became a pure-blooded French Creole to be who could trace his pedigree
back to the god Mars.

"Remember, my boy," was the adjuration received by him as regularly as
his waking cup of black coffee, "that none of your family line ever kept
the laws of any government or creed." And if it was well that he should
bear this in mind, it was well to reiterate it persistently, for, from
the nurse's arms, the boy wore a look, not of docility so much as of
gentle, _judicial_ benevolence. The domestics of the old man's house
used to shed tears of laughter to see that look on the face of a babe.
His rude guardian addressed himself to the modification of this facial
expression; it had not enough of majesty in it, for instance, or of
large dare-deviltry; but with care these could be made to come.

And, true enough, at twenty-one (in Ursin Lemaitre), the labors of his
grandfather were an apparent success. He was not rugged, nor was he
loud-spoken, as his venerable trainer would have liked to present him to
society; but he was as serenely terrible as a well-aimed rifle, and the
old man looked upon his results with pride. He had cultivated him up to
that pitch where he scorned to practice any vice, or any virtue, that
did not include the principle of self-assertion. A few touches only were
wanting here and there to achieve perfection, when suddenly the old man
died. Yet it was his proud satisfaction, before he finally lay down, to
see Ursin a favored companion and the peer, both in courtesy and pride,
of those polished gentlemen famous in history, the brothers Lafitte.

The two Lafittes were, at the time young Lemaitre reached his majority
(say 1808 or 1812), only merchant blacksmiths, so to speak, a term
intended to convey the idea of blacksmiths who never soiled their hands,
who were men of capital, stood a little higher than the clergy, and
moved in society among its autocrats. But they were full of
possibilities, men of action, and men, too, of thought, with already a
pronounced disbelief in the custom-house. In these days of big carnivals
they would have been patented as the dukes of Little Manchac and
Barataria.

Young Ursin Lemaitre (in full the name was Lemaitre-Vignevielle) had not
only the hearty friendship of these good people, but also a natural turn
for accounts; and as his two friends were looking about them with an
enterprising eye, it easily resulted that he presently connected himself
with the blacksmithing professi