In the early days of the New Orleans Mardi Gras a handsome young man from the North was struck by the beauty of a girl with another group at the ball they were both attending. He kept staring at the girl until she looked his way. Instantly there was between them that silent communication experienced only by people suddenly stricken by love.
The man excused himself from his friend and wallked quickly to a moon-bathed balcony. The beautiful young woman joined him a few minutes later, furtive and blushing.
"You are heartless." she said "to induce me to leave my fiance in this way. It's wrong."
"No." he replied, "We are compelled by love in youth and beauty."
They smiled uneasily and spoke briefly, and then the man urged her to join him in supper. She demurred saying it would endanger her reputation. He said in that event he would immediately marry her. So off they went to a certain famous restaurant and ordered the waiter to serve them as fine a meal as he could. For hours through the night the ate and slipped wine and talked of their lives, their hopes and plans for the future. As the dawn of Ash Wednesday appeared they went to the first Mass at St. Louis Cathedral and were then quietly married by one of the priests. The girl took her husband home to meet her family, who had worriedly searched the night for her.
A week later the happy couple left for the North, where several months later the girl died. Her husband never again returned to the Mardi Gras.
But a few days before the next Mardi Gras the resturant where they had first dined received a generous check from the bereaved widower with the request that it be used to serve at the same table, the same meal the couple had eaten that memorable night. And every year at Mardi Gras time the resturant received another check with the same request. The restaurant always complied, seriously serving the memorial dinner to the ghostly diners.
This continued for twenty years, when the restaurant received a letter from a New York law firm, stating that the widower had died and provided in his will for a trust fund for the continuation of the same dinner each year at Mardi Gras time as long as the retaurant was in bussiness.
To this day at a certain New Orleans restautant, on each Shrove Tuesday, a waiter carefully and quietly serves an elaborate meal for two phantom guests, at a gaily decorated table.
This is the love i'm hunting for.
"TRUE LOVE"
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