reat mother-mansion of the Grandissimes. Do not
look for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brick
pillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground and
rose on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered in
the cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinous
glitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the
immense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk
abreast; the great front stairs, descending from the veranda to the
garden, with a lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps forty
Grandissimes could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere,
whence you could see the cathedral, the Ursulines', the governor's
mansion, and the river, far away, shining between the villas of
Tchoupitoulas Coast--all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall as
the flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this _fete de
grandpere_.

Odd to say, it was not the grandpere's birthday that had passed. For
weeks the happy children of the many Grandissime branches--the
Mandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins--had been standing with
their uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to clap hands and jump,
and still, from week to week, the appointed day had been made to fall
back, and fall back before--what think you?--an inability to
understand Honore.

It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house that her
best child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long been so. Even in
Honore's early youth, a scant two years after she had watched him, over
the tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away,
a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissime
of the Grandissimes--an inflexible of the inflexibles--he was found
"inciting" (so the stately dames and officials who graced her front
veranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of
transatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud,
rekindled by the Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. The
main difficulty seemed to be that Honore could not be satisfied with a
clean conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships of
single households; his longing was, and had ever been--he had inherited
it from his father--to see one unbroken and harmonious Grandissime
family gathering yearly under this venerated roof without reproach
before all persons, classes, and race