CHAPTER VIII
A FAIR PENITENT
The reception to General Zachary Taylor, on his return from Mexico, and the inauguration of the carnival combined to the observance of a dual festival day in the Crescent City. Up the river, past the rice fields, disturbing the ducks and pelicans, ploughed the noisy craft bearing “Old Rough and Ready” to the open port of the merry-making town. When near the barracks, the welcoming cannon boomed, and the affrighted darkies on the remote plantations shook with dire forebodings of a Mexican invasion.
The boat rounded at the Place d’Armes, where, beneath a triumphal arch, General Taylor received the crown and chaplet of the people––popular applause––and a salvo of eloquence from the mayor. With flying colors and nourish of trumpets, a procession of civic and military bodies was then formed, the parade finally halting at the St. Charles, where the fatted calf had been killed and the succulent ox roasted. Sounding a retreat, the veteran commander 465 fell back upon a private parlor to recuperate his forces in anticipation of the forthcoming banquet.
From this stronghold, where, however, not all of the enemy––his friends––could be excluded, there escaped an officer, with: “I’ll look around town a little, General.”
“Look around!” said the commander at the door. “I should think we had looked around! Well, don’t fall foul of too many juleps.”
With a laughing response, the young man pushed his way through the jostling crowd near the door, traversed the animated corridor, and soon found himself out on the busy street. Amid the variegated colors and motley throng, he walked, not, however, in King Carnival’s gay domains, but in a city of recollections. The tavern he had just left was associated with an unforgotten presence; the stores, the windows, the thoroughfares themselves were fraught with retrospective suggestion of the strollers.
Even now––and he came to an abrupt standstill––he was staring at the bill-board of the theater where she had played, the familiar entrance bedecked with bunting and festival inscriptions. Before its classic portals appeared the black-letter announcement of an act by “Impecunious Jordan, Ethiopian artist, followed by a Tableau of General Scott’s Capture of the City of Mexico.” Mechanically he stepped within and approached the box office. From the little cupboard, a strange face looked forth; even the ticket vender of old had been swallowed up by the irony of 466 fate, and, instead of the well-remembered blond mustache of the erstwhile seller of seats, a dark-bearded man, with sallow complexion, inquired: