"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day, "you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a niggah?"
"Certainly not."
"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupé!"
We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.
CHAPTER XX
A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE
MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a few hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, a microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory, a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a diving bell, a Creole veritas. Before the day had had time to cool, his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier, Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the lettre de cachet, Demosthenes De Grapion and the fille à l'hôpital, Georges De Grapion and the fille à la cassette, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honorés, young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them
"Knit hands and beat the ground
In a light, fantastic round,"
would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.