The contrast
was sharp as the impress of an old seal in new wax, and Angela loved it.
She liked her hotel, too, and said but half-heartedly each morning,
"To-morrow I'll go on." With Kate for duenna, she wandered through streets
which, though they had historic French names, reminded her more of Spain
than of France, with their rows of balconies and glimpses of flowery
patios paved with mossy stones, or cracked but still beautiful tiles. She
made friends with an elderly French shopkeeper of the Vieux Carre, who
looked as if carved out of ivory and yellowed with age. His business was
the selling of curiosities; antique furniture brought in sailing ships
from France when New Orleans was in the making; quaintly set jewels worn
by famous beauties of the great old days; brocades and velvets which had
been their ball dresses; books which had Andrew Jackson's name on yellow
fly-leaves; weird souvenirs from the haunted house where terrible Madame
Lalaurie tortured slaves to death; fetishes which had belonged to Marie
Laveau, the Voodoo Queen; sticks and stones of the varnished house where
Louis Philippe lived, and letters written by Nicholas Girod, who plotted
to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and spirit him across the sea to New
Orleans.
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