At that Monsieur St. Gre laughed outright.  He became a different man, though he lost none of his dignity.

“I should have had more faith in my old friend Gratiot,” he said; “but you will pardon me if I did not recognize at once the statesman he had sent me, Mr. Ritchie.”

It was my turn to laugh.

“Monsieur,” he went on, returning to that dignity of mien which marked him, “my political opinions are too well known that I should make a mystery of them to you.  I was born a Frenchman, I shall die a Frenchman, and I shall never be happy until Louisiana is French once more.  My great-grandfather, a brother of the Marquis de St. Gre of that time, and a wild blade enough, came out with D’Iberville.  His son, my grandfather, was the Commissary-general of the colony under the Marquis de Vaudreuil.  He sent me to France for my education, where I was introduced at court by my kinsman, the old Marquis, who took a fancy to me and begged me to remain.  It was my father’s wish that I should return, and I did not disobey him.  I had scarcely come back, Monsieur, when that abominable secret bargain of Louis the Fifteenth became known, ceding Louisiana to Spain.  You may have heard of the revolution which followed here.  It was a mild affair, and the remembrance of it makes me smile to this day, though with bitterness.  I was five and twenty, hot-headed, and French.  Que voulez-vous?” and Monsieur de St. Gre shrugged his shoulders.  “O’Reilly, the famous Spanish general, came with his men-of-war.  Well I remember the days we waited with leaden hearts for the men-of-war to come up from the English turn; and I can see now the cannon frowning from the ports, the grim spars, the high poops crowded with officers, the great anchors splashing the yellow water.  I can hear the chains running.  The ships were in line of battle before the town, their flying bridges swung to the levee, and they loomed above us like towering fortresses.  It was dark, Monsieur, such as this afternoon, and we poor French colonists stood huddled in the open space below, waiting for we knew not what.”

He paused, and I started, for the picture he drew had carried me out of myself.

“On the 18th of August, 1769,—­well I remember the day,” Monsieur de St. Gre continued, “the Spanish troops landed late in the afternoon, twenty-six hundred strong, the artillery rumbling over the bridges, the horses wheeling and rearing.  And they drew up as in line of battle in the Place d’Armes,—­dragoons, fusileros de montanas, light and heavy infantry.  Where were our white cockades then?  Fifty guns shook the town, the great O’Reilly limped ashore through the smoke, and Louisiana was lost to France.  We had a cowardly governor, Monsieur, whose name is written in the annals of the province in letters of shame.  He betrayed Monsieur de St. Gre and others into O’Reilly’s hands, and when my father was cast into prison he was seized with such a fit of anger that he died.”