taken into
exile the best of safeguards against misfortune,--humor and an
indomitable spirit.

CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES

As long as I live I shall never forget that Sunday morning of my second
arrival at New Orleans. A saffron heat-haze hung over the river and the
city, robbed alike from the yellow waters of the one and the pestilent
moisture of the other. It would have been strange indeed if this capital
of Louisiana, brought hither to a swamp from the sands of Biloxi many
years ago by the energetic Bienville, were not visited from time to time
by the scourge!

Again I saw the green villas on the outskirts, the verdure-dotted expanse
of roofs of the city behind the levee bank, the line of Kentucky boats,
keel boats and barges which brought our own resistless commerce hither in
the teeth of royal mandates. Farther out, and tugging fretfully in the
yellow current, were the aliens of the blue seas, high-hulled, their
tracery of masts and spars shimmering in the heat: a full-rigged ocean
packet from Spain, a barque and brigantine from the West Indies, a rakish
slaver from Africa with her water-line dry, discharged but yesterday of a
teeming horror of freight. I looked again upon the familiar rows of trees
which shaded the gravelled promenades where Nick had first seen
Antoinette. Then we were under it, for the river was low, and the
dingy-uniformed officer was bowing over our passports beneath the awning.
We walked ashore, Monsieur Vigo and I, and we joined a staring group of
keel boatmen and river-men under the willows.

Below us, the white shell walks of the Place d'Armes were thronged with
gayly dressed people. Over their heads rose the fine new Cathedral,
built by the munificence of Don Andreas Almonaster, and beside that the
many-windowed, heavy-arched Cabildo, nearly finished, which will stand
for all time a monument to Spanish builders.

"It is Corpus Christi day," said Monsieur Vigo; "let us go and see the
procession."

Here once more were the bright-turbaned negresses, the gay Creole gowns
and scarfs, the linen-jacketed, broad-hatted merchants, with those of
soberer and more conventional dress, laughing and chatting, the children
playing despite the heat. Many of these people greeted Monsieur Vigo.
There were the saturnine, long-cloaked Spaniards, too, and a greater
number than I had believed of my own keen-faced countrymen lounging
about, mildly amused by the scene. We crossed t