Surprising, 1999 being the Louisiana Tourism Department's year of French le Fete. Guess they "le Fergot."

Anyway, it was a surprisingly quiet and welcomed peace, after July 4th's Laz Fest, in nearby faraway Vieux Carre'.

This huge fundraiser for Faubourg Marigny's Lazarus House is a truly Catholic event. Could anything be more Purgatory-like, than suffering Cabrini Park's shade-less heat? Then redemption - after hours of hot Indulgences, cooled only by the duel sacraments of iced beer and cold watermelon. And finally salvation, by the blessed intervention of Saint Air-Conditioning. Heaven. Worth waiting for. And a holy cause, too.

Pass the watermelon, Norma, and sit the beer on the ground, our ship seems to have commenced rolling.

I did my Laz Fest penance, four hours at the gate greeting folks, collecting money, eating watermelon. Nice sacrifice, if you can get it.

In truth, this year's Fourth & Fourteenth were uncommonly cool. Well, uncommonly for a Gulf Coast swamp.

Aside from free bread, for wearing Bastille Tricolor - New Orleans pretty much did nothing for the Fourteenth. Although - as stated earlier - a free baguette was more'n the Department of Tourism pulled off.

Absent from Laz Fest was Faubourg Marigny board member Steve Halpern, who spent the month in cold hearted New York City. "Where temperatures were in the unbearable nineties," while New Orleans was experiencing Spring-like eighties. Welcome back. You're just in time for August!

As Summer's heat drove us deep inside air conditioned spaces, Norma and I sloughed up to a long lunch in nearby faraway French Quarter, at Mr. B's, on rue Royal; preceded by a long whisky across the street, at Hotel Monteleone's Carousel Bar; preceded by a ceremonial designation organized by Faubourgundian W. Kenneth Holditch of Hotel Monteleone as a "Literary Landmark," complete with a bronze plaque presented by the American Library Association, in town for their convention. Richard Ford read a passage set in the Monteleone, from his first novel. Very nice afternoon, with air-conditioned librarians. You know librarians are always way out in front on free speech issues. Bless them, and all their electronic card catalogs, too.

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Remember the story, last year in this column, about reading A Lesson Before Dying to a friend at Lazarus House? Lafayette writer Ernest Gaines sold his south Louisiana novel, for a Home Box Office movie that premiered, before broadcast, on the big downtown New Orleans' Orpheum Theatre screen.

Terrific event, with limousines, red carpets, klieg lights, movie stars, the director, local chefs, chiefs and politicians. The great Gaines himself introduced the film. Fabu flick. Rent it if you can.

After the screening, a party to die for, at House of Blues, on Decatur Street. A full orchestra played in the main hall and every nick and cranny was outfitted with groaning tables. Cicely Tyson broke bread

with Dooky Chase's Leah Chase, in the Blues' back room. (Sounds like a jazz number, don't it?)

We daintily grazed in the rear courtyard, where my unnamed companion fingered two voodoo candles in black wax, inscribed with white HBO lettering. He kept one, and I can not tell you who has the other.

Orchids to Kathryn Boutwell, the Faubourg Marigny lady who kept pointing to the water leaking under the new flood wall near the new New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Said Boutwell, "This leak is a leak."

Couldn't be, said officialdom. Three tries later, City Council President Eddie Sapir agreed, and said, "Somebody will have to take responsibility."

Just who has yet to be decided. My money is on the Levee District, but they may lay the blame on the Army Corps of Engineers or Ruthie the Duck Lady.

Last word from the Sewerage and Water Board's Deputy Director, Marcia St. Martin, "The Seepage does exist."