“And how would it have been with us here?” said Toussaint, laying his hand on his breast.
“Put your hand a little lower, and I say it would have been all the better for us,” said the old negro, laughing, “for we should not have gone without wine all this time.”
“What do you think?” Aimée, as usual, asked Isaac.
“I think it was good for my father to be loyal to the king, as long as the king lived. I think it was good for us to be living here free, with time to consider what we should do next. And I think it has happened very well that my father has shown what a soldier he is, which he could not so well have done if we had stayed at Breda. As for Dessalines, he is best where the vines grow thickest, or where the cellars are deepest. It is a pity he should have taken upon him to be loyal.”
“And what do you think of going to the camp with my father? Look at Moyse—how delighted he is!”
Moyse certainly did look possessed with joy. He was rapidly telling all his warlike intentions to Génifrède, who was looking in his face with a countenance of fear and grief.
“You think nothing of us,” she cried at length, giving way to a passion of tears. “We have been so happy here, all together; and now you are glad to go, and leave us behind! You will go and fight, without caring for us—you will be killed in this horrid war, and we shall never see you again—we shall never know what has become of you.”
Moyse’s military fire was instantly quenched. It immediately appeared to him the greatest of miseries to have to leave his cousins. He assured Génifrède he could not really intend to go. He had only been fancying what a war with the white masters would be. He hated the whites heartily; but he loved this place much more. Placide and Isaac might go, but he should stay. Nothing should part him from those he loved best.
Toussaint was not unmindful of what was passing. Génifrède’s tones of distress, and Moyse’s protestations, all reached his ear. He turned, and gently drew his daughter towards him.
“My child,” said he, “we are no longer what we have been—slaves, whose strength is in the will of their masters. We are free; and to be free requires a strong heart, in women as well as in men. When Monsieur Bayou was our master, we rose and slept every day alike, and went out to our work, and came in to our food, without having to think of anything beyond. Now we are free, and God has raised us to the difficult duties which we have always reverenced in the whites. We men must leave our homes to live in camps, and, if necessary, to fight; and you, women and girls, must make it easy for us to do our duty. You must be willing to see us go—glad to spare us—and you must pray to God that we may not return till our duty is done.”