descend from the belvedere turn and note how the
roof drops away in eight different slopes; and think--from whichever one
of these slopes it was--of the little fluttering, befrocked lump of
terrified childhood that leaped from there and fell clean to the paved
yard below. A last word while we are still here: there are other
reasons--one, at least, besides tragedy and crime--that make people
believe this place is haunted. This particular spot is hardly one where a
person would prefer to see a ghost, even if one knew it was but an optical
illusion; but one evening, some years ago, when a bright moon was mounting
high and swinging well around to the south, a young girl who lived near by
and who had a proper skepticism for the marvels of the gossips passed this
house. She was approaching it from an opposite sidewalk, when, glancing up
at this belvedere outlined so loftily on the night sky, she saw with
startling clearness, although pale and misty in the deep shadow of the
cupola,--"It made me shudder," she says, "until I reasoned the matter
out,"--a single, silent, motionless object; the figure of a woman leaning
against its lattice. By careful scrutiny she made it out to be only a
sorcery of moonbeams that fell aslant from the farther side through the
skylight of the belvedere's roof and sifted through the lattice. Would
that there were no more reality to the story before us.

II.

MADAME LALAURIE.

On the 30th of August, 1831, before Octave de Armas, notary, one E. Soniat
Dufossat sold this property to a Madame Lalaurie. She may have dwelt in
the house earlier than this, but here is where its tragic history begins.
Madame Lalaurie was still a beautiful and most attractive lady, though
bearing the name of a third husband. Her surname had been first
McCarty,--a genuine Spanish-Creole name, although of Irish origin, of
course,--then Lopez, or maybe first Lopez and then McCarty, and then
Blanque. She had two daughters, the elder, at least, the issue of her
first marriage.

The house is known to this day as Madame Blanque's house,--which, you
notice, it never was,--so distinctly was she the notable figure in the
household. Her husband was younger than she. There is strong sign of his
lesser importance in the fact that he was sometimes, and only sometimes,
called doctor--Dr. Louis Lalaurie. The graces and graciousness of their
accomplished and entertaining mother quite outshone his step-daughters as
well as him. To