Then, at the right moment, Honore made a single happy stroke, and even the hot Grandissimes, they of the interior parishes and they of Agricola’s squadron, slaked and crumbled when he wrote each a letter saying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and that it would be well, if they wished to evade them, to write the governor at once, surrendering their present commissions.  Well!  Evade?  They would evade nothing!  Do you think they would so belittle themselves as to write to the usurper?  They would submit to keep the positions first.

But the next move was Honore’s making the whole town aware of his apostasy.  The great mansion, with the old grandpere sitting out in front, shivered.  As we have seen, he had ridden through the Place d’Armes with the arch-usurper himself.  Yet, after all, a Grandissime would be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly.  And wasn’t that glorious—­never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad?  It was not everyone who could ride with the governor.

And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that would not meet either in January or February, met in the first week of March, every constituent one of them.

The feast has been eaten.  The garden now is joyous with children and the veranda resplendent with ladies.  From among the latter the eye quickly selects one.  She is perceptibly taller than the others; she sits in their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you look at her there is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make which you would not allow.  Her hair, once black, now lifted up into a glistening snow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful face, while her full stature and stately bearing suggest the finer parts of Agricola, her brother.  It is Madame Grandissime, the mother of Honore.

One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite cousin.  On her right is her daughter, the widowed senora of Jose Martinez; she has wonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful.  The commanding carriage of the mother is tempered in her to a gentle dignity and calm, contrasting pointedly with the animated manners of the courtly matrons among whom she sits, and whose continuous conversation takes this direction or that, at the pleasure of Madame Grandissime.

But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those children who are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the front stair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, which every few minutes, at an end of the veranda, appears, wheels and disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the new-blown flower.  You see that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and golden hair.  You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows,