George Washington Cable

“ Ah, Françoise! of the two destinies I choose that one."
Alix looked at her for a moment and then dropped her head in silence. Suzanne went on in her giddy way:
"And the other: how she was punished for her plebeian tastes!"
"So, my dear Suzanne," responded Alix, "you would not marry—"
"A man not my equal—a workman? Ah! certainly not."
Madame Carpentier turned slightly pale. I looked at Suzanne with eyes full of reproach; and Suzanne remembering the gardener, at that moment in his shirt sleeves pushing one of the boat's long sweeps, bit her lip and turned to hide her tears. ”

“ The white slave was still a slave. We are left to imagine the quiet air of dispatch with which as many of the counsel as were present gathered up any papers they may have had, exchanged a few murmurous words with their clients, and, hats in hand, hurried off and out to other business. Also the silent, slow dejection of Salome, Eva, Frank, and their neighbors and kin—if so be, that they were there—as they rose and left the hall where a man's property was more sacred than a woman's freedom. But the attorney had given them ground of hope. ”

“ Our flatboat moved ever onward. Day by day, hour by hour, every minute it advanced—slowly it is true, in the diminished current, but it advanced. I no longer knew where I was. We came at times where I thought we were lost; and then I thought of mamma and my dear sisters and my two pretty little brothers, whom I might never see again, and I was swallowed up. Then Suzanne would make fun of me and Alix would caress me, and that did me good. There were many bayous,—a labyrinth, as papa said,—and Mario had his map at hand showing the way. ”

“ Attalie pushes it softly, looks into the darkened chamber and draws back, whispering, "He has dropped asleep."
Camille changes places with her and looks in. Then he moves a step across the threshold, leans forward peeringly, and then turns about, lifts his ill-kept forefinger, and murmurs while he fixes his little eyes on hers:
"If you make a noise, or in any way let any one know what has happened, it will cost you all he is worth. I will leave you alone with him just ten minutes." He makes as if to pass by her towards the stair, but she seizes him by the wrist. ”

“ But Madame Karl was not satisfied. "You are not rightly a slave. Your name is Müller. You are of pure German blood. I knew your mother. I know you. We came to this country together on the same ship, twenty-five years ago."
"No," said the other; "you must be mistaking me for some one else that I look like."
But Madame Karl: "Come with me. Come up into Lafayette and see if I do not show you to others who will know you the moment they look at you."
The woman enjoyed much liberty in her place and was able to accept this invitation. Madame Karl took her to the home of Frank and Eva Schuber. ”

“ One summer day she was on some account down near the lower limits of New Orleans on or near the river front, where the population was almost wholly a lower class of Spanish people. Passing an open door her eye was suddenly arrested by a woman of about her own age engaged in some humble service within with her face towards the door.
Madame Karl paused in astonishment. The place was a small drinking-house, a mere cabaret; but the woman! It was as if her aunt Dorothea, who had died on the ship twenty-five years before, stood face to face with her alive and well. ”

“ The food is a trial. This evening the snaky candles lighted the glass and silver on the supper-table with a pale gleam and disclosed a frugal supper indeed—tea without milk (for all the cows are gone) , honey, and bread. A faint ray twinkled on the water swishing against the house and stretching away into the dark woods. It looked like civilization and barbarism met together. Just as we sat down to it, some one passing in a boat shouted that Confederates and Federals were fighting at Vicksburg. ”

“ Suzanne had made her entrance into society three years before, and danced ravishingly. Not so with me. I had attended my first ball only a few months before, and had taken nearly all my dancing-lessons from Suzanne. What was to become of me, then, when I heard my father ask me to dance the bolero which he and Alix were playing!... Every one made room for us, crying, "Oh, oui, Mlle. Suzanne; dancez! Oh, dancez, Mlle. Françoise!" I did not wish to disobey my father. I did not want to disoblige my friends. Suzanne loosed her red scarf and tossed one end to me. ”

“ The slaves grasped the boon; but the masters, trained for generations in the conviction that public safety and private purity were possible only by the subjection of the black race under the white, loathed civil equality as but another name for private companionship, and spurned, as dishonor and destruction in one, the restoration of their sovereignty at the price of political copartnership with the groveling race they had bought and sold and subjected easily to the leash and lash. ”

“ There, in the rooms that had once resounded with the screams of Madame Lalaurie's little slave fleeing to her death, and with the hootings and maledictions of the enraged mob, was being tried the experiment of a common enjoyment of public benefits by the daughters of two widely divergent races, without the enforcement of private social companionship.
From such enforcement the school was as free as any school is or ought to be. The daily discipline did not require any two pupils to be social, but only every one to be civil, and civil to all. ”

“ The tree-planted levee was still populous on summer evenings with promenaders and loungers. The quadroon caste was in its dying splendor, still threatening the moral destruction of private society, and hated—as only woman can hate enemies of the hearthstone—by the proud, fair ladies of the Creole pure-blood, among whom Madame Lalaurie shone brilliantly. Her elegant house, filled with "furniture of the most costly description,"—says the "New Orleans Bee" of a date which we shall come to,—stood central in the swirl of "downtown" gayety, public and private. ”

“ At that time real hats were unknown. For driving or for evening they placed on top of the high, powdered hair what they called a catogan, a little bonnet of gauze or lace trimmed with ribbons; and during the day a sun-bonnet of silk or velvet. You can guess that neither Suzanne nor I, in spite of papa's instructions, forgot these.
Our traveling-dresses were gray cirsacas,—the skirt all one, short, without puffs; the jacket coming up high and with long sleeves,—a sunbonnet of cirsacas, blue stockings, embroidered handkerchief or blue cravat about the neck, and high-heeled shoes. ”

“ Attalie hid her shapely forehead again on the dead hand. "I cannot leave him. Do what you please, only let me stay here. Oh! let me stay here."
"I see," said Camille, with cold severity, "like all women, you count the foolish sentiments of the living of more value than the reasonable wish of the dead." He waited a moment for these words to take effect upon her motionless form, and then, seeing that—again like a woman—she was waiting and wishing for compulsion, he lifted her by one arm. "Come. Go. And make haste to get back again; we are losing priceless time." ”

“ To add to all these commotions, a hideous revolution had swept over San Domingo; the slaves in Louisiana had heard of it, insurrection was feared, and at length, in 1794, when Susanne was seventeen and Françoise fifteen, it broke out on the Mississippi no great matter over a day's ride from their own home, and twenty-three blacks were gibbeted singly at intervals all the way down by their father's plantation and on to New Orleans, and were left swinging in the weather to insure the peace and felicity of the land. ”

“ He was the most lovable old man in the world. All at once Madelaine said:
"Ah! if I could see Alix once more—only once more!"
The old count without a word slipped away, entered his carriage, and had himself driven to the Morainville hotel, where there was that evening a grand ball. Tarrying in the ante-chamber, he had my mother called. She came with alacrity, and when she knew the object of the count's visit she sent me to get a great white burnoose, enveloped me in it, and putting my hand into the count's said to me:
"You have but to show yourself to secure the carriage." ”

“ She made one think she had lived in a world all unlike ours; and withal she was simple, sweet, good, and to love her seemed the most natural thing on earth. There was nothing extraordinary in her beauty; the charm was in her intelligence and her goodness.
Maggie, the Irishwoman, was very taciturn. She never mingled with us, nor spoke to any one except Suzanne, and to her in monosyllables only when addressed. You would see her sometimes sitting alone at the bow of the boat, sewing, knitting, or saying her beads. During this last occupation her eyes never quitted Alix. ”

“ Joseph always kept their little fortune in a leathern belt beneath his shirt. He put on his vest and over it a sort of great-coat, slung his gun by its shoulder-belt, secured his pistols, and then taking from one of his trunks a large woolen cloak he wrapped Alix in it, and lifted her like a child of eight, while she crossed her little arms about his neck and rested her head on his bosom. Then he followed us into Mario's room, where his two associates were waiting. At another time we might have laughed at Maggie, but not now. She had slipped into her belt two horse-pistols. ”

“ Often our emigrants were forced to take their axes and hatchets in hand to open a road. At other times tree-trunks, heaped upon one another, completely closed a bayou. Then think what trouble there was to unbar that gate and pass through. And, to make all complete, troops of hungry alligators clambered upon the sides of our flatboat with jaws open to devour us. There was much outcry; I fled, Alix fled with me, Suzanne laughed. But our men were always ready for them with their guns. ”

“ To impute moral sublimity to a white man and a quadroon woman at one and the same time and in one and the same affair was something beyond the powers of Camille's small soul. But he gave Attalie, on the instant, full credit, over credit it may be, and felt a momentary thrill of spiritual contagion that he had scarcely known before in all his days. ”

“ Françoise—that was I; poor child of sixteen, who had but six months before quitted the school-bench, and totally unlike my sister—blonde, where Suzanne was dark; timid, even cowardly, while she had the hardihood and courage of a young lioness; ready to cry at sight of a wounded bird, while she, gun in hand, brought down as much game as the most skillful hunter. ”

“ She said that her name was Annie; that her father, mother, and brothers lived in the hut. That was all she could say. She did not know her parents' name. When Suzanne put her down she ran with all her legs towards the cabin to show Alix's gift, her pretty ribbon.
Before the sun went down the wind rose. Great clouds covered the horizon; large rain-drops began to fall. Joseph covered the head of his young wife with her mantle, and we hastened back to the camp.
"Do you fear a storm, Joseph?" asked Alix.
"I do not know too much," he replied; "but when you are near, all dangers seem great." ”

“ Martinville, naming again all the barons, counts, and marquises of whom he had spoken to my father, and descanting especially on the grandeur of the balls and parties he had there attended.
"And we have only our camayeu skirts!" cried Suzanne.
"Daughter," observed papa, "be content with what you have. You are neither a duchess nor a countess, and besides you are traveling."
"And," said M. Gerbeau, "the stores there are full of knickknacks that would capture the desires of a queen." ”

“ Grasping my father's arm and begging him not to leave me for an instant, I let him conduct me, while Alix followed me, taking her husband's arm in both her hands. In front marched 'Tino, his gun on his shoulder; after him went Maggie, followed by Tom; and then Suzanne and little Patrick, inseparable friends.
Hardly had we gone a few steps when we were surrounded by a human wall, and I realized with a shiver how easy it would be for these savages to get rid of us and take all our possessions. ”

“ He was at that very time master of Salome Muller, and of "several others fairer than Salome." He belongs in the present story only here in this landscape, and here not as a typical, but only as an easily possible, slaveholder. For that matter, Madame Lalaurie, let it be plainly understood, was only another possibility, not a type. The two stories teach the same truth: that a public practice is answerable for whatever can happen easier with it than without it, no matter whether it must, or only may, happen. ”