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Updated: June 15, 2025
We barely escaped perishing in Lake Chicot and many other things.... At last we arrived at a pretty village St. Martinville called also little Paris and full of barons, marquises, counts and countesses that were an offense to my nose and my stomach. Your grandmother was in raptures. It was there we met the beautiful Tonton, your aunt by marriage. Suzanne née
Yet for all that her jealous critics said she was good and sensible, and would forget everything, even her toilet, to succor any one in trouble. One day Tonton heard a great noise in the street before her door. She was told that a child had just been crushed by a vehicle.
I had even taken it in my hands and caressed it before Tonton, who had just gone to bed. Then I had given it back to her and gone out. Accordingly I questioned her. She took me by the hand, and leading me to the camp fire, showed me the charred skeleton of the chameleon, explaining to me, as best she could, that she had thrown it in the fire, because I had petted it! Oh! women! women!
Without stopping to ask whether the child was white or black or if it still lived, Tonton glanced around for her sun-bonnet, but, not finding it at hand, darted bareheaded into the street. At the door she met her young brother, and, as the sun was hot, she took his hat and put it on her own head. The Rubicon was crossed Tonton had discovered the hat! All she had heard was a false alarm.
And Tonton, indifferent to these remarks, which she heard and to which she was accustomed, and to the furious glances thrown upon her cavalier by Neville Déclouet, continued, with her arm in his, to chat and laugh with him as they walked slowly around the hall.
Diamonds sparkled again on his lace frill, at his wrists, on his cravat of rose silk, and on the buckles of his pumps. I cast my eye around to find Tonton, but she had not come. Some one near me said, "Do you know who will escort Madame du Rocher to the ball?" And another said, "Here is Neville, so who will replace him at the side of the pretty widow?"
Ah, they call necessity the mother of invention, but I declare, from experience, that vanity has performed more miracles of invention, and made greater discoveries than Galileo or Columbus. The women of St. Martinville, Tonton at their head, had revolted against fate and declared they would have hats if they had to get them at the moon.
For a wonder he paid Tonton only the attentions required by politeness, and the pretty widow, while still queen of all, belonged that evening entirely to Neville. The following Saturday my father arrived. The next day, after mass, our friends came in a body to say adieu.
But, go there and lead the life of a brute, of a plunderer and assassin, and you will see how at times your civilized imagination will wander away to take refuge from itself. "I could have rid myself of Tonton. In an oasis we met some rebels, bearing a flag of truce, and exchanged the women for guns and ammunition.
All our friends were there except Tréville de Saint Julien, and Madame Tonton gave her smiles and sweet looks to Neville, who never left her a moment. Oh, how I regretted that my father was not with us! He had gone to Opelousas. He had bought several plantations in St. Martin parish, and in a region called Fausse Pointe, and in another known as the Côte Gelée.
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