of absolute power, the catholic and the protestant, the active and the
indolent, some little time was necessary to blend the discrepant elements of
society. In attaining so desirable an end, woman was made to perform her
accustomed and grateful office. The barriers of Prejudice and religion were
broken through by the irresistible power of the Master Passion, and family
unions, ere long, began to cement the political tie which had made a forced
conjunction, between people so opposite in their habits, their educations, and
their opinions.
    Middleton was among the first of the new possessors of the soil, who became
captive to the charms of a Louisianian Lady. In the immediate vicinity of the
post he had been directed to occupy, dwelt the chief of one of those ancient
colonial families, which had been content to slumber for ages amid the ease,
indolence, and wealth of the spanish provinces. He was an officer of the crown,
and had been induced to remove from the Floridas, among the French of the
adjoining province, by a rich succession of which he had become the inheritor.
The name of Don Augustin de Certavallos was scarcely known beyond the limits of
the little town in which he resided, though he found a secret pleasure, himself,
in pointing it out, in large scrolls of musty documents, to an only child, as
enrolled among the former heroes and grandees of old and of New Spain. This
fact, so important to himself and of so little moment to any body else, was the
principal reason, that while his more vivacious Gallic neighbors were not slow
to open a frank communion with their visiters, he chose to keep aloof, seemingly
content with the society of his daughter, who was a girl just emerging from the
condition of childhood into that of a woman.
    The curiosity of the youthful Inez, however, was not so inactive. She had
not heard the martial music of the garrison, melting on the evening air, nor
seen the strange banner which fluttered over the height, that rose at no great
distance from her Father's extensive grounds, without experiencing some of those
secret impulses which are thought to distinguish the sex. Natural timidity, and
that retiring and perhaps peculiar lassitude which forms the very ground work of
female fascination, in the tropical Provinces of Spain, held her, in their,
seemingly, indissoluble bonds, and it is more than probable that had not an
accident occurred, in which Middleton was of some personal service to her
father, so long a time would have elapsed before they met, that another
direction might have been given to the wishes of