"Clotilda, a white negro, and her child Annette; together with Nicholas—a bright boy," remarkably intelligent-six years old. "These last," adds the list, "have been well brought up, with great care, and are extremely promising and pleasant when speaking. The woman has superior looks, is sometimes called beautiful, has finely developed features, and is considered to be the handsomest bright woman in the county."
We acknowledge the italics to be ours. The list, displaying great competency in the trade of human beings, concludes with warranting them sound and healthy, informing all those in want of such property of the wonderful opportunity of purchasing, and offering to guarantee its qualities. The above being "levied on to satisfy three fi fas," &c. &c.
Poor Clotilda! her beauty has betrayed her: her mother was made a slave, and she has inherited the sin which the enlightened of the western world say shall be handed down from generation to generation until time itself has an end. She is within the damp walls of a narrow cell; the cold stones give forth their moisture to chill her bleeding heart; the rust of oppression cuts into her very soul. The warm sunlight of heaven, once so cheering, has now turned black and cold to her. She sits in that cold confine, filled with sorrow, hope, and expectation, awaiting her doom, like a culprit who measures the chances of escape between him and the gallows. She thinks of Marston. "He was a kind friend to me-he was a good master," she says, little thinking that at that very moment he sits in the saloon reading that southern death-warrant which dooms so many to a life of woe. In it fathers were not mentioned-Marston's feelings were spared that pain; mothers' tears, too, were omitted, lest the sensitiveness of the fashionable world should be touched. Pained, and sick at heart-stung by remorse at finding himself without power to relieve Clotilda-he rises from his seat, and makes arrangement to return to his plantation.
CHAPTER XV. — A SCENE OF MANY LIGHTS.
WE must leave Marston wending his way for the old plantation, and pass to another phase of this complicated affair. In doing this, we must leave the reader to draw from his own imagination much that must have transpired previous to the present incidents.
The Rovero family-old and distinguished-had struggled against the misfortunes brought upon them by their son Lorenzo. Deeply involved, they had allowed their difficulties to go on till they had found themselves living by the favour of courtesy and indulgence. Lorenzo and Franconia were only children; and since the departure of the former the latter had been the idol of their indulgence. She was, as we have before said, delicate, sensitive, endowed with generous impulses, and admired for her gentleness, grace, and vivacity. To these she added firmness, and, when once resolved upon any object, could not be moved from her purpose. Nor was she-as is the popular fallacy of the South-susceptible to the influence of wealth. Her love and tenderness soared above it; she prized wealth less than moral worth. But she could not appease the pride of her parents with her feelings. They, labouring under the influence of their reduced fortunes, had favoured and insisted upon the advances of the very wealthy Colonel M'Carstrow, a rice-planter, who had a few years before inherited a large estate. The colonel is a sturdy specimen of the Southern gentleman, which combines a singular mixture of qualities, some of which are represented by a love of good living, good drinking, good horse-racing, good gambling, and fast company. He lives on the fat of the land, because the fat of the land was made for him to enjoy. He has no particular objection to anybody in the world, providing they believe in slavery, and live according to his notions of a gentleman. His soul's delight is faro, which he would not exchange for all the religion in the world; he has strong doubts about the good of religion, which, he says, should be boxed up with modern morality.
Laying these things aside, however, he is anything but what would have been properly selected as a partner for Franconia; and, while she is only eighteen, he has turned the corner of his forty-third year. In a word, his manners are unmodelled, his feelings coarse, his associations of the worst kind; nor is he adapted to make the happiness of domestic life lasting. He is one of those persons so often met with, whose affections-if they may be supposed to have any-are held in a sort of compromise between an incitement to love, and their natural inclination to revel in voluptuous pleasures. The two being antagonistic at times, the latter is sure to be the stronger, and not unfrequently carries its victim into dissolute extremes. Riches, however, will always weigh heavy in the scale; their possession sways,—the charm of gold is precious and powerful. And, too, the colonel had another attraction-very much esteemed among slave-dealers and owners—he had a military title, though no one knew how he came by it.
Franconia must be the affianced bride of the supposed wealthy Colonel M'Carstrow; so say her parents, who feel they are being crushed out by misfortune. It is their desire; and, however repulsive it may be to Franconia's feelings, she must accept the man: she must forget his years, his habits, his associations, for the wealth he can bring to the relief of the family.