The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  “Hurry, abbé,” the man in the carriage said, “the dogs of the watch are at our heels.” He reached over and hauled up the small figure by the collars, dropping him in the seat. Then the carriage rattled down the street.

  When the doctor awoke from his swoon, he found himself in the hands of two watchmen, who bore him away despite all his protests and assurances. They took the poor man to be a suspicious person, a conviction that would have been dropped if they had simply looked at him carefully. They would later learn that their officiousness had been out of place.

  • • •

  By about midnight, dreadful weather had set in. There was a heavy, depressing rain that poured down on the uneven, broken pavement, and within a few moments the part of the street on which the miserable tenement of our unfortunate family lay was under water. Despite the ceaseless rain, the air was so humid that even those with the healthiest natures felt half sick and were beset by the most painful feelings. Yes, often it seemed as if all the air had been pumped out of the city. The depressing, warm rain appeared as lifeless as the monotonous dark gray night sky, in which no distinct cloud gave the slightest sign of movement—in short, it was perfectly treacherous fever weather.

  On this night, the disease raged at its worst. Because the humidity in the room was intolerable, Lorie had opened the only window, outside of which a deteriorated shutter of blistered green paint hung only by a loose nail. She would have liked to have opened the door as well, but she worried that it would attract the curious, who might see her at work and disturb her. For in these days there were many worthless wanderers who would boldly walk through any open door under the pretext of helping those ill of fever and then would do the most dreadful things. Lorie had heard many stories about such rabble, so she thought it better to keep the door closed until the physician, whose unfortunate situation was unknown to her, should return.

  Lorie had much trouble with her patients. It was easy enough with Constanze and her mother, who needed bandages on their stomachs with a large piece of ice, to drive the blood that had settled in their upper torso into their lower torso. They even took the quinine that she had obtained on the doctor’s order without complaint. But Gertrude and Amelie would simply not be still. The former appeared not even to know Lorie any more. She had continuous hallucinations about Lorie, and she spoke her friend’s name time and again, but when Lorie drew too near she screamed and stamped her hands and feet, thinking there was a stranger near who wished to do her harm. Lorie wept bitter tears over this. She was not able to give Gertrude so much as a drop of the medicine the physician had prescribed. Only with great difficulty did she manage to get her into a position to place her feet in a mustard bath. Good-hearted, complaisant Lorie also managed the same maneuver with Amelie, encountering only rather mild resistance.

  The little nurse had great trouble preparing the bath itself. The few slats that lay in the corner of the chimney, which Gertrude had brought the day before from the cooper’s shop, burned too quickly for her to warm the water more than halfway. So Lorie found herself in a serious quandary. Then she recalled having stumbled over a board that was on the counter right by the door. With great trouble, she managed to split it into several pieces using a long, rusty table knife. These were still too long, so she broke them several times over her knee and then laid them in the chimney in a little pile. But it was still a considerable time before she managed to get the wood to burn, for it was rather moist and produced dreadful smoke.

  After long, hard effort and patient waiting, she finally managed to get a fire going to procure hot water for the bath.

  The little well-intentioned thing still did not have peace for a moment. Ice bandages had to be changed constantly, and the soaked cloths had to be unwrapped so others, which were not plentiful, could be applied. She had to get new cloths because otherwise the available ice would have been used up too quickly. So she moved from one patient to another, applying fresh ice, now here, now there. Often her eyes closed, and she would have loved to sleep for an hour, but she always overcame her fatigue and did her duty.

  Good, poor Lorie! Out of love for you, I hope there is a heaven where you will receive your due. Out of love for you, I would create a God who would see your efforts and give you angel’s wings. For people, little Lorie, only respect splendid, outstanding deeds. The poor child, who works so alone among those stricken by fever and fulfills her duties so truly—such a poor child is not worthy of respect among people. They are disgusting, and Mr. Joshua W* is their man, since he gave two hundred and fifty dollars to the Howard Association for the poor sick of the city—he is named, praised, and lionized! People are that way, and they cannot change.

