A Time of Joy, A Time of Sorrow

A story in the time of Yellow Fever

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Part One

Introduction*

Belle Vert, one of the few plantation houses to escape destruction during the War Between the States is located just off Spring Bayou Road near Marksville LA. It is a Baroque styled house built around one hundred and sixty years ago by Antoine Deshotel who died along with most of his family in a yellow fever epidemic while celebrating the completion of his house in 1853. The disease was contracted in New Orleans during the epidemic there where he and most of his family except for one son, Eduard. He and his family were living at the time near the village of Croix Rouge and running a small but profitable cattle ranch and Sugar Cane farm in southwestern Pointe Coupee Parish. And two daughters Madeleine and Elise that had stayed behind in Marksville with an aunt when Antoine and the rest of the family went down to New Orleans.

The Deshotel family traveled back to Belle Vert only to succumb to the disease a few weeks after arriving home.

Thus, Eduard became the sole owner of Belle Vert. He immediately put his house in Croix Rouge up for sale and moved his family into the plantation house near Marksville. It is here that the story begins.

Actually what I am about to relate began in the year 1877 twelve years after the secession of hostilities in the “War Between the States.” Reconstruction was in full swing by 1867. It had began under Lincoln in 1862 in Louisiana and continued until 1877 when the last of the Federal troops were withdrawn from the state. Eduard and his family had been living at Belle Vert for twenty-four years. His daughter Madeleine Lesch (nee Deshotel) and her family had moved to Belle Vert from Simmsport in 1870 to be with her father.

*Notes at the bottom of page 9

************************************************************************ A Time of Joy, A Time of Sorrow

As the last of the Federal troops turned over the governance of the state to civil authorities and departed Louisiana, things here began to take on some semblance of normalcy. It was then and only then did strange and some say supernatural happenings began to take place at Belle Vert.

At this time, Robert Silvestre Lesch and his wife Madeleine Lesch [nee Deshotel] had been settled at Belle Vert for a few years along with their children, a girl, Margaret and a son Eduard named after his grandfather. It is the girl Margaret that this story concerns. Margret was a budding beauty, strawberry blonde hair, a heart shaped face with green/gray eyes, a petite button nose and a sensuous mouth that in a couple more years would be the envy of her girl friends and the sought after prize of many a young man. She was well on the way of developing into a woman men would dream of marrying, a goddess in the making.

It was the night of Margaret’s 13^th birthday party, the guests had departed about eight 0 clock that evening. The house began to settle back into the normal evening routine when Margaret decided to go outside and sit in a rocker on the gallery.*

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There were three, she was in the center one rocking gently back and forth, looking at the moon and stars, when out of the corner of her left eye she caught a movement and then a movement on her right. Margret had excellent peripheral vision. Both chairs were gently

rocking back and forth. At first, she thought it was a breeze that moved them then realized that there was no breeze---- Turning her face directly to the left she saw what appeared to be a woman about her mother’s age rocking back and forth. The woman reminded Margret of her mother, slender, with auburn hair and sparkling brown eyes with a touch of emerald in the pupils.

The woman had on a pale green nightdress and a gauzy housecoat of the same coloring. Yet Margret could see right through her as easily as she could through that gauze housecoat. The lady was transparent!

She was conversing with a man, thin, nebulous with just the slightest hint of grey in his hair and dark sad eyes, dressed in trousers and a smoking jacket through which a ruffled shirt collar showed at the front opening and ruffled cuffs at the wrists. He was seated in the rocker to Margret’s right with his back to the gallery railing and his face toward the lady. Margret could not hear what they were discussing but she saw the man nod his head and the lady smile in reply.

Margret tried to rise and leave but for some reason she could not get her body to obey. The couple were smiling at each other laughing and talking. She could not hear them but she saw their facial expressions and their lips moving. They were looking through her as if she was not there.

The next thing she remembered was her mother waking her and saying “time for bed birthday girl.”

Margret rose from the rocker with no difficulty and followed her mother into the house. The “visitors” seemed to have left

Every evening for the next week at eight 0 clock or thereabouts Margret would go and sit in the center rocking chair on the gallery hoping to see the apparitions again but no apparitions manifested themselves.

For four weeks Margret sat in the center rocker hoping----then just when she started to believe that what she had seen was a dream; exactly one month past her birthday celebration Margret decided to take a walk through the garden in the evening’s fading light., As the sun’s descendant rays tinted with that special shade of gold that only an early spring or beginning fall twilight can produce touched a wrought iron bench, she saw the couple sitting there.

