“I do not insinuate you would willingly be idle.  I think I know what you want.  You want to make up your mind now what you will do, and at your leisure what you will be; eh?  To be, it seems to me,” he said in summing up,—­“that to be is not so necessary as to do, eh? or am I wrong?”

“No, sir,” replied Joseph, still red, “I was feeling that just now.  I will do the first thing that offers; I can dig.”

The Creole shrugged and pouted.

“And be called a dos brile—­a ‘burnt-back.’”

“But”—­began the immigrant, with overmuch warmth.

The other interrupted him, shaking his head slowly and smiling as he spoke.

“Mr. Frowenfeld, it is of no use to talk; you may hold in contempt the Creole scorn of toil—­just as I do, myself, but in theory, my-de’-seh, not too much in practice.  You cannot afford to be entirely different from the community in which you live; is that not so?”

“A friend of mine,” said Frowenfeld, “has told me I must ‘compromise.’”

“You must get acclimated,” responded the Creole; “not in body only, that you have done; but in mind—­in taste—­in conversation—­and in convictions too, yes, ha, ha!  They all do it—­all who come.  They hold out a little while—­a very little; then they open their stores on Sunday, they import cargoes of Africans, they bribe the officials, they smuggle goods, they have colored housekeepers.  My-de’-seh, the water must expect to take the shape of the bucket; eh?”

“One need not be water!” said the immigrant.

“Ah!” said the Creole, with another amiable shrug, and a wave of his hand; “certainly you do not suppose that is my advice—­that those things have my approval.”

Must we repeat already that Frowenfeld was abnormally young?  “Why have they not your condemnation?” cried he with an earnestness that made the Creole’s horse drop the grass from his teeth and wheel half around.

The answer came slowly and gently.

“Mr. Frowenfeld, my habit is to buy cheap and sell at a profit.  My condemnation?  My-de’-seh, there is no sa-a-ale for it! it spoils the sale of other goods my-de’-seh.  It is not to condemn that you want; you want to suc-ceed.  Ha, ha, ha! you see I am a merchant, eh?  My-de’-seh, can you afford not to succeed?”

The speaker had grown very much in earnest in the course of these few words, and as he asked the closing question, arose, arranged his horse’s bridle and, with his elbow in the saddle, leaned his handsome head on his equally beautiful hand.  His whole appearance was a dazzling contradiction of the notion that a Creole is a person of mixed blood.

“I think I can!” replied the convalescent, with much spirit, rising with more haste than was good, and staggering a moment.

The horseman laughed outright.