“I do not need satisfaction on that. I do not quarrel with the terms we are to make. I do not protest against any of the provisions of the treaty. I protest against the necessity of treating. Summon the prisoners.”
“Can you,” said Christophe, still delaying, “can you improve upon the terms proposed? Can the conditions be altered, so as to give more satisfaction to your superior foresight? I would not use flattering terms at this moment, Toussaint; you know I would not. But your sagacity is greater than mine, or any one’s. I distrust myself about the terms of the treaty, I assure you.”
“About anything more than the mere terms of the treaty?” asked Toussaint, again stopping in his walk.
“About the conditions—and about the conditions only.”
“Your self-distrust is misplaced, and comes too late. Order the prisoners to be brought in.”
As Sabès and Martin entered, L’Ouverture and Christophe renewed, by a glance, their agreement to speak and act with the utmost apparent sameness of views and intentions. It was but a poor substitute for the real coincidence which had always hitherto existed; but it was all that was now possible.
“I am going to send you back to your Captain-General, gentlemen,” said Toussaint.
“Not without apology, I trust,” said Sabès, “for having subjected to such treatment as we have undergone, messengers sent to parley—bearing actually the necessary credentials from the Captain-General. For nine weeks have my companion and I been dragged from place to place, wherever it suited your purposes to go, in perpetual fear for our lives.”
“I am sorry you have trembled for your lives, gentlemen,” replied Toussaint. “It was an unnecessary suffering, as I gave you my word, on your capture, that your persons were safe. Considering that you were found crouching among the ferns, within hearing of my private conversation with my son respecting the affairs of the war, I think your complaints of your detention unreasonable; and I have no apology to make, on that ground, either to yourselves or your commander. I cannot hear another word of complaint, gentlemen. You know well that by any general in Europe you would, under similar circumstances, have been hanged as spies. Now to public business. I am about to send you to General Leclerc, with proposals from General Christophe and myself to bring this painful war to an end, according to the desire of the heads of both armies. We all know such to be the wish of the Captain-General.”
“No doubt. It was never his desire, nor that of any true Frenchman,” said Sabès, “to be at war on the soil of this colony. You alone, General Toussaint, are responsible for the loss of lives, and all the other miseries which it has occasioned.”