face with his
hands.

"That is, not you, but I. I hope they will let you out long before the
summer."

"Does your Excellency hope so?" cried Mars Plaisir, springing to his
feet.

"Certainly, my poor fellow. The happiest news I expect ever to hear is
that you are to be released: and this news I do expect to hear. They
will not let you go home, to tell where I am; but they will take you out
of this place."

"Oh, your Excellency! if you think so, would your Excellency be pleased
to speak for me--to ask the Commandant to let me out? If you will tell
him that my rheumatism will not let me sleep--I do not want to go home--
I do not want to leave your Excellency, except for your Excellency's
good. I would say all I could for you, and kneel to the First Consul;
and, if they would not set you free, I would--" Here his voice faltered,
but he spoke the words--"I would come back into your Excellency's
service in the summer--when I had got cured of my rheumatism. If you
would speak a word to the Commandant!"

"I would, if I were not sure of injuring you by doing so. Do you not
see that nothing is to be granted us that we ask for? Speak not another
word of liberty, and you may have it. Ask for it, and you are here for
life--or for my life. Remember!"

Mars Plaisir stood deep in thought.

"You have never asked for your liberty?" said his master. "No. I knew
that, for my sake, you had not. Has no one ever mentioned liberty to
you? I understand," he continued, seeing an expression of confusion in
the poor fellow's face. "Do not tell me anything; only hear me. If
freedom should be offered to you, take it. It is my wish--it is my
command. Is there more wood? None but this?"

"None but this damp wood that chokes us with smoke. They send us the
worst wood--the green, damp wood that the poorest of the whites in the
castle will not use," cried Mars Plaisir, striving to work off his
emotions in a fit of passion. He kicked the unpromising log into the
fireplace as he exclaimed--

"They think the worst of everything good enough for us, because we are
blacks. Oh! oh!" Here his wrath was aggravated by a twinge of
rheumatism. "They think anything good enough for blacks."

"Let them think so," said his master, kindly. "God does not. God did
not think so when He gave us the soil of Africa, and the sun of Saint
Domingo. When he planted the gardens of the world with palms, it was
for the blacks. When He spread