Through Brandon's sister, Madame de Chateauneuve,
I obtained my entrée to society. By this word
society, however, must be understood that only of the
Creole or native population at that early day in New
Orleans, when the city numbered some thirty-five
thousand people only. Scarcely any other social
world was recognized. The Anglo-American population
were neither sufficiently numerous, nor in sufficiently
good repute, to form an extensive or an ample
community of their own. The Gallic-American circles
were not easily accessible. They were composed
of a proud aristocratic people, possessed of an equal
share of jealousies and refinements. They regarded
the Anglo-Americans as mere intruders—adventurers
by no means representing the better classes of their
people—traders equally unpolished and reckless, having
no aims that did not lie within the narrow compass
of the sovereign dollar! They despised them accordingly;
and soon learned to detest, even as cordially

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

as they despised, when they found these adventurers,
as competitors, in trade, unrestrained by the conventions
of a customary society, undiverted from the one
purpose by any sense of grace and luxury, and whose
superior energies—the result, in some measure, of
their deficient refinements and inferior tastes—were
rapidly undermining their prosperity, and wresting
from them hourly the profits of a trade which the
Creole had rather carried on as an amateur than as
a professor.

It would not, I think, be easy to understand, at
this latter day—now that everything is somewhat altered
in these respects—the wholesale aversion with
which the natives of Louisiana, at that period, regarded
the strange population. They made some distinction,
it is true, between members of the same race,
engaged in agriculture, and those employed in trade,
which were greatly favorable to the former class.
Thus, as I was the son of a planter, and destined to
become a planter myself, I was necessarily recognized
as a gentleman—though still after the Anglo-Saxon
formulæ. It did not matter that my planting interest
was a petty one. It was quite sufficient that its
tendencies were recognized as calculated to raise the
social nature, and elevate the tastes of the individual
to a rank very far superior to those which were usually
ascribed to trade.

In consequence of this distinction, my social position
was freed from the usual disabilities of my race
in New Orleans, and Madame de Chateauneuve kindly
achieved the rest. She found for me a sufficient

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passport. Under her wing, I went the visiting rounds,
and became incorporated with that circle in which
she moved without impediment. She was a calm,
strong-minded person, very much resembling her
brother; and, like a sensible woman, she swayed her
husband's household, without mortifying his amour
propre.

Monsieur Philip de Chateauneuve was a merchant
of the old school—a class, by the way, quite as well
known to the history of trade among the English, as
among their Gallic neighbors. He was a large importer
of French and German wines, and was properly
interested in his business, without suffering his appetite
for gain to render him heedless of the demands
of society—a nice and difficult distinction which the
Anglo-American has yet justly to appreciate. He
contrived, in other words, to maintain together the
character of the trader and the gentleman—was contented
with moderate profits and a moderate business,
and did not fancy that his sole destination in life lay
in his day-book and ledger. He was thus enabled to
devote some time and study to literature and the fine
arts, of which he was passionately fond; and his collection,
though on a small scale, would have refreshed
the connoisseur, as his gallery was not more petit than
recherche. He had some pictures, picked up during
a twelvemonth's visit to the continent of Europe, and
a correspondence with friendly amateurs in Italy,
which he had been careful to nurse and keep alive.
Monsieur de Chateauneuve was considerably older
than his wife, whom he professed to treat rather as a

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child than a woman. To all this she yielded with a
deference seemingly the most implicit, being quite
satisfied to wield the essentials of power, without disputing
about its shows. Her brother was quite a
favorite with her Baron, and in some degree I succeeded,
after a season, to his favor also. But these
details are unnecessary. Enough, that the freedom
of his house afforded me that of several of the oldest
native families, the very families, representing an order
of things rapidly dying out, but which, in numberless
respects, deserved to survive their disabilities,
which, of all things, I should have most desired.

