scape, and here not as a typical, but only as an
easily possible, slaveholder. For that matter, Madame Lalaurie, let it be
plainly understood, was only another possibility, not a type. The two
stories teach the same truth: that a public practice is answerable for
whatever can happen easier with it than without it, no matter whether it
must, or only may, happen. However, let the moral wait or skip it entirely
if you choose: a regular feature of that bright afternoon throng was
Madame Lalaurie's coach with the ever-so-pleasant Madame Lalaurie inside
and her sleek black coachman on the box.

"Think," some friend would say, as he returned her courteous bow--"think
of casting upon that woman the suspicion of starving and maltreating her
own house-servants! Look at that driver; his skin shines with good
keeping. The truth is those jealous Americans"--

There was intense jealousy between the Americans and the Creoles. The
Americans were just beginning in public matters to hold the odds. In
private society the Creoles still held power, but it was slipping from
them even there. Madame Lalaurie was a Creole. Whether Louisiana or St.
Domingo born was no matter; she should not be criticised by American envy!
Nor would the Creoles themselves go nosing into the secretest privacy of
her house.

"Why, look you, it is her common practice, even before her guests, to
leave a little wine in her glass and hand it, with some word of kindness,
to the slave waiting at her back. Thin and hollow-chested--the slaves?
Yes, to be sure: but how about your rich uncle, or my dear old mother: are
they not hollow-chested? Well!"

But this kind of logic did not satisfy everybody, not even every Creole;
and particularly not all her neighbors. The common populace too had
unflattering beliefs.

"Do you see this splendid house? Do you see those attic windows? There are
slaves up there confined in chains and darkness and kept at the point of
starvation."

A Creole gentleman, M. Montreuil, who seems to have been a neighbor, made
several attempts to bring the matter to light, but in vain. Yet rumors and
suspicious indications grew so rank that at length another prominent
citizen, an "American" lawyer, who had a young Creole studying law in his
office, ventured to send him to the house to point out to Madame Lalaurie
certain laws of the State. For instance there was Article XX. of the old
Black Code: "Slaves who shall not be properly fed, clad, and provide