University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE BEGINS TO RUN ROUGH.

In some Arabian Nights or other, there is a story of
voyagers in a becalmed ship who were drifted by irresistible
currents towards an unknown island. As they gazed
at it their eyes were deceived by an enchantment in the
atmosphere, so that they seemed to see upon the shore a
number of beautiful women waiting to welcome them,
whereas these expectant figures were really nothing but
hideous apes with carniverous appetites, whose desire it
was to devour the approaching strangers.

As Miss Ravenel drifted towards Colonel Carter she beheld
him in the guise of a pure and noble creature, while
in truth he was a more than commonly demoralized man,
with potent capacities for injuring others. Mrs. Larue, on
the other hand, perceived him much as he was, and liked
him none the less for it. Had she lived in the days before
the flood she would not have cared specially for the angels
who came down to enjoy themselves with the daughters
of men, except just so far as they satisfied her vanity and
curiosity. Seeing clearly that the Colonel was not a seraph,
but a creature of far lower grade, very coarse and
carnal in some at least of his dispositions, she would still
have been pleased to have him fall in love with her, and
would perhaps have accepted him as a husband. It is probable
that she did not have a suspicion of the glamour
which humbugged the innocent eyes of her youthful cousin.
But she did presently perceive that it would be Lillie,
and not herself, who would receive Carter's offer of

marriage, if it was ever made to either. How should she
behave under these trying circumstances? Painful as the
discovery may have been to her vanity, it had little effect
on a temper so callously amiable, and none on the lucid
wisdom of a spirit so clarified by selfishness. She showed
that she was a person of good worldly sense, and of little
heart. She soon brought herself to encourage the Carter
flirtation, partly because she had a woman's passion for
seeing such things move on, and partly for reasons of
state. If the Colonel married Lillie he would be a valuable
friend at court; moreover the match could not hurt
the social position of her relatives, who were ostracised as
Yankees already; it would be all gain and no loss. She
soon discovered, as she thought, that there was no need
of blowing the Colonel's trumpet in the ears of Miss Lillie,
and that the young lady could be easily brought to
greet him with a betrothal hymn of, “Hail to the chief who
in triumph advances.” But the Doctor, who evidently did
not like the Colonel, might exercise a deleterious influence
on these fine chances. Madame Larue must try to lead
the silly old gentleman to take a reasonable look at his
own interests. What a paroxysm of vexation and centempt
she would have gone into, had she known of his
refusal to make forty or fifty thousand dollars on sugar,
merely because the transaction might furnish the Confederate
army with salt and quinine! Not being aware of this
act of cretinism, she went at him on the marriage business
with a hopeful spirit.

“What an admirable parti for some of our New Orleans
young ladies would be the Colonel Carter!”

The Doctor smiled and bowed his assent, because such
was his habit concerning all matters which were indifferent
to him. The fact that he had lived twenty-five years
in New Orleans without ever being driven to fight a duel,
although disagreeing with its fiery population on various
touchy subjects, shows what an exquisite courtesy he must
have maintained in his manners and conversation.

“I must positively introduce him to Mees Langdon or
Mees Dumas, and see what will come of it,” pursued Madame.

Ravenel professed and looked his delight at the proposition,
without caring a straw for the subject, being engaged
in a charming mineralogical revery Mrs. Larue
perceived his indifference and was annoyed by it, but continued
to smile with the Indian-like fortitude of a veteran
worldling.

“He is of an excellent family—one of the best families
of Virginia. He would be a suitable parti for any young
lady of my acquaintance. There is no doubt that he has
splendid prospects. He is almost the only regular officer
in the department. Of course he will win promotion. I
should not be surprised to see him supersede Picayune
Butler. I beg your pardon—I mean Major-General Butler.
I hear him so constantly called Picayune that I feel
as if that was his name of baptism. Mark my prophecy
now. In a year that man will be superseded by Colonel
Carter.”

“It might be a change for the better,” admitted the
Doctor with the composure of a Gallio.

“The Colonel has a large salary,” continued Madame.
“The mayoralty gives him three thousand, and his pay as
colonel is two thousand six hundred. Five thousand six
hundred dollars seems a monstrous salary in these days
of poverty.”

“It does, indeed,” coincided the Doctor, remembering
his own fifteen hundred, with a momentary dread that it
would hardly keep him out of debt.

