“Oh, is that all that was troubling you, papa Jean?” laughed Mimi.
“You can afford to laugh here in Creole New Orleans,” Jean cautioned. “But away from here it’s a different matter. Here in the place we know I want to tell you of some of the stock from which we Daquins come. It’s a record we’re proud of—we’ve helped build this Louisiana of ours—much of what we did’s been forgotten but it’s there, just the same. I’m telling you, for when you run up against hard situations later on in life and we all do—the knowledge of what’s back of you will give you strength and courage.”
Mimi said nothing. Jean went on.
“We Daquins trace our history a long ways back—back to the early days of the convent Louis XV founded here in 1727—the Ursalines—to teach the Negro and Indian girls. You know of beloved Madeline Hachard—she who was a postulant in the Ursaline Convent in Rouen—Rouen beloved of Flaubert and Maupassant. Her letters home tell of their perilous voyage to Louisiana in 1728, of shipwreck and shortages of food and water, of sickness and discomfort. Soon after Madeline Hachard—who called herself ‘Hachard de St. Stanislas’ after she took the veil—and the others opened the doors of their convent, there was need of wives for the young men of character and means. Girls of good family were sent to the colony—les filles à la cassette they were called. From these matings sprang many of the great families of Louisiana—and to one of them you and I owe our being. From her who nearly two hundred years ago took the long and perilous voyage there comes down to us a path—at times clear and distinct—at times faded and shadowy—from that path innumerable branches shoot like the limbs of that ancient oak over there.”
Jean’s words had begun to weave a mysterious spell over Mimi. She looked at the tree to which Jean pointed—vaguely disappointed that instead of its leaves she did not see families, faces with laughing eyes and alluring mysteriousness. Jean had never talked to her like this before—she felt a thrilling pride that he spoke to her as to one of mature years and understanding.
“You’ve many relatives, Mimi, of whom you can justly be proud—and some of whom the less said, the better. Like two great rivers from the same mother source, plunging, roaring, or gently purling they flow—parallel much of the way, touching at others, then springing apart to seek their way through diverse lands. We of the so-called coloured branch—many of our ancestry of the proud gens de coleur libre—we too have had a large share in making Louisiana what it is today.”
“Tell me about some of them, Jean,” demanded Mimi eagerly. “Tell me of the ones of whom you’re proud—tell me of those you’re not so proud of.”
The sun was high in the sky and beating down upon them with vigour before Jean had finished his story. Mimi was too absorbed to notice the heat or to note the passing of the hours. Jean, with the mellowness acquired only through an unhurried life, had great pride in his ability as a raconteur—when he fancied he detected a waning interest on Mimi’s face as he delved into the more abstract historical part of his tale, he quickly injected anecdotes, dramatic episodes, colourful vignettes. When Mimi seemed wearied of too great stress on the part Negroes had played as soldiers or labourers or if she appeared surfeited with tales of too great virtue and exemplary constructiveness on the part of those who were her forebears, Jean would, almost shyly and imperceptibly, relate a tale of derring do by one who lived at Barataria with that great pirate and freebooter—Jean Lafitte. Mimi felt a delicious tingle titillating her body as Jean told of that other Jean—he of the swart skin, midnight-black hair and eyes, beard shaven clean from the front of his face. She was glad—very glad one of her line had known this intrepid, carefree adventurer who, a marine Robin Hood, had plundered and smuggled and risked death a thousand times as though he were passing the time of day on the street corner.
She, too, was fascinated by Jean’s picture of the coming into being of the Creole.
“The white Louisianian will tell you the Creole is white with ancestry of French or Spanish or West Indian extraction. There may be some of that kind—but I’m not sure—but most Creoles are a little bit of everything and from that very mixture comes the delightful colourfulness which is their greatest charm. To them the cardinal sin is avarice or stinginess. Dalliance at love—too great devotion to the cup—poverty—all these are minor faults to be forgiven and forgotten. We are not a nation of shopkeepers, thank God, even though you and I, Mimi, are about to desert to the enemy.”
Many other stories he told her there. He told of that Governor Perier who armed Negroes in 1729 and sent them to fight that fear-inspiring tribe of Indians, the Chonchas, with whom the black slaves were becoming too friendly, and how, with an ease that should have frightened Perier, these blacks wiped out the Indian enemy. Proudly Jean told how this example and others gave impetus to the later freeing of the slaves which had come largely through their own efforts—the revolt of the slaves led by the Chickasaws and Banbaras and other stirring uprisings—gentle, kindly Jean—who would not have crushed an ant—exultantly told of carnage, of slaughter, of death.
He took great pride in telling Mimi of Jeannot, stalwart slave offered freedom by Kerlerec if he would become the public executioner, a job no white man would take. Mimi
