I sank upon my knees and muffled my head in the skirt of my dress, to shut out the dreadful sound that was sure to follow all I had seen; but that sound—the death-volley which slew my father, seemed to split my ears, like rolling thunder! .......
When I looked again, the multitude were yelling and whooping round a prostrate and bleeding form, which was thrust into a rude coffin and borne away by black slaves, while the naked Bacchantes of whom I have spoken danced hand in hand around it, and, as it disappeared, a blessed insensibility came over me.
Such was the fate of my father, the Sieur de Mazancy, commander of the royal troops in Martinique.
After this, several days passed; of these I have little other recollection than hearing from time to time sounds of tumult; the echo of musket-shots, and wild cries from the town of St. Pierre, where the republicans of all colours were leaguing with the blacks and revolted troops to destroy the wealthy planters and their families. Overcome in mind and body by the terror I had endured, and a horror of my present position, I would have sunk altogether, but for the kindness and ministrations of Benoit le Noir, an old Obeah negro of my father's, who had obtained the office of sweeping the prisons and cleansing the scaffold in the citadel, and who, almost forced me to eat some cakes made of a delicate fruit, and to drink from time to time the contents of a gourd bottle, which he carried in his wallet of grass-matting. The beverage it contained was vidonia wine and citron juice, seasoned with sugar and nutmeg; it refreshed and sustained me, and I remember more than once drooping my aching head upon the shoulder of this old slave and weeping bitterly, for in my loneliness I felt how true it is that,
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
After the first paroxysm of grief was past and I had become tolerably resigned, I was visited by Thibaud de Rouvigny. I remembered how my father had upbraided him, and the part he had performed at his execution—let me rather call it murder!—and I received him with coldness almost loathing. But he only smiled, seated himself upon my truckle bed, and persisted in endeavouring to console me. Let me hasten over an interview, the result of which makes me now despise myself! But, oh, what was I, a poor girl broken in heart and crushed in spirit!
He told me that, as an aristocrat, I was doomed to death by the laws which had regenerated France; laws, which the provisional government of Martinique recognized; that the warrant for my execution had already been signed by him; but that one way remained by which I could be saved.
"A way—oh! name it, monsieur," said I imploringly.
"Marriage with a citizen—a child of the Republic."
"Oh, this is adding absurdity to cruelty—insult to misfortune," I replied with clasped hands.