On the fringe of the amused throng of white onlookers stood a young woman of remarkable beauty and poise.
She munched little ginger cakes called mulatto's belly and kept her green, somewhat hypnotic eyes fixed on a light-colored male who was prancing wildly with a 5-foot king snake wrapped around his bronze neck.

The youth with the snake had a natural pride and joy of life which appealed to the woman.
Lithe and muscular, he had well-molded features, and his light color told of the European ancestors who had been intimate with the slave women of his family.

The haughty white girl turned to a distinguished, hawk-faced man standing at her side and murmured: "Look at your watch, Col. Garvier.
It is almost time for and calinda to begin".

Col. Henri Garvier was one of New Orleans' most important and enlightened slave owners.
He chuckled and gave the signal for the dance to start.
The slaves ran gaily to the center of Congo Square and gathered around a sweaty youth they called Johnny No-Name.

Johnny vigorously pounded two bleached steer bones against the gourd which served as his drum.
He showed his gleaming tusks of teeth and bellowed incoherently, his brass earrings jangling discordantly as he shook and trembled in ecstasy.

The drummer flogged the gourd with frantic intensity as the dancers began the calinda, a sensual gyration which had long been a favorite of voodoo practitioners and their disciples in the Louisiana slave compounds.
The dance was of Haitian origin.

The white girl with the penetrating green eyes sipped the lemonade handed to her by a handsome man of about 30, who had coppery skin and beetling eyebrows.
He was possessive in his manner and, though a slave, obviously was educated after a fashion and imitated the manners of his owners.
He proudly wore the blue livery of her house, for the girl was Madame Delphine Lalaurie, wife of the prominent surgeon, Dr. Louis Lalaurie, who bore one of the South's oldest and most cherished names.

Delphine was a pace-setter in high society.
She was a top horsewoman and one of the city's most gracious hostesses.
Although New Orleans was not to learn of it for a spell, she also was a sadist, a nymphomaniac and unobtrusively mad -- the perpetrator of some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed on American soil.

Madame Lalaurie gestured with her riding crop toward the 20-year-old youth who was stomping and writhing with the king snake still draped over his bare shoulders.
The slender, handsome fellow was called Dandy Brandon by the other slaves.
He was gifted with animal magnetism and a potent allure for women of any race.
But Dandy had had little experience with girls on his master's plantation in Bayou St. John.

Shy, actually, he avoided feminine overtures and seemed truly ignorant of the girls' desires when they sought to make liaisons with him in the open fields, in carriages and in boathouses.

This young slave was therefore quite unprepared when Delphine Lalaurie signaled that she wanted him to draw near.
The woman eyed the youth with the avidity a coin collector might display toward a rare doubloon which is not yet in his collection.

"What is your name, boy?
Come a bit closer.
I won't bite, you know".

He gaped at Madame Lalaurie and sniffed the Paris perfume which emanated from her.
Then he smiled shyly.
"My name is Dandy Brandon, missy.
I belong to Master Alexander Prieur".

She said with intense feeling: "Come near, let me feel your arms.
You look quite strong and healthy to me, Dandy".

Mrs. Lalaurie impatiently propelled the slave toward her waiting carriage.
Lifting her skirts, she climbed in, never relinquishing her grip on his arm.
The woman seemed utterly unafraid of the snake which coiled on the floor in a torpor.

Once inside the luxuriosly-upholstered landau, she drew the curtains and proceeded to give the startled youth the kind of physical examination usually reserved for army inductees.
Satisfied at last, and after a few amorous gambits on her part which convinced Delphine that Dandy was capable of learning new arts, she opened the window and called to her liveried driver.
This was the big man with the proprietory air and the beetling, shaggy eyebrows.

"Aristide!
I want you to find Monsieur Prieur at once and give him this money for the boy's purchase.
There's $600 in gold in this chamois sack.
If the old fool argues about the price, tell him I shall order my husband not to treat him as a patient any longer.
Prieur has gout and depends on Louis' pills and bleedings.
Besides, he owns 300 slaves.
One less shouldn't matter to him".

Aristide Devol, the sardonic manservant who had been brought in chains years before from his native Sierra Leone, smiled thinly and touched his well-brushed beaver hat.
His bold eyes raked the woman, and a perceptive spectator might sense that there was more to their relationship than that of slave to owner.

"Another youth, Madame"?
The coachman said softly.
"This one is a tender chicken, oui?
Such delicate beauty, such fine flesh.
It will rip and shred easily for Madame".

"Be quiet, Devol!
You are forgetting your place".

The tall coachman walked off briskly in search of Alexander Prieur.
Delphine Lalaurie took the reins in her gloved hands and drove Dandy Brandon -- cowering in the back seat of the carriage -- to her mansion at 677 Perdido Street.

Dr. Louis Lalaurie stood on the veranda at the head of the driveway and watched his carriage as it approached the pillared mansion.
Dandy, curiosity overcoming his apprehensions, peered out at the doctor from the window of the vehicle.
He saw a pint-sized man with a graying spade beard and an unusually large head.
Dr. Lalaurie wore a maroon smoking jacket, and his myopic eyes were blurry and glistened behind thick octagonal lenses.
He was about 50 years old.

