orant as we are, does he suppose us stupid enough to be
delighted when, free already, we find ourselves surrounded by fifty-four
war-ships, which come to promise us liberty?"

"He does not know, apparently, how our commerce with the world brings us
tidings of all the world."

"And if it were not so--if his were the first ships that our eyes had
ever seen--does he not know that the richest tidings of liberty come,
not through the eye and ear, but from the heart? Does he not know that
the liberties of Saint Domingo, large as they are, everlasting as they
will prove to be--all sprang from here and here?"--pointing to his head
and heart. "This is he," he continued, "who has been king in my
thoughts, from the hour when I heard of the artillery officer who had
saved the Convention! This is he to whom I have felt myself bound as a
brother in destiny and in glory! This is he with whom I hoped to share
the lot of reconciling the quarrel of races and of ages! In the eye of
the world he may be great, and I the bandit captain of a despised race.
On the page of history he may be magnified, and I derided. But I spurn
him for a hero--I reject him for a brother. My rival he may make
himself. His soul is narrow, and his aims are low. He might have been
a god to the world, and he is a tyrant. We have followed him with
wistful eyes, to see him loosen bonds with a divine touch; and we find
him busy forging new chains. He has sullied his divine commission; and
while my own remains pure, he is no brother of my soul. You, my friend,
knew him better than I, or you would not have left his service for
mine."

"Yet I gave him credit for a better appreciation of you, a clearer
foresight of the destiny of this colony, than he has shown."

"While we live, my friend, we must accept disappointment. In my youth,
I learned to give up hope after hope; and one of the brightest I must
now relinquish in my old age."

"Two brilliant ones have, however, entered your dwelling this evening,
my friend," said the secretary.

"My boys? Are they not?--But these are times to show what they are. In
the joy of having them back, I might have forgiven and forgotten
everything, but for the claim--You heard, Pascal?"

"About their leaving you at dawn. Yes; that was amusing."

"If they will not consider a negro a man, they might have remembered
that beasts are desperate to recover the young that they have lost.
Leclerc will find, however, that this