e was burning when we found
him."

"Yes, sir."

"There is more wood and more candle?"

"Yes, sir; the wood in this corner, and the candle on the table--just
under your hand, sir."

"Oh, ay, here. Put on some wood, and blow up a flame. Observe, we
found his fire burning."

"Yes, sir."

They soon re-appeared in the courtyard, and announced the death of the
prisoner. Rubaut ordered a messenger to be in readiness to ride to
Pontarlier, by the time he should have written a letter.

"We must have the physicians from Pontarlier," observed the Commandant,
aloud, "to examine the deceased, and declare what he died of. The old
man has not been well for some time past. I have no doubt the
physicians will find that he died of apoplexy, or something of the
kind."

"No wonder, poor soul!" said a sutler's wife to another woman.

"No wonder, indeed," replied the other. "My husband died of the heat in
Saint Domingo; and they took this poor man (don't tell it, but he was a
black; I got a sight of him, and he came from Saint Domingo, you may
depend upon it)--they took him out of all that heat, and put him into
that cold, damp place there! No wonder he is dead."

"Well, I never knew we had a black here!"

"Don't say I told you, then."

"I have no doubt--yes, we found his fire burning," said Bellines to the
inquirers round him. "They will find it apoplexy, or some such thing, I
have no doubt of it."

And so they did, to the entire satisfaction of the First Consul.

Yet it was long before the inquiring world knew with certainty what had
become of Toussaint L'Ouverture.

APPENDIX.

Those who feel interest enough in the extraordinary fortunes of
Toussaint L'Ouverture to inquire concerning him from the Biographical
Dictionaries and Popular Histories of the day, will find in them all the
same brief and peremptory decision concerning his character. They all
pronounce him to have been a man of wonderful sagacity, endowed with a
native genius for both war and government; but savage in warfare;
hypocritical in religion--using piety as a political mask; and, in all
his affairs, the very prince of dissemblers. It is true that this
account consists neither with the facts of his life, the opinions of the
people he delivered, nor the state documents of the island he governed.
Yet it is easy to account for. The first notices of him were French,
reported by the discomfited invaders of Saint Domingo to writers imbued
wit