"You have doubtless seen the lady, and she is yours, said he.
"You forget that I am in love with a miniature," I said.
In half an hour we were packed and ready, the horses had arrived, we bade
good-by to Madame Bouvet and rode down the miry street until we reached
the road behind the levee. Turning southward, we soon left behind the
shaded esplanade and the city's roofs below us, and came to the first of
the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage. No tremor shook
the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so still was the day,
and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between us and the cloudless sky
above. The sun's rays pierced it and gathered fire; the mighty river
beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging back the heat defiantly.
And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance,
the live-oak, the hackberry, the myrtle, the Spanish bayonet in bristling
groups, and the shaded places gave out a scented moisture like an
orangery; anon we passed fields of corn and cotton, swamps of rice,
stretches of poverty-stricken indigo plants, gnawed to the stem by the
pest. Our ponies ambled on, unmindful; but Nick vowed that no woman
under heaven would induce him to undertake such a journey again.
Some three miles out of the city we descried two figures on horseback
coming towards us, and quickly perceived that one was a gentleman, the
other his black servant.
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