Their eyes were gazed into, their hair stroked,
their limbs caressed and outlined, their busts stared at and touched.
Men went mad over these beauties.
A story went the rounds that a young man in Virginia fell in love with
an octoroon slave while on a visit to a country house. The girl had gone
to her mistress for protection, and received it, against the man's
advances. But he had returned, saying that he could not live without the
girl. The mistress had sold her to him for $1500. Did Zoe meet that
fate, and not violence?
So I searched the cafes, the places of amusement, the bagnios for Zoe.
And into every octoroon's face in which I saw a resemblance to Zoe I
peered, hoping that it would be she. For with Dorothy so much ill, and
with no one in the world of my own but Dorothy and our boy, I had hours
of profound loneliness. In New Orleans this winter I was more lonely
than I had ever been in my life. I no longer had to strive, I had money
enough. And all the while my real estate investments in Chicago doubled
and trebled while I traveled.
There were many French in New Orleans; there was reverence there and
memory for Bonaparte. There was gladness and exultation now that Louis
Napoleon had accomplished a coup d'etat and established a throne upon
the ruins of the republic. His soldiers were in the Crimea, fighting as
desperately as if great wealth or fame could be won by their valor and
death.
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