all dead to-day, twenty thousand more
would be ready to come to-morrow. If every officer was buried here, the
choicest commanders there would press forward over their graves. If
even the Leclercs should perish, I believe that other relatives of the
First Consul, and perhaps some other of his sisters, would kneel to him,
as these have done, to implore him to appoint them to the new expedition
to Saint Domingo."

"The madness of numbers is never without an open cause," said Toussaint.
"What is the cause here?"

"Clear and plain enough. The representations of the emigrants coming in
aid of the secret wishes of Bonaparte, have, under his encouragement,
turned the heads of his family, his court, and after them, of his
people."

"The emigrants sigh for their country (and it is a country to sigh
after), and they look back on their estates and their power, I suppose;
while the interval of ten years dims in their memories all
inconveniences from the climate, and from the degradation of their
order."

"They appear to forget that any form of evil but Oge and you, father,
ever entered their paradise. They say that, but for you, they might
have been all this while in paradise. They have boasted of its wealth
and its pleasures, till there is not a lady in the court of France who
does not long to come and dwell in palaces of perfumed woods, marbles,
and gold and silver. They dream of passing the day in breezy shades,
and of sipping the nectar of tropical fruits, from hour to hour. They
think a good deal, too, of the plate and wines, and equipages, and
trains of attendants, of which they have heard so much; and at the same
time, of martial glory and laurel crowns."

"So these are the ideas with which they have come to languish on
Tortuga, and be buried in its sands! These emigrants have much to
answer for."

"So Isaac and I perpetually told them; but they would not listen to
anything said by an Ouverture. Nor could we wonder at this, when
persons of every colour were given to the same boastings; so that Isaac
and I found ourselves tempted into a like strain upon occasion."

"It appears as if the old days had returned," said Toussaint; "the days
of Columbus and his crows. We are as the unhappy Indians to the
rapacity of Europe. No wonder, if mulattoes and blacks speak of the
colony as if it were the old Hayti."

"They do, from Lanville, the coffee-planter, to our Mars Plaisir. Mars
Plaisir has brought orders for I