desire that we should make use of our own means for our own welfare.
Everything that is good shall be welcomed from abroad as it arrives; but
the liberty of the blacks can be secured only by the prosperity of their
agriculture."

"I do not see why not by fisheries," observed Paul, to the party in the
piazza, as he caught his brother's words. "If Toussaint is not fond of
fish, he should remember that other people are."

"He means," said Therese, "that toil, peaceful toil, with its hope, and
its due fruit, is best for the blacks. Now, you know, Paul L'Ouverture,
that if the fields of the ocean had required as much labour as those of
the plain, you would never have been a fisherman."

"It is pleasanter on a hot day to dive than to dig; and easier to draw
the net for an hour than to cut canes for a day--is it not, uncle?"
asked Aimee.

"If the Commander-in-chief thinks toil good for us," said Moyse, "why
does he disparage war? Who knows better than he what are the fatigues
of a march? and the wearisomeness of an ambush is greater still. Why
does he, of all men, disparage war?"

"Because," said Madame, "he thinks there has been enough hatred and
fighting. I have to put him in mind of his own glory in war, or he
would be always forgetting it--except, indeed, when any one comes from
Europe. When he hears of Bonaparte, he smiles; and I know he is then
glad that he is a soldier too."

"Besides his thinking that there has been too much fighting," said
Aimee, "he wishes that the people should labour joyfully in the very
places where they used to toil in wretchedness for the whites."

Therese turned to listen, with fire in her eyes.

"In order," continued Aimee, "that they may lose the sense of that
misery, and become friendly towards the whites."

Therese turned away again, languidly.

"There are whites now entering," said Paul; "not foreigners, are they?"

"No," said Madame. "Surely they are Creoles; yes, there is Monsieur
Caze, and Monsieur Hugonin, and Monsieur Charrier. I think these
gentlemen have all been reinstated in their properties since the last
levee. Hear what they say."

"We come," exclaimed aloud Monsieur Caze, the spokesman of the party of
white planters; "we come, overwhelmed with amazement, penetrated with
gratitude, to lay our thanks at your feet. All was lost. The estates
on which we were born, the lands bequeathed to us by our fathers, were
wrenched from our hands, ravaged, destroyed.