received the cordial
leave of Aurora and another bow from Clotilde.

CHAPTER XVII

THAT NIGHT

Do we not fail to accord to our nights their true value? We are ever
giving to our days the credit and blame of all we do and mis-do,
forgetting those silent, glimmering hours when plans--and sometimes
plots--are laid; when resolutions are formed or changed; when heaven,
and sometimes heaven's enemies, are invoked; when anger and evil
thoughts are recalled, and sometimes hate made to inflame and fester;
when problems are solved, riddles guessed, and things made apparent in
the dark, which day refused to reveal. Our nights are the keys to our
days. They explain them. They are also the day's correctors. Night's
leisure untangles the mistakes of day's haste. We should not attempt to
comprise our pasts in the phrase, "in those days;" we should rather say
"in those days and nights."

That night was a long-remembered one to the apothecary of the rue
Royale. But it was after he had closed his shop, and in his back room
sat pondering the unusual experiences of the evening, that it began to
be, in a higher degree, a night of events to most of those persons who
had a part in its earlier incidents.

That Honore Grandissime whom Frowenfeld had only this day learned to
know as _the_ Honore Grandissime and the young governor-general were
closeted together.

"What can you expect, my-de'-seh?" the Creole was asking, as they
confronted each other in the smoke of their choice tobacco. "Remember,
they are citizens by compulsion. You say your best and wisest law is
that one prohibiting the slave-trade; my-de'-seh, I assure you,
privately, I agree with you; but they abhor your law!

"Your principal danger--at least, I mean difficulty--is this: that the
Louisianais themselves, some in pure lawlessness, some through loss of
office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things,
will not only hold off from all participation in your government, but
will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and
especially all office-holding under it, odious--disreputable--infamous.
You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can
face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men
generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero--the ninety-nine
will be scamps; and the moral hero will most likely get his brains blown
out early in the day.

"Count O'Reilly, when he esta