human
Well, to begin, Chester urged,
gpt
Yes. Nearly opposite the ladies' entrance of that Hotel St. Louis now perishing.
human
Yes, to save that. I hope 'twill succeed. To me that old dome is a monument of those two men.
gpt
But if it comes down the home remains, opposite, where both were born, were they not?
human
Yes. Yet I'd rather the dome. We Creoles, you know, are called very conservative.
gpt
Yet no race is more radical than the French.
human
True. And we Chapdelaines have always been radical. _Grandpère_ was, though a slaveholder.
gpt
Oh, none of _my_ ancestors justified slavery, yet as planters they had to own negroes.
human
But the Chapdelaines were not planters. They were agents of ships. Fifty times on one page in the old _Picayune_, or in _L'Abeille_--'For freight or passage apply to the master on board or to T. Chapdelaine & Son, agents.' Even then there were two Théophiles, and grandpapa was the son. They were wholesale agents also for French exporters of artistic china, porcelain, glass, bronze. Twice they furnished the hotel with everything of that kind; when it first opened, and when it changed hands. That's how they came to hold stock in it. Grandpapa, outdoor man of the firm, was every day in the rotunda, under that dome.
gpt
Yes, Chester said,
human
You love our small antiquities. So do I. Well, grandpapa did much business there, both of French goods and of ships; and because the hotel was the favorite of the sugar-planters its rotunda was one of the principal places for slave auctions.
gpt
Yes, they were, I know, almost daily. The old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine.
human
Ah, genuine or not, what difference? From one that _was_ there _grandpère_ bought many slaves. He and his father speculated in them.
gpt
Why! How strange! The son? _your_ grandfather? the radical, who married--'Maud'?
human
Yes, the last slave he bought was for her.
gpt
Why, why, why! He couldn't have met her be'--well--before the year of Lincoln's election.
human
No, let me tell you. You remember 'Sidney'?
gpt
Well, when she came to Maud, at Maud's home, in the North, she was still in agony about Mingo, who'd been recaptured. So Maud wrote South, to her aunt, who wrote back: 'Yes, he had been brought home, and at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here in New Orleans.' So then Sidney begged Maud, who by luck was coming here, to bring her here to find him.
human
Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus.
gpt
Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?
human
Yes. But--who told you all this so exactly--your _grand'mère_ herself, or your _grandpère_?
gpt
Ah--she, no. I never saw her. And _grandpère_--no, he was killed before I was born.
human
Yes, all that I'll come to. This I'm telling now is from my own papa. He had it from _grandpère_. _Grand'mère_ and Sidney came with friends, a gentleman and his wife, by ship from New York.
gpt
And all put up at Hotel St. Louis?
human
Yes. From there Maud and Sidney began their search. But now, first, about that speculating in slaves: those two Théophiles, first the father, then both, hated slavery. 'Twas by nature and in everything that they were radical. Their friends knew that, even when they only said, 'Oh, you are extreme!' or 'Those Chapdelaines are extremist.' In those years from about eighteen-forty to 'sixty----
gpt
When the slavery question was about to blaze----
human
Yes--they voted Whig. That was the most antislavery they could vote and stay here. But under the rose they said: 'All right! extremist, yet Whig; we'll be extreme Whig of a new kind. We'll trade in slaves.'
gpt
I begin to see,
human
I'll tell you by and by about that also, she murmured, and then resumed:
gpt
While _grandpère_ was yet a boy his father had begun that, that slave-buying. On that auction-block he would often see a slave about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be increased by training to some trade. You see?--blacksmith, lady's maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?
human
So he made the thing pay?
gpt
But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make profits difficult?
human
Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it at all. They would not have been respected.
gpt
But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected.
human
Yes, _in spite_ of that. Their friends said: 'Let the extremists be extreme that way.'
gpt
The public mind was not yet quite in flames.
human
No. But--guess who helped _grandpère_ do that.
gpt
Why, do I know him? Castanado.
human
Who? Beloiseau?
gpt
Ah, you! You can guess better.
human
Ovide Lan'--no, Ovide was still a slave.
gpt
Yet more free than most free negroes. 'Twas he. He was janitor to offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of the slave-mart. And when he found one who was quite of the right kind--and Ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know--he would show him to _grandpère_, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, _grandpère_ would buy him--or her.
human
What was one of 'quite the right kind'? One willing to buy his own freedom?
gpt
Ah, also to do something more; you see?
human
Yes, I see, Chester laughed;
gpt
Not precisely to run, but----
human
To stow away, on those ships, h'm? There was rapture in crossing that _h'm_ line of intimacy.
gpt
I see it all! Ha-ha, I see it all! Well! that brings us back to 'Maud,' doesn't it--h'm?
human
Yes. They met, she and grandpère, at a ball, in the hotel. But --Aline smiled--
gpt
Mademoiselle! That happened to _them_?--_there_?
human
Yes, to _them_, _there_.
gpt
Who is our young friend, anyhow?
human
Ah, I suppose you have guessed. He is the grandson of Sidney.