University of Virginia Library

9. PÈRE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM.

NEAR the Levee, and not far from the old
French Cathedral in the Place d'Armes, at
New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet
in height, spreading its broad leaves in the alien
air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking
strength from their native earth.

Sir Charles Lyell, in his “Second Visit to the
United States,” mentions this exotic: “The tree
is seventy or eighty years old; for Père Antoine,
a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty
years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it himself,
when he was young. In his will he provided
that they who succeeded to this lot of ground
should forfeit it if they cut down the palm.”

Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's
history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among
the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg.
That the old priest, in his last days, became very

much emaciated, that he walked about the streets
like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally
blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory
result of the tourist's investigations. This
is all that is generally told of Père Antoine.

In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans
was yet occupied by the Rebel forces, I met at
Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana,
— Miss Blondeau by name, — who gave me the
substance of the following legend touching Père
Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If it
should appear tame to the reader, it will be because
I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk
dress, with a strip of point-lace around my throat,
like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her
eyes and lips and Southern music to tell it with.

When Père Antoine was a very young man, he
had a friend whom he loved as he loved his life.
Émile Jardin returned his passion, and the two,
on account of their friendship, became the marvel
of the city where they dwelt. One was never
seen without the other; for they studied, walked,
ate, and slept together.

Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of

Fiammetta telling her prettiest story to the Florentines
in the garden of Boccaccio.

Antoine and Émile were preparing to enter
the Church; indeed, they had taken the preliminary
steps, when a circumstance occurred which
changed the color of their lives. A foreign lady,
from some nameless island in the Pacific, had a
few months before moved into their neighborhood.
The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of
sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless and unprovided
for. The young men had been kind to
the woman during her illness, and at her death
— melting with pity at the forlorn situation of
Anglice, the daughter — swore between themselves
to love and watch over her as if she were
their sister.

Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that
made other women seem tame beside her; and in
the course of time the young men found themselves
regarding their ward not so much like
brothers as at first. In brief, they found themselves
in love with her.

They struggled with their hopeless passion
month after month, neither betraying his secret
to the other; for the austere orders which they

were about to assume precluded the idea of
love and marriage. Until then they had dwelt
in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved
except by that pious fervor which in other ages
taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and
to smile amid the flames. But a blond girl,
with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of
a vesper hymn, had come in between them and
their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that
had bound the young men together snapped silently
one by one. At length each read in the pale
face of the other the story of his own despair.

And she? If Anglice shared their trouble,
her face told no story. It was like the face of a
saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as
she came suddenly upon the two men and overheard
words that seemed to burn like fire on the
lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an
instant. Then she passed on, her face as immobile
as before in its setting of wavy gold hair.

“Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux.”

One night Émile and Anglice were missing.
They had flown,—but whither, nobody knew,
and nobody, save Antoine, cared. It was a heavy
blow to Antoine,—for he had himself half

resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge
her to fly with him.

A strip of paper slipped from a volume on
Antoine's prie-dieu, and fluttered to his feet.

“Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper,
piteously; “forgive us, for we love.”

Three years went by wearily enough. Antoine
had entered the Church, and was already
looked upon as a rising man; but his face was
pale and his heart leaden, for there was no
sweetness in life for him.

Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered
with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the
young priest, — a letter from Anglice. She was
dying; — would he forgive her? Émile, the year
previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that
raged on the island; and their child, Anglice,
was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she
begged Antoine to take charge of the child until
she was old enough to enter the convent of
the Sacré-Cœur. The epistle was finished hastily
by another hand, informing Antoine of
Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that
Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly
to leave the island for some Western port.

The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck,
was hardly read and wept over when little
Anglice arrived.

On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy
and surprise, — she was so like the woman he
had worshipped.

The passion that had been crowded down in his
heart broke out and lavished its richness on this
child, who was to him not only the Anglice of
years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin also.

Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty
of her mother, — the bending, willowy form, the
rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had
almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery
to him.

For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy
in her new home. She talked continually of
the bright country where she was born, the fruits
and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like trees,
and the streams that went murmuring through
them to the sea. Antoine could not pacify her.

By and by she ceased to weep, and went about
the cottage in a weary, disconsolate way that cut
Antoine to the heart. A long-tailed paroquet,
which she had brought with her in the ship,

walked solemnly behind her from room to room,
mutely pining, it seemed, for those heavy orient
airs that used to ruffle its brilliant plumage.

Before the year ended, he noticed that the
ruddy tinge had faded from her cheek, that
her eyes had grown languid, and her slight
figure more willowy than ever.

A physician was consulted. He could discover
nothing wrong with the child, except this fading
and drooping. He failed to account for that.
It was some vague disease of the mind, he said,
beyond his skill.

So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom
left the room now. At last Antoine could not
shut out the fact that the child was passing away.
He had learned to love her so!

“Dear heart,” he said once, “what is 't ails
thee?”

“Nothing, mon père,” for so she called him.

The winter passed, the balmy spring had
come with its magnolia blooms and orange
blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her
small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed
to and fro in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar
undulating motion, like a graceful tree.

At times something seemed to weigh upon her
mind. Antoine observed it, and waited. At
length she spoke.

“Near our house,” said little Anglice, —
“near our house, on the island, the palm-trees
are waving under the blue sky. O how beautiful!
I seem to lie beneath them all day long. I
am very, very happy. I yearned for them so
much that I grew sick, — don't you think it was
so, mon père?”

“Hélas, yes!” exclaimed Antoine, suddenly.
“Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where
the palms are waving.”

Anglice smiled.

“I am going there, mon père.”

A week from that evening the wax candles
burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on
the journey.

All was over. Now was Antoine's heart
empty. Death, like another Émile, had stolen
his new Anglice. He had nothing to do but to
lay the blighted flower away.

Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his
garden, and heaped the fresh brown mould over
his idol.

In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was
seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in
the unread breviary.

The summer broke on that sunny land; and
in the cool morning twilight, and after nightfall,
Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never
be with it enough.

One morning he observed a delicate stem, with
two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing
up from the centre of the mound. At first he
merely noticed it casually; but at length the
plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike
anything he had ever seen before, that he examined
it with care.

How straight and graceful and exquisite it
was! When it swung to and fro with the summer
wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if
little Anglice were standing there in the garden.

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the
fragile shoot, wondering what manner of blossom
it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden.
One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten
face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden
rail, and said to him, “What a fine young date-palm
you have there, sir!”

“Mon Dieu!” cried Père Antoine, “and is it
a palm?”

“Yes, indeed,” returned the man. “I did n't
reckon the tree would flourish in this latitude.”

“Ah, mon Dieu!” was all the priest could
say aloud; but he murmured to himself, “C'est
le bon Dieu qui m' a donné cela.”

If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshipped
it now. He watered it, and nurtured it,
and could have clasped it in his arms. Here
were Émile and Anglice and the child, all in
one!

The years glided away, and the date-palm and
the priest grew together, — only one became vigorous
and the other feeble. Père Antoine had
long passed the meridian of life. The tree was
in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated
garden; for pretentious brick and stucco houses
had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They
looked down scowling on the humble thatched
roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd
him off his land. But he clung to it like lichen
and refused to sell.

Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he
laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry,

and cold, and thinly clad; but he laughed none
the less.

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” said the old
priest's smile.

Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able
to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, caressing
leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab;
and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators
came to him. But even in death Père Antoine
was faithful to his trust.

The owner of that land loses it, if he harm the
date-tree.

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy
street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite
foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the
incense of whose breath makes the air enamoured.
May the hand wither that touches her ungently!

“Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice,”
said Miss Blondeau, tenderly.