“I would thank anyone to tell me that it is not as I fear,” replied Dessalines. “I fear Maurepas is effecting a junction, not with us, but with some one else.”
“With Rochambeau!”
“Traitor!”
“The traitor Maurepas!”
“His head!”
“Our all for his head!” cried the enraged gazers, as they saw Maurepas indeed diverging from the road to the post, and a large body of French troops turning a reach of the same road, from behind a hill. The two clouds of dust met. And now there was no more silence, but sound enough from below and afar. There was evidently clamour and rage among the troops in the Plateaux; and bursts of music from the army of their foes, triumphant and insulting, swelled the breeze.
“Our all for the head of Maurepas!” cried the group again.
“Nay,” said Vincent, “leave Maurepas his head. Who knows but that peace may come out of it? If all had done as he has now done, there could be no war.”
“In the same way,” exclaimed Pascal, “as if all of your colour thought as you do, there would then be no war, because there would be no men to fight; but only slaves to walk quietly under the yoke.”
“Be as angry as you will,” said Vincent, in a low voice to Pascal. “No one’s anger can alter the truth. It is impious and vain, here as elsewhere, to oppose Bonaparte. L’Ouverture will have to yield; you know that as well as I do, Monsieur Pascal; and those are the best friends of the blacks who help to render war impossible, and who bring the affair to a close while the First Consul may yet be placable.”