nakedness, dirt, fetichism, debauchery, slaughter, pestilence and the rest—­she was their heiress; they left her the cinders of human feelings.  She remembered her mother.  They had been separated in her childhood, in Virginia when it was a province.  She remembered, with pride, the price her mother had brought at auction, and remarked, as an additional interesting item, that she had never seen or heard of her since.  She had had children, assorted colors—­had one with her now, the black boy that brought the basil to Joseph; the others were here and there, some in the Grandissime households or field-gangs, some elsewhere within occasional sight, some dead, some not accounted for.  Husbands—­like the Samaritan woman’s.  We know she was a constant singer and laugher.

And so on that day, when Honore Grandissime had advised the Governor-General of Louisiana to be very careful to avoid demonstration of any sort if he wished to avert a street war in his little capital, Clemence went up one street and down another, singing her song and laughing her professional merry laugh.  How could it be otherwise?  Let events take any possible turn, how could it make any difference to Clemence?  What could she hope to gain?  What could she fear to lose?  She sold some of her goods to Casa Calvo’s Spanish guard and sang them a Spanish song; some to Claiborne’s soldiers and sang them Yankee Doodle with unclean words of her own inspiration, which evoked true soldiers’ laughter; some to a priest at his window, exchanging with him a pious comment or two upon the wickedness of the times generally and their Americain Protestant-poisoned community in particular; and (after going home to dinner and coming out newly furnished) she sold some more of her wares to the excited groups of Creoles to which we have had occasion to allude, and from whom, insensible as she was to ribaldry, she was glad to escape.  The day now drawing to a close, she turned her steps toward her wonted crouching-place, the willow avenue on the levee, near the Place d’Armes.  But she had hardly defined this decision clearly in her mind, and had but just turned out of the rue St. Louis, when her song attracted an ear in a second-story room under whose window she was passing.  As usual, it was fitted to the passing event: 

     “Apportez moi mo’ sabre,
     Ba boum, ba boum, boum, boum.”

“Run, fetch that girl here,” said Dr. Keene to the slave woman who had just entered his room with a pitcher of water.

“Well, old eavesdropper,” he said, as Clemence came, “what is the scandal to-day?”

Clemence laughed.

“You know, Mawse Chawlie, I dunno noth’n’ ’tall ’bout nobody.  I’se a nigga w’at mine my own business.”

“Sit down there on that stool, and tell me what is going on outside.”

“I d’ no noth’n’ ‘bout no goin’s on; got no time fo’ sit down, me; got sell my cakes.  I don’t goin’ git mix’ in wid no white folks’s doin’s.”