Moyse was silent for a moment, and then replied—
“Those may deal with them who desire to live side-by-side with whites. As for me, I quarrel with none who avenge our centuries of wrong.”
“Would to God my father had known that this was in your heart! You would not then have been a wretched prisoner here. Moyse, the moment you are free, let us fly to the mornes. I told you how it would be, if we parted. You will do as I wish henceforward; you will take me to the Mornes?”
“My love, where and how should we live there? In a cave of the rocks, or roosting in trees?”
“People do live there—not now, perhaps, under my father’s government: but in the old days, runaways did live there.”
“So you would institute a new race of banditti, under your father’s reign. How well it will sound in the First Consul’s council-chamber, that the eldest daughter of the ambitious Commander-in-Chief is the first bandit’s wife in the mornes!”
“Let them say what they will: we must have peace, Moyse. We have been wretched too long. Oh, if we could once be up there, hidden among the rocks, or sitting among the ferns in the highest of those valleys, with the very clouds between us and this weary world below—never to see a white face more! Then, at last, we could be at peace. Everywhere else we are beset with this enemy. They are in the streets, in the churches, on the plain. We meet them in the shade of the woods, and have to pass them basking on the sea-shore. There is no peace but high up in the mornes—too high for the wild beast, and the reptile, and the white man.”
“The white man mounts as high as the eagle’s nest, Génifrède. You will not be safe, even there, from the traveller or the philosopher, climbing to measure the mountain or observe the stars.—But while we are talking of the free and breezy heights—”
“You are a prisoner,” said Génifrède, mournfully. “But soon, very soon, we can go. Why do you look so? You said there was no fear—that nothing serious could happen—nothing more than disgrace; and, for each other’s sake, we can defy disgrace. Can we not, Moyse? Why do not you speak?”
“Disgrace, or death, or anything. Even death, Génifrède. Yes—I said what was not true. They will not let me out but to my death. Do not shudder so, my love: they shall not part us. They shall not rob me of everything. You did well to come, love. If they had detained you, and I had had to die with such a last thought as that you remained to be comforted, sooner or later, by another—to be made to forget me by a more prosperous lover—O God! I should have been mad!”