This early observer receives abundant corroboration from other travellers of the day.  Paul Alliott, drawing a contrast between New Orleans and St. Louis, another city with a considerable number of French inhabitants, says:  “The inhabitants of the city of St. Louis, like those old time simple and united patriarchs, do not live at all in debauchery as do a part of those of New Orleans.  Marriage is honored there, and the children resulting from it share the inheritance of their parents without any quarrelling."[228] But, says Berquin-Duvallon, among a large percentage of the colonists about New Orleans, “their taste for women extends more particularly to those of color, whom they prefer to the white women, because such women demand fewer of those annoying attentions which contradict their taste for independence.  A great number, accordingly, prefer to live in concubinage rather than to marry.  They find in that the double advantage of being served with the most scrupulous exactness, and in case of discontent or unfaithfulness, of changing their housekeeper (this is the honorable name given to that sort of woman).”  Of course, such a scheme of life was not especially conducive to happiness among white women, and, although as Alliott declares, the white men “have generally much more regard for (negro girls) in their domestic economy than they do for their legitimate wives.... the (white) women show the greatest contempt and aversion for that sort of women.”

When moral conditions could shock an eighteenth century Frenchman they must have been exceptionally bad; but the customs of the New Orleans men were entirely too unprincipled for Berquin-Duvallon and various other French investigators.  “Not far from the taverns are obscene bawdy houses and dirty smoking houses where the father on one side, and the son on the other go, openly and without embarassment as well as without shame, ... to revel and dance indiscriminately and for whole nights with a lot of men and women of saffron color or quite black, either free or slave.  Will any one dare to deny this fact?  I will only designate, in support of my assertion (and to say no more), the famous house of Coquet, located near the center of the city, where all that scum is to be seen publicly, and that for several years."[229]

Naturally, as a matter of mere defense, the women of pure white blood drew the color line very strictly, and would not knowingly mingle socially to the very slightest degree with a person of mixed negro or Indian blood.  Such severe distinctions led to embarrassing and even cruel incidents at social gatherings; and on many occasions, if cool-headed social leaders had not quickly ejected guests of tainted lineage, there undoubtedly would have been bloodshed.  Berquin-Duvallon describes just such a scene:  “The ladies’ ball is a sanctuary where no woman dare approach if she has even a suspicion of mixed blood.  The purest conduct, the most eminent virtues could not