about the time one first could descry the white spires of the old St.
Louis Cathedral, you would be pretty sure to spy, just over to your
right under the levee, Belles Demoiselles Mansion, with its broad
veranda and red painted cypress roof, peering over the embankment, like
a bird in the nest, half hid by the avenue of willows which one of the
departed De Charleus,--he that married a Marot,--had planted on the
levee's crown.

The house stood unusually near the river, facing eastward, and standing
four-square, with an immense veranda about its sides, and a flight of
steps in front spreading broadly downward, as we open arms to a child.
From the veranda nine miles of river were seen; and in their compass,
near at hand, the shady garden full of rare and beautiful flowers;
farther away broad fields of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of
the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a dark belt of cypress forest.

The master was old Colonel De Charleu,--Jean Albert Henri Joseph De
Charleu-Marot, and "Colonel" by the grace of the first American
governor. Monsieur,--he would not speak to any one who called him
"Colonel,"--was a hoary-headed patriarch. His step was firm, his form
erect, his intellect strong and clear, his countenance classic, serene,
dignified, commanding, his manners courtly, his voice musical,
--fascinating. He had had his vices,--all his life; but had borne them,
as his race do, with a serenity of conscience and a cleanness of mouth
that left no outward blemish on the surface of the gentleman. He had
gambled in Royal Street, drunk hard in Orleans Street, run his adversary
through in the duelling-ground at Slaughter-house Point, and danced and
quarrelled at the St. Philippe-street-theatre quadroon balls. Even now,
with all his courtesy and bounty, and a hospitality which seemed to be
entertaining angels, he was bitter-proud and penurious, and deep down in