Chapter Forty.

Chapter Forty.Meeting Winter.It was a glorious day, that twelfth of June, when theHérossailed away from the shores of Saint Domingo. Before theHéroscould sail quite away, it was compelled to hover, as it were, about the shadow of the land—to advance and retreat—to say farewell, apparently, and then to greet it again. The wind was north-east, so that a direct course was impossible; and the Ouverture family assembled, with the exception of Toussaint himself, upon deck, gave vent, again and again, to their tears—again and again strained their eyes, as the mountains with their shadowy sides, the still forests, the yellow sands, and the quiet settlements of the lateral valleys, came into view, or faded away.L’Ouverture’s cabin, to which he was strictly confined during the voyage, had a window in the stern, and he, too, had therefore some change of prospect. He gazed eagerly at every shifting picture of the land; but most eagerly when he found himself off Cap Samana. With his pocket-glass he explored and discovered the very point of rough ground on the height where he stood with Christophe, less than six months before, to watch the approach, and observe the rendezvous, of the French fleet. He remembered, as his eye was fixed upon the point, his naming to Henri this very ship, in which he was now a prisoner, sailing away, never more to return.“Be it so!” he thought, according to his wont. “My blacks are not conquered, and will never more be slaves.”The wind soon changed, and the voyage was a rapid one. Short as it was, it was tedious; for, with the exception of Mars Plaisir, who was appointed to wait on him, the prisoner saw no one. Again and again he caught the voices of his children, singing upon deck—no doubt in order to communicate with him: but, in every instance, almost before he had begun to listen, the song ceased. Mars Plaisir explained that it was silenced by the captain’s order. No captain’s order had power to stop the prisoner’s singing. Every night was Aimée consoled, amidst her weeping, by the solemn air of her father’s favourite Latin Hymn to Our Lady of the Sea: every morning was Margot roused to hope by her husband’s voice, singing his matin-prayer. Whatever might be the captain’s apprehensions of political danger from these exercises, he gave over the opposition which had succeeded so well with the women.“My father crossed this sea,” thought Toussaint: “and little could he have dreamed that the next of his race would cross it also, a prince and a prisoner. He, the son of a king, was seized and sold as a slave. His son, raised to be a ruler by the hand of Him who creates princes (whether by birth or royalty of soul), is kidnapped, and sacrificed to the passions of a rival. Such is our life! But in its evil there is good. If my father had not crossed this sea as a slave, Saint Domingo would have wanted me; and in me, perhaps, its freedom and civilisation. If I had not been kidnapped, my blacks might have lacked wrath to accomplish the victory to which I have led them. If my father is looking back on this world, I doubt not he rejoices in the degradation which brought elevation to his race; and, as for me, I lay the few years of my old age a ready sacrifice on the altar of Africa.”Sometimes he amused himself with the idea of surveying, at last, the Paris of which he had heard so much. Oftener, however, he dwelt with complacency on the prospect of seeing Bonaparte—of meeting his rival, mind to mind. He knew that Bonaparte’s curiosity about him was eager, and he never doubted that he should be called to account personally for his government, in all its details. He did not consider that the great captain of the age might fear to meet his victim—might shrink from the eye of a brother-soldier whom he had treated worse than a felon.Time and disappointment taught the prisoner this. None of his dreams were verified. In Brest harbour he was hurried from the ship—allowed a parting embrace of his family upon deck—no more; not a sentence of conversation, though all the ship’s crew were by to hear. Mars Plaisir alone was allowed to accompany him. Two hurried whispers alone were conveyed to his ear. Placide assured him (yet how could it be?) that Monsieur Pascal was in France and would exert himself. And Margot told him, amidst her sobs, that she had done the one only thing she could—she had prayed for Bonaparte, as she promised, that night of prophetic woe at Pongaudin.Nothing did he see of Paris but some of the dimly-lighted streets, as he was conveyed, at night, to the prison of the Temple. During the weeks that he was a prisoner there, he looked in vain for a summons to the presence of the First Consul, or for the First Consul’s appearance in his apartment. One of Bonaparte’s aides, Caffarelli, came indeed, and brought messages: but these messages were only insulting inquiries about the treasures—the treasures buried in the mornes;—for ever these treasures! This recurring message, with its answer, was all the communication he had with Bonaparte; and the hum and murmur from the streets were all that he knew of Paris. When Bonaparte, nettled with the reply—“The treasures I have lost are far other than those you seek,”—was convinced that no better answer would be obtained, he gave the order which had been impending during those weeks of confinement in the Temple.When Bonaparte found his first leisure, after the fêtes and bustle occasioned in August by his being made First Consul for life, he issued his commands regarding the disposal of his West Indian prisoner: and presently Toussaint was traversing France, with Mars Plaisir for his companion in captivity—with an officer, as a guard, inside the closed carriage; another guard on the box; and one, if not two, mounted in their rear.The journey was conducted under circumstances of great mystery. The blinds of the carriage were never let down; provisions were served out while the party was in full career; and the few baitings that were made were contrived to take place, either during the night, or in unfrequented places. It was clear that the complexion of the strangers was not to be seen by the inhabitants. All that Toussaint could learn was that they were travelling south-east.“Have you mountains in your island?” asked the officer, letting down the blind just so much, when the carriage turned a corner of the road, as to permit to himself a glimpse of the scenery. “We are entering the Jura. Have you mountains in your island?”Toussaint left it to Mars Plaisir to answer this question; which he did with indignant volubility, describing the uses and the beauties of the heights of Saint Domingo, from the loftiest peaks which intercept the hurricane, to the lowest, crested with forts or spreading their blossoming groves to the verge of the valleys.“We too have fortresses on our heights,” said the officer. “Indeed, you will be in one of them before night. When we are on the other side of Pontarlier, we will look about us a little.”“Then, on the other side of Pontarlier, we shall meet no people,” observed Mars Plaisir.“People! Oh, yes! we have people everywhere in France.”When Pontarlier was passed, and the windows of the carriage were thrown open, the travellers perceived plainly enough why this degree of liberty was allowed. The region was so wild, that none were likely to come hither in search of the captives. There were inhabitants; but few likely to give information as to who had passed along the road. There were charcoal-burners up on the hill-side; there were women washing clothes in the stream which rushed along, far below in the valley; the miller was in his mill, niched in the hollow beside the waterfall; and there might still be inmates in the convent which stood just below the firs, on the knoll to the left of the road. But by the wayside, there were none who, with curious eyes, might mark, and with eager tongue report, the complexion of the strangers who were rapidly whirled along towards Joux.Toussaint shivered as the chill mountain air blew in. Perhaps what he saw chilled him no less than what he felt. He might have unconsciously expected to see something like the teeming slopes of his own mountains, the yellow ferns, the glittering rocks, shining like polished metal in the sun. Instead of these, the scanty grass was of a blue-green; the stunted firs were black; and the patches of dazzling white intermingled with them formed a contrast of colour hideous to the eye of a native of the tropics.“That is snow,” exclaimed Mars Plaisir to his master, with the pride of superior experience.“I know it,” replied Toussaint, quietly.The carriage now laboured up a steep ascent. Thebrave hommewho drove alighted on one side, and the guard on the other, and walked up the hill, to relieve the horses. The guard gathered such flowers as met his eye; and handed into the carriage a blue gentian which had till now lingered on the borders of the snows,—or a rhododendron, for which he had scaled a crag. His officer roughly ordered him not to leave the track.“If we had passed this way two or three months earlier,” he said complacently to his prisoners, “we should have found cowslips here and there, all along the road. We have a good many cowslips in early summer. Have you cowslips in your island?”Toussaint smiled as he thought of the flower-strewn savannahs, where more blossoms opened and perished in an hour than in this dreary region all the summer through. He heard Mars Plaisir compelled to admit that he had never seen cowslips out of France.At length, after several mountings and dismountings of the driver and guard, they seemed, on entering a defile, to apply themselves seriously to their business. The guard cast a glance along the road, and up the sides of the steeps, and beckoned to the horsemen behind to come on; and the driver repeatedly cracked his whip. Silence settled down on the party within the carriage; for all understood that they drew near the fortress. In silence they wound through the defile, till all egress seemed barred by a lofty crag. The road, however, passed round its base, and disclosed to view a small basin among the mountains, in the midst of which rose the steep which bore the fortress of Joux. At the foot of this steep lay the village; a small assemblage of sordid dwellings. At this village four roads met, from as many defiles which opened into this centre. A mountain-stream gushed along, now by the road-side, now winding and growing quieter among the little plot of green fields which lay in the rear of the castle rock. This plot of vivid green cheered, for a moment, the eye of the captives; but a second glance showed that it was but a swamp. This swamp, crags, firs, and snow, with the dirty village, made up the prospect. As for the inhabitants—as the carriage stopped short of the village, none were to be seen, but a girl with her distaff amidst a flock of goats, and some soldiers on the castle walls above.There appeared to be but one road up the rock—a bridle or foot road to the right, too narrow and too steep for any carriage. Where this joined the main road the carriage stopped; and the prisoners were desired to alight.“We must trouble you to walk up this hill,” said the officer, “unless you prefer to mount, and have your horse led.”Before he had finished speaking, Toussaint was many paces in advance of his guards. But few opportunities had he enjoyed, of late, of exercising his limbs. He believed that this would be the last; and he sprang up the rocky pathway with a sense of desperate pleasure. Panting and heated, the most active of the soldiers reached the summit some moments after him. Toussaint had made use of those few moments. He had fixed in his memory the loading points of the landscape towards the east—the bearings of the roads which opened glimpses into two valleys on that side—the patches of enclosure—the nooks of pasture where cows were grazing, and children were at play—these features of the landscape he eagerly comprehended—partly for use, in case of any opportunity of escape; partly for solace, if he should not henceforth be permitted to look abroad.A few, and but a few, more moments he had, while the drawbridge was lowered, the portcullis raised, and the guard sent in with some order from his officer. Toussaint well knew that that little plot of fields, with its winding stream, was the last verdure that he might ever see. The snowy summits which peered over the fir-tops were prophets of death to him; for how should he, who had gone hither and thither under the sun of the tropics for sixty years, live chained among the snows? Well did he know this; yet he did not wait to be asked to pass the bridge.The drawbridge and the courtyard were both deserted. Not a soldier was to be seen. Mars Plaisir muttered his astonishment, but his master understood, that the presence of negro prisoners in the fortress was not to become known. He read in this incident a prophecy of total seclusion.They were marched rapidly through the courtyard, into a dark passage, where they were desired to stop. In a few moments Toussaint heard the tramp of feet about the gate, and understood that the soldiers had been ordered back to their post.“The Commandant,” the officer announced to his prisoners; and the Commandant Rubaut entered the dim passage. Toussaint formed his judgment of him, to a certain extent, in a moment. Rubaut endeavoured to assume a tone of good-humoured familiarity; but there appeared through this a misgiving as to whether he was thus either letting himself down, on the one hand, or, on the other, encroaching on the dignity of the person he addressed. His prisoner was a negro; but then he had been the recognised Commander-in-Chief of Saint Domingo. One symptom of awkwardness was, that he addressed Toussaint by no sort of title.“We have had notice of your approach,” said he; “which is fortunate, as it enables me to conduct you at once to your apartment. Will you proceed? This way. A torch, Bellines! We have been looking for you these two days; which happens very well, as we have been enabled to prepare for you. Torches, Bellines! This way. We mount a few steps, you perceive. We are not taking you underground, though I call for lights; but this passage to the left, you perceive, is rather dark. Yes, that is our well; and a great depth it is—deeper, I assure you, than this rock is high. What do they call the depth, Chalôt? Well, never mind the depth! You can follow me, I believe, without waiting for a light. We cannot go wrong. Through this apartment to the left.”Toussaint, however, chose to wait for Bellines and his torch. He chose to see what he could of the passages of his prison. If this vault in which he stood were not underground, it was the dreariest apartment from which the daylight had ever been built out. In the moment’s pause occasioned by his not moving on when desired, he heard the dripping of water as in a well.Bellines appeared, and his torch showed the stone walls of the vault shining with the trickling of water. A cold steam appeared to thicken the air, oppress the lungs, and make the torch burn dim.“To what apartment can this be the passage?” thought Toussaint. “The grave is warm compared with this.”A glance of wretchedness from Mars Plaisir, seen in the torchlight, as Bellines passed on to the front, showed that the poor fellow’s spirits, and perhaps some visions of a merry life among the soldiers, had melted already in the damps of this vault. Rubaut gave him a push, which showed that he was to follow the torch-bearer.Through this vault was a passage, dark, wet, and slippery. In the left-hand wall of this passage was a door, studded with iron nails thickly covered with rust. The key was in this door. During the instant required for throwing it wide, a large flake of ice fell from the ceiling of the passage upon the head of Toussaint. He shook it off, and it extinguished the torch.“You mean to murder us,” said he, “if you propose to place us here. Do you not know that ice and darkness are the negro’s poison? Snow, too,” he continued, advancing to the cleft of his dungeon wall, at the outward extremity of which was his small grated window. “Snow piled against this window now! We shall be buried under it in winter.”“You will have good fires in winter.”“In winter! Yes! this night; or I shall never see winter.”“This night! Oh, certainly! You can have a fire, though it is not usual with us at this season. Bellines—a fire here immediately.”He saw his prisoner surveying, by the dim light from the deep window, the miserable cell—about twenty-eight feet by thirteen, built of blocks of stone, its vaulted ceiling so low that it could be touched by the hand; its floor, though planked, rotten and slippery with wet; and no furniture to be seen but a table, two chairs, and two heaps of straw in opposite corners.“I am happy,” said the Commandant, “to have been able to avoid putting you underground. The orders I have had, from the First Consul himself, as to your beingmis au secret, are very strict. Notwithstanding that, I have been able, you see, to place you in an apartment which overlooks the courtyard; and which, too, affords you other objects”—pointing through the gratings to the few feet of the pavement without, and the few yards of the perpendicular rock opposite, which might be seen through the loop-hole.“How many hours of the day and night are we to pass in tills place?”“How many hours? We reckon twenty-four hours to the day and night, as is the custom in Europe,” replied Rubaut; whether in ignorance or irony, his prisoner could not, in the dim twilight, ascertain. He only learned too surely that no exit from this cell was to be allowed.Firewood and light were brought. Rubaut, eager to be busy till he could go, and to be gone as soon as possible, found fault with some long-deceased occupant of the cell, for having covered its arched ceiling with grotesque drawings in charcoal; and then with Bellines, for not having dried the floor. Truly the light gleamed over it as over a pond. Bellines pleaded in his defence that the floor had been dried twice since morning; but that there was no stopping the melting of the ice above. The water would come through the joints till the winter frosts set in.“Ay, the winter frosts—they will set all to rights. They will cure the melting of the ice, no doubt.” Turning to his prisoners, he congratulated himself on not being compelled to search their persons. The practice of searching was usual, but might, he rejoiced to say, be dispensed with on the present occasion. He might now, therefore, have the pleasure of wishing them a good evening.Pointing to the two heaps of straw, he begged that his prisoners would lay down their beds in any part of the cell which pleased them best. Their food, and all that they wanted, would be brought to the door regularly. As for the rest, they would wait upon each other. Having thus exhausted his politeness, he quitted the cell; and lock, bolt, and bar were fastened upon the captives.By the faint light, Toussaint then perceived that his companion was struggling with laughter. When Mars Plaisir perceived by his master’s smile that he had leave to give way, he laughed till the cell rang again, saying—“Wait upon each other! His Excellency wait upon me! His Excellency wait upon anybody!”“There would be nothing new in that. I have endeavoured to wait upon others all my life. Rarely does Providence grant the favour to wait upon so many.”Mars Plaisir did not comprehend this, and therefore continued—“These whites think that we blacks are created to be serving, serving always—always serving.”“And they are right. Their mistake is in not seeing that the same is the case with all other men.”In his incessant habit of serving those about him, Toussaint now remembered that it would be more kind to poor Mars Plaisir to employ him, than to speak of things which he could not comprehend. He signed to him, therefore, to shake down the straw on each side the fireplace. Mars Plaisir sacrificed some of his own bundle to wipe down the wet walls; but it was all in vain. During the silence, while his master was meditating at the window, the melancholy sound of falling water—drip, drip—plash, plash—was heard all around, within and without the cell. When he had wiped down the walls, from the door in the corner round to the door again, the place from which he had set out was as wet as ever, and his straw was spoiled. He angrily kicked the wet straw into the fire; the consequence of which was that the cell was filled with smoke, almost to suffocation.“Ask for more,” said Toussaint.Mars Plaisir shouted, knocked at the door, and used every endeavour to make himself heard; but in vain. No one came.“Take some of mine,” said Toussaint. “No one can lie on this floor.”Mars Plaisir shook his head. He proceeded mournfully to spread the other heap of straw; but a large flake of ice had fallen upon it from the corner of the walls, and it was as wet as that which he had burned.This was too much for poor Mars Plaisir. He looked upon his master, now spreading his thin hands over the fire, his furrowed face now and then lighted up by the blaze which sprang fitfully through the smoke—he thought of the hall of audience at Port-au-Prince, of the gardens at Pongaudin, of the Place d’Armes at Cap Français on review-days, of the military journeys and official fêtes of the Commander-in-Chief, and he looked upon him now. He burst into tears as uncontrollable as his laughter had been before. Peeling his master’s hand upon his shoulder, he considered it necessary to give a reason for his grief, and sobbed out—“They treat your Excellency as if your Excellency were nobody. They give your Excellency no title. They will not even call you General.”Toussaint laughed at this cause of grief in such a place; but Mars Plaisir insisted upon it.“How would they like it themselves? What would the First Consul himself say if he were a prisoner, and his gaolers refused him his titles?”“I do not suppose him to be a man of so narrow a heart, and so low a soul, as that such a trifle could annoy him. Cheer up, if that be all.”Mars Plaisir was far from thinking this all; but his tears and sobs choked him in the midst of his complaints. Toussaint turned again to the fire, and presently began to sing one of the most familiar songs of Saint Domingo. He had not sung a stanza before, as he had anticipated, his servant joined in, rising from his attitude of despair, and singing with as much animation as if he had been on the Haut-du-Cap. This was soon put a stop to by a sentinel, who knocked at the door to command silence.“They cannot hear us if we want dry straw,” said Mars Plaisir, passionately: “and yet we cannot raise a note but they must stop us.”“We are caged birds; and you know Denis’s canary might sing only when it pleased his master. Have I not seen even you cover up the cage? But sing—sing softly, and they may not hear you.”When supper was brought, fresh straw and more firewood were granted. At his master’s bidding, and under the influence of these comforts, Mars Plaisir composed himself to sleep.Toussaint sat long beside the fire. He could not have slept. The weeks that had passed since he left Saint Domingo had not yet reconciled his ear to the silence of a European night. At sea, the dash of the waves against the ship’s side had lulled him to rest. Since he had landed, he had slept little, partly from privation of exercise, partly from the action of over-busy thoughts; but also, in part, from the absence of that hum of life which, to the natives of the tropics, is the incentive to sleep and its accompaniment. Here, there was but the crackle of the burning wood, and the plashing of water, renewed from minute to minute, till it became a fearful doubt—a passing doubt, but very fearful—whether his ear could become accustomed to the dreary sound, or whether his self-command was to be overthrown by so small an agency as this. From such a question he turned, by an effort, to consider other evils of his condition. It was a cruel aggravation of his sufferings to have his servant shut up with him. It imposed upon him some duties, it was true; and was, in so far, a good; but it also imposed most painful restraints. He had a strong persuasion that Bonaparte had not given up the pursuit of his supposed treasures, or the hope of mastering all his designs, real or imaginary; and he suspected that Mars Plaisir would be left long enough with him to receive the overflowings of his confidence (so hard to restrain in such circumstances as theirs!) and would then be tampered with by the agents of the First Consul. What was the nature and efficacy of their system of cross-examination, he knew; and he knew how nothing but ignorance could preserve poor Mars Plaisir from treachery. Here, therefore—here, in this cell, without resource, without companionship, without solace of any kind, it would be necessary, perhaps, through long months, to set a watch upon his lips, as strict as when he dined with the French Commissaries at Government-House, or when he was weighing the Report of the Central Assembly, regarding a Colonial constitution. For the reserve which his function had imposed upon him at home, he had been repaid by a thousand enjoyments. Now, no more sympathy, no more ministering from his family!—no more could he open to Margot his glory in Placide, his hopes from Denis, his cares for his other children, to uphold them under a pressure of influences which were too strong for them; no more could he look upon the friendly face of Henri, and unbosom himself to him in sun or shade; no more could he look upon the results of his labours in the merchant fleets on the sea, and the harvests burdening the plains! No more could happy voices, from a thousand homes, come to him in blessing and in joy! No more music, no more sunshine, no more fragrance; no more certainty, either, that others were now enjoying what he had parted with for ever! Not only might he never hear what had ensued upon the “truce till August,” but he must carefully conceal his anxiety to hear—his belief that there were such tidings to be told. In the presence of Mars Plaisir, he could scarcely even think of that which lay heaviest at his heart—of what Henri had done, in consequence of his abduction—of his poor oppressed blacks—whether they had sunk under the blow for the time, and so delayed the arrival of that freedom which they must at length achieve; or whether they had risen, like a multitudinous family of bereaved children, to work out the designs of the father who had been snatched from them. Of all this there could be no speech (scarcely a speculation in his secret soul) in the presence of one who must, if he heard, almost necessarily become a traitor. And then his family! From them he had vanished; and he must live as if they had vanished from his very memory. They were, doubtless, all eye, all ear: for ever watching to know what had become of him. For their personal safety, now that he was helpless, he trusted there was little cause for fear; but what peace of mind could they enjoy, while in ignorance of his fate? He fancied them imploring of their guardians tidings of him, in vain; questioning the four winds for whispers of his retreat; pacing every cemetery for a grave that might be his; gazing up at the loopholes of every prison, with a fear that he might be there; keeping awake at midnight, for the chance of a visit from his injured spirit; or seeking sleep, in the dim hope that he might be revealed to them in a dream. And all this must be but a dim dream to him, except in such an hour as this—a chance hour when no eye was upon him! The reconciling process was slow—but it was no less sure than usual.“Be it so!” was, as usual, his conclusion—“Be it so! for as long as Heaven pleases—though that cannot be long. The one consolation of being buried alive, soul or body—or both, as in this case—is, that release is sure and near. This poor fellow’s spirit will die within him, and his body will then be let out—the consummation most necessary for him. And my body, already failing, will soon die, and my work be done. To die, and to die thus, is part of my work; and I will do it as willingly as in the field. Hundreds, thousands of my race have died for slavery, cooped up, pining, suffocated in slave-ships, in the wastes of the sea. Hundreds and thousands have thus died, without knowing the end for which they perished. What is it, then, for one to die of cold in the wastes of the mountains, for freedom, and knowing that freedom is the end of his life and his death? What is it? If I groan, if I shrink, may my race curse me, and my God cast me out!”A warmer glow than the dying embers could give passed through his frame; and he presently slept, basking till morning in dreams of his sunny home.

