ng a
whole day among her papers, and then in my receiving the certificate of a
gentleman of high official standing in Louisiana that, on the 10th of last
April (1889), this lady, in his presence, took from a large trunk of
written papers, variously dated and "appearing to be perfectly genuine," a
book of memoranda from which, writes he, "I copy the following paragraph
written by Madame S. de la Houssaye herself in the middle of the book, on
page 29." Then follows in French:

June 20, 1841.--M. Gerbeau has dined here again. What a singular story he
tells me. We talked of my grandmother and Madame Carpentier, and what does
M. Gerbeau tell me but that Alix had not finished her history when my
grandmother and my aunt returned, and that he had promised to get it to
them. "And I kept it two years for want of an opportunity," he added. How
mad Grandmamma must have been! How the delay must have made her suffer!

Well and good! Then Alix did write her story! But if she wrote for both
her "dear and good friends," Suzanne and Francoise, then Francoise, the
younger and milder sister, would the more likely have to be content,
sooner or later, with a copy. This, I find no reason to doubt, is what
lies before me. Indeed, here (crossed out in the manuscript, but by me
restored and italicized) are signs of a copyist's pen: "Mais helas! il
desesperoit de reussir quand' _il desespe_ rencontra," etc. Is not that a
copyist's repetition? Or this:"--et lui, mon mari apres tout se fit mon
_marim_ domestique." And here the copyist misread the original: "Lorsque
le maire entendit les noms et les _personnes_ prenoms de la mariee," etc.
In the manuscript personnes is crossed out, and the correct word, prenoms,
is written above it.

Whoever made this copy it remains still so simple and compact that he or
she cannot be charged with many embellishments. And yet it is easy to
believe that some one, with that looseness of family tradition and
largeness of ancestral pride so common among the Creoles, in
half-knowledge and half-ignorance should have ventured aside for an
instant to attribute in pure parenthesis to an ancestral De la Houssaye
the premature honor of a San Domingan war; or, incited by some tradition
of the old Prime Minister's intimate friendship with Madelaine's family,
should have imputed a gracious attention to the wrong Count de Maurepas,
or to the wrong count altogether.

I find no other theory tenable. To reject the whole matter as