This time the lady was dressed in a green chiffon evening gown and wide brimmed cloth bonnet of the same color and the man in dark trousers and crème colored swallow tailcoat. beneath which he wore a pale pink poet’s shirt* They were holding hands and speaking quietly. Every now and again, the lady would smile a quiet smile, toss back her head and the sun would glint brightly on her auburn hair.

The man, for the most part would show in his ghost of a smile, even white teeth beneath a graying but expertly trimmed moustache.

Margret stood on the path unable to move. She wished she could hear what they were saying. The man seemed preoccupied with some problem or problems but was attentive to

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the lady and took or seemed to take a keen interest in what she was saying.

The sun was sinking, only a deep maroon glow remained above the horizon. Shadows lengthened along the garden path---- “Margret.” a voice whispered, no louder than a sigh on the wind. Margret glanced toward the sound, saw the auburn haired lady smile at her, ---- then she was alone on the long shadow mottled garden path.

“Margret” this time the sound came from the direction of the house.

“Yes Mama I’m coming,” she answered loudly as she hurried along the path to where her mother waited.

“What were you doing daughter?”

“Nothing mama just walking in the garden---- I know it’s fall and that flowers should be going dormant but is it not strange that Ma’mere’s flowers seem never to fade?

“Never fade? Of course they fade, they go dormant Margret, why just look--- there are no buds there, not until spring, the ground is resting, just dead flowers on the surface that will decay and feed the perennial roots of next spring‘s blossoms”

Margret looked at the plot of ground that every spring and summer was filled with her great grandmother’s fleur de leis. They were still vibrant as ever. The white ones glowing in the deepening purple twilight as though they had an inner light source while the rest, the colored ones, the violet, the blue, reflected the light given off by the pale ones. Of course Margret thought, looking up they are only reflecting the moonlight, but they were there swaying in the gentle evening wind, they were alive…

“Look mama; see how they glow beneath the moon, why do you say they are dead?

Madeleine looked again at the almost bare patch of ground where a few yellowed and brown stained petals shifted uneasily when touched by the breeze.

“Come,” she said, with a shrug, “It’s near dark and supper should be on the table.

“Margret“, Madeleine thought to herself, “had strange dreams when she was a child, she would tell me about seeing and speaking in French with her Ma’mere. The lady, my grandmother died in 1853. Margret never knew her. Now she is a young woman and will be attending cotillions, balls, and debutante parties soon. I would have thought she had outgrown these adolescent fantasies.

Margret,” she asked, “Have you been have strange dreams?”

The girl started to shake her head, thought to better of it and nodded instead, she never could deceive her mother.

“Ma mere?”

Margret nodded again, “Yes Mama, the night of my party, after the guests had gone, I went to sit on the gallery and she was there talking with a man. The man was dressed in dark trousers and had a smoking jacket over a white laced shirt; Ma’mere was dressed in a green nightgown-----”

Madeleine opened her mouth to say something and shut it again.

“Sacre Bleu” she thought, that is the same gown she is wearing in her portrait in the master bedroom where as a young bride she posed for the portrait standing on the small porch, her back toward the glass pained French doors that opened onto the landing.

The full moon is shining through the diaphanous material of her nightdress outlining her body and limbs in bold relief.

Ma’mere was certainly not ashamed of her body! But she was modest, only the family

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girls had seen the portrait and that was because mama wanted us to realize what we were to be like as mature women. Of course, Papa had seen it, perhaps a few of the house servants but they knew not to speak of it.

That night or rather in the wee hours of the morning Margret dreamed that instead of turning toward her mother when she called she turned the other way to follow her Ma’mere and man. They were about a dozen and half steps ahead of her, dim, ghostly, in a light mist and deepening twilight and seemingly unaware that Margret was following them the two were having quiet an animated conversation the man gesturing and shaking his head. Her Ma’mere was speaking; looking at the man whom Margret assumed was her Grand-pere she seemed to be pleading. Margret was too far back to clearly see the expression on the lady’s face, which was a shadowed silhouette, and in profile to her. As was the man’s But his face was clear enough in the last vestiges of the sunlight as he was standing in a small clearing. He did not seem to be angry but it was evident that he was arguing his point forcefully.

The lady wrung her hands then took a small laced handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes.

To her surprise Margret caught pieces of the conversation as the lady answered----- “Care--- will not---- young--- Maddie---- broken----non! Antoine---”

She could not make sense of the words although she heard them plainly. “Antoine” was her great grand father’s name! So the man was her great grand pere! At least now, she knew who these people were. Her mother’s grandparents!

Just as she was about to catch up with them they turned right onto a dirt path that led from the garden to the family cemetery. By the time it took to make the half dozen steps and look down the path that her arriere parents* had taken they had disappeared.

