"a yellow primrose was to him----"

yonder in the parlor with the ducatels, ignorant of the poet's lines as they, the two aunts--those two consciously irremovable, unadjustable, incarnated interdictions to their niece's marriage--saw the primrose, the "business," as the pair in the bower thought they saw it themselves. were not aline and chester immersed in that tale of servile insurrection so destitute of angels, guiding stars, and lovers? and was not hector with them? and are not three as truly a crowd in french as in american?

"well, to begin," chester urged, "your grandfather, théophile chapdelaine, was born in this old quarter, in such a street. royal?"

"yes. nearly opposite the ladies' entrance of that hotel st. louis now perishing."

"except its dome. i hear there's a movement----

"yes, to save that. i hope 'twill succeed. to me that old dome is a monument of those two men."

"but if it comes down the home remains, opposite, where both were born, were they not?"

"yes. yet i'd rather the dome. we creoles, you know, are called very conservative."

"yet no race is more radical than the french."

"true. and we chapdelaines have always been radical. grandpère was, though a slaveholder."

"oh, none of my ancestors justified slavery, yet as planters they had to own negroes."

"but the chapdelaines were not planters. they were agents of ships. fifty times on one page in the old picayune, or in l'abeille--'for freight or passage apply to the master on board or to t. chapdelaine & son, agents.' even then there were two théophiles, and grandpapa was the son. they were wholesale agents also for french exporters of artistic china, porcelain, glass, bronze. twice they furnished the hotel with everything of that kind; when it first opened, and when it changed hands. that's how they came to hold stock in it. grandpapa, outdoor man of the firm, was every day in the rotunda, under that dome."

"yes," chester said, "it was a kind of rialto, i know. they called it the 'exchange,' as earlier they had called maspero's."

"you love our small antiquities. so do i. well, grandpapa did much business there, both of french goods and of ships; and because the hotel was the favorite of the sugar-planters its rotunda was one of the principal places for slave auctions."

"yes, they were, i know, almost daily. the old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine."

"ah, genuine or not, what difference? from one that was there grandpère bought many slaves. he and his father speculated in them."

"why! how strange! the son? your grandfather? the radical, who married--'maud'?"

"yes, the last slave he bought was for her."

"why, why, why! he couldn't have met her be'--well--before the year of lincoln's election."

"no, let me tell you. you remember 'sidney'?"

"'maud's' black maid? my uncle's euonymus? yes."

"well, when she came to maud, at maud's home, in the north, she was still in agony about mingo, who'd been recaptured. so maud wrote south, to her aunt, who wrote back: 'yes, he had been brought home, and at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here in new orleans.' so then sidney begged maud, who by luck was coming here, to bring her here to find him."

"brave sidney. brave euonymus."

"yes--although--her southern mistress--i know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. that made it safer, i suppose, eh?"

"yes. but--who told you all this so exactly--your grand'mère herself, or your grandpère?"

"ah--she, no. i never saw her. and grandpère--no, he was killed before i was born."

"what?"

"yes, all that i'll come to. this i'm telling now is from my own papa. he had it from grandpère. grand'mère and sidney came with friends, a gentleman and his wife, by ship from new york."

"and all put up at hotel st. louis?"

"yes. from there maud and sidney began their search. but now, first, about that speculating in slaves: those two théophiles, first the father, then both, hated slavery. 'twas by nature and in everything that they were radical. their friends knew that, even when they only said, 'oh, you are extreme!' or 'those chapdelaines are extremist.' in those years from about eighteen-forty to 'sixty----"

"when the slavery question was about to blaze----"

"yes--they voted whig. that was the most antislavery they could vote and stay here. but under the rose they said: 'all right! extremist, yet whig; we'll be extreme whig of a new kind. we'll trade in slaves.'"

chester laughed. "i begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance bade aline note the rapt attention of cupid. her answering smile was so confidential that his heart leaped.

"i'll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then resumed: "while grandpère was yet a boy his father had begun that, that slave-buying. on that auction-block he would often see a slave about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be increased by training to some trade. you see?--blacksmith, lady's maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?"

chester darkened. "so he made the thing pay?"

"seem to pay. looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for something else."

"but in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make profits difficult?"

"ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it at all. they would not have been respected."

"but t. chapdelaine & son were respected."

"yes, in spite of that. their friends said: 'let the extremists be extreme that way.'"

"the public mind was not yet quite in flames."

"no. but--guess who helped grandpère do that."

"why, do i know him? castanado."

the girl shook her head.

"who? beloiseau?"

"ah, you! you can guess better."

"ovide lan'--no, ovide was still a slave."

"yet more free than most free negroes. 'twas he. he was janitor to offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of the slave-mart. and when he found one who was quite of the right kind--and ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know--he would show him to grandpère, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, grandpère would buy him--or her."

"what was one of 'quite the right kind'? one willing to buy his own freedom?"

"ah, also to do something more; you see?"

"yes, i see," chester laughed; "to help others run away, wasn't it?"

"not precisely to run, but----"

"to stow away, on those ships, h'm?" there was rapture in crossing that h'm line of intimacy. "i see it all! ha-ha, i see it all! well! that brings us back to 'maud,' doesn't it--h'm?"

"yes. they met, she and grandpère, at a ball, in the hotel. but"--aline smiled--"that was not their first. their first was two or three mornings before, when he, passing in royal street, and she--with sidney--looking at old buildings in conti street----"

"mademoiselle! that happened to them?--there?"

"yes, to them, there." with level gaze narrator and listener regarded each other. then they glanced at cupid. his eyes were shining on them.

"who is our young friend, anyhow?" asked chester.

"ah, i suppose you have guessed. he is the grandson of sidney."