Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 by Jennifer Blake Read Free Book Online

because she was a constant reminder of her predecessor, but primarily because Elise, according to her father’s will, would inherit two-thirds of the estate on his death, should there be no issue of the new marriage. There had begun a slow campaign to make it seem that it was Elise who resented the new order and in time that was certainly true.
    The situation became harder and harder to bear, especially since her father, after a time, ceased to take her part. A month before her fifteenth birthday there had been a terrible quarrel over a lace shawl that had belonged to Elise’s mother. Her stepmother had taken up a broom handle to beat Elise and she had wrenched it from the older woman, striking back. The woman had run screaming from the house with blood pouring from a cut on her cheek. She had summoned the gendarmes and demanded that Elise be taken away to a house of correction.
    The days and weeks had passed. Elise had finally given up hope of being removed from the terrible correction house by her father. All she could think was that her stepmother must have told him she had run away. She hadn’t wanted to consider that he would allow her to be kept where she was, without protest, when his word alone would have been enough to secure her freedom. She had refused to think that it might be so.
    She had begun to listen to the women who were crowded into the correction house. Their tales were often, or so she suspected, a strange blending of fact and fancy, and yet there was enough horror in them to famish years of nightmares. A common thread running through them seemed to be the perfidy of men: men who took what they wanted with force or threats, without thought for the damage they caused; men with smooth tongues and consummate guilt who lied and cheated, then left the women behind. Much was made of their cruelty also, of their senseless rages and tortures, both physical and mental. As the stories she heard blended with the pain of her father’s betrayal, Elise came to despise the male sex.
    Then one day there had been a great bustle. Men had appeared with a proclamation that declared that they had the right to choose from among the correction girls, brides for the colonists of Louisiana. Those chosen would be given a small bundle of clothing, taken to the coast, and put on a ship for that distant colony. Once they had been signed up, there was nothing — no representation from parents or guardians, no bribe or legal maneuver — that could save them from the long journey to the new world. They had a quota to fill and none were exempt, though they preferred young females without vices or diseases. They had chosen a score or more of the women. Elise had been among them.
    The journey to the coast had been a trial of endurance. It had taken place in the dead of winter in an open cart. The women had been inadequately clothed, most wore thin summer stuffs, without capes or cloaks. They had been chained together at the waist, herded in and out of ordinaries and inns like cattle with little privacy from the soldiers guarding them while they attended to their physical needs. A fever had struck while they waited at Le Havre for a ship and several of their number had died. Other women had been brought to join the ship: women snatched off the streets and from the farmyards of small villages; women from the prisons of scattered towns, many branded with the fleur-de-lis that marked them murderesses, traitresses. Many more of them had failed to survive the storm-wracked voyage aboard the Mutine , and the rest were only half-alive when they finally reached port at Mobile.
    They had rested for a time, regaining their strength before continuing the voyage to New Orleans. In that city, the women had been taken in by the director of the Company of the Indies, Monsieur Jacques de la Chaise. Their wants had been attended to and they had been allowed to bathe, to wash their clothing, and to rest for a few days. During this respite, many men had