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Creole life. Her "Balcony Stories" are like pictures in their vivid
intensity.

WORKS.

 Monsieur Motte.
 Earthlings.
 Balcony Stories.
 Bonne Maman.
 Bayou L'Ombre.
 History of Louisiana.

LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE.

A BALCONY STORY.

(_From the Century Magazine_,[50] Jan., 1893.)

That was what she was called by everybody as soon as she was seen or
described. Her name, besides baptismal titles, was Idalie Sainte Foy
Mortemart des Islets. When she came into society, in the brilliant
little world of New Orleans, it was the event of the season, and
after she came in, whatever she did became also events. Whether she
went, or did not go; what she said, or did not say; what she wore, and
did not wear--all these became important matters of discussion, quoted
as much or more than what the President said, or the governor thought.
And in those days, the days of '59, New Orleans was not, as it is now,
a one-heiress place, but it may be said that one could find heiresses
then as one finds type-writing girls now.

Mademoiselle Idalie received her birth and what education she had on
her parent's plantation, the famed old Reine Sainte Foy place, and it
is no secret that, like the ancient kings of France, her birth
exceeded her education.

It was a plantation, the Reine Sainte Foy, the richness and luxury of
which are really well described in those perfervid pictures of
tropical life, at one time the passion of philanthropic imaginations,
excited and exciting over the horrors of slavery. Although these
pictures were then often accused of being purposely exaggerated, they
seem now to fall short of, instead of surpassing, the truth. Stately
walls, acres of roses, miles of oranges, unmeasured fields of cane,
colossal sugar-house--they were all there, and all the rest of it,
with the slaves, slaves, slaves everywhere, whole villages of negro
cabins. And there were also, most noticeable to the natural, as well
as visionary eye--there were the ease, idleness, extravagance,
self-indulgence, pomp, pride, arrogance, in short the whole
enumeration, the moral _sine qua non_, as some people considered it,
of the wealthy slaveholder of aristocratic descent and tastes.

What Mademoiselle Idalie cared to learn she studied, what she did not
she ignored; and she followed the same simple rule untrammeled in her
eating, drinking, dressing, and comportment generally; and whatever
discipline may have been exercised on the place, either in fact or
fiction, most assuredly none of it, even so much as in a threat, ever
attainted her sacred person. When she was just turned sixteen,
Mademoiselle Idalie made up her mind to go into society. Whether she
was beautiful or not, it is hard to say. It is almost impossible to
appreciate properly the beauty of the rich, the very rich. The
unfettered development, the limitless choice of accessories, the
confidence, the self-esteem, the sureness of expression, the
simplicity of purpose, the ease of execution,--all these produce a
certain effect of beauty behind which one really cannot get to measure
length of nose, or brilliancy of the eye. This much can be said; there
was nothing in her that positively contradicted any assumption of
beauty on her part, or credit of it on the part of others. She was
very tall and very thin with small head, long neck, black eyes, and
abundant straight black hair,--for which her hair-dresser deserved
more praise than she,--good teeth of course, and a mouth that, even in
prayer, talked nothing but commands; that is about all she had _en
fait d'ornements_, as the modistes say. It may be added that she
walked as if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended over the whole
earth, and the soil of it were too vile for her tread.

Of course she did not buy her toilets in New Orleans. Everything was
ordered from Paris, and came as regularly through the custom-house as
the modes and robes to the milliners. She was furnished by a certain
house there, just as one of a royal family would be at the present
day. As this had lasted from her layette up to her sixteenth year, it
may be imagined what took place when she determined to make her début.
Then it was literally, not metaphorically, _carte blanche_, at least
so it got to the ears of society. She took a sheet of note-paper,
wrote the date at the top, added "I make my début in November," signed
her name at the extreme end of the sheet, addressed it to her
dressmaker in Paris, and sent it. . . . . .

That she was admired, raved about, loved even, goes without saying.
After the first month she held the refusal of half the beaux of New
Orleans. Men did absurd, undignified, preposterous things for her: and
she? Love? Marry? The idea never occurred to her. She treated the most
exquisite of her pretenders no better than she treated her Paris
gowns, for the matter of that. She could not even bring herself to
listen to a proposal patiently; whistling to her dogs, in the middle
of the most ardent protestations, or jumping up and walking away with
a shrug of the shoulders, and a "Bah!"

Well! every one knows what happened after '59. There is no need to
repeat. The history of one is the history of all. . . . . . . . .

It might have been ten years according to some calculations, or ten
eternities,--the heart and the almanac never agree about time,--but
one morning old Champigny (they used to call him Champignon) was
walking along his levee front . . . when he saw a figure approaching.
He had to stop to look at it, for it was worth while. The head was
hidden by a green barege veil, which the showers had plentifully
besprinkled with dew; a tall thin figure. . . . She was the teacher of
the colored school some three or four miles away. "Ah," thought
Champigny, "some Northern lady on a mission." . . . Old Champigny
could not get over it that he had never seen her before. But he must
have seen her, and, with his abstraction and old age, not have
noticed her, for he found out from the negroes that she had been
teaching four or five years there. And he found out also--how, it is
not important--that she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets.
_La grande demoiselle!_ He had never known her in the old days, owing
to his uncomplimentary attitude toward women, but he knew of her, of
course, and of her family. . . . .

Only the good God himself knows what passed in Champigny's mind on the
subject. We know only the results. He went and married _la grande
demoiselle_. How? Only the good God knows that too.

FOOTNOTE:

[50] By permission of the author, and publishers, The Century Co.,
N. Y.

WAITMAN BARBE.

~1864=----.~

WAITMAN BARBE was born at Morgantown, West Virginia, and educated at
the State University in that town. Since the year 1884 he has been
engaged in editorial and literary pursuits, being now editor of the
_Daily State Journal_. He has already made a reputation as a speaker
on literary and educational topics: and his poems, first appearing in
periodicals, have now been collected into a volume called "Ashes and

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