  As little as Lorie wanted to, and as much as she feared to, she finally had to open the chamber door. What drove her to this was not so much the humidity as it was a repellent miasma that had begun to spread in the room, seeping through the closed door. At first Lorie paid it no heed, for she knew nothing of the enclosure and thought that the room in which her patients were located was the only one they occupied. Once she thought about it, it seemed odd to her that neither the old count nor Hugo and Suzie were there, but the condition of her sick charges did not permit her to ask them about it. And so she forgot it at once. But now her eyes fell on that door leading to the enclosure, where the dreadful disease had been resting for the night. “Where does this door lead?” the good little girl asked herself. Perhaps it led to a kitchen or to a yard where there was a cistern from which she could draw water? And this nurse needed water very badly, for she had used the last drop. So she thought and considered. After making fresh bandages for the sick persons, she approached the door on her toes. She took the empty bucket in her left hand. Quietly she opened the door and looked in with extended neck—but it was very dark inside. She could not make out anything but the end of a mattress that lay by the wall, touching the threshold.

  She felt nauseous and stepped back; she touched the back of her head with her right hand and let the bucket fall. The mother heard the fall and attempted to raise herself up. It also awoke Constanze from a feverish dream. It was not a loud fall—it was only a bucket falling to the floor, but persons so sick hear the smallest sound. Gertrude, on the other hand, heard nothing.

  She was still hallucinating. And Amelie? Who knows why she did not hear it?

  Outside at the same instant there was a loud splash in the water that had gathered around the tenement from the constant rain. Then two men rushed in; one, a gaunt man with long, pitch-black hair and a luxuriant beard of the same color, called to the other: “Close the door, abbé—we are safe here!”

  Chapter 3

  HOW IT HAPPENED

  The stream of life drives us into such a Charybdis of trouble and pain that everyone has felt the need at times to stop still and simply weep. But fortunately the tears do not flow for long, and soon irony lets out its Homeric peal of laughter. So we often see Democritus and Heraclitus joining hands, and it is good that this is so.

  We had to weep at Aunty Celestine’s pitiable bier—but then we concluded that drama and had a good laugh at the Hamburg Mill. Now we find the count’s family in deep misfortune for the second time. And once more we must stop and weep without knowing the cause that conjured up this hopeless misery.

  Hadn’t all the arrangements been made to return Jenny and Frida to the arms of the count’s family? And wasn’t the count’s family to cross Lake Pontchartrain, where they were to receive a joyous welcome, as we already know? What strange and dreadful events befell them? The sympathetic reader might well have asked this when we entered the impoverished tenement—or even before that, when we saw Gertrude wandering about, so poor and abandoned, seeking a doctor! Listen, then, to how it happened:

  Two days before the scheduled departure across Lake Pontchartrain, Lady Evans-Stuart held a party in her residence on Annunciation Square,3 in honor of the birthday of her daughter, the angelic beauty Dudley. Present were the prince of Württemberg, Countess
Jenny R*, Count Lajos Est*** and spouse, the Countesses Constanze and Gertrude, Baroness Alma de Saint Marie-Église and her niece Claudine, and a captain of the United States Army who happened to be in New Orleans and had been presented as an old acquaintance to the elderly Scotswoman by the prince of Württemberg.

