"

When this interview finally drew to a close the governor had made a
memorandum of some fifteen or twenty Grandissimes, scattered through
different cantons of Louisiana, who, their kinsman Honore thought, would
not decline appointments.

* * * * *

Certain of the Muses were abroad that night. Faintly audible to the
apothecary of the rue Royale through that deserted stillness which is
yet the marked peculiarity of New Orleans streets by night, came from a
neighboring slave-yard the monotonous chant and machine-like tune-beat
of an African dance. There our lately met _marchande_ (albeit she was
but a guest, fortified against the street-watch with her master's
written "pass") led the ancient Calinda dance with that well-known song
of derision, in whose ever multiplying stanzas the helpless satire of a
feeble race still continues to celebrate the personal failings of each
newly prominent figure among the dominant caste. There was a new distich
to the song to-night, signifying that the pride of the Grandissimes must
find his friends now among the Yankees:

"Miche Hon're, alle! h-alle!
Trouve to zamis parmi les Yankis.
Dance calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!
Dance calinda, bou-joum! bou-joum!

Frowenfeld, as we have already said, had closed his shop, and was
sitting in the room behind it with one arm on his table and the other on
his celestial globe, watching the flicker of his small fire and musing
upon the unusual experiences of the evening. Upon every side there
seemed to start away from his turning glance the multiplied shadows of
something wrong. The melancholy face of that Honore Grandissime, his
landlord, at whose mention Dr. Keene had thought it fair to laugh
without explaining; the tall, bright-eyed _milatraisse_; old Agricola;
the lady of the basil; the newly identified merchant friend, now the
more satisfactory Honore,--they all came before him in his meditation,
provoking among themselves a certain discord, faint but persistent, to
which he strove to close his ear. For he was brain-weary. Even in the
bright recollection of the lady and her talk he became involved among
shadows, and going from bad to worse, seemed at length almost to gasp in
an atmosphere of hints, allusions, faint unspoken admissions,
ill-concealed antipathies, unfinished speeches, mistaken identities and
whisperings of hidden strife. The cathedral clock struck twelve and was
answered again