“Dass good! Dass mighty good, yass! ’Tis so.”
“Yes, it is; and I tell you, and you only, because I’m proud to believe you’re my sincere friend. Am I right?”
Zoséphine busies herself with her riding-skirt, shifts her seat a little, and with studied carelessness assents.
“Yes,” her companion repeats; “and so I tell you. The true business man is candid to all, communicative to none. And yet I open my heart to you. I can’t help it; it won’t stay shut. And you must see, I’m sure you must, that there’s something more in there besides money; don’t you?” His tone grows tender.
Madame Beausoleil steals a glance toward him,—a grave, timid glance. She knows there is safety in the present moment. Three horsemen, strangers, far across the field in their front, are coming toward them, and she feels an almost proprietary complacence in a suitor whom she can safely trust to be saying just the right nothings when those shall meet them and ride by. She does not speak; but he says:
“You know there is, dear Jos——friend!” He smiles with modest sweetness. “G. W. Tarbox doesn’t run after money, and consequently he never runs past much without picking it up.” They both laugh in decorous moderation. The horsemen are drawing near; they are Acadians. “I admit I love to make money. But that’s not my chief pleasure. My chief pleasure is the study of human nature.
‘The proper study of mankind is man.
* * * * *
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.’
“This season I’ve been studying these Acadian people. And I like them! They don’t like to be reminded that they’re Acadians. Well, that’s natural; the Creoles used to lord it over them so when the Creoles were slave-holding planters and they were small farmers. That’s about past now. The Acadians are descended from peasants, that’s true, while some Creoles are from the French nobility. But, hooh! wouldn’t any fair-minded person”—the horsemen are within earshot; they are staring at the silk hat—“Adjieu.”
“Adjieu.” They pass.
“—Wouldn’t any fair-minded person that knows what France was two or three hundred years ago—show you some day in the ‘Album’—about as lief be descended from a good deal of that peasantry as from a good deal of that nobility? I should smile! Why, my dear—friend, the day’s coming when the Acadians will be counted as good French blood as there is in Louisiana! They’re the only white people that ever trod this continent—island or mainland—who never on their own account oppressed anybody. Some little depredation on their British neighbors, out of dogged faithfulness to their king and church,—that’s the worst charge you can make. Look at their history! all poetry and pathos! Look at their character! brave, peaceable, loyal, industrious, home-loving”—