This person employed an interpreter.
"He says," said the interpreter to the officer, "he come to make you the fair warning how you muz not make the street pas' at his 'ouse." The officer remarked that "such impudence was refreshing;" but the experienced interpreter translated freely.
"He says: 'Why you don't want ?'" said the interpreter.
The old slave-trader answered at some length.
"He says," said the interpreter, again turning to the officer, "the marass is a too unhealth' for peopl' to live." "But we expect to drain his old marsh; it's not going to be a marsh." "_Il dit_"-- The interpreter explained in French.
The old man answered tersely.
"He says the canal is a private," said the interpreter.
"Oh! _that_ old ditch; that's to be filled up.

Tell the old man we're going to fix him up nicely." Translation being duly made, the man in power was amused to see a thunder-cloud gathering on the old man's face.
"Tell him," he added, "by the time we finish, there'll not be a ghost left in his shanty." The interpreter began to translate, but-- "_J' comprends, J' comprends_," said the old man, with an impatient gesture, and burst forth, pouring curses upon the United States, the President, the Territory of Orleans, Congress, the Governor and all his subordinates, striding out of the apartment as he cursed, while the object of his maledictions roared with merriment and rammed the floor with his foot.
"Why, it will make his old place worth ten dollars to one," said the official to the interpreter.
"'Tis not for de worse of de property," said the interpreter.
"I should guess not," said the other, whittling his chair,--"seems to me as if some of these old Creoles would liever live in a crawfish hole than to have a neighbor" "You know what make old Jean Poquelin make like that?
I will tell you.
You know"-- The interpreter was rolling a cigarette, and paused to light his tinder; then, as the smoke poured in a thick double stream from his nostrils, he said, in a solemn whisper: "He is a witch." "Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other.
"You don't believe it?
What you want to bet ?" cried the interpreter, jerking himself half up and thrusting out one arm while he bared it of its coat-sleeve with the hand of the other.

"What you want to bet ?" "How do you know ?" asked the official.
"Dass what I goin' to tell you.

You know, one evening I was shooting some _grosbec_.

I killed three, but I had trouble to fine them, it was becoming so dark.