  In keeping with old Scottish custom, the daughter of the house, Miss Dudley, acted as hostess. It was a marvel to see how this angelic being, who one could not imagine doing anything save kneeling before an altar, was able to observe the finest points of protocol in this high society. Dudley was dressed in snowy white. Through her hair was woven a string of pearls that would have made a princess boast. About her sparkling white neck, through which one could follow the coursing of the blood in her veins, lay a small, golden dove holding a cross set with diamonds. The mother was dressed as simply as the daughter, save that she had chosen a dark color suitable to her age, an ensemble that pleased the captain very much. He appreciated her clothing all the more in contrast to the overdone and garish dresses he had disliked upon the much older women in Washington. To be sure, the old Scottish woman still wore a form of mourning in honor of her late husband, which she had sworn to do until her death, but the very fact that, unlike many coquettishly inclined women who exploited this situation to announce their return to flirting, her dignity of dress was a touchstone of her noble, respectable attitude. Lady Evans-Stuart sat on a sofa of dark green satin, with Prince Paul of Württemberg at her right. He wore a dark blue demifrock with yellow metal buttons and narrow trousers of the finest white cloth. On his left breast could be seen the Grand Cross of a prince of the royal house, half hidden by his lapels. The prince had chosen this decoration to show the captain his esteem for the uniform of the United States. The captain had the fine tact to understand this gesture. He, like the others already named, sat to the side of the sofa in such a way that their chairs formed a semicircle. We should also pay attention to how they are dressed. On the right of the prince of Württemberg, who sat with Lady Evans-Stuart on the sofa, was Countess Frida, whose husband sat on the opposite side, to the left of Lady Evans-Stuart. Countess Frida wore a black barège dress decorated with black silken stripes on the bias that reached below her knee and ran in circles about her dress at narrowing intervals. Her pale face showed her deep mourning even more thoroughly than this dress. In her luxurious, full hair was set a white camellia of the most unsullied purity. The flower was set to one side, and it seemed to be kissing the blonde’s startlingly white head. Her sister, who sat next to the captain, was dressed in the same way, but with the slight difference, hardly discernable, that the sleeves of her dress were wider at the front, so that her whole arm was visible with the slightest movement. She had a dark red camellia, instead of white, in her raven-black hair.

  Count Lajos Est***, who, like his wife, was dressed in deep mourning because of their dead child, aroused the greatest interest in the old Scotswoman from the moment he appeared. He was no less marveled at in silence by the captain and the old baroness of Saint Marie, who, among her other jewelry, was dripping with diamonds and bore a large signet ring engraved with a coat of arms. Her niece Claudine, the unhappy young woman and, as we know, Orleana’s bosom friend, wore fresh, bright colors that made an unfortunate contrast with her pale, suffering features. She also stood out for having attached to her bosom a nosegay of pansies, the sign of a lesbian. Her light brown hair was parted, as usual, à la fleur-de-Marie, and shone like pure silk.

  The little Countess Gertrude, with her German forget-me-not eyes and her fabled golden Lorelei hair, sat in her sky-blue dress with its low-cut bodice next to Miss Dudley.

  Countess Gertrude and her sister Constanze each wore a small artificial rose of black crepe as a sign of their sympathy for the deep mourning of Count Lajos and his wife. The prince of Württemberg also wore a small strip of crepe in the buttonhole of his coat.

  Countess Constanze looked exceptionally fine in her dark red crepe dress with its high bodice. The fresh color of her face, together with the chestnut-brown of her hair, complimented her clothes in a warming ensemble.

  The company, which assembled in the grand salon after a stroll in the garden following dinner, carried on its conversation in French. Miss Dudley had been instructed by her mother to make the first introductions in French, as the language proper for the day. This had been done in part out of courtesy to His Royal Highness, whose French was better than his English, and partly because of the old Baroness Alma de Saint Marie-Église, who could not understand a word of English—for in the high French clique within which she moved exclusively, the English language was utterly despised.

