a haunt of pelicans, the corpse of a child. Some locks of bright
hair still adhering to the skull, a string of red beads, a white

muslin dress, a handkerchief broidered with the initials
"A.L.B.,"--were secured as clews; and the little body was

interred where it had been found.
And, several days before, Captain Hotard, of the relief-boat

Estelle Brousseaux, had found, drifting in the open Gulf
(latitude 26 degrees 43 minutes; longitude 88 degrees 17

minutes),--the corpse of a fair-haired woman, clinging to a
table. The body was disfigured beyond recognition: even the

slender bones of the hands had been stripped by the nibs of the
sea-birds-except one finger, the third of the left, which seemed

to have been protected by a ring of gold, as by a charm. Graven
within the plain yellow circlet was a date,--"JUILLET--1851" ;

and the names,--"ADELE + JULIEN,"--separated by a cross. The
Estelle carried coffins that day: most of them were already

full; but there was one for Adele.
Who was she?--who was her Julien? ... When the Estelle and many

other vessels had discharged their ghastly cargoes;--when the
bereaved of the land had assembled as hastily as they might for

the du y of identification;--when memories were strained almost
to madness in research of names, dates, incidents--for the

evocation of dead words, resurrection of vanished days,
recollection of dear promises,--then, in the confusion, it was

believed and declared that the little corpse found on the pelican
island was the daughter of the wearer of the wedding ring: Adele

La Brierre, nee Florane, wife of Dr. Julien La Brierre, of New
Orleans, who was numbered among the missing.

And they brought dead Adele back,--up shadowy river windings,
over linked brightnesses of lake and lakelet, through many a

green glimmering bayou,--to the Creole city, and laid her to rest
somewhere in the old Saint-Louis Cemetery. And upon the tablet

recording her name were also graven the words--
.....................

Aussi a la memoire de
son mari;

JULIEN RAYMOND LA BRIERRE,
ne a la paroisse St. Landry,

le 29 Mai; MDCCCXXVIII;
et de leur fille,

EULALIE,
agee de 4 as et 5 mois,--

Qui tous perirent
dans la grande tempete qui

balaya L'Ile Derniere, le
10 Aout, MDCCCLVI

..... + .....
Priez pour eux!

VII.
Yet six months afterward the face of Julien La Brierre was seen

again upon the streets of New Orleans. Men started at the sight
of him, as at a spectre standing in the sun. And nevertheless

the apparition cast a shadow. People paused, approached, half
extended a hand through old habit, suddenly checked themselves

and passed on,--wondering they should have forgotten, asking
themselves why they had so nearly made an absurd mistake.

It was a February day,--one of those crystalline days of our
snowless Southern winter, when the air is clear and cool, and

outlines sharpen in the light as if viewed through the focus of a
diamond glass;--and in that brightness Julien La Brierre perused

his own brief epitaph, and gazed upon the sculptured name of
drowned Adele. Only half a year had passed since she was laid

away in the high wall of tombs,--in that strange colonial
columbarium where the dead slept in rows, behind squared marbles

lettered in black or bronze. Yet her resting-place,--in the
highest range,--already seemed old. Under our Southern sun, the

vegetation of cemeteries seems to spring into being
spontaneously--to leap all suddenly into luxuriant life!

Microscopic mossy growths had begun to mottle the slab that
closed her in;--over its face some singular creeper was crawling,

planting tiny reptile-feet into the chiselled letters of the
inscription; and from the moist soil below speckled euphorbias

were growing up to her,--and morning glories,--and beautiful
green tangled things of which he did not know the name.

And the sight of the pretty lizards, puffing their crimson
pouches in the sun, or undulating athwart epitaphs, and shifting

their color when approached, from emerald to ashen-gray;--the
caravans of the ants, journeying to and from tiny chinks in the

masonry;--the bees gathering honey from the crimson blossoms of
the crete-de-coq, whose radicles sought sustenance, perhaps from

human dust, in the decay of generations:--all that rich life of
graves summoned up fancies of Resurrection, Nature's

resurrection-work--wondrous transformations of flesh, marvellous
bans migration of souls! ... From some forgotten crevice of that

tomb roof, which alone intervened between her and the vast light,
a sturdy weed was growing. He knew that plant, as it quivered

against the blue,--the chou-gras, as Creole children call it:
its dark berries form the mockingbird's favorite food ... Might

not its roots, exploring darkness, have found some unfamiliar
nutriment within?--might it not be that something of the dead

heart had risen to purple and emerald life--in the sap of
translucent leaves, in the wine of the savage berries,--to blend

with the blood of the Wizard Singer,--to lend a strange sweetness
to the melody of his wooing? ...

... Seldom, indeed, does it happen that a man in the prime of
youth, in the possession of wealth, habituated to comforts and

the elegances of life, discovers in one brief week how minute his
true relation to the human aggregate,---how insignificant his

part as one living atom of the social organism. Seldom, at the
age of twenty-eight, has one been made able to comprehend,

through experience alone, that in the vast and complex Stream of
Being he counts for less than a drop; and that, even as the blood

loses and replaces its corpuscles, without a variance in the
volume and vigor of its current, so are individual existences

eliminated and replaced in the pulsing of a people's life, with
never a pause in its mighty murmur. But all this, and much more,

Julien had learned in seven merciless days--seven successive and
terrible shocks of experience. The enormous world had not missed

him; and his place therein was not void--society had simply
forgotten him. So long as he had moved among them, all he knew

for friends had performed their petty altruistic roles,--had
discharged their small human obligations,--had kept turned toward

him the least selfish side of their natures,--had made with him a
tolerably equitable exchange of ideas and of favors; and after

his disappearance from their midst, they had duly mourned for his
loss--to themselves! They had played out the final act in the

unimportant drama of his life: it was really asking too much to
demand a repetition ... Impossible to deceive himself as to the

feeling his unanticipated return had aroused:--feigned pity where
he had looked for sympatheticwelcome; dismay where he had

expected surprised delight; and, oftener, airs of resignation, or
disappointment ill disguised,--always insincerity, politely

masked or coldly bare. He had come back to find strangers in his
home, relatives at law concerning his estate, and himself

regarded as an intruder among the living,--an unlucky guest, a
revenant ... How hollow and selfish a world it seemed! And yet

there was love in it; he had been loved in it, unselfishly,
passionately, with the love of father and of mother, of wife and

child ... All buried!--all lost forever! ... Oh! would to God the
story of that stone were not a lie!--would to kind God he also

were dead! ...
Evening shadowed: the violet deepened and prickled itself with