“We? Who? What ruin?”
“The whole negro race. Do you suppose the whites are less cruel than they were? Do you believe that their thirst for our humiliation, our slavery, is quenched? Do you believe that the white man’s heart is softened by the generosity and forgiveness of the blacks?”
“My father believes so,” replied Génifrède; “and do they not adore him—the whites whom he has reinstated? Do they not know that they owe to him their lives, their homes, the prosperity of the island? Does he not trust the whites? Does he not order all things for their good, from reverence and affection for them?”
“Yes, he does,” replied Moyse, in a tone which made Génifrède anxiously explore his countenance.
“You think him deceived?” she said.
“No, I do not. It is not easy to deceive L’Ouverture.”
“You do not think—no, you cannot think, that he deceives the whites, or any one.”
“No. L’Ouverture deceives no one. As you say, he reveres the whites. He reveres them for their knowledge. He says they are masters of an intellectual kingdom from which we have been shut out, and they alone can let us in. And then again.—Génifrède, it seems to me that he loves best those who have most injured him.”
“Not best,” she replied. “He delights to forgive: but what white has he ever loved as he loves Henri? Did he ever look upon any white as he looked upon me, when—when he consented? Moyse, you remember?”
“I do. But still he loves the whites as if they were born, and had lived and died, our friends, as he desires they should be. Yet more—he expects and requires that all his race should love them too.”