The Rose of Old St. Louis | Page 6

I was in such a tumult of rage and mortification that not until I
reached the landing on the banks of Cahokia Creek, where the boats
were tied and the men busily making ready for the departure, did I
bethink me that I had left the house without a word of adieus or thanks
to my host for his courtesy. I began to fear that my sense of self-respect
would compel my return, and rather would I have faced a battalion of
the British than another flash from those dark eyes; nor could I hope to
make another so masterly a retreat as I plumed myself this one had
been. But as I glanced back toward the house on the bluffs that had
proved my undoing, to my intense relief I saw that the three gentlemen
had followed not far behind me and were even now descending the
pathway to the creek. I hastened to meet them and make my apologies.
A more courteous gentleman than Mr. Gratiot I never met. He spoke
very good English indeed, his accent I believe not so good as my
French one, but his grammar much better.
"My dear young gentleman, you acquitted yourself nobly," he was kind
enough to say. "In the eyes of the young ladies, if I may possibly except
Mademoiselle Pelagie, you are a hero. But they are much chagrined
that you should have left them without giving them a chance to express
their sympathy or their admiration."
The sound of those silvery peals of laughter was too vividly in my
remembrance to permit me to accept Mr. Gratiot's compliments without
a large grain of allowance for a Frenchman's courtesy, but I bowed low
in seeming to accept them. Then he introduced me to his companion,
who proved not to be Mr. Vigo after all, but Dr. Saugrain, the French
émigré so renowned for his learning. I looked at him keenly as I made
my bow, for I had heard something of him in Philadelphia, and in
Kentucky there had been so many tales of the wonderful things he
could do that I think most people looked upon him as a dealer in black
arts. But he was in no respect my idea of a Mephisto. He was small and
wiry of build, and dressed in black small-clothes, with ruffles of finest

lace at wrist and knee.
Black silk stockings showed a well-turned calf in no whit shrunken
with age, and his silver shoe-buckles glittered with brilliants. His hair,
iron-gray and curly, was tied in a short queue with a black satin ribbon,
and beneath a rather narrow and high brow beamed two as kindly blue
eyes as it had ever been my lot to meet.
His greeting was most cordial, though there was a merry twinkle in his
eye while speaking to me that made me feel he might still be laughing
inwardly at my ridiculous descent of Mr. Gratiot's staircase. With a
very grand manner indeed, and with much use of his hands, as is the
fashion of Frenchmen, he said:
"My dear sir, it mek me mos' proud and mos' 'appy to know you. Vous
êtes véritablement un brave. Le capitaine dîne chez moi to-day; I s'all
be désolé and inconsolable if he bring not also his ver' dear young
frien'." Then, with a sudden and entire change of manner, he laid his
finger beside his nose and said in a loud whisper:
"My frien', I would not min' you kill that dog, moi! I lofe 'im not."
But while his words did not sound kind to me, who am such a lover of
dogs that nothing but the necessity of self-defense would ever make me
lift a hand against one, yet, all the time he spoke, his eyes twinkled
more merrily than ever, and I wondered at the man whose manner
could change so quickly from the grand seigneur's to that of a king's
jester, and I puzzled my brains mightily to know what his connection
with the dog could be.
CHAPTER II
I PROPOSE A TOAST
"The rose that all are praising."
"And this is the village of St. Louis, sir?"

My discomfiture, my mortification, my rage, the vision of dainty
beauty, the strange little savant--every remembrance of my brief visit to
Cahokia had been swept away by the rushing waters of the great river
of which I had read and heard so much.
My brain was teeming with tales of the Spanish adventurer De Soto; of
the French trader Joliet; of the devoted and saintly Jesuit, beloved of
the Indians, Père Marquette; and of the bold Norman La Salle, who
hated and feared all Jesuits. I saw the river through a veil of romance
that gilded its turbid waters, but it was something far other than