The Grandissimes

by George Washington Cable

  CHAPTER XV

  ROLLED IN THE DUST

  "No, Frowenfeld," said little Doctor Keene, speaking for theafter-dinner loungers, "you must take a little human advice. Go, get theair on the Plaza. We will keep shop for you. Stay as long as you likeand come home in any condition you think best." And Joseph, tormentedinto this course, put on his hat and went out.

  "Hard to move as a cow in the moonlight," continued Doctor Keene, "andknows just about as much of the world. He wasn't aware, until I told himto-day, that there are two Honore Grandissimes." [Laughter.]

  "Why did you tell him?"

  "I didn't give him anything but the bare fact. I want to see how long itwill take him to find out the rest."

  The Place d'Armes offered amusement to every one else rather than to theimmigrant. The family relation, the most noticeable feature of its'well-pleased groups, was to him too painful a reminder of his latelosses, and, after an honest endeavor to flutter out of the innertwilight of himself into the outer glare of a moving world, he had givenup the effort and had passed beyond the square and seated himself upon arude bench which encircled the trunk of a willow on the levee.

  The negress, who, resting near by with a tray of cakes before her, hasbeen for some time contemplating the three-quarter face of herunconscious neighbor, drops her head at last with a small, Ethiopian,feminine laugh. It is a self-confession that, pleasant as the study ofhis countenance is, to resolve that study into knowledge is beyond herpowers; and very pardonably so it is, she being but a _marchande desgateaux_ (an itinerant cake-vender), and he, she concludes, a man ofparts. There is a purpose, too, as well as an admission, in the laugh.She would like to engage him in conversation. But he does not notice.Little supposing he is the object of even a cake-merchant's attention,he is lost in idle meditation.

  One would guess his age to be as much as twenty-six. His face isbeardless, of course, like almost everybody's around him, and of aGerman kind of seriousness. A certain diffidence in his look may tend torender him unattractive to careless eyes, the more so since he has aslight appearance of self-neglect. On a second glance, his refinementshows out more distinctly, and one also sees that he is not shabby. Thelittle that seems lacking is woman's care, the brush of attentivefingers here and there, the turning of a fold in the high-collared coat,and a mere touch on the neckerchief and shirt-frill. He has a decidedlygood forehead. His blue eyes, while they are both strong and modest, arenoticeable, too, as betraying fatigue, and the shade of gravity in themis deepened by a certain worn look of excess--in books; a most unusuallook in New Orleans in those days, and pointedly out of keeping with thescene which was absorbing his attention.

  You might mistake the time for mid-May. Before the view lies the Placed'Armes in its green-breasted uniform of new spring grass crosseddiagonally with white shell walks for facings, and dotted with the_elite_ of the city for decorations. Over the line of shade-trees whichmarks its farther boundary, the white-topped twin turrets of St. LouisCathedral look across it and beyond the bared site of the removedbattery (built by the busy Carondelet to protect Louisiana from herselfand Kentucky, and razed by his immediate successors) and out upon theMississippi, the color of whose surface is beginning to change with thechanging sky of this beautiful and now departing day. A breeze, which isalmost early June, and which has been hovering over the bosom of thegreat river and above the turf-covered levee, ceases, as if it sankexhausted under its burden of spring odors, and in the profound calm thecathedral bell strikes the sunset hour. From its neighboring garden, theconvent of the Ursulines responds in a tone of devoutness, while fromthe parapet of the less pious little Fort St. Charles, the evening gunsends a solemn ejaculation rumbling down the "coast;" a drum rolls, theair rises again from the water like a flock of birds, and many in thesquare and on the levee's crown turn and accept its gentle blowing.Rising over the levee willows, and sinking into the streets,--which arelower than the water,--it flutters among the balconies and in and out ofdim Spanish arcades, and finally drifts away toward that part of the skywhere the sun is sinking behind the low, unbroken line of forest. Thereis such seduction in the evening air, such sweetness of flowers on itsevery motion, such lack of cold, or heat, or dust, or wet, that thepeople have no heart to stay in-doors; nor is there any reason why theyshould. The levee road is dotted with horsemen, and the willow avenue onthe levee's crown, the whole short mile between Terre aux Boeufs gate onthe right and Tchoupitoulas gate on the left, is bright withpromenaders, although the hour is brief and there will be no twilight;for, so far from being May, it is merely that same nineteenth of whichwe have already spoken,--the nineteenth of Louisiana's deliciousFebruary.

