this king's second son was taken in battle, and sold, with
other prisoners of war, into slavery: how he married an African girl on
the Breda estate, and used to talk of home and its wars, and its haunts,
and its sunshine idleness--how he used thus to talk in the evenings, and
on Sundays, to the boy upon his knee; so that Toussaint felt, from his
infancy, like an African, and the descendant of chiefs. This was a
theme which Madame L'Ouverture loved to dwell on, and especially when
listened to as now. The Congo chief and his wife hung upon her words,
and told in their turn how their youth had been spent at home--how they
had been kidnapped, and delivered over to the whites. In the eagerness
of their talk, they were perpetually falling unconsciously into the use
of their negro language, and as often recalled by their hearers to that
which all could understand. Moliere and Laxabon listened earnestly; and
even Loisir, occupied as he was still with the architecture of the
mansion, found himself impatient if he lost a word of the story.
Vincent alone, negro as he was, was careless and unmoved. He presently
sauntered away, and nobody missed him.

He looked over the shoulder of the architect.

"What pains you are taking!" he said. "You have only to follow your own
fancy and convenience about Christophe's house. Christophe has never
been to France. Tell him, or any others of my countrymen, that any
building you choose to put up is European, and in good taste, and they
will be quite pleased enough."

"You are a sinner," said Loisir; "but be quiet now."

"Nay--do not you find the blacks one and all ready to devour your
travellers' tales--your prodigious reports of European cities? You have
only to tell like stories in stone and brick, and they will believe you
just as thankfully."

"No, no, Vincent. I have told no tales so wicked as you tell of your
own race. My travellers' tales are all very well to pass an hour, and
be forgotten; but Christophe's mansion is to stand for an age--to stand
as the first evidence, in the department of the arts, of the elevation
of your race. Christophe knows, as well as you do without having been
to Paris, what is beautiful in architecture; and, if he did not, I would
not treacherously mislead him."

"Christophe knows! Christophe has taste!"

"Yes. While you have been walking streets and squares, he has been
studying the aisles of palms, and the crypts of the banyan, which, to an