowly as he could, and, as he came back, she lifted her face +with sudden energy, and exclaimed: + +"Oh, Pere Jerome, de law is brogue! de law is brogue! I brogue it! 'Twas +me! 'Twas me!" + +The tears gushed out again, but she shut her lips very tight, and dumbly +turned away her face. Pere Jerome waited a little before replying; then +he said, very gently: + +"I suppose dad muss 'ave been by accyden', Madame Delphine?" + +The little father felt a wish--one which he often had when weeping women +were before him--that he were an angel instead of a man, long enough to +press the tearful cheek upon his breast, and assure the weeper God would +not let the lawyers and judges hurt her. He allowed a few moments more +to pass, and then asked: + +"_N'est-ce-pas_, Madame Delphine? Daz ze way, aint it?" + +"No, Pere Jerome, no. My daughter--oh, Pere Jerome, I bethroath my lill' +girl--to a w'ite man!" And immediately Madame Delphine commenced +savagely drawing a thread in the fabric of her skirt with one trembling +hand, while she drove the fan with the other. "Dey goin' git marry." + +On the priest's face came a look of pained surprise. He slowly said: + +"Is dad possib', Madame Delphine?" + +"Yass," she replied, at first without lifting her eyes; and then again, +"Yass," looking full upon him through her tears, "yass, 'tis tru'." + +He rose and walked once across the room, returned, and said, in the +Creole dialect: + +"Is he a good man--without doubt?" + +"De bez in God's world!" replied Madame Delphine, with a rapturous +smile. + +"My poor, dear friend," said the priest, "I am afraid you are being +deceived by somebody." + +There was the pride of an unswerving faith in the triumphant tone and +smile with which she replied, raising and slowly shaking her head: + +"Ah-h, no-o-o, Miche! Ah-h, no, no! Not by Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle!" + +Pere Jerome was confounded. He turned again, and, with his hands at his +back and his eyes cast down, slowly paced the floor. + +"He _is_ a good man," he said, by and by, as if he thought aloud. At +length he halted before the woman. + +"Madame Delphine----" + +The distressed glance with which she had been following his steps was +lifted to his eyes. + +"Suppose dad should be true w'at doze peop' say 'bout Ursin." + +"_Qui ci ca?_ What is that?" asked the quadroone, stopping her fan. + +"Some peop' say Ursin is crezzie." + +"Ah, Pere Jerome!" She leaped to her feet as if he had smitten her, and +putting his words away with an outstretched arm and wide-open palm, +suddenly lifted hands and eyes to heaven, and cried: "I wizh to God--_I +wizh to God_--de whole worl' was crezzie dad same way!" She sank, +trembling, into her chair. "Oh, no, no," she continued, shaking her +head, "'tis not Miche Vignevielle w'at's crezzie." Her eyes lighted with +sudden fierceness. "'Tis dad _law_! Dad _law_ is crezzie! Dad law is a +fool!" + +A priest of less heart-wisdom might have replied that the law is--the +law; but Pere Jerome saw that Madame Delphine was expecting this very +response. Wherefore he said, with gentleness: + +"Madame Delphine, a priest is not a bailiff, but a physician. How can I +help you?" + +A grateful light shone a moment in her eyes, yet there remained a +piteous hostility in the tone in which she demanded: + +"_Mais, pou'quoi ye fe cette mechanique la?_"--What business had they to +make that contraption? + +His answer was a shrug with his palms extended and a short, disclamatory +"Ah." He started to resume his walk, but turned to her again and said: + +"Why did they make that law? Well, they made it to keep the two races +separate." + +Madame Delphine startled the speaker with a loud, harsh, angry laugh. +Fire came from her eyes and her lip curled with scorn. + +"Then they made a lie, Pere Jerome! Separate! No-o-o! They do not want +to keep us separated; no, no! But they _do_ want to keep us despised!" +She laid her hand on her heart, and frowned upward with physical +pain. "But, very well! from which race do they want to keep my +daughter separate? She is seven parts white! The law did not stop +her from being that; and now, when she wants to be a white man's +good and honest wife, shall that law stop her? Oh, no!" She rose +up. "No; I will tell you what that law is made for. It is made +to--punish--my--child--for--not--choosing--her--father! Pere Jerome--my +God, what a law!" She dropped back into her seat. The tears came in a +flood, which she made no attempt to restrain. + +"No," she began again--and here she broke into English--"fo' me I don' +kyare; but, Pere Jerome,--'tis fo' dat I come to tell you,--dey _shall +not_ punizh my daughter!" She was on her feet again, smiting her heaving +bosom with the fan. "She shall marrie oo she want!" + +Pere Jerome had heard her out, not interrupting by so much as a motion +of the hand. Now his decision was made, and he touched her softly with +the ends of his fingers. + +"Madame Delphine, I want you to go at 'ome. Go at 'ome." + +"Wad you goin' mague?" she asked. + +"Nottin'. But go at 'ome. Kip quite; don' put