  Among the throng were many whose names were going to be written large inhistory. There was Casa Calvo,--Sebastian de Casa Calvo de la Puerta yO'Farril, Marquis of Casa Calvo,--a man then at the fine age offifty-three, elegant, fascinating, perfect in Spanish courtesy andSpanish diplomacy, rolling by in a showy equipage surrounded by aclanking body-guard of the Catholic king's cavalry. There was youngDaniel Clark, already beginning to amass those riches which an age oflitigation has not to this day consumed; it was he whom the Frenchcolonial prefect, Laussat, in a late letter to France, had extolled as aman whose "talents for intrigue were carried to a rare degree ofexcellence." There was Laussat himself, in the flower of his years, sourwith pride, conscious of great official insignificance and full of pettyspites--he yet tarried in a land where his beautiful wife was the "modelof taste." There was that convivial old fox, Wilkinson, who had plottedfor years with Miro and did not sell himself and his country to Spainbecause--as we now say--"he found he could do better;" who modestlyconfessed himself in a traitor's letter to the Spanish king as a man"whose head may err, but whose heart cannot deceive!" and who broughtGovernor Gayoso to an early death-bed by simply out-drinking him. Therealso was Edward Livingston, attorney-at-law, inseparably joined to themention of the famous Batture cases--though that was later. There alsowas that terror of colonial peculators, the old ex-Intendant Morales,who, having quarrelled with every governor of Louisiana he ever saw, wasnow snarling at Casa Calvo from force of habit.

  And the Creoles--the Knickerbockers of Louisiana--but time would failus. The Villeres and Destrehans--patriots and patriots' sons; the De LaChaise family in mourning for young Auguste La Chaise ofKentuckian-Louisianian-San Domingan history; the Livaudaises, _pere etfils_, of Haunted House fame, descendants of the first pilot of theBelize; the pirate brothers Lafitte, moving among the best; Marigny deMandeville, afterwards the marquis member of Congress; the Davezacs, theMossys, the Boulignys, the Labatuts, the Bringiers, the De Trudeaus, theDe Macartys, the De la Houssayes, the De Lavilleboeuvres, the Grandpres,the Forstalls; and the proselyted Creoles: Etienne de Bore (he was thefather of all such as handle the sugar-kettle); old man Pitot, whobecame mayor; Madame Pontalba and her unsuccessful suitor, JohnMcDonough; the three Girods, the two Graviers, or the lone JulianPoydras, godfather of orphan girls. Besides these, and among them asshining fractions of the community, the numerous representatives of thenot only noble, but noticeable and ubiquitous, family of Grandissime:Grandissimes simple and Grandissimes compound; Brahmins, Mandarins andFusiliers. One, 'Polyte by name, a light, gay fellow, with classicfeatures, hair turning gray, is standing and conversing with this grouphere by the mock-cannon inclosure of the grounds. Another, his cousin,Charlie Mandarin, a tall, very slender, bronzed gentleman in a flannelhunting-shirt and buckskin leggings, is walking, in moccasins, with asweet lady in whose tasteful attire feminine scrutiny, but such only,might detect economy, but whose marked beauty of yesterday is retreatingand reappearing in the flock of children who are noisily running roundand round them, nominally in the care of three fat and venerable blacknurses. Another, yonder, Theophile Grandissime, is whipping hisstockings with his cane, a lithe youngster in the height of the fashion(be it understood the fashion in New Orleans was five years or so behindParis), with a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and giddy laugh, and aconfession of experienc
es which these pages, fortunately for their moraltone, need not recount. All these were there and many others.

