"This is the place,"-- "That is the man,"-- how plainly the glances of passers sometimes speak! The people seemed, moreover, a little nervous.

Could even so little a city be stirred about such a petty, private trouble as this of his?
No; the city was having tribulations of its own.
New Orleans was in that state of suppressed excitement which, in later days, a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has caused to be described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul perceived it before he had left the shop twenty paces behind.

By the time he reached the first corner he was in the swirl of the popular current.

He enjoyed it like a strong swimmer.

He even drank of it.