uadroones_ (for we must contrive a feminine spelling to define the
strict limits of the caste as then established) came forth in splendor.
Old travellers spare no terms to tell their praises, their faultlessness
of feature, their perfection of form, their varied styles of
beauty,--for there were even pure Caucasian blondes among them,--their
fascinating manners, their sparkling vivacity, their chaste and pretty
wit, their grace in the dance, their modest propriety, their taste and
elegance in dress. In the gentlest and most poetic sense they were
indeed the sirens of this land where it seemed "always afternoon"--a
momentary triumph of an Arcadian over a Christian civilization, so
beautiful and so seductive that it became the subject of special
chapters by writers of the day more original than correct as social
philosophers.

The balls that were got up for them by the male _sang-pur_ were to that
day what the carnival is to the present. Society balls given the same
nights proved failures through the coincidence. The magnates of
government,--municipal, state, federal,--those of the army, of the
learned professions and of the clubs,--in short, the white male
aristocracy in every thing save the ecclesiastical desk,--were there.
Tickets were high-priced to insure the exclusion of the vulgar. No
distinguished stranger was allowed to miss them. They were beautiful!
They were clad in silken extenuations from the throat to the feet, and
wore, withal, a pathos in their charm that gave them a family likeness
to innocence.

Madame Delphine, were you not a stranger, could have told you all about
it; though hardly, I suppose, without tears.

But at the time of which we would speak (1821-22) her day of splendor
was set, and her husband--let us call him so for her sake--was long
dead. He was an American, and, if we take her word for it, a man of
noble heart and extremely handsome; but this is knowledge which we can
do without.

Even in those days the house was always shut, and Madame Delphine's
chief occupation and end in life seemed to be to keep well locked up
in-doors. She was an excellent person, the neighbors said,--a very
worthy person; and they were, maybe, nearer correct then they knew. They
rarely saw her save when she went to or returned from church; a small,
rather tired-looking, dark quadroone of very good features and a gentle
thoughtfulness of expression which would take long to describe: call it
a widow's look.

I