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e. He was a man of
patrician birth and high breeding, who liked to live in a manner
worthy of his rank. Remarkable for his personal graces and comeliness,
for the dignity of his bearing and the fascination of his address, he
was fond of pomp, show, and pleasure; surrounded by a host of
brilliant officers, of whom he was the idol, he loved to keep up a
miniature court, in distant imitation of that of Versailles; and long
after he had departed, old people were fond of talking of the
exquisitely refined manners, of the magnificent balls, of the
splendidly uniformed troops, of the high-born young officers, and of
the many other unparalleled things they had seen in the days of the
_Great Marquis_.

. . . . . . .

The inventories made of the property of the twelve gentlemen, whom the
decree of the Spanish tribunal had convicted of rebellion, afford
interesting proofs of the Spartan simplicity which existed in the
colony. Thus the furniture of the bed-room of Madam Villeré, who was
the wife of one of the most distinguished citizens of Louisiana, and
the grand-daughter of De Lachaise, who came to the colony in 1723 as
ordaining commissary, was described as consisting of a cypress
bedstead, three feet wide by six in length, with a mattress of corn
shucks and one of feathers on the top, a bolster of corn shucks, and a
coarse cotton counterpane or quilt, manufactured probably by the lady
herself, or by her servants; six chairs of cypress wood, with straw
bottoms; some candlesticks with common wax, the candles made in the
country, &c., &c.

The rest of the house was not more splendidly furnished, and the
house itself, as described in the inventory, must have looked very
much like one of those modest and unpainted little wood structures
which are, to this day, to be seen in many parts of the banks of the
river Mississippi, and in the Attakapas and Opelousas parishes. They
are the tenements of our small planters who own only a few slaves, and
they retain the appellation of _Maisons d'Acadiens, or Acadian
houses_.

Villeré's plantation, situated at the German coast, was not large, and
the whole of his slaves, of both sexes and of all ages, did not exceed
thirty-two. His friends and brother conspirators, who were among the
first gentlemen in the land, did not live with more ostentation. All
the sequestrated property being sold, it was found that, after having
distributed among the widows and other creditors what they were
entitled to, and after paying the costs of the trial and inventories,
the royal treasury had little or nothing to receive. . . . . .

There were but humble dwellings in Louisiana in 1769, and he who would
have judged of their tenants from their outward appearance would have
thought that they were occupied by mere peasants, but had he passed
their thresholds he would have been amazed at being welcomed with such
manners as were habitual in the most polished court of Europe, and
entertained by men and women wearing with the utmost ease and grace
the elegant and rich costume of the reign of Louis XV. There, the
powdered head, the silk and gold flowered coat, the lace and frills,
the red-heeled shoe, the steel handled sword, the silver knee buckles,
the high and courteous bearing of the gentleman, the hoop petticoat,
the brocaded gown, the rich head dress, the stately bow, the slightly
rouged cheeks, the artificially graceful deportment, and the
aristocratic features of the lady, formed a strange contrast with the
roughness of surrounding objects. It struck one with as much
astonishment as if diamonds had been found capriciously set by some
unknown hand in one of the wild trees of the forest, or it reminded
the imagination of those fairy tales in which a princess is found
asleep in a solitude, where none but beasts of prey were expected to
roam.

THE TREE OF THE DEAD.

(_From History of Louisiana._)

In a lot situated at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine streets, in
the city of New Orleans, there is a tree which nobody looks at without
curiosity and without wondering how it came there. For a long time it
was the only one of its kind known in the state, and from its isolated
position it has always been cursed with sterility. It reminds one of
the warm climes of Africa or Asia, and wears the aspect of a stranger
of distinction driven from his native country. Indeed with its sharp
and thin foliage, sighing mournfully under the blast of one of our
November northern winds, it looks as sorrowful as an exile. Its
enormous trunk is nothing but an agglomeration of knots and bumps,
which each passing year seems to have deposited there as a mark of
age, and as a protection against the blows of time and of the world.

Inquire for its origin, and every one will tell you that it has stood
there from time immemorial. A sort of vague but impressive mystery is
attached to it, and it is as superstitiously respected as one of the
old oaks of Dodona. Bold would be the axe that would strike the first
blow at that foreign patriarch; and if it were prostrated to the
ground by a profane hand, what native of the city would not mourn
over its fall, and brand the act as an unnatural and criminal deed?
So, long live the date-tree of Orleans street--that time-honored
descendant of Asiatic ancestors!

In the beginning of 1727, a French vessel of war landed at New Orleans
a man of haughty mien, who wore the Turkish dress, and whose whole
attendance was a single servant. He was received by the governor with
the highest distinction, and was conducted by him to a small but
comfortable house with a pretty garden, then existing at the corner of
Orleans and Dauphine streets, and which, from the circumstance of its
being so distant from other dwellings, might have been called a rural
retreat, although situated in the limits of the city. There the
stranger, who was understood to be a prisoner of state, lived in the
greatest seclusion; and although neither he nor his attendant could be
guilty of indiscretion, because none understood their language, and
although Governor Périer severely rebuked the slightest inquiry, yet
it seemed to be the settled conviction in Louisiana, that the
mysterious stranger was a brother of the Sultan, or some great
personage of the Ottoman empire, who had fled from the anger of the
vicegerent of Mohammed, and who had taken refuge in France.

The Sultan had peremptorily demanded the fugitive, and the French
government, thinking it derogatory to its dignity to comply with that
request, but at the same time not wishing to expose its friendly
relations with the Moslem monarch, and perhaps desiring for political
purposes, to keep in hostage the important guest it had in its hands,
had recourse to the expedient of answering that he had fled to
Louisiana, which was so distant a country, that it might be looked
upon as the grave, where, as it was suggested, the fugitive might be
suffered to wait in peace for actual death, without danger or offence
to the Sultan. Whether this story be tr

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