He relaxed and fancied himself a mysterious and romantic figure as he went along behind the porter he had engaged to conduct him to a hotel “suitable for a planter there on business.” The man turned his head now and then to be sure Leon did not lose him. He had told Leon it was a short distance to the Palmetto Island Hotel, and so it proved to be. He now told Leon as they arrived at the entrance that it was one of several in Charleston owned by a colored man, a Mr. Bruton. It looked to be a comfortable place, and he understood how it might suit as accommodation to gentlemen whose business brought them occasionally to Charleston’s dock area.

When he took his room, he showed the broadsheet he had taken from Aunt Pea. The solemnly refined clerk told him the theatre was in King Street and that there was to be a performance that evening of Julius Caesar. Leon remembered it as a play that did not offer very much opportunity to its female characters. Portia and Calphurnia were dull ladies, both. Would Lauretta, if she proved to be one of the company, appear this evening at all?

After a rest in his room, Leon called for hot water, and bathed and put on fresh linen. He then went out and walked about, beside the walled gardens of rich private dwellings, then back into the docking area where he entered a public house and dined on a dozen oysters and a beefsteak. He enjoyed a cigar, excellent coffee, and a last glass of wine, and arrived at the theatre in plenty of time to secure a seat with a close view of the stage.

The single program sheet told him that Mrs. Savage would take the role of Portia. The theatre filled, and the play began. He knew that Portia must appear in Caesar’s train of attendants in the early scenes, but the stage was not so well lighted that he could find and recognize the actress who played the character. It was not until the second act that she appeared with importance in her own right. Yes, it was she, Lauretta! Leon could hardly contain his excitement on discovering her, and smiled broadly during her first scene, which was hardly appropriate to the content of that episode. She was older, but so were they all, of course. She was more beautiful, a woman now, not a girl. How fluid and spirited were her movements, he decided. With what passionate dignity did she scold Brutus: “Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure?” Brutus was played by Roderick Conyngham, the company’s leading actor and manager.