University of Virginia Library

7. VII.

A few months after the departure of the baron,
Emilie gave birth to a daughter. During the long
period of his intimacy with the beautiful quadroon,
he had taken pleasure in storing her mind with the
nobler branches of literature, and elevating the standard
of her intellect. He taught her to reason and to
reflect. After his departure, reason and reflection became
to her the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. For the first time she began to view in its true
light her moral and social degradation. She loathed
herself, and passed hours in unavailing tears. She
was proud, and her pride was humbled, her spirit
broken. One evening she veiled herself, and went to
the Cathedral. Kneeling on the spot where she had
first seen the young foreigner, she made a solemn vow
to the Virgin, “that her daughter should never know
her mother's degradation nor the race from which she
herself had sprung.” She rose and returned home
with a lighter heart and a firm purpose.

When the little Louisa was in her fifth year, she
left New Orleans, where the fulfilment of her vow
would have been impossible, and went to the Havanna;
from whence she took passage to Marseilles, and
then proceeded to Paris. Here as Madame D'Avigny,
and representing herself as the widow of a West
India planter, she took up her abode, and pursued the
education of her daughter. Her income was great,
and the style of her establishment had scarcely a rival
in Paris. She gave soirées, was courted, and when,
at the age of nineteen, Louise came out, a new star in
the constellation of fashion, the saloons of Madame
D'Avigny were among the most thronged and celebrated

in Paris. The beauty of Louise now became
the universal theme, and in all public places she was
the “cynosure of all eyes.”