"And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky."

It was in the early days of March, some eight months later, that the big barge in which I had come down the Ohio, and thus far on the Mississippi, put me ashore at New Madrid with my saddle-bags and my horse Bourbon Prince; for so I had promptly named the black beauty for whom I had exchanged my chestnut mare. He could never quite take the place of Fatima in my affections, but I had grown very fond of him: partly for his virtues, for he was a thoroughbred of famous lineage, and partly, I have no doubt, because he had once belonged to mademoiselle.

Of mademoiselle I had not heard for many months. I had arrived at home in the late summer, to find my father a physical and almost a mental wreck from the stroke of paralysis that had laid him low nearly three months before. Yet I had never loved my strong, stern father in the prime of manhood, managing great business enterprises, occupying places of honor and responsibility in the State, as I loved this feeble and broken old man with the face and the manner of a little child. As the weeks went on and he gradually grew able to move about, it was my pride and my joy to walk slowly down Chestnut Street, my father leaning heavily on my arm, and looking up into my face to comment with childish delight upon whatever pleased him in the streets.

I had had to assume, to the best of my ability, his heavy business responsibilities, and the charge of his great properties, and but that my mother was herself a fine business woman and thoroughly informed on my father's affairs I might have made shipwreck of it all. It was not the life I had chosen for myself, but it lay so directly in the path of duty there was no escaping it, and it kept every moment so fully occupied there was no time left for brooding over private troubles.

I had received a letter from the Prince de Polignac about two weeks after my return home, telling me of the safe arrival in Baden of the Comtesse de Baloit. It was a very courteous letter, thanking me once more for the great services I had rendered them on that eventful night in the Chantilly parks, and inclosing a pleasant message of acknowledgment from the Duc d'Enghien for the kindness shown his cousin the countess. Mademoiselle had added a line in her own writing:

Pelagie."

To most people that might seem a very common-place little message; to me those sixteen words were the most wonderful ever written. I twisted and turned them until each one became a volume of tender sentiments, and the little signature "Pelagie" almost too sacred to be looked at, and only to be kissed, shut up in my own room in the dark, or with none but the moon to see.

I had replied to the prince's letter immediately, sending a courteous message to the duke and a special one to Pelagie about Clotilde, whom I had sent under safe escort to St. Louis. But although I had intimated to the prince that it would give me very great pleasure to hear occasionally of the welfare of the countess, I never heard from any of them again.

This, of course, was an especial grief to me on Pelagie's account, but also it touched me a little that the prince should so soon have forgotten me and what he was pleased to term my "great services" to him, for I had been strongly attracted to him by his noble bearing and chivalrous protection of mademoiselle. Often, in thinking of them,—he a noble young prince of great manly beauty and endowed by nature with all charming and lovable qualities; she the most exquisite of womankind,—I thought it would be strange indeed if in the intimate companionship of that long ride together they had not become so deeply interested in each other as to forget the existence of a young American gentleman three thousand miles away.

When in the winter there came news of the Cadoudal plots against the life of Napoleon, in which the young Prince de Polignac and his older brother the duke were involved; that both brothers had been arrested, tried, and condemned to death; and, later, that Napoleon had granted them a free pardon, I could easily believe that other interests than love and marriage had so absorbed the prince as to make him forgetful of a distant acquaintance.

On the heels of this appalling news, which shook the world and which yet left me glad and grateful that the chivalrous young prince had been saved from the ignominious death of an assassin, there came a letter to me from Captain Clarke, written in St. Louis, inviting me to join the expedition of discovery and exploration which Mr. Meriwether Lewis and he were to conduct up the Missouri River and across the mountains.

Few duties have come to me in life more difficult to perform than the writing of that letter declining the invitation. It was the life I longed for, to be had for the taking, and an expedition of such kind under the leadership of two men like my captain, whom I still adored, and Mr. Meriwether Lewis, whom I greatly admired, was the strongest temptation that could be presented to me.

But I knew well it was not for me. It would, no doubt, be a year or two in the accomplishing, with many hazards to life and limb, and I was now the virtual head of the family, with mother and sisters and invalid father all looking to me for protection and guidance and comfort. No, it was not to be thought of.

Without consulting any one I sent my answer, but I suppose my face was an open book to my dear mother, and in some moment of abstraction I had forgotten to be cheerful and so betrayed that something was troubling me. At any rate, she came to my room one night, and there, in the way that mothers have, she beguiled my secret from me. She agreed with me that it would never do in my father's state of health to join such an expedition, but she was greatly distressed for what she called my disappointment, though I tried to assure her it was not enough to think about.

