So laugh the sidewalks; but society, overhead, cares not for a made-over Gibbs while round about him are sixty or seventy young heroes who need no making over.  Anna, Anna! what a brave and happy half-and-half of Creoles and “Americans” do your moist eyes beam down upon:  here a Canonge and there an Ogden—­a Zacherie—­a Fontennette—­Willie Geddes—­Tom Norton—­a Fusilier!  Nat Frellsen—­a Tramontana—­a Grandissime!—­and a Grandissime again!  Percy Chilton—­a Dudley—­Arthur Puig y Puig—­a De Armas—­MacKnight—­Violett—­Avendano—­Rob Rareshide—­ Guy Palfrey—­a Morse, a Bien, a Fuentes—­a Grandissme once more!  Aleck Moise—­Ralph Fenner—­Ned Ferry!—­and lo! a Raoul Innerarity, image of his grandfather’s portrait—­and a Jules St. Ange! a Converse—­Jack Eustis—­two Frowenfelds! a Mossy! a Hennen—­Bartie Sloo—­McVey, McStea, a De Lavillebuevre—­a Thorndyke-Smith and a Grandissime again!

And ah! see yonder young cannoneer half-way between these two balconies and the statue beyond; that foppish boy with his hair in a hundred curls and his eyes wild with wayward ardor!  “Ah, Charlie Valcour!” thinks Anna; “oh, your poor sister!” while the eyes of Victorine take him in secretly and her voice is still for a whole minute.  Hark!  From the head of the column is wafted back a bugle-note, and everything stands.

Now the trim lads relax, the balcony dames in the rear rows sit down, there are nods and becks and wafted whispers to a Calder and an Avery, to tall Numa, Dolhonde and short Eugene Chopin, to George Wood and Dick Penn and Fenner and Bouligny and Pilcher and L’Hommedieu; and Charlie sends up bows and smiles, and wipes the beautiful brow he so openly and wilfully loves best on earth.  Anna smiles back, but Constance bids her look at Maxime, Victorine’s father, whom neither his long white moustaches nor weight of years nor the lawless past revealed in his daring eyes can rob of his youth.  So Anna looks, and when she turns again to Charlie she finds him sending a glance rife with conquest—­not his first—­up to Victorine, who, without meeting it, replies—­as she has done to each one before it—­with a dreamy smile into vacancy, and a faint narrowing of her almond eyes.

Captain Kincaid comes ambling back, and right here in the throat of Royal Street faces the command.  The matter is explained to Madame Valcour by a stranger: 

“Now at the captain’s word all the cannoneers will spring down, leaving only guns, teams and drivers at their back, and line up facing us.  The captain will dismount and ascend to the balcony, and there he and the young lady, whoever she is—­” He waits, hoping Madame will say who the young lady is, but Madame only smiles for him to proceed—­“The captain and she will confront each other, she will present the colors, he, replying, will receive them, and—­ah, after all!” The thing had been done without their seeing it, and there stood the whole magnificent double line.  Captain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the vanished procession—­Mandeville.  Slipping and clattering, he reined up and saluted:  “How soon can Kincaid’s Battery be completely ready to go into camp?”