Aimee. "Everything that you can say in praise of the First Consul is
true. But yet you should go and see Paris. You do not know what Paris
is--you do not know what your brothers are like in Paris--especially
Isaac. He tells you, no doubt, how happy he is there?"

"He does; but I had rather see him here."

"You have fine scenery here, no doubt, and a climate which you enjoy:
but there! what streets and palaces--what theatres--what libraries and
picture-galleries--and what society!"

"Is it not true, however," said Azua, "that all the world is alike to
her where her brother is?"

"This is L'Etoile," said Aimee. "Of all the country houses in the
island, this was, not perhaps the grandest, but the most beautiful. It
is now ruined; but we hear that enough remains for Monsieur Loisir to
make out the design."

She turned to Vincent, and told him that General Christophe was about to
build a house; and that he wished it to be on the model of L'Etoile, as
it was before the war. Monsieur Loisir was to furnish the design.

The Europeans of the party were glad to be told that they had nearly
arrived at their resting place; for they could scarcely sit their
horses, while toiling in the heat through the deep sand of the road.
They had left far behind them both wood and swamp; and, though the
mansion seemed to be embowered in the green shade, they had to cross
open ground to reach it. At length Azua, who had sunk into a despairing
silence, cried out with animation--

"Ha! the opuntia! what a fence! what a wall!"

"You may know every deserted house in the plain," said Aimee, "by the
cactus hedge round it."

"What ornament can the inhabited mansion have more graceful, more
beautiful?" said Azua, forgetting the heat in his admiration of the
blossoms, some red, some snow-white, some blush-coloured, which were
scattered in profusion over the thick and high cactus hedge which barred
the path.

"Nothing can be more beautiful," said Aimee, "but nothing more
inconvenient. See, you are setting your horse's feet into a trap." And
she pointed to the stiff, prickly green shoots which matted all the
ground. "We must approach by some other way. Let us wait till the
servants have gone round."

With the servants appeared a tall and very handsome negro, well-known
throughout the island for his defence of the Etoile estate against
Rigaud. Charles Bellair was a Congo chief, kidnapped in his youth, and
brought into Saint Domingo