Margret looked down the now empty pathway to the tomb where the remains of the two people she had followed were resting, an ornate, small houselike structure typical to Louisiana with two angels whose wings were touching, kneeling atop the tiled roof, Doric columns on either side of a bright bronze door shining dimly in the moonlight upon which the names of the deceased had been etched.

JEANE DESHOTEL- nee fevrier22 1760-le mort Feb.28 1812

MARIE DESHOTEL-nee juin 5 1767- la mort Dec. 27 1818

MAURICE DESHOTEL-nee janvier. 8 1806- le mort Aout 17 1853

ANTIONE DESHOTEL-nee janvier. 27 1810- le mort juillet 4 1853

JEANNE DESHOTE-nee septembre 8 1811- la mort juillet 5 1853

RAPHAEL DESHOTEL-nee octobre 17 1841-le mort octobre 17 1853

RANDOLPH LE CARRIE-nee mars 1841-le mort juin 26 1863[Cousin] (Vicksburg)

DAVID LE CARRIE-nee avril 17 1839-le mort- juin 1864, [Cousin] (Brice’s Crossroads)

ALTON JOSEPH LE CARRIE mai 16 1834-le mort-1864 juin [Cousin] (Brice’s Crossroads)

ANTONETTE LE CARRIE-nee1848- la mort 1870(Cousine)

GUILHEM LE CARRIE-nee mai 19 1846-le mort 17 juin 1875 [Cousin] [Shanty town raid]

That was the last Margret would see of her great grandparents until just after Christmas.

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1877.

Actually, it was on the date that the Cajuns as well as the Creoles exchange Christmas gifts, January 6^th The feast of the Epiphany. Also known as the Feast of the Magi.

It had been cold all day with a gentle but biting north wind. That evening while sitting in the parlor with her family Margret noticed the phantoms sitting in their usual rocking chairs when she glanced out of the large ceiling to floor windows that opened from the bottom with a big enough opening to allow people to pass through to the outside in case of fire. There were also windows of equal size on the opposite wall(s) that opened to let the air flow throughout the house in the heat of summer thus keeping the house at an almost comfortable temperature.

As I was saying, Margret saw the two specters seated in their usual places on the gallery. They did not seem to mind the cold; in fact, they seemed to be enjoying it. Her arriere grand pere seated as he was with his back to the gallery railing could see right through the heavy opened curtains into the parlor. What he saw he approved of and showed his even white teeth in a smile the contrasted agreeably with his dark almost Latin complexion. He was about to motion to Margret when her mother rose to shut the curtains against the cold. Madeleine of course saw nothing.

Margret rose early the next morning before daybreak and sleepily stumbled down the stairs, the anteroom was freezing and Margret in her night shirt and barefoot began to shiver with cold. She ran across the breezeway to the kitchen where Maybelle, the cook was just beginning to stir the morning fire to life.

“Child, what you doin up afore the sun? Margret shivering answered----

“I couldn’t sleep Miz Maybelle it was too cold up there in the bedroom even under the quilts.

“Well you sure is shivering now honey, come stand by the fire an warm yoself ‘foe y’u ketch yore death!”

Margret did as she was told and as soon the cook fire blazed up she began to warm.

After a breakfast of boiled sausage and grits, Margret hurried back to her room and dressed for the day. The sun now was a good bit above the horizon and bright. As she opened the front door, a cold wind swept the gallery and sent derelict leaves into the foyer. Margret shivered and stepped onto the gallery closing the door behind her.

“Oh”, she thought, “What a beautiful morning. Cold as it is I believe I will walk through the garden.”

With that, Margret started toward the steps. She had to pass the three rockers to get to them, as she was hurrying past she noticed something shimmering in the early morning sun. It was a green silk handkerchief laying on the small round table a few steps from where the rockers were.

Margret picked it up and placed it in the pocket of her smock. She knew whose it was but she had not seen her arriere grandmere with it. She wondered why her great grandmother had left it behind.

The sun was higher now and slowly warming the air as she stepped onto the garden path. She hurried down the path to where it turned toward the family cemetery and went through the rusty wrought iron gate to stand in front of the entrance to the crypt.

She noticed, with no great surprise that that seal was broken and the door was slightly

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ajar.

“Well, she thought, “I suppose this proves one thing, sprits may be able to walk through walls but it seems that they prefer to use doorways if they have a choice.”

