Madame Delphine

by George Washington Cable

Overview

And this is likely to be all the information you get-not that they would not tell, but they cannot grasp the idea that you wish to know-until, possibly, just as you are turning to depart, your informant, in a single word and with the most evident non-appreciation of its value, drops the simple key to the whole matter:
"Dey's quadroons."
He may then be aroused to mention the better appearance of the place in former years, when the houses of this region generally stood farther apart, and that garden comprised the whole square.
Here dwelt, sixty years ago and more, one Delphine Carraze; or, as she was commonly designated by the few who knew her, Madame Delphine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781489508850
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	05/19/2013
Pages:	76
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.18(d)

About the Author

George Washington Cable (October 12, 1844 - January 31, 1925) was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been called "the most important southern artist working in the late 19th century", as well as "the first modern southern writer." In his treatment of racism, mixed-race families and miscegenation, his fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.

Read an Excerpt

THE CAP FITS About two months after the conversation just given, and therefore somewhere about the Christmas holidays of the year 1821, Pere Jerome delighted the congregation of his little chapel with the announcement that he had appointed to preach a sermon in French on the following sabbath not there, but in the Cathedral. He was much beloved. Notwithstanding that among the clergy there were two or three who shook their heads and raised their eyebrows, and said he would be at least as orthodox if he did not make quite so much of the Bible and so little of the dogmas, yet '' the common people heard him gladly.'' When told, one day, of the unfavorable whispers, he smiled a little and answered hisinformant whom he knew .to be one of the whisperers himself laying a hand kindly upon his shoulder : "Father Murphy" or whatever the name was " your words comfort me." "How is that?" '' Because ' Ve quum benedixerint mihi homines !' " ' The appointed morning, when it came, was one of those exquisite days in which there is such a universal harmony, that worship rises from the heart like a spring. "Truly," said Pere Jerome to the companion who was to assist him in the mass, " this is a sabbath day which we do not have to make holy, but only to keep so." Maybe it was one of the secrets of Pere Jerome's success as a preacher, that he took more thought as to how he should feel, than as to what he should say. The cathedral of those days was called a very plain old pile, boasting neither beauty nor riches ; but to Pere Jerome it was very 1 "Woe unto me when all men speak well of me !"lovely; and before its homely altar, not homely to him, in the performance of those solemn offices, symbols ofheaven's mightiest truths, in the hearing of the organ's harmonies, and the...