  This throng, shifting like the fragments of colored glass in thekaleidoscope, had its far-away interest to the contemplative Joseph. Tothem he was of little interest, or none. Of the many passers, scarcelyan occasional one greeted him, and such only with an extremely politeand silent dignity which seemed to him like saying something of thissort: "Most noble alien, give you good-day--stay where you are.Profoundly yours--"

  Two men came through the Place d'Armes on conspicuously fine horses. Oneit is not necessary to describe. The other, a man of perhapsthirty-three or thirty-four years of age, was extremely handsome andwell dressed, the martial fashion of the day showing his tall and finelyknit figure to much advantage. He sat his horse with an uncommon grace,and, as he rode beside his companion, spoke and gave ear by turns withan easy dignity sufficient of itself to have attracted popularobservation. It was the apothecary's unknown friend. Frowenfeld noticedthem while they were yet in the middle of the grounds. He could hardlyhave failed to do so, for some one close beside his bench in undoubtedallusion to one of the approaching figures exclaimed:

  "Here comes Honore Grandissime."

  Moreover, at that moment there was a slight unwonted stir on the Placed'Armes. It began at the farther corner of the square, hard by thePrincipal, and spread so quickly through the groups near about, that ina minute the entire company were quietly made aware of something goingnotably wrong in their immediate presence. There was no running to seeit. There seemed to be not so much as any verbal communication of thematter from mouth to mouth. Rather a consciousness appeared to catchnoiselessly from one to another as the knowledge of human intrusioncomes to groups of deer in a park. There was the same elevating of thehead here and there, the same rounding of beautiful eyes. Some stared,others slowly approached, while others turned and moved away; but acommon indignation was in the breast of that thing dreadful everywhere,but terrible in Louisiana, the Majority. For there, in the presence ofthose good citizens, before the eyes of the proudest and fairest mothersand daughters of New Orleans, glaringly, on the open Plaza, the Creolewhom Joseph had met by the graves in the field, Honore Grandissime, theuttermost flower on the topmost branch of the tallest family tree evertransplanted from France to Louisiana, Honore,--the worshiped, themagnificent,--in the broad light of the sun's going down, rode side byside with the Yankee governor and was not ashamed!

  Joseph, on his bench, sat contemplating the two parties to this scandalas they came toward him. Their horses' flanks were damp from somepleasant gallop, but their present gait was the soft, mettlesomemovement of animals who will even submit to walk if their mastersinsist. As they wheeled out of the broad diagonal path that crossed thesquare, and turned toward him in the highway, he fancied that the Creoleobserved him. He was not mistaken. As they seemed about to pass the spotwhere he sat, M. Grandissime interrupted the governor with a word and,turning his horse's head, rode up to the bench, lifting his hat ashe came.

  "Good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."

  Joseph, looking brighter than when he sat unaccosted, rose and blushed.

  "Mr. Frowenfeld, you know my uncle very well, I believe--AgricoleFusilier--long beard?"

  "Oh! yes, sir, certainly."

  "Well, Mr. Frowenfeld, I shall be much obliged if you will tellhim--that is, should you meet him this evening--that I wish to see him.If you will be so kind?"

  "Oh! yes, sir, certainly."

  Frowenfeld's diffidence made itself evident in this reiterated phrase.

  "I do not know that you will see him, but if you should, you know--"

  "Oh, certainly, sir!"

  The two paused a single instant, exchanging a smile of amiable reminderfrom the horseman and of bashful but pleased acknowledgment from the onewho saw his precepts being reduced to practice.

  "Well, good-evening, Mr. Frowenfeld."

  M. Grandissime lifted his hat and turned. Frowenfeld sat down.

  "_Bou zou, Miche Honore!_" called the _marchande_.

  "_Comment to ye, Clemence?_"

  The merchant waved his hand as he rode away with his companion.

  "_Beau Miche, la_," said the _marchande_, catching Joseph's eye.

  He smiled his ignorance and shook his head.

  "Dass one fine gen'leman," she repeated. "_Mo pa'le Angle_," she addedwith a chuckle.

  "You know him?"

