The Madame had had some tastes of human experience; had been betrothed at sixteen (to a man she did not love, “being at that time a fool,” as she said); one summer day at noon had been a bride, and at sundown—­a widow.  Accidental discharge of the tipsy bridegroom’s own pistol.  Pass it by!  It left but one lasting effect on her, a special detestation of quarrels and weapons.

The little maidens whom poor parentage has doomed to sit upon street door-sills and nurse their infant brothers have a game of “choosing” the beautiful ladies who sweep by along the pavement; but in Rue Royale there was no choosing; every little damsel must own Madame Delicieuse or nobody, and as that richly adorned and regal favorite of old General Villivicencio came along they would lift their big, bold eyes away up to her face and pour forth their admiration in a universal—­“Ah-h-h-h!”

But, mark you, she was good Madame Delicieuse as well as fair Madame Delicieuse:  her principles, however, not constructed in the austere Anglo-Saxon style, exactly (what need, with the lattice of the Confessional not a stone’s throw off?).  Her kind offices and beneficent schemes were almost as famous as General Villivicencio’s splendid alms; if she could at times do what the infantile Washington said he could not, why, no doubt she and her friends generally looked upon it as a mere question of enterprise.

She had charms, too, of intellect—­albeit not such a sinner against time and place as to be an “educated woman”—­charms that, even in a plainer person, would have brought down the half of New Orleans upon one knee, with both hands on the left side. She had the whole city at her feet, and, with the fine tact which was the perfection of her character, kept it there contented.  Madame was, in short, one of the kind that gracefully wrest from society the prerogative of doing as they please, and had gone even to such extravagant lengths as driving out in the Americain faubourg, learning the English tongue, talking national politics, and similar freaks whereby she provoked the unbounded worship of her less audacious lady friends.  In the centre of the cluster of Creole beauties which everywhere gathered about her, and, most of all, in those incomparable companies which assembled in her own splendid drawing-rooms, she was always queen lily.  Her house, her drawing-rooms, etc.; for the little brown aunt who lived with her was a mere piece of curious furniture.

There was this notable charm about Madame Delicieuse, she improved by comparison.  She never looked so grand as when, hanging on General Villivicencio’s arm at some gorgeous ball, these two bore down on you like a royal barge lashed to a ship-of-the-line.  She never looked so like her sweet name, as when she seated her prettiest lady adorers close around her, and got them all a-laughing.