“You might laugh, my dear,” answered her mother, “but I think I should be more inclined to cry—yes, to cry for sheer joy at seeing him again. I grant you he was a little ridiculous; but what courage! what sincerity! what a true gentleman! I hear that he too is out of favour at the Palais Royal, and has returned to his estates at Chateau-Guerrand. His coach was seen near the Hôtel Montmirail the night of Monsieur le Duc’s creditable escapade, and that is crime enough, I conclude, to balance a dozen battles and forty years of loyal service to the throne. No, Cerise, I tell you while the monster lives we must remain exiled in this purgatory of fire. But my friends keep me well informed of passing events. I hear his health is failing. They tell me his face is purple now in the mornings when he comes to Council, and he drinks harder than ever with his roués at night. Of course, my child, it would be wicked to wish for the death of a fellow-creature, but while there is a Regent in France you and I must be content with the lizards and the cockroaches for society, and for amusement, the supervision of these miserable, brutalised negro slaves.”
“Poor things!” said the younger lady, tenderly. “I am sure they have kind hearts under their black skins. I cannot but think that if they were taught and encouraged, and treated less like beasts of burden, they would show as much intelligence as our own peasants at La Fierté or the real Montmirail. Why, Fleurette brought me a bouquet of jessamines and tuberoses yesterday, with a compliment to the paleness of my complexion that could not have been outdone by Count Point-d’Appui himself. Oh! mamma, I wish you would let me establish my civil code for the municipal government of the blacks.”
“You had better let it alone, my child,” answered the Marquise, gravely. “Wiser brains than yours have puzzled over the problem, and failed to solve it. I have obtained all the information in my power from those whose experience is reliable, and considered it for myself besides, till my head ached. It seems to me that young colonists, and all who know nothing about negroes, are for encouragement and indulgence; old planters, and those who are well acquainted with their nature, for severity and repression. I would not be cruel; far from it; but as for treating them like white people, Cerise, in my opinion all such liberality is sheer nonsense. Jaques and Pierre, at home, are ill-fed, ill-clothed (I wish it were not so), up early, down late, and working often without intermission from sunrise till sunset; nevertheless, Jaques or Pierre will doff his red cap, tuck up his blouse, and run a league bareheaded, after a hard day’s work, if you or I lift up a finger; and why?—because we are La Fiertés or Montmirails. But Hippolyte or Achille, fat, strong, lazy, well-fed, grumbles if he is bid to carry a message to the boiling-house after his eight hours’ labour, and only obeys because he knows that Bartoletti can order him a hundred lashes by my authority at his discretion.”
“I do not like the Italian, mamma! I am sure that man is not to be trusted,” observed Cerise, inconsequently, being a young lady. “What could make my dear old bonne marry him, I have never been able to discover. He is an alchemist, you know, and a conjuror, and worse. I shudder to think of the stories they told about him at home, and I believe he bewitched her!”
Here Mademoiselle de Montmirail crossed herself devoutly, and her mother laughed.
“He is a very good overseer,” said she, “and as for his necromancy, even if he learned it from the Prince of Darkness, which you seem to believe, I fancy Célandine would prove a match for his master. Between them, the Signor, as he calls himself, and his wife, manage my people wonderfully well, and this is no easy matter at present, for I am sorry to say they show a good deal of insubordination and ill-will. There is a spirit of disaffection amongst them,” added the Marquise, setting her red lips firmly together, “that must be kept down with the strong hand. I do not mind your going about amongst the house negroes, Cerise, or noticing the little children, though taking anything black on your lap is, in my opinion, an injudicious piece of condescension; but I would not have you be seen near the field-gang at present, men or women, and above all, never trust them. Not one is to be depended on except Célandine, for I believe they hate her as much as her husband, and fear her a great deal more.”
The Marquise had indeed cause for uneasiness as to the condition of her plantation, although she had never before hinted so much to her daughter, and indeed, like the generality of people who live on the crust of a volcano, she forced herself to ignore the danger of which she was yet uncomfortably conscious. For some time, perhaps ever since the arrival of the Italian overseer, there had been symptoms of discontent and disaffection among the slaves. The work indeed went on as usual, for Bartoletti was unsparing of the lash, but scarce a week passed without a runaway betaking himself to the bush, and vague threats, forerunners of some serious outbreak, had been heard from the idlest and most mutinous of the gang when under punishment. It would not have been well in such difficulties to relax the bonds of discipline, yet it was scarcely wise to draw them tighter than before. The Marquise, however, came of a race that had never yet learned to yield, and to which, for generations, the assertion of his rights by an inferior had seemed an intolerable presumption that must be resisted to the death. As her slaves, therefore, grew more defiant she became more severe, and of late the slightest offences had been visited with the utmost rigour, and under no circumstances passed over without punishment. It was an unfortunate time therefore that poor Fleurette had chosen to be detected in the abstraction of a turkey ready plucked for cooking, and she could not have fallen into worse hands than those of the pitiless Italian overseer.
The Marquise had scarce concluded her warning, ere Bartoletti entered the sitting-room with his daily report. His manner was extremely obsequious to Madame de Montmirail, and polite beyond expression to Mademoiselle. The former scarcely noticed his demeanour at any time; the latter observed him narrowly, with the air of a child who watches a toad or any such object for which it feels an unaccountable dislike.
Cerise usually left the room soon after the Signor entered it, but something in her mother’s face on the present occasion, as she ran her eye over the black book, induced her to remain.
The Marquise read the punishment list twice; frowned, hesitated, and looked discomposed.