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 new officers willingly grew into old ones in a place so near akin in society and elegance to Paris. For Paris was the arbiter and model of New Orleans, and never had the great city by the Seine an apter pupil than the little city by the Mississippi.

Social elegance and pleasure reached its standard height under the administration of the Marquis de Vaudreuil—"le grand Marquis," as he was called. His entertainments, banquets, balls, theatrical performances, his manners, dress, conversation, his etiquette, civil and military, furnished the code which, in a way, still governs social practice in the city.

When, in 1763, France, by the Treaty of Paris, signed away all her possessions east of the Mississippi to England, she yet retained her grasp on the jugular vein of the North American continent by reserving the Island of Orleans, as it was denominated—that is, the mouth of the Mississippi. And now the city, by right and title the sole French metropolis of North America, made so rapid and so great a stride forward in wealth, population, and commercial activity, that even its easy-going, pleasure-loving citizens began to feel the exhilarating