moment
closed, his broad palms were lifted and pressed against his forehead, a
tremor seized him, and he fell all in a lump to the floor. The children
ran off with their infant-loads, leaving Jules St.-Ange swearing by all
his deceased relatives, first to Miguel and Joe, and then to the lifted
parson, that he did not know what had become of the money "except if"
the black man had got it.

In the rear of ancient New Orleans, beyond the sites of the old rampart,
a trio of Spanish forts, where the town has since sprung up and grown
old, green with all the luxuriance of the wild Creole summer, lay the
Congo Plains. Here stretched the canvas of the historic Cayetano, who
Sunday after Sunday sowed the sawdust for his circus-ring.

But to-day the great showman had fallen short of his printed promise.
The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an
irretrievable sop of every thing. The circus trailed away its bedraggled
magnificence, and the ring was cleared for the bull.

Then the sun seemed to come out and work for the people. "See," said the
Spaniards, looking up at the glorious sky with its great, white fleets
drawn off upon the horizon--"see--heaven smiles upon the bull-fight!"

In the high upper seats of the rude amphitheatre sat the gayly-decked
wives and daughters of the Gascons, from the _metaries_ along the Ridge,
and the chattering Spanish women of the Market, their shining hair
un-bonneted to the sun. Next below were their husbands and lovers in
Sunday blouses, milkmen, butchers, bakers, black-bearded fishermen,
Sicilian fruiterers, swarthy Portuguese sailors, in little woollen caps,
and strangers of the graver sort; mariners of England, Germany, and
Holland. The lowest seats were full of trappers, smugglers, Canadian
_voyageurs_, drinking and singing; _Americains_, too--more's the
shame--from the upper rivers--who will not keep their seats--who ply the
bottle, and who will get home by and by and tell how wicked Sodom is;
broad-brimmed, silver-braided Mexicans, too, with their copper cheeks
and bat's eyes and their tinkling spurred heels. Yonder, in that quieter
section, are the quadroon women in their black lace shawls--and there is
Baptiste; and below them are the turbaned black women, and there is--but
he vanishes--Colossus.

The afternoon is advancing, yet the sport, though loudly demanded, does
not begin. The _Americains_ grow derisive and find pastime in gibes and
raillery They mock