With a very slight smattering of French, which
was sufficiently imperfect to encourage my friends
to correct me graciously—a task which my fair
companions always performed in such a manner as to
make the correction agreeable—I made my way into
society with tolerable success. Though something of
a rustic, I was lively and good-natured, and my equal
simplicity and animation were serviceable to me in a
condition of the social world which if highly sophisticated,
had never yet lost its frankness. I flattered
myself that I grew rather popular, and Brandon
assured me that such was the case. Invitations,
accordingly, poured in upon, and kept me busy. An
incessant round of parties—morning, noon, and evening
reunions—made me something of a gallant; and
I, who had lately worn moccasons and leggings, was
now well satisfied to believe that I had never danced
in anything more grotesque than French opera boots,
and Poniatowski pumps!

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One delightful morning in January found Frederick
Brandon and myself eagerly engaged in discussing our
habits for the bal masque of Madame Marie de Berniere.
This lady was a belle and a fortune. She was
the youthful widow of the once notorious Col. Eugene
de Berniere, a sugar planter and a famous swordsman.
He was one of a school now nearly extinct, who
prided himself on his reputation as a fire-eater. He
had been emphatically un mauvais sujet, one of the
most malignant of a tribe whose malignity assumed a
type of fanaticism little short of insanity, and who
seemed anxious to distinguish themselves by a sort of
general warfare against humanity. A fierce, dark,
savage man, ungenial and morose, he had been a domestic
tyrant, and was equally feared by his family,
and loathed by society, which he nevertheless contrived
to bully into the appearance of respect and
certainly into forbearance.

Marie Prideau, now de Berniere, was some twenty
years younger than himself. She had been forced
into his arms when but a child of sixteen, by the
perverse avarice of her needy mother, who very soon
learned to deplore the folly of which she had been
guilty, the cruel fruits of which she was yet not compelled
in her own person to endure. These enured
wholly to the unhappy victim, her daughter. Col.
de Berniere soon taught her an experience in torture
which might have afforded some lessons to the Spanish
Inquisition, in the day of its maturer tyrannies. He
soon grew jealous of the fidelity of the beautiful
creature delivered into his hands, assured as he was,

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by the infallible convictions of his nature, that there
was nothing in himself at all calculated to secure or
influence her affections. But his jealousy was wholly
without cause.

The virtues of Marie de Berniere were beyond reproach.
Her prudence, however, was at fault. Of
a high spirit, a frank and ardent temper, she could
not conceal the disgust and aversion which his brutalities
provoked. His treatment of her was harsh and
brutal, amounting at times to violence; and his death,
which happened suddenly, was a grateful relief from
the most cruel of all bonds. She felt it so, and affected
none of the regrets which she could not be
supposed to feel. She was at no great pains to convince
the world that she was unconsolable; still, she
offended against none of the proprieties. She clad
herself and household in the usual habits of mourning.
She abstained from the gayer circles of society; she
violated none of its rules; and her conduct was held
not merely unexceptionable, but, among those who
knew her history, exemplary in a high degree. And
thus she continued till the period of our narrative.

It was now nearly two years since the death of her
tyrant. Her weeds were all discarded; she had resumed
her place in society, and was now preparing to
give her first grand entertainment. All the world,
to employ the superlative idiom of the French, was
agog for the occasion. They knew her story; they
felt her charms; they had not forgotten the great
wealth, which the sudden death of her husband, without
heirs, had secured without restraint to herself.

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The public mind was greatly excited, and indulged in
glowing expectations. Conjecture and rumor were
busy in describing, in language the most exaggerated,
the delights and glories which we might anticipate.
The young widow was about to revenge herself for
her long forbearance; and the prediction was confident
and universal that we were soon to enjoy a
festival more brilliant, picturesque, and charming than
had been seen for many years before in our American
Paris. Great preparations for the event were known
to be in progress, and all the auguries were propitious
and all the prophecies were grateful. Anticipation,
however, if I may dare to say so, did not go quite far
enough. The spectacle may have had a self-exaggerating
effect in eyes which, like mine, had not been
familiar with such displays, and which, accordingly,
were without the just standards for determining upon
them, but there is still a considerable circle in the
Crescent City, as it was some thirty years ago, who
will long remember the bal masque of Madame de
Berniere, not less from what actually took place,
than by what was so glowingly promised to public
expectation.

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