started in the mind of such a man?

He was about to resume his walk, when there came in, or more strictly
speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose
adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and
clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure Creole. His name, when
it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a
Franco-Celtic origin.

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in after
recess, "I 'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window."

He wheeled half around as he spoke and seized from a naked black boy,
who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper.

Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A
pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a
pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols--the property of some ancient
gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep
up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation--went
into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of
by _tombola_. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral
education of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any
sort of evil, that in this drivelling species of gambling he saw nothing
hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" appeared also articles
for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for instance, the
wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little
bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the
bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of
which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild
waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively
of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines'
convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years,
the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in
ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by
"a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come
to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics
were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and,
fortunately, we have a few still left.

The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
counter, tore away its wrappings and disclo