In some Arabian Nights or other, there is a story of voyagers in a becalmed ship who were drifted by irresistible currents towards an unknown island. As they gazed at it their eyes were deceived by an enchantment in the atmosphere, so that they seemed to see upon the shore a number of beautiful women waiting to welcome them, whereas these expectant figures were really nothing but hideous apes with carniverous appetites, whose desire it was to devour the approaching strangers.

As Miss Ravenel drifted towards Colonel Carter she beheld him in the guise of a pure and noble creature, while in truth he was a more than commonly demoralized man, with potent capacities for injuring others. Mrs. Larue, on the other hand, perceived him much as he was, and liked him none the less for it. Had she lived in the days before the flood she would not have cared specially for the angels who came down to enjoy themselves with the daughters of men, except just so far as they satisfied her vanity and curiosity. Seeing clearly that the Colonel was not a seraph, but a creature of far lower grade, very coarse and carnal in some at least of his dispositions, she would still have been pleased to have him fall in love with her, and would perhaps have accepted him as a husband. It is probable that she did not have a suspicion of the glamour which humbugged the innocent eyes of her youthful cousin. But she did presently perceive that it would be Lillie, and not herself, who would receive Carter's offer of marriage, if it was ever made to either. How should she behave under these trying circumstances? Painful as the discovery may have been to her vanity, it had little effect on a temper so callously amiable, and none on the lucid wisdom of a spirit so clarified by selfishness. She showed that she was a person of good worldly sense, and of little heart. She soon brought herself to encourage the Carter flirtation, partly because she had a woman's passion for seeing such things move on, and partly for reasons of state. If the Colonel married Lillie he would be a valuable friend at court; moreover the match could not hurt the social position of her relatives, who were ostracised as Yankees already; it would be all gain and no loss. She soon discovered, as she thought, that there was no need of blowing the Colonel's trumpet in the ears of Miss Lillie, and that the young lady could be easily brought to greet him with a betrothal hymn of, "Hail to the chief who in triumph advances." But the Doctor, who evidently did not like the Colonel, might exercise a deleterious influence on these fine chances. Madame Larue must try to lead the silly old gentleman to take a reasonable look at his own interests. What a paroxysm of vexation and contempt she would have gone into, had she known of his refusal to make forty or fifty thousand dollars on sugar, merely because the transaction might furnish the Confederate army with salt and quinine! Not being aware of this act of cretinism, she went at him on the marriage business with a hopeful spirit.

"What an admirable parti for some of our New Orleans young ladies would be the Colonel Carter!"

The Doctor smiled and bowed his assent, because such was his habit concerning all matters which, were indifferent to him. The fact that he had lived twenty-five years in New Oceans without ever being driven to fight a duel, although disagreeing with its fiery population on various touchy subjects, shows what an exquisite courtesy he must have maintained in his manners and conversation.

"I must positively introduce him to Mees Langdon or Mees Dumas, and see what will come of it," pursued Madame.

Ravenel professed and looked his delight at the proposition, without caring a straw for the subject, being engaged in a charming mineralogical revery. Mrs. Larue perceived his indifference and was annoyed by it, but continued to smile with the Indian-like fortitude of a veteran worldling.

"He is of an excellent family—one of the best families of Virginia. He would be a suitable parti for any young lady of my acquaintance. There is no doubt that he has splendid prospects. He is almost the only regular officer in the department. Of course he will win promotion. I should not be surprised to see him supersede Picayune Butler. I beg your pardon—I mean Major-General Butler. I hear him so constantly called Picayune that I feel as if that was his name of baptism. Mark my prophecy now. In a year that man will be superseded by Colonel Carter."

"It might be a change for the better," admitted the Doctor with the composure of a Gallio.

"The Colonel has a large salary," continued Madame. "The mayoralty gives him three thousand, and his pay as colonel is two thousand six hundred. Five thousand six hundred dollars seems a monstrous salary in these days of poverty."

"It does, indeed," coincided the Doctor, remembering his own fifteen hundred, with a momentary dread that it would hardly keep him out of debt.

