Page:The Conquest.djvu/173

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the Mayor and populace followed until they embarked on the ship and sailed to Havana.

The old Ursuline convent of New Orleans is now the archbishop's palace. Sister Infelice is gone, but near some old cloister of Cuba we know her ashes must now be reposing. Henceforth the gates were open. The wall decayed, the moat was filled, and over it to-day winds the handsomest boulevard in America.

The flatboatmen came home with romantic tales of the land of the palmetto and orange, luxuries unknown in the rigorous north. The tide of emigration so long held in check burst its bounds and deluged Louisiana.

Among other Americans that settled at New Orleans was the Fighting Parson. His son Charles Mynn Thruston had married Fanny.


V

THE CESSION OF ST. LOUIS

"Glass we must have, and quicksilver. Wife, let me have the mirror."

The Madame threw up her hands. "The precious pier glass my dead mother brought over from France? What shall we have left?"

"But Rosalie, this is an emergency for the government. The men must have thermometers, and barometers, and I have no glass."

"The President will pay for the glass, Madame; he would consider it the highest use to which it could be put," said Captain Lewis.

"And you shall have a better one by the next ship that sails around from France."

So as usual to everything the Doctor wished, the good woman consented. None had more unbounded faith in Dr. Saugrain's gift of miracles than his own wife.

The huge glass, that had reflected Parisian scenes for