“You think it so.”
“Why, do not you? Consider how many years we have known him, and what confidence you had in him when you sent him with our dear boys to Paris! And now he has done great things in the south. He comes, covered with glory, to ask us for our Aimée. What could be more flattering?”
“It was our child’s future happiness that I was thinking of, when I seemed to doubt. Vincent is full of good qualities; but he is so wholly French that—”
“Not so French as Monsieur Pascal, who was born, brought up, and employed at Paris; and you are pleased that he should marry Afra.”
“Vincent is more French than Pascal, though he is a black. He is devoted to Bonaparte—”
“What of that?” said Madame L’Ouverture, after a pause. “He is devoted to you also. And are you not yourself devoted to France and to Bonaparte? Do we not pray together for him every day of our lives?”
“Remember, Margot, to pray for him every day, as long as you live, if I am separated from you by death or otherwise. Pray that such a blessing may rest upon him as that he may be wise to see his duty, and strong to do it. If he injures us, pray that he may be forgiven.”
“I will,” replied Margot, in a low voice; “but—”
She was lost in considering what this might mean.
“As for Vincent,” resumed Toussaint, “my doubt is whether, with his views and tastes, he ought to ally himself with a doomed man.”