The Grandissimes Read online

  CHAPTER V

  A MAIDEN WHO WILL NOT MARRY

  Midway between the times of Lufki-Humma and those of her prouddescendant, Agricola Fusilier, fifty-two years lying on either side,were the days of Pierre Rigaut, the magnificent, the "Grand Marquis,"the Governor, De Vaudreuil. He was the Solomon of Louisiana. Forsplendor, however, not for wisdom. Those were the gala days of license,extravagance and pomp. He made paper money to be as the leaves of theforest for multitude; it was nothing accounted of in the days of theGrand Marquis. For Louis Quinze was king.

  Clotilde, orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was one of sixty, the lastroyal allotment to Louisiana, of imported wives. The king's agents hadinveigled her away from France with fair stories: "They will give you aquiet home with some lady of the colony. Have to marry?--not unless itpleases you. The king himself pays your passage and gives you a casketof clothes. Think of that these times, fillette; and passage free,withal, to--the garden of Eden, as you may call it--what more, say you,can a poor girl want? Without doubt, too, like a model colonist, youwill accept a good husband and have a great many beautiful children, whowill say with pride, 'Me, I am no House-of-Correction-girl stock; mymother'--or 'grandmother,' as the case may be--'was a _fille a lacassette!_'"

  The sixty were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of theUrsuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine soldiers ofthe king were well wived and ready to settle upon their riparianland-grants. The residuum in the nuns' hands was one stiff-necked littleheretic, named, in part, Clotilde. They bore with her for sixty days,and then complained to the Grand Marquis. But the Grand Marquis, withall his pomp, was gracious and kind-hearted, and loved his ease almostas much as his marchioness loved money. He bade them try her anothermonth. They did so, and then returned with her; she would neither marrynor pray to Mary.

  Here is the way they talked in New Orleans in those days. If you care tounderstand why Louisiana has grown up so out of joint, note the tone ofthose who governed her in the middle of the last century:

  "What, my child," the Grand Marquis said, "you a _fille a la cassette?_France, for shame! Come here by my side. Will you take a little advicefrom an old soldier? It is in one word--submit. Whatever is inevitable,submit to it. If you want to live easy and sleep easy, do as otherpeople do--submit. Consider submission in the present case; how easy,how comfortable, and how little it amounts to! A little hearing of mass,a little telling of beads, a little crossing of one's self--what isthat? One need not believe in them. Don't shake your head. Take myexample; look at me; all these things go in at this ear and out at this.Do king or clergy trouble me? Not at all. For how does the king in thesematters of religion? I shall not even tell you, he is such a bad boy. Doyou not know that all the _noblesse_, and all the _savants_, andespecially all the archbishops and cardinals,--all, in a word, but suchsilly little chicks as yourself,--have found out that this religiousbusiness is a joke? Actually a joke, every whit; except, to be sure,this heresy phase; that is a joke they cannot take. Now, I wish youwell, pretty child; so if you--eh?--truly, my pet, I fear we shall haveto call you unreasonable. Stop; they can spare me here a moment; I willtake you to the Marquise: she is in the next room.... Behold," said he,as he entered the presence of his marchioness, "the little maid who willnot marry!"

  The Marquise was as cold and hard-hearted as the Marquis was loose andkind; but we need not recount the slow tortures of the _fille a lacassette's_ second verbal temptation. The colony had to have soldiers,she was given to understand, and the soldiers must have wives. "Why, Iam a soldier's wife, myself!" said the gorgeously attired lady, layingher hand upon the governor-general's epaulet. She explained, further,that he was rather softhearted, while she was a business woman; alsothat the royal commissary's rolls did not comprehend such a thing as aspinster, and--incidentally--that living by principle was rather out offashion in the province just then.

  After she had offered much torment of this sort, a definite notionseemed to take her; she turned her lord by a touch of the elbow, andexchanged two or three business-like whispers with him at a windowoverlooking the Levee.

