For Louis Quinze was king.
Clotilde, orphan of a murdered Huguenot, was one of sixty, the last royal allotment to Louisiana, of imported wives.

The king's agents had inveigled her away from France with fair stories: "They will give you a quiet home with some lady of the colony.

Have to marry ?--not unless it pleases you.

The king himself pays your passage and gives you a casket of clothes.

Think of that these times, fillette; and passage free, withal, to--the garden of Eden, as you may call it--what more, say you, can a poor girl want?
Without doubt, too, like a model colonist, you will accept a good husband and have a great many beautiful children, who will say with pride, 'Me, I am no House-of-Correction-girl stock; my mother'-- or 'grandmother,' as the case may be--'was a _fille a la cassette!_'" The sixty were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of the Ursuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine soldiers of the king were well wived and ready to settle upon their riparian land-grants.