Mrs. Larue paused and considered whether she should venture further. She had already got as far as this two or three times without eliciting from her brother-in-law a word good or bad as to the matter which she had at heart. She had been like a boy who walks two miles to a pond, puts on his skates, looks at the thinly frozen surface, shakes his doubtful head, unbuckles his skates and trudges home again. She resolved to try the ice this time, at no matter what risk of breaking it.

"I have been thinking that he would not be a bad parti for my little cousin."

The Doctor laid aside his Robinsonites in some quiet corner of his mind, and devoted himself to the subject of the conversation, leaning forward and surveying Madame earnestly through his spectacles.

"I would almost rather bury her," he said in his excitement.

"You amaze me. There is a difference in age, I grant. But how little! He is still what we call a young man. And then marriages are so difficult to make up in these horrible times. Who else is there in all New Orleans?"

"I don't see why she should marry at all," said the Doctor very warmly. "Why can't she continue to live with me?"

"Positively you are not serious."

"I certainly am. I beg pardon for disagreeing with you, but I don't see why I shouldn't entertain the idea I mention."

"Oh! when it comes to that, there is no arguing. You step out of the bounds of reason into pure feeling and egoÏsme. I also beg your pardon, but I must tell you that you are egoÏste. To forbid a girl to marry is like forbidding a young man to engage in business, to work, to open his own carriÈre. A woman who must not love is defrauded of her best rights."

"Why can't she be satisfied with loving me?" demanded the Doctor. He knew that he was talking irrationally on this subject; but what he meant to say was, "I don't like Colonel Carter."

"Because that would leave her an unhappy, sickly old maid," retorted Madame. "Because that would leave you without grandchildren."

Ravenel rose and walked the room with a melancholy step and a countenance full of trouble. Suddenly he stopped short and turned upon Mrs. Larue a look of anxious inquiry.

"I hope you have not observed in Lillie any inclination towards this—this idea."

"Not the slightest," replied Madame, lying frankly, and without the slightest hesitation or confusion.

"And you have not broached it to her?"

"Never!" affirmed the lady solemnly, which was another whopper.

"I sincerely hope that you will not. Oblige me, I beg you, by promising that you will not."

"If such is your pleasure," sighed Madame. "Well—I promise."

"I am so much obliged to you," said the Doctor.

"I know that there is a difference in age," Mrs. Larue recommenced, thereby insinuating that that was the only objection to the match that she could imagine: but her brother-in-law solemnly shook his head, as if to say that he had other reasons for opposition compared with which this was a trifle: and so, after taking a sharp look at him, she judged it wise to drop the subject.

"I hope," concluded the Doctor, "that hereafter, when I am away, you will allow Lillie to receive calls in your house. There is a back passage. It is neither quite decorous to receive gentlemen alone here, nor to send them away."

Mrs. Larue made no objection to this plan, seeing that she could be just as strict or just as careless a duenna as she chose.

"I wonder why he has such an aversion to the match," she thought. Accustomed to see men matured in vice lead innocent young girls to the altar, habituated to look upon the notoriously pure-minded Doctor as a social curiosity rather than a social standard, she scarcely guessed, and could not realize, the repugnance with which such a father would resign a daughter to the doubtful protection of a husband chosen from the class known as men about town.

"Aurait il dÉcouvert," she continued to meditate; "ce petit liaison de monsieur le colonel? Il est vraiment curieux mon beau-frere; c'est plutÔt une vierge qu'un homme."

I beg the reader not to do this clever lady the injustice to suppose that she kept or ever intended to keep her promise to the Doctor. To him, indeed, she did not for a long time speak of the proposed marriage, intending thereby to lull his suspicions to sleep, and thus prevent him from offering any timely opposition to that natural course of human events which might alone suffice to bring about the desired end. But into Lillie's ears she perpetually whispered pleasant things concerning Carter, besides leaving the two alone together for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, until Lillie would get alarmed at her unusual position, and become either nervously silent or nervously talkative. For these services the Colonel was not as grateful as he should have been. He was just the man to believe that he could make his own way in a love affair, and need not burden himself with a sense of obligation for any one's assistance. Moreover, valuing himself on his knowledge of life, he thought that he understood Mrs. Larue's character perfectly, and declared that he was not the man to be managed by such an intriguante, however knowing. He did in fact perceive that she was corrupt, and by the way he liked her none the worse for it, although he would not have married her. To Colburne he spoke of her gaily and conceitedly as "the Larue," or sometimes as "La rouÉe," for he knew French well enough to make an occasional bad pun in it. The Captain, on the other hand, never mentioned her except respectfully, feeling himself bound to treat any relative of Miss Ravenel with perfect courtesy.

