Story 2, Chapter VII.
Hospitable Friends.
Casey’s views were commercial, and New Orleans was not the place where a display of spirit would be likely to damage his prospects. It appeared rather to have an opposite effect; for, before his arm was well out of the sling, I had the gratification to learn that he had received an appointment in one of the large cotton commission houses—a calling sufficiently suited to his temperament.
My own object in visiting the Western World was less definite. I was of that age when travel is attractive—young enough to afford a few years of far niente before entering upon the more serious pursuits of life. In short, I had no object beyond idleness and sight-seeing; and in either way, a month or two may be passed in New Orleans without much danger of suffering from ennui.
My stay in the “Crescent City” extended to a period of full three months. A pleasant hospitality induced me to prolong it beyond what I had originally intended: and the dispenser of this hospitality was no other than Monsieur Luis De Hauteroche.
Notwithstanding the bizarrerie of its beginning, our acquaintance soon grew into friendship; for the southern heart is of free and quick expansion, as the flowers of its clime, and its affection as rapidly ripens. There the friendship of a single month is often as strong—ay, and as lasting too—as that which results from years of intercourse under the cold ceremonies of old world life.
In a month De Hauteroche and I were bosom friends; and scarcely a day passed that we did not see each other, scarcely three that we were not companions in some boating or hunting excursion—some fête champêtre among his Creole acquaintances, the hospitable planters of the “coast,”—at the bal-masque, or in the boxes of the “Théatre Français.”
In the morning hours I often visited him at his place of business—for business he did not altogether neglect—in the Rue Royale; but more frequently in the evening at his private residence—the pretty little “cabane,” as he called it, with its glass door windows and vine-loaded verandahs, in the adjoining street of the Rue Bourgogne.