Mrs. Larue paused and considered whether she should
venture further. She had already got as far as this two
or three times without eliciting from her brother-in-law a
word good or bad as to the matter which she had at heart.
She had been like a boy who walks two miles to a pond,
puts on his skates, looks at the thinly frozen surface, shakes
his doubtful head, unbuckles his skates and trudges home

again. She resolved to try the ice this time, at no matter
what risk of breaking it.

“I have been thinking that he would not be a bad parti
for my little cousin.”

The Doctor laid aside his Robinsonites in some quiet
corner of his mind, and devoted himself to the subject of
the conversation, leaning forward and surveying Madame
earnestly through his spectacles.

“I would almost rather bury her,” he said in his excitement.

“You amaze me. There is a difference in age, I grant.
But how little! He is still what we call a young man.
And then marriages are so difficult to make up in these
horrible times. Who else is there in all New Orleans?”

“I don't see why she should marry at all,” said the Doctor
very warmly. “Why can't she continue to live with
me?”

“Positively you are not serious.”

“I certainly am. I beg pardon for disagreeing with
you, but I don't see why I shouldn't entertain the idea I
mention.”

“Oh! when it comes to that, there is no arguing. You
step out of the bounds of reason into pure feeling and
egoïsme. I also beg your pardon, but I must tell you that
you are egoïste. To forbid a girl to marry is like forbidding
a young man to engage in business, to work, to open
his own carrière. A woman who must not love is defrauded
of her best rights.”

“Why can't she be satisfied with loving me?” demanded
the Doctor. He knew that he was talking irrationally
on this subject; but what he meant to say was,
“I don't like Colonel Carter.”

“Because that would leave her an unhappy, sickly old
maid,” retorted Madame. “Because that would leave you
without grandchildren.”

Ravenel rose and walked the room with a melancholy
step and a countenance full of trouble. Suddenly he

stopped short and turned upon Mrs. Larue a look of anxious
inquiry.

“I hope you have not observed in Lillie any inclination
towards this—this idea.”

“Not the slightest,” replied Madame, lying frankly, and
without the slightest hesitation or confusion.

“And you have not broached it to her?”

“Never!” affirmed the lady solemnly, which was
another whopper.

“I sincerely hope that you will not. Oblige me, I beg
you, by promising that you will not.”

“If such is your pleasure,” sighed Madame. “Well—I
promise.”

“I am so much obliged to you,” said the Doctor.

“I know that there is a difference in age,” Mrs. Larue
recommenced, thereby insinuating that that was the only
objection to the match that she could imagine: but her
brother-in-law solemnly shook his head, as if to say that
he had other reasons for opposition compared with which
this was a trifle: and so, after taking a sharp look at him,
she judged it wise to drop the subject.

“I hope,” concluded the Doctor, “that hereafter, when
I am away, you will allow Lillie to receive calls in your
house. There is a back passage. It is neither quite decorous
to receive gentlemen alone here, nor to send them
away.”

Mrs. Larue made no objection to this plan, seeing that
she could be just as strict or just as careless a duenna as
she chose.

“I wonder why he has such an aversion to the match,”
she thought. Accustomed to see men matured in vice
lead innocent young girls to the altar, habituated to look
upon the notoriously pure-minded Doctor as a social curiosity
rather than a social standard, she scarcely guessed,
and could not realize, the repugnance with which such a
father would resign a daughter to the doubtful protection

of a husband chosen from the class known as men about
town.

“Aurait il découvert,” she continued to meditate; “ce
petit liaison de monsieur le colonel? Il est vraiment
curieux mon beau-frere; c'est plutôt une vierge qu'un
homme.”

I beg the reader not to do this clever lady the injustice
to suppose that she kept or ever intended to keep her
promise to the Doctor. To him, indeed, she did not for a
long time speak of the proposed marriage, intending thereby
to lull his suspicions to sleep, and thus prevent him
from offering any timely opposition to that natural course
of human events which might alone suffice to bring
about the desired end. But into Lillie's ears she perpetually
whispered pleasant things concerning Carter, besides
leaving the two alone together for ten, fifteen, twenty
minutes at a time, until Lillie would get alarmed at her
unusual position, and become either nervously silent or
nervously talkative. For these services the Colonel was
not as grateful as he should have been. He was just the
man to believe that he could make his own way in a love
affair, and need not burden himself with a sense of obligation
for any one's assistance. Moreover, valuing himself
on his knowledge of life, he thought that he understood
Mrs. Larue's character perfectly, and declared that he was
not the man to be managed by such an intriguante, however
knowing. He did in fact perceive that she was corrupt,
and by the way he liked her none the worse for it,
although he would not have married her. To Colburne he
spoke of her gaily and conceitedly as “the Larue,” or
sometimes as “La rouée,” for he knew French well enough
to make an occasional bad pun in it. The Captain, on the
other hand, never mentioned her except respectfully, feeling
himself bound to treat any relative of Miss Ravenel
with perfect courtesy.

