ced by night, with
her wild gyration and gesture, as naturally as a moth flies; and when
not in demand with the seigniory, was wont to perform in even keener
force and fire at the quarters, to an admiring circle of her own kind,
with ambitious imitators on the outskirts.

It was not, however, an indiscriminate assemblage even there that
encouraged her rude art. There are circles within circles, and the more
decorous of the slaves gave small favor to the young posturer, although
the patronage she received from the house enabled her to meet their
disapprobation defiantly; while to the younger portion, in the vague
sense that there was something wrong about it, her dance became
surrounded by all the attraction and allurement of seeing life. It was
not that the frowning ones did not go through many of the same motions
themselves; but theirs were occasioned by the frenzy of the religious
excitement, where pious rapture and ecstasy were to be expressed by
nothing but the bodily exertion of the Shout: the objectless dance of
the dancer was a thing beyond their comprehension, dimly at first, and
then positively, associated with sin. But she laughed them down with a
gibe; she felt triumphant in the possession of her secret, known to none
of them: her dance was not objectless, but the perpetual expression of
all emotions, whether of beauty or joy or gratitude or praise. Some one
at the house had given her a pair of little hoops with bells attached,
which she was wont to wear about her ankles, and it afforded her
malicious enjoyment to scatter her opponents by the tintinnabulation of
her step. For all that levity, she was not destitute of her peculiar
mode of adoration. For the religion of the Shout she had no absorbents
whatever; she furtively watched it, and openly ridiculed it; but she had
a religion of her own, notwithstanding,--a sort of primitive and grand
religion, Fetich though it was. She reasoned, that the kindly brown
earth produces us, bears us along on its flight, nourishes us, gives us
the delights of life, takes us back into its bosom at last. She
worshipped the great dark earth, imparted to it her confidence, asked of
it her boons. As she grew older, and her logic or her fancy
strengthened, she might have felt the sun supplying the earth, and the
beings of the earth, with all their force, and have become a
fire-worshipper, until further light broke on her, and she sought and
found the Power that feeds the very sun