"Another young man, my dear?
Really, you are most indiscreet to drive him here yourself", he said, frowning with displeasure.

Delphine presented her cheek for a kiss, and the physician pecked it like a timid rooster.

"Dandy is to be our house guest, Louis.
I want the room in the attic prepared for him He is a most unusual lad, quite precocious in many ways.
He deserves a better life than just rotting away on the Prieur plantation".

"Quite so, my dear.
His room will be ready shortly".

The physician led the horses to the stable after a cursory glance at the cringing slave.
Had Dandy been older or wiser, instinct might have warned him that he would be well advised to flee from the Lalauries' tender care if he valued his life.

But he liked the smell of Delphine's perfume.
Besides, her endearments and caresses in the carriage had been new and stirring experiences to the simple youth.
Also, he was weary of plantation drudgery and monotony.

So Dandy Brandon trustingly entered the house with Delphine Lalaurie and trudged up the rear steps to the attic room which was to be his new home.
Airless and dingy though it was, the attic represented luxury to a slave who had led a wretched life with six brothers and sisters and assorted relatives in a shanty at Bayou St. John.

He bounced exuberantly on the sagging bed and was even more delighted when Madame Lalaurie -- after closing the door -- showed the slave that the bed was designed for something other than slumber.

It was just as well that the ignorant Dandy enjoyed himself to the hilt that first evening, for the room was to become his prison cell.
When he finally left the sinister mansion on Perdido Street, he was carried out in a coroner's basket.

Just six weeks after Dandy Brandon's arrival at the mansion, the little surgeon and his svelte young wife gave their annual open house and ball, to which only New Orleans' oldest and wealthiest families were invited.

A stringed orchestra played softly behind the potted palms, and Delphine circulated graciously among her guests, chatting airily of the forthcoming races, the latest fashions from Paris, and Louisiana politics.

Suddenly there was a commotion upstairs, a despairing boyish shriek, and the strains of the waltz faltered and died as the musicians and guests gaped at an apparition descending the marble staircase.

It was Dandy Brandon, clad only in a bloody loincloth, emaciated and quaking as if the devil were breathing hard on him.
The lad's once superb body was a mass of scars and welts.
His pinched face showed the ravages of malnutrition.

Feebly he pointed an accusing finger at Madame Lalaurie and shouted: "Evil woman!
You did this you like to hurt to beat people I want to go home".

These were the last words he ever uttered.
Convulsively, he spat up some blood and collapsed into the arms of Senator Gaston Berche, crimsoning the frilly shirt and waistcoat the politician wore.

Dr. Louis Lalaurie examined the inert form of the slave on the parquet dance floor and pronounced him dead.
The ball broke up in confusion.
Guests stared with horror at Madame Lalaurie and made speedy departures.
Delphine stood like stone, her eyes alive with hate as she looked down at the sheeted corpse.

But at the coroner's inquest Delphine told a forthright story.

"I saw the boy Dandy at the Congo Square festivities and felt sorry for him.
It was our hope to educate him and to give him his freedom when the right time came, for he was a bright and friendly youth who seemed worthy of our interest.
After I paid Monsieur Prieur for Dandy, I brought him home, but he was ill at ease and ran away the same night.
How he returned in such a ghastly condition, or why, I cannot say.
Dr. Lalaurie and I didn't even know he was in the house until the night of our ball when he came down the stairs".

She daubed at her swimming eyes with a lacy handkerchief and said with obvious emotion: "That poor boy!
He must have fallen in with evil companions, for he was a simple youth and quite trusting and inexperienced.
Ruffians must have robbed and beaten him before bringing him back to our house to die.
Such a pitiful end"!

Though the slave's dying words about the woman troubled the coroner's panel, Dandy's accusation was adjudged an aberration by the jury and disregarded.
The Lalauries were at the top rung of the social ladder, and even a jury didn't feel privileged to doubt the veracity of so illustrious a lady.
Moreover, runaway slaves frequently got into serious trouble in New Orleans' dives.

So the verdict was "death at the hands of a person or persons unknown", and the elite of the city, accepting Delphine's testimony, welcomed her and the doctor back into the fold.
Once again life went its serene way -- soirees, fox hunts, balls and dinners.

The excitement over Brandon's bizarre death abated and Madame Lalaurie's stock soared when she resumed her self-imposed chores of visiting the poor and bringing cakes and comfort to destitute patients in the county hospital.
Then, on July 2, there occurred another incident which set tongues to wagging at a furious clip.

Mrs. Victor Dominique, socially prominent and a neighbor of the Lalauries, chanced to glance out of her parlor window at dusk one evening and beheld an amazing sight.
The manservant Devol and his mistress, Delphine Lalaurie, were pursuing a young girl -- an octoroon of cameo-like beauty -- across the front lawn of the Lalaurie mansion.
The girl was not more than 16.
She was nude to the waist and her tumbled abundance of black hair did not conceal the knife slashes on her back.

The bleeding girl was tiring fast;
the coachman and Delphine were gaining on her as she raced down Perdido Street.

The fugitive cried out in an oddly sibilant voice: "Help me, somebody!
They have pulled out all my teeth and now she will carve out my tongue with her hacksaw!