human
Um-h'm, he said,
gpt
Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead, soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift lottery and bazaar, lasting a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and in a balcony of the grand salon, that _grandpère_--
human
Proposed,
gpt
Were left to his own judgment and tact?
human
Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can we say bitternesses in English?
gpt
Indeed we can,
human
To what bitternesses _grandpére_ had to return!
gpt
Aline! Mme. De l'Isle called;
human
Yes, madame. Tell me--you, Mr. Chester--to your vision, how all that must have been.
gpt
Paint in your sketch? Let me try. Maybe only because you tell the story, but maybe rather because it's so easy to see in you a reincarnation of your _grand'mére_--a Creole incarnation of that young 'Maud'--what I see plainest is she. I see her here, two thousand miles from home, with but three or four friends among a quarter of a million enemies. I see her on the day the city fell, looking up and down Royal Street from a balcony of the hotel, while from the great dome a few steps behind her the Union fleet could be seen, rounding the first two river bends below the harbor, engaging a last few Confederate guns at the old battle-ground, and coming on, with the Stars and Stripes at every peak. I see her----
human
She was beautiful, you know--_grand'mére_.
gpt
Yes, I see her so, looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the city by pairs and families, or in armed squads and unarmed mobs swept through the streets and up and down the levee, burning, breaking, and plundering.
human
But that was the worst anybody did, you know.
gpt
Oh, yes. We never knew till to-day's war came how humane that war was. It wasn't a war in which beauty, age, and infancy were hideous perils.
human
Ah, never mind about that to-day. But about _grandpère_ and _grand'mère_ go on. Let me see how much you can imagine correctly, h'm?
gpt
Please, mademoiselle, no. Time has made you--through your father's eyes--they say you have them--an eye-witness. So next you see your _grandpère_ getting back at last, by ship--go on.
human
Yes, I see that, in a harbor whose miles of wharfs without ships cried to him: 'our occupation and your fortune are gone!' Also I see him again in the streets--Royal, Chartres, Canal, Carondelet--where old friends pass him with a stare. I see him and _grand'mère_ married at last, in a church nearly empty and even the priest unfriendly.
gpt
Had he no new friends, Unionists?
human
Not yet, at the wedding. There he said: 'Old friends or none.' And that was right, don't you think? Later 'twas different. You see, in the navy, both of the rivers and the sea, as likewise the army, _grand'mère_ had uncles and cousins; and when the hotel was made a military hospital she was there every day. And naturally those cousins, whether from hospital or no, would call and even bring friends. Well, of course, _grandpère_ was, at the least, courteous! And then there was his word of honor, to Mr. Lincoln, as also his own desire, to bring the State back into the Union.
gpt
Of course. Don't hurry, please.
human
Was I hurrying? Pardon, but I'm afraid they'll be calling us again. The pair rose, but stood.
gpt
Well, when a kind of government was made of that part of the State held by the Union, and the military governor wanted both _grandpère_ and his father to take some public offices, his father made excuse of his age and of a malady--taken from that hospital--which soon occasioned him to die.
human
I've seen his tomb, in St. Louis cemetery, with its epitaph of barely two words--'Adieu, Chapdelaine.' Who supplied that? Old friends, after all?
gpt
A few old, a few new, and one the governor.
human
Did the governor propose the words?
gpt
No. If I tell you you won't tell? Ovide. But _grandpère_ he took the office. And so that put him yet more distant from old friends except just two or three who believed the same as he did.
human
And our Royal Street coterie, of course.
gpt
Ah, not those you see now; but their parents, yes. They were faithful; though sometimes, some of them, sympathizing differently. Well, and so there was _grandpère_ working to repair a _piece_ of the State, when at last the war finished and the reconstruction of the whole State commenced. He and Ovide were both of that State convention they mobbed in the 'July riot.' Some men were killed in that riot. _Grandpère_ was wounded, also Ovide. Those were awful times to _grand'mère_, those years of the reconstruction. _Grandpère_ he--
human
Yes, Chester said,
gpt
Well, go ahead; imagine, to me.
