To this day one may occasionally see in New Orleans and in other lower river towns an old “mammy” wearing the bandanna headdress called a tignon, which, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was made compulsory for colored women in Louisiana.  The need for some such distinguishing racial badge was, it is said, twofold.  Yellow sirens from the French West Indies, flocking to New Orleans, were becoming exceedingly conspicuous in dress and adornment; furthermore one hears stories of wealthy white men, fathers of octoroon or quadroon girls, who sent these illegitimate daughters abroad to be educated.  The latter, one learns from many sources, were very often beautiful in the extreme, as were also the Domingan girls, and history is full of the tales of the curious, wild, fashionably caparisoned, declasse circle of society, which came to exist in New Orleans through the presence there of so many alluring women of light color and equally light character.  Some of these women, it is said, could hardly be distinguished from brunette whites, and it was largely for this reason that the tignon was placed by law upon the heads of all women having negro blood.

No morsels from the history of old New Orleans are more suggestive to the imagination than the hints we get from many sources of wildly dissipated life centering around the notorious quadroon balls—­or as they were called in their day, cordon bleu balls.  An old guide book informs me that the women who were the great attraction at these functions were “probably the handsomest race of women in the world, and were, besides, splendid dancers and finished dressers.”  Authorities seem to agree that these balls were exceedingly popular among the young Creole gentlemen, as well as with men visiting the city, and that duels, resulting from quarrels over the women, were of common occurrence.  If a Creole had the choice of weapons slender swords called colichemardes were used, whereas pistols were almost invariably selected by Americans.  Duels with swords were often fought indoors, but when firearms were to be employed the combatants repaired to one of the customary dueling grounds.  Under the fine old live oaks of the City Park—­then out in the country—­it is said that as many as ten duels have been fought in a single day.  Duels having their beginnings at the quadroon balls were, however, often fought in St. Anthony’s Garden, for the ballroom was in a building (now occupied by a sisterhood of colored nuns) which stands on Orleans Street, near where it abuts against the Garden.  This garden, bearing the name of the saint whose temptations have been of such conspicuous interest to painters of the nude, is not named for him so much in his own right, as because he was the patron of that same Padre Antonio de Sedella, already mentioned, who came to New Orleans to institute the Inquisition, but who, after having been sent away by Governor Miro, returned as a secular priest and became much beloved for his good works.  Padre Antonio lived in a hut near the garden, and it is he who figures in Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s story “Pere Antoine’s Date Palm.”