The lady rose and beamed upon us.

“From Monsieur Gratiot,” she said; “you are very welcome, gentlemen, to such poor accommodations as I have.  It is not unusual to have American gentlemen in New Orleans, for many come here first and last.  And I am happy to say that two of my best rooms are vacant.  Zoey!”

There was a shrill answer from the court below, and a negro girl in a yellow turban came running up, while Madame Bouvet bustled along the gallery and opened the doors of two darkened rooms.  Within I could dimly see a walnut dresser, a chair, and a walnut bed on which was spread a mosquito bar.

“Voila!  Messieurs,” cried Madame Bouvet, “there is still a little time for a siesta.  No siesta!” cried Madame, eying us aghast; “ah, the Americans they never rest—­never.”

We bade farewell to the good Xavier, promising to see him soon; and Nick, shouting to Benjy to open the saddle-bags, proceeded to array himself in the clothes which had made so much havoc at St. Louis.  I boded no good from this proceeding, but I reflected, as I watched him dress, that I might as well try to turn the Mississippi from its course as to attempt to keep my cousin from the search for gallant adventure.  And I reflected that his indulgence in pleasure-seeking would serve the more to divert any suspicions which might fall upon my own head.  At last, when the setting sun was flooding the court-yard, he stood arrayed upon the gallery, ready to venture forth to conquest.

Madame Bouvet’s tavern, or hotel, or whatever she was pleased to call it, was not immaculately clean.  Before passing into the street we stood for a moment looking into the public room on the left of the hallway, a long saloon, evidently used in the early afternoon for a dining room, and at the back of it a wide, many-paned window, capped by a Spanish arch, looked out on the gallery.  Near this window was a gay party of young men engaged at cards, waited on by the yellow-turbaned Zoey, and drinking what evidently was claret punch.  The sounds of their jests and laughter pursued us out of the house.

The town was waking from its siesta, the streets filling, and people stopped to stare at Nick as we passed.  But Nick, who was plainly in search of something he did not find, hurried on.  We soon came to the quarter which had suffered most from the fire, where new houses had gone up or were in the building beside the blackened logs of many of Bienville’s time.  Then we came to a high white wall that surrounded a large garden, and within it was a long, massive building of some beauty and pretension, with a high, latticed belfry and heavy walls and with arched dormers in the sloping roof.  As we stood staring at it through the iron grille set in the archway of the lodge, Nick declared that it put him in mind of some of the chateaux he had seen in France, and he crossed the street to get a better view of the premises.  An old man in coarse blue linen came out of the lodge and spoke to me.