Strange True Stories of Louisiana

6] Can you believe, there were but two dry-goods stores! And what fabulous prices we had to pay! Pins twenty dollars a paper. Poor people and children had to make

ry year laid aside immense profits. Along the crazy walls extended a few rough shelves covered with bottles and decanters. Three planks placed on boards formed the counter, with Père la Chaise always behind it. There were two or three small tables, as many chairs, and one

ppily, did not lose his head; he found means to satisfy all, to smooth down quarrels

of people, drinking, talking, and singing. A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven entered almost timidly and sat down at the table where my father was-for he saw that all the other places were occupied-and ordered a half-bottle of cider. He was a Norman gardener. My father knew him by sight; he had met him here several times withou

ottonade pantaloons, stuffed into a pair of dirty boots, and a vareuse of the same stuff made up his dress. His vareuse, unbuttoned, showed his breast, brown and hairy; and a horrid cap with long hair covered, without concealing, a mass o

recognized him at first sight. He was an Italian about the age of Gordon; short, thick-set, powerful, swarthy, with the neck of a bull and hair as black as ebony. He was telling rapidly, with strong gestures, in an almost incomprehensible mixture of Spanish, English, French, and Italian, the story of a hunting party that he had made up five years before. This was

must see it to believe it. Plains and forests full of animals, lakes and bayous full of fish. Ah! fortune is there. For five years I have dreamed, I have worked, with b

d, laid a hand upon the sp

d, I am y

he hand and shook it

ep. But"-turning again to t

ced to the two men. "Comrades, I will b

ether and appointed to meet the next d

place, he placed his hand on Mario's shoulder and

an honest and noble heart. He passed his arm into the Italian's and drew him to the inn where my father was stopping, and to his room. Here he learned from Mario that he had bought one of those great barges that bring down provisions from the West, and which,

our minds to inquire into the conduct of our slaves. Suzanne and I had known Celeste, Mario's wife, very well before her husband bought her. She had been the maid of Marianne Perret, and on great occasions Marianne had sent her

but comfortably, that papa would share this room with us, that Mario would supply our table, and that his wife would serve as maid and l

y than on the previous night a man of native refinement, confessed to a young wife without offspring. Mario told his story of love and alliance with one as fair of face as he, and whom only cruel law forbade him to call wif

onest man, Mo

think so?" ask

ountry where there are

an peasant's lodgings, he was greatly surprised at her appearance and manner, and so captivated by them that he proposed that their two parties should make one at table during the projected voyage-a proposition gratefully accepted. Then he left

TNO

a girl to make of a scattered town hidd

from a real De la Chaise, true nephew of Pere la Chaise, the famous confessor of Louis XIV. The nephew wa

ere as seen by the writer herself