Many were the wrecks. But over their debris, Mercury and Venus--the busy season and the gay season--ran lightly, hand in hand. Men getting money and women squandering it. Whole nights in the ball-room. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at the spout,--Carondelet street emptying like a yellow river into Canal street. Thousands for vanity; thousands for pride; thousands for influence and for station; thousands for hidden sins; a slender fraction for the wants of the body; a slenderer for the cravings of the soul. Lazarus paid to stay away from the gate. John the Baptist, in raiment of broadcloth, a circlet of white linen about his neck, and his meat strawberries and ice-cream. The lower classes mentioned mincingly; awkward silences or visible wincings at allusions to death, and converse on eternal things banished as if it were the smell of cabbage. So looked the gay world, at least, to Dr. Sevier. He saw more of it than had been his wont for many seasons. The two young-lady cousins whom he had brought and installed in his home thirsted for that gorgeous, nocturnal moth life in which no thirst is truly slaked, and dragged him with them into the iridescent, gas-lighted spider-web of society. "Now, you know you like it!" they said. "A little of it, yes. But I don't see how you can like it, who virtually live in it and upon it. Why, I would as soon try to live upon cake and candy!" "Well, we can live very nicely upon cake and candy," retorted they. "Why, girls, it's no more life than spice is food. What lofty motive--what earnest, worthy object"-- But they drowned his homily in a carol, and ran away arm in arm to dress for another ball. One of them stopped in the door with an air of mock bravado:-- "What do we care for lofty motives or worthy objects?" A smile escaped from him as she vanished. His condemnation was flavored with charity. "It's their mating season," he silently thought, and, not knowing he did it, sighed. "There come Dr. Sevier and his two pretty cousins," was the ball-room whisper. "Beautiful girls--rich widower without children--great catch! _Passe_, how? Well, maybe so; not as much as he makes himself out, though." "_Passe_, yes," said a merciless belle to a blade of her own years; "a man of strong sense is _passe_ at any age." Sister Jane's name was mentioned in the same connection, but that illusion quickly passed. The cousins denied indignantly that he had any matrimonial intention. Somebody dissipated the rumor by a syllogism: "A man hunting a second wife always looks like a fool; the Doctor doesn't look a bit like a fool, ergo"-- He grew very weary of the giddy rout, standing in it like a rock in a whirlpool. He did rejoice in the Carnival, but only because it was the end. "Pretty? yes, as pretty as a bonfire," he said. "I can't enjoy much fiddling while Rome is burning." "But Rome isn't always burning," said the cousins. "Yes, it is! Yes, it is!"