It was a glorious day, that twelfth of June, when theHérossailed away from the shores of Saint Domingo. Before theHéroscould sail quite away, it was compelled to hover, as it were, about the shadow of the land—to advance and retreat—to say farewell, apparently, and then to greet it again. The wind was north-east, so that a direct course was impossible; and the Ouverture family assembled, with the exception of Toussaint himself, upon deck, gave vent, again and again, to their tears—again and again strained their eyes, as the mountains with their shadowy sides, the still forests, the yellow sands, and the quiet settlements of the lateral valleys, came into view, or faded away.

L’Ouverture’s cabin, to which he was strictly confined during the voyage, had a window in the stern, and he, too, had therefore some change of prospect. He gazed eagerly at every shifting picture of the land; but most eagerly when he found himself off Cap Samana. With his pocket-glass he explored and discovered the very point of rough ground on the height where he stood with Christophe, less than six months before, to watch the approach, and observe the rendezvous, of the French fleet. He remembered, as his eye was fixed upon the point, his naming to Henri this very ship, in which he was now a prisoner, sailing away, never more to return.

“Be it so!” he thought, according to his wont. “My blacks are not conquered, and will never more be slaves.”

The wind soon changed, and the voyage was a rapid one. Short as it was, it was tedious; for, with the exception of Mars Plaisir, who was appointed to wait on him, the prisoner saw no one. Again and again he caught the voices of his children, singing upon deck—no doubt in order to communicate with him: but, in every instance, almost before he had begun to listen, the song ceased. Mars Plaisir explained that it was silenced by the captain’s order. No captain’s order had power to stop the prisoner’s singing. Every night was Aimée consoled, amidst her weeping, by the solemn air of her father’s favourite Latin Hymn to Our Lady of the Sea: every morning was Margot roused to hope by her husband’s voice, singing his matin-prayer. Whatever might be the captain’s apprehensions of political danger from these exercises, he gave over the opposition which had succeeded so well with the women.

“My father crossed this sea,” thought Toussaint: “and little could he have dreamed that the next of his race would cross it also, a prince and a prisoner. He, the son of a king, was seized and sold as a slave. His son, raised to be a ruler by the hand of Him who creates princes (whether by birth or royalty of soul), is kidnapped, and sacrificed to the passions of a rival. Such is our life! But in its evil there is good. If my father had not crossed this sea as a slave, Saint Domingo would have wanted me; and in me, perhaps, its freedom and civilisation. If I had not been kidnapped, my blacks might have lacked wrath to accomplish the victory to which I have led them. If my father is looking back on this world, I doubt not he rejoices in the degradation which brought elevation to his race; and, as for me, I lay the few years of my old age a ready sacrifice on the altar of Africa.”

