He
looked through the window. She was kneeling, with her forehead resting
on her arms--motionless.
He repeated the words of absolution. Still she did not stir.
"My daughter," he said, "go to thy home in peace." But she did not move.
He rose hastily, stepped from the box, raised her in his arms, and
called her by name:
"Madame Delphine!" Her head fell back in his elbow; for an instant there
was life in the eyes--it glimmered--it vanished, and tears gushed from
his own and fell upon the gentle face of the dead, as he looked up to
heaven and cried:
"Lord, lay not this sin to her charge!"
CAFE DES EXILES.
That which in 1835--I think he said thirty-five--was a reality in the
Rue Burgundy--I think he said Burgundy--is now but a reminiscence. Yet
so vividly was its story told me, that at this moment the old Cafe des
Exiles appears before my eye, floating in the clouds of revery, and I
doubt not I see it just as it was in the old times.
An antiquated story-and-a-half Creole cottage sitting right down on the
banquette, as do the Choctaw squaws who sell bay and sassafras and
life-everlasting, with a high, close board-fence shutting out of view
the diminutive garden on the southern side.
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