But while Carter supposed that he comprehended the
Larue, he walked in the path which she had traced out

for him. From week to week he found it more agreeable
to be with Miss Ravenel. Those random tête-a-têtes
which to her were so alarming, were to him so pleasant
that he caught himself anticipating them with anxiety.
The Colonel might have known from his past experience,
he might have known by only looking at his high-colored
face and powerful frame in a mirror, that it was not a safe
amusement for him to be so much with one charming lady.
Self-possessed in his demeanor, and, like most roués,
tolerably cool for a little distance below the surface of his
feelings, he was at bottom and by the decree of imperious
nature, very volcanic. As we say of some fiery wines,
there was a great deal of body to him. As this time he
was determined not to fall in love. He remembered how
he had been infatuated in other days, and dreaded the return
of the passionate dominion. To use his own expression,
“he made such a blasted fool of himself when he once
got after a woman!”

Nevertheless, he began to be, not jealous; he could not
admit that very soft impeachment; but he began to want
to monopolize Miss Ravenel. When he found Colburne in
her company he sometimes talked French to her, thereby
embarrassing and humiliating the Captain, who understood
nothing of the language except when he saw it in print,
and could trace out the meaning of some words by their
resemblance to Latin. The young lady, either becaase she
felt for Colburne's awkward position, or because she did
not wish to be suspected of saying things which she
might not have dared utter in English, usually restored
the conversation to her mother tongue after a few sentences.
Once her manner in doing this was so pointed that
the Colonel apologized.

“I beg pardon, Captain,” he said, to which he added a
white lie. “I realy supposed that you spoke French.”

No; Colburne did not speak French, nor any other modern
language; he did not draw, nor sing, nor play, and
was in short as destitute of accomplishments as are most

Americans. He blushed at the Colonel's apology, which
mortified him more than the offence for which it was intended
to atone. He would have given all his Greek for
a smattering of Gallic, and he took a French teacher the
next morning.

Another annoyance to Colburne was Mrs. Larue. He
was still so young in heart matters, or rather in coquetry,
that he was troubled by being made the object of airs of
affection which he could not reciprocate. I do not mean
to say that the lady was in love with him; she never had
been in love in her life, and was not going to begin at
thirty-three. The plain, placid truth was, that she was
willing to flirt with him to please herself, and determined
to keep him away from Lillie in order to give every possible
chance to Carter. Only when Mrs. Larue said “flirt,”
she meant indescribable things, such as ladies may talk of
without reproach among themselves, but which, if introduced
into print, are considered very improper reading.
Meantime neither Carter nor Colburne understood her, although
the former would have hooted at the idea that he
did not comprehend the lady perfectly.

“By Jove!” soliloquized the knowing Colonel, “she is
sweeter on him than a pailful of syrup. She puts one in
mind of a boa-constrictor. She is licking him all over, preparatory
to swallowing him. Not a bad sort of serpent
to have around one, either,” pursued the Colonel, almost
winking to himself, so knowing did he feel. “Not a bad
sort of serpent. Only I shouldn't care about marrying
her.”

Indeed the Colonel reminds one a little of “devilish sly
old Joey Bagstock.”

The innocent Colburne acknowledged to himself that he
did not comprehend Mrs. Larue nor her purposes. He
would have inferred from her ways that she wanted him
for a husband, only that she spoke in a very cool way of
the matrimonial state.

“Marriage will not content me, nor will single life,” she

said to him one day. “I have tried both, and I cannot
recommend either. It is a choice between two evils, and
one does not know to say which is the least.”

Widows in search of second husbands do not talk publicly
in this style, and Colburne intelligently concluded
that he was not to be invited to the altar. At the same
time Mrs. Larue went on in this way, she treated him to
certain appetizing little movements, glances and words,
which led him to suspect with some vague alarm that she
did not mean to let him off as a mere acquaintance. Finally,
as is supposed, an explanation ensued which was not
to his liking. There was an interview of half an hour in a
back parlor, brought about by the graceful manœuvres of
the lady, of which Colburne steadily refused to reveal the
secrets, although straitly questioned by the fun-loving
Colonel.

“By Jove! he's been bluffing her,” soliloquized Carter,
who thought he perceived that from this private confabulation
the parties came forth on terms of estrangement.
“What a queer fellow he is! Suppose he didn't want to
marry her—he might amuse himself. It would be pleasant
to him, and wouldn't hurt her. Hanged if he isn't a
curiosity!”

The next time that Colburne called on Miss Ravenel the
Larue took her revenge for that mysterious defeat, the particulars
of which I am unable to relate. To comprehend
the nature and efficiency of this vengeance, it is necessary
to take a dive into the recesses of New Orleans society.
There is a geographical fable of civilized white negroes in
the centre of Africa, somewhere near the Mountains of
the Moon. This fable is realized in the Crescent City and
in some of the richest planting districts of Louisiana,
where you will find a class of colored people, who are not
black people at all, having only the merest fraction of negro
blood in their veins, and who are respectable in character,
numbers of them wealthy, and some of them accomplished.
These Creoles, as they call themselves, have been

free for generations, and until Anglo-Saxon law invaded
Louisiana, enjoyed the same rights as other citizens. They
are good Catholics; they marry and are given in marriage;
their sons are educated in Paris on a perfect level
with young Frenchmen; their daughters receive the strict
surveillance which is allotted to girls in most southern
countries. In the street many of them are scarcely distinguishable
from the unmixed descendants of the old
French planters. But there is a social line of demarkation
drawn about them, like the sanitary cordon about an infected
district. The Anglo-Saxon race, the proudest race
of modern times, does not marry nor consort with them,
nor of late years does the pure French Creole, driven to
join in this ostracism by the brute force of Henghist and
Horsa prejudice. The New Orleanois who before the war
should have treated these white colored people on terms
of equality, would have shared in their opprobrium, and
perhaps have been ridden on a rail by his outraged fellow-citizens
of northern descent.

Now these white negroes from the Mountains of the
Moon constituted the sole loyal class, except the slaves,
which Butler found in Louisiana. They and their black
cousins of the sixteenth degree were the only people who,
as a body, came forward with joy to welcome the
drums and tramplings of the New England Division;
and when the commanding General called for regiments of
free blacks to uphold the Stars and Stripes, he met a patriotic
response as enthusiastic as that of Connecticut or Massachusetts.
Foremost in this military uprising were two
brothers of the name of Meurice, who poured out their
wealth freely to meet those incidental expenses, never acknowledged
by Government, which attend the recruiting
of volunteer regiments. They gave dinners and presented
flags; they advanced uniforms, sabres and pistols for officers;
they trusted the families of private soldiers. The
youngest Meurice became Major of one of the regiments,
which I take to be the nearest approach to a miracle

ever yet enacted in the United States of America.
Their entertainments became so famous that invitations to
them were gratefully accepted by officers of Anglo-Saxon
organizations. At their profuse yet elegant table, where
Brillât-Savarin would not have been annoyed by a badly
cooked dish or an inferior wine, and where he might have
listened to the accents of his own Parisian, Colburne had
met New Englanders, New Yorkers, and even stray Marylanders
and Kentuckians. There he became acquainted
(ignorant Baratarian that he was!) with the tasse de cafe
noir and the petit verre de cognac which close a French
dinner. There he smoked cigars which gave him new
ideas concerning the value of Cuba. For these pleasures
he was now to suffer at the Caucasian hands of Madame
Larue.

“I am afraid that we are doomed to lose you, Captain
Colburne,” she said with a smile which expressed something
worse than good-natured raillery. “I hear that you
have made some fascinating acquaintances in New Orleans.
I never myself had the pleasure of knowing the Meurices.
They are very charming, are they not?”

Colburne's nerves quivered under this speech, not because
he was conscious of having done any thing unbecoming
a gentleman, but because he divined the clever
malice of the attack. To gentle spirits the consciousness
that they are the objects of spite, is a dolorous sensation.

“It is a very pleasant and intelligent family,” he replied
bravely.

“Who are they?” smilingly asked Miss Ravenel, who
inferred from her aunt's manner that Colburne was to be
charged with a flirtation.

“Ce sont des métis, ma chère,” laughed Mrs. Larue.
“Il y a diné plusieurs fois. Ces abolitionistes oût leur
gonts a eux.”

