Louisiana
must have population. A bonus of so much per head was offered for
colonists, and hideous things ensued: servants, children, and helpless
women were kidnapped, and the occupants of hospitals, asylums, and
houses of correction were assembled and deported. Incidentally it will
be remembered that out of these black deeds flowered "the first
masterpiece of French literature which can properly be called a novel,"
the Abbe Prevost's "Manon Lescaut," which has been dramatized and
redramatized, and which is the theme of operas by both Massenet and
Puccini. Though a grave alleged to be that of Manon used to be shown on
the outskirts of the city, there is doubt that such a person actually
existed, although those who wish to believe in a flesh-and-blood Manon
may perhaps take encouragement from the fact that the arrival in the
colony of a Chevalier des Grieux, in the year 1719, fourteen years
before the book appeared, has been established, and, further, that the
name of the Chevalier des Grieux may be seen upon a crumbling tomb in
one of the river parishes.
When the girls arrived they were on inspection in the daytime, but at
night were carefully guarded by soldiers, in the house where they were
quartered together. Miss Grace King, in her delightful book, "New
Orleans, the Place and the People," tells us that in these times there
were never enough girls to fill the demand for wives, and that in one
instance two young bachelors proposed to fight over a very plain
girl--the last one left out of a shipload--but that the commandant
obliged them to settle their dispute by the more pacific means of
drawing lots.
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