New Orleans was awake. A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on
the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback
on the Royal Road below. Across the Place d'Armes the spire of the
parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the
mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange
throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers;
jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his
tabatiere, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and
shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with
quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts,
gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a
blanketed Indian. Nor was this all. Some occasion (so Madame Bouvet had
told us) had brought a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it
was a fashion to astonish me. There were fine gentlemen with swords
and silk waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer
gowns. Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not
got beyond Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and
Watteau then, and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we
saw an officer of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that
might have served at court.

Ay, and there was yet another sort. Every flatboatman who returned to
Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and
octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had
not indeed been greatly overdrawn. For here were these ladies in the
flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift
glance, and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna. Their
faces were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could
scarce repress. In former times they had been lavish in their finery,
and even now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.

Nick was delighted, but he had not dragged me twice the length of the
esplanade ere his eye was caught by a young lady in pink who sauntered
between an elderly gentleman in black silk and a young man more gayly
dressed.

"Egad," said Nick, "there is my divinity, and I need not look a step
farther."

I laughed.

"You have but to choose, I suppose, and all falls your way," I answered.

"But look!" he cried, halting me to stare after the girl, "what a face,
and what