Madame Bouvet's tavern, or hotel, or whatever she was pleased to call it, was not immaculately clean.Before passing into the street we stood for a moment looking into the public room on the left of the hallway, a long saloon, evidently used in the early afternoon for a dining room, and at the back of it a wide, many-paned window, capped by a Spanish arch, looked out on the gallery.Near this window was a gay party of young men engaged at cards, waited on by the yellow-turbaned Zoey, and drinking what evidently was claret punch.The sounds of their jests and laughter pursued us out of the house.
The town was waking from its siesta, the streets filling, and people stopped to stare at Nick as we passed.But Nick, who was plainly in search of something he did not find, hurried on.We soon came to the quarter which had suffered most from the fire, where new houses had gone up or were in the building beside the blackened logs of many of Bienville's time.Then we came to a high white wall that surrounded a large garden, and within it was a long, massive building of some beauty and pretension, with a high, latticed belfry and heavy walls and with arched dormers in the sloping roof.As we stood staring at it through the iron grille set in the archway of the lodge, Nick declared that it put him in mind of some of the chateaux he had seen in France, and he crossed the street to get a better view of the premises.
An old man in coarse blue linen came out of the lodge and spoke to me.
``It is the convent of the good nuns, the Ursulines, Monsieur, he said in French, ``and it was built long ago in the Sieur de Bienville's time, when the colony was young.For forty-five years, Monsieur, the young ladies of the city have come here to be educated.''
``What does he say?'' demanded Nick, pricking up his ears as he came across the street.
``That young men have been sent to the mines of Brazil for climbing the walls,'' I answered.
``Who wants to climb the walls?'' said Nick, disgusted.
``The young ladies of the town go to school here,'' Ianswered; ``it is a convent.''
``It might serve to pass the time,'' said Nick, gazing with a new interest at the latticed windows.``How much would you take, my friend, to let us in at the back way this evening?'' he demanded of the porter in French.
The good man gasped, lifted his hands in horror, and straightway let loose upon Nick a torrent of French invectives that had not the least effect except to cause a blacksmith's apprentice and two negroes to stop and stare at us.
``Pooh!'' exclaimed Nick, when the man had paused for want of breath, ``it is no trick to get over that wall.''
``Bon Dieu!'' cried the porter, ``you are Kentuckians, yes? I might have known that you were Kentuckians, and I shall advise the good sisters to put glass on the wall and keep a watch.''
``The young ladies are beautiful, you say?'' said Nick.
At this juncture, with the negroes grinning and the porter near bursting with rage, there came out of the lodge the fattest woman I have ever seen for her size.She seized her husband by the back of his loose frock and pulled him away, crying out that he was losing time by talking to vagabonds, besides disturbing the good sisters.
Then we went away, Nick following the convent wall down to the river.Turning southward under the bank past the huddle of market-stalls, we came suddenly upon a sight that made us pause and wonder.
New Orleans was awake.A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback on the Royal Road below.Across the Place d'Armes the spire of the parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor.It was a strange throng.There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers; jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his tabatiere, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts, gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a blanketed Indian.
Nor was this all.Some occasion (so Madame Bouvet had told us) had brought a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it was a fashion to astonish me.
There were fine gentlemen with swords and silk waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer gowns.Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not got beyond Watteau.As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and Watteau then, and we could only stare in astonishment.And for once we saw an officer of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that might have served at court.
Ay, and there was yet another sort.Every flatboatman who returned to Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had not indeed been greatly overdrawn.For here were these ladies in the flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift glance, and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna.Their faces were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could scarce repress.In former times they had been lavish in their finery, and even now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.
Nick was delighted, but he had not dragged me twice the length of the esplanade ere his eye was caught by a young lady in pink who sauntered between an elderly gentleman in black silk and a young man more gayly dressed.
``Egad,'' said Nick, ``there is my divinity, and I need not look a step farther.''
I laughed.
``You have but to choose, I suppose, and all falls your way,'' I answered.
``But look!'' he cried, halting me to stare after the girl, ``what a face, and what a form! And what a carriage, by Jove! There is breeding for you! And Davy, did you mark the gentle, rounded arm? Thank heaven these short sleeves are the fashion.''