Her kind offices and beneficent
schemes were almost as famous as General Villivicencio's splendid alms;
if she could at times do what the infantile Washington said he could
not, why, no doubt she and her friends generally looked upon it as a
mere question of enterprise.
She had charms, too, of intellect--albeit not such a sinner against time
and place as to be an "educated woman"--charms that, even in a plainer
person, would have brought down the half of New Orleans upon one knee,
with both hands on the left side. _She_ had the _whole_ city at her
feet, and, with the fine tact which was the perfection of her character,
kept it there contented. Madame was, in short, one of the kind that
gracefully wrest from society the prerogative of doing as they please,
and had gone even to such extravagant lengths as driving out in the
_Americain_ faubourg, learning the English tongue, talking national
politics, and similar freaks whereby she provoked the unbounded worship
of her less audacious lady friends. In the centre of the cluster of
Creole beauties which everywhere gathered about her, and, most of all,
in those incomparable companies which assembled in her own splendid
drawing-rooms, she was always queen lily.
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