“Why do you suppose these wretched blacks killed him, my dear?”
“I do not know why they rose, this one particular time. But I believe they have always risen because the whites have been proud and cruel; because the whites used to put them in chains, and whip them, and part mothers and children. After doing all this, and after bringing them up ignorant and without religion, we expect them to forgive everything that has passed, while we will not forgive them ourselves. But I will—I will forgive them my share. For all that you religious people may say, I will forgive them: and I am not afraid of what grandpapa would think. I hope he is in a place now where there is no question about forgiving those who have injured us. The worst thing is, the thing that I cannot understand is, how L’Ouverture could do anything so cruel.”
“I have a word to say to you, my dear,” said the priest, with a sign to the abbess.
“Oh, father!” replied the abbess, in an imploring tone.
“We must bring her to a right view, reverend sister. Euphrosyne, if your grandfather had not been the kind master you suppose him—if he had been one of the cruel whites you spoke of just now, if his own slaves had always hated him, and—”
“Do stop!” said Euphrosyne, colouring crimson. “I cannot bear to hear you speak so, father.”
“You must bear, my child, to listen to what it is good for you to hear. If he had been disliked by every black in the colony, and they had sought his life out of revenge, would you still be angry that justice was done, and ungrateful that he is avenged?”
“You talk of avenging—you, a Christian priest!” said Euphrosyne. “You talk of justice—you, who slander the dead!”
“Peace, my daughter,” said the abbess, very gently. “Remember where you are, and whom you speak to.”
“Remember where my grandfather is,” cried Euphrosyne. “Remember that he is in his grave, and that I am left to speak for him. However,” she said—and, in these few moments, a thousand confirmations of the priest’s words had rushed upon her memory—a thousand tokens of the mutual fear and hatred of her grandfather and the black race, a thousand signs of his repugnance to visit Le Bosquet—“however,” she resumed, in a milder tone, and with an anxious glance at Father Gabriel’s face, “Father Gabriel only said ‘if’—if all that he described had been so.”