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?4. de ?THoHttufy&t and Soh&
In 1855 a French scholar and journalist, Ludovic Adrian de Montluzin, brought his family by sailing vessel to Louisiana, where at Convent and later in New Orleans he established private schools for boys. Retiring after twenty years of teaching, he moved to the quiet coast town of. Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where in 1878 he purchased a small chemist's shop inteikling simply to indulge his hobby of chemistry. The com-
munity's need for medicine^' however, caused him to develop the tiny shop into what is now the oldest drugstore 'on the .Mississippi Gulf Coast. One of his sons, Roger, became a physician; two self's, A1 fled and Rene, became pharmacists; and his grandson, Rene Jr., a graduate at the..ifoyola School of Pharmacy, is now	pharmacist-in-
charge and owner of the st"o ijfe -.v"'?
The present building erected iri 1897 after a fire destroyed most of the town's business section along th^phench. Its old-world atmosphere has been carefully preserved, along with its rouncf-glass counters, old French shutters, crystal candy jars, frosted glass partition, and many other relics of the early days, so that, although keeping pace professionally with modern drugs and merchandise, its quaintness is still refreshing both to longtime friends and passing tourists.
The late Caroline Dale Snedeker, Bay St.	Louis author, once wrote-	"Ours is	a
romantic drugstore. It is quite different from	drugstores otherwhere.	It	sits like	a
beneficent sphinx with its forepaws on the bluff-edge and its body stretching out over the waters of the Gulf .... and to us who have known it of old, the aura of Romance doth hang round it still."


de Montluzin, Rene, Jr Color-007
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