Margret stepped to the bronze doors and slowly pulled one back it was heavy and scraped with a loud bone chilling Screeeech on the marble landing before the entrance. “loud enough to wake the dead,” Margret thought with a shiver and a grin. She stepped into the dim interior. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary all of the tombs were sealed and it looked as though the dust and cobwebs had been there since the beginning of time. She stepped further into the interior of the crypt searching for the tombs of her relatives that has died of yellow fever in 1853, they were clustered together on the left side and each bore a portrait of the person within. Margret found the two she was seeking and yes, both portraits showed her Arriere parents as they appeared when she had seen them on the gallery and the garden.

Satisfied that she had actually sat with them and not dreamed them Margret turned stepped out into the sunlight and walked slowly back to the house.

The rest of the day was spent with her cousines in the parlor doing needlepoint and embroidery. The fire in the huge fireplace kept the room cozy as the girls chatted back and forth about the recent holidays. They were looking forward to the Mardi Gras celebration in the parish wishing that they could go down to New Orleans for the festivities there. But travel in the early spring was usually rather difficult unless one took the train and who could afford to in this day and age when the cost of life’s necessities took just about all the income their families earned in a year.

The month of February came and went without much excitement and what excitement there was, was due to a rather tame celebration of George Washington’s birthday. A few fire works were exploded in celebration, guns and the cannon in front of the Marksville Court House were discharged, the people sent up a desultory, halfhearted cheer through blue lips, shivered in the cold and returned to their homes. George’s 146^th birthday celebration over.

March and Mardi Gras arrived in style and with warmer weather. The well known “Mardi Gras Ride” of masked horsemen traveling the highways and byways visiting the various farms, plantations and town houses in the area collecting ingredients for the community “Gumbo Pot” to be shared that day in the various communities, along with Cajun music, dancing and an evening “fais -do-do” where the young people, married and single, dance until the church bells toll midnight and the beginning of Lent.

This year Mardi Gras came early but not as early, as it could The date was March 5, which made Easter and spring arrive in late April.

Margret had not seen the ghosts of her arriere parents since the night of January 6^th The Feast of the Magi. And if the truth were told, she had hardly thought of them since then. But they were there on the gallery almost every evening sitting in the rockers talking, watching her. They were at times sad as they looked at the young girl going through her days and evenings, sometimes happy as when they would watch her enjoying dancing at the debutante “coming out parties” enjoying as only the innocent can, the company of their peers.

Jeanne, her great grandmother would clap her hands with delight as she watched

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Margret dance with one young swain and then another. Sometimes she would pull Antoine into her arms and waltz with him to the music drifting out into the night. Antoine would grin at her showing his beautiful white teeth against his swarthy complexion and waltz her around the gallery or dooryard if the gallery was not large enough. After the cotillion, they would ride back to Belle Vert in the carriage with Margret keeping themselves unseen.

Spring days came and went in a flurry of activities, dances, shopping, more debutante balls, cotillions, picnics, church socials… Before Margret knew it summer had arrived and a last barbeque before the heat curtailed most activities both outdoors and in.

For the first time in months, Margret thought about her great grandparents and wondered why they had not come to sit on the gallery for so long a period of time. She missed them even though they did not talk with her. She did enjoy their company and watching as they spoke to one another even if she could not hear the conversation; she had liked the challenge presented in attempting to read their lips.

It was late one evening in mid July Margret was sitting alone on the gallery rocking back and forth when she suddenly felt a stirring in the breeze as though someone had brushed by her. Then she saw the rocker on her left move ever so slightly and saw her great grandmother seated there. Jeanne was looking down the path that wandered through the garden among the now blooming fleur de leis, roses, geraniums and the other flowers swaying gently in the evening breeze. She then looked at the quarter moon and sighed.

Margret jumped at the sound and looked at her great grandmother who had turned and was staring directly into her eyes. “Margret “her name was whispered, almost inaudible, but she had heard it, her arriere grand mother had spoken to her!

“Margret“, she repeated.

“Yes, Ma’mere?”

“We, that is your Pa’pere and I have been watching over you since you were born and have succeeded thus far in keeping you from harm. I suppose one could say that we are your guardians. No my dear, we are not angels; they are far more than we can ever be. However, for whatever reason Le Bon Dieu decided that we two were to be your guardians.

However, Margret, He will be calling us back in a few weeks and you will be alone with no one to watch over you. Nevertheless, Le Bon Dieu in His Goodness has thought it appropriate that I, that we, your Grand pere and I give you a glimpse into the future. And he, your grand pere has reluctantly agreed to do this. That, Ma petite femme* is what we have been “debating” these past months since your birthday.

Next month you and Andre Le Carrie, your cousin are to be betrothed, oui, betrothed, which is we believe a good thing; she said noticing the incredulous on Margret’s face. Smiling she continued, you will journey to New Orleans and there in St. Louis Cathedral your father’s cousin Rene*, who is now curate there will perform the ceremony making you and Andre officially engaged.”

