“At least, what has happened?  The most ordinary thing in the world; Professor Frowenfeld lost his footing on a slippery gunwale, fell, cut his head upon a protruding spike, and went into the house of Palmyre to bathe his wound; but finding it worse than he had at first supposed it, immediately hurried out again and came to his store.  He left his hat where it had fallen, too muddy to be worth recovery.  Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin and others, passing at the time, thought he had met with violence in the house of the hair-dresser, and drew some natural inferences, but have since been better informed; and the public will please understand that Professor Frowenfeld is a white man, a gentleman, and a Louisianian, ready to vindicate his honor, and that Citizen Agricola Fusilier is his friend!”

The old man looked around with the air of a bull on a hill-top.

Frowenfeld, vexed beyond degree, restrained himself only for the sake of an object in view, and contented himself with repeating for the fourth or fifth time,—­

“I cannot accept any such deliverance.”

“Professor Frowenfeld, friendship—­society—­demands it; our circle must be protected in all its members.  You have nothing to do with it.  You will leave it with me, Joseph.”

“No, no,” said Frowenfeld, “I thank you, but—­”

“Ah! my dear boy, thank me not; I cannot help these impulses; I belong to a warm-hearted race.  But”—­he drew back in his chair sidewise and made great pretence of frowning—­“you decline the offices of that precious possession, a Creole friend?”

“I only decline to be shielded by a fiction.”

“Ah-h!” said Agricola, further nettling his victim by a gaze of stagy admiration. “’Sans peur et sans reproche’—­and yet you disappoint me.  Is it for naught, that I have sallied forth from home, drawing the curtains of my carriage to shield me from the gazing crowd?  It was to rescue my friend—­my vicar—­my coadjutor—­my son—­from the laughs and finger-points of the vulgar mass.  H-I might as well have stayed at home—­or better, for my peculiar position to-day rather requires me to keep in—­”

“No, citizen,” said Frowenfeld, laying his hand upon Agricola’s arm, “I trust it is not in vain that you have come out.  There is a man in trouble whom only you can deliver.”

The old man began to swell with complacency.

“H-why, really—­”

“He, Citizen, is truly of your kind—­”

“He must be delivered, Professor Frowenfeld—­”

“He is a native Louisianian, not only by accident of birth but by sentiment and intention,” said Frowenfeld.

The old man smiled a benign delight, but the apothecary now had the upper hand, and would not hear him speak.

“His aspirations,” continued the speaker, “his indignations—­mount with his people’s.  His pulse beats with yours, sir.  He is a part of your circle.  He is one of your caste.”