  "Fillette," she said, returning, "you are going to live on thesea-coast. I am sending an aged lady there to gather the wax of the wildmyrtle. This good soldier of mine buys it for our king at twelve livresthe pound. Do you not know that women can make money? The place is notsafe; but there are no safe places in Louisiana. There are no nuns totrouble you there; only a few Indians and soldiers. You and Madame willlive together, quite to yourselves, and can pray as you like."

  "And not marry a soldier," said the Grand Marquis.

  "No," said the lady, "not if you can gather enough myrtle-berries toafford me a profit and you a living."

  It was some thirty leagues or more eastward to the country of theBiloxis, a beautiful land of low, evergreen hills looking out across thepine-covered sand-keys of Mississippi Sound to the Gulf of Mexico. Thenorthern shore of Biloxi Bay was rich in candleberry-myrtle. InClotilde's day, though Biloxi was no longer the capital of theMississippi Valley, the fort which D'Iberville had built in 1699, andthe first timber of which is said to have been lifted by ZephyrGrandissime at one end and Epaminondas Fusilier at the other, was stillthere, making brave against the possible advent of corsairs, with a fewold culverines and one wooden mortar.

  And did the orphan, in despite of Indians and soldiers and wilderness,settle down here and make a moderate fortune? Alas, she never gathered aberry! When she--with the aged lady, her appointed companion in exile,the young commandant of the fort, in whose pinnace they had come, andtwo or three French sailors and Canadians--stepped out upon the whitesand of Biloxi beach, she was bound with invisible fetters hand andfoot, by that Olympian rogue of a boy, who likes no better prey than alittle maiden who thinks she will never marry.

  The officer's name was De Grapion--Georges De Grapion. The Marquis gavehim a choice grant of land on that part of the Mississippi river "coast"known as the Cannes Brulees.

  "Of course you know where Cannes Brulees is, don't you?" asked DoctorKeene of Joseph Frowenfeld.

  "Yes," said Joseph, with a twinge of reminiscence that recalled thestudy of Louisiana on paper with his father and sisters.

  There Georges De Grapion settled, with the laudable determination tomake a fresh start against the mortifyingly numerous Grandissimes.

  "My father's policy was every way bad," he said to his spouse; "it isuseless, and probably wrong, this trying to thin them out by duels; wewill try another plan. Thank you," he added, as she handed his coat backto him, with the shoulder-straps cut off. In pursuance of the new plan,Madame De Grapion,--the precious little heroine!--before the myrtlesoffered another crop of berries, bore him a boy not much smaller (saithtradition) than herself.

  Only one thing qualified the father's elation. On that very day NumaGrandissime (Brahmin-Mandarin de Grandissime), a mere child, receivedfrom Governor de Vaudreuil a cadetship.

  "Never mind, Messieurs Grandissime, go on with your tricks; we shallsee! Ha! we shall see!"

  "We shall see what?" asked a remote relative of that family. "WillMonsieur be so good as to explain himself?"

  * * * * *

  Bang! bang!

  Alas, Madame De Grapion!

  It may be recorded that no affair of honor in Louisiana ever left abraver little widow. When Joseph and his doctor pretended to play chesstogether, but little more than a half-century had elapsed since the_fille a la cassette_ stood before the Grand Marquis and refused to wed.Yet she had been long gone into the skies, leaving a worthy examplebehind her in twenty years of beautiful widowhood. Her son, the heir andresident of the plantation at Cannes Brulees, at the age of--they dosay--eighteen, had married a blithe and pretty lady of Franco-Spanishextraction, and, after a fair length of life divided between campaigningunder the brilliant young Galvez and raising unremunerativeindigo crops, had lately lain down to sleep, leaving only twodescendants--females--how shall we describe them?--a Monk and a _Fil
le ala Cassette_. It was very hard to have to go leaving his family namesnuffed out and certain Grandissime-ward grievances burning.

  * * * * *

  "There are so many Grandissimes," said the weary-eyed Frowenfeld, "Icannot distinguish between--I can scarcely count them."

  "Well, now," said the doctor, "let me tell you, don't try. They can'tdo it themselves. Take them in the mass--as you would shrimps."