The very first day in the city happened to be a Sunday. She was up and ready betimes to go to the French Market, where I used to go once in a great while and take coffee at Manette’s stall. It was a shock to her to see the ramshackle old market she had heard so much about, and whose praises had been sung to her by her Southern mother. No Manette. No stall where she could have been induced to take a cup of coffee; but a few steps off and a perspective view revealed to her cultivated eye the very sketch she wanted, the very thing she “came all the way to New Orleans for”—and a plan was formulated to go another day when the light would be more favorable.
In our rambles down Royal Street we passed an open corridor, with a view beyond of a blooming bit of parterre. She paused to look in. I saw only the bright flowers and the vases covered with vines. She saw only an iron fretwork lamp suspended from the ceiling. Oh! that was too artistic for anything! Did I think the people in that house would permit her to sketch, from the entrance, that long corridor and that wonderful lantern?
A Courtyard in the French Quarter.
At that moment a pretty young girl passed through the shrubbery in the rear. I beckoned her. “Oh, yes, she knew mamma would be so happy.” The work was arranged for the following day, when the light would be just right. While my little lady worked I wandered around the corridor. The stairs leading to the living rooms above seemed strangely familiar. It dawned upon me that I had walked years before up those very stairs. The little Creole girl crossed the parterre again, and was called to see the finished sketch. It was only a section of the corridor and the wonderful iron lamp. I ventured to inquire if the Bienvenues had not occupied that house in the fifties.
“Yes, indeed, my mamma was a Bienvenue.” The child flew upstairs to tell her mamma, and quickly returned with an invitation for us. Mamma desired to see the sketch, and to meet the lady who had visited her elder sisters. My daughter, used to the cold formality of the New York life, was overwhelmed with the Creole cordiality, delighted to hear that the lamp which had attracted her was a real Spanish antique, and had been hanging in the corridor almost a hundred years; delighted to be shown the superb chandeliers in the parlors, almost as old; and to have a cordial invitation to come another day and make a sketch of the little parterres and of the rambling balconies in the rear.
“Behold a Wrecked Fountain.”