city, when, as they pulled up from a final
gallop, mention was made of Doctor Keene. He was improving; Honore had
seen him that morning; so, at another hour, had Frowenfeld. Doctor Keene
had told Honore about Palmyre's wound.

"You was at her house again this morning?" asked the Creole.

"Yes," said Frowenfeld.

M. Grandissime shook his head warningly.

"'Tis a dangerous business. You are almost sure to become the object of
slander. You ought to tell Doctor Keene to make some other arrangement,
or presently you, too, will be under the--" he lowered his voice, for
Frowenfeld was dismounting at the shop door, and three or four
acquaintances stood around--"under the 'shadow of the Ethiopian.'"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FETE DE GRANDPERE

Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down Esplanade
street will notice, across on the right, between it and that sorry
streak once fondly known as Champs Elysees, two or three large, old
houses, rising above the general surroundings and displaying
architectural features which identify them with an irrevocable past--a
past when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear of
contradiction, express his religious belief that the antipathy he felt
for the Americain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in his
ante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence. There
is, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred and
fifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captain
governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray as
a pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank added
or subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into the
Bastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, when
the setting sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectacles
standing up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there and
will never come back. These houses are the last remaining--if, indeed,
they were not pulled down yesterday--of a group that once marked from
afar the direction of the old highway between the city's walls and the
suburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier aristocracy of the colony;
all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons,
etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings' moneys, with an
_abandon_ which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.

Among these stood the g