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Jean-Ah Poquelin
by
What wonder the marsh grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste. Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one graceless dare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards of the house after nightfall.
* * * * *
The alien races pouring into old New Orleans began to find the few streets named for the Bourbon princes too strait for them. The wheel of fortune, beginning to whirl, threw them off beyond the ancient corporation lines, and sowed civilization and even trade upon the lands of the Graviers and Girods. Fields became roads, roads streets. Everywhere the leveller was peering through his glass, rodsmen were whacking their way through willow-brakes and rose-hedges, and the sweating Irishmen tossed the blue clay up with their long-handled shovels.
“Ha! that is all very well,” quoth the Jean-Baptistes, fueling the reproach of an enterprise that asked neither co-operation nor advice of them, “but wait till they come yonder to Jean Poquelin’s marsh; ha! ha! ha!” The supposed predicament so delighted them, that they put on a mock terror and whirled about in an assumed stampede, then caught their clasped hands between their knees in excess of mirth, and laughed till the tears ran; for whether the street-makers mired in the marsh, or contrived to cut through old “Jean-ah’s” property, either event would be joyful. Meantime a line of tiny rods, with bits of white paper in their split tops, gradually extended its way straight through the haunted ground, and across the canal diagonally.
“We shall fill that ditch,” said the men in mud-boots, and brushed close along the chained and padlocked gate of the haunted mansion. Ah, Jean-ah Poquelin, those were not Creole boys, to be stampeded with a little hard swearing.
He went to the Governor. That official scanned the odd figure with no slight interest. Jean Poquelin was of short, broad frame, with a bronzed leonine face. His brow was ample and deeply furrowed. His eye, large and black, was bold and open like that of a war-horse, and his jaws shut together with the firmness of iron. He was dressed in a suit of Attakapas cottonade, and his shirt unbuttoned and thrown back from the throat and bosom, sailor-wise, showed a herculean breast; hard and grizzled. There was no fierceness or defiance in his look, no harsh ungentleness, no symptom of his unlawful life or violent temper; but rather a peaceful and peaceable fearlessness. Across the whole face, not marked in one or another feature, but as it were laid softly upon the countenance like an almost imperceptible veil, was the imprint of some great grief. A careless eye might easily overlook it, but, once seen, there it hung–faint, but unmistakable.
The Governor bowed.
“Parlez-vous francais?” asked the figure.
“I would rather talk English, if you can do so,” said the Governor.
“My name, Jean Poquelin.”
“How can I serve you, Mr. Poquelin?”
“My ‘ouse is yond’; dans le marais la-bas.”
The Governor bowed.
“Dat marais billong to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“To me; Jean Poquelin; I hown ‘im meself.”
“Well, sir?”
“He don’t billong to you; I get him from me father.”
“That is perfectly true, Mr. Poquelin, as far as I am aware.”
“You want to make strit pass yond’?”
“I do not know, sir; it is quite probable; but the city will indemnify you for any loss you may suffer–you will get paid, you understand.”
“Strit can’t pass dare.”
“You will have to see the municipal authorities about that, Mr. Poquelin.”
A bitter smile came upon the old man’s face:
“Pardon, Monsieur, you is not le Gouverneur?“
“Yes.”
“Mais, yes. You har le Gouverneur–yes. Veh-well. I come to you. I tell you, strit can’t pass at me ‘ouse.”
“But you will have to see”–
“I come to you. You is le Gouverneur. I know not the new laws. I ham a Fr-r-rench-a-man! Fr-rench-a-man have something aller au contraire–he come at his Gouverneur. I come at you. If me not had been bought from me king like bossals in the hold time, ze king gof–France would-a-show Monsieur le Gouverneur to take care his men to make strit in right places. Mais, I know; we billong to Monsieur le President. I want you do somesin for me, eh?”