That she was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying.
After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New
Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her; and
she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the
most exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris
gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to
listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the middle
of the most ardent protestations, or jumping up and walking away with
a shrug of the shoulders, and a "Bah!"

[Illustration: "WALKING AWAY WITH A SHRUG OF THE SHOULDERS."]

Well! Every one knows what happened after '59. There is no need to
repeat. The history of one is the history of all. But there was this
difference--for there is every shade of difference in misfortune, as
there is every shade of resemblance in happiness. Mortemart des Islets
went off to fight. That was natural; his family had been doing that,
he thought, or said, ever since Charlemagne. Just as naturally he was
killed in the first engagement. They, his family, were always
among the first killed; so much so that it began to be considered
assassination to fight a duel with any of them. All that was in the
ordinary course of events. One difference in their misfortunes lay
in that after the city was captured, their plantation, so near,
convenient, and rich in all kinds of provisions, was selected to
receive a contingent of troops--a colored company. If it had been a
colored company raised in Louisiana it might have been different; and
these negroes mixed with the negroes in the neighborhood,--and negroes
are no better than whites, for the proportion of good and bad among
them,--and the officers were always off duty when they should have
been on, and on when they should have been off.