When, at last, my pompano was vanished, and the claret gone, and I regretfully quitted the shelter of _La_ ---- it was long past the stroke of twelve, yet the café was still crowded and the _Vieux Carré_ was alight and astir as though it were early in the night. Again crossing Canal street, I found the American city dark and silent. I hurriedly went my way to the hotel, my footsteps echoing with that strange, reverberating hollowness which marks the tread upon the deserted, midnight city street.
In the morning I was up betimes, taking a cup of coffee and a roll, and then making my way down St. Charles street and crossing Canal to the _rue_ Royale, passing the open gates of the old convent garden of the Ursulines, now the Archbishop’s palace, and turning into the _rue_ St. Petre, then into Jackson Square. The air was cool. The world had not quite waked up. The gardeners with their water carts were giving the morning bath to the lawns and flowers of the park. A friendly mannered policeman had just disturbed two tramps from their nightly slumber, bidding them move on. I sat down upon a stone bench near where they had slept and looked across at the old Spanish-French Cathedral of St. Louis and the municipal buildings of the courts, the Cabildo and Hotel de Ville--architectural monuments of an already shadowy past. The chimes were ringing to matins and the devout were entering to the early mass.
[Illustration: JACKSON STATUE--NEW ORLEANS]
I watched the hurrying groups, musing the while upon the picture before me. Here, the Canadian de Bienville, and Cadillac and Aubry and their French compeers, as well as the Spanish Captains General, from Don Juan de Ulloa to Don Manuel Salcedo had offered up their thanks for safe arrival from dangerous voyages across uncharted seas. Here, Don Antonio O’Rielly, Havana’s murderous Irish Governor, had ordered his Spanish musketeers to shoot to death the Creole patriots, Lafreniere, Milhet, Noyant, Marquis, Caresse, that devoted band who refused to believe that Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul and his Majesty, Louis XV, _le bien aimé_--had secretly made cold-blooded sale of the fair Province of Louisiana to Spain. Here, Citizen Laussat, by order of Napoleon, had surrendered the great Louisiana Province to General Wilkinson and Governor Claiborne, the Commissioners of Thomas Jefferson, who thereby added an empire to the dominion of the young government of the United States. Here, also, had been celebrated with so much pomp and trumpet fanfare the victory of Andrew Jackson’s border riflemen over Pakenham’s Peninsular veterans. The historic Place d’Armes has been rechristened Jackson Square, and “Old Hickory” now rides his big horse in the midst of a lovely municipal garden. In later years, here also had Confederate Mayor and Federal General posted their decrees and proclamations, among the latter that famous “General Order No. 28,” wherein the doughty General presumed to teach good manners to the dames and demoiselles of New Orleans, and gained thereby the sobriquet “Beast Butler.”