Lillie colored crimson with amazement, with horror,
with downright anger. To this New Orleans born Anglo-Saxon

girl, full of the pride of lineage and the prejudices of
the slaveholding society in which she had been nurtured,
it seemed a downright insult that a gentleman who called
on her, should also call on a metis, and admit it and defend
it. She glanced at Colburne to see if he had a word to
offer of apology or explanation. It might be that he had
visited these mixed bloods in the performance of some
disagreeable but unavoidable duty as an officer of the
Federal army. She hoped so, for she liked him too well to
be willing to despise him.

“Intelligent? But without doubt,” assented Madame,
“if they had been stupid, you would not have dined with
them four or five times.”

“Three times, to be exact, Mrs. Larue,” said Colburne.
He had formed his line of battle, and could be not merely
defiant but ironically aggressive. But the lady was master
of the southern tactics; she had taken the initiative, and
she attacked audaciously; although, I must explain, without
the slightest sign of irritation.

“Which do you find the most agreeable,” she asked,
“the white people of New Orleans, or the brown?”

Colburne was tempted to reply that he did not see much
difference, but refrained on account of Miss Ravenel; and,
dropping satire, he entered on a calm defence, less of himself
than of the mixed race in question. He affirmed their
intelligence, education, good breeding, respectability of
character, and exceptional patriotism in a community of
rebels.

“You, Mrs. Larue, think something of the elegancies of
society as an element of civilization,” he said. “Now
then, I am obliged to confess that these people can give a
finer dinner, better selected, better cooked, better served,
than I ever saw in my own city of New Boston, notwithstanding
that we are as white as they are and—can't speak
French. These Meurices, for example, have actually given
me new ideas of hospitality, as something which may be
plenteous without being coarse, and cordial without being

boreous. I don't hesitate to call them nice people. As
for the African blood in their veins (if that is a reproach)
I can't detect a trace of it. I shouldn't have believed it
if they hadn't assured me of it. There is a little child
there, a cousin, with blue eyes and straight flaxen hair.
She has the honor, if it is one, of being whiter than I am.”

It will be remembered here that any one who was whiter
than Colburne was necessarily much whiter than Mrs.
Larue.

“When I first saw the eldest Meurice,” he proceeded,
“I supposed from his looks that he was a German. The
Major bears a striking resemblance to the first Napoleon,
and is certainly one of the handsomest men that I have
seen in New Orleans. His manners are charming, as I
suppose they ought to be, seeing that he has lived in Paris
since he was a child.”

Mrs. Larue had never transgressed the borders of
Louisiana.

“When this war broke out he came home to see if he
might be permitted to fight for his race, and for his and
my country. He now wears the same uniform that I do,
and he is my superior officer.”

“It is shameful,” broke out Lillie.

“It is the will of authority,” answered Colburne,—“of
authority that I have sworn to respect.”

“A southern gentleman would resign,” said Mrs. Larue.

“A northern gentleman keeps his oath and stands by
his flag,” retorted Colburne.

Mrs. Larue paused, suppressed her rising excitement,
and with an exterior air of meekness considered the situation.
She had gained her battle; she had wounded and
punished him; she had probably detached Lillie from him;
now she would stop the conflict.

“I beg pardon,” she said, looking him full in the eyes
with a charming little expression of penitence. “I am
sorry if I have annoyed you. I thought, I hoped,
you might perhaps be obliged to me for hinting to you

that these people are not received here in society. You
are a stranger, and do not know our prejudices. I pray
you to excuse me if I have been officious.”

Colburne was astonished, disarmed, ashamed, notwithstanding
that he had been in the right and was the injured
party.

“Mrs. Larue, I beg your pardon,” he answered. “I
have been unnecessarily excited. I sincerely ask you pardon.”

She accorded it in pleasant words and with the most
amiable of smiles. She was a good-natured, graceful little
grimalkin, she could be pretty and festive over a mouse
while torturing it; so purring and velvet-pawed, indeed,
that the mouse himself could not believe her to be in earnest,
and prayed to be excused for turning upon her. It
is probable that, not being susceptible to keen emotions,
she did not know what deep pain she had given the young
man by her attack. The advantage which blasé people
have over innocents in a fight is awful. They know how
to hit, and they don't mind the punishing. It is said that
Deaf Burke's physiognomy was so calloused by frequent
poundings that he would permit any man to give him a
facer for a shilling a crack.

