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Cafe Des Exiles
by
“The man with one eyebrow,” said the neighbors, “is sick. Pauline left the house yesterday to make room for him.”
“Ah! is it possible?”
“Yes, it is really true; she and her husband. She took her mocking-bird with her; he carried it; he came back alone.”
On the next afternoon the children about the Cafe des Refugies enjoyed the spectacle of the invalid Cuban moved on a trestle to the Cafe des Exiles, although he did not look so deathly sick as they could have liked to see him, and on the fourth morning the doors of the Cafe des Exiles remained closed. A black-bordered funeral notice, veiled with crape, announced that the great Caller-home of exiles had served his summons upon Don Pedro Hernandez (surname borrowed for the occasion), and Don Carlos Mendez y Benito.
The hour for the funeral was fixed at four P.M. It never took place. Down at the Picayune Tier on the river bank there was, about two o’clock that same day, a slight commotion, and those who stood aimlessly about a small, neat schooner, said she was “seized.” At four there suddenly appeared before the Cafe des Exiles a squad of men with silver crescents on their breasts–police officers. The old cottage sat silent with closed doors, the crape hanging heavily over the funeral notice like a widow’s veil, the little unseen garden sending up odors from its hidden censers, and the old weeping-willow bending over all.
“Nobody here?” asks the leader.
The crowd which has gathered stares without answering.
As quietly and peaceably as possible the officers pry open the door. They enter, and the crowd pushes in after. There are the two coffins, looking very heavy and solid, lying in state but unguarded.
The crowd draws a breath of astonishment. “Are they going to wrench the tops off with hatchet and chisel?”
Bap, rap, rap; wrench, rap, wrench. Ah! the cases come open.
“Well kept?” asks the leader flippantly.
“Oh, yes,” is the reply. And then all laugh.
One of the lookers-on pushes up and gets a glimpse within.
“What is it?” ask the other idlers.
He tells one quietly.
“What did he say?” ask the rest, one of another.
“He says they are not dead men, but new muskets”–
“Here, clear out!” cries an officer, and the loiterers fall back and by and by straggle off.
The exiles? What became of them, do you ask? Why, nothing; they were not troubled, but they never all came together again. Said a chief-of-police to Major Shaughnessy years afterward:
“Major, there was only one thing that kept your expedition from succeeding–you were too sly about it. Had you come out flat and said what you were doing, we’d never a-said a word to you. But that little fellow gave us the wink, and then we had to stop you.”
And was no one punished? Alas! one was. Poor, pretty, curly-headed traitorous Mazaro! He was drawn out of Carondelet Canal–cold, dead! And when his wounds were counted–they were just the number of the Cafe des Exiles’ children, less Galahad. But the mother–that is, the old cafe–did not see it; she had gone up the night before in a chariot of fire.
In the files of the old “Picayune” and “Price-Current” of 1837 may be seen the mention of Galahad Shaughnessy among the merchants–“our enterprising and accomplished fellow-townsman,” and all that. But old M. D’Hemecourt’s name is cut in marble, and his citizenship is in “a city whose maker and builder is God.”
Only yesterday I dined with the Shaughnessys–fine old couple and handsome. Their children sat about them and entertained me most pleasantly. But there isn’t one can tell a tale as their father can–’twas he told me this one, though here and there my enthusiasm may have taken liberties. He knows the history of every old house in the French Quarter; or, if he happens not to know a true one, he can make one up as he goes along.