But while Carter supposed that he comprehended the Larue, he walked in the path which she had traced out for him. From week to week he found it more agreeable to be with Miss Ravenel. Those random tÊte-a-tÊtes which to her were so alarming, were to him so pleasant that he caught himself anticipating them with anxiety. The Colonel might have known from his past experience, he might have known by only looking at his high-colored face and powerful frame in a mirror, that it was not a safe amusement for him to be so much with one charming lady. Self-possessed in his demeanor, and, like most rouÉs, tolerably cool for a little distance below the surface of his feelings, he was at bottom and by the decree of imperious nature, very volcanic. As we say of some fiery wines, there was a great deal of body to him. At this time he was determined not to fall in love. He remembered how he had been infatuated in other days, and dreaded the return of the passionate dominion. To use his own expression, "he made such a blasted fool of himself when he once got after a woman!"

Nevertheless, he began to be, not jealous; he could not admit that very soft impeachment; but he began to want to monopolize Miss Ravenel. When he found Colburne in her company he sometimes talked French to her, thereby embarrassing and humiliating the Captain, who understood nothing of the language except when he saw it in print, and could trace out the meaning of some words by their resemblance to Latin. The young lady, either because she felt for Colburne's awkward position, or because she did not wish to be suspected of saying things which she might not have dared utter in English, usually restored the conversation to her mother tongue after a few sentences. Once her manner in doing this was so pointed that the Colonel apologized.

"I beg pardon, Captain," he said, to which he added a white lie. "I really supposed that you spoke French."

No; Colburne did not speak French, nor any other modern language; he did not draw, nor sing, nor play, and was in short as destitute of accomplishments as are most Americans. He blushed at the Colonel's apology, which mortified him more than the offence for which it was intended to atone. He would have given all his Greek for a smattering of Gallic, and he took a French teacher the next morning.

Another annoyance to Colburne was Mrs. Larue. He was still so young in heart matters, or rather in coquetry, that he was troubled by being made the object of airs of affection which he could not reciprocate. I do not mean to say that the lady was in love with him; she never had been in love in her life, and was not going to begin at thirty-three. The plain, placid truth was, that she was willing to flirt with him to please herself, and determined to keep him away from Lillie in order to give every possible chance to Carter. Only when Mrs. Larue said "flirt," she meant indescribable things, such as ladies may talk of without reproach among themselves, but which, if introduced into print, are considered very improper reading. Meantime neither Carter nor Colburne understood her, although the former would have hooted at the idea that he did not comprehend the lady perfectly.

"By Jove!" soliloquized the knowing Colonel, "she is sweeter on him than a pailful of syrup. She puts one in mind of a boa-constrictor. She is licking him all over, preparatory to swallowing him. Not a bad sort of serpent to have around one, either," pursued the Colonel, almost winking to himself, so knowing did he feel. "Not a bad sort of serpent. Only I shouldn't care about marrying her."

Indeed the Colonel reminds one a little of "devilish sly old Joey Bagstock."

The innocent Colburne acknowledged to himself that he did not comprehend Mrs. Larue nor her purposes. He would have inferred from her ways that she wanted him for a husband, only that she spoke in a very cool way of the matrimonial state.

"Marriage will not content me, nor will single life," she said to him one day. "I have tried both, and I cannot recommend either. It is a choice between two evils, and one does not know to say which is the least."

Widows in search of second husbands do not talk publicly in this style, and Colburne intelligently concluded that he was not to be invited to the altar. At the same time Mrs. Larue went on in this way, she treated him to certain appetizing little movements, glances and words, which led him to suspect with some vague alarm that she did not mean to let him off as a mere acquaintance. Finally, as is supposed, an explanation ensued which was not to his liking. There was an interview of half an hour in a back parlor, brought about by the graceful manoeuvres of the lady, of which Colburne steadily refused to reveal the secrets, although straitly questioned by the fun-loving Colonel.

