“Ah!” several demurred, “and let that magazine swallow whole all those profit’ of all those advertisement’!”

Chester spoke:  “I have an idea—­” But others had ideas and the floor besides.

Castanado lifted a hand:  “Frien’—­our counsel.”

Counsel tried again:  “I have a conviction that we should first offer this to a magazine—­through—­yes, of course, through some influential friend.  If one doesn’t want it another may——­”

Chorus:  “Ho! they will all want it!  That was not written laz’ night!  ‘Tis fivty year’ old; they cannot rif-use that!”

“However,” Chester persisted, “if they should—­if all should—­I’d advise——­”

“Frien’s,” Castanado pleaded, “let us hear.”

“I should advise that we gather together as many such old narratives as we can find, especially such as can be related to one another——­”

“They need not be ril-ated!” cried Dubroca. “We are not ril-ated, and yet see!  Ril-ated? where you are goin’ to find them, ril-ated?”

“Royal Street!” Scipion retorted.  “Royal Street is pave’ with old narration’!”

“Already,” said Castanado, “we chanze to have three or four.  Mademoiselle has that story of her grand’mere, and Mr. Chezter he has—­sir, you’ll not care if I tell that?—­Mr. Chezter has the sequal to that, and written by his uncle!”

“Yes,” Chester put in, “but Ovide Landry finds it was printed years ago.”

“Proof!” proclaimed Mme. Alexandre, “proof that ’tis good to print ag-ain!  The people that read that before, they are mozely dead.”

“At the same time,” Chester responded, rising and addressing the chair, his hostess, “because that is a sequel to the grand’-mere’s story, and because this—­this West Indian episode—­is not a sequel and has no sequel, and particularly because we ought to let mademoiselle be first to judge whether my uncle’s memorandum is fit company for her two stories, I propose, I say, that before we read this West Indian thing we read my uncle’s memorandum, and that we send and beg her to come and hear it with us.  It’s in my pocket.”

Patter, patter, patter, went a dozen hands.

“Marcel,” the hostess cried in French, “go!”

“I will go with you,” Mme. Alexandra proposed, “she will never come without me.”

“Tis but a step,” said Mme. De l’Isle, “the three of us will go together.”  They went.

Those who waited talked on of their city’s true stories.  The vastest and most monstrous war in human history was smoking and roaring just across the Atlantic, and in it they had racial, national, personal interests; but for the moment they left all that aside.  “One troub’,” Dubroca said, “’tis that all those three stone’—­and all I can rim-ember—­even that story of M’sieu’ Smith about the fall of the city—­1862—­they all got in them somewhere, alas! the nigger.  The publique they are not any longer pretty easy to fascinate on that subjec’.”