A right good father, and a right sensible father was Joseph, according to my thinking; for the little Paqueta throve well under his instructions. Every morning and every night she took the medal from her neck, and placed it upon her bed and knelt before it and asked for health, and rose with the consciousness of possessing what she asked for. Her religion was a reality, and if it went not far, it at least went some way; and there was an earnestness about it which sometimes made me wish it my own. I have many neighbors, and perhaps you are slightly acquainted with others, who would show another and a better face with one half of Paqueta’s faith.
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CHAPTER II.
Little Paqueta, nice Paqueta, sweet Paqueta, slave Paqueta, my pen runs riot when speaking of Paqueta, heaven bless her soul. Thus Paqueta lived, and breathed, and was happy during two whole years under my eyes, when a great change came over her life, and she put off the bonds of servitude never to resume them more. Her mistress, who had wealth, and who, with all of her sex among the creole French of Louisiana, looked forward to a translation to Paris with much of the expectation that fills the breast of a devotee who travels toward a “city out of sight,” removed to La Belle France. As the law then stood, it was the practice of those who went abroad to add a favorite slave to their train, as a readier and earlier means of manumission than the statute gave. All who touched la belle France returned free; so Paqueta’s mistress, knowing full well that her little maid-in-waiting, whom she had spoilt, and whom everybody had spoilt, was too white for servitude, was too white for any thing except one long Easter-day, as the pagans kept it, put her among her baggage. I saw Paqueta on shipboard, and there, standing upon the deck which was to take her forever from the clime of which she was a most true child, the wind whistling through her hair, and her tongue garrulous of the joy which childhood ever finds in all things new. I gave her my last lesson.
“Paqueta,” said I, “never trouble yourself about counting five; if you should ever arrive at the counting of a hundred, you would be none the better for it; but remember always the good Father Joseph’s gift and his instructions—good bye.”
And again the little slave-girl, so happy and so beautiful, rolled at my feet, and took them in her hands, and looked up, and was silent; for the long lesson of two years was ended, and was to be washed out by the wetting of a passing sorrow which I saw hanging upon her eyelids.
Ten years had rolled away since Paqueta’s emigration, and in the course of them I had grown more than ten years older under this hot, quick-racing sun. I had forgotten the long-haired, blue-eyed, Easter-born quateronne, with her mistress, and ten thousand other things beside, when, one long vacation, having nothing else to do, and having just got through a dull history of Paris in twelve big volumes, I resolved to see that great heart of the world. It was in King Philippe’s day, when the Parisians enjoyed more rational liberty than they ever enjoyed before, or will ever enjoy again, except they very much mend their ways. Now any thing may take place in Paris, as we know very well; and one who has lived there a long time must have long since ceased wondering. Paris is the mother of civilization, and civilization is a Proteus which turns itself inside-out, and upside-down, every day throughout the week. Paris is a citizen of the world, and has the good and the bad qualities of all the earth beside; so that no one, wherever born, is at a loss in its streets, but at once feels at home, and leaving it, leaves it with regret. Paris, therefore, is as infinite in its incident as the earth is; and although it might be hard to find, elsewhere in Europe, the manners of two widely-separated people in close and harmonious juxtaposition, yet, in Paris, you tread upon the four continents every step you take. In Paris man’s intellect is stretched to the utmost, the best fencer takes the prize, the hardest fends off, and no false coin passes for true metal; real merit is recognized, and mind, polished, sharp, ready for effective use, is the only nobility which ranks one higher than another. Therefore, sir, you need not open your eyes very wide when I tell you of Paqueta’s transformation in Paris.
I had been in the city a whole month, running about in every quarter to see the world of art collected within its walls—and twelve months, and twice twelve-months would not have been sufficient for the Louvre alone—when, one early eve, the light yet hanging upon the house-tops and dropping down upon the passengers below, I discovered in the Champs Elysées, moving in a direction opposite to my own, a gentleman and lady whose manner, whose comeliness, whose air of full content, strongly fixed my attention. As we drew near to each other, I saw that the lady was possessed of a rare beauty, and as Frenchwomen are proverbially plain, and as her complexion was of the deeper olive, I at once said that she was from the Peninsula, perhaps Cadiz, of whose excellence in that way we have all read so much.
The lady and her companion were engaged in earnest conversation, when, just as we were about to cross, her eye caught mine; she hesitated, stopped, moved on, hesitated, stopped again, and then, her whole face lighting up with a burst of joy, sprang forward, and seizing both my hands in hers—
“Ah, have you forgotten me!” she exclaimed; “mon cher ami, mon ancien ami; have you forgotten Paqueta—little Paqueta, who would not count five!”