第169章 THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES(1)

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 the square, and with the courtesy of their race the people made way for us in the press; and we were no sooner placed ere the procession came out of the church.Flaming soldiers of the Governor's guard, two by two; sober, sandalled friars in brown, priests in their robes,--another batch of color; crosses shimmering, tapers emerging from the cool darkness within to pale by the light of day.Then down on their knees to Him who sits high above the yellow haze fell the thousands in the Place d'Armes.For here was the Host itself, flower-decked in white and crimson, its gold-tasselled canopy upheld by four tonsured priests, a sheen of purple under it,--the Bishop of Louisiana in his robes.

``The Governor!'' whispered Monsieur Vigo, and the word was passed from mouth to mouth as the people rose from their knees.Francois Louis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, resplendent in his uniform of colonel in the royal army of Spain, his orders glittering on his breast,--pillar of royalty and enemy to the Rights of Man! His eye was stern, his carriage erect, but I seemed to read in his careworn face the trials of three years in this moist capital.After the Governor, one by one, the waiting Associations fell in line, each with its own distinguishing sash.So the procession moved off into the narrow streets of the city, the people in the Place dispersed to new vantage points, and Monsieur Vigo signed me to follow him.

``I have a frien', la veuve Gravois, who lives ver' quiet.

She have one room, and I ask her tek you in, Davy.'' He led the way through the empty Rue Chartres, turned to the right at the Rue Bienville, and stopped before an unpretentious house some three doors from the corner.

Madame Gravois, elderly, wizened, primp in a starched cotton gown, opened the door herself, fell upon Monsieur Vigo in the Creole fashion; and within a quarter of an hour I was installed in her best room, which gave out on a little court behind.Monsieur Vigo promised to send his servant with my baggage, told me his address, bade me call on him for what I wanted, and took his leave.

First, there was Madame Gravois' story to listen to as she bustled about giving orders to a kinky-haired negro girl concerning my dinner.Then came the dinner, excellent--if I could have eaten it.The virtues of the former Monsieur Gravois were legion.He had come to Louisiana from Toulon, planted indigo, fought a duel, and Madame was a widow.So I condense two hours into two lines.

Happily, Madame was not proof against the habits of the climate, and she retired for her siesta.I sought my room, almost suffocated by a heat which defies my pen to describe, a heat reeking with moisture sucked from the foul kennels of the city.I had felt nothing like it in my former visit to New Orleans.It seemed to bear down upon my brain, to clog the power of thought, to make me vacillating.Hitherto my reasoning had led me to seek Monsieur de St.Gre, to count upon that gentleman's common sense and his former friendship.But now that the time had come for it, I shrank from such a meeting.

I remembered his passionate affection for Antoinette, Iimagined that he would not listen calmly to one who was in some sort connected with her unhappiness.So a kind of cowardice drove me first to Mrs.Temple.She might know much that would save me useless trouble and blundering.