“Do you want me to go with you?” I said.

He looked at me incredulously.

“I should be delighted,” he said, “but you mek a jest.”

“I was never more serious in my life,” I answered, “for I have business in New Orleans.  I shall be ready.”

“Ha,” cried Monsieur Vigo, hospitably, “I shall be enchant.  We will talk philosophe, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Rousseau.”

For Monsieur Vigo was a great reader, and we had often indulged in conversation which (we flattered ourselves) had a literary turn.

I spent the remaining hours arranging with a young lawyer of my acquaintance to look after my business, and at ten o’clock I was aboard the keel boat with my small baggage.  At eleven, Monsieur Vigo and I were talking “philosophe” over a wonderful breakfast under the awning, as we dropped down between the forest-lined shores of the Ohio.  My host travelled in luxury, and we ate the Creole dishes, which his cook prepared, with silver forks which he kept in a great chest in the cabin.

You who read this may feel something of my impatience to get to New Orleans, and hence I shall not give a long account of the journey.  What a contrast it was to that which Nick and I had taken five years before in Monsieur Gratiot’s fur boat!  Like all successful Creole traders, Monsieur Vigo had a wonderful knack of getting on with the Indians, and often when we tied up of a night the chief men of a tribe would come down to greet him.  We slipped southward on the great, yellow river which parted the wilderness, with its sucks and eddies and green islands, every one of which Monsieur knew, and I saw again the flocks of water-fowl and herons in procession, and hawks and vultures wheeling in their search.  Sometimes a favorable wind sprang up, and we hoisted the sail.  We passed the Walnut Hills, the Nogales, the moans of the alligators broke our sleep by night, and at length we came to Natchez, ruled over now by that watch-dog of the Spanish King, Gayoso de Lemos.  Thanks to Monsieur Vigo, his manners were charming and his hospitality gracious, and there was no trouble whatever about my passport.

Our progress was slow when we came at last to the belvedered plantation houses amongst the orange groves; and as we sat on the wide galleries in the summer nights, we heard all the latest gossip of the capital of Louisiana.  The river was low; there was an ominous quality in the heat which had its effect, indeed, upon me, and made the old Creoles shake their heads and mutter a word with a terrible meaning.  New Orleans was a cesspool, said the enlightened.  The Baron de Carondelet, indefatigable man, aimed at digging a canal to relieve the city of its filth, but this would be the year when it was most needed, and it was not dug.  Yes, Monsieur le Baron was energy itself.  That other fever—­the political one—­he had scotched.  “Ca Ira” and “La Marseillaise” had been sung in the theatres, but not often, for the Baron had sent the alcaldes to shut them up.  Certain gentlemen of French ancestry had gone to languish in the Morro at Havana.  Yes, Monsieur de Carondelet, though fat, was on horseback before dawn, New Orleans was fortified as it never had been before, the militia organized, real cannon were on the ramparts which could shoot at a pinch.