  The baroness of Saint Marie, who had often visited Lady Evans-Stuart in past years, had avoided her friend completely from the moment Abbé Debreuil took formal charge of the household. The old baroness was mightily upset with the abbé over some matter that she never mentioned, and once she saw that the abbé was influencing not only Lady Evans-Stuart’s heart and thoughts but the entire household, she vowed to never set foot in her friend’s home again. Now that the abbé had been completely discredited and removed from the house due to the efforts of Prince Paul, she dared to visit Lady Evans-Stuart, or Cornelia, as she called her old friend, once more, often passing the entire day with her. So she had been invited to the party along with her niece, and she had been presented to the prince for the first time. Likewise, she and her niece were new acquaintances to the other guests as well. The Scotswoman was the only person present who knew of Claudine’s unhappy relationship with Albert, and she had not known the young architect at all. It was utterly unknown to the prince of Württemberg that Albert had ever been married; that was due to the fact that Albert himself had never breathed a word of it, no matter how often he came to the sisters’ lovable cottage, the sole place where the prince had happened to meet him. Claudine had been presented to the prince and the others as the widowed Madame de Lesuire—she did not use her husband’s name. This was how the old baroness wished it, and the Scotswoman naturally had no objection.

  Lady Evans-Stuart, who loved and appreciated her friend despite the baroness’s cramped aristocratic ways and her generally peculiar manners, was making use of her daughter’s birthday celebration to present the baroness and her niece to the prince of Württemberg as well as to the other guests. She hoped to create a friendly coterie that would win new and promising reinforcement when the count’s family joined them across the lake. All of her earlier friends and visitors, who had sought her company more or less due to her wealth alone and of whom she could count legions before the appearance of the Abbé Dubreuil in her house, were either no longer in New Orleans or hesitated to return to a sphere from which they had been so rudely ejected years ago owing to the whim, or rather the command, of a Catholic priest. Baroness Alma de Saint Marie was the only one who had sought out old Cornelia, accompanied by her niece, as soon as she heard of the abbé’s dismissal.

  The conversation, which began as a lively crossfire of colorful inspirations and mutual gallantries, suddenly took a more serious and interesting turn when the captain—whether accidentally or on purpose—steered discussion toward the history of the city of New Orleans. He spoke of the time when that portion of the Mississippi that bordered the present Second District bore the name of St. Louis Fleuve and the entire city contained no more than two hundred residents.*

  On this occasion he touched upon a theme that drew the close attention of the entire company. He spoke of the first appearance of the yellow fever in New Orleans in 1769, and he rejected the assumption that this disease had been introduced by a British ship that had arrived with a cargo of slaves from the west coast of Africa.

  “You do not appear to be an abolitionist, Captain,” the prince of Württemberg remarked at this point.

  “How did you come to this perilous question, Prince?” the captain asked tensely.

  “Because you oppose the notion that we have the importation of slaves to thank for this,” the prince of
Württemberg asserted.

  “Now I understand you, Prince—you are of the opinion that, if I were an abolitionist, I would like to believe that slavery was to blame for yellow fever.”

  “To be sure,” the prince responded. “But since you so boldly cast doubt on the correctness of the common opinion that yellow fever came with a slave ship, I would not harbor the least suspicion that you are an abolitionist.”

  “In fact, Prince,” the captain responded cheerfully, “nothing gets past German logic, and we Americans would have trouble winning if we challenged German philosophers to combat.”

  Claudine, who sat between Frida and Constanze, turned slightly to the latter and softly asked, “Could you perhaps explain to me, my dear countess, what an ‘abolitionist’ is?”

  “I regret very much,” she responded, “but the term is utterly unknown to me—by the way, I find it very boring and ungallant of these two gentlemen to talk about such incomprehensible things in the presence of us ladies. I also marvel that Lady Evans-Stuart, our dear hostess, who otherwise is so attentive, has not protested against the crude actions of the prince and the captain—”

  The Hungarian, who had heard the secretive whispering of the two ladies but was unable to understand a word, looked directly into Constanze’s face to discover what the secretiveness was all about. He was always sharp and earnest when it came to reading faces, and he became immediately aware that the ladies were becoming tired of this turn in the discourse.

  “Madame,” he turned to the old Scotswoman with a loud voice, “be so good as to look over there—Madame de Lesuire and Countess Constanze appear to be trying to conjure up a revolution.”