The Café des Ameliorations was frequented principally by elderly, unreconstructed Creoles who refused to admit that American possession of Louisiana was final. For years they met daily at the café, where they concocted fantastic schemes for the capture of the state government, the expulsion of the American barbarians, and the restoration of the territory to France. The most vociferous of these fire-eaters was an old gentleman known as the Chevalier, who was one of the odd characters of the time. With a dog and a monkey which remained his constant companions, the Chevalier first appeared in New Orleans about 1795, having removed to the city from an upstate settlement. He not only hated the Americans, but abhorred the ideas of equality which had developed even among the Creoles after the French Revolution, and was horrified at the popular dress of the period, especially the increasingly popular pantaloons and the custom of appearing in public without a wig. To the day of his death his attire consisted of the habiliments of a gentleman of an almost forgotten generation—powdered wig and queue, knee breeches, silk stockings, frizzled cuffs and shirt-front, and silver buckles on his slippers. Most of the Chevalier’s means were dissipated in the furtherance of chimerical schemes for the liberation of Louisiana, and about 1800, to recoup his fortunes, he opened a candy- and cake-shop on Chartres Street near Dumaine. His stock included a plantation delicacy called the praline, the first of that famous confection ever offered for sale in New Orleans.
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