The Renaissance at Charleroi Page: 368
[18], 331-448, [16] p. : ill. ; 26 cm.View a full description of this prose (fiction).
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THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI
By O. HenryGrandemont Charles was a little Cre-
ole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with a
bald spot on the top of his head and the
manners of a prince. By day he was a
clerk in a cotton broker's office in one
of those cold, rancid mountains of oozy
brick, down near the levee in New Or-
leans. By night, in his three-story-high
chtambre garner in the old French Ouar-
ter he was again the last male descend-
ant of the Charles family, that noble
house that had lorded it in France, and
had pushed its way smiling, rapiered and
courtly into Louisiana's early and bril-
liant days. Of late years the Charleses
had subsided into the more republican
but scarcely less royally carried magnifi-
cence and ease of plantation life along
the Mississippi. Perhaps Grandemont
was even Marquis de Brass&. There was
that title in the family. But, a Marquis
on seventy-five dollars per month!
Vrafmcnt! Still, it has been done on
less.
Grandemont had saved out of his sal-
arv the sum of six hundred dollars.
Enough, you would say, for any man to
marry on. So. after a silence of two
years on that subject, he reopened that
most hazardous question to Mlle. Adele
Fauquier, riding down to Meade d'Or,
her father's plantation. Her answer was
the same that it had been any time dur-
ing the last ten years-"First find my
brother, Monsieur Charles."
This time he had risen before her,
perhaps discouraged by a love so long
and hopeless, being dependent upon a
contin agency so unreasonable, and de-
manded to be told in simple words
whether she loved him or no.
Adele looked at him steadily out of
her gray ees that betrayed no secrets
and answered, a little more softly:
"Grandemont, you have no right to
ask that question unless you can do what
I ask f von. Either bring back brother
Victor to us ,- tle proof that he died."Somehow, though five times thus re-
jected, his heart was not so heavy when
he left. She had not denied that she
loved. Upon what shallow waters can
the bark of passion remain afloat! Or,
shall we play the doctrinaire and hint
that at thirty-four the tides of life are
calmer and cognizant of many sources
instead of but one-as at four and
twenty ?
Victor Fauquier would never be
found. In those early days of his disap-
pearance there was money to the
Charles name, and Grandemont had
spent the dollars as if they were pica-
yunes in trying to find the lost youth.
Even then he had had small hope of suc-
cess, for the Mississippi gives up a
victim from its oily tangles only at the
whim of its malign will.
A thousand times had Grandemont
conned in his mind the scene of Victor's
disappearance. And, at each time that
Adele had set her stubborn but pitiful
alternative against his suit still clearer
it repeated itself in his brain.
The boy had been the family favorite;
daring, winning, reckless. Iis unwise
fancy- had been captured by a girl on the
plantation-the daughter of an overseer.
Victor's family was in ignorance of the
intrigue, as far as it had gone. To save
them the inevitable pain that his course
promised, Grandemont strove to pre-
vent it. Omnipotent money smoothed
the way. The overseer and his daughter
left, between a sunset and dawn, for an
undesignated bourne. Grandemont was
confident that this stroke would bring
the boy to reason. lie rode over to
Meade d'Or to talk with him. The two
strolled out of the house and grounds,
crossed the road, and, mounting the
levee, walked its broad path while thev
conversed. A thunder cloud was hang-
ing, imminei t, love, but, as vet, to
rain fell. At Grandemont's disclosure
of his interference in the clandestine ro-J I
"t- - - - -I ' ~ I~ pi
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Henry, O., 1862-1910. The Renaissance at Charleroi, prose (fiction), October 1902; Philadelphia. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth139424/m1/4/: accessed June 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.