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So he told me the true story which I have called "Attalie Brouillard," because, having forgotten the woman's real name, it pleased his fancy to use that name in recounting the tale: "Attalie Brouillard." I repeated the story to a friend, a gentleman of much reading. His reply dismayed me.
These names may sound inexact, but can you prove that these were not their names and occupations? We shall proceed. These three simple souls were bound to Attalie by the strong yet tender bonds of debit and credit. She was not distressingly but only interestingly "behind" on their well-greased books, where Camille's account, too, was longer on the left-hand side.
If to herself actually, then in case of his early death, for Camille had got a notion of that, and had got it from Attalie, who had got it from the Englishman, what then? Would she get his money, or any of it? No, not if Camille knew men especially white men. For a quadroon woman to be true to herself and to her God was not the kind of thing that white men if he knew them rewarded.
Then the patient resumed with stronger voice. "I will and bequeath to my friend Camille Ducour" Attalie started from her chair with a half-uttered cry of amazement and protest, but dropped back again at the notary's gesture for silence, and the patient spoke straight on without hesitation "to my friend Camille Ducour, the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash."
The black maid led them up from below, and Attalie, tearless now, but meek and red-eyed, and speaking low through the slightly opened door from within the Englishman's bed-chamber, thanked them, explained that a will was to be made, and was just asking them to find seats in the adjoining front room, when the notary, aged, bent, dark-goggled, and as insensible as a machine, arrived.
The notary once more handed him the pen, but the same thing happened again. The butcher cleared his throat in a way to draw attention. Attalie looked towards him and he drawled, half rising from his chair: "I t'ink a li'l more cognac" "Yass," murmured the baker. The candlestick-maker did not speak, but unconsciously wet his lips with his tongue and wiped them with the back of his forefinger.
"And now, Madame Brouillard, to do this thing in the very best way I ought to say to you at once that our dear friend did he ever tell you what he was worth?" The speaker leaned against the door-post and seemed to concern himself languidly with his black-rimmed finger-nails, while in fact he was watching Attalie from head to foot with all his senses and wits.
Attalie had another friend, a white man. This other friend was a big, burly Englishman, forty-something years old, but looking older; a big pink cabbage-rose of a man who had for many years been Attalie's principal lodger. He, too, was alone in the world. And yet neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer.
And this is it: In 1855 this Attalie Brouillard so called, mark you, for present convenience only lived in the French quarter of New Orleans; I think they say in Bienville street, but that is no matter; somewhere in the vieux carré of Bienville's original town.
Do that, Madame Brouillard, as quickly as you can. I will wait here." But the kneeling figure hesitated, with intense distress in her upturned face: "What are you going to do, Michié Ducour?" "We are going to make you sole legatee." "I do not want it! How are you going to do it? How?" "In a way which he knows about and approves." Attalie hid her shapely forehead again on the dead hand.
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