  "Oh! yass, sah; Mawse Honore knows me, yass. All de gen'lemens knows me.I sell de _calas;_ mawnin's sell _calas_, evenin's sell zinzer-cake._You_ know me" (a fact which Joseph had all along been aware of). "Datme w'at pass in rue Royale ev'y mawnin' holl'in' '_Be calas toutschauds_,' an' singin'; don't you know?"

  The enthusiasm of an artist overcame any timidity she might have beensupposed to possess, and, waiving the formality of an invitation, shebegan, to Frowenfeld's consternation, to sing, in a loud, nasal voice.

  But the performance, long familiar, attracted no public attention, andhe for whose special delight it was intended had taken an attitude ofdisclaimer and was again contemplating the quiet groups of the Placed'Armes and the pleasant hurry of the levee road.

  "Don't you know?" persisted the woman. "Yass, sah, dass me; I'sClemence."

  But Frowenfeld was looking another way.

  "You know my boy," suddenly said she.

  Frowenfeld looked at her.

  "Yass, sah. Dat boy w'at bring you de box of _basilic_ lass Chrismus;dass my boy."

  She straightened her cakes on the tray and made some changes in theirarrangement that possibly were important.

  "I learned to speak English in Fijinny. Bawn dah."

  She looked steadily into the apothecary's absorbed countenance for afull minute, then let her eyes wander down the highway. The human tidewas turning cityward. Presently she spoke again.

  "Folks comin' home a'ready, yass."

  Her hearer looked down the road.

  Suddenly a voice that, once heard, was always known,--deep and pompous,as if a lion roared,--sounded so close behind him as to startle him halffrom his seat.

  "Is this a corporeal man, or must I doubt my eyes? Hah! ProfessorFrowenfeld!" it said.

  "Mr. Fusilier!" exclaimed Frowenfeld in a subdued voice, while heblushed again and looked at the new-comer with that sort of awe whichchildren experience in a menagerie.

  "_Citizen_ Fusilier," said the lion.

  Agricola indulged to excess the grim hypocrisy of brandishing thecatchwords of new-fangled reforms; they served to spice a breath thatwas strong with the praise of the "superior liberties of Europe,"--thoseold, cast-iron tyrannies to get rid of which America was settled.

  Frowenfeld smiled amusedly and apologetically at the same moment.

  "I am glad to meet you. I--"

  He was going on to give Honore Grandissime's message, but wasinterrupted.

  "My young friend," rumbled the old man in his deepest key, smilingemotionally and holding and solemning continuing to shake Joseph's hand,"I am sure you are. You ought to thank God that you have myacquaintance."

  Frowenfeld colored to the temples.

  "I must acknowledge--" he began.

  "Ah!" growled the lion, "your beautiful modesty leads you to misconstrueme, sir. You pay my judgment no compliment. I know your worth, sir; Imerely meant, sir, that in me--poor, humble me--you have secured asympathizer in your tastes and plans. Agricola Fusilier, sir, is not acock on a dunghill, to find a jewel and then scratch it aside."

  The smile of diffidence, but not the flush, passed from the young man'sface, and he sat down forcibly.

  "You jest," he said.

  The reply was a majestic growl.

  "I _never_ jest!" The speaker half sat down, then straightened up again."Ah, the Marquis of Caso Calvo!--I must bow to him, though an honestman's bow is more than he deserves."

  "More than he deserves?" was Frowenfeld's query.

  "More than he deserves!" was the response.

  "What has he done? I
have never heard--"

  The denunciator turned upon Frowenfeld his most royal frown, andretorted with a question which still grows wild in Louisiana:

  "What"--he seemed to shake his mane--"what has he _not_ done, sir?" andthen he withdrew his frown slowly, as if to add, "You'll be careful nexttime how you cast doubt upon a public official's guilt."

