"You cannot have much of an idea of it from this place, except as Mr. Harris tells me that you are almost in a sea of mud except when you are frozen up. They have a great deal of it in the way of inundations, and part of the city lies very low. But there is no real winter and everything is abloom with roses. Such luxurious trees, indeed all kinds of vegetation. It is really a French city, much more so than St. Louis. The States seem to have taken in almost every nation and I wonder how they will assimilate them."
"I should like to see the year 1900," laughed Mr. Harris. "We are not half through a wonderful century. It is not sixty years yet since we achieved our independence, a few poor struggling colonies, and already we are stretching beyond the Mississippi.
"What madness took possession of France I can never understand, except that she set out to rule men's religious consciences while she herself plunged into the depths of depravity. The Huguenots would have been a crown of enlightenment to her, and she martyred them, cast them out, and then slowly followed the loss of all this great empire, for which she had paid so much in the lives of her finest and bravest men. From New Orleans to Montreal!"
"Have you been to Canada also?" I ventured to inquire.
"To Canada, to the cities on the Atlantic, to England, France, Holland, indeed as far as Moscow, Constantinople and the Mediterranean," and the smile he gave me completed his conquest.
Then we went back to New Orleans with its French, Spanish and Creoles living in harmony, its odd, narrow streets, its great outlying estates, its sugar plantations, its bloom and beauty until my heart was aflame with a desire to see it. And its antithesis was Montreal, Quebec.
It seemed to me when the clock struck nine there had never been so short an hour and a half. I knew I must go, but it was as if some curious power held me back, pervaded every pulse. I could believe in enchantment.
"I hope you have had a pleasant evening," said Mr. Harris at the door, "and that it may lead to something more advantageous."
"I can't express it," I returned bunglingly. "I never heard any one talk so delightfully before, and to think what Mr. Le Moyne must know!"
He laughed softly.