It was toward four o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived in Mr. Laborde’s house.
Our friendly host immediately introduced two Europeans to us, the only ones then staying at Tananariva. The two gentlemen were clergymen; one of them had been living for two years, the other for seven months, in Mr. Laborde’s house. It was not the time to appear as missionaries, and they concealed the fact of their belonging to a mission very carefully, the prince and the Europeans being the only persons admitted into the secret. One passes as a physician, the other as tutor to Mr. Laborde’s son, who had come back two years since from Paris, where he had been sent by his father to be educated.
We were soon assembled at a good dinner round our host’s table. Every thing was arranged in European style, with the exception that the dishes and plates were all of massive silver, and silver goblets supplied the place of drinking-glasses. I observed jokingly to Mr. Laborde that I had never met with such luxury at any table, and that Tananariva was the last place in the world where I should have expected to find it. He replied that similar luxury prevailed in all the houses of the rich, but that there were certainly not many houses of this description. He said he had himself introduced the fashion, but not from ostentation, but, on the contrary, on economical grounds. He found that china-ware had continually to be replaced, as the slaves were perfect adepts in the art of breaking any given number of articles in the shortest possible time, so that the use of china became very expensive.
Before we had nearly concluded our pleasant meal, while Champagne was being handed round, and the toasts were beginning, a slave came running up in hot haste to announce the approach of Prince Rakoto. We rose hastily from table, but had little time to go and meet the prince, for, in his impatience to see Mr. Lambert, he had followed close at the slave’s heels. The two men held each other in a long embrace, but for some time neither of them could find a word to express his joy. It was easy to see that a deep and true friendship existed between them, and we who stood round could not view the scene without feelings of pleasurable emotion.
Prince Rakoto, or, to call him by his full name, Rako-dond-Radama, is a young man twenty-seven years of age. Contrary to my expectation, his appearance was far from disagreeable. He is short and slim in stature, and his face does not betray a likeness, in form or color, to any of the four races who inhabit Madagascar. His features have quite the type of the Moldavian Greeks. His black hair is curly, but not woolly; he has dark eyes, full of life and fire; a well-shaped mouth, and handsome teeth. His features wear an expression of such childlike goodness that one feels drawn toward him from the first moment of seeing him. He often goes about in European costume.
The prince is honored and beloved alike by high and low; and I was assured by Mr. Laborde that he fully deserved all this affection and honor. The son is, in fact, as kind-hearted as the mother is cruel; he is just as averse to the shedding of blood as his mother is addicted to it, and his chief efforts are directed toward mitigating the severe punishments the queen is continually inflicting, and obtaining a reversal of the sentences of death which she is always too ready to pronounce upon her subjects.
He is always ready to listen to the unfortunate, and to help them; and has strictly forbidden his slaves to turn any applicant away on the score that he is sleeping or engaged at his meals. Well aware of this, people often come in the middle of the night and wake the prince from his sleep, with petitions for their relations who are to be executed early next morning. If he can not obtain a pardon from his mother, he manages to pass as if by accident along the road by which the poor culprits are led, bound with cords, to meet their fate. Then he cuts their bonds asunder, and either tells them to flee, or to go quietly home, according as their offenses have been grave or venial. When the queen is informed of what her son has done, she never makes any remark, but only tries to keep the next sentences she pronounces as secret as possible, and to hasten their execution. Condemnation and punishment thus often succeed each other so rapidly, that if the prince is absent from the town when sentence is passed, the application to him for assistance is almost sure to come too late.
It is strange, considering how radically different their dispositions are, that mother and son should love each other so tenderly. The prince is devoted to the queen with the utmost affection; he tries to excuse her deeds of severity by every conceivable argument, and it is a bitter reflection to him that she can be neither loved nor respected by the nation.
The prince’s character is the more remarkable, inasmuch as he has had his mother’s bad example before his eyes from his earliest youth, and can not escape from her influence; moreover, not the slightest care has been taken of his education. In most similar cases, the son would certainly have imbibed the prejudices and acquired the vices of the mother.
No one has attempted to teach him any thing, with the exception of a few words of the English language; what he knows, and what he is, he owes entirely to himself. What might this prince not have been had a judicious education opened his mind and developed his talents? I had frequent opportunities of seeing and observing him, for a day seldom passed without his paying Mr. Lambert a visit. I found no fault in him except a certain want of independence and a distrust of his own abilities; and the only thing I fear, should the government one day fall into his hands, is, that he will not come forward with sufficient energy, and may fail in thoroughly carrying out his good intentions.