Sometimes he amused himself with the idea of surveying, at last, the Paris of which he had heard so much. Oftener, however, he dwelt with complacency on the prospect of seeing Bonaparte—of meeting his rival, mind to mind. He knew that Bonaparte’s curiosity about him was eager, and he never doubted that he should be called to account personally for his government, in all its details. He did not consider that the great captain of the age might fear to meet his victim—might shrink from the eye of a brother-soldier whom he had treated worse than a felon.

Time and disappointment taught the prisoner this. None of his dreams were verified. In Brest harbour he was hurried from the ship—allowed a parting embrace of his family upon deck—no more; not a sentence of conversation, though all the ship’s crew were by to hear. Mars Plaisir alone was allowed to accompany him. Two hurried whispers alone were conveyed to his ear. Placide assured him (yet how could it be?) that Monsieur Pascal was in France and would exert himself. And Margot told him, amidst her sobs, that she had done the one only thing she could—she had prayed for Bonaparte, as she promised, that night of prophetic woe at Pongaudin.

Nothing did he see of Paris but some of the dimly-lighted streets, as he was conveyed, at night, to the prison of the Temple. During the weeks that he was a prisoner there, he looked in vain for a summons to the presence of the First Consul, or for the First Consul’s appearance in his apartment. One of Bonaparte’s aides, Caffarelli, came indeed, and brought messages: but these messages were only insulting inquiries about the treasures—the treasures buried in the mornes;—for ever these treasures! This recurring message, with its answer, was all the communication he had with Bonaparte; and the hum and murmur from the streets were all that he knew of Paris. When Bonaparte, nettled with the reply—“The treasures I have lost are far other than those you seek,”—was convinced that no better answer would be obtained, he gave the order which had been impending during those weeks of confinement in the Temple.

When Bonaparte found his first leisure, after the fêtes and bustle occasioned in August by his being made First Consul for life, he issued his commands regarding the disposal of his West Indian prisoner: and presently Toussaint was traversing France, with Mars Plaisir for his companion in captivity—with an officer, as a guard, inside the closed carriage; another guard on the box; and one, if not two, mounted in their rear.

The journey was conducted under circumstances of great mystery. The blinds of the carriage were never let down; provisions were served out while the party was in full career; and the few baitings that were made were contrived to take place, either during the night, or in unfrequented places. It was clear that the complexion of the strangers was not to be seen by the inhabitants. All that Toussaint could learn was that they were travelling south-east.

“Have you mountains in your island?” asked the officer, letting down the blind just so much, when the carriage turned a corner of the road, as to permit to himself a glimpse of the scenery. “We are entering the Jura. Have you mountains in your island?”

Toussaint left it to Mars Plaisir to answer this question; which he did with indignant volubility, describing the uses and the beauties of the heights of Saint Domingo, from the loftiest peaks which intercept the hurricane, to the lowest, crested with forts or spreading their blossoming groves to the verge of the valleys.

“We too have fortresses on our heights,” said the officer. “Indeed, you will be in one of them before night. When we are on the other side of Pontarlier, we will look about us a little.”

“Then, on the other side of Pontarlier, we shall meet no people,” observed Mars Plaisir.

“People! Oh, yes! we have people everywhere in France.”

When Pontarlier was passed, and the windows of the carriage were thrown open, the travellers perceived plainly enough why this degree of liberty was allowed. The region was so wild, that none were likely to come hither in search of the captives. There were inhabitants; but few likely to give information as to who had passed along the road. There were charcoal-burners up on the hill-side; there were women washing clothes in the stream which rushed along, far below in the valley; the miller was in his mill, niched in the hollow beside the waterfall; and there might still be inmates in the convent which stood just below the firs, on the knoll to the left of the road. But by the wayside, there were none who, with curious eyes, might mark, and with eager tongue report, the complexion of the strangers who were rapidly whirled along towards Joux.

Toussaint shivered as the chill mountain air blew in. Perhaps what he saw chilled him no less than what he felt. He might have unconsciously expected to see something like the teeming slopes of his own mountains, the yellow ferns, the glittering rocks, shining like polished metal in the sun. Instead of these, the scanty grass was of a blue-green; the stunted firs were black; and the patches of dazzling white intermingled with them formed a contrast of colour hideous to the eye of a native of the tropics.

“That is snow,” exclaimed Mars Plaisir to his master, with the pride of superior experience.

“I know it,” replied Toussaint, quietly.

The carriage now laboured up a steep ascent. Thebrave hommewho drove alighted on one side, and the guard on the other, and walked up the hill, to relieve the horses. The guard gathered such flowers as met his eye; and handed into the carriage a blue gentian which had till now lingered on the borders of the snows,—or a rhododendron, for which he had scaled a crag. His officer roughly ordered him not to leave the track.

“If we had passed this way two or three months earlier,” he said complacently to his prisoners, “we should have found cowslips here and there, all along the road. We have a good many cowslips in early summer. Have you cowslips in your island?”

Toussaint smiled as he thought of the flower-strewn savannahs, where more blossoms opened and perished in an hour than in this dreary region all the summer through. He heard Mars Plaisir compelled to admit that he had never seen cowslips out of France.

At length, after several mountings and dismountings of the driver and guard, they seemed, on entering a defile, to apply themselves seriously to their business. The guard cast a glance along the road, and up the sides of the steeps, and beckoned to the horsemen behind to come on; and the driver repeatedly cracked his whip. Silence settled down on the party within the carriage; for all understood that they drew near the fortress. In silence they wound through the defile, till all egress seemed barred by a lofty crag. The road, however, passed round its base, and disclosed to view a small basin among the mountains, in the midst of which rose the steep which bore the fortress of Joux. At the foot of this steep lay the village; a small assemblage of sordid dwellings. At this village four roads met, from as many defiles which opened into this centre. A mountain-stream gushed along, now by the road-side, now winding and growing quieter among the little plot of green fields which lay in the rear of the castle rock. This plot of vivid green cheered, for a moment, the eye of the captives; but a second glance showed that it was but a swamp. This swamp, crags, firs, and snow, with the dirty village, made up the prospect. As for the inhabitants—as the carriage stopped short of the village, none were to be seen, but a girl with her distaff amidst a flock of goats, and some soldiers on the castle walls above.

There appeared to be but one road up the rock—a bridle or foot road to the right, too narrow and too steep for any carriage. Where this joined the main road the carriage stopped; and the prisoners were desired to alight.

“We must trouble you to walk up this hill,” said the officer, “unless you prefer to mount, and have your horse led.”

Before he had finished speaking, Toussaint was many paces in advance of his guards. But few opportunities had he enjoyed, of late, of exercising his limbs. He believed that this would be the last; and he sprang up the rocky pathway with a sense of desperate pleasure. Panting and heated, the most active of the soldiers reached the summit some moments after him. Toussaint had made use of those few moments. He had fixed in his memory the loading points of the landscape towards the east—the bearings of the roads which opened glimpses into two valleys on that side—the patches of enclosure—the nooks of pasture where cows were grazing, and children were at play—these features of the landscape he eagerly comprehended—partly for use, in case of any opportunity of escape; partly for solace, if he should not henceforth be permitted to look abroad.

A few, and but a few, more moments he had, while the drawbridge was lowered, the portcullis raised, and the guard sent in with some order from his officer. Toussaint well knew that that little plot of fields, with its winding stream, was the last verdure that he might ever see. The snowy summits which peered over the fir-tops were prophets of death to him; for how should he, who had gone hither and thither under the sun of the tropics for sixty years, live chained among the snows? Well did he know this; yet he did not wait to be asked to pass the bridge.

The drawbridge and the courtyard were both deserted. Not a soldier was to be seen. Mars Plaisir muttered his astonishment, but his master understood, that the presence of negro prisoners in the fortress was not to become known. He read in this incident a prophecy of total seclusion.

They were marched rapidly through the courtyard, into a dark passage, where they were desired to stop. In a few moments Toussaint heard the tramp of feet about the gate, and understood that the soldiers had been ordered back to their post.

“The Commandant,” the officer announced to his prisoners; and the Commandant Rubaut entered the dim passage. Toussaint formed his judgment of him, to a certain extent, in a moment. Rubaut endeavoured to assume a tone of good-humoured familiarity; but there appeared through this a misgiving as to whether he was thus either letting himself down, on the one hand, or, on the other, encroaching on the dignity of the person he addressed. His prisoner was a negro; but then he had been the recognised Commander-in-Chief of Saint Domingo. One symptom of awkwardness was, that he addressed Toussaint by no sort of title.

“We have had notice of your approach,” said he; “which is fortunate, as it enables me to conduct you at once to your apartment. Will you proceed? This way. A torch, Bellines! We have been looking for you these two days; which happens very well, as we have been enabled to prepare for you. Torches, Bellines! This way. We mount a few steps, you perceive. We are not taking you underground, though I call for lights; but this passage to the left, you perceive, is rather dark. Yes, that is our well; and a great depth it is—deeper, I assure you, than this rock is high. What do they call the depth, Chalôt? Well, never mind the depth! You can follow me, I believe, without waiting for a light. We cannot go wrong. Through this apartment to the left.”

Toussaint, however, chose to wait for Bellines and his torch. He chose to see what he could of the passages of his prison. If this vault in which he stood were not underground, it was the dreariest apartment from which the daylight had ever been built out. In the moment’s pause occasioned by his not moving on when desired, he heard the dripping of water as in a well.

Bellines appeared, and his torch showed the stone walls of the vault shining with the trickling of water. A cold steam appeared to thicken the air, oppress the lungs, and make the torch burn dim.

“To what apartment can this be the passage?” thought Toussaint. “The grave is warm compared with this.”

A glance of wretchedness from Mars Plaisir, seen in the torchlight, as Bellines passed on to the front, showed that the poor fellow’s spirits, and perhaps some visions of a merry life among the soldiers, had melted already in the damps of this vault. Rubaut gave him a push, which showed that he was to follow the torch-bearer.

Through this vault was a passage, dark, wet, and slippery. In the left-hand wall of this passage was a door, studded with iron nails thickly covered with rust. The key was in this door. During the instant required for throwing it wide, a large flake of ice fell from the ceiling of the passage upon the head of Toussaint. He shook it off, and it extinguished the torch.

“You mean to murder us,” said he, “if you propose to place us here. Do you not know that ice and darkness are the negro’s poison? Snow, too,” he continued, advancing to the cleft of his dungeon wall, at the outward extremity of which was his small grated window. “Snow piled against this window now! We shall be buried under it in winter.”

“You will have good fires in winter.”

“In winter! Yes! this night; or I shall never see winter.”

“This night! Oh, certainly! You can have a fire, though it is not usual with us at this season. Bellines—a fire here immediately.”

He saw his prisoner surveying, by the dim light from the deep window, the miserable cell—about twenty-eight feet by thirteen, built of blocks of stone, its vaulted ceiling so low that it could be touched by the hand; its floor, though planked, rotten and slippery with wet; and no furniture to be seen but a table, two chairs, and two heaps of straw in opposite corners.

“I am happy,” said the Commandant, “to have been able to avoid putting you underground. The orders I have had, from the First Consul himself, as to your beingmis au secret, are very strict. Notwithstanding that, I have been able, you see, to place you in an apartment which overlooks the courtyard; and which, too, affords you other objects”—pointing through the gratings to the few feet of the pavement without, and the few yards of the perpendicular rock opposite, which might be seen through the loop-hole.

“How many hours of the day and night are we to pass in tills place?”

“How many hours? We reckon twenty-four hours to the day and night, as is the custom in Europe,” replied Rubaut; whether in ignorance or irony, his prisoner could not, in the dim twilight, ascertain. He only learned too surely that no exit from this cell was to be allowed.

Firewood and light were brought. Rubaut, eager to be busy till he could go, and to be gone as soon as possible, found fault with some long-deceased occupant of the cell, for having covered its arched ceiling with grotesque drawings in charcoal; and then with Bellines, for not having dried the floor. Truly the light gleamed over it as over a pond. Bellines pleaded in his defence that the floor had been dried twice since morning; but that there was no stopping the melting of the ice above. The water would come through the joints till the winter frosts set in.

“Ay, the winter frosts—they will set all to rights. They will cure the melting of the ice, no doubt.” Turning to his prisoners, he congratulated himself on not being compelled to search their persons. The practice of searching was usual, but might, he rejoiced to say, be dispensed with on the present occasion. He might now, therefore, have the pleasure of wishing them a good evening.

Pointing to the two heaps of straw, he begged that his prisoners would lay down their beds in any part of the cell which pleased them best. Their food, and all that they wanted, would be brought to the door regularly. As for the rest, they would wait upon each other. Having thus exhausted his politeness, he quitted the cell; and lock, bolt, and bar were fastened upon the captives.