"By Jove! he's been bluffing her," soliloquized Carter, who thought he perceived that from this private confabulation the parties came forth on terms of estrangement. "What a queer fellow he is! Suppose he didn't want to marry her—he might amuse himself. It would be pleasant to him, and wouldn't hurt her. Hanged if he isn't a curiosity!"

The next time that Colburne called on Miss Ravenel the Larue took her revenge for that mysterious defeat, the particulars of which I am unable to relate. To comprehend the nature and efficiency of this vengeance, it is necessary to take a dive into the recesses of New Orleans society. There is a geographical fable of civilized white negroes in the centre of Africa, somewhere near the Mountains of the Moon. This fable is realized in the Crescent City and in some of the richest planting districts of Louisiana, where you will find a class of colored people, who are not black people at all, having only the merest fraction of negro blood in their veins, and who are respectable in character, numbers of them wealthy, and some of them accomplished. These Creoles, as they call themselves, have been free for generations, and until Anglo-Saxon law invaded Louisiana, enjoyed the same rights as other citizens. They are good Catholics; they marry and are given in marriage; their sons are educated in Paris on a perfect level with young Frenchmen; their daughters receive the strict surveillance which is allotted to girls in most southern countries. In the street many of them are scarcely distinguishable from the unmixed descendants of the old French planters. But there is a social line of demarkation drawn about them, like the sanitary cordon about an infected district. The Anglo-Saxon race, the proudest race of modern times, does not marry nor consort with them, nor of late years does the pure French Creole, driven to join in this ostracism by the brute force of Henghist and Horsa prejudice. The New Orleanois who before the war should have treated these white colored people on terms of equality, would have shared in their opprobrium, and perhaps have been ridden on a rail by his outraged fellow-citizens of northern descent.

Now these white negroes from the Mountains of the Moon constituted the sole loyal class, except the slaves, which Butler found in Louisiana. They and their black cousins of the sixteenth degree were the only people who, as a body, came forward with joy to welcome the drums and tramplings of the New England Division; and when the commanding General called for regiments of free blacks to uphold the Stars and Stripes, he met a patriotic response as enthusiastic as that of Connecticut or Massachusetts. Foremost in this military uprising were two brothers of the name of Meurice, who poured out their wealth freely to meet those incidental expenses, never acknowledged by Government, which attend the recruiting of volunteer regiments. They gave dinners and presented flags; they advanced uniforms, sabres and pistols for officers; they trusted the families of private soldiers. The youngest Meurice became Major of one of the regiments, which I take to be the nearest approach to a miracle ever yet enacted in the United States of America. Their entertainments became so famous that invitations to them were gratefully accepted by officers of Anglo-Saxon organizations. At their profuse yet elegant table, where BrillÂt-Savarin would not have been annoyed by a badly cooked dish or an inferior wine, and where he might have listened to the accents of his own Parisian, Colburne had met New Englanders, New Yorkers, and even stray Marylanders and Kentuckians. There he became acquainted (ignorant Baratarian that he was!) with the tasse de cafe noir and the petit verre de cognac which close a French dinner. There he smoked cigars which gave him new ideas concerning the value of Cuba. For these pleasures he was now to suffer at the Caucasian hands of Madame Larue.

"I am afraid that we are doomed to lose you, Captain Colburne," she said with a smile which expressed something worse than good-natured raillery. "I hear that you have made some fascinating acquaintances in New Orleans. I never myself had the pleasure of knowing the Meurices. They are very charming, are they not?"

Colburne's nerves quivered under this speech, not because he was conscious of having done any thing unbecoming a gentleman, but because he divined the clever malice of the attack. To gentle spirits the consciousness that they are the objects of spite, is a dolorous sensation.

"It is a very pleasant and intelligent family," he replied bravely.

"Who are they?" smilingly asked Miss Ravenel, who inferred from her aunt's manner that Colburne was to be charged with a flirtation.

"Ce sont des mÉtis, ma chÈre," laughed Mrs. Larue. "Il y a dÎnÉ plusieurs fois. Ces abolitionistes ont leur goÛts À eux."

Lillie colored crimson with amazement, with horror, with downright anger. To this New Orleans born Anglo-Saxon girl, full of the pride of lineage and the prejudices of the slaveholding society in which she had been nurtured, it seemed a downright insult that a gentleman who called on her, should also call on a mÉtis, and admit it and defend it. She glanced at Colburne to see if he had a word to offer of apology or explanation. It might be that he had visited these mixed bloods in the performance of some disagreeable but unavoidable duty as an officer of the Federal army. She hoped so, for she liked him too well to be willing to despise him.

"Intelligent? But without doubt," assented Madame, "if they had been stupid, you would not have dined with them four or five times."

"Three times, to be exact, Mrs. Larue," said Colburne. He had formed his line of battle, and could be not merely defiant but ironically aggressive. But the lady was master of the southern tactics; she had taken the initiative, and she attacked audaciously; although, I must explain, without the slightest sign of irritation.

"Which do you find the most agreeable," she asked, "the white people of New Orleans, or the brown?"

Colburne was tempted to reply that he did not see much difference, but refrained on account of Miss Ravenel; and, dropping satire, he entered on a calm defence, less of himself than of the mixed race in question. He affirmed their intelligence, education, good breeding, respectability of character, and exceptional patriotism in a community of rebels.

"You, Mrs. Larue, think something of the elegancies of society as an element of civilization," he said. "Now then, I am obliged to confess that these people can give a finer dinner, better selected, better cooked, better served, than I ever saw in my own city of New Boston, notwithstanding that we are as white as they are and—can't speak French. These Meurices, for example, have actually given me new ideas of hospitality, as something which may be plenteous without being coarse, and cordial without being laboreous. I don't hesitate to call them nice people. As for the African blood in their veins (if that is a reproach) I can't detect a trace of it. I shouldn't have believed it if they hadn't assured me of it. There is a little child there, a cousin, with blue eyes and straight flaxen hair. She has the honor, if it is one, of being whiter than I am."

It will be remembered here that any one who was whiter than Colburne was necessarily much whiter than Mrs. Larue.

"When I first saw the eldest Meurice," he proceeded, "I supposed from his looks that he was a German. The Major bears a striking resemblance to the first Napoleon, and is certainly one of the handsomest men that I have seen in New Orleans. His manners are charming, as I suppose they ought to be, seeing that he has lived in Paris since he was a child."

Mrs. Larue had never transgressed the borders of Louisiana.

"When this war broke out he came home to see if he might be permitted to fight for his race, and for his and my country. He now wears the same uniform that I do, and he is my superior officer."

"It is shameful," broke out Lillie.

"It is the will of authority," answered Colburne,—"of authority that I have sworn to respect."

"A southern gentleman would resign," said Mrs. Larue.

"A northern gentleman keeps his oath and stands by his flag," retorted Colburne.

Mrs. Larue paused, suppressed her rising excitement, and with an exterior air of meekness considered the situation. She had gained her battle; she had wounded and punished him; she had probably detached Lillie from him; now she would stop the conflict.

"I beg pardon," she said, looking him full in the eyes with a charming little expression of penitence. "I am sorry if I have annoyed you. I thought, I hoped, you might perhaps be obliged to me for hinting to you that these people are not received here in society. You are a stranger, and do not know our prejudices. I pray you to excuse me if I have been officious."

Colburne was astonished, disarmed, ashamed, notwithstanding that he had been in the right and was the injured party.

"Mrs. Larue, I beg your pardon," he answered. "I have been unnecessarily excited. I sincerely ask you pardon."

She accorded it in pleasant words and with the most amiable of smiles. She was a good-natured, graceful little grimalkin, she could be pretty and festive over a mouse while torturing it; so purring and velvet-pawed, indeed, that the mouse himself could not believe her to be in earnest, and prayed to be excused for turning upon her. It is probable that, not being susceptible to keen emotions, she did not know what deep pain she had given the young man by her attack. The advantage which blasÉ people have over innocents in a fight is awful. They know how to hit, and they don't mind the punishing. It is said that Deaf Burke's physiognomy was so calloused by frequent poundings that he would permit any man to give him a facer for a shilling a crack.

