“La pluie—­la pluie tombait,
     Crapaud criait,
     Moustique chantait—­”

The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another.  He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.

In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven dark forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars to be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did not listen.  In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft, mock-startled “Who is that?” and one of that same sparkling group of girls that had lately hung upon Honore came so close to Raoul, in her attempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met.  They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled forth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the great rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire, waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each, from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.

“But mark,” they cried unitedly, “you have got to wind up with the story of Bras-Coupe!”

“A song!  A song!”

“Une chanson Creole!  Une chanson des negres!”

“Sing ‘ye tole dance la doung y doung doung!’” cried a black-eyed girl.

Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.

“Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on.”

But instead he sang them this: 

“La premier’ fois mo te ’oir li, Li te pose au bord so lit; Mo di’, Bouzon, bel n’amourese!  L’aut’ fois li te si’ so la saise Comme vie Madam dans so fauteil, Quand li vive cote soleil.

     So gies ye te plis noir passe la nouitte,
     So de la lev’ plis doux passe la quitte! 
     Tou’ mo la vie, zamein mo oir
     Ein n’ amourese zoli comme ca! 
          Mo’ blie manze—­mo’ blie boir’—­
          Mo’ blie tout dipi c’ temps-la—­
          Mo’ blie parle—­mo’ blie dormi,
          Quand mo pense apres zami!”

“And you have heard Bras-Coupe sing that, yourself?”

“Once upon a time,” said Raoul, warming with his subject, “we were coming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues.  We had been three days fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador.  Bras-Coupe had one pirogue with six paddles—­”

“Oh, yes!” cried a youth named Baltazar; “sing that, Raoul!”

And he sang that.

“But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out in the bayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!”