Lillie said almost nothing during the conversation, being
quite overcome with amazement and anger at Colburne's
degradation and at the wrongheadedness, the indelicacy,
the fanaticism with which he defended it. When
the erring young man left the house she did not give him
her hand, after her usual friendly southern fashion. The
pride of race, the prejudices of her education, would not
permit her to be cordial, at least not in the first moments
of offence, with one who felt himself at liberty to go from
her parlor to that of an octoroon. How could a Miss
Ravenel put herself on a level with a Miss Meurice.

“Oh, these abolitionists! these negar worshippers!”
laughed Mrs. Larue, when the social heretic had taken
himself away. “Are they not horrible, these New England

isms? He will be joining the vondoos next. I foresee
that you will have rivals, Mees Lillie. I fear that Mademoiselle
Meurice will carry the day. You are under the
disadvantage of being white. Et puis tu n'est pas
descendue d'une race bâtarde. Quel malheur! Je ne dirais
rien s'il entretenait son octaronne à lui. Voilà qui est
permis, bien que ce n'est pas joli.”

“Mrs. Larue, I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that
way;—I don't like to hear it,” said Lillie, in high anger.

“Mais c'est mieux au moins que de les épouser, les octaronnes,”
persisted Madame.

Miss Ravenel rose and went to her own house and
room without answering. Since her father fled from New
Orleans, openly espousing the cause of the North against
the South, she had not been so vexed, so hurt, as she was
by this vulgar conduct of her friend, Captain Colburne.
Although it cannot be said that she had even begun to
love him, she certainly did like him better than any other
man that she ever knew, excepting her father and Colonel
Carter. She had thought, also, that he liked her too well
to do anything which would be sure to meet her disapprobation;
and her womanly pride was exceedingly hurt
in that her friendship had been risked for the sake of communion
with a race of pariahs. There is little doubt that
Colburne now had small chance with Miss Ravenel. He
guessed as much, and the thought cut him even more
deeply that he could have imagined; but he was too chivalrous
to be false to his education, to his principles, to himself,
though it were to gain the heart of the only woman
whom he had ever loved. In fact, so fastidious was his
sense of honor that he had disdained to fortify himself
against Mrs. Larue's attack by stating, as he might have
done truthfully, that at one of these Meurice dinners he
had sat by the side of Colonel Carter.

I consider it worth while to mention here that Colburne
committed a great mistake about this time in declining a
regiment which the eldest Meurice offered to raise for him,

providing he would apply for the colonelcy. But it was
not for fear of Mrs. Larue nor yet of Miss Ravenel that he
declined the proffer. He took the proposition into serious
consideration and referred it to Carter, who advised him
against it. Public opinion on this subject had not yet become
so overpoweringly luminous that the old regular,
the West Point Brahmin, could see the negro in a military
light.

“I may be all wrong,” he admitted with a considerable
effusion of swearing. “If the war spins out it may prove
me all wrong. A downright slaughtering match of three
or four years will force one party or other to call in the
nigger. But I can't come to it yet. I despise the low
brute. I hate to see him in uniform. And then he never
will be used for the higher military operations. If you
take a command of niggers, you will find yourself put into
Fort Pike or some such place, among the mosquitoes and
fever and ague, where white men can't live. Or your
regiment will be made road-builders, and scavengers, and
baggage guards, to do the dirty work of white regiments.
You never will form a line of battle, nor head a storming
column, nor get any credit if you do. And finally, just
look at the military position of these Louisiana black regiments.
They are not acknowledged by the government
yet; they are not a part of the army. They are only
Louisiana militia, called out by General Butler on his own
responsibility. Suppose the War Department shouldn't
approve his policy;—then down goes your house. You
have resigned your captaincy to get a sham colonelcy;
and there you are, out of the service, with a bran-new
uniform. Stay in the regiment. You shall have, by”
(this and that!) “the first vacancy in the field positions.”

In fact it was an esprit du corps which more than anything
else induced Colburne to cling to the Tenth Barataria.
A volunteer, a citizen soldier, new to the ways of armies,
he longed to do his fighting under his own State flag, and

at the head of the men whom he had himself raised and
drilled for the battle-field.

About these times Colonel Carter broke up that more
than questionable domestic establishment which Lieutenant
Van Zandt had alluded to under the humorous misnomer
of “a little French boudoir.” Whether this step was taken
by the advice of Mrs. Larue, or solely because the Colonel
had found some source of truer enjoyment, I am unable to
say; but it is certain, and it is also a very natural human
circumstance, that from this day his admiration for Miss
Ravenel burgeoned rapidly into the condition of a passion.