By the faint light, Toussaint then perceived that his companion was struggling with laughter. When Mars Plaisir perceived by his master’s smile that he had leave to give way, he laughed till the cell rang again, saying—

“Wait upon each other! His Excellency wait upon me! His Excellency wait upon anybody!”

“There would be nothing new in that. I have endeavoured to wait upon others all my life. Rarely does Providence grant the favour to wait upon so many.”

Mars Plaisir did not comprehend this, and therefore continued—

“These whites think that we blacks are created to be serving, serving always—always serving.”

“And they are right. Their mistake is in not seeing that the same is the case with all other men.”

In his incessant habit of serving those about him, Toussaint now remembered that it would be more kind to poor Mars Plaisir to employ him, than to speak of things which he could not comprehend. He signed to him, therefore, to shake down the straw on each side the fireplace. Mars Plaisir sacrificed some of his own bundle to wipe down the wet walls; but it was all in vain. During the silence, while his master was meditating at the window, the melancholy sound of falling water—drip, drip—plash, plash—was heard all around, within and without the cell. When he had wiped down the walls, from the door in the corner round to the door again, the place from which he had set out was as wet as ever, and his straw was spoiled. He angrily kicked the wet straw into the fire; the consequence of which was that the cell was filled with smoke, almost to suffocation.

“Ask for more,” said Toussaint.

Mars Plaisir shouted, knocked at the door, and used every endeavour to make himself heard; but in vain. No one came.

“Take some of mine,” said Toussaint. “No one can lie on this floor.”

Mars Plaisir shook his head. He proceeded mournfully to spread the other heap of straw; but a large flake of ice had fallen upon it from the corner of the walls, and it was as wet as that which he had burned.

This was too much for poor Mars Plaisir. He looked upon his master, now spreading his thin hands over the fire, his furrowed face now and then lighted up by the blaze which sprang fitfully through the smoke—he thought of the hall of audience at Port-au-Prince, of the gardens at Pongaudin, of the Place d’Armes at Cap Français on review-days, of the military journeys and official fêtes of the Commander-in-Chief, and he looked upon him now. He burst into tears as uncontrollable as his laughter had been before. Peeling his master’s hand upon his shoulder, he considered it necessary to give a reason for his grief, and sobbed out—

“They treat your Excellency as if your Excellency were nobody. They give your Excellency no title. They will not even call you General.”

Toussaint laughed at this cause of grief in such a place; but Mars Plaisir insisted upon it.

“How would they like it themselves? What would the First Consul himself say if he were a prisoner, and his gaolers refused him his titles?”

“I do not suppose him to be a man of so narrow a heart, and so low a soul, as that such a trifle could annoy him. Cheer up, if that be all.”

Mars Plaisir was far from thinking this all; but his tears and sobs choked him in the midst of his complaints. Toussaint turned again to the fire, and presently began to sing one of the most familiar songs of Saint Domingo. He had not sung a stanza before, as he had anticipated, his servant joined in, rising from his attitude of despair, and singing with as much animation as if he had been on the Haut-du-Cap. This was soon put a stop to by a sentinel, who knocked at the door to command silence.

“They cannot hear us if we want dry straw,” said Mars Plaisir, passionately: “and yet we cannot raise a note but they must stop us.”

“We are caged birds; and you know Denis’s canary might sing only when it pleased his master. Have I not seen even you cover up the cage? But sing—sing softly, and they may not hear you.”

When supper was brought, fresh straw and more firewood were granted. At his master’s bidding, and under the influence of these comforts, Mars Plaisir composed himself to sleep.

Toussaint sat long beside the fire. He could not have slept. The weeks that had passed since he left Saint Domingo had not yet reconciled his ear to the silence of a European night. At sea, the dash of the waves against the ship’s side had lulled him to rest. Since he had landed, he had slept little, partly from privation of exercise, partly from the action of over-busy thoughts; but also, in part, from the absence of that hum of life which, to the natives of the tropics, is the incentive to sleep and its accompaniment. Here, there was but the crackle of the burning wood, and the plashing of water, renewed from minute to minute, till it became a fearful doubt—a passing doubt, but very fearful—whether his ear could become accustomed to the dreary sound, or whether his self-command was to be overthrown by so small an agency as this. From such a question he turned, by an effort, to consider other evils of his condition. It was a cruel aggravation of his sufferings to have his servant shut up with him. It imposed upon him some duties, it was true; and was, in so far, a good; but it also imposed most painful restraints. He had a strong persuasion that Bonaparte had not given up the pursuit of his supposed treasures, or the hope of mastering all his designs, real or imaginary; and he suspected that Mars Plaisir would be left long enough with him to receive the overflowings of his confidence (so hard to restrain in such circumstances as theirs!) and would then be tampered with by the agents of the First Consul. What was the nature and efficacy of their system of cross-examination, he knew; and he knew how nothing but ignorance could preserve poor Mars Plaisir from treachery. Here, therefore—here, in this cell, without resource, without companionship, without solace of any kind, it would be necessary, perhaps, through long months, to set a watch upon his lips, as strict as when he dined with the French Commissaries at Government-House, or when he was weighing the Report of the Central Assembly, regarding a Colonial constitution. For the reserve which his function had imposed upon him at home, he had been repaid by a thousand enjoyments. Now, no more sympathy, no more ministering from his family!—no more could he open to Margot his glory in Placide, his hopes from Denis, his cares for his other children, to uphold them under a pressure of influences which were too strong for them; no more could he look upon the friendly face of Henri, and unbosom himself to him in sun or shade; no more could he look upon the results of his labours in the merchant fleets on the sea, and the harvests burdening the plains! No more could happy voices, from a thousand homes, come to him in blessing and in joy! No more music, no more sunshine, no more fragrance; no more certainty, either, that others were now enjoying what he had parted with for ever! Not only might he never hear what had ensued upon the “truce till August,” but he must carefully conceal his anxiety to hear—his belief that there were such tidings to be told. In the presence of Mars Plaisir, he could scarcely even think of that which lay heaviest at his heart—of what Henri had done, in consequence of his abduction—of his poor oppressed blacks—whether they had sunk under the blow for the time, and so delayed the arrival of that freedom which they must at length achieve; or whether they had risen, like a multitudinous family of bereaved children, to work out the designs of the father who had been snatched from them. Of all this there could be no speech (scarcely a speculation in his secret soul) in the presence of one who must, if he heard, almost necessarily become a traitor. And then his family! From them he had vanished; and he must live as if they had vanished from his very memory. They were, doubtless, all eye, all ear: for ever watching to know what had become of him. For their personal safety, now that he was helpless, he trusted there was little cause for fear; but what peace of mind could they enjoy, while in ignorance of his fate? He fancied them imploring of their guardians tidings of him, in vain; questioning the four winds for whispers of his retreat; pacing every cemetery for a grave that might be his; gazing up at the loopholes of every prison, with a fear that he might be there; keeping awake at midnight, for the chance of a visit from his injured spirit; or seeking sleep, in the dim hope that he might be revealed to them in a dream. And all this must be but a dim dream to him, except in such an hour as this—a chance hour when no eye was upon him! The reconciling process was slow—but it was no less sure than usual.

“Be it so!” was, as usual, his conclusion—“Be it so! for as long as Heaven pleases—though that cannot be long. The one consolation of being buried alive, soul or body—or both, as in this case—is, that release is sure and near. This poor fellow’s spirit will die within him, and his body will then be let out—the consummation most necessary for him. And my body, already failing, will soon die, and my work be done. To die, and to die thus, is part of my work; and I will do it as willingly as in the field. Hundreds, thousands of my race have died for slavery, cooped up, pining, suffocated in slave-ships, in the wastes of the sea. Hundreds and thousands have thus died, without knowing the end for which they perished. What is it, then, for one to die of cold in the wastes of the mountains, for freedom, and knowing that freedom is the end of his life and his death? What is it? If I groan, if I shrink, may my race curse me, and my God cast me out!”

A warmer glow than the dying embers could give passed through his frame; and he presently slept, basking till morning in dreams of his sunny home.

