Balcony Stories | Page 5

secret that, like the ancient kings of France, her birth exceeded her
education.
It was a plantation, the Reine Sainte Foy, the richness and luxury of
which are really well described in those fervid pictures of tropical life,
at one time the passion of philanthropic imaginations, excited and
exciting over the horrors of slavery. Although these pictures were then
often accused of being purposely exaggerated, they seem now to fall
short of, instead of surpassing, the truth. Stately walls, acres of roses,
miles of oranges, unmeasured fields of cane, colossal sugar-house--they
were all there, and all the rest of it, with the slaves, slaves, slaves
everywhere, whole villages of negro cabins. And there were also, most
noticeable to the natural, as well as to the visionary, eye--there were the
ease, idleness, extravagance, self-indulgence, pomp, pride, arrogance,
in short the whole enumeration, the moral sine qua non, as some people
considered it, of the wealthy slaveholder of aristocratic descent and
tastes.
What Mademoiselle Idalie cared to learn she studied, what she did not
she ignored; and she followed the same simple rule untrammeled in her
eating, drinking, dressing, and comportment generally; and whatever
discipline may have been exercised on the place, either in fact or fiction,
most assuredly none of it, even so much as in a threat, ever attended her
sacred person. When she was just turned sixteen, Mademoiselle Idalie
made up her mind to go into society. Whether she was beautiful or not,
it is hard to say. It is almost impossible to appreciate properly the
beauty of the rich, the very rich. The unfettered development, the
limitless choice of accessories, the confidence, the self-esteem, the
sureness of expression, the simplicity of purpose, the ease of
execution--all these produce a certain effect of beauty behind which
one really cannot get to measure length of nose, or brilliancy of eye.
This much can be said: there was nothing in her that positively
contradicted any assumption of beauty on her part, or credit of it on the
part of others. She was very tall and very thin with small head, long
neck, black eyes, and abundant straight black hair,--for which her
hair-dresser deserved more praise than she,--good teeth, of course, and
a mouth that, even in prayer, talked nothing but commands; that is

about all she had _en fait d'ornements_, as the modesties say. It may be
added that she walked as if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended
over the whole earth, and the soil of it were too vile for her tread. Of
course she did not buy her toilets in New Orleans. Everything was
ordered from Paris, and came as regularly through the custom-house as
the modes and robes to the milliners. She was furnished by a certain
house there, just as one of a royal family would be at the present day.
As this had lasted from her layette up to her sixteenth year, it may be
imagined what took place when she determined to make her début.
Then it was literally, not metaphorically, carte blanche, at least so it
got to the ears of society. She took a sheet of note-paper, wrote the date
at the top, added, "I make my début in November," signed her name at
the extreme end of the sheet, addressed it to her dressmaker in Paris,
and sent it.
It was said that in her dresses the very handsomest silks were used for
linings, and that real lace was used where others put imitation,--around
the bottoms of the skirts, for instance,--and silk ribbons of the best
quality served the purposes of ordinary tapes; and sometimes the
buttons were of real gold and silver, sometimes set with precious stones.
Not that she ordered these particulars, but the dressmakers, when given
carte blanche by those who do not condescend to details, so soon
exhaust the outside limits of garments that perforce they take to
plastering them inside with gold, so to speak, and, when the bill goes in,
they depend upon the furnishings to carry out a certain amount of the
contract in justifying the price. And it was said that these costly dresses,
after being worn once or twice, were cast aside, thrown upon the floor,
given to the negroes--anything to get them out of sight. Not an inch of
the real lace, not one of the jeweled buttons, not a scrap of ribbon, was
ripped off to save. And it was said that if she wanted to romp with her
dogs in all her finery, she did it; she was known to have ridden
horseback, one moonlight night, all around the plantation in a white
silk dinner-dress flounced with Alençon. And at night, when she came
from the balls, tired, tired to death as only balls can render one, she
would throw