“What pains you are taking!” he said. “You have only to follow your own fancy and convenience about Christophe’s house. Christophe has never been to France. Tell him, or any others of my countrymen, that any building you choose to put up is European, and in good taste, and they will be quite pleased enough.”
“You are a sinner,” said Loisir; “but be quiet now.”
“Nay—do not you find the blacks one and all ready to devour your travellers’ tales—your prodigious reports of European cities? You have only to tell like stories in stone and brick, and they will believe you just as thankfully.”
“No, no, Vincent. I have told no tales so wicked as you tell of your own race. My travellers’ tales are all very well to pass an hour, and be forgotten; but Christophe’s mansion is to stand for an age—to stand as the first evidence, in the department of the arts, of the elevation of your race. Christophe knows, as well as you do without having been to Paris, what is beautiful in architecture; and, if he did not, I would not treacherously mislead him.”
“Christophe knows! Christophe has taste!”
“Yes. While you have been walking streets and squares, he has been studying the aisles of palms, and the crypts of the banyan, which, to an open eye, may teach as much as a prejudiced mind can learn in all Rome.”
“So Loisir is of those who flatter men in power?” said Vincent, laughing.
“I look further,” said Loisir; “I am working for men unborn. I am ambitious; but my ambition is to connect my name honourably with the first great house built for a negro general. My ambition is to build here a rival to the palaces of Europe.”
“Do what you will, you will not rival your own tales of them—unless you find Aladdin’s lamp among these ruins.”
“If you find it, you may bring it me. Azna has found something half as good—a really fine statue in the grass.”