M. St.-Ange stood looking up and down the street for nearly an hour.  But few ladies, only the inveterate mass-goers, were out.  About the entrance of the frequent cafes the masculine gentility stood leaning on canes, with which now one and now another beckoned to Jules, some even adding pantomimic hints of the social cup.

M. St.-Ange remarked to his servant without turning his head that somehow he felt sure he should soon return those bons that the mulatto had lent him.

“What will you do with them?”

“Me!” said Baptiste, quickly; “I will go and see the bull-fight in the Place Congo.”

“There is to be a bull-fight?  But where is M. Cayetano?”

“Ah, got all his affairs wet in the tornado.  Instead of his circus, they are to have a bull-fight—­not an ordinary bull-fight with sick horses, but a buffalo-and-tiger fight.  I would not miss it—­”

Two or three persons ran to the opposite corner, and commenced striking at something with their canes.  Others followed.  Can M. St.-Ange and servant, who hasten forward—­can the Creoles, Cubans, Spaniards, San Domingo refugees, and other loungers—­can they hope it is a fight?  They hurry forward.  Is a man in a fit?  The crowd pours in from the side-streets.  Have they killed a so-long snake?  Bareheaded shopmen leave their wives, who stand upon chairs.  The crowd huddles and packs.  Those on the outside make little leaps into the air, trying to be tall.

“What is the matter?”

“Have they caught a real live rat?”

“Who is hurt?” asks some one in English.

“Personne,” replies a shopkeeper; “a man’s hat blow’ in the gutter; but he has it now.  Jules pick’ it.  See, that is the man, head and shoulders on top the res’.”

“He in the homespun?” asks a second shopkeeper.  “Humph! an Americain—­a West-Floridian; bah!”

“But wait; ’st! he is speaking; listen!”

“To who is he speak—?”

“Sh-sh-sh! to Jules.”

“Jules who?”

“Silence, you!  To Jules St.-Ange, what howe me a bill since long time.  Sh-sh-sh!”

Then the voice was heard.

Its owner was a man of giant stature, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, as if he was making a constant, good-natured attempt to accommodate himself to ordinary doors and ceilings.  His bones were those of an ox.  His face was marked more by weather than age, and his narrow brow was bald and smooth.  He had instantaneously formed an opinion of Jules St.-Ange, and the multitude of words, most of them lingual curiosities, with which he was rasping the wide-open ears of his listeners, signified, in short, that, as sure as his name was Parson Jones, the little Creole was a “plum gentleman.”

M. St.-Ange bowed and smiled, and was about to call attention, by both gesture and speech, to a singular object on top of the still uncovered head, when the nervous motion of the Americain anticipated him, as, throwing up an immense hand, he drew down a large roll of bank-notes.  The crowd laughed, the West-Floridian joining, and began to disperse.