men who do not believe
in the slave trade! Shake hands? Yes; associate--fraternize! with
apothecaries and negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the
_fete de grandpere_, in the house where he is really the chief--the
_cacique!_"

No! The family would not come together on the first appointment; no, nor
on the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his wish; no, nor on
the third--nor on the fourth.

"_Non, Messieurs_!" cried both youth and reckless age; and, sometimes,
also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of means, of force and
of influence, urged on from behind by their proud and beautiful wives
and daughters.

Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days.
Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with the
poetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community recognized
the supreme domination of "the gentleman" in questions of right and of
"the ladies" in matters of sentiment. Under such conditions strength
establishes over weakness a showy protection which is the subtlest of
tyrannies, yet which, in the very moment of extending its arm over
woman, confers upon her a power which a truer freedom would only
diminish; constitutes her in a large degree an autocrat of public
sentiment and thus accepts her narrowest prejudices and most belated
errors as veriest need-be's of social life.

The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those who
boiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a close
cover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most part, those
who were holding office under old Spanish commissions, and were daily
expecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. The
steaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family--the timid, the
apathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better than
exactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of deciding
harrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal so
much easier--and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying to
contemplate.

"The Yankee was an inferior animal."

"Certainly."

"But Honore had a right to his convictions."

"Yes, that was so, too."

"It looked very traitorous, however."

"Yes, so it did."

"Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honore was advancing the true
interests of his people."

"Very likely."

"It would not do to accept office under the Yankee government."

"