The trap was loosened from her bleeding leg, the burden placed in her arms, and they disappeared in the direction of the mansion.
A black shape, a boy, the lad who had carried the basil to Frowenfeld, rose up from where he had all this time lain, close against the hedge, and glided off down its black shadow to warn the philosophe.
When Clemence was searched, there was found on her person an old table-knife with its end ground to a point.
CHAPTER LVI
BLOOD FOR A BLOW
It seems to be one of the self-punitive characteristics of tyranny, whether the tyrant be a man, a community, or a caste, to have a pusillanimous fear of its victim. It was not when Clemence lay in irons, it is barely now, that our South is casting off a certain apprehensive tremor, generally latent, but at the slightest provocation active, and now and then violent, concerning her "blacks." This fear, like others similar elsewhere in the world, has always been met by the same one antidote--terrific cruelty to the tyrant's victim. So we shall presently see the Grandissime ladies, deeming themselves compassionate, urging their kinsmen to "give the poor wretch a sound whipping and let her go." Ah! what atrocities are we unconsciously perpetrating North and South now, in the name of mercy or defence, which the advancing light of progressive thought will presently show out in their enormity?
Agricola slept late. He had gone to his room the evening before much incensed at the presumption of some younger Grandissimes who had brought up the subject, and spoken in defence, of their cousin Honoré. He had retired, however, not to rest, but to construct an engine of offensive warfare which would revenge him a hundred-fold upon the miserable school of imported thought which had sent its revolting influences to the very Grandissime hearthstone; he wrote a "Phillipique Générale contre la Conduite du Gouvernement de la Louisiane" and a short but vigorous chapter in English on "The Insanity of Educating the Masses." This accomplished, he had gone to bed in a condition of peaceful elation, eager for the next day to come that he might take these mighty productions to Joseph Frowenfeld, and make him a present of them for insertion in his book of tables.
Jean-Baptiste felt no need of his advice, that he should rouse him; and, for a long time before the old man awoke, his younger kinsmen were stirring about unwontedly, going and coming through the hall of the mansion, along its verandas and up and down its outer flight of stairs. Gates were opening and shutting, errands were being carried by negro boys on bareback horses, Charlie Mandarin of St. Bernard parish and an Armand Fusilier from Faubourg Ste. Marie had on some account come--as they told the ladies--"to take breakfast;" and the ladies, not yet informed, amusedly wondering at all this trampling and stage whispering, were up a trifle early. In those days Creole society was a ship, in which the fair sex were all passengers and the ruder sex the crew. The ladies of the Grandissime mansion this morning asked passengers' questions, got sailors' answers, retorted wittily and more or less satirically, and laughed often, feeling their constrained insignificance. However, in a house so full of bright-eyed children, with mothers and sisters of all ages as their confederates, the secret was soon out, and before Agricola had left his little cottage in the grove the topic of all tongues was the abysmal treachery and ingratitude of negro slaves. The whole tribe of Grandissime believed, this morning, in the doctrine of total depravity--of the negro.