their heads and mutter a word with a terrible meaning. New Orleans was
a cesspool, said the enlightened. The Baron de Carondelet, indefatigable
man, aimed at digging a canal to relieve the city of its filth, but
this would be the year when it was most needed, and it was not dug. Yes,
Monsieur le Baron was energy itself. That other fever--the political
one--he had scotched. "Ca Ira" and "La Marseillaise" had been sung in
the theatres, but not often, for the Baron had sent the alcaldes to shut
them up. Certain gentlemen of French ancestry had gone to languish in
the Morro at Havana. Yes, Monsieur de Carondelet, though fat, was on
horseback before dawn, New Orleans was fortified as it never had been
before, the militia organized, real cannon were on the ramparts which
could shoot at a pinch.

Sub rosa, I found much sympathy among the planters with the Rights of
Man. What had become, they asked, of the expedition of Citizen General
Clark preparing in the North? They may have sighed secretly when I
painted it in its true colors, but they loved peace, these planters.
Strangely enough, the name of Auguste de St. Gre never crossed their
lips, and I got no trace of him or Nick at any of these places. Was it
possible that they might not have come to New Orleans after all?

Through the days, when the sun beat upon the awning with a tropical
fierceness, when Monsieur Vigo abandoned himself to his siestas, I
thought. It was perhaps characteristic of me that I waited nearly three
weeks to confide in my old friend the purpose of my journey to New
Orleans. It was not because I could not trust him that I held my tongue,
but because I sought some way of separating the more intimate story of
Nick's mother and his affair with Antoinette de St. Gre from the rest of
the story. But Monsieur Vigo was a man of importance in Louisiana, and
I reflected that a time might come when I should need his help. One
evening, when we were tied up under the oaks of a bayou, I told him.
There emanated from Monsieur Vigo a sympathy which few men possess, and
this I felt strongly as he listened, breaking his silence only at long
intervals to ask a question. It was a still night, I remember, of great
beauty, with a wisp of a moon hanging over the forest line, the air
heavy with odors and vibrant with a thousand insect tones.

"And what you do, Davy?" he said at length.

"I must find my cousin and St. Gre before they have a chance to get
into much mischief,"