Wichita eagle., 1889-10-11

1
knew that when once the heavy door swung
to and the three stood facing each other in
the narrow path where the priests cassock
brushed against the physicians broadcloth,
that they would motion her forward and she
would lead the way to an upper room where
a wan faced woman sat in silence, or else
walked up and down the floor muttering,
muttering, muttering to herself. On the
way, just at the head of the steps, was a room
with iron barred windows and padded walls,
whose only furniture was thick, soft mat
tress fastened to the floor. As they passed
that room the physician bowed bis head and
the priest made the sign of the cross. Neither
spoke, but they turned towards Adele, ques-
tioning her mutely.
NO" she answered; mot this week. She
| has been very quiet"
Without word they passed on to a room
where shrill, maniacal laughter could be
heard, and there, walking up and down, up
and down the long room, was figure, SO wild
eyed, SO haggard, with such disheveled hair,
SO wildly black against the deathly pallor OF
her face, she scarcely seemed a creature of
| this world.
Attic sound of footsteps she turned towards
| them For moment her crazed brain strug-
| shrill laugh-more sad than any sob could be
| she began again her wild walk up and down
the long room.
The priest drew his coarse serge sleeve be
! fore his face, and the physician, Injured as he
was to the sight of pain, felt his lips tremble,
for they they had both known and loved the
mad woman all her life. Presently the priest
said sadly:
'Our time has not yet come, my son; pa
! tience, patience" And the two turned and
walked silently to the gate, followed by Adele,
with the key in her hand The three paused
once more in the narrow pathway, and the
| physician, turning abruptly to the woman,
said:
You do not repent having undertaken the
| charger Nine d'Avril will never be sane
! again, and if you weary of your life here she
can be placed in an asylum Poor creature,
she knows nothing Of her surroundings! She
is often very violent; are you not afraid of
her?'
mo, no, MOI" cried the woman, passion
ately; lit is my atonement. Not for myself
God, what has my life been that 1 should
fear the tortures of hell? 1t could not be
worse than the misery l have known, but I
would make atonement for those who sinned
for MOI
The priest said nothing, but he laid his
hands for moment on the bowed head and
then passed out through the little gate.
Many, many years before, when Adele was
young and beautiful, with the weird beauty
Of the quadroon, soft and feeting loneliness
Ike dusky summer night she had belonged
TO a rich sugar planter in one of the Creole
parishes of Louisiana She was intensely
beautiful. All the sensuous loveliness, all
the wild passionate grace of her savage an
cestry, all the stately pride Of bearing of her
white blood met in her and made her like the
dethroned princess of some eastern legend.
Such women were only too naturally the
prey of their owners, or Of some neighboring
grandee who was enthralled for moment by
their beauty Adele's fate was the fate of
her kind-with this difference. A planter
fell wildly, madly, passionately in love with
her-and wanted to marry her. She was will
ing to sacrifice country, home, friends, every
thing to his unreasonable passion for the
beautiful slave He offered her owner any
price, but the naughty old Creole, who would
have died to preserve the integrity of his
CASTE Indignantly refused to listen to terms.
Adele's lover pleaded stornled threatened in
vain
But Adele's child is my son."
Monsieur lie grande shrugged his shoulders.
''M'sieur, that is a detail of your life with
which l have nothing to do"
If miscegenation was ever brought on
Louisiana it would not be through his fault
Adele loved her child with all the passion
ate intensity of her half savage nature, and
when the child's father begged her to give
him the boy so he might have broader life
in another country than he could hope for in
his own, she was like tigress fighting for her
whelpS. She had known nothing but slavery
and she could not understand the degradation
it meant for the man, born of freedmen, who
saw the woman he loved and his child bear
ing the bonds of slaves; but at last mother
love triumphed, and one dark night she stole
the child out of bed and tore his clinging
arms from about her neck, kissed for the last
time the dewy sweet mouth of childhood, and
laid him in his fathers arms All that night
she lay upon the dank, wet grass writing
in anguish that tore her very soul in twain,
and when, in the early dusk, she saw the
black hull and tall masts of the ocean steamer
as it dropped down the river, she could bear
10 more, but drew her hands over her eyes to
shut out the sight, for she knew it bore her
child away from her.
The years went by slowly enough for the
poor mother, whose soul was absorbed in the
thought of her petit Ledou," as she fcndly
persisted in calling him, but for the boy
growing up in great city, handsome, rich,
feted, the time passed all too swiftly. No
one knew his history He was the son of a
rich American-that title so vague yet so
satisfactory to Europeans. As for the rest,
one could see for themselvesl
No one knew the boys history but the boy
himself. His father never once suffered him
TO forget it, that his mother, so beautiful and
50 beloved, was a slave. who was doomed to
feel, perhaps, the slave drivers lash on her
tender, quivering flesh. From his earliest
consciousness it was impressed on Leon that
he was TO avenge the wrong inflicted on his
father and mother.
Leon was beautiful; he had the best educa-
ton The French capital could bestow and that
Undesirable air of the great world that sets
the seal of polish on q man. His father, look
ing at him, felt all the revenge and hatred he
had nursed 50 long crystalline in a plan of
action He would send Leon TO New Orleans
with proper letters and credentials; there he
should meet the daughter OF the man who had
rtood between him and Adele; he should
marry this girl, and there then be would be
revenged, when the daughter of the naughty
pristocrat knew she was married 10 the son
IF her own slave!
Leon had not lived under his fathers NOR
bid influence so long without becoming in
fected by it. He. TOO. felt the degradation of
his mother being held as q slave, and he
chafed at the impossibility of freeing her.
L. h1~v-