"Partly," replied Frowenfeld; "but how shall I vindicate my innocence? I think I ought to go back openly to this woman's house and get my hat. I was about to do that when I got your note; yet it seems a feeble--even if possible--expedient."
"My friend," said Honoré, "leave it to me. I see your whole case, both what you tell and what you conceal. I guess it with ease. Knowing Palmyre so well, and knowing (what you do not) that all the voudous in town think you a sorcerer, I know just what she would drop down and beg you for--a ouangan, ha, ha! You see? Leave it all to me--and your hat with Palmyre, take a febrifuge and a nap, and await word from me."
"And may I offer you no help in your difficulty?" asked the apothecary, as the two rose and grasped hands.
"Oh!" said the Creole, with a little shrug, "you may do anything you can--which will be nothing."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
TESTS OF FRIENDSHIP
Frowenfeld turned away from the closing door, caught his head between his hands and tried to comprehend the new wildness of the tumult within. Honoré Grandissime avowedly in love with one of them--which one? Doctor Keene visibly in love with one of them--which one? And he! What meant this bounding joy that, like one gorgeous moth among innumerable bats, flashed to and fro among the wild distresses and dismays swarming in and out of his distempered imagination? He did not answer the question; he only knew the confusion in his brain was dreadful. Both hands could not hold back the throbbing of his temples; the table did not steady the trembling of his hands; his thoughts went hither and thither, heedless of his call. Sit down as he might, rise up, pace the room, stand, lean his forehead against the wall--nothing could quiet the fearful disorder, until at length he recalled Honoré's neglected advice and resolutely lay down and sought sleep; and, long before he had hoped to secure it, it came.
In the distant Grandissime mansion, Agricola Fusilier was casting about for ways and means to rid himself of the heaviest heart that ever had throbbed in his bosom. He had risen at sunrise from slumber worse than sleeplessness, in which his dreams had anticipated the duel of to-morrow with Sylvestre. He was trying to get the unwonted quaking out of his hands and the memory of the night's heart-dissolving phantasms from before his inner vision. To do this he had resort to a very familiar, we may say time-honored, prescription--rum. He did not use it after the voudou fashion; the voudous pour it on the ground--Agricola was an anti-voudou. It finally had its effect. By eleven o'clock he seemed, outwardly at least, to be at peace with everything in Louisiana that he considered Louisianian, properly so-called; as to all else he was ready for war, as in peace one should be. While in this mood, and performing at a sideboard the solemn rite of las onze, news incidentally reached him, by the mouth of his busy second, Hippolyte, of Frowenfeld's trouble, and despite 'Polyte's protestations against the principal in a pending "affair" appearing on the street, he ordered the carriage and hurried to the apothecary's.