you'se'f sig. I goin' see +Ursin. We trah to figs dat law fo' you." + +"You kin figs dad!" she cried, with a gleam of joy. + +"We goin' to try, Madame Delphine. Adieu!" + +He offered his hand. She seized and kissed it thrice, covering it with +tears, at the same time lifting up her eyes to his and murmuring: + +"De bez man God evva mague!" + +At the door she turned to offer a more conventional good-bye; but he was +following her out, bareheaded. At the gate they paused an instant, and +then parted with a simple adieu, she going home and he returning for +his hat, and starting again upon his interrupted business. + + * * * * * + +Before he came back to his own house, he stopped at the lodgings of +Monsieur Vignevielle, but did not find him in. + +"Indeed," the servant at the door said, "he said he might not return for +some days or weeks." + +So Pere Jerome, much wondering, made a second detour toward the +residence of one of Monsieur Vignevielle's employes. + +"Yes," said the clerk, "his instructions are to hold the business, as +far as practicable, in suspense, during his absence. Everything is in +another name." And then he whispered: + +"Officers of the Government looking for him. Information got from some +of the prisoners taken months ago by the United States brig _Porpoise_. +But"--a still softer whisper--"have no fear; they will never find him: +Jean Thompson and Evariste Varrillat have hid him away too well for +that." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +TRIBULATION. + + +The Saturday following was a very beautiful day. In the morning a light +fall of rain had passed across the town, and all the afternoon you could +see signs, here and there upon the horizon, of other showers. The ground +was dry again, while the breeze was cool and sweet, smelling of wet +foliage and bringing sunshine and shade in frequent and very pleasing +alternation. + +There was a walk in Pere Jerome's little garden, of which we have not +spoken, off on the right side of the cottage, with his chamber window at +one end, a few old and twisted, but blossom-laden, crape-myrtles on +either hand, now and then a rose of some unpretending variety and some +bunches of rue, and at the other end a shrine, in whose blue niche +stood a small figure of Mary, with folded hands and uplifted eyes. No +other window looked down upon the spot, and its seclusion was often a +great comfort to Pere Jerome. + +Up and down this path, but a few steps in its entire length, the priest +was walking, taking the air for a few moments after a prolonged sitting +in the confessional. Penitents had been numerous this afternoon. He was +thinking of Ursin. The officers of the Government had not found him, nor +had Pere Jerome seen him; yet he believed they had, in a certain +indirect way, devised a simple project by which they could at any time +"figs dad law," providing only that these Government officials would +give over their search; for, though he had not seen the fugitive, Madame +Delphine had seen him, and had been the vehicle of communication between +them. There was an orange-tree, where a mocking-bird was wont to sing +and a girl in white to walk, that the detectives wot not of. The law was +to be "figs" by the departure of the three frequenters of the +jasmine-scented garden in one ship to France, where the law offered no +obstacles. + +It seemed moderately certain to those in search of Monsieur Vignevielle +(and it was true) that Jean and Evariste were his harborers; but for all +that the hunt, even for clues, was vain. The little banking +establishment had not been disturbed. Jean Thompson had told the +searchers certain facts about it, and about its gentle proprietor as +well, that persuaded them to make no move against the concern, if the +same relations did not even induce a relaxation of their efforts for his +personal discovery. + +Pere Jerome was walking to and fro, with his hands behind him, pondering +these matters. He had paused a moment at the end of the walk furthest +from his window, and was looking around upon the sky, when, turning, he +beheld a closely veiled female figure standing at the other end, and +knew instantly that it was Olive. + +She came forward quickly and with evident eagerness. + +"I came to confession," she said, breathing hurriedly, the excitement in +her eyes shining through her veil, "but I find I am too late." + +"There is no too late or too early for that; I am always ready," said +the priest. "But how is your mother?" + +"Ah!----" + +Her voice failed. + +"More trouble?" + +"Ah, sir, I have _made_ trouble. Oh, Pere Jerome, I am bringing so much +trouble upon my poor mother!" + +Pere Jerome moved slowly toward the house, with his eyes cast down, the +veiled girl at his side. + +"It is not your fault," he presently said. And after another pause: "I +thought it was all arranged." + +He looked up and could see, even through the veil, her crimson blush. + +"Oh, no," she replied, in a low, despairing voice, dropping her face. + +"What is the difficulty?" asked the priest, stopping in the angle of the +path, where it turned toward the front of the house. + +She averted her face, and began picking the thin scales of bark from a +crape-myrtle. + +"Madame Thompson and her husband were at our house this morning. _He_ +had told Monsieur Thompson all about it. They were very kind to me at +first, but they tried----" She was weeping. + +"What did they try to do?" asked the priest. + +"They tried to make me believe he is insane." + +She succeeded in passing her handkerchief up under her veil. + +"And I suppose then your poor mother grew angry, eh?" + +"Yes; and they became much more so, and said if we did not write, or +send a writing, to _him_, within twenty-four hours, breaking the----" + +"Engagement," said Pere Jerome. + +"They would give him up to the Government. Oh, Pere Jerome, what shall I +do? It is killing my mother!" + +She bowed her head and sobbed. + +"Where is your mother now?" + +"She has gone to see Monsieur Jean Thompson. She says she has a plan +that will match them all. I do not know what it is. I begged her not to +go; but oh, sir, _she is_ crazy,--and--I am no better." + +"My poor child," said Pere Jerome, "what you seem to want is not +absolution, but relief from persecution." + +"Oh, father, I have committed mortal sin,--I am guilty of pride and +anger." + +"Nevertheless," said the priest, starting toward his front gate, "we +will put off your confession. Let it go until to-morrow morning; you +will find me in my box just before mass; I will hear you then. My child, +I know that in your heart, now, you begrudge the time it would take; and +that is right. There are moments when we are not in place even on +penitential knees. It is so with you now. We must find your mother. Go +you at once to your house; if she is there, comfort her as best you can, +and _keep her in, if possible_, until I come. If she is not there, stay; +leave me to find her; one of you, at least, must be where I can get +word to you promptly. God comfort and uphold you. I hope you may find +her at home; tell her, for me, not to fear,"--he lifted the +gate-latch,--"that she and her daughter are of more value than many +sparrows; that God's priest sends her that word from Him. Tell her to +fix her trust in the great Husband of the Church, and she shall yet see +her child receiving the grace-giving sacrament of matrimony. Go; I +shall, in a few minutes, be on my way to Jean Thompson's, and shall find +her, either there or wherever she is. Go; they shall not oppress you. +Adieu!" + +A moment or two later he was in the street himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +BY AN OATH. + + +Pere Jerome, pausing on a street-corner in the last hour of sunlight, +had wiped his brow and taken his cane down from under his arm to start +again, when somebody, coming noiselessly from he knew not where, asked, +so suddenly as to startle him: + +"_Miche, commin ye 'pelle la rie ici?_--how do they call this street +here?" + +It was by the bonnet and dress, disordered though they were, rather than +by the haggard face which looked distractedly around, that he recognized +the woman to whom he replied in her own _patois_: + +"It is the Rue Burgundy. Where are you going, Madame Delphine?" + +She almost leaped from the ground. + +"Oh, Pere Jerome! _mo pas conne_,--I dunno. You know w'ere's dad 'ouse +of Miche Jean Tomkin? _Mo courri 'ci, mo courri la,--mo pas capale li +trouve_. I go (run) here--there--I cannot find it," she gesticulated. + +"I am going there myself," said he; "but why do you want to see Jean +Thompson, Madame Delphine?" + +"I '_blige_' to see 'im!" she replied, jerking herself half around away, +one foot planted forward with an air of excited preoccupation; "I god +some' to tell 'im wad I '_blige_' to tell 'im!" + +"Madame Delphine----" + +"Oh! Pere Jerome, fo' de love of de good God, show me dad way to de +'ouse of Jean Tomkin!" + +Her distressed smile implored pardon for her rudeness. + +"What are you going to tell him?" asked the priest. + +"Oh, Pere Jerome,"--in the Creole _patois_ again,--"I am going to put an +end to all this trouble--only I pray you do not ask me about it now; +every minute is precious!" + +He could not withstand her look of entreaty. + +"Come," he said, and they went. + + * * * * * + +Jean Thompson and Doctor Varrillat lived opposite each other on the +Bayou road, a little way beyond the town limits as then prescribed. Each +had his large, white-columned, four-sided house among the +magnolias,--his huge live-oak overshadowing either corner of the darkly +shaded garden, his broad, brick walk leading down to the tall, +brick-pillared gate, his square of bright, red pavement on the +turf-covered sidewalk, and his railed platform spanning the +draining-ditch, with a pair of green benches, one on each edge, facing +each other crosswise of the gutter. There, any sunset hour, you were +sure to find the householder sitting beside his cool-robed matron, two +or three slave nurses in white turbans standing at hand, and an excited +throng of fair children, nearly all of a size. + +Sometimes, at a beckon or call, the parents on one side of the way would +join those on the other, and the children and nurses of both families +would be given the liberty of the opposite platform and an ice-cream +fund! Generally the parents chose the Thompson platform, its outlook +being more toward the sunset. + +Such happened to be the arrangement this afternoon. The two husbands sat +on one bench and their wives on the other, both pairs very quiet, +waiting respectfully for the day to die, and exchanging only occasional +comments on matters of light moment as they passed through the memory. +During one term of silence Madame Varrillat, a pale, thin-faced, but +cheerful-looking lady, touched Madame Thompson, a person of two and a +half times her weight, on her extensive and snowy bare elbow, directing +her attention obliquely up and across the road. + +About a hundred yards distant, in the direction of the river, was a +long, pleasantly shaded green strip of turf, destined in time for a +sidewalk. It had a deep ditch on the nearer side, and a fence of rough +cypress palisades on the farther, and these were overhung, on the one +hand, by a row of bitter orange-trees inside the inclosure, and, on the +other, by a line of slanting china-trees along the outer edge of the +ditch. Down this cool avenue two figures were approaching side by side. +They had first attracted Madame Varrillat's notice by the bright play of +sunbeams which, as they walked, fell upon them in soft, golden flashes +through the chinks between the palisades. + +Madame Thompson elevated a pair of glasses which were no detraction from +her very good looks, and remarked, with the serenity of a reconnoitering +general: + +"_Pere Jerome et cette milatraise_." + +All eyes were bent toward them. + +"She walks like a man," said Madame Varrillat, in the language with +which the conversation had opened. + +"No," said the physician, "like a woman in a state of high nervous +excitement." + +Jean Thompson kept his eyes on the woman, and said: + +"She must not forget to walk like a woman in the State of +Louisiana,"--as near as the pun can be translated. The company laughed. +Jean Thompson looked at his wife, whose applause he prized, and she +answered by an asseverative toss of the head, leaning back and +contriving, with some effort, to get her arms folded. Her laugh was +musical and low, but enough to make the folded arms shake gently up and +down. + +"Pere Jerome is talking to her," said one. The priest was at that moment +endeavoring, in the interest of peace, to say a good word for the four +people who sat watching his approach. It was in the old strain: + +"Blame them one part, Madame Delphine, and their fathers, mothers, +brothers, and fellow-citizens the other ninety-nine." + +But to everything she had the one amiable answer which Pere Jerome +ignored: + +"I am going to arrange it to satisfy everybody, all together. _Tout a +fait_." + +"They are coming here," said Madame Varrillat, half articulately. + +"Well, of course," murmured another; and the four rose up, smiling +courteously, the doctor and attorney advancing and shaking hands with +the priest. + +No--Pere Jerome thanked them--he could not sit down. + +"This, I believe you know, Jean, is Madame Delphine----" + +The quadroone curtsied. + +"A friend of mine," he added, smiling kindly upon her, and turning, with +something imperative in his eye, to the group. "She says she has an +important private matter to communicate." + +"To me?" asked Jean Thompson. + +"To all of you; so I will---- Good-evening." He responded nothing to the +expressions of regret, but turned to Madame Delphine. She murmured +something. + +"Ah! yes, certainly." He addressed the company: "She wishes me to speak +for her veracity; it is unimpeachable. "Well, good-evening." He shook +hands and departed. + +The four resumed their seats, and turned their eyes upon the standing +figure. + +"Have you something to say to us?" asked Jean Thompson, frowning at her +law-defying bonnet. + +"_Oui_," replied the woman, shrinking to one side, and laying hold of +one of the benches, "_mo oule di' tou' c'ose_"--I want to tell +everything. "_Miche Vignevielle la plis bon homme di moune_"--the best +man in the world; "_mo pas capabe li fe tracas_"--I cannot give him +trouble. "_Mo pas capabe, non; m'ole di' tous c'ose_." She attempted to +fan herself, her face turned away from the attorney, and her eyes rested +on the ground. + +"Take a seat," said Doctor Varrillat, with some suddenness, starting +from his place and gently guiding her sinking form into the corner of +the bench. The ladies rose up; somebody had to stand; the two races +could not both sit down at once--at least not in that public manner. + +"Your salts," said the physician to his wife. She handed the vial. +Madame Delphine stood up again. + +"We will all go inside," said Madame Thompson, and they passed through +the gate and up the walk, mounted the steps, and entered the deep, cool +drawing-room. + +Madame Thompson herself bade the quadroone be seated. + +"Well?" said Jean Thompson, as