with? N-a-hay! but
Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked
out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his case an
act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I simply do not
understand them! _H-you_ know, Professor Frowenfeld, what he has done!
You know how ignominiously he has surrendered the key of a moral
position which for the honor of the Grandissime-Fusilier name we have
felt it necessary to hold against our hereditary enemies!
And--you--know--" here Agricola actually dropped all artificiality and
spoke from the depths of his feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has
joined himself in business h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do?
What can we say? It is Honore Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell!
He is gone over to the enemy.'"

The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul Innerarity.
Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such part as he could
understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with ever-broadening
admiration. We know how devoted he became to the interests and fame of
"Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had married. Not to divide his
generous heart he took rooms opposite the drug-store, resolved that
"Frowenfeld's" should be not only the latest closed but the earliest
opened of all the pharmacies in New Orleans.

This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his bride fell
suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of Aurora and Clotilde
could not be so near to trouble and not know it, and before Raoul was
nearly enough recovered from the shock of this peril to remember that he
was a Grandissime, these last two of the De Grapions had hastened across
the street to the small, white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of
universal human love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame
Innerarity recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could
pay such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four
became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward
Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed her
all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to be, for
him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily inaccessible; but
Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was delighted with Aurora.
He told her in confidence that "Profess-or Frowenfel'" was the best man
in the world; but she boldly said, taking pains to spea