The Grandissimes Part 47

"Mi-frien'," said Raoul, with mingled pity and superiority, "you haven't got doze _inside_ nooz; Louisiana is goin' to state w'at she want."

On his way back toward the shop Mr. Innerarity easily learned Louisiana's wants and don't-wants by heart. She wanted a Creole governor; she did not want Casa Calvo invited to leave the country; she wanted the provisions of the Treaty of Cession hurried up; "as soon as possible," that instrument said; she had waited long enough; she did not want "dat trile bi-ju'y"--execrable tras.h.!.+ she wanted an _unwatched import trade!_ she did not want a single additional Americain appointed to office; she wanted the slave trade.

Just in sight of the bareheaded and anxious Frowenfeld, Raoul let himself be stopped by a friend.

The remark was exchanged that the times were exciting.

"And yet," said the friend, "the city was never more peaceable. It is exasperating to see that coward governor looking so diligently after his police and hurrying on the organization of the Americain volunteer militia!" He pointed savagely here and there. "M. Innerarity, I am lost in admiration at the all but craven patience with which our people endure their wrongs! Do my pistols show _too_ much through my coat?

Well, good-day; I must go home and clean my gun; my dear friend, one don't know how soon he may have to encounter the Recorder and Register of Land-t.i.tles."

Raoul finished his errand.

"'Sieur Frowenfel', excuse me--I take dat lett' to 'Polyte for you if you want." There are times when mere shopkeeping--any peaceful routine--is torture.

But the apothecary felt so himself; he declined his a.s.sistant's offer and went out toward the Veau-qui-tete.

CHAPTER XL

FROWENFELD FINDS SYLVESTRE

The Veau-qui-tete restaurant occupied the whole ground floor of a small, low, two-story, tile-roofed, brick-and-stucco building which still stands on the corner of Chartres and St. Peter streets, in company with the well-preserved old Cabildo and the young Cathedral, reminding one of the shabby and swarthy Creoles whom we sometimes see helping better-kept kinsmen to murder time on the banquettes of the old French Quarter. It was a favorite rendezvous of the higher cla.s.ses, convenient to the court-rooms and munic.i.p.al bureaus. There you found the choicest legal and political gossips, with the best the market afforded of meat and drink.

Frowenfeld found a considerable number of persons there. He had to move about among them to some extent, to make sure he was not overlooking the object of his search.

As he entered the door, a man sitting near it stopped talking, gazed rudely as he pa.s.sed, and then leaned across the table and smiled and murmured to his companion. The subject of his jest felt their four eyes on his back.

There was a loud buzz of conversation throughout the room, but wherever he went a wake of momentary silence followed him, and once or twice he saw elbows nudged. He perceived that there was something in the state of mind of these good citizens that made the present sight of him particularly discordant.

Four men, leaning or standing at a small bar, were talking excitedly in the Creole patois. They made frequent anxious, yet amusedly defiant, mention of a certain _Pointe Canadienne_. It was a portion of the Mississippi River "coast" not far above New Orleans, where the merchants of the city met the smugglers who came up from the Gulf by way of Barrataria Bay and Bayou. These four men did not call it by the proper t.i.tle just given; there were commercial gentlemen in the Creole city, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Yankees, as well as French and Spanish Creoles, who in public indignantly denied, and in private t.i.ttered over, their complicity with the pirates of Grand Isle, and who knew their trading rendezvous by the sly nickname of "Little Manchac." As Frowenfeld pa.s.sed these four men they, too, ceased speaking and looked after him, three with offensive smiles and one with a stare of contempt.

Farther on, some Creoles were talking rapidly to an Americain, in English.

"And why?" one was demanding. "Because money is scarce. Under other governments we had any quant.i.ty!"

"Yes," said the venturesome Americain in retort, "such as it was; _a.s.signats, liberanzas, bons_--Claiborne will give us better money than that when he starts his bank."

"Hah! his bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father.

What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst of laughter.

A tall, slender young Creole whom he knew, and who had always been greatly pleased to exchange salutations, brushed against him without turning his eyes.

"You know," he was saying to a companion, "everybody in Louisiana is to be a citizen, except the negroes and mules; that is the kind of liberty they give us--all eat out of one trough."

"What we want," said a dark, ill-looking, but finely-dressed man, setting his claret down, "and what we have got to have, is"--he was speaking in French, but gave the want in English--"Representesh'n wizout Taxa--" There his eye fell upon Frowenfeld and followed him with a scowl.

