If Ever I Cease to Love [antikvár]

Chapter i 'My dear, did you ever see such a parade in your life? I've heard that the queen's costume cost one thousand dollars.' 'It's perfectly gorgeous. Stella has the figure to set it off and the face to go with it. She has a lovely disposition, too.' 'She's been mighty obstinate with her grandmother about this young Cajun lawyer, Raoul Bienvenu.' 'I hear he is almost certain to go to Congress next fall, on the crest of this reform wave. But he certainly isn't the type her family thought she'd want to marry.' The two friends, Barbara Emery and Mathilde Villeré, were sitting in the Municipal Auditorium of New Orleans, where the Pacifici were holding their Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration. Of all the balls held in the Carnival Season none had begun to create the excitement that surrounded this one. For on this occasion Mrs Marcel Fontaine, who as Estelle Lenoir had been the queen of the Pacifici at their first ball, fifty years earlier, was to lead the march, escorted by that perennial beau, Arthur Leroy. In their wake were to follow forty of the fifty belles who had reigned as queens of the Pacifici since the foundation of the Society, many of them wearing the regal robes in which they had made their first appearance; while at the end of the procession Stella Fontaine, Mrs Fontaine's granddaughter, was to appear as queen of the current ball. The evening had begun inauspiciously: it had been bitterly cold in New Orleans for more than a fortnight. Once inside the Auditorium, however, frayed tempers began to improve. To be sure, there were the usual murmurs that not only had the weather never been like this in the old days, but that no bare modern buildings, like the Municipal Auditorium, could possibly give the atmosphere which the old French Opera House had automatically supplied. But the spectators forgot the décor of the Auditorium when the curtain was withdrawn. The Pacifici had outdone all their previous successful efforts. ii