Louison

“ Pressing her hand to her temples, Louison began to sob. Just then the coarse laughter of her torturers sounded from the basement and her tears immediately dried.
Softly, very softly, she opened the window, stood on the sill and swung herself to the outer sill. A pole which served to support a grapevine gave her a hold. She carefully climbed down its side, reached the street and ran as if pursued by the Furies.
The fog grew denser, and more than once Louison knocked against a wall or ran against passers-by, but these obstacles did not hinder her from running on. ”

“ Thus Louison discovered him. The very slightest look of astonishment passed over her face, a fugitive amazement that she immediately controlled.
"Louison, you are discretion itself," Dossonville said approvingly, his smile extending to a grin as he stretched forth his hand. "If ever the Revolution places women in power (and what is impossible to-day?) , I'll recommend you for Minister of Foreign Affairs."
"Citoyen, citoyen, you are mad to enter this place," Louison cried. "Do you not know that this is the headquarters of Javogues?"
"I know it; but see you, Louison, that animal is so stupid." ”

“ The ladies were dressed finely, with the taste and care I had so much admired. Louison turned away from me with a splendid dignity and stood looking up at the wall, her hands behind her, a toe of one shoe tapping the floor impatiently. It was a picture to remember a lifetime. ”

“ Numberless little touches of nobility—all savouring of self-denial—came to light from amidst these days of luxury and pleasure.
Mademoiselle Louison's best friend—an insignificant little lady who sat at the foot of the table—told, in spite, of Louison's protest, how the latter had taken three poor seamstresses up to her own rooms, and had them sew the whole of the night before the fête in the hippodrome. She had given the poor girls coffee and food, besides payment.
Mademoiselle Louison suddenly became an important personage at table, and the journalist began to show her marked attention. ”

“ A dozen men rushed to separate them, while the Marseillais, echoing the accusation of their leader, surged furiously forward. Louison and [Pg 70] Nicole, with a common impulse, seized Dossonville, and in the confusion drew him into the hall and out by a rear entrance into the cool of the night.
"Thanks, my dears!" he cried, once free of the turmoil, nonchalant and flippant as ever. "It is always difficult to find the right word on which to retreat with dignity. You saved me the trouble. What! it is you, Louison and Nicole? ”

“ After the terrible scene in the Fougereuse mansion, the young countess, with the help of Arthur, brought Louison to a carriage, and, to Madame Ursula's horror, she gave the young girl her own room and bed. For Fanfaro's sister nothing could be good enough, and the young countess made Louison as comfortable as possible. ”

“ Louis,—that just and austere king—looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the rolling heights of Forest Park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises or privileges in a modern town. ”

“ Shirley, with Britain's glory fired,
Heaven's favoring smile implored:
"Let Louisburg return,"—he said,
"Unto its ancient Lord."
At once the Camp and Fleet were filled
With Britain's loyal sons,
Whose hearts are filled with generous strife
T' avenge their Country's wrongs.
With Liberty their breasts are filled,
Fair Liberty's their shield;
'Tis Liberty their banner waves
And hovers o'er their field.
Louis!—behold the unequal strife,
Thy slaves in walls immured!
While George's sons laugh at those walls—
Of victory assured. ”

“ On the 6th of June, 1838, the white frost lay on the west side of Pittsburg roofs as we steamed away from her wharf, bound for Louisville, where my husband proposed going into a business already established by his brother Samuel.
On the boat, all the way down the river, the general topic of conversation was the contrast between the desolate slave-cursed shores of Kentucky, and the smiling plenty of the opposite bank; but Louisville was largely settled by Northern people, and was to prove an oasis in the desert of slavery. ”

“ I do believe that if King Louis, being what he was, a man after God's own heart, had come, not with the sword, but preaching the truth by his life, he had done more for the cause that he had at heart. ”

“ I did not intend, however, to enter upon a disquisition of the different types of civilization in Cincinnati and in Louisville. One observes them as evidences of what has heretofore been mentioned, the great variety in American life, when one looks below the surface. The traveller enjoys both types, and is rejoiced to find such variety, culture, taking in one city the form of the worship of beauty and the enjoyment of life, and in the other greater tendency to the fine arts. Louisville is a city of churches, of very considerable religious activity, and of pretty stanch orthodoxy. ”

“ He was not only a great giver of alms and founder of churches, monasteries, and hospitals. He daily fed the poor at his table, and visited the sick and wretched at their own abodes. He washed the feet of repulsive beggars and cripples. He did not shrink from contact with the lepers. His simple enthusiasm for good works powerfully affected the rough barons with whom he was brought into contact. ‘To see or hear him,’ we are told, ‘brought comfort and calm to the most troubled spirit.’
With all his piety and simplicity, there was nothing weak or puerile in Louis’ character. ”

“ It is to her own supineness, to her indifference and lack of ambition to attain the rank to which she is entitled, that she is indebted for her second-rate position. Had the energy of the last two years been invested ten years ago, and been continued till now, the population of Louisville would to-day have been one hundred thousand souls. But she has been content to sit languidly down to the enjoyment of the passing hour, while her competitors were bracing every nerve and straining every muscle, not only to surpass her in the race for supremacy, but to disable and destroy her. ”

“ Louis then saw, it was the friend, and not the minister, that Elizabeth of Brunswick welcomed from her Imperial throne; and, at the same time, he could not but notice, that the position of his father, rather spoke the air of a Prince at the feet of beauty, than the prostration of a subject to exalted power.
"It is the mind alone," thought Louis, "that debases actions, or ennobles them! One man would crouch and cringe like a slave, while this bends his knee, like Alexander before a sister princess!" ”

“ But if Louisa cared so well for her daughter, yet more absolutely was she engrossed by the future of her infant son. Her passionate heart, left empty by her husband's death, gave harbour to an unrestrained ambition, and her dreams began early to fulfil themselves. On the 6th April 1498 the young King died childless, and his childless brother-in-law, Louis, Duke of Orleans, succeeded him, under the title of Louis XII. These events made the little boy at Romorantin heir-presumptive to the throne of France. ”

“ Louis wiser in his generation? The loss to France was mankind's gain, from the example of saintly king and perfect knight, kept bright in the narratives of men equal to the task. Louis was happy in his biographers. Two among them knew him intimately and in ways affording special opportunities to observe the sides of his character congenial to their respective tempers. One was his confessor for twenty years, the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu; the other was the Sire de Joinville. Geoffrey's Vita records Louis' devotions; Joinville's Histoire notes the king's piety ”

“ Nor did he in the least appeal to the great public; for his plays have as yet not proved acceptable to them. Saint Louis is a beautiful poem, not a tragedy after all, but a triumph, for no hero may see the fruits of his labor, and if a temporary failure seems for a moment to cloud the sky, it is only temporary. This is the message of Saint Louis. The good monarch who, "dying at the foot of the mountain, sees Jerusalem only through the eyes of his army," is a figure of hope. ”

“ Loudon. A parish of Ayrshire, Scotland, 4 miles east from Kilmarnock. In the neighborhood, at Loudon Hall, Bruce, with his forces, encountered the troops of the Earl of Pembroke in 1307.
Loudon-hill. See Drumclog.
Louis, or Knights of St. Louis. The name of a military order in France, instituted by Louis XIV. in 1693. Their collars were of a flame color, and passed from left to right. The king was always grand master.
Louisburg. A famous fortress built by the French soon after the peace of Utrecht (1713) upon the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island. ”

“ Louis fully responded to the touch, and without a notion that he was showing himself to the best advantage, he yielded to the pleasure, and for once proved of what he was capable—revealing unawares an unusual amount of intelligence and observation, and great power of expression. Not even his aunt had ever seen him appear so much like a superior man, and the only alloy was his father's, ill-repressed dread lest he should fall on dangerous ground, and commit himself either to his wildly philanthropical or extravagantly monarchical views, whichever might happen to be in the ascendant. ”

“ Uniformed riders and fast messengers, ex-soldiers dressed in Uncle Sam's conventional blue, the fair sex as thick as the leaves of the forest, boys in the trees, all the windows full of sight-seers, and men and boys on the roofs of the houses—well, indeed, might the oldest inhabitant ask where all the people came from! Nobody could have given a complete answer to that question, for there were tens of thousands of people here this day who had never been to Louisville before. ”

“ In all things wherein great men ofttimes offend he was wholly blameless and beyond reproach. Of all men that I had any knowledge of, whether by sight or by hearing, in this business of the Crusades there was not one who could be so much as named in comparison with King Louis. To King Louis religion was as life itself. ”

“ The streets south of Jefferson are all entirely occupied with dwelling houses. No business is done on any of them except an occasional family grocery or drug store. The fashionable shops are fitted up in a style of unexampled magnificence and contain the most beautiful products of human ingenuity. No city in the Union is better supplied with or finds more ready sale for the finest class of articles of every description than Louisville. ”

“ It is precisely the class spoken of in the foregoing extract that is being built up, and is yet to be built up by the German citizens in Louisville. And, notwithstanding the number already here, there is yet room and work for many more. As has already been said the advent of artizans of this class is desired by the city, and, if they can be content to rise to wealth by slow and steady increase rather than by rapid strides of progress, their [Pg 250] success is infallibly certain. ”

“ Others were sold to New England traders and replaced by inferior substitutes.
Of course, direct trade between the opposing colonies was strictly forbidden by both the French and British navigation acts. But the Louisbourg officials winked at anything that would enrich them quickly, while the New Englanders pushed in eagerly wherever a profit could be made by any means at all. Louisbourg was intended to be the general rendezvous of the transatlantic French fishing vessels; a great port of call between France, Canada, and the French West Indies; and a harbour of refuge in peace and war. ”

“ It is no part of the design of this volume to eulogize Louisville beyond its deserts. The greatest care has been taken to prevent any tendency to exaggeration in all the statistical parts of the work, and the object constantly had in view has been to present both to citizens and strangers an authentic and reliable statement of all that is useful or interesting in the past and present history of the city. ”

“ And here again it redounds to the sagacity of Louis that he should select a man for so great a post whom he never personally loved, and who in his gusts of passion would almost insult his master. Louvois is acknowledged to have been the ablest war minister that France ever had.
Louis reigned peaceably and prosperously for six years before the ambition of being a conqueror and a hero seized him. At twenty-eight he burned to play the part of Alexander. Thenceforth the history of his reign chiefly pertains to his gigantic wars,--some defensive, but mostly offensive, aggressive, and unprovoked. ”

“ It has been the lot of the gentleman who is at the head of it, and who is distinguished alike as a poet and a politician, as a wit and a sage, to wield an influence such as few men in any station have ever exercised; an influence which is not only political but also literary and social, and which has been exerted alike at the birth of a true poet and at the death of a false patriot or a foolish politician.
By the census of the next year—1827—we find the population of Louisville to have reached 7063, showing an increase of nearly double since 1821. ”