manners were charming and his hospitality gracious, and there was no
trouble whatever about my passport.

Our progress was slow when we came at last to the belvedered plantation
houses amongst the orange groves; and as we sat on the wide galleries in
the summer nights, we heard all the latest gossip of the capital of
Louisiana. The river was low; there was an ominous quality in the heat
which had its effect, indeed, upon me, and made the old Creoles shake
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 fro