A Little Girl in Old St. Louis

by Amanda M. Douglas

Robert was fascinated as well with the half Indian wife of M. Marchand, and never tired of the wild legends of fur hunting and life up at the strait. Then the ten children were a great source of interest as well. There were only two girls among them, the boys growing up tall, strong and fine-looking, proud of their mother, who kept curiously young and occasionally put on all her Indian finery for their amusement.

Renée was quite fair and rather petite, and with such shining eyes they often called her Firefly. Then Robert fell in love with her, and there was another Renée de Longueville to hand down the name, and very proud felt Renée Valbonais of the fact.

The little old church was partly rebuilt in the repairing, and was turned about. Then many years afterward it became the French Cathedral on Walnut Street. The high, stiff pews savor of olden time. There are still several paintings in it, one very fine, sent by Louis, the King of France. And there are the inscriptions in four languages, two modern and two ancient.

When Renée Valbonais knelt in her pew at the consecration her face was still sweet, her eyes brown, soft and smiling, but the hair curling about her forehead was snowy white. On this spot she had prayed for Uncle Gaspard’s safe return, then she had prayed to be made willing to give him up if it was for his happiness. Now she had very little to pray for, so many blessings had been showered upon her by the good God. So her heart was all one great thanksgiving, and she felt that at the last she could “depart in peace.”

When it was set off from Louisiana, when it became a Territory and then a State, St. Louis remained the capital. Brick and finished frame houses were built, stores and factories, a newspaper started, a steamboat came up the river, and that revolutionized the trade.

Then it was to change curiously again. The Americans had nearly superseded the French. Some of them went to the towns below, intermarriages became common as the prejudices died away. Then there was a great German emigration. The failure of patriotic hopes at home in the Old World sent many across to the New World. They were of the better class, educated, energetic and earnest for freedom of thought. Again in 1849 they were largely recruited after another unsuccessful revolution.

Eighty-three years after the founding of the town they held a grand celebration. Only one member of Pierre Laclede Liquist’s company, who had planted and named the town, was living. This was the president of the day, Pierre Chouteau. The fine old madame, who had gloried in her brave sons, had passed to the other country. Four mounted Indians in full costume were the bodyguard of the venerable president, and in the carriages were a few withered-up, brown-faced Frenchmen, who had made themselves log houses along those early years and lived their simple lives, raised their families, danced in the merry-makings and now felt almost like aliens.

Gaspard Denys, still hale and hearty, was among them, past eighty, but clear of eye and steady of step. He had seen his godson, young Gaspard, grow up into a fine, manly fellow, marry a sweet girl and have sons to carry on the name. What more could a man ask than a well-used life and a certain share of happiness? But they had gone back on the next rise of ground, for business had seized with its inexorable grasp on the old home where Renée had sat and dreamed beside the great chimney and Mère Lunde had nodded.

Way out to the side of the old pond they had gone, where there was still a forest on one side of them. Great hickories, pecans, trees useful for food and fuel and building houses, long reaches of tangled grapes that made all the air sweet at their blossoming and again at their ripening, fields and meadows, the garden near by, the house with great porches, a wide hall and beautiful stairway, with no need of outside climbing.

“Here we will end our days,” Gaspard Denys said to the child of the woman he still dreamed about, more vividly, perhaps, now than at middle life. For there was the wide stone chimney, the great corners in the fireplace. Sometimes on a winter night they stood a pine torch in the corner, and it gave the weird, flickering light they used to love.