My father, to console him, would say that it would be easy to find other
tracts just as fine.

"Never!" replied he, rolling his eyes and brandishing his arms; and his
fury would grow until Maggie cried:

"He is Satan himself! He's the devil!"

One evening the flatboat stopped a few miles only from where is now the
village of Pattersonville. The weather was magnificent, and while papa,
Gordon, and Mario went hunting, Joseph, Alix, and we two walked on the
bank. Little by little we wandered, and, burying ourselves in the
interior, we found ourselves all at once confronting a little cottage
embowered in a grove of oranges. Alix uttered a cry of admiration and
went towards the house. We saw that it was uninhabited and must have been
long abandoned. The little kitchen, the poultry-house, the dovecote, were
in ruins. But the surroundings were admirable: in the rear a large court
was entirely shaded with live-oaks; in front was the green belt of orange
trees; farther away Bayou Teche, like a blue ribbon, marked a natural
boundary, and at the bottom of the picture the great trees of the forest
lifted their green-brown tops.

"Oh!" cried Alix, "if I could stay here I should be happy."

"Who knows?" replied Joseph. "The owner has left the house; he may be
dead. Who knows but I may take this place?"

"Oh! I pray you, Joseph, try. Try!" At that moment my father and Mario
appeared, looking for us, and Alix cried: