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On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime, on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an old Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop, this blacksmith's shop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied and dormer-windowed wine-warehouse Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, had halted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman the whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honoré Grandissime.

He saw Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, with anguished faces, offering woman's pleadings to deaf constables. He saw the remainder of Aurora's plantation account thrown to the lawyers to keep the question of the Grandissime titles languishing in the courts.

"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose third finger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom. "W'at you got to say to dat?" The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a thrill of anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love affair that did not include Clotilde Nancanou. "Whom have you married?" "De pritties' gal in de citty."

"Madame Nancanou," said Honoré Grandissime, leaning toward her earnestly, "you know I must beg leave to appeal to your candor and confidence you know everything concerning Palmyre that I know. You know me, and who I am; you know it is not for me to undertake to confer with Palmyre.

Clotilde, too, nerved by the sight of her mother's embarrassment, came to her support, and she and the visitor spoke in one breath. "Maman, if Monsieur pardon " "Madame Nancanou, the pardon, Mademoiselle "

Ask Honoré Grandissime; he has seen the little widow; but then he don't know who she is. He will not ask me, and I will not tell him. Oh, yes; it is about eighteen years now since old De Grapion elegant, high-stepping old fellow married her, then only sixteen years of age, to young Nancanou, an indigo-planter on the Fausse Rivière the old bend, you know, behind Pointe Coupée.

Obviously, the place to commence at was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies Nancanou. As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose temperature had just been recorded as 50° F., the apothecary stepped half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came blowing upon his tired forehead from the north.

He had already set one foot down upon the stair, but at sight of the ascending group drew back and said: "It is my mother;" then turned to his mother and took her hand; they had been for months estranged, but now they silently kissed. "He is sleeping," said Honoré. "Maman, Madame Nancanou." The ladies bowed the one looking very large and splendid, the other very sweet and small.

It is nearly noon of a balmy morning late in February. Aurore Nancanou and her daughter have only this moment ceased sewing, in the small front room of No. 19 rue Bienville. Number 19 is the right-hand half of a single-story, low-roofed tenement, washed with yellow ochre, which it shares generously with whoever leans against it. It sits as fast on the ground as a toad.

The doctor laughed a little, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one hand, as he laughed. The convalescent wondered what there could be to laugh at. "Who are they?" he inquired. "Their name is De Grapion oh, De Grapion, says I! their name is Nancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women the brightest, the best, and the bravest that I know in New Orleans."