STRANGE TRUE STORIES of LOUISIANA, Illustrated
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Cr MolfieS jy A COLLECTION OF FIRST EDITIONS brought together by FRED A. AND FRANCES ROSENSTOCK acquired by the Library with the assistance of the classes of 1942, 1948, 1951, I960, and 1961. X ^y-^n^. *C* *^2 C, /f& 7- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Brigham Young University http://archive.org/details/strangetruestoriOOcabl STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. GEORGE W. CABLE'S WRITINGS. BONAVENTURE. A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana. 12mo, $1.25. DR. SEVIER. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. THE GRANDISSIMES. A Story of Creole Life. 12mo, $1.25. OLD CREOLE DAYS. 12mo, $1.25. Uniform Edition. 4 vols, in a box, $5.00. OLD CREOLE DAYS. 2 vols., i6mo, paper, each 30 cts.; cloth, each, 75 cts. MADAME DELPHINE. l6mo, 75 cts. THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. Illustrated. 4to, $2.50. THE SILENT SOUTH, Together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease System. With Portrait. l2mo, $1.00. STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA, illustrated. l2mo, $2.00. {From a portrait now in the possession of Mine. Veuve Alcibiade De Blanc.'] <H». STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA GEORGE W. CABLE Author of "The Grandissimes," " Bonaventure," etc. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1889 Copyright, i888, 1889, BY GEORGE W. CABLE. TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING AND CO. PRESSWORK BY BERWICK AND SMITH. BOSTON. THE LIBRARY BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY PROVO, UTAH TO MY FRIEND JAMES BIRNEY GUTHRIE CONTENTS PAGE HOW I GOT THEM 1 THE YOUNG AUNT WITH WHITE HAIR . 23 THE ADVENTURES OF FRANQOISE AND SUZANNE. I. The Two Sisters 34 II. Making up the Expedition . 37 III. The Embarkation . .43 IV. Alix Carpentier .... 51 V. Down Bayou Plaquemine. — The Fight with Wild Nature . 55 VI. The Twice-Married Countess . 61 VII. Odd Partners in the Bolero Dance, 65 VIII. A Bad Storm in a Bad Place . 69 IX. Maggie and the Robbers . 73 X. Alix puts away the Past ... 80 XL Alix plays Fairy. — Parting Tears, 84 XII. Little Paris 90 XIII. The Countess Madelaine ... 94 XIV. "Poor Little Alix!" ... 99 XV. The Discovery of the Hat . 104 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE XVI. The Ball 108 XVII. Picnic and Farewell 116 ALIX DE MORAINVILLE 121 SALOME MULLER, THE WHITE SLAVE I. Salome and her Kindred . 145 II. Six Months at Anchor 148 III. Famine at Sea . 150 IV. Sold into Bondage 155 V. The Lost Orphans 159 VI. Christian Roselius 162 VII. Miller versus Belmonti 163 VIII. The Trial 169 IX. The Evidence 173 X. The Crowning Proof 178 XI. Judgment .... 180 XII. Before the Supreme Court 185 THE HAUNTED HOUSE" IX ROYAL STREET. I. As it stands now . 192 II. Madame Lalaurie .... 200 III. A Terrible Revelation . 204 IV. The Lady's Flight . 212 V. A New Use 219 VI. Evictions 223 ATTALIE BROUILLARD. I. Furnished Rooms 233 II. John Bull 236 III. Ducour's Meditations 239 CONTENTS. IX PAGE IV. Proxy 243 V. The Nuncupative Will . 248 VI. Men can be Better than their Laws, 257 WAR DIARY OF A UNION WOMAN IN THE I. Secession 262 II. The Volunteers. — Fort Sumter 266 III. Tribulation 269 IV. A Beleaguered City .... 274 V. Married 279 VI. How it was in Arkansas . 281 VII. The Fight for Food and Clothing, 285 VIII. Drowned out and starved out . 289 IX. Homeless and Shelterless 296 X. Frights and Perils in Steele's Bayou 302 XI. Wild Times in Mississippi . 308 XII. Vicksburg 320 XIII. Preparations for the Siege 326 XIV. The Siege itself .... 334 XV. Gibraltar falls 343 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. From photographs of the originals, in possession of Mr. George W. Cable. "Tonton" Frontispiece Facing page Some of the Manuscripts 1 Part of Francois's First Page .... 34 Part of First Page, "Alix Manuscript" . 121 The Court Papers 168 " " The Entrance of the Haunted House . 194 Printed on Wall Paper in the Siege of Vicks- burg 339 Fac-simile of a Letter from Adj.