Sometimes I wonder if Zoe is not alive, if some kind of consummate trick was not played on me.  Fortescue did not kill her.  He did not seem to me like a man who would commit murder.  Why would any one murder Zoe?  Might she not have been sold for her loveliness to some man desiring a mistress?  No!  Zoe would write to me if she were living.  Yet I went everywhere in New Orleans searching for Zoe.

Often I visited the St. Louis hotel, for there young quadroons and octoroons on sale, tastefully dressed, were inspected by men with all the critical and amorous interest with which a roue would look upon the object of his desire.  Their eyes were gazed into, their hair stroked, their limbs caressed and outlined, their busts stared at and touched.  Men went mad over these beauties.

A story went the rounds that a young man in Virginia fell in love with an octoroon slave while on a visit to a country house.  The girl had gone to her mistress for protection, and received it, against the man’s advances.  But he had returned, saying that he could not live without the girl.  The mistress had sold her to him for $1500.  Did Zoe meet that fate, and not violence?

So I searched the cafes, the places of amusement, the bagnios for Zoe.  And into every octoroon’s face in which I saw a resemblance to Zoe I peered, hoping that it would be she.  For with Dorothy so much ill, and with no one in the world of my own but Dorothy and our boy, I had hours of profound loneliness.  In New Orleans this winter I was more lonely than I had ever been in my life.  I no longer had to strive, I had money enough.  And all the while my real estate investments in Chicago doubled and trebled while I traveled.

There were many French in New Orleans; there was reverence there and memory for Bonaparte.  There was gladness and exultation now that Louis Napoleon had accomplished a coup d’etat and established a throne upon the ruins of the republic.  His soldiers were in the Crimea, fighting as desperately as if great wealth or fame could be won by their valor and death.  But it was all for the glory of the French throne!  A French monarchy again, after the struggles of Mirabeau, after the agony of Marat, and after the rise of republican principles which Douglas had hailed with delight!  If these things could be done with honor and applause, did Douglas deserve the hostility which was rising up against him?  Was America so immaculately free that Douglas’ subordination of the negro to the welfare of the republic at large should be so severely dealt with?

On the bulletin boards in great headlines, the progress of the Crimean War was heralded.  The French soldiers were winning imperishable glory.  The Light Brigade had died for God and the glory of England in the charge at Balaklava.  Cavour had sent the Sardinians to help France and England against the Russians; these were soon to fight for the liberty of Italy.  Always liberty and God!  Russia had gone to war