sour with pride, conscious of great official insignificance and full of petty spites—­he yet tarried in a land where his beautiful wife was the “model of taste.”  There was that convivial old fox, Wilkinson, who had plotted for years with Miro and did not sell himself and his country to Spain because—­as we now say—­“he found he could do better;” who modestly confessed himself in a traitor’s letter to the Spanish king as a man “whose head may err, but whose heart cannot deceive!” and who brought Governor Gayoso to an early death-bed by simply out-drinking him.  There also was Edward Livingston, attorney-at-law, inseparably joined to the mention of the famous Batture cases—­though that was later.  There also was that terror of colonial peculators, the old ex-Intendant Morales, who, having quarrelled with every governor of Louisiana he ever saw, was now snarling at Casa Calvo from force of habit.

And the Creoles—­the Knickerbockers of Louisiana—­but time would fail us.  The Villeres and Destrehans—­patriots and patriots’ sons; the De La Chaise family in mourning for young Auguste La Chaise of Kentuckian-Louisianian-San Domingan history; the Livaudaises, pere et fils, of Haunted House fame, descendants of the first pilot of the Belize; the pirate brothers Lafitte, moving among the best; Marigny de Mandeville, afterwards the marquis member of Congress; the Davezacs, the Mossys, the Boulignys, the Labatuts, the Bringiers, the De Trudeaus, the De Macartys, the De la Houssayes, the De Lavilleboeuvres, the Grandpres, the Forstalls; and the proselyted Creoles:  Etienne de Bore (he was the father of all such as handle the sugar-kettle); old man Pitot, who became mayor; Madame Pontalba and her unsuccessful suitor, John McDonough; the three Girods, the two Graviers, or the lone Julian Poydras, godfather of orphan girls.  Besides these, and among them as shining fractions of the community, the numerous representatives of the not only noble, but noticeable and ubiquitous, family of Grandissime:  Grandissimes simple and Grandissimes compound; Brahmins, Mandarins and Fusiliers.  One, ’Polyte by name, a light, gay fellow, with classic features, hair turning gray, is standing and conversing with this group here by the mock-cannon inclosure of the grounds.  Another, his cousin, Charlie Mandarin, a tall, very slender, bronzed gentleman in a flannel hunting-shirt and buckskin leggings, is walking, in moccasins, with a sweet lady in whose tasteful attire feminine scrutiny, but such only, might detect economy, but whose marked beauty of yesterday is retreating and reappearing in the flock of children who are noisily running round and round them, nominally in the care of three fat and venerable black nurses.  Another, yonder, Theophile Grandissime, is whipping his stockings with his cane, a lithe youngster in the height of the fashion (be it understood the fashion in New Orleans was five years or so behind Paris), with a joyous, noble face, a merry tongue and giddy laugh, and a confession of experiences which these pages, fortunately for their moral tone, need not recount.  All these were there and many others.