Père Antoines Date-Palm

Antoine's Date-Palm, by Thomas
Bailey Aldrich

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Title: Père Antoine's Date-Palm
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23361]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PÈRE
ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM ***

Produced by David Widger

PÈRE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM.
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
Near the Levée, and not far from the old French Cathedral in the Place
d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet in height,
spreading its broad leaves in the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous
roots were sucking strength from their native earth.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States, mentions
this exotic: "The tree is seventy or eighty years old; for Père Antoine, a
Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty years ago, told Mr.
Bringier that he planted it himself, when he was young. In his will he
provided that they who succeeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it
if they cut down the palm."
Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell
made inquiries among the ancient créole inhabitants of the faubourg.
That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that
he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up,
and finally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the
tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Père Antoine.
In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the
Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from
Louisiana--Miss Blondeau by name--who gave me the substance of the
following legend touching Père Antoine and his wonderful date-palm.
If it should appear tame to the reader, it will be because I am not
habited in a black ribbed-silk dress, with a strip of point-lace around
my throat, like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her eyes and
lips and Southern music to tell it with.
When Père Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend whom he
loved as he loved his life. Emile Jardin returned his passion, and the
two, on account of their friendship, became the marvel of the city
where they dwelt. One was never seen without the other; for they
studied, walked, ate, and slept together.
Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of Fiammetta telling her
prettiest story to the Florentines in the garden of Boccaccio.

Antoine and Emile were preparing to enter the Church; indeed, they
had taken the preliminary steps, when a circumstance occurred which
changed the color of their lives. A foreign lady, from some nameless
island in the Pacific, had a few months before moved into their
neighborhood. The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or
seventeen, entirely friendless and unprovided for. The young men had
been kind to the woman during her illness, and at her death--melting
with pity at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter--swore
between themselves to love and watch over her as if she were their
sister.
Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other women seem
tame beside her; and in the course of time the young men found
themselves regarding their ward not so much like brothers as at first. In
brief, they found themselves in love with her.
They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month, neither
betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders which they were
about to assume precluded the idea of love and marriage. Until then
they had dwelt in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved except
by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the
tortures of the rack and to smile amid the flames. But a blonde girl,
with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had
come in between them and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that
had bound the young men together snapped silently one by one. At last
each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own despair.
And she? If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no story. It was
like the face of a saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as she
came suddenly upon the two men and overheard words that seemed to
burn like fire on the lip of the