Chapter Forty One.Half Free.Autumn faded, and the long winter of the Jura came on, without bringing changes of any importance to the prisoners—unless it were that, in addition to the wood-fire, which scarcely kept up the warmth of life in their bodies, they were allowed a stove. This indulgence was not in answer to any request of theirs. Toussaint early discovered that Rubaut would grant nothing that was asked for, but liked to bestow a favour spontaneously, now and then. This was a clear piece of instruction; by which, however, Mars Plaisir was slow to profit. Notwithstanding his master’s explanations and commands, and his own promises, fervently given when they were alone, he could never see the Commandant without pouting out all his complaints, and asking for everything relating to external comfort that his master had been accustomed to at Pongaudin. A stove, not being among the articles of furniture there, was not asked for; and thus this one comfort was not intercepted by being named. Books were another. Mars Plaisir had been taught to read and write in one of the public schools in the island; but his tastes did not lie in the direction of literature; and he rarely remembered that he possessed the accomplishment of being able to read, except when circumstances called upon him to boast of his country and his race. Books were therefore brought, two at a time, with the Commandant’s compliments; two at a time, for the rule of treating the prisoners as equals was exactly observed. This civility brought great comfort to Toussaint—the greatest except solitude. He always chose to suppose that Mars Plaisir was reading when he held a book: and he put a book into his hands daily when he opened his own. Many an hour did he thus obtain for the indulgence of his meditations; and while his servant was wondering how he could see to read by the dim light which came in at the window—more dim each day, as the snow-heap there rose higher—or by the fitful flame of the fire, his thoughts were far away, beating about amidst the struggle then probably going on in Saint Domingo; or exploring, with wonder and sorrow, the narrow and darkened passages of that mind which he had long taken to be the companion of his own; or springing forward into the future, and reposing in serene faith on the condition of his people when, at length, they should possess their own souls, and have learned to use their human privileges. Many a time did Mars Plaisir, looking off from a volume of the Philosophical Dictionary, which yielded no amusement to him, watch the bright smile on his master’s face, and suppose it owing to the jokes in the Racine he held, when that smile arose from pictures formed within of the future senates, schools, courts, and virtuous homes, in which his dusky brethren would hereafter be exercising and securing their lights. Not ungratefully did he use his books the while. He read and enjoyed; but his greatest obligations to them were for the suggestions they afforded, the guidance they offered to his thoughts to regions amidst which his prison and his sufferings were forgotten.At times, the servant so far broke through his habitual deference for his master as to fling down his book upon the table, and then beg pardon, saying that they should both go mad if they did not make some noise. When he saw the snow falling perpetually, noiseless as the dew, he longed for the sheeted rains of his own winter, splashing as if to drown the land. Here, there was only the eternal drip, drip, which his ear was weary of months ago.“Cannot you fancy it rain-drops falling from a palm-leaf? Shut your eyes and try,” said his master.It would not do. Mars Plaisir complained that the Commandant had promised that this drip should cease when the frosts of winter came.“So it might, but for our stove. But then our ears would have been frozen up, too. We should have been underground by this time—which they say we are not now, though it is hard, sometimes to believe them. However, we shall hear something by-and-by that will drown the drip. Among these mountains, there must be thunder. In the summer, Mars Plaisir, we may hear thunder.”“In the summer!” exclaimed Mars Plaisir, covering his 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 the wide shade of the banyan, He made a tent for the blacks. When He filled the air with the scent of the cinnamon and the cacao, was it not for the blacks to enjoy the fragrance? Has He not given them music? Has he not given them love and a home? What has He not given them? Let the whites think of us as they will! They shall be welcome to a share of what God gave the blacks, though they return us nothing better than wet wood, to warm us among their snows.”“It is true,” said Mars Plaisir, his complacency completely restored—“God thinks nothing too good for the blacks. I will tell the First Consul so, if—”“The First Consul would rather hear something else from you: and you know, Mars Plaisir, the whites laugh at us for our boastings. However, tell the First Consul what you will.”Again was Mars Plaisir silenced, and his countenance confused. Perpetually, from this hour did he drop words which showed an expectation of seeing the First Consul—words which were never noticed by his master. Every time that the increasing weakness and pain under which Toussaint suffered forced themselves on his servant’s observation—whenever the skeleton hands were rubbed in his own, to relieve cramps and restore warmth; or the friendly office was returned, in spite of the shame and confusion of the servant at finding himself thus served—with every drift of snow which blocked up the window—and every relaxation of frost, which only increased the worse evil of the damp—Mars Plaisir avowed or muttered the persuasive things he would say to the First Consul.Toussaint felt too much sympathy to indulge in much contempt for his companion. He, too, found it hard to be tortured with cramps, and wrung by spasms—to enjoy no respite from vexations of body and spirit. He, too, found the passage to the grave weary and dreary. And, as for an interview with Bonaparte, for how long had this been his first desire! How distinctly had it of late been the reserve of his hope! Reminding himself, too, of the effects on the wretched of an indefinite hope, such as the unsettled mind and manners of his servant convinced him, more and more, had been held out—he could not, in the very midst of scenes of increasing folly and passion, despise poor Mars Plaisir. He mistrusted him, however, and with a more irksome mistrust continually, while he became aware that Mars Plaisir was in the habit of lamenting Saint Domingo chiefly for the sake of naming Christophe and Dessalines, the companies in the mornes, the fever among the whites, and whatever might be most likely to draw his master into conversation on the hopes and resources of the blacks. He became more and more convinced that the weakness of his companion was practised upon, and possibly his attachment to his master, by promises of good to both, on condition of information furnished. He was nearly certain that he had once heard the door of the cell closed gently, as he was beginning to awake, in the middle of the night; and he was quite sure that he one day saw Mars Plaisir burn a note, as he replenished the fire, while he thought his master was busy reading. Not even these mysterious proceedings could make Toussaint feel anything worse than sorrowing pity for Mars Plaisir.The Commandant had ceased to visit his prisoners. During the rest of the winter, he never came. He sent books occasionally, but less frequently. The supply of firewood was gradually diminished; and so was the quantity of food. The ailments of the prisoners were aggravated, from day-to-day; and if the Commandant had favoured them with his presence, he would have believed that he saw two dusky shadows amidst the gloom of their cell, rather than men.One morning, Toussaint awoke, slowly and with difficulty, from a sleep which appeared to have been strangely sound for one who could not move a limb without pain, and who rarely, therefore, slept for many minutes together. It must have been strangely long, too; for the light was as strong as it had ever been at noon in this dim cell. Before he rose, Toussaint felt that there was sunshine in the air; and the thought that spring was come, sent a gleam of pleasure through his spirit. It was true enough. As he stood before the window, something like a shadow might be seen on the floor. No sky—not a shred the breadth of his hand—was to be seen. For six months past, he had behold neither cloud, nor star, nor the flight of a bird. But, casting a glance up to the perpendicular rock opposite, he saw that it faintly reflected sunshine. He saw, moreover, something white moving—some living creature upon this rock. It was a young kid, standing upon a point or ledge imperceptible below—by its action, browsing upon some vegetation which could not be seen so far-off.“Mars Plaisir! Mars Plaisir!” cried Toussaint. “Spring is come! The world is alive again, even here. Mars Plaisir!” There was no answer.“He has slept deeply and long, like myself,” said he, going, however, into the darker corner of the cell where Mars Plaisir’s bed was laid. The straw was there, but no one was on it. The stove was warm, but there was no fire in the fireplace. The small chest allowed for the prisoners’ clothes was gone—everything was gone but the two volumes in which they had been reading the night before. Toussaint shook these books, to see if any note had been hidden in them. He explored them at the window, to discover any word of farewell that might be written on blank leaf or margin. There was none there; nor any scrap of paper hidden in the straw, or dropped upon the floor. Mars Plaisir was gone, and had left no token.“They drugged me—hence my long sleep,” thought Toussaint. “They knew the poor fellow’s weakness, and feared his saying too much, when it came to parting. I hope they will treat him well, for (thanks to my care for him!) he never betrayed me to them. I treated him well in taking care that he should not betray me to them, while they yet so far believed that he might as to release him. It is all well; and I am alone! It is almost like being in the free air. I am almost as free as yonder kid on the rock. My wife! my children! I may name you all now—name you in my thoughts and in my song. Placide! are you rousing the nations to ask the tyrant where I am? Henri! have you buried the dead whites yet in Saint Domingo? and have your rains done weeping the treason of those dead against freedom? Let it be so, Henri! Your rains have washed out the blood of this treason; and your dews have brought forth the verdure of your plains, to cover the graves of the guilty and the fallen. Take this lesson home, Henri! Forget—not me, for you must remember me in carrying on my work—but forget how you lost me. Believe that I fell in the mornes, and that you buried me there; believe this, rather than shed one drop of blood for me. Learn of God, not of Bonaparte, how to bless our race. Poison their souls no more with blood. The sword and the fever have done their work, and tamed your tyrants. As for the rest, act with God for our people! Give them harvests to their hands; and open the universe of knowledge before their eyes. Give them rest and stillness in the summer heats: and shelter them in virtuous and busy homes from the sheeted rains. It is enough that blood was the price of freedom—a heavy price, which has been paid. Let there be no such barter for vengeance. My children, hear me! Wherever you are—in the court of our tyrant, or on the wide sea, or on the mountain-top, where the very storms cannot make themselves heard so high—yet let your father’s voice reach you from his living grave! No vengeance! Freedom—freedom to the last drop of blood in the veins of our race! Let our island be left to the wild herds and the reptiles, rather than be the habitation of slaves: but if you have established freedom there, it is holy ground, and no vengeance must profane it. If you love me and my race, you must forgive my murderers. Yes, murderers,” he pursued in thought, after dwelling a while on the images of home and familiar faces, “murderers they already are, doubtless, in intent. I should have been sent hence long ago, but for the hope of reaching my counsels through Mars Plaisir. From the eyes of the world I have already disappeared; and nothing hinders the riddance of me now. Feeble as I am, the waiting for death may yet be tedious. If tedious for him who has this day done with me, how tedious for me, who have done with him and with all the world!—done with them, except as to the affections with which one may look back upon them from the clear heights on the other side of the dark valley. That I should pine and shiver long in the shadows of that valley would be tedious to him who drove me there before my time, and to me. He has never submitted to what is tedious, and he will not now.”The door of the cell was here softly opened, a head showed itself, and immediately disappeared. Toussaint silently watched the kid, as it moved from point to point on the face of the rock: and it was with some sorrow that he at last saw it spring away. Just then, Bellines entered with the usual miserable breakfast. Toussaint requested fire, to which Bellines assented. He then asked to have the window opened, that the air of the spring morning might enter. Bellines shrugged his shoulders, and observed that the air of these March mornings was sharp. The prisoner persisted, however; and with the fresh air, there came in upon him a fresh set of thoughts. Calling Bellines back, he desired, in a tone of authority, to see the Commandant.It was strange to him—he wondered at himself on finding his mind filled with a new enterprise—with the idea of making a last appeal to Rubaut for freedom—an appeal to his justice, not to his clemency. With the chill breeze, there had entered the tinkle of the cow-bell, and the voices of children singing. These called up a vivid picture of the valley, as he had seen it on entering his prison—the small green level, the gushing stream, the sunny rock, the girl with her distaff, tending the goats. He thought he could show his title to, at least, a free sight of the face of nature; and the impulse did not immediately die. During the morning, he listened for footsteps without. After some hours, he smiled at his own hope, and nearly ceased to listen. The face of the rock grow dim; the wind rose, and sleet was driven in at the window: so that he was compelled to use his stiff and aching limbs in climbing up to shut it. No one had remembered, or had chosen to make his fire; and he was shivering, as in an ague fit, when, late in the afternoon, Bellines brought in his second meal, and some fuel.“The Commandant?”“The Commandant is not in the castle. He is absent to-day.”“Where?”“They say the First Consul has business with him.”“With me rather,” thought Toussaint. He said aloud, “Then he is gone with my servant?”“May be so. They went the same road; but that road leads to many places.”“The road from Pontarlier?”“Any road—all our roads here lead to many places,” said Bellines, as he went out.“Poor Mars Plaisir!” thought Toussaint, as he carefully placed the wood so as to tempt the feeble blaze. “Our road has seemed the same for the last eight months; but it leads to widely different points. I rejoice for him that his has parted off to-day; and for myself, though it shows that I am near the end of mine. Is it this soldier, with comrades, who is to end me? Or is it this supper, better drugged than that of last night? Or will they wait to see whether solitude will kill a busy, ambitious Commander-in-Chief, as they think me?”

Autumn faded, and the long winter of the Jura came on, without bringing changes of any importance to the prisoners—unless it were that, in addition to the wood-fire, which scarcely kept up the warmth of life in their bodies, they were allowed a stove. This indulgence was not in answer to any request of theirs. Toussaint early discovered that Rubaut would grant nothing that was asked for, but liked to bestow a favour spontaneously, now and then. This was a clear piece of instruction; by which, however, Mars Plaisir was slow to profit. Notwithstanding his master’s explanations and commands, and his own promises, fervently given when they were alone, he could never see the Commandant without pouting out all his complaints, and asking for everything relating to external comfort that his master had been accustomed to at Pongaudin. A stove, not being among the articles of furniture there, was not asked for; and thus this one comfort was not intercepted by being named. Books were another. Mars Plaisir had been taught to read and write in one of the public schools in the island; but his tastes did not lie in the direction of literature; and he rarely remembered that he possessed the accomplishment of being able to read, except when circumstances called upon him to boast of his country and his race. Books were therefore brought, two at a time, with the Commandant’s compliments; two at a time, for the rule of treating the prisoners as equals was exactly observed. This civility brought great comfort to Toussaint—the greatest except solitude. He always chose to suppose that Mars Plaisir was reading when he held a book: and he put a book into his hands daily when he opened his own. Many an hour did he thus obtain for the indulgence of his meditations; and while his servant was wondering how he could see to read by the dim light which came in at the window—more dim each day, as the snow-heap there rose higher—or by the fitful flame of the fire, his thoughts were far away, beating about amidst the struggle then probably going on in Saint Domingo; or exploring, with wonder and sorrow, the narrow and darkened passages of that mind which he had long taken to be the companion of his own; or springing forward into the future, and reposing in serene faith on the condition of his people when, at length, they should possess their own souls, and have learned to use their human privileges. Many a time did Mars Plaisir, looking off from a volume of the Philosophical Dictionary, which yielded no amusement to him, watch the bright smile on his master’s face, and suppose it owing to the jokes in the Racine he held, when that smile arose from pictures formed within of the future senates, schools, courts, and virtuous homes, in which his dusky brethren would hereafter be exercising and securing their lights. Not ungratefully did he use his books the while. He read and enjoyed; but his greatest obligations to them were for the suggestions they afforded, the guidance they offered to his thoughts to regions amidst which his prison and his sufferings were forgotten.

At times, the servant so far broke through his habitual deference for his master as to fling down his book upon the table, and then beg pardon, saying that they should both go mad if they did not make some noise. When he saw the snow falling perpetually, noiseless as the dew, he longed for the sheeted rains of his own winter, splashing as if to drown the land. Here, there was only the eternal drip, drip, which his ear was weary of months ago.

“Cannot you fancy it rain-drops falling from a palm-leaf? Shut your eyes and try,” said his master.

It would not do. Mars Plaisir complained that the Commandant had promised that this drip should cease when the frosts of winter came.

“So it might, but for our stove. But then our ears would have been frozen up, too. We should have been underground by this time—which they say we are not now, though it is hard, sometimes to believe them. However, we shall hear something by-and-by that will drown the drip. Among these mountains, there must be thunder. In the summer, Mars Plaisir, we may hear thunder.”

“In the summer!” exclaimed Mars Plaisir, covering his 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 the wide shade of the banyan, He made a tent for the blacks. When He filled the air with the scent of the cinnamon and the cacao, was it not for the blacks to enjoy the fragrance? Has He not given them music? Has he not given them love and a home? What has He not given them? Let the whites think of us as they will! They shall be welcome to a share of what God gave the blacks, though they return us nothing better than wet wood, to warm us among their snows.”

“It is true,” said Mars Plaisir, his complacency completely restored—“God thinks nothing too good for the blacks. I will tell the First Consul so, if—”

“The First Consul would rather hear something else from you: and you know, Mars Plaisir, the whites laugh at us for our boastings. However, tell the First Consul what you will.”

Again was Mars Plaisir silenced, and his countenance confused. Perpetually, from this hour did he drop words which showed an expectation of seeing the First Consul—words which were never noticed by his master. Every time that the increasing weakness and pain under which Toussaint suffered forced themselves on his servant’s observation—whenever the skeleton hands were rubbed in his own, to relieve cramps and restore warmth; or the friendly office was returned, in spite of the shame and confusion of the servant at finding himself thus served—with every drift of snow which blocked up the window—and every relaxation of frost, which only increased the worse evil of the damp—Mars Plaisir avowed or muttered the persuasive things he would say to the First Consul.

Toussaint felt too much sympathy to indulge in much contempt for his companion. He, too, found it hard to be tortured with cramps, and wrung by spasms—to enjoy no respite from vexations of body and spirit. He, too, found the passage to the grave weary and dreary. And, as for an interview with Bonaparte, for how long had this been his first desire! How distinctly had it of late been the reserve of his hope! Reminding himself, too, of the effects on the wretched of an indefinite hope, such as the unsettled mind and manners of his servant convinced him, more and more, had been held out—he could not, in the very midst of scenes of increasing folly and passion, despise poor Mars Plaisir. He mistrusted him, however, and with a more irksome mistrust continually, while he became aware that Mars Plaisir was in the habit of lamenting Saint Domingo chiefly for the sake of naming Christophe and Dessalines, the companies in the mornes, the fever among the whites, and whatever might be most likely to draw his master into conversation on the hopes and resources of the blacks. He became more and more convinced that the weakness of his companion was practised upon, and possibly his attachment to his master, by promises of good to both, on condition of information furnished. He was nearly certain that he had once heard the door of the cell closed gently, as he was beginning to awake, in the middle of the night; and he was quite sure that he one day saw Mars Plaisir burn a note, as he replenished the fire, while he thought his master was busy reading. Not even these mysterious proceedings could make Toussaint feel anything worse than sorrowing pity for Mars Plaisir.