human
No. No, except just enough to see him with no choice of party allegiance but between a rabble up to the elbows in robbery and an old régime red-handed with the rabble's blood.
gpt
Ah, so papa told me, after _grandpère_ was long gone, and me on his knee asking questions. 'Reconstruction, my dear child--' once he answered me, ''twas like trying to drive, on the right road, a frantic horse in a rotten harness, and with the reins under his tail!' Ah, I wish you could have known him, Mr. Chester--my father!
human
I know his daughter.
gpt
Well, I suppose--I suppose we must go in.
human
With the story almost finished?
gpt
We'll, maybe finish inside--or--some day.
human
But! with only four to sit down there, how was it possib' to h-ask for a tab'e for six? That wou'n' be logical!
gpt
No, she said;
human
Hiztorical! the aunts broke in.
gpt
Well-known! abbout old house! in the _vieux carré_!
human
And, madame insisted,
gpt
[to the pair]
human
Like that circ' --the aunts fell into tears of laughter. They touched each other with finger-tips, cried,
gpt
Like that circuz of Barnum! and repeated to the De l'Isles and then to Aline,
human
Like that circuz of Barnum an' Bailey!
gpt
Ah! said Aline,
human
Then tell me, further, of '_grandpère_'
gpt
And grand'mère? Yes, I must, as I learned about them on papa's knee. Mamma never saw them; they had been years gone when papa first knew her. But Sidney I knew, when she was old and had seen all those dreadful times; and, though she often would not tell me the story, she would tell me what to ask papa; you see? You would have liked to talk with Sidney about old buildings. Mr. Chester, I think it is not that in New Orleans we are so picturesque, but that all the rest of our country--in the cities--is so starved for the picturesque. Sidney would have told you that story monsieur is telling now as well as all the strange history of that old Hotel St. Louis. First, after the war it was changed back from a hospital to a hotel. I think 'twas then they called it Hotel Royal. Anyhow 'twas again very fine. Grandpère and grand'mère were often in that salon where he had first--as they say--spoken. Because, for one thing, there they met people of the outside world without the local prejudices, you know?
human
At that time bitter and vindictive?
gpt
Oh, ferocious! And there they met also people of the most--dignity.
human
Above the average of the other hotels?
gpt
Well, not so--so brisk.
human
Not so American?
gpt
Ah, you know. Well, maybe that's one reason the St. Charles, for example, continued, while the Royal did not. Anyhow the Royal--grandpère had the life habit of it and 'twas just across the street. Daily they ate there; a real economy.
human
But they kept the old home.
gpt
Yes. 'Twas furnished the same but not 'run' the same. 'Twas very difficult to keep it, even with all three stories of the servants' wing shut up, you know?--like
human
But you say Hotel Royal was soon closed.
gpt
Yes, and then, in the worst of those days, it became the capitol. There, in the most elegant hotel for the most elegant planters of the South--anyhow Southwest--sat their slaves, with white men even more abhorred, and made the laws. In that old dome, second story, they put a floor across, and there sat the Senate! Just over that auction-block where grandpère had bought Mingo.
human
Where was he--Mingo?
gpt
Dead--of drink. Grandpère was in that government! Long time he was senator. Mr. Chester, _for that_ papa was proud of him, and I am proud.
human
I know, he said,
gpt
And any of the old masters who agreed to that could help lead!
human
Mademoiselle, how could they agree to it? Some did, I know, but that's the wonder. Those that could not--who can blame them?
gpt
Ah! 'tis no longer a question of blame but of judgment. So papa used to say. Anyhow grandpère agreed, accepted, led; until at the last, one day, that White League--you've heard of them, how they armed and drilled and rose against that reconstruction police in a battle on the steamboat landing? Grandpère was in that. He commanded part of the reconstruction forces. And papa was there, though only thirteen. Grandpère was bayonet-wounded. They carried him away bleeding. Only at the State-house a surgeon met them, and there, under that dome, just as papa brought grand'mère and Sidney, he died.