"What can I do for you, monsieur?"
"Oh! it is not much I ask. Go to your patron and persuade him that I lied last night."
"Impossible, monsieur! He has already left the house."
"Then follow him, Beudant. I am bound or I would beseech you on my knees. Beudant for the love of God——"
"Monsieur, monsieur!"
"Kind, sweet Beudant!" I wailed. "Beautiful, excellent Beudant, do this little thing for me. See it is a dying man entreats you. Sweet Beudant, pretty Beudant."
The poor negro looked the picture of distress. His eyes rolled in his head, and he knew not what to do or say.
"I cannot deceive my patron!" he cried at last.
But at that I shrieked aloud and drove him from the room with venomous blood-curdling curses. In his agitation he forgot to take with him the candle, which he had set upon the floor, and that circumstance gave me an occupation for some hours which in some degree alleviated my dark mood of bitterness. I thought that by dint of great stress and labour I might work my chair beside the flame and sear through some or other of my bonds. In four hours of constant effort I had moved a foot perhaps, but then I gave up in despair, for I had still a yard to go and already the candle guttered in its socket.
Jussieu was the next to visit me, bearing on a tray my mid-day meal. After eating heartily, I tested him in much the fashion I had tried on Beudant. He gave me similar replies, and I rewarded him with similar maledictions. But instead of flying from my oaths as the other negro had, to my astonishment, he quelled me with a rolling sermon, delivered in the finest Lutheran style. Texts quivered from his tongue, like shafts of lightning in a storm, and the black canting hypocrite, who was ready at his master's nod to murder me, dared preach to me of penitence, and summoned me in thunderous tones to prepare my soul for death.