And was not Hector with them? And are not three as truly a crowd in French as in American?
"Well, to begin," Chester urged, "your grandfather, Theophile Chapdelaine, was born in this old quarter, in such a street. Royal?"
"Yes. Nearly opposite the ladies" entrance of that Hotel St. Louis now perishing."
"Except its dome. I hear there"s a movement----
"Yes, to save that. I hope "twill succeed. To me that old dome is a monument of those two men."
"But if it comes down the home remains, opposite, where both were born, were they not?"
"Yes. Yet I"d rather the dome. We Creoles, you know, are called very conservative."
"Yet no race is more radical than the French."
"True. And we Chapdelaines have always been radical. _Grandpere_ was, though a slaveholder."
"Oh, none of _my_ ancestors justified slavery, yet as planters they had to own negroes."
"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 pa.s.sage apply to the master on board or to T. Chapdelaine & Son, agents." Even then there were two Theophiles, and grandpapa was the son. They were wholesale agents also for French exporters of artistic china, porcelain, gla.s.s, 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."
"Yes," Chester said, "it was a kind of Rialto, I know. They called it the "Exchange," as earlier they had called Maspero"s."
"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 princ.i.p.al places for slave auctions."
"Yes, they were, I know, almost daily. The old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine."
"Ah, genuine or not, what difference? From one that _was_ there _grandpere_ bought many slaves. He and his father speculated in them."
"Why! How strange! The son? _your_ grandfather? the radical, who married--"Maud"?"
"Yes, the last slave he bought was for her."
"Why, why, why! He couldn"t have met her be"--well--before the year of Lincoln"s election."
"No, let me tell you. You remember "Sidney"?"
""Maud"s" black maid? my uncle"s Euonymus? Yes."
"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."
"Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus."
"Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?"
"Yes. But--who told you all this so exactly--your _grand"mere_ herself, or your _grandpere_?"
"Ah--she, no. I never saw her. And _grandpere_--no, he was killed before I was born."
"_What_?"
"Yes, all that I"ll come to. This I"m telling now is from my own papa.
He had it from _grandpere_. _Grand"mere_ and Sidney came with friends, a gentleman and his wife, by ship from New York."
"And all put up at Hotel St. Louis?"
"Yes. From there Maud and Sidney began their search. But now, first, about that speculating in slaves: those two Theophiles, 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----"
"When the slavery question was about to blaze----"
"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.""
Chester laughed. "I begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance bade Aline note the rapt attention of Cupid. Her answering smile was so confidential that his heart leaped.
"I"ll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then resumed: "While _grandpere_ 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?"
Chester darkened. "So he made the thing pay?"
"_Seem_ to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, "twas but a mask for something else."
"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no compet.i.tors, to make profits difficult?"
"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."
"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected."
"Yes, _in spite_ of that. Their friends said: "Let the extremists be extreme that way.""
"The public mind was not yet quite in flames."
"No. But--guess who helped _grandpere_ do that."
"Why, do I know him? Castanado."
The girl shook her head.
"Who? Beloiseau?"
"Ah, you! You can guess better."
"Ovide Lan"--no, Ovide was still a slave."
"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 _grandpere_, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, _grandpere_ would buy him--or her."
"What was one of "quite the right kind"? One willing to buy his own freedom?"
"Ah, also to do something more; you see?"