  The marquis's cavalcade came briskly jingling by. Frowenfeld saw withinthe carriage two men, one in citizen's dress, the other in a brilliantuniform. The latter leaned forward, and, with a cordiality which struckthe young spectator as delightful, bowed. The immigrant glanced atCitizen Fusilier, expecting to see the greeting returned with greathaughtiness; instead of which that person uncovered his leonine head,and, with a solemn sweep of his cocked hat, bowed half his length. Nay,he more than bowed, he bowed down--so that the action hurt Frowenfeldfrom head to foot.

  "What large gentlemen was that sitting on the other side?" asked theyoung man, as his companion sat down with the air of having finishedan oration.

  "No gentleman at all!" thundered the citizen. "That fellow" (beetlingfrown), "that _fellow_ is Edward Livingston."

  "The great lawyer?"

  "The great villain!"

  Frowenfeld himself frowned.

  The old man laid a hand upon his junior's shoulder and growledbenignantly:

  "My young friend, your displeasure delights me!"

  The patience with which Frowenfeld was bearing all this forced a chuckleand shake of the head from the _marchande_.

  Citizen Fusilier went on speaking in a manner that might be construedeither as address or soliloquy, gesticulating much and occasionallyletting out a fervent word that made passers look around and Josephinwardly wince. With eyes closed and hands folded on the top of theknotted staff which he carried but never used, he delivered anapostrophe to the "spotless soul of youth," enticed by the "spirit ofadventure" to "launch away upon the unploughed sea of the future!" Helifted one hand and smote the back of the other solemnly, once, twice,and again, nodding his head faintly several times without opening hiseyes, as who should say, "Very impressive; go on," and so resumed; spokeof this spotless soul of youth searching under unknown latitudes for the"sunken treasures of experience"; indulged, as the reporters of our daywould say, in "many beautiful nights of rhetoric," and finally depictedthe loathing with which the spotless soul of youth "recoils!"--suitingthe action to the word so emphatically as to make a pretty little boywho stood gaping at him start back--"on encountering in the holychambers of public office the vultures hatched in the nests of ambitionand avarice!"

  Three or four persons lingered carelessly near by with ears wide open.Frowenfeld felt that he must bring this to an end, and, like any youngperson who has learned neither deceit nor disrespect to seniors, heattempted to reason it down.

  "You do not think many of our public men are dishonest!"

  "Sir!" replied the rhetorician, with a patronizing smile, "h-you must bethinking of France!"

  "No, sir; of Louisiana."

  "Louisiana! Dishonest? All, sir, all. They are all as corrupt asOlympus, sir!"

  "Well," said Frowenfeld, with more feeling than was called for, "thereis one who, I feel sure, is pure. I know it by his face!"

  The old man gave a look of stern interrogation.

  "Governor Claiborne."

  "Ye-e-e g-hods! Claiborne! _Claiborne!_ Why, he is a Yankee!"

  The lion glowered over the lamb like a thundercloud.

  "He is a Virginian," said Frowenfeld.

  "He is an American, and no American can be honest."

  "You are prejudiced," exclaimed the young man.

  Citizen Fusilier made himself larger.

  "What is prejudice? I do not know."

  "I am an American myself," said Frowenfeld, rising up with his faceburning.

  The citizen rose up also, but unruffled.

  "My beloved young friend," laying his hand heavily upon the other'sshoulder, "you are not. You were merely born in America."

  But Frowenfeld was not appeased.

  "Hear me through," persisted the flatterer. "You were merely born inAmerica. I, too, was born in America--but will any man responsible forhis opinion mistake me--Agricola Fusilier--for an American?"

  He clutched his cane in the middle and glared around, but no personseemed to be making the mistake to which he so scornfully alluded, andhe was about to speak again when an outcry of alarm comingsimultaneously from Joseph and the _marchande_ directed his attention toa lady in danger.

  The scene, as afterward recalled to the mind of the un-American citizen,included the figures of his nephew and the new governor returning upthe road at a canter; but, at the time, he knew only that a lady ofunmistakable gentility, her back toward him, had just gathered her robesand started to cross the road, when there was a general cry of warning,and the _marchande_ cried, "_Garde choual!_" while the lady leapeddirectly into the danger and his nephew's horse knocked her tothe earth!

