"
"Do you want me to go with you?" I said.
He looked at me incredulously.
"I should be delighted," he said, "but you mek a jest."
"I was never more serious in my life," I answered, "for I have business
in New Orleans. I shall be ready."
"Ha," cried Monsieur Vigo, hospitably, "I shall be enchant. We will talk
philosophe, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Rousseau."
For Monsieur Vigo was a great reader, and we had often indulged in
conversation which (we flattered ourselves) had a literary turn.
I spent the remaining hours arranging with a young lawyer of my
acquaintance to look after my business, and at ten o'clock I was aboard
the keel boat with my small baggage. At eleven, Monsieur Vigo and I were
talking "philosophe" over a wonderful breakfast under the awning, as we
dropped down between the forest-lined shores of the Ohio. My host
travelled in luxury, and we ate the Creole dishes, which his cook
prepared, with silver forks which he kept in a great chest in the cabin.
You who read this may feel something of my impatience to get to New
Orleans, and hence I shall not give a long account of the journey. What
a contrast it was to that which Nick and I had taken five years before in
Monsieur Gratiot's fur boat! Like all successful Creole traders,
Monsieur Vigo had a wonderful knack of getting on with the Indians, and
often when we tied up of a night the chief men of a tribe would come down
to greet him.
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