Now mothers have a way of finding a salve for every hurt. I suppose it is a talent God has given them, that this world may be a pleasanter place for living in, and that the rugged path we have to tread through it may be smoother and pleasanter to our feet. (Though I hope no one will think because I have said this that I am one of those long-faced people who think this world a vale of woes to be traversed as quickly as possible, looking neither to the right nor to the left, lest they see something to please their eyes. I have ever found it a pleasant world, and my path through it of exceeding interest, with some sorrows and many difficulties to test one's mettle and add to the zest of living; but also with many wonderful and beautiful things lying all along the path, that God has placed there that one may stop and enjoy them and rest by the wayside.)

Now the salve my mother found for this hurt was one to my especial liking.

"Though you could not be gone from home two or three years, my son," she said, "a matter of two or three months could make no great difference to any one; why not go out to St. Louis, see your friends there, and help the expedition get under way?"

My heart gave a great leap. "And get news of mademoiselle from Dr. Saugrain," I said to myself; but then I hesitated. Would my father miss me too sadly? for he had seemed to lean upon me much for comfort and companionship. When I expressed my fears to my mother, she hesitated also, but we both finally agreed we would leave it to her to broach the matter to my father, and if it seemed to distress him too greatly, we would say nothing more about it.

To my surprise, he was almost more eager for it than my mother. It need not have surprised me, for even in the old days my father, though stern, had never been selfish, and now all the unselfishness of his nature had seemed to grow strong with his feebleness.

Thus it was that I stood once more on the shores of the Great River. Had my impatience permitted me to wait a little longer at Pittsburg, I might have found a boat going all the way to St. Louis, but I had rather take the ride of nearly a hundred and fifty miles on Bourbon (for so I had shortened his name) than to spend a day in idle waiting. A barge going to New Orleans (New Orleans had been under our flag since the twentieth of December, and the river was teeming with craft bearing our merchandise to the once prohibited market) took me on board and put me ashore at New Madrid in the early morning, and I lost not a moment's time in getting started on my northward way.

The spring was early that year, and in the warm and sheltered valley, lying open to the south, where New Madrid nestles, the orchards were already a pink and white glory, and in the forest glades the wild azaleas and the dogwood were just ready to burst into bloom. Riding under leafy archways of tall trees garlanded with wild vines, or through natural meadows dotted with clumps of shrubbery, as if set out by the hand of man for a park, where the turf was like velvet under Bourbon's feet; crossing little streams that a sudden rush of headwater from the hills had swollen to dangerous torrents, or other streams that backwater from the Great River had converted into inland lakes; the air sweet with the fragrance of the wild crab and blossoming grape; wood-thrush and oriole, meadow-lark and cardinal-bird, making the woods ring with their melodies—this ride through Upper Louisiana in the early springtime was one long joy to eye and ear and nostril. Farther north the spring was less advanced, only little leaves on the trees, and for flowers a carpet, sometimes extending for miles, of creamy-white spring-beauties, streaked with rosy pink, laid down for Bourbon's feet to tread upon; and for birds the modest song-sparrow and bluebird, earliest harbingers of spring.

I stayed the first night in Cape Girardeau (and thought of the chevalier in hiding for weeks among the Osages near by); the second night I spent with the VallÉs in Ste. Genevieve. I had known young FranÇois VallÉ in St. Louis the winter before, and meeting me on the street as I rode into town, he carried me off at once to his father's house with true Louisiana hospitality—a hospitality that welcomed the coming but did not speed the parting guest. I found it hard work to get away the next morning, with such friendly insistence did they urge me to remain for a visit, seeming to feel also that I was putting a slight upon their quaint old town—the oldest in Upper Louisiana—by so short a stay.

