836

My very dear Niece. I received your letter this morning in which you ask
me to tell you what I remember of the journey to Attakapas made in 1795 by
papa, M. -----, [and] my younger sister Francoise afterward your
grandmother. If it were with my tongue I could answer more favorably; but
writing is not my forte; I was never calculated for a public writer, as
your grandmother was. By the way, she wrote the journey, and very
prettily; what have you done with it? It is a pity to lose so pretty a
piece of writing.... We left New Orleans to go to the Attakapas in the
month of May, 1795, and in an old barge ["vieux chalant qui sente le rat
mord a plien nez"]. We were Francoise and I Suzanne, pearl of the family,
and Papa, who went to buy lands; and one Joseph Charpentier and his dear
and pretty little wife Alix [whom] I love so much; 3 Irish, father mother
and son [fice]; lastly Mario, whom you knew, with Celeste, formerly lady's
maid to Marianne--who is now my sister-in-law.... If I knew better how to
write I would tell you our adventures the alligators tried to devour us.
We barely escaped perishing in Lake Chicot and many other things.... At
last we arrived at a pretty village St. Martinville called also little
Paris and full of barons, marquises, counts and countesses[2] that were an
offense to my nose and my stomach. Your grandmother was in raptures. It
was there we met the beautiful Tonton, your aunt by marriage. I have a bad
finger and must stop.... Your loving aunty [ta tantine qui temme]

Suzanne ---- nee ----

The kind of letter to expect from one who, as a girl of eighteen, could
shoot and swim and was called by her father "my son"; the antipode of her
sister Francoise. My attorney wrote that the evidence was sufficient.

His letter had hardly got into the mail-bag when another telegram cried
hold! That a few pages of the original manuscript had been found and
forwarded by post. They came. They were only nine in all--old, yellow,
ragged, torn, leaves of a plantation account-book whose red-ruled columns
had long ago faded to a faint brown, one side of two or three of them
preoccupied with charges in bad French of yards of cottonade, "mouslin a
dames," "jaconad," dozens of soap, pounds of tobacco, pairs of stockings,
lace, etc.; but to our great pleasure each page corresponding closely,
save in orthography and syntax, with a page of the new manuscript, and the
page numbers of the old running higher than those