Balcony Stories | Page 6

herself down upon her bed in her tulle skirts,--on top, or
not, of the exquisite flowers, she did not care,--and make her maid
undress her in that position; often having her bodices cut off her,

because she was too tired to turn over and have them unlaced.
That she was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying.
After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New
Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and
she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the
most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris
gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to listen
to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the middle of the most
ardent protestations, or jumping up and walking away with a shrug of
the shoulders, and a "Bah!"
[Illustration: "WALKING AWAY WITH A SHRUG OF THE
SHOULDERS."]
Well! Every one knows what happened after '59. There is no need to
repeat. The history of one is the history of all. But there was this
difference--for there is every shade of difference in misfortune, as there
is every shade of resemblance in happiness. Mortemart des Islets went
off to fight. That was natural; his family had been doing that, he
thought, or said, ever since Charlemagne. Just as naturally he was
killed in the first engagement. They, his family, were always among the
first killed; so much so that it began to be considered assassination to
fight a duel with any of them. All that was in the ordinary course of
events. One difference in their misfortunes lay in that after the city was
captured, their plantation, so near, convenient, and rich in all kinds of
provisions, was selected to receive a contingent of troops--a colored
company. If it had been a colored company raised in Louisiana it might
have been different; and these negroes mixed with the negroes in the
neighborhood,--and negroes are no better than whites, for the
proportion of good and bad among them,--and the officers were always
off duty when they should have been on, and on when they should have
been off.
One night the dwelling caught fire. There was an immediate rush to
save the ladies. Oh, there was no hesitation about that! They were
seized in their beds, and carried out in the very arms of their enemies;
carried away off to the sugar-house, and deposited there. No danger of

their doing anything but keep very quiet and still in their chemises de
nuit, and their one sheet apiece, which was about all that was saved
from the conflagration--that is, for them. But it must be remembered
that this is all hearsay. When one has not been present, one knows
nothing of one's own knowledge; one can only repeat. It has been
repeated, however, that although the house was burned to the ground,
and everything in it destroyed, wherever, for a year afterward, a man of
that company or of that neighborhood was found, there could have been
found also, without search-warrant, property that had belonged to the
Des Islets. That is the story; and it is believed or not, exactly according
to prejudice.
How the ladies ever got out of the sugar-house, history does not relate;
nor what they did. It was not a time for sociability, either personal or
epistolary. At one offensive word your letter, and you, very likely,
examined; and Ship Island for a hotel, with soldiers for hostesses!
Madame Des Islets died very soon after the accident--of rage, they say;
and that was about all the public knew.
Indeed, at that time the society of New Orleans had other things to
think about than the fate of the Des Islets. As for la grande demoiselle,
she had prepared for her own oblivion in the hearts of her female
friends. And the gentlemen,--her preux chevaliers,--they were burning
with other passions than those which had driven them to her knees,
encountering a little more serious response than "bahs" and shrugs. And,
after all, a woman seems the quickest thing forgotten when once the
important affairs of life come to men for consideration.
It might have been ten years according to some calculations, or ten
eternities,--the heart and the almanac never agree about time,--but one
morning old Champigny (they used to call him Champignon) was
walking along his levee front, calculating how soon the water would
come over, and drown him out, as the Louisianians say. It was before a
seven-o'clock breakfast, cold, wet, rainy, and discouraging. The road
was knee-deep in mud, and so broken up with hauling, that it was like
walking upon waves to get over it. A shower poured down. Old
Champigny was hurrying in when he