"Mah frang," he said to his table companion, "wa.s.s you sink of a mane w'at hask-a one neegrow to 'ave-a one shair wiz 'im, eh?--in ze sem room?"

The apothecary found that his fame was far wider and more general than he had supposed. He turned to go out, bowing as he did so, to an Americain merchant with whom he had some acquaintance.

"Sir?" asked the merchant, with severe politeness, "wish to see me? I thought you--As I was saying, gentlemen, what, after all, does it sum up?"

A Creole interrupted him with an answer:

"Leetegash'n, Spoleeash'n, Paht.i.tsh'n, Disintegrhash'n!"

The voice was like Honore's. Frowenfeld looked; it was Agamemnon Grandissime.

"I must go to Maspero's," thought the apothecary, and he started up the rue Chartres. As he turned into the rue St. Louis, he suddenly found himself one of a crowd standing before a newly-posted placard, and at a glance saw it to be one of the inflammatory publications which were a feature of the times, appearing both daily and nightly on walls and fences.

"One Amerry-can pull' it down, an' Camille Brahmin 'e pas'e it back,"

said a boy at Frowenfeld's side.

Exchange Alley was once _Pa.s.sage de la Bourse_, and led down (as it now does to the State House--late St. Louis Hotel) to an establishment which seems to have served for a long term of years as a sort of merchants'

and auctioneers' coffee-house, with a minimum of china and a maximum of gla.s.s: Maspero's--certainly Maspero's as far back as 1810, and, we believe, Maspero's the day the apothecary entered it, March 9, 1804. It was a livelier spot than the Veau-qui-tete; it was to that what commerce is to litigation, what standing and quaffing is to sitting and sipping.

Whenever the public mind approached that sad state of public sentiment in which sanct.i.ty signs politicians' memorials and chivalry breaks into the gun-shops, a good place to feel the thump of the machinery was in Maspero's.

The first man Frowenfeld saw as he entered was M. Valentine Grandissime.

There was a double semicircle of gazers and listeners in front of him; he was talking, with much show of unconcern, in Creole French.

"Policy? I care little about policy." He waved his hand. "I know my rights--and Louisiana's. We have a right to our opinions. We have"--with a quiet smile and an upward turn of his extended palm--"a right to protect them from the attack of interlopers, even if we have to use gunpowder. I do not propose to abridge the liberties of even this army of fortune-hunters. _Let_ them think." He half laughed. "Who cares whether they share our opinions or not? Let them have their own. I had rather they would. But let them hold their tongues. Let them remember they are Yankees. Let them remember they are unbidden guests." All this without the least warmth.

But the answer came aglow with pa.s.sion, from one of the semicircle, whom two or three seemed disposed to hold in check. It also was in French, but the apothecary was astonished to hear his own name uttered.

"But this fellow Frowenfeld"--the speaker did not see Joseph--"has never held his tongue. He has given us good reason half a dozen times, with his too free speech and his high moral whine, to hang him with the lamppost rope! And now, when we have borne and borne and borne and borne with him, and he shows up, all at once, in all his rottenness, you say let him alone! One would think you were defending Honore Grandissime!"

The back of one of the speaker's hands fluttered in the palm of the other.

Valentine smiled.

"Honore Grandissime? Boy, you do not know what you are talking about.

Not Honore, ha, ha! A man who, upon his own avowal, is guilty of affiliating with the Yankees. A man whom we have good reason to suspect of meditating his family's dishonor and embarra.s.sment!" Somebody saw the apothecary and laid a cautionary touch on Valentine's arm, but he brushed it off. "As for Professor Frowenfeld, he must defend himself."

"Ha-a-a-ah!"--a general cry of derision from the listeners.

"Defend himself!" exclaimed their spokesman; "shall I tell you again what he is?" In his vehemence, the speaker wagged his chin and held his clenched fists stiffly toward the floor. "He is--he is--he is--"

He paused, breathing like a fighting dog. Frowenfeld, large, white, and immovable, stood close before him.

"Dey 'ad no bizniz led 'im come oud to-day," said a bystander, edging toward a pillar.

The Creole, a small young man not unknown to us, glared upon the apothecary; but Frowenfeld was far above his blus.h.i.+ng mood, and was not disconcerted. This exasperated the Creole beyond bound; he made a sudden, angry change of att.i.tude, and demanded:

"Do you interrup' two gen'lemen in dey conve'sition, you Yankee clown?

Do you igno' dad you 'ave insult me, off-scow'ing?"

Frowenfeld's first response was a stern gaze. When he spoke, he said: