Always entertained by the vagaries of human conduct, January distracted himself from the pain in his arms and back by picking out exactly where in the ballroom the frontier between American and French ran, an invisible Rubicon curving from the second of the Corinthian pilasters on the north wall, to a point just south of the enormous, carven double doors opening to the upstairs hall. French territory centered around Mrs. Pritchard, plump and plain and sweet faced, and the brilliantly animated Madame Jumon, though now and then a Creole gentleman would pass that invisible line to discuss business with the Colonel's friends: bankers, sugar brokers, importers, and landlords, the planters having long since departed New Orleans for their acres. Every so often one of the younger Americans would solicit the favor of a dance with one of Mrs. Pritchard's younger Marcillac or Jumon cousins and to do them justice, January had to admit that for Americans they were as well behaved as they probably knew how to be. For the most part, the damsel would be rescued by a brother or a cousin or a younger uncle twice-removed who would reply politely that Mademoiselle was desolate, but the dance was already promised to him. When MadamMjumon's surviving son, a craggily saturnine gentleman of forty-five, showed signs of leading Pritchard's middle-aged maiden sister out onto the floor, Madame quickly excused herself from conversation and intercepted the erring gallant; January was hard put to hide a smile. "Don't see what they got to be stuck-up about," grumbled a short, badly pomaded gentleman with a paste ruby the size of an orange pip in his stickpin. "I don't care if their granddaddies were the King of Goddam France, they're citizens of the United States now, just like we are. I got a good mind to go back and take that gal's brother to account..."

"Mr. Greenaway, please!" Emily Redfern, a stout little widow-who a moment ago had been bargaining like a Levantine trader with the burly Hubert Granville of the Bank of Louisiana-laid a simpering black-mitted hand on the pomaded gentleman's arm.