plea was not allowed. But, now, there is our absent
friend. I tell you truly this whole community ought to be recognized as
partners in his moral errors. Among another people, reared under wiser
care and with better companions, how different might he not have been!
How can we speak of him as a law-breaker who might have saved him from
that name?" Here the speaker turned to Jean Thompson, and changed his
speech to English. "A lady sez to me to-day: 'Pere Jerome, 'ow dat is a
dreadfool dat 'e gone at de coas' of Cuba to be one corsair! Ain't it?'
'Ah, madame,' I sez, ''tis a terrible! I 'ope de good God will fo'give
me an' you fo' dat!'"

Jean Thompson answered quickly:

"You should not have let her say that."

"_Mais_, fo' w'y?"

"Why, because, if you are partly responsible, you ought so much the more
to do what you can to shield his reputation. You should have said,"--the
attorney changed to French,--"'He is no pirate; he has merely taken out
letters of marque and reprisal under the flag of the republic of
Carthagena!'"

"_Ah, bah_!" exclaimed Doctor Varrillat, and both he and his
brother-in-law, the priest, laughed.

"Why not?" demanded Thompson.

"Oh!" said the physician, with a shrug, "say id thad way iv you wand."

Then, suddenly becoming serious, he was about to add something else,
when Pere Jerome spoke.

"I will tell you what I could have said, I could have said: 'Madame,
yes; 'tis a terrible fo' him. He stum'le in de dark; but dat good God
will mek it a _mo' terrible fo'_ dat man oohever he is, w'at put 'at
light out!'"

"But how do you know he is a pirate?" demanded Thompson, aggressively.

"How do we know?" said the little priest, returning to French. "Ah!
there is no other explanation of the ninety-and-nine stories that come
to us, from every port where ships arrive from the north coast of Cuba,
of a commander of pirates there who is a marvel of courtesy and
gentility"--[1]

[Footnote 1: See gazettes of the period.]

"And whose name is Lafitte," said the obstinate attorney.

"And who, nevertheless, is not Lafitte," insisted Pere Jerome.

"Daz troo, Jean," said Doctor Varrillat. "We hall know daz troo."

Pere Jerome leaned forward over the board and spoke, with an air of
secrecy, in French.

"You have heard of the ship which came into port here last Monday. You
have heard that she was boarded by pirates, and that the captain of the
ship himself drove them off."

"An incredible story," s