“But Ma’mere,” Margret managed to blurt out. “I hardly know him, only that we are third cousins and I have seen him now and again at birthday parties and family gatherings at the funeral of his mother Antoinette, mama’s cousin a few years ago. We hardly ever spoke Ma’mere. How does he feel about this?”

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“I am sure I do not know Margret, however it is settled, you and he are to be betrothed. Do not overly concern yourself Margret, you both have a year after the betrothal to decide for yourselves if you wish to marry. During that time either of you may cancel the betrothal. That is an option we did not have.

Beyond that, your future is blurred. I cannot see further than the church ceremony except to say that both you and Andre will return to Avoyelles to take up the remainder of your lives.

“Ma’mere, will we marry? Will we stay together for the required time before we marry? Surely, you can see that far?

“Non Margret I cannot, I do not. Do not worry petite femme I am sure that Le Bon Dieu in His wisdom will do what is best.

Thus in the first week of August 1878 Margret Lesch, almost 14 years of age and about to become betrothed to a cousin she barely knew, went along with her duenna and a small retinue of household servants to New Orleans arriving there on Monday August 5^th where they lodged in one of the cabins provided for visitors on the grounds of, or as it was known then the “campus” of the Cathedral.

On August 12 1878, “Bronze John” entered the city quietly. At first unnoticed he spread his mayhem quickly, by the following Saturday numerous families had been affected and the number of yellow fever victims mounted rapidly. By the middle of the next week graves were being prepared, tombs opened and as fast as they were dug or made ready there was a corpse to place within.

Andre had not yet arrived in the city but was traveling there by coach when news of the epidemic reached him. He or rather his father made the decision to turn back and head for home.

As the disease spread many of the inhabitants and visitors left the city for the homes of relatives or their own. Those not so fortunate simply traveled as far as their money would take them and camped out in the fields and countryside living as best they could in tents and makeshift shelters.

Margret and her “traveling companions” left New Orleans on Saturday the 24^th boarding the last train to Alexandria before the entire city was quarantined. Arriving at Belle Vert on the 27^th.

By the end of the month, the majority of those that had traveled to New Orleans with Margret were down with the fever. Her duenna, Tante Marie, died on September 1^st at the age of eighty-eight.

Margret first began to feel the symptoms shortly after the funeral, a slight headache at first then a slow but steady rise in body temperature. A pain in her lower back, loss of appetite and vomiting.

Hoping against hope and praying daily for her recovery Madeline and Robert were beside themselves with worry. Slowly Margret seemed improve but on the fifth day she relapsed on the sixth there was a noticeable yellowing of her skin and she suffered stomach pains. She began bleeding from the mouth; blood seeped from her eyes, when she threw up the discharge from her mouth was black….

The doctor could do nothing, bleeding her only weakened Margret the various endemics left her listless, barely able to lift her arms or speak.

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“Mama” she tried to call out but only a barely audible whisper came forth.

“Mama, I am so tired, might I rest now mama? Oh mama the garden is in full bloom and Ma’mere’s flowers the are so beautiful, mama do you think she would mind if that when I get better I make a bouquet?”

“No, my precious darling, she will not mind, Madeleine answered tears streaming down her cheeks while off to side Robert was barely able to stifle a sob. “So young,” he cried silently, oh so young----” Margret turned her face to her father----

“Do not cry Poppa,” she spoke barely above a whisper. “Next week when I am all better you and I will go riding it will be just as it was when I was well, you will see. Now I would like to sleep, perhaps when I wake I shall be ravenously hungry ------

The next thing Margret remembered was standing by the family tomb with her great grand parents watching a funeral procession make it’s slow way toward them. She noticed something odd as the three of them stood in silence. Her Ma’mere and Pa’ pere were alive, they were really alive she could no longer see through them and both were holding bouquets of flowers one was of Fleur De Leis and the other of the reddest roses she had ever seen.

As the people reached the top of the marble steps the pallbearers, Andre among them, paused before entering the crypt and there at the head of the coffin was a portrait of a young woman that looked familiar, startlingly familiar---- with a start Margret realized it was a portrait of her!

* Gallery--- porch; A term used mostly in south Louisiana

* Poet’s Shirt--- A ruffled shirt with an open neck, wide collar, puffed sleeves and narrow cuffs, which button at the wrist.

* Arriere Parents (literally, behind parents) Grand parents, great grand parents.

*Ma petite femme--- my little lady

* Rene--- Robert’s cousin so despised by Madeleine in the story “A moment in Time.”

*Bronze John--- colloquial name for Yellow fever