But I was impatient to be on my way, and my impatience grew as I neared St. Louis. A long day's ride brought me toward evening to the banks of the Maramec, full to the brim of its high banks with backwater from the Mississippi. I thought, at first, I would have to swim it, but, fortunately, I spied a horn hanging from the limb of a sycamore above my head, and I knew enough of the ways of this frontier country to know that a horn by a river-bank meant a ferry. So I blew it lustily, and in five minutes there appeared from under the overhanging trees of the opposite bank a flatboat, paddled by an old man, who not only ferried Bourbon and me safely across dry-shod, but persuaded me to spend the night with him in his little cabin; for the night was coming on cloudy and dark, and there were still nearly twenty miles to ride, and swollen streams to cross that might mean trouble in the dark. He had not the great house of the VallÉs, with troops of slaves to wait on us and an abundance of frontier luxuries (for Mr. FranÇois VallÉ, Sr., was the richest man in all that country) but his hospitality was as genuine. For the ferriage he took money, since that was his business; for the night's lodging and supper and breakfast he would have none of it. True, my bed was only a bearskin on the hard floor, and my supper and breakfast were the same,—a slice of bacon and a bowl of hominy,—but such as he had he gave me of his best.

In the early dawn I had a plunge in the Maramec for bath (and its waters had the icy tang of the melting snows on the distant mountains), and then I made a careful toilet, for in a few hours I would see my old friends in St. Louis, and, at thought of the merry glances from bright eyes I would soon be meeting, my heart sank within me that Pelagie's would not be among them.

As I neared St. Louis, every step of the way was full of reminders of her. Crossing La Petite RiviÈre, I thought of the day of the picnic on Chouteau's Pond, and involuntarily I listened for the call of the whippoorwill. But instead there was the happy song of the spring birds filling the woods that crested the banks, and my heart grew lighter in response to their joyous melodies.

I entered the town by the lower entrance, leading through the stockade on to the Rue Royale, for I was of a mind to ride through the streets of the town and see whom I should chance to meet before presenting myself at Dr. Saugrain's.

I had advanced no great distance when I saw coming to meet me a splendid procession: young men and maidens, parents and children, the whole population of the town, I should think, in gala array, and singing as they came.

I was overwhelmed at the prospect of such honor accorded me, and greatly touched, too, that my old friends should welcome me back so gladly, but I was in a quandary what to do: whether it would be more dignified to stay Bourbon in the middle of the road and await their approach, or whether to advance to meet them.

It puzzled me greatly, also, that they should have known the exact moment of my arrival, for although both Dr. Saugrain and Captain Clarke knew of my intended visit, they could hardly have calculated to such a nicety not only the day but the very hour of my entry into town. It must be that pickets had been stationed to descry my approach from a distance and give the signal.

Still puzzling my brains over the wonder of it all, and hardly knowing whether to feel more proud or more frightened at the honor intended me, and wishing with all my heart that I had known of it that I might have arrayed myself in a costume befitting the occasion, I slowly drew near the procession, and the procession drew near me.

Then suddenly I discovered what nothing but my domtiferous vanity had prevented me from discerning from the first: this was a religious procession bearing the banners of the church and singing Aves and Te Deums. I had known such processions before in St. Louis on saints' days, and always headed by the two most beautiful maidens in the town, bearing silver plates, who, as the procession drew up to the church, stood on either side of the door holding the plates to receive alms. I drew Bourbon to one side of the road and waited.

Yes, there were the two beautiful maidens with the silver plates, and I was not surprised to see that one was Mademoiselle Chouteau; and as she drew near she could not resist a saucy look of recognition in her dancing eyes, entirely out of character in the leader of a religious procession. I smiled back at her, my heart already growing warmer and lighter with her friendliness, and then I glanced at the other: a wavy mass of soft, dark hair, little ringlets about white neck and brow, lips like a scarlet pomegranate blossom, and long, black lashes lying on an ivory cheek, where the pale rose was fast turning to crimson under my gaze.

It was Pelagie! Her cheek told the tale that she knew I was looking at her, yet not once did she lift her eyes and look at me. I wonder that my heart did not break through my breast, so great a bound it made when I discovered her, and then all the blood in my body flowed back upon it, and I sat on Bourbon as one carved in marble, while friends and acquaintances passed by and smiled up at me in kindly welcome. Not until Josef Papin left the ranks and came up to me with outstretched hand could I recover myself and begin to feel alive again, with the blood slowly running back in its courses and tingling in my finger-tips.

"Come," he said, when the first greetings were over, "tie your horse to the tree, and we will fall in at the end of the line and go up to the church together. This is no saint's day, as you might think, but we are to have mass for the last time under the old rule. The United States troops come over to-day from Cahokia and take possession."

This was wonderful news to me, and I could not but feel a great sympathy with him, for he spoke with a voice that faltered. What would it not have meant to me if my own city of Philadelphia were being transferred to the rule of France or Spain!