The Commandant had ceased to visit his prisoners. During the rest of the winter, he never came. He sent books occasionally, but less frequently. The supply of firewood was gradually diminished; and so was the quantity of food. The ailments of the prisoners were aggravated, from day-to-day; and if the Commandant had favoured them with his presence, he would have believed that he saw two dusky shadows amidst the gloom of their cell, rather than men.

One morning, Toussaint awoke, slowly and with difficulty, from a sleep which appeared to have been strangely sound for one who could not move a limb without pain, and who rarely, therefore, slept for many minutes together. It must have been strangely long, too; for the light was as strong as it had ever been at noon in this dim cell. Before he rose, Toussaint felt that there was sunshine in the air; and the thought that spring was come, sent a gleam of pleasure through his spirit. It was true enough. As he stood before the window, something like a shadow might be seen on the floor. No sky—not a shred the breadth of his hand—was to be seen. For six months past, he had behold neither cloud, nor star, nor the flight of a bird. But, casting a glance up to the perpendicular rock opposite, he saw that it faintly reflected sunshine. He saw, moreover, something white moving—some living creature upon this rock. It was a young kid, standing upon a point or ledge imperceptible below—by its action, browsing upon some vegetation which could not be seen so far-off.

“Mars Plaisir! Mars Plaisir!” cried Toussaint. “Spring is come! The world is alive again, even here. Mars Plaisir!” There was no answer.

“He has slept deeply and long, like myself,” said he, going, however, into the darker corner of the cell where Mars Plaisir’s bed was laid. The straw was there, but no one was on it. The stove was warm, but there was no fire in the fireplace. The small chest allowed for the prisoners’ clothes was gone—everything was gone but the two volumes in which they had been reading the night before. Toussaint shook these books, to see if any note had been hidden in them. He explored them at the window, to discover any word of farewell that might be written on blank leaf or margin. There was none there; nor any scrap of paper hidden in the straw, or dropped upon the floor. Mars Plaisir was gone, and had left no token.

“They drugged me—hence my long sleep,” thought Toussaint. “They knew the poor fellow’s weakness, and feared his saying too much, when it came to parting. I hope they will treat him well, for (thanks to my care for him!) he never betrayed me to them. I treated him well in taking care that he should not betray me to them, while they yet so far believed that he might as to release him. It is all well; and I am alone! It is almost like being in the free air. I am almost as free as yonder kid on the rock. My wife! my children! I may name you all now—name you in my thoughts and in my song. Placide! are you rousing the nations to ask the tyrant where I am? Henri! have you buried the dead whites yet in Saint Domingo? and have your rains done weeping the treason of those dead against freedom? Let it be so, Henri! Your rains have washed out the blood of this treason; and your dews have brought forth the verdure of your plains, to cover the graves of the guilty and the fallen. Take this lesson home, Henri! Forget—not me, for you must remember me in carrying on my work—but forget how you lost me. Believe that I fell in the mornes, and that you buried me there; believe this, rather than shed one drop of blood for me. Learn of God, not of Bonaparte, how to bless our race. Poison their souls no more with blood. The sword and the fever have done their work, and tamed your tyrants. As for the rest, act with God for our people! Give them harvests to their hands; and open the universe of knowledge before their eyes. Give them rest and stillness in the summer heats: and shelter them in virtuous and busy homes from the sheeted rains. It is enough that blood was the price of freedom—a heavy price, which has been paid. Let there be no such barter for vengeance. My children, hear me! Wherever you are—in the court of our tyrant, or on the wide sea, or on the mountain-top, where the very storms cannot make themselves heard so high—yet let your father’s voice reach you from his living grave! No vengeance! Freedom—freedom to the last drop of blood in the veins of our race! Let our island be left to the wild herds and the reptiles, rather than be the habitation of slaves: but if you have established freedom there, it is holy ground, and no vengeance must profane it. If you love me and my race, you must forgive my murderers. Yes, murderers,” he pursued in thought, after dwelling a while on the images of home and familiar faces, “murderers they already are, doubtless, in intent. I should have been sent hence long ago, but for the hope of reaching my counsels through Mars Plaisir. From the eyes of the world I have already disappeared; and nothing hinders the riddance of me now. Feeble as I am, the waiting for death may yet be tedious. If tedious for him who has this day done with me, how tedious for me, who have done with him and with all the world!—done with them, except as to the affections with which one may look back upon them from the clear heights on the other side of the dark valley. That I should pine and shiver long in the shadows of that valley would be tedious to him who drove me there before my time, and to me. He has never submitted to what is tedious, and he will not now.”

The door of the cell was here softly opened, a head showed itself, and immediately disappeared. Toussaint silently watched the kid, as it moved from point to point on the face of the rock: and it was with some sorrow that he at last saw it spring away. Just then, Bellines entered with the usual miserable breakfast. Toussaint requested fire, to which Bellines assented. He then asked to have the window opened, that the air of the spring morning might enter. Bellines shrugged his shoulders, and observed that the air of these March mornings was sharp. The prisoner persisted, however; and with the fresh air, there came in upon him a fresh set of thoughts. Calling Bellines back, he desired, in a tone of authority, to see the Commandant.

It was strange to him—he wondered at himself on finding his mind filled with a new enterprise—with the idea of making a last appeal to Rubaut for freedom—an appeal to his justice, not to his clemency. With the chill breeze, there had entered the tinkle of the cow-bell, and the voices of children singing. These called up a vivid picture of the valley, as he had seen it on entering his prison—the small green level, the gushing stream, the sunny rock, the girl with her distaff, tending the goats. He thought he could show his title to, at least, a free sight of the face of nature; and the impulse did not immediately die. During the morning, he listened for footsteps without. After some hours, he smiled at his own hope, and nearly ceased to listen. The face of the rock grow dim; the wind rose, and sleet was driven in at the window: so that he was compelled to use his stiff and aching limbs in climbing up to shut it. No one had remembered, or had chosen to make his fire; and he was shivering, as in an ague fit, when, late in the afternoon, Bellines brought in his second meal, and some fuel.

“The Commandant?”

“The Commandant is not in the castle. He is absent to-day.”

“Where?”

“They say the First Consul has business with him.”

“With me rather,” thought Toussaint. He said aloud, “Then he is gone with my servant?”

“May be so. They went the same road; but that road leads to many places.”

“The road from Pontarlier?”

“Any road—all our roads here lead to many places,” said Bellines, as he went out.

“Poor Mars Plaisir!” thought Toussaint, as he carefully placed the wood so as to tempt the feeble blaze. “Our road has seemed the same for the last eight months; but it leads to widely different points. I rejoice for him that his has parted off to-day; and for myself, though it shows that I am near the end of mine. Is it this soldier, with comrades, who is to end me? Or is it this supper, better drugged than that of last night? Or will they wait to see whether solitude will kill a busy, ambitious Commander-in-Chief, as they think me?”

