It was a pleasant journey, with only a few storms, one severe enough to make them run into an inlet to get out of the fierce sweep of the river. There was Cahokia, whose ruins were still visible. Kaskaskia, despoiled of much of its valuable front, the town high now above the river. Strange and curious sights to one who had been no farther than St. Charles.
How would St. Louis look when they went back to it? Renée wondered. For this to her was a marvellous city, more brilliant than any dream ever made it. It seemed as if the whole world must have been gathered in it when one heard the confusion of tongues.
They did not return the next summer, for still the business could not spare André. But Monsieur Chouteau came down, and there were journeys about to places of such bloom and beauty and mystery that one almost had to hold one's breath.
Strange things, too, were happening in the world beyond the great river that seemed all to them. The colonies were growing more stable, being welded together by chains of interest and pride and patriotism into a grand country, but the Mississippi River would always be its boundary. It could not pass that, men thought.
Over seas there were tumults and wars, and France in the throes of a most fearful revolution. They heard a great deal about it here. How hundreds of the nobility were thrown in prison, the King and Queen executed and the mob quarrelling with its leaders.
Renée thought of the two little brothers in Paris that she had seen on the day of her journey. And the Count. He was among the nobility, and he was her father. She shuddered over the horrible doings. And here was her other father, bright and happy and always considering what would be for her pleasure.
Sometimes they read an unspoken wish in each other's eyes.
"It is not quite St. Louis," she would say, with a half smile meant to be gay, but was pensive instead.
"No. But we will return presently," the eyes full of cheerful light and the tone hopeful.
"Oh, there is no place like the home and the friends of childhood--the larger childhood, when everything is impressed on one's heart. The old house and the shop and the wide chimneys and Mère Lunde, and the Marchands with their babies. I know what it is to be an exile."