Part 17 (1/2)

A moment after, Frowenfeld found himself introduced to ”my dotter, Clotilde,” who all at once ceased her demonstrations of affection and bowed to him with a majestic sweetness, that seemed one instant grateful and the next, distant.

”I can hardly understand that you are not sisters,” said Frowenfeld, a little awkwardly.

”Ah! _ecoutez!_” exclaimed the younger.

”Ah! _par exemple!_” cried the elder, and they laughed down each other's throats, while the immigrant blushed.

This encounter was presently followed by a silent surprise when they stopped and turned before the door of Number 19, and Frowenfeld contrasted the women with their painfully humble dwelling. But therein is where your true Creole was, and still continues to be, properly, yea, delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of snowy lace, as its bright-eyed tenants.

”'Sieur Frowenfel', if you pliz to come in,” said Aurora, and the timid apothecary would have bravely accepted the invitation, but for a quick look which he saw the daughter give the mother; whereupon he asked, instead, permission to call at some future day, and received the cordial leave of Aurora and another bow from Clotilde.

CHAPTER XVII

THAT NIGHT

Do we not fail to accord to our nights their true value? We are ever giving to our days the credit and blame of all we do and mis-do, forgetting those silent, glimmering hours when plans--and sometimes plots--are laid; when resolutions are formed or changed; when heaven, and sometimes heaven's enemies, are invoked; when anger and evil thoughts are recalled, and sometimes hate made to inflame and fester; when problems are solved, riddles guessed, and things made apparent in the dark, which day refused to reveal. Our nights are the keys to our days. They explain them. They are also the day's correctors. Night's leisure untangles the mistakes of day's haste. We should not attempt to comprise our pasts in the phrase, ”in those days;” we should rather say ”in those days and nights.”

That night was a long-remembered one to the apothecary of the rue Royale. But it was after he had closed his shop, and in his back room sat pondering the unusual experiences of the evening, that it began to be, in a higher degree, a night of events to most of those persons who had a part in its earlier incidents.

That Honore Grandissime whom Frowenfeld had only this day learned to know as _the_ Honore Grandissime and the young governor-general were closeted together.

”What can you expect, my-de'-seh?” the Creole was asking, as they confronted each other in the smoke of their choice tobacco. ”Remember, they are citizens by compulsion. You say your best and wisest law is that one prohibiting the slave-trade; my-de'-seh, I a.s.sure you, privately, I agree with you; but they abhor your law!

”Your princ.i.p.al danger--at least, I mean difficulty--is this: that the Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some through loss of office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things, will not only hold off from all partic.i.p.ation in your government, but will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and especially all office-holding under it, odious--disreputable--infamous.

You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero--the ninety-nine will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown out early in the day.

”Count O'Reilly, when he established the Spanish power here thirty-five years ago, cut a similar knot with the executioner's sword; but, my-de'-seh, you are here to establish a _free_ government; and how can you make it freer than the people wish it? There is your riddle! They hold off and say, 'Make your government as free as you can, but do not ask us to help you;' and before you know it you have no retainers but a gang of shameless mercenaries, who will desert you whenever the indignation of this people overbalances their indolence; and you will fall the victim of what you may call our mutinous patriotism.”

The governor made a very quiet, unappreciative remark about a ”patriotism that lets its government get choked up with corruption and then blows it out with gunpowder!”

The Creole shrugged.

”And repeats the operation indefinitely,” he said.

The governor said something often heard, before and since, to the effect that communities will not sacrifice themselves for mere ideas.

”My-de'-seh,” replied the Creole, ”you speak like a true Anglo-Saxon; but, sir! how many communities have _committed_ suicide. And this one?--why, it is _just_ the kind to do it!”

”Well,” said the governor, smilingly, ”you have pointed out what you consider to be the breakers, now can you point out the channel?”

”Channel? There is none! And you, nor I, cannot dig one. Two great forces _may_ ultimately do it, Religion and Education--as I was telling you I said to my young friend, the apothecary,--but still I am free to say what would be my first and princ.i.p.al step, if I was in your place--as I thank G.o.d I am not.”

The listener asked him what that was.

”Wherever I could find a Creole that I could venture to trust, my-de'-seh, I would put him in office. Never mind a little political heterodoxy, you know; almost any man can be trusted to shoot away from the uniform he has on. And then--”

”But,” said the other, ”I have offered you--”