and believed half a century ago, but which, like all the old ideas and glories of Louisiana, is fast being forgotten and unheard.
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A century and a half ago there lived in the city of New Orleans an old Frenchman by [the] name [of] Jean Marie de Castillon. Jean, or "Babillard," as he was re-christened, was an ideal old Frenchman, vain, childish and garrulous, but the very best of company. His fund of anecdotes was inexhaustible; in these old Jean was always his own herovictor on the field of battle, in the cabinet or in the drawing room.
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Every morning and evening, Castillon would promenade through the marsh Place d'Armes or along the fish-smelling levee, ogling the fille de la casette or voluptuous sirens from St. Domingo. Yet, even these could not allure him; and he would wander from their temptations to the company's warehouses, where he was sure to capture some new listener, a wild, half savage voyageur from St. Genevieve, or a staid Alsacian from the German coast. Then he would pour forth his stories, until a plea of "business" rescued his unhappy prisoner.
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Among the many "coinages of his brain," one never failed to bring down his audience; this was his claim to a Marquisate in the aristocratic province of Berni. Some of the army officers, dangerous pegrès drafted from the prisons of Paris, would jokingly respond to this claim, that old Castillon was more than noble, that he was royal, and bore upon his shoulders, like the kings of France, a blood-red fleur-de-lys, printed there in large characters by the hangman of Arles. At this rough camp joke, Castillon would twist his moustaches, contract his busy [sic] grey eyebrows, and drop his hand upon his sword hilt. He never drew the weapon; his courage was so well established by his [s]tories that this was deemed all that was necessary in such a chevalier Bayard.
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With all his nobility and his chateaux (en Espagne), Jean was distressingly poor. He had a homea rickety, uncertain
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