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Updated: June 23, 2025
Yes, and the doctor says whenever a patient of his says that he stops coming." They reach the door of the sick man's bedchamber. Attalie pushes it softly, looks into the darkened chamber and draws back, whispering, "He has dropped asleep." Camille changes places with her and looks in.
He wished he could determine conclusively and exactly what was the mutual relation of Attalie and her lodger. Out of the minutest corner of one eye he had watched her for years. A quadroon woman's lot was a hard one; any true woman would say that, even while approving the laws and popular notions of necessity that made that lot what it was.
"And the doctor?" asks Camille, as he and the messenger are hurrying side by side out of Exchange alley into Bienville street. " was there yesterday and the day before." They reach the house. Attalie meets her counselor alone at the top of the stairs. "Li bien malade," she whispers, weeping; "he is very ill." " wants to make his will?" asks Camille. All their talk is in their bad French.
Attalie nods, answers inaudibly, and weeps afresh. Presently she manages to tell how the sick man had tried to write, and failed, and had fallen back exclaiming, "Attalie Attalie I want to leave it all to you what little " and did not finish, but presently gasped out, "Bring a notary." "And the doctor?" " has not come to-day. Michié told the doctor if he came again he would kick him downstairs.
Attalie, still kneeling, kept her eyes on his in silence, but she understood; he saw that. "She must tell him," he continued, "to come at once. But before she goes there she must stop on the way and tell three persons to come and witness a notarial act. Now whom shall they be?
Attalie and her handmaiden looked at each other with a dumb show of lamentation; but her butcher and her baker turned slowly upon her candlestick-maker, and he upon them, a look of quiet but profound approval. The notary wrote, and the patient spoke again: "I will everything else which I may leave at my death, both real and personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard."
The notary rose, a wet pen in one hand and the will with his portfolio under it for a tablet in the other. Attalie hurried to the bedside and stood ready to assist. The patient took the pen with a trembling hand. The writing was laid before him, and Attalie with a knee on the bed thrust her arm under the pillows behind him to make a firmer support.
The notary turned his goggles upon the reclining figure and asked in English, with a strong Creole accent: "What is your name?" The words of the man in the bed were an inaudible gasp. But Attalie bent her ear quickly, caught them, and turning repeated: "More brandy." The black girl brought a decanter from the floor behind the bureau, and a wine-glass from the washstand.
Then he glided downstairs again and had just slipped into his shoes when Attalie came up hastily from below. She was pale and seemed both awe-struck and suspicious. As she met him outside the door grief and dismay were struggling in her eyes with mistrust, and as he coolly handed her the key of her room indignation joined the strife.
"Ah!" exclaimed Attalie, in the manner of one largely, but not entirely, propitiated. The maid suited her silent movement to the utterance, and the three witnesses exchanged slow looks of grave satisfaction.
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