Eagerly availing himself of the place offered at her side, soon the marquis was cackling after the manner of a senile beau of the old school; relating spicy anecdotes of dames who had long departed this realm of 248 scandal; and mingling witticism and wickedness in one continual flow, until like a panorama another age was revived in his words––an age when bedizened women wore patches and their perfumed gallants wrote verses on the demise of their lap-dogs; when “their virtue resembled a statesman’s religion, the Quaker’s word, the gamester’s oath and the great man’s honor––but to cheat those that trusted them!”
The day’s events, however, were soon over; the city of pleasure finally capitulated; its people began rapidly to depart. That sudden movement resembled the migration of a swarm of bees to form a new colony, when, if the day be bright, the expedition issues forth with wondrous rapidity. So this human hive commenced to empty itself of queens, drones and workers. It was an outgoing wave of such life and animation as is apparent in the flight of a swarm of cell-dwellers, giving out a loud and sharp-toned hum from the action of their wings as they soar over the blooming heather and the “bright consummate flowers.” And these human bees had their passions, too! their massacres; their tragedies; their “Rival Queens”; their combats; their sentinels; their dreams of that Utopian form of government realized in the communistic society of insects.
“How did you enjoy it, my dear?” asked Barnes, suddenly reappearing at Constance’s box. “A grand heat, that! Though I did bet on the wrong horse! But don’t wait for us, Saint-Prosper. Mrs. Adams and I will take our time getting through the crowd. 249 I will see you at the hotel, my dear!” he added, as the soldier and Constance moved away.
Only the merry home-going remained, and the culmination, a dinner at Moreau’s, Victor’s, or Miguel’s, the natural epilogue to the day’s pastime, the tag to the comedy! In the returning throng were creoles with sky-blue costumes and palmetto hats; the Lafourche or Attakapas planter; representatives of the older régime and the varied newer populace. Superb equipages mingled in democratic confusion with carts and wagons; the broken-winded nag and spavined crowbait––veterans at the bugle call!––pricked up their ears and kicked up their heels like colts in pasture, while the delighted darkies thumped their bony shanks to encourage this brief rejuvenescence.
Those who had lost felt the money well spent; those who had won would be the more lavish in the spending. They had simply won a few more pleasures. “Quick come; quick go!” sang the whirling wheels. “The niggard in pound and pence is a usurer in happiness; a miser driving a hard bargain with pleasure. Better burn the candle at both ends than not burn it at all! In one case, you get light; in the other nothing but darkness. Laughter is cheap at any price. A castle in the air is almost as durable as Solomon’s temple. How soon––how soon both fade away!”
Thus ran the song of the wheels before them and behind them, as the soldier and Constance joined the desultory fag-end of the procession. On either side 250 of the road waved the mournful cypress, draped by the hoary tillandsia, and from the somber depths of foliage came the chirp of the tree-crickets and the note of the swamp owl. Faint music, in measured rhythm, a foil to disconnected wood-sound, was wafted from a distant plantation.
“Wait!” said Constance.
He drew in the horses and silently they listened. Or, was he listening? His glance seemed bent so moodily––almost!––on space she concluded he was not. She stole a sidelong look at him.
“A penny for your thoughts!” she said gaily.
He started. “I was thinking how soon I might leave New Orleans.”