Project Gutenberg's Pere Antoine's Date-Palm, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Pere Antoine's Date-Palm

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23361]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM ***

Produced by David Widger

PERE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM.

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

Near the Levee, and not far from the old French Cathedral in the Place
d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet in height,
spreading its broad leaves in the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous
roots were sucking strength from their native earth.

Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States, mentions
this exotic: "The tree is seventy or eighty years old; for Pere Antoine,
a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty years ago, told Mr.
Bringier that he planted it himself, when he was young. In his will he
provided that they who succeeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it
if they cut down the palm."

Wishing to learn something of Pere Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell
made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg.
That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that
he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up,
and finally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the
tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Pere
Antoine. In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by
the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from
Louisiana--Miss Blondeau by name--who gave me the substance of the
following legend touching Pere Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If
it should appear tame to the reader, it will be because I am not habited
in a black ribbed-silk dress, with a strip of point-lace around my
throat, like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her eyes and lips
and Southern music to tell it with.

When Pere Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend whom he loved
as he loved his life. Emile Jardin r