Chapter Forty Two.Free.Day after day passed on, and the prisoner found no change in his condition—as far, at least, as it depended on his gaolers. He was more ill as he became enveloped in the damps of the spring; and he grew more and more sensible of the comfort of being alone. Death by violence, however, did not come.He did not give over his concern for Mars Plaisir because he was glad of his absence. He inquired occasionally for the Commandant, hoping that, if he could see Rubaut, he might learn whether his servant was still a prisoner, and whether his release from his cell had been for freedom, or for a worse lot than he had left behind. There was no learning from Bellines, however, whether the Commandant had returned to the fortress, or who was his lieutenant, if he had not. In the middle of April, the doubt was settled by the appearance of Rubaut himself in the cell. He was civil—unusually so—but declared himself unable to give any information about Mars Plaisir. He had nothing more to do with his prisoners when they were once taken out of his charge. He had always business enough upon his hands to prevent his occupying himself with things and people that were gone by. He had delivered Mars Plaisir into proper care; and that was the last he knew of him. The man was well at that time—as well as usual, and pleased enough to be in the open air again. Rubaut could remember no more concerning him—in fact, had not thought of him again, from that day to the present.“And this is the kind of answer that you would give concerning me, if my sons should arrive hither in search of me some days after my grave had been closed?”“Come, come! no foreboding!” said Rubaut. “Foreboding is bad.”“If my sons should present themselves—” proceeded Toussaint—“They will not come here—they cannot come here,” interrupted Rubaut. “No one knows that you are here, but some three or four who will never tell.”“How,” thought Toussaint, “have they secured Mars Plaisir, that he shall never tell?” For the poor man’s sake, however, he would not ask this aloud.Rubaut continued: “The reason why we cannot have the pleasure of giving you the range of the fortress is, that the First Consul thinks it necessary to keep secret the place of your abode—for the good of the colony, as he says. With one of our own countrymen, this seclusion might not be necessary, as the good people of the village could hardly distinguish features from the distance at which they are; and they have no telescopes—no idea of playing the spy upon us, as we can upon them. They cannot distinguish features, so high up—”“But they could complexion.”“Exactly so; and it might get abroad that some one of your colour was here.”“And if it should get abroad, and some one of my sons, or my wife should come, your answer would be that you remember nothing—that you cannot charge your memory with persons and things that are gone by—that you have had prisoners of all complexions—that some have lived and some have died—and that you have something else to do than to remember what became of each. I hope, however, and (as it would be for the advantage of the First Consul) I believe, that you would have the complaisance to show them my grave.”“Come, come! no foreboding! Foreboding is bad,” repeated Rubaut.Toussaint smiled, and said—“What other employment do you afford me than that of looking into the past and future, in order to avoid the present? If, turning from the sickening view which the past presents of the treachery of your race to mine, of the abuse of my brotherly trust in him by which your ruler has afflicted our hearts if, turning from this mournful past, I look the other way, what do I see before me but the open grave?”“You are out of spirits,” said Rubaut, building up the fire.“You wear well, however. You must have been very strong in your best days. You wear extremely well.”“I still live; and that I do so is because the sun of my own climate, and the strength of soul of my best days, shine and glow through me now, quenching in part even these damps. But I am old, and every day heaps years on me. However, I am as willing as you that my looking forward should be for others than myself. I might be able to forebode for France, and for its ruler.”Rubaut folded his arms, and leaned, as if anxious to listen, against the wall beside the fire; but it was so wet that he quickly shifted his position; still, however, keeping his eyes fixed on his prisoner.“And what would you forebode for France, and for her ruler?” he asked.“That my country will never again be hers. Her retribution is as sure as her tyranny has been great. She may send out fleet after fleet, each bearing an army; but the spirit of freedom will be too strong for them all. Their bodies will poison the air, and choke the sea, and the names of their commanders will, one after another, sink in disgrace, before they will again make slaves of my people in Saint Domingo. How stands the name of Leclerc at this moment in France?”“Leclerc is dead,” said Rubaut; repenting, the next moment, that he had said so much. Toussaint saw this by his countenance, and inquired no further.“He is dead! and twenty thousand Frenchmen with him, who might at this hour have been enjoying at home the natural wealth of my country, the fruits of our industry. The time was when I thought your ruler and I—the ruler, in alliance with him, of my race in Saint Domingo—were brothers in soul, as we were apparently in duty and in fortune. Brothers in soul we were not, as it has been the heaviest grief of my life to learn. I spurn brotherhood of soul with one whose ambition has been for himself. Brothers in duty we were; and, if we should yet be brothers in fortune—if he should fall into the hands of a strong foe—But you are saying in your heart, ‘No foreboding! Foreboding is bad!’”Rubaut smiled, and said foreboding was only bad for the spirits; and the First Consul’s spirits were not likely to be affected by anything that could be said at Joux. To predict bad fortune for him was like looking for the sun to be put out at noonday; it might pass the time, but would not dim the sun.“So was it said of me,” replied the prisoner, “and with the more reason, because I made no enemies. My enemies have not been of my own making. Your ruler is making enemies on every hand; and alas! for him if he lives to meet the hour of retribution! If he, like myself, should fall into the power of a strong foe—if he should pass his remaining days imprisoned on a rock, may he find more peace than I should dare look for, if I had his soul!”“There is not a braver man in Europe, or the Indies either, than the First Consul.”“Brave towards foes without and sufferings to come. But bravery gives no help against enemies harboured within, and evils fixed in the past. What will his bravery avail against the images of France corrupted, of Europe outraged, of the blacks betrayed and oppressed—of the godlike power which was put into his hands abused to the purposes of the devil!”“But perhaps he would not view his affairs as you do.”“Then would his bravery avail him no better. If he should be so blind as to see nothing higher and better than his own acts, then will he see no higher nor better hope than he has lost. Then will he suffer and die under the slow torment of personal mortifications and regrets.”“You say you are sinking under your reverses. You say you are slowly dying.”“I am. I shall die of the sickening and pining of sense and limb—of the wasting of bone and muscle. Day by day is my eye more dim, and my right arm more feeble. But I have never complained of evils that the bravery you speak of would not meet. Have I ever said that you have touched my soul?”Rubaut saw the fire in his eye, glanced at his emaciated hand, and felt that this was true. He could bear the conversation no longer, now that no disclosures that could serve the First Consul seemed likely to be made.“You are going?” said Toussaint.“Yes. I looked in to-day because I am about to leave the fortress for a few days.”“If you see the First Consul, tell him what I have now said; and add that if, like him, I had used my power for myself, he would have had a power over me which he has not now. I should not then have been here—nay, you must hear me—I should not then have been here, crushed beneath his hand; I should have been on the throne of Saint Domingo—flattered, as he is, by assurances of my glory and security—but crushed by a heavier weight than that of his hand; by his image, as that of one betrayed in my infidelity to his country and nation. Tell him this; tell him that I perish willingly, if this consequence of my fidelity to France may be a plea for justice to my race.”“How people have misrepresented you to me!” said Rubaut, bustling about the cell, and opening the door to call Bellines. “They told me you were very silent—rarely spoke.”“That was true when my duty was to think,” said Toussaint. “To-day my duty has been to speak. Remember that yours, in fidelity to your ruler, is to repeat to him what I say.”“More wood, Bellines,” said Rubaut, going to the door, to give further directions in a low voice. Returning, he said, with some hurry of manner, that, as he was to be absent for two or three days, he had sent for such a supply of wood and flambeaux as might last some time. More books should also be brought.“When shall we meet again?” asked Toussaint.“I don’t know. Indeed I do not know,” said the Commandant, looking at his watch by the firelight. His prisoner saw that his hands trembled, and that he walked with some irresolution to the door.“Au revoir!” said Toussaint.Rubaut did not reply, but went out, leaving the door standing wide, and apparently no one to guard it.Toussaint’s heart beat at the thought that this might give him one more opportunity of being abroad in the daylight, perhaps in the sun! He rose to make the attempt; but he was exhausted by the conversation he had held—the first for so long! His aching limbs failed him; and he sank down on his bed, from which he did not rise till long after Bellines had laid down his loads, and left the place.The prisoner rose, at length, to walk, as he did many times in the day, from corner to corner of his cell. At the first turn, by the door, he struck his foot against something which he upset. It was a pitcher of water, which, with a loaf of bread, had been put in that unusual place. The sight was as distinct in its signification as a yawning grave. His door was to open upon him no more. He was not again to see a human face. The Commandant was to be absent awhile, and, on returning, to find his prisoner dead.He used all means that he could devise to ascertain whether it were indeed so. He called Bellines from the door, in the way which Bellines had never failed to reply to since the departure of Mars Plaisir. Bellines did not come. He sang aloud, as he had never before been allowed to sing unchecked, since he entered the fortress. He now sang unchecked. The hour of the afternoon meal passed, and no one came. The evening closed, and no bolt had been drawn. The case was clear.The prisoner now and then felt a moment’s surprise at experiencing so little recoil from such a fate. He was scarcely conscious even of repugnance. His tranquillity was doubtless owing, in part, to his having long contemplated death in this place as certain; to life having now little left to make its continuance desirable; and to his knowing himself to be so reduced, that the struggle could not be very long. But he himself believed his composure to be owing to another cause than any of these.“He who appointed me to the work of such a life as mine,” thought the dying man, “is making its close easy to His servant. I would willingly have suffered to the extremity of His will: but my work is done; men’s eyes are no longer upon me; I am alone with Him; and He is pleased to let me enter already upon my everlasting peace. If Father Laxabon were here, would he now say, as he has often said, and as most men say, that, looking back upon life from its close, it appears short as the time of the early rains? Instead of this, how long appear the sixty years that I have lived! How long, how weary now teems the life when I was a slave—though much was done, and it was the schooling of my soul for the work preparing for my hand. My Margot! my children! how quietly did we then live, as if no change were ever to come, and we were to sit before our door at Breda every evening, till death should remove us, one by one! While I was composing my soul to patience by thought and by reading, how little did I dream that I was so becoming prepared to free my race, to reign, and then to die of cold and hunger, such as the meanest slave never knows! Then the next eight years of toil—they seem longer than all that went before. Doubtless they were lengthened to me, to make my weak powers equal to the greatness of my task; for every day of conducting war, and making laws, appeared to me stretched out into a year. These late seasons of reverse have passed over more rapidly, for their suffering has been less. While all, even to Henri, have pitied me during these latter years, they knew not that I was recovering the peace which I shall now no more lose. It is true that I erred, according to the common estimate of affairs, in not making myself a king, and separating my country from France, as France herself is compelling her to separate at last. It is true, I might now have been reigning there, instead of dying here; and, what is more worthy of meditation, my people might now have been laying aside their arms, and beginning a long career of peace. It might possibly have been so; but at what cost! Their career of freedom (if freedom it could then have been called) would have begun in treason and in murder; and the stain would have polluted my race for ever. Now, they will have freedom still—they cannot but have it, though it is delayed. And upon this freedom will rest the blessing of Heaven. We have not fought for dominion, nor for plunder; nor, as far as I could govern the passions of men, for revenge. We began our career of freedom in fidelity, in obedience, and in reverence towards the whites; and therefore may we take to ourselves the blessing of Him who made us to be free, and demands that we be so with clean hands and a pure heart. Therefore will the freedom of Saint Domingo be but the beginning of freedom to the negro race. Therefore may we hope that in this race will the spirit of Christianity appear more fully than it has yet shown itself among the proud whites—show itself in its gentleness, its fidelity, its disinterestedness, and its simple trust. The proud whites may scorn this hope, and point to the ignorance and the passions of my people, and say, ‘Is this your exhibition of the spirit of the Gospel?’ But not for this will we give up our hope. This ignorance, these passions, are natural to all men, and are in us aggravated and protracted by our slavery. Remove them by the discipline and the stimulus of freedom, begun in obedience to God and fidelity to men, and there remain the love that embraces all—the meek faith that can bear to be betrayed, but is ashamed to doubt—the generosity that can forgive offences seventy-and-seven times renewed—the simple, open, joyous spirit which marks such as are of the kingdom of heaven. Lord! I thank Thee that Thou hast made me the servant of this race!”Never, during the years of his lowliness, or the days of his grandeur, had Toussaint spent a brighter hour than now, while the spirit of prophecy (twin-angel with death) visited him, and showed him the realms of mind which were opening before his race—that countless host whose van he had himself led to the confines. This spirit whispered something of the immortality of his own name, hidden, lost as he was in his last hours.“Be it so!” thought he, “if my name can excite any to devotedness, or give to any the pleasure of being grateful. If my name live, the goodness of those who name it will be its life; for my true self-will not be in it. No one will the more know the real Toussaint. The weakness that was in me when I felt most strong, the reluctance when I appeared most ready, the acts of sin from which I was saved by accident alone, the divine constraint of circumstances to which my best deeds were owing—these things are between me and my God. If my name and my life are to be of use, I thank God that they exist; but this outward existence of them is nothing between Him and me. To me henceforward they no more belong than the name of Epaminondas, or the life of Tell. Man stands naked on the brink of the grave, his name stripped from him, and his deeds laid down as the property of the society he leaves behind. Let the name and deeds I now leave behind be a pride to generations yet to come—a more innocent pride than they have sometimes, alas! been to me. I have done with them.”Toussaint had often known what hunger was—in the mornes he had endured it almost to extremity. He now expected to suffer less from it than then, from being able to yield to the faintness and drowsiness which had then to be resisted. From time to time during his meditations, he felt its sensations visiting him, and felt them without fear or regret. He had eaten his loaf when first hungry, and had watched through the first night, hoping to sleep his long sleep the sooner, when his fire should at length be burned out. During the day, some faint sounds reached him from the valley—some tokens of the existence of men. During the two last nights of his life, his ear was kept awake only by the dropping of water—the old familiar sound—and the occasional stir of the brands upon the hearth. About midnight of the second night, he found he could sit up no longer. With trembling hands he laid on such pieces of wood as he could lift, lighted another flambeau, and lay down on his straw. He raised himself but once, hastily and dizzily in the dawn (dawn to him, but sunrise abroad). His ear had been reached by the song of the young goatherds, as they led their flock abroad into another valley. The prisoner had dreamed that it was his boy Denis, singing in the piazza at Pongaudin. As his dim eye recognised the place, by the flicker of the expiring flambeau, he smiled at his delusion, and sank back to sleep again.The Commandant was absent three days. On his return, he summoned Bellines, and said, in the presence of several soldiers—“How is the prisoner there?” pointing in the direction of Toussaint’s cell.“He has been very quiet this morning, sir.”“Very quiet? Do you suppose he is ill?”“He was as well as usual the last time I went to him.”“He has had plenty of everything, I suppose?”“Oh, yes, sir. Wood, candle, food, water—everything.”“Very well. Get lights, and I will visit him.”Lights were brought. A boy, who carried a lantern, shivered as he saw how ghastly Bellines’ face looked in the yellow gleam, in the dark vault on the way to the cell, and was not sorry to be told to stay behind, till called to light the Commandant back again.“Have you heard anything?” asked Rubaut of the soldier, in a low voice.“Not for many hours. There was a call or two, and some singing, just after you went; but nothing since.”“Hush! Listen!”They listened motionless for some time; but nothing was heard but the everlasting plash, which went on all around them.“Unbar the door, Bellines.”He did so, and held the door wide for the Commandant to enter. Rubaut stalked in, and straight up to the straw bed. He called the prisoner in a somewhat agitated voice, felt the hand, raised the head, and declared that he was gone. The candle was burned completely out. Rubaut turned to the hearth, carefully stirred the ashes, blew among them, and raised a spark.“You observe,” he said to Bellines; “his fire 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.

Day after day passed on, and the prisoner found no change in his condition—as far, at least, as it depended on his gaolers. He was more ill as he became enveloped in the damps of the spring; and he grew more and more sensible of the comfort of being alone. Death by violence, however, did not come.

He did not give over his concern for Mars Plaisir because he was glad of his absence. He inquired occasionally for the Commandant, hoping that, if he could see Rubaut, he might learn whether his servant was still a prisoner, and whether his release from his cell had been for freedom, or for a worse lot than he had left behind. There was no learning from Bellines, however, whether the Commandant had returned to the fortress, or who was his lieutenant, if he had not. In the middle of April, the doubt was settled by the appearance of Rubaut himself in the cell. He was civil—unusually so—but declared himself unable to give any information about Mars Plaisir. He had nothing more to do with his prisoners when they were once taken out of his charge. He had always business enough upon his hands to prevent his occupying himself with things and people that were gone by. He had delivered Mars Plaisir into proper care; and that was the last he knew of him. The man was well at that time—as well as usual, and pleased enough to be in the open air again. Rubaut could remember no more concerning him—in fact, had not thought of him again, from that day to the present.

“And this is the kind of answer that you would give concerning me, if my sons should arrive hither in search of me some days after my grave had been closed?”

“Come, come! no foreboding!” said Rubaut. “Foreboding is bad.”

“If my sons should present themselves—” proceeded Toussaint—

“They will not come here—they cannot come here,” interrupted Rubaut. “No one knows that you are here, but some three or four who will never tell.”

“How,” thought Toussaint, “have they secured Mars Plaisir, that he shall never tell?” For the poor man’s sake, however, he would not ask this aloud.

Rubaut continued: “The reason why we cannot have the pleasure of giving you the range of the fortress is, that the First Consul thinks it necessary to keep secret the place of your abode—for the good of the colony, as he says. With one of our own countrymen, this seclusion might not be necessary, as the good people of the village could hardly distinguish features from the distance at which they are; and they have no telescopes—no idea of playing the spy upon us, as we can upon them. They cannot distinguish features, so high up—”

“But they could complexion.”

“Exactly so; and it might get abroad that some one of your colour was here.”

“And if it should get abroad, and some one of my sons, or my wife should come, your answer would be that you remember nothing—that you cannot charge your memory with persons and things that are gone by—that you have had prisoners of all complexions—that some have lived and some have died—and that you have something else to do than to remember what became of each. I hope, however, and (as it would be for the advantage of the First Consul) I believe, that you would have the complaisance to show them my grave.”

“Come, come! no foreboding! Foreboding is bad,” repeated Rubaut.

Toussaint smiled, and said—

“What other employment do you afford me than that of looking into the past and future, in order to avoid the present? If, turning from the sickening view which the past presents of the treachery of your race to mine, of the abuse of my brotherly trust in him by which your ruler has afflicted our hearts if, turning from this mournful past, I look the other way, what do I see before me but the open grave?”

