Strange True Stories of Louisiana Part 2

[4] If this was an English ship,--for her crew was English and her master's name seems to have been Andrews,--she was probably not under British colors.--TRANSLATOR.

[5] The treeless marshes of the Delta would be very slow coming into view.--TRANSLATOR.

THE ADVENTURES OF FRANcOISE AND SUZANNE.

1795.

Years pa.s.sed by. Our war of the Revolution was over. The Indians of Louisiana and Florida were all greedy, smiling gift-takers of his Catholic Majesty. So were some others not Indians; and the Spanish governors of Louisiana, scheming with them for the acquisition of Kentucky and the regions intervening, had allowed an interprovincial commerce to spring up.

Flatboats and barges came floating down the Mississippi past the plantation home where little Suzanne and Francoise were growing up to womanhood. Many of the immigrants who now came to Louisiana were the royalist _n.o.blesse_ flying from the horrors of the French Revolution.

Governor Carondelet was strengthening his fortifications around New Orleans; for Creole revolutionists had slipped away to Kentucky and were there plotting an armed descent in flatboats upon his little capital, where the rabble were singing the terrible songs of b.l.o.o.d.y Paris. Agents of the Revolution had come from France and so "contaminated," as he says, "the greater part of the province" that he kept order only "at the cost of sleepless nights, by frightening some, punishing others, and driving several out of the colony." It looks as though Suzanne had caught a touch of dis-relish for _les aristocrates_, whose necks the songs of the day were promising to the lampposts. 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 Francoise 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. Two other matters are all we need notice for the ready comprehension of Francoise's story. Immigration was knocking at every gate of the province, and citizen etienne de Bore had just made himself forever famous in the history of Louisiana by producing merchantable sugar; land was going to be valuable, even back on the wild prairies of Opelousas and Attakapas, where, twenty years before, the Acadians,--the cousins of Evangeline,--wandering from far Nova Scotia, had settled. Such was the region and such were the times when it began to be the year 1795.

By good fortune one of the undestroyed fragments of Francoise's own ma.n.u.script is its first page. She was already a grandmother forty-three years old when in 1822 she wrote the tale she had so often told. Part of the dedication to her only daughter and namesake--one line, possibly two--has been torn off, leaving only the words, "ma fille unique a la gra.s.se [meaning 'grace'] de dieu [sic]," over her signature and the date, "14 Julet [sic], 1822."

I.

THE TWO SISTERS.

It is to give pleasure to my dear daughter Fannie and to her children that I write this journey. I shall be well satisfied if I can succeed in giving them this pleasure: by the grace of G.o.d, Amen.

Papa, Mr. Pierre Bossier, planter of St. James parish, had been fifteen days gone to the city (New Orleans) in his skiff with two rowers, Louis and Baptiste, when, returning, he embraced us all, gave us some caramels which he had in his pockets, and announced that he counted on leaving us again in four or five days to go to Attakapas. He had long been speaking of going there. Papa and mamma were German, and papa loved to travel. When he first came to Louisiana it was with no expectation of staying. But here he saw mamma; he loved her, married her, and bought a very fine plantation, where he cultivated indigo. You know they blue clothes with that drug, and dye cottonade and other things. There we, their eight children, were born....

[Ill.u.s.tration: PART OF FRANcOIS'S FIRST PAGE.]

When my father used to go to New Orleans he went in his skiff, with a canopy over his head to keep off the sun, and two rowers, who sang as they rowed. Sometimes papa took me with him, and it was very entertaining.

We would pa.s.s the nights of our voyage at the houses of papa's friends [des zami de papa]. Sometimes mamma would come, and Suzanne always--always. She was the daughter next older than I. She barely missed being a boy. She was eighteen years of age, went hunting with our father, was skillful with a gun, and swam like a fish. Papa called her "my son."

You must understand the two boys were respectively but two years and three months old, and papa, who greatly desired a son, had easily made one of Suzanne. My father had brought a few books with him to Louisiana, and among them, you may well suppose, were several volumes of travel. For myself, I rarely touched them; but they were the only books that Suzanne read. And you may well think, too, that my father had no sooner spoken of his intention than Suzanne cried:

"I am going with you, am I not, papa?"

"Naturally," replied my father; "and Francoise shall go also."

Francoise--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.

I exclaimed at my father's speech. I had heard there were many Indians in Attakapas; the name means man-eaters. I have a foolish terror of Indians, and a more reasonable one for man-eaters. But papa and Suzanne mocked at my fears; and as, after all, I burned with desire for the journey, it was decided that I should go with them.

Necessarily we wanted to know how we were to go--whether we should travel by skiff, and how many negroes and negresses would go with us. For you see, my daughter, young people in 1795 were exactly what they are in 1822; they could do nothing by themselves, but must have a domestic to dress and undress them. Especially in traveling, where one had to take clothes out of trunks and put them back again, a.s.sistance became an absolute necessity. Think, then, of our astonishment, of our vexation, when papa a.s.sured us that he would not take a single slave; that my sister and I would be compelled to help each other, and that the skiff would remain behind, tied up at the landing where it then lay.

"But explain yourself, Papa, I beg of you," cried Suzanne, with her habitual petulance.

"That is what I am trying to do," said he. "If you will listen in silence, I will give you all the explanation you want."

Here, my daughter, to save time, I will borrow my father's speech and tell of the trip he had made to New Orleans; how he had there found means to put into execution his journey to Attakapas, and the companions that were to accompany him.