-Gen. Thomas L. Snead 349 a! *" 5 E o +- c W o STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. HOW I GOT THEM. 1882-89. True stories are not often good art. The relations and experiences of real men and women rarely fall in such symmetrical order as to make an artistic whole. Until they have had such treatment as we give stone in the quarry or gems in the rough they seldom group themselves with that harmony of values and brilliant unity of interest that result when art comes in — not so much to transcend nature as to make nature transcend herself. Yet I have learned to believe that good stories hap- pen oftener than once I thought they did. Within the last few years there have dropped into my hands by one accident or another a number of these natural crystals, whose charms, never the same in any two, are in each and all enough at least to warn off all tampering of the fictionist. Happily, moreover, with- out being necessary one to another, they yet have a 1 : 2 STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. coherent sequence, and follow one another like the days of a week. They are mine only by right of discovery. From various necessities of the case I am sometimes the story-teller, and sometimes, in the reader's interest, have to abridge ; but I add no fact and trim naught of value away. Here are no uncon- fessed "restorations," not one. In time, place, cir- cumstance, in every essential feature, I give them as I got them — strange stories that truly happened, all partly, some wholly, in Louisiana. In the spring of 1883, being one night the guest of my friend Dr. Francis Bacon, in New Haven, Con- necticut, and the conversation turning, at the close of the evening, upon wonderful and romantic true happenings, he said " You are from New Orleans ; did you never hear " of Salome Miiller ? "No." Thereupon he told the story, and a few weeks later sent me by mail, to my home in New Orleans, whither I had returned, a transcription, which he had most generously made, of a brief summary of the case — it would be right to say tragedy instead of case — as printed in " The Law Reporter " some forty years ago. That transcription lies before me now, beginning, "The Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana has lately been called upon to investigate and decide one of the most interesting cases which has ever come under the cognizance of a judicial tribunal." This episode, which had been the cause of public excite- ment within the memory of men still living on the HOW I GOT THEM. 3 scene, I, a native resident of New Orleans and student of its history, stumbled upon for the first time nearly two thousand miles from home. I mentioned it to a number of lawyers of New Orleans, one after another. None remembered ever having heard of it. I appealed to a former chief- justice of the State, who had a lively personal remem- brance of every member of the bench and the bar concerned in the case ; but of the case he had no rec- ollection. One of the medical experts called in by the court for evidence upon which the whole merits of the case seemed to hang was still living — the dis- tinguished Creole physician, Dr. Armand Mercier. He could not recall the matter until I recounted the story, and then only in the vaguest way. Yet when my friend the former chief-justice kindly took down from his shelves and beat free of dust the right volume of supreme court decisions, there was the terse, cold rec- ord, No. 5623. I went to the old newspaper files under the roof of the city hall, and had the pleasure speedily to find, under the dates of 1818 and 1844, such passing allusions to the strange facts of which I was in search as one might hope to find in those days when a serious riot was likely to receive no mention, and a steamboat explosion dangerously near the editorial rooms would be recorded in ten lines of colorless statement. I went to the courts, and, after following and abandoning sev- eral false trails through two days' search, found that the books of record containing the object of my quest had been lost, having unaccountably disappeared in — if I remember aright — 1870. 4 STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. There was one chance left : it was to find the origi- nal papers. I employed an intelligent gentleman at so mnch a day to search till he should find them. In the dusty garret of one of the court buildings — the old Spanish Cabildo, that faces Jackson Square — he rummaged for ten days, finding now one desired docu- ment and now another, until he had gathered all but one. Several he drew out of a great heap of papers lying in the middle of the floor, as if it were a pile of rubbish ; but this one he never found. Yet I was con- tent. Through the perseverance of this gentleman and the intervention of a friend in the legal profession, and by the courtesy of the court, I held in my hand the whole forgotten story of the poor lost and found Salome Muller. How through the courtesy of some of " the reportorial staff of the " New Orleans Picayune I found and conversed with three of Salome's still surviving relatives and friends, I shall not stop to tell. While I was still in search of these things, the editor of the " New Orleans Times-Democrat " handed me a thick manuscript, asking me to examine and pronounce upon its merits.