On our way he told me what my soul most longed to hear: how mademoiselle came to be in St. Louis.

Her cousin, the Duc d'Enghien, had begun to feel that his home was no longer a safe place for her, for Bonaparte's spies were watching him, and he felt that though Baden was neutral territory he might at any moment be arrested and thrown into prison. That would leave Pelagie entirely unprotected, and he had begun to consider some other safer retreat for her. When mademoiselle found that she was to be sent away from Ettenheim, she begged that she might return to St. Louis, the only place she had known as home, and to the people she loved, who had been to her kindred and friends. It was only after much pleading that the duke had been persuaded to let her go so far from home again, but mademoiselle's heart was set on it.

"And," said Josef Papin, "as we both know, when she will, she will; I defy any man to gainsay her. She arrived two weeks ago by way of New Orleans, with a Monsieur and Madame Dubois, newly married, I believe, who were coming over to America to settle."

"Monsieur and Madame Dubois!" I said, in some excitement.

"Yes; do you know them?" asked Josef, curiously.

"I am not sure. I may have met them; I met a Monsieur and Madame Dubois once at Chantilly near Paris," I answered carelessly, "but very likely they are not the same."

"No, they could not be," answered Josef, "for they were married only just before leaving for America."

And then there was no chance to say anything more, for our end of the procession was nearing the church door, where on either side stood Mademoiselle Chouteau and Pelagie, holding out their silver plates already piled high with livres.

As I glanced at Pelagie I felt as if royalty radiated from her—from the proud pose of her dainty head to the high-bred arch of her little foot. "A princess of CondÉ!" I exclaimed to myself half angrily, "and meekly holding the church plate for negroes and Indians and humble habitans, and smiling up into the faces of her old friends with a royal sweetness."

I was on the side next her as we drew near the door. Will she look at me? I wondered. We were the last in the line; it would hinder no one if I stopped a moment beside her.

But I could not make her look up at me. One louis d'or after another I piled upon her plate, but the only effect it had was to make it tremble in her hands and the color deepen steadily in her face. I could not stand there gazing rudely at her, and I went into the church beside Josef Papin as in a dream, half doubting it was mademoiselle, yet watching her eagerly as she and Mademoiselle Chouteau bore the plates up the aisle and held them aloft before the altar for the priest to bless.

The service that followed was indescribably solemn and touched me greatly; it was as though it were a service for the dead, and the people (the whole village was there, every man, woman, and child I had known the year before) chanted the responses with the tears running down their cheeks. Josef Papin had told me that the old priest who had baptized all the younger generation and married their parents was going away with the Spaniards, unwilling to be subject to a foreign rule, and the mourning of the people for their father was from the heart.

As they knelt upon the floor to receive the benediction (and the sound of their kneeling was like the breeze among the dry leaves of autumn) they broke out into a long, low wail that rose and swelled and then died away in the sound of suppressed sobbing. Nevermore under Latin rule would they kneel in their dear old church, but under the rule of the hated Anglo-Saxons, their hereditary foe. Nevermore would the priest they had loved and reverenced for years extend his hands over them in blessing. The good father's voice broke again and again as he tried in vain to utter the familiar words, until at length, his hands upraised to heaven, tears streaming from his eyes, he uttered the simple words, "Go in peace, my children."

I was near the door and I slipped quietly out. It was not a time to meet old friends, and I felt like one intruding upon a house of mourning. Heads were still bowed in the solemn hush that followed the benediction and no one saw me go. I hurried back to where I had left Bourbon, mounted him, and rode slowly up toward Government House.

Long before I reached it the streets were filled. With the quick change from grave to gay, natural to these volatile creoles, the same people that a few moments ago had been all tears and sorrow were now all excitement and curiosity. Down from the fort on the hill marched a troop of Spanish soldiers, stopping at Government House to salute the governor, and then forming in company order in front of the house to await the coming of the United States troops.

Beside Governor Delassus on the gallery of Government House stood my old friend Mr. Meriwether Lewis; for he seemed an old friend to me, though I had known him but that one memorable day in Washington. In response to a friendly wave of the hand from both I dismounted and ran up the steps to speak to them for a moment. They presented me to a third officer, Captain Stoddard, the officer in command of the United States troops who were to take possession, and also, as Governor Delassus informed me, empowered by the French prefect at New Orleans to receive the city for the French republic from the Spanish.

