I found my cousin railing at Benjy, who had extracted from the saddle-bags a wondrous gray suit of London cut in which to array his master.  Clothes became Nick’s slim figure remarkably.  This coat was cut away smartly, like a uniform, towards the tails, and was brought in at the waist with an infinite art.

“Whither now, my conquistador?” I said.

“To Mass,” said he.

“To Mass!” I exclaimed; “but you have slept through the greater part of it.”

“The best part is to come,” said Nick, giving a final touch to his neck-band.  Followed by Benjy’s adoring eyes, he started out of the door, and I followed him perforce.  We came to the little church, of upright logs and plaster, with its crudely shingled, peaked roof, with its tiny belfry crowned by a cross, with its porches on each side shading the line of windows there.  Beside the church, a little at the back, was the cure’s modest house of stone, and at the other hand, under spreading trees, the graveyard with its rough wooden crosses.  And behind these graves rose the wooded hill that stretched away towards the wilderness.

What a span of life had been theirs who rested here!  Their youth, perchance, had been spent amongst the crooked streets of some French village, streets lined by red-tiled houses and crossing limpid streams by quaint bridges.  Death had overtaken them beside a monster tawny river of which their imaginations had not conceived, a river which draws tribute from the remote places of an unknown land,—­a river, indeed, which, mixing all the waters, seemed to symbolize a coming race which was to conquer the land by its resistless flow, even as the Mississippi bore relentlessly towards the sea.

These were my own thoughts as I listened to the tones of the priest as they came, droningly, out of the door, while Nick was exchanging jokes in doubtful French with some half-breeds leaning against the palings.  Then we heard benches scraping on the floor, and the congregation began to file out.

Those who reached the steps gave back, respectfully, and there came an elderly lady in a sober turban, a black mantilla wrapped tightly about her shoulders, and I made no doubt that she was Monsieur Gratiot’s mother-in-law, Madame Chouteau, she whom he had jestingly called the queen regent.  I was sure of this when I saw Madame Gratiot behind her.  Madame Chouteau indeed had the face of authority, a high-bridged nose, a determined chin, a mouth that shut tightly.  Madame Gratiot presented us to her mother, and as she passed on to the gate Madame Chouteau reminded us that we were to dine with her at two.

After her the congregation, the well-to-do and the poor alike, poured out of the church and spread in merry groups over the grass:  keel boatmen in tow shirts and party-colored worsted belts, the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the farmer of a small plot in the common fields in large cotton pantaloons and light-wove camlet coat, the more favored in skull-caps, linen small-clothes, cotton stockings, and silver-buckled shoes,—­every man pausing, dipping into his tabatiere, for a word with his neighbor.  The women, too, made a picture strange to our eyes, the matrons in jacket and petticoat, a Madras handkerchief flung about their shoulders, the girls in fresh cottonade or calamanco.