One night the dwelling caught fire. There was an immediate rush to
save the ladies. Oh, there was no hesitation about that! They were
seized in their beds, and carried out in the very arms of their
enemies; carried away off to the sugar-house, and deposited there. No
danger of their doing anything but keep very quiet and still in their
_chemises de nuit_, and their one sheet apiece, which was about all
that was saved from the conflagration--that is, for them. But it must
be remembered that this is all hearsay. When one has not been present,
one knows nothing of one's own knowledge; one can only repeat. It has
been repeated, however, that although the house was burned to
the ground, and everything in it destroyed, wherever, for a year
afterward, a man of that company or of that neighborhood was found,
there could have been found also, without search-warrant, property
that had belonged to the Des Islets. That is the story; and it is
believed or not, exactly according to prejudice.

How the ladies ever got out of the sugar-house, history does not
relate; nor what they did. It was not a time for sociability, either
personal or epistolary. At one offensive word your letter, and you,
very likely, examined; and Ship Island for a hotel, with soldiers for
hostesses! Madame Des Islets died very soon after the accident--of
rage, they say; and that was about all the public knew.

Indeed, at that time the society of New Orleans had other things
to think about than the fate of the Des Islets. As for _la grande
demoiselle_, she had prepared for her own oblivion in the hearts of
her female friends. And the gentlemen,--her _preux chevaliers_,--they
were burning with other passions than those which had driven them to
her knees, encountering a little more serious response than "bahs" and