Lillie said almost nothing during the conversation, being quite overcome with amazement and anger at Colburne's degradation and at the wrongheadedness, the indelicacy, the fanaticism with which he defended it. When the erring young man left the house she did not give him her hand, after her usual friendly southern fashion. The pride of race, the prejudices of her education, would not permit her to be cordial, at least not in the first moments of offence, with one who felt himself at liberty to go from her parlor to that of an octoroon. How could a Miss Ravenel put herself on a level with a Miss Meurice.

"Oh, these abolitionists! these negar worshippers!" laughed Mrs. Larue, when the social heretic had taken himself away. "Are they not horrible, these New England isms? He will be joining the voodoos next. I foresee that you will have rivals, Mees Lillie. I fear that Mademoiselle Meurice will carry the day. You are under the disadvantage of being white. Et puis tu n'est pas descendue d'une race bÂtarde. Quel malheur! Je ne dirais rien s'il entretenait son octaronne a lui. VoilÀ qui est permis, bien que ce n'est pas joli."

"Mrs. Larue, I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that way;—I don't like to hear it," said Lillie, in high anger.

"Mais c'est mieux an moins que de les Épouser, les octaronnes," persisted Madame.

Miss Ravenel rose and went to her own house and room without answering. Since her father fled from New Orleans, openly espousing the cause of the North against the South, she had not been so vexed, so hurt, as she was by this vulgar conduct of her friend, Captain Colburne. Although it cannot be said that she had even begun to love him, she certainly did like him better than any other man that she ever knew, excepting her father and Colonel Carter. She had thought, also, that he liked her too well to do anything which would be sure to meet her disapprobation; and her womanly pride was exceedingly hurt in that her friendship had been risked for the sake of communion with a race of pariahs. There is little doubt that Colburne now had small chance with Miss Ravenel. He guessed as much, and the thought cut him even more deeply that he could have imagined; but he was too chivalrous to be false to his education, to his principles, to himself, though it were to gain the heart of the only woman whom he had ever loved. In fact, so fastidious was his sense of honor that he had disdained to fortify himself against Mrs. Larue's attack by stating, as he might have done truthfully, that at one of these Meurice dinners he had sat by the side of Colonel Carter.

I consider it worth while to mention here that Colburne committed a great mistake about this time in declining a regiment which the eldest Meurice offered to raise for him, providing he would apply for the colonelcy. But it was not for fear of Mrs. Larue nor yet of Miss Ravenel that he declined the proffer. He took the proposition into serious consideration and referred it to Carter, who advised him against it. Public opinion on this subject had not yet become so overpoweringly luminous that the old regular, the West Point Brahmin, could see the negro in a military light.

"I may be all wrong," he admitted with a considerable effusion of swearing. "If the war spins out it may prove me all wrong. A downright slaughtering match of three or four years will force one party or other to call in the nigger. But I can't come to it yet. I despise the low brute. I hate to see him in uniform. And then he never will be used for the higher military operations. If you take a command of niggers, you will find yourself put into Fort Pike or some such place, among the mosquitoes and fever and ague, where white men can't live. Or your regiment will be made road-builders, and scavengers, and baggage guards, to do the dirty work of white regiments. You never will form a line of battle, nor head a storming column, nor get any credit if you do. And finally, just look at the military position of these Louisiana black regiments. They are not acknowledged by the government yet; they are not a part of the army. They are only Louisiana militia, called out by General Butler on his own responsibility. Suppose the War Department shouldn't approve his policy;—then down goes your house. You have resigned your captaincy to get a sham colonelcy; and there you are, out of the service, with a bran-new uniform. Stay in the regiment. You shall have, by" (this and that!) "the first vacancy in the field positions."

In fact it was an esprit du corps which more than anything else induced Colburne to cling to the Tenth Barataria. A volunteer, a citizen soldier, new to the ways of armies, he longed to do his fighting under his own State flag, and at the head of the men whom he had himself raised and drilled for the battle-field.

About these times Colonel Carter broke up that more than questionable domestic establishment which Lieutenant Van Zandt had alluded to under the humorous misnomer of "a little French boudoir." Whether this step was taken by the advice of Mrs. Larue, or solely because the Colonel had found some source of truer enjoyment, I am unable to say; but it is certain, and it is also a very natural human circumstance, that from this day his admiration for Miss Ravenel burgeoned rapidly into the condition of a passion.