he nerves of all. White persons feel it--at these
precipitate sounds their hearts beat faster; and, according to old
residents, its effect on the natives was extreme. Bishop Dordillon might
entreat; Temoana himself command and threaten; at the note of the drum
wild instincts triumphed. And now it might beat upon these ruins, and
who should assemble? The houses are down, the people dead, their lineage
extinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and islands
encamp upon their graves. The decline of the dance Stanislao especially
laments. "_Chaque pays a ses coutumes_," said he; but in the report of
any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of delits
and the instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on
the expurgatorial index. "_Tenez, une danse qui n'est pas permise_,"
said Stanislao: "_je ne sais pas pourquoi, elle est tres jolie, elle va
comme ca_," and sticking his umbrella upright in the road, he sketched
the steps and gestures. All his criticisms of the present, all his
regrets for the past, struck me as temperate and sensible. The short
term of office of the Resident he thought the chief defect of the
administration; that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he
was recalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some fear
the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. I am sure at least
that I regard it so myself; for the civil servants of France have never
appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower of their country, while
her naval officers may challenge competition with the world. In all his
talk, Stanislao was particular to speak of his own country as a land of
savages; and when he stated an opinion of his own, it was with some
apologetic preface, alleging that he was "a savage who had travelled."
There was a deal, in this elaborate modesty, of honest pride. Yet there
was something in the precaution that saddened me; and I could not but
fear he was only forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often.

I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao. The first was a
certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in the
verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices as the
showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the billiard-room, to
consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of the world which forms
its chief adornment. He was naturally ignorant of English history, so
that I had much of ne