the rest took chairs. + +"_C'est drole_"--it's funny--said Madame Delphine, with a piteous effort +to smile, "that nobody thought of it. It is so plain. You have only to +look and see. I mean about Olive." She loosed a button in the front of +her dress and passed her hand into her bosom. "And yet, Olive herself +never thought of it. She does not know a word." + +The hand came out holding a miniature. Madame Varrillat passed it to +Jean Thompson. + +"_Ouala so popa_" said Madame Delphine. "That is her father." + +It went from one to another, exciting admiration and murmured praise. + +"She is the image of him," said Madame Thompson, in an austere +under-tone, returning it to her husband. + +Doctor Varrillat was watching Madame Delphine. She was very pale. She +had passed a trembling hand into a pocket of her skirt, and now drew +out another picture, in a case the counterpart of the first. He reached +out for it, and she handed it to him. He looked at it a moment, when his +eyes suddenly lighted up and he passed it to the attorney. + +"_Et la_"--Madame Delphine's utterance failed--"_et la, ouala sa +moman_." (That is her mother.) + +The three others instantly gathered around Jean Thompson's chair. They +were much impressed. + +"It is true beyond a doubt!" muttered Madame Thompson. + +Madame Varrillat looked at her with astonishment. + +"The proof is right there in the faces," said Madame Thompson. + +"Yes! yes!" said Madame Delphine, excitedly; "the proof is there! You do +not want any better! I am willing to swear to it! But you want no better +proof! That is all anybody could want! My God! you cannot help but see +it!" + +Her manner was wild. + +Jean Thompson looked at her sternly. + +"Nevertheless you say you are willing to take your solemn oath to this." + +"Certainly----" + +"You will have to do it." + +"Certainly, Miche Thompson, _of course_ I shall; you will make out the +paper and I will swear before God that it is true! Only"--turning to the +ladies--"do not tell Olive; she will never believe it. It will break her +heart! It----" + +A servant came and spoke privately to Madame Thompson, who rose quickly +and went to the hall. Madame Delphine continued, rising unconsciously: + +"You see, I have had her with me from a baby. She knows no better. He +brought her to me only two months old. Her mother had died in the ship, +coming out here. He did not come straight from home here. His people +never knew he was married!" + +The speaker looked around suddenly with a startled glance. There was a +noise of excited speaking in the hall. + +"It is not true, Madame Thompson!" cried a girl's voice. + +Madame Delphine's look became one of wildest distress and alarm, and she +opened her lips in a vain attempt to utter some request, when Olive +appeared a moment in the door, and then flew into her arms. + +"My mother! my mother! my mother!" + +Madame Thompson, with tears in her eyes, tenderly drew them apart and +let Madame Delphine down into her chair, while Olive threw herself upon +her knees, continuing to cry: + +"Oh, my mother! Say you are my mother!" + +Madame Delphine looked an instant into the upturned face, and then +turned her own away, with a long, low cry of pain, looked again, and +laying both hands upon the suppliant's head, said: + +"_Oh, chere piti a moin, to pa' ma fie!_" (Oh, my darling little one, +you are not my daughter!) Her eyes closed, and her head sank back; the +two gentlemen sprang to her assistance, and laid her upon a sofa +unconscious. + +When they brought her to herself, Olive was kneeling at her head +silently weeping. + +"_Maman, chere maman_!" said the girl softly, kissing her lips. + +"_Ma courri c'ez moin_" (I will go home), said the mother, drearily. + +"You will go home with me," said Madame Varrillat, with great kindness +of manner--"just across the street here; I will take care of you till +you feel better. And Olive will stay here with Madame Thompson. You will +be only the width of the street apart." + +But Madame Delphine would go nowhere but to her home. Olive she would +not allow to go with her. Then they wanted to send a servant or two to +sleep in the house with her for aid and protection; but all she would +accept was the transient service of a messenger to invite two of her +kinspeople--man and wife--to come and make their dwelling with her. + +In course of time these two--a poor, timid, helpless, pair--fell heir to +the premises. Their children had it after them; but, whether in those +hands or these, the house had its habits and continued in them; and to +this day the neighbors, as has already been said, rightly explain its +close-sealed, uninhabited look by the all-sufficient statement that the +inmates "is quadroons." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +KYRIE ELEISON. + + +The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm. The lamp +burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have +hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind. The lilies of St. +Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more +completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended +in the slumbering air. Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery, +with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door +which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the +confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and +rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one +entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band +of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence +that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, +would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing +and in review of those slips and errors which prove us all akin. + +The day had been long and fatiguing. First, early mass; a hasty meal; +then a business call upon the archbishop in the interest of some +projected charity; then back to his cottage, and so to the banking-house +of "Vignevielle," in the Rue Toulouse. There all was open, bright, and +re-assured, its master virtually, though not actually, present. The +search was over and the seekers gone, personally wiser than they would +tell, and officially reporting that (to the best of their knowledge and +belief, based on evidence, and especially on the assurances of an +unexceptionable eyewitness, to wit, Monsieur Vignevielle, banker) +Capitaine Lemaitre was dead and buried. At noon there had been a wedding +in the little church. Its scenes lingered before Pere Jerome's vision +now--the kneeling pair: the bridegroom, rich in all the excellences of +man, strength and kindness slumbering interlocked in every part and +feature; the bride, a saintly weariness on her pale face, her awesome +eyes lifted in adoration upon the image of the Saviour; the small knots +of friends behind: Madame Thompson, large, fair, self-contained; Jean +Thompson, with the affidavit of Madame Delphine showing through his +tightly buttoned coat; the physician and his wife, sharing one +expression of amiable consent; and last--yet first--one small, shrinking +female figure, here at one side, in faded robes and dingy bonnet. She +sat as motionless as stone, yet wore a look of apprehension, and in the +small, restless black eyes which peered out from the pinched and wasted +face, betrayed the peacelessness of a harrowed mind; and neither the +recollection of bride, nor of groom, nor of potential friends behind, +nor the occupation of the present hour, could shut out from the tired +priest the image of that woman, or the sound of his own low words of +invitation to her, given as the company left the church--"Come to +confession this afternoon." + +By and by a long time passed without the approach of any step, or any +glancing of light or shadow, save for the occasional progress from +station to station of some one over on the right who was noiselessly +going the way of the cross. Yet Pere Jerome tarried. + +"She will surely come," he said to himself; "she promised she would +come." + +A moment later, his sense, quickened by the prolonged silence, caught a +subtle evidence or two of approach, and the next moment a penitent knelt +noiselessly at the window of his box, and the whisper came tremblingly, +in the voice he had waited to hear: + +"_Benissez-moin, mo' Pere, pa'ce que mo peche_." (Bless me, father, for +I have sinned.) + +He gave his blessing. + +"_Ainsi soit-il_--Amen," murmured the penitent, and then, in the soft +accents of the Creole _patois_, continued: + +"'I confess to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to +blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy +Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned +exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, _through my fault, through my +fault, through my most grievous fault_.' I confessed on Saturday, three +weeks ago, and received absolution, and I have performed the penance +enjoined. Since then----" There she stopped. + +There was a soft stir, as if she sank slowly down, and another as if she +rose up again, and in a moment she said: + +"Olive _is_ my child. The picture I showed to Jean Thompson is the +half-sister of my daughter's father, dead before my child was born. She +is the image of her and of him; but, O God! Thou knowest! Oh Olive, my +own daughter!" + +She ceased, and was still. Pere Jerome waited, but no sound came. He +looked through the window. She was kneeling, with her forehead resting +on her arms--motionless. + +He repeated the words of absolution. Still she did not stir. + +"My daughter," he said, "go to thy home in peace." But she did not +move. + +He rose hastily, stepped from the box, raised her in his arms, and +called her by name: + +"Madame Delphine!" Her head fell back in his elbow; for an instant there +was life in the eyes--it glimmered--it vanished, and tears gushed from +his own and fell upon the gentle face of the dead, as he looked up to +heaven and cried: + +"Lord, lay not this sin to her charge!" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Delphine, by George W. 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