"Going!" exclaimed Monsieur le Mayor of New Orleans. "For why? You shall not be disturbed, you shall have full protection."
"Do you stand for France, revolution and infidelity?" gasped the aged mother, denouncing the Mayor.
The people pled, the Mayor went down on his knees. "Do not abandon our schools and our children!" But the Mother Superior was firm.
Twenty-two years had the Donna De Leyba been a nun. The old official records are lost, but out of twenty-five nuns in the establishment we know the sixteen of Spain went away.
All New Orleans gathered to see them depart. When the gun sounded on Whitsunday Eve, sixteen women in black came forth, heavily veiled. The convent gardens were thronged with pupils, slaves knelt by the wayside, the Mayor and populace followed until they embarked on the ship and sailed to Havana.
The old Ursuline convent of New Orleans is now the archbishop's palace. Sister Infelice is gone, but near some old cloister of Cuba we know her ashes must now be reposing. Henceforth the gates were open. The wall decayed, the moat was filled, and over it to-day winds the handsomest boulevard in America.
The flatboatmen came home with romantic tales of the land of the palmetto and orange, luxuries unknown in the rigorous north. The tide of emigration so long held in check burst its bounds and deluged Louisiana.
Among other Americans that settled at New Orleans was the Fighting Parson. His son Charles Mynn Thruston had married Fanny.
V
THE CESSION OF ST. LOUIS
"Glass we must have, and quicksilver. Wife, let me have the mirror."