landed among them and in the earlier years many of these were
redemptioners. Among them one whose name will always be inseparable from
the history of New Orleans has a permanent place in this story.




VI.

CHRISTIAN ROSELIUS.


One morning many years ago, when some business had brought me into a
corridor of one of the old court buildings facing the Place d'Armes, a
loud voice from within one of the court-rooms arrested my own and the
general ear. At once from all directions men came with decorous haste
towards the spot whence it proceeded. I pushed in through a green door
into a closely crowded room and found the Supreme Court of the State in
session. A short, broad, big-browed man of an iron sort, with silver hair
close shorn from a Roman head, had just begun his argument in the final
trial of a great case that had been before the court for many years, and
the privileged seats were filled with the highest legal talent, sitting to
hear him. It was a famous will case[26], and I remember that he was quoting
from "King Lear" as I entered.

"Who is that?" I asked of a man packed against me in the press.

"Roselius," he whispered; and the name confirmed my conjecture: the
speaker looked like all I had once heard about him. Christian Roselius
came from Brunswick, Germany, a youth of seventeen, something more than