“Well, I never knew we had a black here!”
“Don’t say I told you, then.”
“I have no doubt—yes, we found his fire burning,” said Bellines to the inquirers round him. “They will find it apoplexy, or some such thing, I have no doubt of it.”
And so they did, to the entire satisfaction of the First Consul.
Yet it was long before the inquiring world knew with certainty what had become of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
Appendix.
Those who feel interest enough in the extraordinary fortunes of Toussaint L’Ouverture to inquire concerning him from the Biographical Dictionaries and Popular Histories of the day, will find in them all the same brief and peremptory decision concerning his character. They all pronounce him to have been a man of wonderful sagacity, endowed with a native genius for both war and government; but savage in warfare; hypocritical in religion—using piety as a political mask; and, in all his affairs, the very prince of dissemblers. It is true that this account consists neither with the facts of his life, the opinions of the people he delivered, nor the state documents of the island he governed. Yet it is easy to account for. The first notices of him were French, reported by the discomfited invaders of Saint Domingo to writers imbued with the philosophy of the days of the Revolution; and later accounts are copies of these earlier ones. From the time when my attention was first fixed on this hero, I have been struck with the inconsistencies contained in all reports of his character which ascribe to him cruelty and hypocrisy; and, after a long and careful comparison of such views with his words and deeds, with the evidence obtainable from Saint Domingo, and with the temper of his times in France, I have arrived at the conclusion that his character was, in sober truth, such as I have endeavoured to represent it in the foregoing work.
I do not mean to say that I am the first who has formed an opinion that Toussaint was an honest, a religious, and a mild and merciful man. In an article in the Quarterly Review (Number seventeen) on the “Past and Present State of Hayti,” so interesting an account is given of the great negro, as to cause some wonder that no one has till now been moved by it to present the facts of his life in the form of an historical novel. In that article it is justly observed that the onus rests with those who accuse Toussaint of hypocrisy to prove their allegation by facts. I would say the same of the other charge, of cruelty. Meanwhile, I disbelieve both charges, for these reasons among others:—