MAKING UP THE EXPEDITION.
In 1795 New Orleans was nothing but a mere market town. The cathedral, the convent of the Ursulines, five or six cafés, and about a hundred houses were all of it.[6] Can you believe, there were but two dry-goods stores! And what fabulous prices we had to pay! Pins twenty dollars a paper. Poor people and children had to make shift with thorns of orange and amourette [honey locust?]. A needle cost fifty cents, very indifferent stockings five dollars a pair, and other things accordingly.
On the levee was a little pothouse of the lowest sort; yet from that unclean and smoky hole was destined to come one of the finest fortunes in Louisiana. They called the proprietor "Père la Chaise."[7] He was a little old marten-faced man, always busy and smiling, who every year laid aside immense profits. Along the crazy walls extended a few rough shelves covered with bottles and decanters. Three planks placed on boards formed the counter, with Père la Chaise always behind it. There were two or three small tables, as many chairs, and one big wooden bench. Here gathered the city's working-class, and often among them one might find a goodly number of the city's élite; for the wine and the beer of the old cabaretier were famous, and one could be sure in entering there to hear all the news told and discussed.
By day the place was quiet, but with evening it became tumultuous. Père la Chaise, happily, did not lose his head; he found means to satisfy all, to smooth down quarrels without calling in the police, to get rid of drunkards, and to make delinquents pay up.
My father knew the place, and never failed to pay it a visit when he went to New Orleans. Poor, dear father! he loved to talk as much as to travel. Père la Chaise was acquainted with him. One evening papa entered, sat down at one of the little tables, and bade Père la Chaise bring a bottle of his best wine. The place was already full of people, drinking, talking, and singing. A young man of twenty-six or twenty-seven entered almost timidly and sat down at the table where my father was—for he saw that all the other places were occupied—and ordered a half-bottle of cider. He was a Norman gardener. My father knew him by sight; he had met him here several times without speaking to him. You recognized the peasant at once; and yet his exquisite neatness, the gentleness of his face, distinguished him from his kind. Joseph Carpentier was dressed[8] in a very ordinary gray woolen coat; but his coarse shirt was very white, and his hair, when he took off his broad-brimmed hat, was well combed and glossy.
As Carpentier was opening his bottle a second frequenter entered the cabaret. This was a man of thirty or thirty-five, with strong features and the frame of a Hercules. An expression of frankness and gayety overspread his sunburnt face. Cottonade pantaloons, stuffed into a pair of dirty boots, and a vareuse of the same stuff made up his dress. His vareuse, unbuttoned, showed his breast, brown and hairy; and a horrid cap with long hair covered, without concealing, a mass of red locks that a comb had never gone through. A long whip, the stock of which he held in his hand, was coiled about his left arm. He advanced to the counter and asked for a glass of brandy. He was a drayman named John Gordon—an Irishman.
But, strange, John Gordon, glass in hand, did not drink; Carpentier, with his fingers round the neck of the bottle, failed to pour his cider; and my father himself, his eyes attracted to another part of the room, forgot his wine. Every one was looking at an individual gesticulating and haranguing in the middle of the place, to the great amusement of all. My father recognized him at first sight. He was an Italian about the age of Gordon; short, thick-set, powerful, swarthy, with the neck of a bull and hair as black as ebony. He was telling rapidly, with strong gestures, in an almost incomprehensible mixture of Spanish, English, French, and Italian, the story of a hunting party that he had made up five years before. This was Mario Carlo. A Neapolitan by birth, he had for several years worked as a blacksmith on the plantation of one of our neighbors, M. Alphonse Perret. Often papa had heard him tell of this hunt, for nothing could be more amusing than to listen to Carlo. Six young men, with Carlo as sailor and cook, had gone on a two-months' expedition into the country of the Attakapas.
"Yes," said the Italian, in conclusion, "game never failed us; deer, turkeys, ducks, snipe, two or three bears a week. But the sublimest thing was the rich land. Ah! one must see it to believe it. Plains and forests full of animals, lakes and bayous full of fish. Ah! fortune is there. For five years I have dreamed, I have worked, with but one object in view; and today the end is reached. I am ready to go. I want only two companions to aid me in the long journey, and those I have come to look for here."
John Gordon stepped forward, laid a hand upon the speaker's shoulder, and said:
"My friend, I am your man."