The thirty-one must bills which were certain to be enacted into law within no more than three more days were the subject of Sunday’s mealtime talk throughout Louisiana that noon. Huey Long was expressing complete confidence as to what these would do to “put a crimp into Roosevelt’s notion he can run Louisiana.” Everyone who paused at his table in the capitol cafeteria was given the same heartening assurance.

In private homes everywhere authentic information as to what the new laws would provide was available for the first time on this day. In New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Monroe, Alexandria, Shreveport, and Lake Charles the morning papers had carried full accounts of the introduction of these measures, giving the subject matter of each bill in summary form.

Thus the members of the Weiss family at last had before them full information about the measure which would displace the father of young Mrs. Weiss from the judicial position he had held continuously since before she was born. But the table talk at the senior Dr. Weiss’s home was anything but dispirited.

“My son ate heartily and joked at the dinner,” he said when referring to the occasion; and this was borne out in a statement by Yvonne’s uncle, Dr. F. Octave Pavy, who was in Baton Rouge for the session as one of St. Landry parish’s three House members.

In any case, while the gerrymander was not ignored in the Weiss family conversation, it was not looked upon as a disaster; and after dinner all five—three men named Carl Austin Weiss and the wives of the two older ones—motored to the Amite River where Dr. Weiss, Sr., had a summer camp.

Frequently on such occasions, but by no means always, Carl and Yvonne took with them the small-caliber Belgian automatic pistol he had brought back from abroad and customarily kept in his car when he went out on night calls. He and his wife would engage in target practice, shooting at cans either while these were stationary or as they floated down the placid current of the river.

But on this particular Sunday they did not bring the gun. Carl and Yvonne went swimming and had a gay time of it, while the elders, seated on the warm sand of the high bank, dandled their wonderful three-month-old grandson.

“While they were swimming,” Dr. Weiss, Sr., recalled later, “I remarked to my wife: ‘That boy is just skin and bones,’ and she said: ‘Yes, we have got to make him take a rest, he has been working too hard lately.’”

Seeing them there, that pleasant afternoon, any observer would have concluded that this was a family group whose members gave no indication of being troubled by forebodings of an impending disaster.

Obviously the wonderful baby must have had a feeding and an occasional change sometime during the afternoon, and no doubt he slept in his mother’s arms once the party tidied up the camp ground, got into the car, and headed homeward a little after sundown.

In his high apartment Huey Long, who had not left the capitol since Murphy Roden drove him to Baton Rouge from New Orleans on the previous afternoon, gathered his top legislative and political leaders for a consultation about the candidate his faction should endorse for governor. His brother Earl was not among those present, nor was he under consideration for any elective office. The breach between them stemmed from the time Earl ran for lieutenant governor on an anti-Huey ticket three years before.

Justice Fournet, who stood high in the Kingfish’s favor, was not present at the conference either. He did not reach the capitol until well after dark. Another absentee was Judge Richard W. Leche of the Circuit Court of Appeal, but——

“Huey had telephoned me to come up for the session,” he said in recalling what he could of the day’s events. “However, I had been thrown from a horse just a fortnight or so before, while vacationing with Mrs. Leche in Arizona. The fall fractured my left upper arm just below the shoulder. Huey had joked with me about it, saying it was a pity I hadn’t broken my neck instead, and I replied that this illustrated once more his readiness to make any sacrifice for the good of the state.

“When he asked me if I would come to Baton Rouge for the session, I assumed this was because I had been Governor Allen’s secretary and knew all the legislators. But since it was hardly proper for a judge of the appellate bench to be a lobbyist even on behalf of the administration to which he owes his position, I told him that with my left arm in an airplane splint it was almost impossible for me to get around, and that I would have to stay in New Orleans right along to have dressings changed, and the like. He didn’t seem pleased, but nothing more was said about it at the time.

“However, when he called me at my home in Metairie Sunday afternoon he had something else in mind. The first thing he asked me was: ‘Dick, what the hell are you, outside of being an Indian?’ For a moment this had me stumped. I couldn’t imagine what he meant. Then I remembered that two or three years earlier, a group of us were chatting about one thing and another, and the question of religion came up. That was one thing Huey never bothered about. I mean what any man’s religious beliefs were. Anyway, someone in the crowd asked me what my religion was. I answered that as I saw it, religion was something that dealt with the hereafter, and the only people who had a hereafter I thought I could enjoy were the Indians. They believed in a happy hunting ground, and as for me, give me a gun and a dog and some shells and you could keep your harps and your wings. Anyway, I said I guessed that by religion I would be classed as an Indian. So when Huey asked me over the phone what I was, aside from being an Indian, I said:

“‘You mean you’re asking me what my religion is?’

“‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he answered. ‘You’re going to be my candidate for governor, and some of the boys here said I couldn’t run you because you’re a Catholic and it’s too tough to swing north Louisiana’s vote to a Catholic for governor.’

“‘Well, I was born a Catholic,’ I told him.

“‘You didn’t run out on them, did you?’ he demanded.

“‘No,’ I told him, ‘but I changed to the Presbyterian church a long time back. Now listen, Huey. I’ve got no idea of running for governor. I’ve got exactly the kind of position I like, and down here they make a practice of re-electing judges who have not been guilty of flagrant misconduct, so my future’s secure.’

“He said something about how I had better leave all that to him, and he would see me in New Orleans as soon as the session was over and we would talk further about it. That ended the conversation. I never spoke to him again.”

Another of the intimates Huey Long summoned to Baton Rouge that afternoon was Public Service Commissioner (now Juvenile Court Judge) James P. O’Connor. The reason for this was never disclosed, for when O’Connor arrived “we just chatted about a lot of inconsequentialities. One of the things he was all worked up over was writing some more songs with Castro Carrazo for the L.S.U. football team.”

The afternoon wore on. Apparently Judge Leche was the only one in whom the Senator confided about the gubernatorial selection.

“Senator Long did not leave the capitol all day,” Murphy Roden says in telling about the events in which he played so large a role. “As long as he was in his apartment there was no break in the stream of people who came to call on him. The House was to meet that night and approve the committee’s favorable report on the bills so they could be passed and sent to the Senate the next day.

“After he dressed, the Senator was in and out of the apartment, spending some of the time in Governor Allen’s office. I brought his supper up to him from the cafeteria, and several persons were there talking to him while he ate, but no one ate with him. He went down to the governor’s office about seven o’clock, even though the House wasn’t scheduled to meet until eight.”