"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man of Color" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

January heard the shouting as he crossed the upstairs lobby, which was completely deserted, men and
women crowding the three ballroom doors. Monsieur Bouille's shrill accusations rode up over the
jangling background racket of a brass band playing marches in the street outside. "A swine and a liar, a
scum not fit to associate with decent society....."

Granger, thought January wryly. Bouille had used precisely the same wording in his latest letter to the
Bee.

"You call me a liar, sir? Deny if you will that you helped yourself to bribes from every cheapjack railway
scheme—"

"Bribery may be how you Americans do business, sir, but it is not the way of gentlemen!"

"Now who's the liar?"

There was a roar and a surge of the crowd, and Monsieur Froissart's helpless voice wailing, "Messieurs!
Messieurs!
January slipped unnoticed along the back of the crowd, to where Hannibal, Uncle Bichet, and Jacques
were sharing a bottle of champagne behind the piano. He had never played a white subscription ball that
hadn't included beatings with canes, pistol whippings or kicking matches in the courtyard or the gaming
rooms—So much, he thought wryly, for the vaunted Creole concept of "duels of honor." If it wasn't
a Bonapartist taking out his spite on an Orl6aniste, it was a lawyer assaulting another lawyer over
personal remarks exchanged in the courtroom or a physician challenging another physician following a
lively fusilade of letters in the newspapers.

"Wagers now being taken." Hannibal poured out a glass of champagne for him. "Jacques here insists it'll
be swords. . . ."

" 'Course it'll be swords," argued the cornetist. "Bouille spends half what he earns at Mayerling's salle des
armes and he's crazy to try it out! He's been challenging everyone he meets to duels!"

January shook his head, and sipped the fizzy liquid. "Pistols," he said.

"Pistols? Where's your sword?"

"Americans always use pistols."

"Told you," said Uncle Bichet to Jacques.

On the whole, the quadroon balls were far better run. January wondered whether that had something to
do with the fact that these men didn't legally control their mistresses the way they did their wives and so
had to make a better impression on them, or if the simple social pressure of Creole families caused the
men to drink more.

"Live pigs at thirty paces," decreed Hannibal solemnly, and gestured with a crawfish patty. "Arma
virum-que cano . . . Did you encounter La Crozat?"

"Monsieur Bouille, you forget yourself and where you are." Over the heads of the crowd—and January
could look over the heads of most crowds—he saw a snowy-bearded, elderly gentleman in the dark blue