gate.

Two or three of the sisters and Euphrosyne were with the abbess in her
parlour, when Madame Oge entered. Euphrosyne had permission to bring in
her work; so that she could sit plying her needle, and listening to what
went on, without many nervous feelings about being observed by a person
whom she could become acquainted with only by stealing glances at her
face.

That face, she thought, must in its youth have had much of the beauty
common among mulattoes, if not natural to them, in a favourable climate,
it was now deeply impressed with sorrow. Every line, every feature,
told of sorrow. There was no other painful expression in it. There was
great solemnity, but stillness rather than passion;--nothing which
warranted, in itself, the superstitious fears which the sisters had of
the unhappy lady. She was handsomely dressed, and her manner was quiet.

The conversation turned first upon the state of the coffee and sugar
crops, about which little could be said, because the prospect of every
kind of produce was excellent. So much regard was everywhere paid to
the processes of cultivation; and the practice of ten years, under the
vigilant eye of Toussaint and his agents, had so improved the methods of
tillage and the habits of the cultivators, that the bounties of the soil
and climate were improved instead of being intercepted. Every year,
since the revolution, the harvests had been richer; and this was the
crowning year.

"Yes," said Madame Oge: "we have heard a great deal of all that; and I
fancy we have nearly heard the last of it."

"There must, indeed," replied the abbess, "be some limit to the
fruitfulness of the soil, and to the industry of those who till it: and
it does seem as if the earth could yield no more than it is bringing
forth this year."

"Father Gabriel says," observed sister Claire, "that in his journeys he
could almost believe that the fields sing, and the hills rejoice with
music, as the Scripture says--the cultivators are so hidden among the
corn and the canes, and the groves and the vines, that their songs
really seem to come out of the ground."

"It is in the woods," added sister Benoite, "as if the very trees
shouted--"

She stopped abruptly before the name L'Ouverture, remembering that it
would not be acceptable to all the present company.

"I have no doubt," said Madame Oge, "that all the monkeys and parrots
are taught to shout L'Ouverture. Like his people, they are quick at