I stayed only a moment, for Captain Lewis told me I would find Captain Clarke and Dr. Saugrain at the landing at the foot of the Rue Bonhomme, so I followed in the wake of the motley crowd of habitans, negroes, and Indians trooping along the Rue Royale and filling La Place with a many-colored throng, as they had filled it on the day I first set foot in St. Louis.

Bourbon Prince picked his way carefully along the steep path that led down the bluff to the landing at the foot of the Rue Bonhomme, where the boats from Cahokia bearing the United States troops were already approaching the shore, and where I found awaiting them, as Captain Lewis had said I should, my old friend, the little doctor, and my captain (for so I shall always call Captain Clarke), and the warmth of their greeting set my heart to dancing merrily.

My spirits had been rising steadily every moment since I had recovered from my stupefaction at the sight of Pelagie. What though she would not look at me, I was nothing daunted; for now that she was safe on American soil,—yes, American, Spanish no longer,—nor chevaliers nor dukes nor First Consuls should deter me from boldly trying to win her. For the first time since I had known her I felt that I had a right to try. She was no longer a titled lady of France, and I was now my own master and could maintain her in greater luxury than she had ever known. I would take her home with me to Philadelphia! and my dear mother and my fond old father would love her as they loved my sisters. My spirit was exultant, and that she dared not meet my eyes lent more of hope than discouragement.

So it was with a happy heart that I met the little doctor's beaming glance, and felt the strong grasp of my captain's hand as he uttered his hearty "Welcome home, my lad." And little I cared that he called me lad; indeed, had he addressed me by any other title I should have missed some of the friendliness of his greeting.

"You are to stay at ÉmigrÉ's Retreat, you know," said Dr. Saugrain; "Madame Saugrain is as happy in the thought of your home-coming as if you were her own boy."

But Josef Papin coming down the bluff at that moment and overhearing the doctor, interposed:

"No, Dr. Saugrain, he is my guest this time. You had him all last winter, and you have had Captain Clarke and Captain Lewis all this winter; you must share some of your honors with me."

It was not for me to decide a question of such kind, and though my heart turned longingly to the hospitable hearth that had first entertained me in St. Louis, feeling that in no other house would it seem so truly a home-coming, yet I was not sure but it was better that it was finally decided that I should stay with Josef Papin, for I was determined to put my fortune to the touch, and should Pelagie prove unkind (a contingency, however, that I refused to contemplate), it would be embarrassing indeed to be under the same roof with her.

But now there was no longer time for discussion of any kind, for the boats were running their keels into the bank, and Lieutenant Worrall, temporarily in command of the troops, was the first man to leap ashore. We all went down to meet him, and when he had formed his battalion in line, we accompanied him up the steep bluff and down the Rue Royale to Government House, a great throng following.

Then Lieutenant Worrall drew up his troops facing the Spanish troops. The open space where the Rue Royale crossed the Rue de la Tour was densely packed with people. Every man, woman, and child of the village, it seemed to me, must be there, yet I looked in vain for either Madame Saugrain or Pelagie. I fastened Bourbon farther up the street, and at the invitation of Governor Delassus sent us by an orderly I accompanied Dr. Saugrain, Josef Papin, and my captain to the gallery of Government House, where we found also both the Chouteaus and many of the leading citizens of the village.

As soon as the American troops were drawn up in line, Governor Delassus stepped to the front of the gallery, holding in his hand a document bearing the seals of the United States and of Spain, and at a sign from him, Captain Stoddard stepped to his side, a similar document in his hand. Then Governor Delassus held the paper up so that all the people might see, and, as every voice was hushed and all eyes turned on him, he read:

"Now be it known unto all men by these presents that I, Carlos D. Delassus, in quality of lieutenant-governor, at the requirement duly made to me by Amos Stoddard, agent and commissary of the French republic, have delivered to him the full possession, sovereignty, and government of Upper Louisiana, with all the military posts, quarters, and fortifications thereto belonging or dependent thereof."

Immediately Captain Stoddard took up the refrain, reading on from where the governor stopped:

"And I, Amos Stoddard, commissary as such, do acknowledge to have received the said possession on the same terms mentioned in these presents, of which I acknowledge myself satisfied and possessed on this day. In testimony whereof the lieutenant-governor and myself have respectively signed these presents, sealed with the seal of our arms, being assisted with the witnesses signed below. Of which proceedings six copies have been made out, to wit, three in the Spanish and three in the English languages.

"Given in the town of St. Louis of Illinois, 9th March, 1804.