h rage, there came out of the lodge the fattest woman I have ever seen
for her size. She seized her husband by the back of his loose frock and
pulled him away, crying out that he was losing time by talking to
vagabonds, besides disturbing the good sisters. Then we went away, Nick
following the convent wall down to the river. Turning southward under
the bank past the huddle of market-stalls, we came suddenly upon a sight
that made us pause and wonder.

New Orleans was awake. A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on
the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback
on the Royal Road below. Across the Place d'Armes the spire of the
parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the
mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange
throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers;
jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his
tabatiere, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and
shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with
quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts,
gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a
blanketed Indian. Nor was this all. Some occasion (so Madame Bouvet had
told us) had brought a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it was
a fashion to astonish me. There were fine gentlemen with swords and silk
waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer gowns.
Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not got beyond
Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and Watteau then,
and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we saw an officer
of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that might have served
at court.

Ay, and there was yet another sort. Every flatboatman who returned to
Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and
octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had
not indeed been greatly overdrawn. For here were these ladies in the
flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift glance,
and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna. Their faces
were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could scarce
repress. In former times they had been lavish in their finery, and even
now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.

Nick was delighte