difference."

"Do not you see, Henri, that you not only cease to aid me at a great
crisis but that you put a force upon me?"

"I cannot help it; I must do so, rather than go and be a butcher in the
mornes with Dessalines."

"Say with me, too: call me a butcher, too! After the long years that
you have known my heart, call me a butcher too."

"Let us talk sense, Toussaint: this is no time for trifling. After
August, I shall join you again--to fight, if it be necessary: but I hope
it will not."

"Not if heaven strengthens me to do my work without you, Christophe.
After the fever, it is much for the sick to walk: we do not expect the
dead to rise."

"When I join you, after August," resumed Christophe, "whether for the
labours of war or peace, you, and perhaps even Jacques, will wish that
your hands were as clean from blood as mine. Your thought, Toussaint!--
tell me your thought. If--"

"I was thinking that you _will_ join us, Henri. You _will_ labour till
our great work is done. You may err; and you may injure our cause by
your error; but you will never be seduced from the rectitude of your own
intentions. That is what I was thinking. I would fain keep my judgment
of you undisturbed by a grieving heart."

"You are more than generous, Toussaint: you are just. I was neither.
Pardon me. But I am unhappy--I am wretched that you are about to
forfeit your greatness, when--Oh, Toussaint! nothing should ever grieve
me again, if we could but agree to-day--if I could but see you retire,
with your wonted magnanimity, to Pongaudin, there, with your wonted
piety, to await the leadings from above. Where is your wonted faith,
that you do not see them now, through the clouds that are about us?"

"I cannot but see them now," said Toussaint, sighing; "and to see is to
follow. If you are wholly resolved to make a truce for yourself and
your division--"

"I am wholly resolved to do so."

"Then you compel me to do the same. Without you, I have not force
sufficient to maintain an effectual resistance."

"Thank God! then we shall see you again L'Ouverture, and no longer
Toussaint, the outlaw. You will--"

"Hear me, Henri! You put this constraint upon me. What are you
prepared to do, if the French prove treacherous, after our peace is
made?"

"To drive them into the sea, to be sure. You do not suppose I shall
regard them as friends the more for making a truce with them! We will
keep our eyes upon them. We wil