All of Paqueta, as I had taken leave of her upon the ship’s deck, came back to me in a moment, and I wondered that I had not recognized her, enlarged as she was, with the same beauty, the same heart, the same child-character, raised and instructed to fill another and higher condition in life. She was so warm, so truthful, so full of recollections of the early years which she still loved, that I half feared she might again roll at my feet, and take them in her hands, and say, “non, ce n’est pas juste; un, trois, quatre”—and I told her so.
“And now, you must know my husband, my Charles,” said she, turning to her companion who stood making big eyes at the scene which was enacted before him. Charles received me with the polished courtesy of a Frenchman, asked for my address, gave me his own, and said that his wife received her friends every Thursday. We parted; Paqueta, a being of impulse, all the girl again, laughing until her eyes ran over at my perplexity, which I could not wholly conceal, and I promising that she should see me on the morrow, although Thursday was yet two days off.
On ascending to my rooms, at the head of four flights of French stairs, dark, odorous, and which comfort never visited but to die, I opened my note book, and commenced the journal of the day. I am now writing from it, and the page is marked with a flourish, a sort of out-breaking animal spirits, to show that it commemorates one of the happiest incidents of my life. “Charles R——; so; I have heard of that name before. He is something already, and is young enough to become in the end a great deal more. Charles R——; he must be a feuilletonist or a politician, an attaché to some one of the innumerable parties with which this miserable country is cursed; for these are the only names that get over to the other side of the water. Very well, he has won Paqueta—and she was worth the winning. Into what a noble woman the little minx has grown! And who can discover a trace of her former servitude about her! I hope he knows her beginning; and certainly Paqueta is too honest to have concealed her life; how does an extreme civilization civilize away our prejudices: and, after all, condition is but one of the positive laws of men.”
On the morrow I called upon Paqueta, and found her living, with some elegance, upon a second floor, or “flat,” as we call it in Edinbro’. To those who have been in Paris, or to those who have read Parisian books, or books written elsewhere of Parisian life, it is not necessary to say what a “second floor” is; and all others may as well remain as they are. She received me with her whole heart, with no show of her changed condition—which was to me like the sudden shifting of a scene in some melo-dramatic piece upon the stage—and sat me down, and at once commenced talking of Louisiana, and of her early life, and of its happiness, and sighed that it could not have so remained forever. She then told me of her history since her coming into France; how that her mistress, who was without children, after settling down in Paris treated her more as a favorite daughter than otherwise; how that she had masters given her, who taught her ten thousand things beside the counting of five; how that her mistress had died two years before, bequeathing her thirty thousand francs; and how Charles once met her, and loved her, and they were married. And thus she ran on for one full hour, her eyes sparkling with delight, the same Paqueta with whom I had trifled away many a pleasant minute ten years before. Cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currant. While we conversed, her husband entered, and took my hand with much cordiality, and welcomed me, saying that his wife had told him of her having known me in America.
“And did you tell him what a hard master I was?”
“Ah, I remember the fillips perfectly well, and sometimes think I feel them burning upon my ears even now,” said Paqueta.
“And the little medal, your god; with the good Father Joseph’s advice?”
Paqueta’s face, for the first time, looked troubled; the sunlight left it; and I felt sorry that I had asked the question.
“Charles made me lay the medal aside the second day after our marriage; and as to praying for health, or aught else, Paris knows nothing of that.”
Charles laughed, and said “that he had been long since convinced that a priesthood was incompatible with Liberty.”