The following Saturday my father arrived. The next day, after mass, our friends came in a body to say adieu. And on the morrow, amid kisses, handshaking, regrets, tears, and waving handkerchiefs, we departed in the carriage that was to bear us far and forever from Little Paris, and the friends we shall never meet again. Suzanne and I wept like children. On the fourth day after, the carriage stopped before the door of M. Gerbeau's house. I must confess we were not over-polite to Mme. Gerbeau. We embraced her hurriedly, and, leaving my father talking about lands, started on a run for Alix's dwelling.
Oh, dear Alix! How happy she seemed to see us again! How proud to show us the innovations made in her neat little house! With what touching care had she prepared our chamber! She had wished for a sofa, and Joseph had made her one and covered it with one of the velvet robes of the Countess Aurelia de Morainville. And when we went into Alix's own room, Suzanne, whose eye nothing ever escaped, pointed out to me, half hidden behind the mosquito-net of the bed, the prettiest little cradle in the world.
"Yes," said Alix, blushing, "I am blessed. I am perfectly happy."
We told her all our adventures and pleasures. She wept when she heard that the Countess de la Houssaye had not forgotten her.
"You will see her," said Suzanne. "She will come to see you, without a doubt."
"Ah, Heaven prevent it! Our destinies are too unlike now. Me perhaps the Countess Madelaine might welcome affectionately; but Joseph? Oh, no! My husband's lot is mine; I have no wish for any other. It is better that she and I remain strangers."
And Joseph? How he confessed his joy in seeing us!
During our absence M. Gerbeau had found means for us to return to St. James. It seems that two little boats, resembling steamboats in form, kept up a constant trade in wood—clapboards, pieux [split boards], shingles, even cordwood—between the lakes and the Bayou Teche plantation. M. Gerbeau had taken his skiff and two oarsmen and gone in search of one of these boats, which, as he guessed, was not far away. In fact he met it in Mexican [now Berwick's] Bay, and for two hundred dollars persuaded the captain to take us to St. James. "Yes," said M. Gerbeau to us, "you will make in a week a journey that might have taken you two months."
The following Monday the captain tied up at M. Gerbeau's landing. It was a droll affair, his boat. You must have seen on plantations what they call a horse-mill—a long pole on which a man sits, and to which a horse or mule is hitched. Such was the machinery by which we moved. The boat's cabin was all one room. The berths, one above another, ran all round the room, hung with long curtains, and men, women, and children—when there were any—were all obliged to stay in the same apartment.
We remained with Alix to the last moment. The morning we left she gave Suzanne a pretty ring, and me a locket containing her portrait. In return my sister placed upon her finger a ruby encircled with little diamonds; and I, taking off the gold medal I always wore on my neck, whispered: