The worshipers were returning from the mass. My reverie was at an end. I arose and, crossing the square, strolled over to Decatur Place toward the old French market by the river side. There I found much that reminded me of the greater _Marché Central_ which I had visited one early morning in Paris. There were the same daintiness and care in arranging and displaying the vegetables, the same taste and skill in showing the flowers, which are everywhere the glory of New Orleans. There were bushels of roses--the Marechal Neil, the gorgeous Cloth of Gold among the more splendid. Here also the butchers were carrying the meats upon their heads, just as they did in France, and the fish and game were as temptingly displayed. But the people of the market, though speaking the French tongue, were widely different. The swarthy tints of the tropics were here in evidence. Negresses black as night made me _bonjour!_ The venders and porters were ebony or mulatto, and even the buyers were largely tinctured with African blood, while the French they talked was a speech I could with difficulty comprehend. The sharp nasal twang of Paris was greatly softened, and their “u” had lost that certain difficult liquidity which English and American mouths find it almost impossible to attain. Curious two-wheeled carts loaded with brass milk cans were starting on their morning rounds, and lesser two-wheeled wagons were being loaded with vegetables, meats and fish for the day’s peddling throughout the city. Burdens were not so generally borne upon the backs and shoulders as in France, although some of the women and a few men were carrying their wares and goods upon the head with easy balance.
The _Vieux Carré_ has in it to me a certain note of sadness. As you wander along its _rues_ and ways you feel that, somehow or other, the days of its importance and its power are forever gone. Mansions, once the imposing homes of the affluent, are now cracked and marred, and there seem to be none to put them into good repair. Dilapidation broods over the _Vieux Carré_. You feel that the good old Creole days are surely fled. You realize that as the language of La Belle France is disappearing, so the leisurely customs and easy habits of French New Orleans, before many years, will be submerged by the direct speech and commercial brusqueness of modern America.