“You are out of spirits,” said Rubaut, building up the fire.

“You wear well, however. You must have been very strong in your best days. You wear extremely well.”

“I still live; and that I do so is because the sun of my own climate, and the strength of soul of my best days, shine and glow through me now, quenching in part even these damps. But I am old, and every day heaps years on me. However, I am as willing as you that my looking forward should be for others than myself. I might be able to forebode for France, and for its ruler.”

Rubaut folded his arms, and leaned, as if anxious to listen, against the wall beside the fire; but it was so wet that he quickly shifted his position; still, however, keeping his eyes fixed on his prisoner.

“And what would you forebode for France, and for her ruler?” he asked.

“That my country will never again be hers. Her retribution is as sure as her tyranny has been great. She may send out fleet after fleet, each bearing an army; but the spirit of freedom will be too strong for them all. Their bodies will poison the air, and choke the sea, and the names of their commanders will, one after another, sink in disgrace, before they will again make slaves of my people in Saint Domingo. How stands the name of Leclerc at this moment in France?”

“Leclerc is dead,” said Rubaut; repenting, the next moment, that he had said so much. Toussaint saw this by his countenance, and inquired no further.

“He is dead! and twenty thousand Frenchmen with him, who might at this hour have been enjoying at home the natural wealth of my country, the fruits of our industry. The time was when I thought your ruler and I—the ruler, in alliance with him, of my race in Saint Domingo—were brothers in soul, as we were apparently in duty and in fortune. Brothers in soul we were not, as it has been the heaviest grief of my life to learn. I spurn brotherhood of soul with one whose ambition has been for himself. Brothers in duty we were; and, if we should yet be brothers in fortune—if he should fall into the hands of a strong foe—But you are saying in your heart, ‘No foreboding! Foreboding is bad!’”

Rubaut smiled, and said foreboding was only bad for the spirits; and the First Consul’s spirits were not likely to be affected by anything that could be said at Joux. To predict bad fortune for him was like looking for the sun to be put out at noonday; it might pass the time, but would not dim the sun.

“So was it said of me,” replied the prisoner, “and with the more reason, because I made no enemies. My enemies have not been of my own making. Your ruler is making enemies on every hand; and alas! for him if he lives to meet the hour of retribution! If he, like myself, should fall into the power of a strong foe—if he should pass his remaining days imprisoned on a rock, may he find more peace than I should dare look for, if I had his soul!”

“There is not a braver man in Europe, or the Indies either, than the First Consul.”

“Brave towards foes without and sufferings to come. But bravery gives no help against enemies harboured within, and evils fixed in the past. What will his bravery avail against the images of France corrupted, of Europe outraged, of the blacks betrayed and oppressed—of the godlike power which was put into his hands abused to the purposes of the devil!”

“But perhaps he would not view his affairs as you do.”

“Then would his bravery avail him no better. If he should be so blind as to see nothing higher and better than his own acts, then will he see no higher nor better hope than he has lost. Then will he suffer and die under the slow torment of personal mortifications and regrets.”

“You say you are sinking under your reverses. You say you are slowly dying.”

“I am. I shall die of the sickening and pining of sense and limb—of the wasting of bone and muscle. Day by day is my eye more dim, and my right arm more feeble. But I have never complained of evils that the bravery you speak of would not meet. Have I ever said that you have touched my soul?”

Rubaut saw the fire in his eye, glanced at his emaciated hand, and felt that this was true. He could bear the conversation no longer, now that no disclosures that could serve the First Consul seemed likely to be made.

“You are going?” said Toussaint.

“Yes. I looked in to-day because I am about to leave the fortress for a few days.”

“If you see the First Consul, tell him what I have now said; and add that if, like him, I had used my power for myself, he would have had a power over me which he has not now. I should not then have been here—nay, you must hear me—I should not then have been here, crushed beneath his hand; I should have been on the throne of Saint Domingo—flattered, as he is, by assurances of my glory and security—but crushed by a heavier weight than that of his hand; by his image, as that of one betrayed in my infidelity to his country and nation. Tell him this; tell him that I perish willingly, if this consequence of my fidelity to France may be a plea for justice to my race.”

“How people have misrepresented you to me!” said Rubaut, bustling about the cell, and opening the door to call Bellines. “They told me you were very silent—rarely spoke.”

“That was true when my duty was to think,” said Toussaint. “To-day my duty has been to speak. Remember that yours, in fidelity to your ruler, is to repeat to him what I say.”

“More wood, Bellines,” said Rubaut, going to the door, to give further directions in a low voice. Returning, he said, with some hurry of manner, that, as he was to be absent for two or three days, he had sent for such a supply of wood and flambeaux as might last some time. More books should also be brought.

“When shall we meet again?” asked Toussaint.

“I don’t know. Indeed I do not know,” said the Commandant, looking at his watch by the firelight. His prisoner saw that his hands trembled, and that he walked with some irresolution to the door.

“Au revoir!” said Toussaint.

Rubaut did not reply, but went out, leaving the door standing wide, and apparently no one to guard it.

Toussaint’s heart beat at the thought that this might give him one more opportunity of being abroad in the daylight, perhaps in the sun! He rose to make the attempt; but he was exhausted by the conversation he had held—the first for so long! His aching limbs failed him; and he sank down on his bed, from which he did not rise till long after Bellines had laid down his loads, and left the place.

The prisoner rose, at length, to walk, as he did many times in the day, from corner to corner of his cell. At the first turn, by the door, he struck his foot against something which he upset. It was a pitcher of water, which, with a loaf of bread, had been put in that unusual place. The sight was as distinct in its signification as a yawning grave. His door was to open upon him no more. He was not again to see a human face. The Commandant was to be absent awhile, and, on returning, to find his prisoner dead.

He used all means that he could devise to ascertain whether it were indeed so. He called Bellines from the door, in the way which Bellines had never failed to reply to since the departure of Mars Plaisir. Bellines did not come. He sang aloud, as he had never before been allowed to sing unchecked, since he entered the fortress. He now sang unchecked. The hour of the afternoon meal passed, and no one came. The evening closed, and no bolt had been drawn. The case was clear.

The prisoner now and then felt a moment’s surprise at experiencing so little recoil from such a fate. He was scarcely conscious even of repugnance. His tranquillity was doubtless owing, in part, to his having long contemplated death in this place as certain; to life having now little left to make its continuance desirable; and to his knowing himself to be so reduced, that the struggle could not be very long. But he himself believed his composure to be owing to another cause than any of these.

“He who appointed me to the work of such a life as mine,” thought the dying man, “is making its close easy to His servant. I would willingly have suffered to the extremity of His will: but my work is done; men’s eyes are no longer upon me; I am alone with Him; and He is pleased to let me enter already upon my everlasting peace. If Father Laxabon were here, would he now say, as he has often said, and as most men say, that, looking back upon life from its close, it appears short as the time of the early rains? Instead of this, how long appear the sixty years that I have lived! How long, how weary now teems the life when I was a slave—though much was done, and it was the schooling of my soul for the work preparing for my hand. My Margot! my children! how quietly did we then live, as if no change were ever to come, and we were to sit before our door at Breda every evening, till death should remove us, one by one! While I was composing my soul to patience by thought and by reading, how little did I dream that I was so becoming prepared to free my race, to reign, and then to die of cold and hunger, such as the meanest slave never knows! Then the next eight years of toil—they seem longer than all that went before. Doubtless they were lengthened to me, to make my weak powers equal to the greatness of my task; for every day of conducting war, and making laws, appeared to me stretched out into a year. These late seasons of reverse have passed over more rapidly, for their suffering has been less. While all, even to Henri, have pitied me during these latter years, they knew not that I was recovering the peace which I shall now no more lose. It is true that I erred, according to the common estimate of affairs, in not making myself a king, and separating my country from France, as France herself is compelling her to separate at last. It is true, I might now have been reigning there, instead of dying here; and, what is more worthy of meditation, my people might now have been laying aside their arms, and beginning a long career of peace. It might possibly have been so; but at what cost! Their career of freedom (if freedom it could then have been called) would have begun in treason and in murder; and the stain would have polluted my race for ever. Now, they will have freedom still—they cannot but have it, though it is delayed. And upon this freedom will rest the blessing of Heaven. We have not fought for dominion, nor for plunder; nor, as far as I could govern the passions of men, for revenge. We began our career of freedom in fidelity, in obedience, and in reverence towards the whites; and therefore may we take to ourselves the blessing of Him who made us to be free, and demands that we be so with clean hands and a pure heart. Therefore will the freedom of Saint Domingo be but the beginning of freedom to the negro race. Therefore may we hope that in this race will the spirit of Christianity appear more fully than it has yet shown itself among the proud whites—show itself in its gentleness, its fidelity, its disinterestedness, and its simple trust. The proud whites may scorn this hope, and point to the ignorance and the passions of my people, and say, ‘Is this your exhibition of the spirit of the Gospel?’ But not for this will we give up our hope. This ignorance, these passions, are natural to all men, and are in us aggravated and protracted by our slavery. Remove them by the discipline and the stimulus of freedom, begun in obedience to God and fidelity to men, and there remain the love that embraces all—the meek faith that can bear to be betrayed, but is ashamed to doubt—the generosity that can forgive offences seventy-and-seven times renewed—the simple, open, joyous spirit which marks such as are of the kingdom of heaven. Lord! I thank Thee that Thou hast made me the servant of this race!”

Never, during the years of his lowliness, or the days of his grandeur, had Toussaint spent a brighter hour than now, while the spirit of prophecy (twin-angel with death) visited him, and showed him the realms of mind which were opening before his race—that countless host whose van he had himself led to the confines. This spirit whispered something of the immortality of his own name, hidden, lost as he was in his last hours.

“Be it so!” thought he, “if my name can excite any to devotedness, or give to any the pleasure of being grateful. If my name live, the goodness of those who name it will be its life; for my true self-will not be in it. No one will the more know the real Toussaint. The weakness that was in me when I felt most strong, the reluctance when I appeared most ready, the acts of sin from which I was saved by accident alone, the divine constraint of circumstances to which my best deeds were owing—these things are between me and my God. If my name and my life are to be of use, I thank God that they exist; but this outward existence of them is nothing between Him and me. To me henceforward they no more belong than the name of Epaminondas, or the life of Tell. Man stands naked on the brink of the grave, his name stripped from him, and his deeds laid down as the property of the society he leaves behind. Let the name and deeds I now leave behind be a pride to generations yet to come—a more innocent pride than they have sometimes, alas! been to me. I have done with them.”

Toussaint had often known what hunger was—in the mornes he had endured it almost to extremity. He now expected to suffer less from it than then, from being able to yield to the faintness and drowsiness which had then to be resisted. From time to time during his meditations, he felt its sensations visiting him, and felt them without fear or regret. He had eaten his loaf when first hungry, and had watched through the first night, hoping to sleep his long sleep the sooner, when his fire should at length be burned out. During the day, some faint sounds reached him from the valley—some tokens of the existence of men. During the two last nights of his life, his ear was kept awake only by the dropping of water—the old familiar sound—and the occasional stir of the brands upon the hearth. About midnight of the second night, he found he could sit up no longer. With trembling hands he laid on such pieces of wood as he could lift, lighted another flambeau, and lay down on his straw. He raised himself but once, hastily and dizzily in the dawn (dawn to him, but sunrise abroad). His ear had been reached by the song of the young goatherds, as they led their flock abroad into another valley. The prisoner had dreamed that it was his boy Denis, singing in the piazza at Pongaudin. As his dim eye recognised the place, by the flicker of the expiring flambeau, he smiled at his delusion, and sank back to sleep again.

The Commandant was absent three days. On his return, he summoned Bellines, and said, in the presence of several soldiers—

“How is the prisoner there?” pointing in the direction of Toussaint’s cell.

“He has been very quiet this morning, sir.”

“Very quiet? Do you suppose he is ill?”

“He was as well as usual the last time I went to him.”

“He has had plenty of everything, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Wood, candle, food, water—everything.”

“Very well. Get lights, and I will visit him.”

Lights were brought. A boy, who carried a lantern, shivered as he saw how ghastly Bellines’ face looked in the yellow gleam, in the dark vault on the way to the cell, and was not sorry to be told to stay behind, till called to light the Commandant back again.

“Have you heard anything?” asked Rubaut of the soldier, in a low voice.

“Not for many hours. There was a call or two, and some singing, just after you went; but nothing since.”

“Hush! Listen!”

They listened motionless for some time; but nothing was heard but the everlasting plash, which went on all around them.

“Unbar the door, Bellines.”

He did so, and held the door wide for the Commandant to enter. Rubaut stalked in, and straight up to the straw bed. He called the prisoner in a somewhat agitated voice, felt the hand, raised the head, and declared that he was gone. The candle was burned completely out. Rubaut turned to the hearth, carefully stirred the ashes, blew among them, and raised a spark.

“You observe,” he said to Bellines; “his fire 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.

Back to IndexNext