“Crisis!—public safety!—seen in the streets!” exclaimed Hédouville. “I assure you, General, I have no thoughts of going abroad till evening. It will be a scorching day. Is the crisis you speak of that of the heats?”
“No trifling, Commissary! Gentlemen,” said he, turning to the officers, who happened to be laughing, “no levity! The occasion is too serious for mirth or for loss of time. Shall we speak alone, Commissary?”
“By no means,” said Hédouville. “These gentlemen would not for the world miss hearing your news. Has a fresh insurrection been contrived already? or has any Frenchman forgotten himself, and kissed Psyche, or cuffed Agamemnon?”
“A new insurrection has been contrived; and by you. The cultivators are marching over the plain; and in four hours the town will be sacked, if you, Monsieur Hédouville, who have given the provocation, do not withdraw it. You must sign this proclamation. It is the opposite of your own now waiting for jubilation. But you must sign and issue it—and that within this hour. I hear what you say, gentlemen. You say that I have raised the cultivators. I have not. There is not a negro in the plain who does not at this moment believe that I am in the south. I come to put them down; but I will not go out with the sword in one hand, if I do not carry justice in the other.”
“What do you mean about justice, General? What injustice has been done?”
“Here is the draft of your proclamation—”
“How came you by that paper—by the particulars of my intention?” asked Hédouville. “My proclamation is yet locked up in my own desk.”
“Its contents are nevertheless known throughout the colony. When a Commissary, lightly and incidentally (and therefore the more offensively) settles, without understanding them, the most important points of difference between two unreconciled races, the very winds stoop in their flight, to snatch up the tidings, and drop them as they fly. See here! See how you pronounce on the terms of field-service—and here, on the partition of unclaimed estates—and here, on the claims of the emigrants! The blacks must be indeed as stupid as you hold them to be, if they did not spread the alarm that you are about to enslave them again.”
“I protest I never dreamed of such a thing.”
“I believe you. And that you did not so dream, shows that you are blind to the effects of your own measures—that the cultivators of the plain understand your proceedings better than you do yourself. Here is the proclamation which must be issued.”