“They think they are loyal and patriotic, my dear. I am sure I hope they will go on to think so; for it is the best excuse for them.”
“I wish I had a magic glass,” said Euphrosyne—
“My dear, do not wish any such thing. It is very dangerous and wicked to have anything to do with that kind of people. I could tell you such a story of poor Moyse (and of many other unhappy persons, too) as would show you the mischief of meddling with charms, Euphrosyne.”
“Do not be afraid, dear madam. I was not thinking of any witchcraft; but only wishing your children the bright mirror of a clear and settled mind. I think such a mirror would show them that what they take for loyalty and patriotism in their own feelings and conduct, is no more loyalty and patriotism than the dancing lights in our rice-grounds are stars.”
“What is it, my dear, do you think?”
“I think it is weakness, remaining from their former condition. When people are reared in humiliation, there will be weakness left behind. Loyal minds must call Bonaparte’s conduct to L’Ouverture vulgar. Those who admire it, it seems to me, either have been, or are ready to be, slaves.”
“One may pity rather than blame the first,” said Afra; “but I do not pretend to have any patience with the last. I pity our poor faithless generals here, and dear Aimée, with her mind so perplexed, and her struggling heart; but I have no toleration for Leclerc and Rochambeau, and the whole train of Bonaparte’s worshippers in France.”
“They are not like your husband, indeed, Afra.”
“And they might all have been as right as he. They might all have known as well as he, what L’Ouverture is, and what he has done. Why do they not know that he might long ago have been a king? Why do they not tell one another that his throne might, at this day, have been visited by ambassadors from all the nations, but for his loyalty to France? Why do they not see, as my husband does, that it is for want of personal ambition that L’Ouverture is now an outlaw in the mornes, instead of being hand-in-hand, as a brother king, with George of England? They might have known whom to honour and whom to restrain, as my husband does, if they had had his clearness of soul, and his love of freedom.”
“And because they have not,” said Euphrosyne, “they are lost in amazement at his devotion to a negro outlaw. Do not shrink, dear madam, from those words. If they were meant in anything but honour they would not be spoken before you. Afra and I feel that to be the First of the Blacks is now to be the greatest man in the world; and that to be an outlaw in the mornes, in the cause of a redeemed race, is a higher glory than to be the conqueror of Europe. Do we not, Afra?”