  Though there was a rush to the rescue from every direction, she was onher feet before any one could reach her, her lips compressed, nostrilsdilated, cheek burning, and eyes flashing a lady's wrath upon adismounted horseman. It was the governor. As the crowd had rushed in,the startled horses, from whom the two riders had instantly leaped, drewviolently back, jerking their masters with them and leaving only thegovernor in range of the lady's angry eye.

  "Mademoiselle!" he cried, striving to reach her.

  She pointed him in gasping indignation to his empty saddle, and, as thecrowd farther separated them, waved away all permission to apologize andturned her back.

  "Hah!" cried the crowd, echoing her humor.

  "Lady," interposed the governor, "do not drive us to the rudeness ofleaving--"

  "_Animal, vous!_" cried half a dozen, and the lady gave him such a lookof scorn that he did not finish his sentence.

  "Open the way, there," called a voice in French.

  It was Honore Grandissime. But just then he saw that the lady had foundthe best of protectors, and the two horsemen, having no choice,remounted and rode away. As they did so, M. Grandissime called somethinghurriedly to Frowenfeld, on whose arm the lady hung, concerning the careof her; but his words were lost in the short yell of derision sent afterhimself and his companion by the crowd.

  Old Agricola, meanwhile, was having a trouble of his own. He hadfollowed Joseph's wake as he pushed through the throng; but as the ladyturned her face he wheeled abruptly away. This brought again into viewthe bench he had just left, whereupon he, in turn, cried out, and,dashing through all obstructions, rushed back to it, lifting his uglystaff as he went and flourishing it in the face of Palmyre Philosophe.

  She stood beside the seat with the smile of one foiled and intenselyconscious of peril, but neither frightened nor suppliant, holding backwith her eyes the execution of Agricola's threat against her life.

  Presently she drew a short step backward, then another, then a third,and then turned and moved away down the avenue of willows, followed fora few steps by the lion and by the laughing comment of the _marchande_,who stood looking after them with her tray balanced on her head.

  "_Ya, ya! ye connais voudou bien!_[1]"

  [Footnote 1: "They're up in the voudou arts."]

  The old man turned to rejoin his companion. The day was rapidly givingplace to night and the people were withdrawing to their homes. Hecrossed the levee, passed through the Place d'Armes and on into thecity without meeting the object of his search. For Joseph and the ladyhad hurried off together.

  As the populace floated away in knots of three, four and five, those whohad witnessed mademoiselle's (?) mishap told it to those who had not;explaining that it was the accursed Yankee governor who had designedlydriven his horse at his utmost speed against the fair victim (some ofthem butted against their hearers by way of illustration); that thefiend had then maliciously laughed; that this was all the Yankees cameto New Orleans for, and that there was an understanding amongthem--"Understanding, indeed!" exclai
med one, "They have instructionsfrom the President!"--that unprotected ladies should be run downwherever overtaken. If you didn't believe it you could ask the tyrant,Claiborne, himself; he made no secret of it. One or two--but they wereconsidered by others extravagant--testified that, as the lady fell, theyhad seen his face distorted with a horrid delight, and had heard himcry: "Daz de way to knog them!"

  "But how came a lady to be out on the levee, at sunset, on foot andalone?" asked a citizen, and another replied--both using the French ofthe late province:

  "As for being on foot"--a shrug. "But she was not alone; she had a_milatraisse_ behind her."

  "Ah! so; that was well."

  "But--ha, ha!--the _milatraisse_, seeing her mistress out of danger,takes the opportunity to try to bring the curse upon Agricola Fusilierby sitting down where he had just risen up, and had to get away from himas quickly as possible to save her own skull."

  "And left the lady?"

  "Yes; and who took her to her home at last, but Frowenfeld, theapothecary!"

  "Ho, ho! the astrologer! We ought to hang that fellow."

  "With his books tied to his feet," suggested a third citizen. "It is nomore than we owe to the community to go and smash his show-window. Hehad better behave himself. Come, gentlemen, a little _taffia_ will do usgood. When shall we ever get through these exciting times?"