As they had proposed, the brothers-in-law did not arrive in New Orleans as mere refugees but as owners of a sugar plantation, the most prestigious rank on the scale of castes. Sancho's vision in having acquired land had turned out to be providential. "Do not forget, Toulouse, the future lies in cotton. Sugar has a bad name," he warned Valmorain. Blood-chilling tales circulated about slavery in the Antilles, and the abolitionists were waging an international campaign to sabotage sugar stained by blood. "Believe me, Sancho, even if the lumps were crimson, consumption would continue to increase. Sweet gold is more addictive than opium," Valmorain replied. No one spoke about that in the closed circle of the Creoles, who affirmed that the atrocities of the islands did not occur in Louisiana. Among those people, united by a complex network of family relationships in which it was impossible to keep secrets-everything was known sooner or later-cruelty was badly viewed and inappropriate as well, since only a fool damaged his property. Besides, the priests, led by the Spanish friar Antonio de Sedella, known as Pere Antoine and feared for his reputation as a saint, made it a point to drive home their responsibility before God for the bodies and souls of their slaves.

As he began to acquire laborers for the plantation, Valmorain encountered a reality very different from that in Saint-Domingue: the price of slaves was high. That meant a larger investment than he had calculated, and he had to be prudent about expenses, but he also felt secretly relieved. Now there was a practical reason for taking care of one's slaves, not merely humanitarian scruples that could be interpreted as weakness. The worst of the twenty-three years at Saint-Lazare had been the absolute power he held over other lives, with its burden of temptations and degradation, worse than his wife's madness, the climate that corroded health and dissolved man's most decent principles, the solitude and the hunger for books and conversation. Just as Dr. Parmentier had maintained, the revolution in Saint-Domingue had been the inevitable revenge of slaves against the colonists' brutality. Louisiana offered Valmorain the opportunity to revive the youthful ideals smoldering in the embers of his memory. He began to dream of a model plantation capable of producing as much sugar as Saint-Lazare, but one where slaves lived a human existence. This time he would take much better care in selecting a manager and overseers. He did not want another Prosper Cambray.

Sancho devoted himself to cultivating friendships among the Creoles, without whom they could not prosper, and within a brief time he became the soul of parties, with his guitar and silken voice, his talent for losing at gaming tables, his sleepy eyes and fine humor with the matriarchs on whom he lavished praise-without their approval, after all, no one crossed the threshold of their houses. He played billiards, back-gammon, dominos, and cards, he danced gracefully, he was informed on every subject, and he had the art of always being in the right place at the right time. His favorite stroll was along the tree-lined road bordering the dike that protected the city from floods, where everyone mixed together, from distinguished families to noisy sailors, slaves, free people of color, and the ever-present Kaintucks, with their reputation for drunkenness, killings, and whoring. Those men came down the Mississippi from Kentucky and other regions to the north to sell their tobacco, cotton, hides, and wood, encountering hostile Indians and a thousand other dangers along the way, which was why they went around well armed. In New Orleans they sold their rowboats for firewood, caroused a couple of weeks, and then undertook the arduous return.

Sancho, if only to be seen, attended theater and opera just as he went to mass on Sundays. His simple black suit, hair pulled into a ponytail, and waxed mustache contrasted with the brocade and lace attire of the French, giving him a slightly dangerous air that attracted the women. His manners were impeccable, an essential requirement in the upper class, where the proper use of the fork was more important than moral tenets. Such splendid virtues would have served that somewhat eccentric Spaniard for nothing without his relationship to Valmorain, a Frenchman of wealth and good family name, but once he was introduced in those salons, no one thought of dismissing him. Valmorain was a widower, only forty-five years old, not bad looking, though several kilos too heavy, and naturally enterprising patriarchs tried to trap him for a daughter or niece. The brother-in-law with the unpronounceable name was also a candidate; even a Spanish son-in-law was preferable to the embarrassment of an unwed daughter.

There were comments, but no one offered any opposition when that pair of strangers rented one of the mansions in the quartier, or later when the owner sold it to them. It had two floors and a mansard, but lacked a cellar because New Orleans floated on water, and digging only a palm's width was enough to get wet. The mausoleums of the cemetery were raised so that the dead would not sail away with every storm. Like many others, Valmorain's house was wood and brick, Spanish in style, with a wide entry for the coach, a patio cobbled with paving stone, a tile fountain, and cool balconies with iron railings covered with fragrant climbing vines. Valmorain avoided any ostentation in decorating the house, for that was a sign of being nouveau riche. He could not carry a tune, but he invested in musical instruments because at every social event the mademoiselles showed their skill at the piano, the harp, or the clavichord, and the young gentlemen shone on their guitars.

Maurice and Rosette had to take music and dance lessons with private instructors, like any other wealthy children. A refugee from Saint-Domingue gave them music classes, using his corrective rod, and a plump, affected man taught them the dances in vogue, also with a rod. In the future those lessons would be as useful to Maurice as fencing for fighting a duel and salon games, and for Rosette they would serve for entertaining visitors, though never competing with white girls. She had grace and a good voice, whereas Maurice had inherited his father's tin ear and attended the classes with the resigned attitude of a galley slave. He preferred books, which were not going to do anything for him in New Orleans, where intellect was considered suspicious; much more appreciated was a talent for light conversation, gallantry, and living the good life.

To Valmorain, accustomed to a hermit's life at Saint-Lazare, the hours of banal chatter in the cafes and bars Sancho dragged him to seemed a waste. He had to make an effort to participate in the games and betting; he detested the cockfights that left the attendees spattered with blood as well as the horse and greyhound racing at which he always lost. Every day of the week there was a gathering in a different drawing room, presided over by a matron who kept track of who attended and what gossip they brought. Bachelors went from house to house, always with some gift, usually a monstrous sugar and nut dessert heavy as a cow's head. According to Sancho, these reunions des amis were obligatory in that closed society. Dances, soirees, picnics, always the same faces with nothing new to say. Valmorain preferred the plantation, but he realized that in Louisiana his taste for seclusion would be interpreted as arrogance or miserliness.

The dining and drawing rooms of the city house were on the first floor, the bedchambers on the second, and the kitchen and slave quarters off the back patio, in separate buildings. The windows gave access to a small but well tended garden. The most spacious room was the dining hall, as it was in all Creole houses, in which life turned around the dining table and the pride of hospitality. A respectable family owned china for at least twenty-four guests. One of the rooms on the first floor had a separate entrance intended for the bachelor sons; in that way they could come and go without offending the ladies of the family. On the plantations their garconnieres were octagonal quarters near the road and separated from the main house. Maurice was twelve years short of qualifying for that privilege; for the moment he slept alone, for the first time, in a room between those of his father and his uncle Sancho.