II.

MAKING UP THE EXPEDITION.

In 1795 New Orleans was nothing but a mere market town. The cathedral, the convent of the Ursulines, five or six cafes, and about a hundred houses were all of it.[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 shift with thorns of orange and _amourette_ [honey locust?]. A needle cost fifty cents, very indifferent stockings five dollars a pair, and other things accordingly.

On the levee was a little pothouse of the lowest sort; yet from that unclean and smoky hole was destined to come one of the finest fortunes in Louisiana. They called the proprietor "Pere la Chaise."[7] He was a little old marten-faced man, always busy and smiling, who every 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 Pere la Chaise always behind it. There were two or three small tables, as many chairs, and one big wooden bench. Here gathered the city's working-cla.s.s, and often among them one might find a goodly number of the city's elite; for the wine and the beer of the old _cabaretier_ were famous, and one could be sure in entering there to hear all the news told and discussed.

By day the place was quiet, but with evening it became tumultuous. Pere la Chaise, happily, did not lose his head; he found means to satisfy all, to smooth down quarrels without calling in the police, to get rid of drunkards, and to make delinquents pay up.

My father knew the place, and never failed to pay it a visit when he went to New Orleans. Poor, dear father! he loved to talk as much as to travel.

Pere la Chaise was acquainted with him. One evening papa entered, sat down at one of the little tables, and bade Pere la Chaise bring a bottle of his best wine. The place was already full 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 without speaking to him. You recognized the peasant at once; and yet his exquisite neatness, the gentleness of his face, distinguished him from his kind. Joseph Carpentier was dressed[8] in a very ordinary gray woolen coat; but his coa.r.s.e shirt was very white, and his hair, when he took off his broad-brimmed hat, was well combed and glossy.

As Carpentier was opening his bottle a second frequenter entered the _cabaret_. This was a man of thirty or thirty-five, with strong features and the frame of a Hercules. An expression of frankness and gayety overspread his sunburnt face. Cottonade pantaloons, stuffed into a pair of dirty boots, and a _vareuse_ of the same stuff made up his dress. His vareuse, unb.u.t.toned, showed his breast, brown and hairy; and a horrid cap with long hair covered, without concealing, a ma.s.s of red locks that a comb had never gone through. A long whip, the stock of which he held in his hand, was coiled about his left arm. He advanced to the counter and asked for a gla.s.s of brandy. He was a drayman named John Gordon--an Irishman.

But, strange, John Gordon, gla.s.s in hand, did not drink; Carpentier, with his fingers round the neck of the bottle, failed to pour his cider; and my father himself, his eyes attracted to another part of the room, forgot his wine. Every one was looking at an individual gesticulating and haranguing in the middle of the place, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of all. My father 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 Mario Carlo. A Neapolitan by birth, he had for several years worked as a blacksmith on the plantation of one of our neighbors, M. Alphonse Perret.

Often papa had heard him tell of this hunt, for nothing could be more amusing than to listen to Carlo. Six young men, with Carlo as sailor and cook, had gone on a two-months' expedition into the country of the Attakapas.

"Yes," said the Italian, in conclusion, "game never failed us; deer, turkeys, ducks, snipe, two or three bears a week. But the sublimest thing was the rich land. Ah! one 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 but one object in view; and today the end is reached. I am ready to go. I want only two companions to aid me in the long journey, and those I have come to look for here."

John Gordon stepped forward, laid a hand upon the speaker's shoulder, and said:

"My friend, I am your man."

Mario Carlo seized the hand and shook it with all his force.

"You will not repent the step. But"--turning again to the crowd--"we want one more."

Joseph Carpentier rose slowly and advanced to the two men. "Comrades, I will be your companion if you will accept me."

Before separating, the three drank together and appointed to meet the next day at the house of Gordon, the Irishman.

When my father saw Gordon and Carpentier leave the place, he placed his hand on Mario's shoulder and said in Italian, "My boy, I want to talk with you."

At that time, as now, parents were very scrupulous as to the society into which they introduced their children, especially their daughters; and papa knew of a certain circ.u.mstance in Carlo's life to which my mother might greatly object. But he knew the man had an honest and n.o.ble heart. He pa.s.sed 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, when unloaded, the owners count themselves lucky to sell at any reasonable price. When my father proposed to Mario to be taken as a pa.s.senger the poor devil's joy knew no bounds; but it disappeared when papa added that he should take his two daughters with him.

The trouble was this: Mario was taking with him in his flatboat his wife and his four children; his wife and four children were simply--mulattoes.

However, then as now, we hardly noticed those things, and the idea never entered 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 to us to dress our hair and to prepare our toilets. We were therefore enchanted to learn that she would be with us on board the flatboat, and that papa had engaged her services in place of the attendants we had to leave behind.

It was agreed that for one hundred dollars Mario Carlo would receive all three of us as pa.s.sengers, that he would furnish a room simply 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 laundress. It remained to be seen now whether our other fellow-travelers were married, and, if so, what sort of creatures their wives were.

[The next day the four intended travelers met at Gordon's house. Gordon had a wife, Maggie, and a son, Patrick, aged twelve, as unlovely in outward aspect as were his parents. Carpentier, who showed himself even more plainly 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 wife and compelled him to buy his children; and told the story so well that at its close the father of Francoise silently grasped the narrator's hand, and Carpentier, reaching across the table where they sat, gave his, saying: