INTERRUPTED PRELIMINARIES About the same time of day, three gentlemen (we use the term gentlemen in its petrified state) were walking down the rue Royale from the direction of the Faubourg Ste.

Marie.
They were coming down toward Palmyre's corner.

The middle one, tall and shapely, might have been mistaken at first glance for Honore Grandissime, but was taller and broader, and wore a cocked hat, which Honore did not.

It was Valentine.

The short, black-bearded man in buckskin breeches on his right was Jean-Baptiste Grandissime, and the slight one on the left, who, with the prettiest and most graceful gestures and balancings, was leading the conversation, was Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin, a cousin and counterpart of that sturdy-hearted challenger of Agricola, Sylvestre.
"But after all," he was saying in Louisiana French, "there is no spot comparable, for comfortable seclusion, to the old orange grove under the levee on the Point; twenty minutes in a skiff, five minutes for preliminaries--you would not want more, the ground has been measured off five hundred times--'are you ready ?'--" "Ah, bah!" said Valentine, tossing his head, "the Yankees would be down on us before you could count one." "Well, then, behind the Jesuits' warehouses, if you insist.