"I regret that I have not."
"Est-il possible!"
"On my honour."
"Tête Dieu—you astonish me!"
"'Tis the case, nevertheless," said I, feeling more amused by his surprise than ashamed of my own ignorance.
"She was here in Guadaloupe all that Mesdames Pompadour, Du Barri, or Maintenon, were at Versailles or the Louvre. Her beauty and intrigues made her queen of the island, as I shall have the honour of telling you."
"Another story," said I, with a well-bred grimace.
"Oui, Monsieur le Capitaine," said the old gentleman, making three such profound bows, that at each of them I felt my wounded arm twinge. "In the days of M. Aubert's government, I mean during the reign of——"
"Ah, his most Christian Majesty——"
"Louis XIII.; exactly monsieur, our colonists were sadly in want of wives, and it is not every one who can realize a Venus in a copper-coloured Carib squaw, or a tattooed Congo negress, with a fish-bone in her nostrils; so the Frenchmen in Guadaloupe tilled the land, sowed, reaped, boiled the sugar, pressed the vines, and made money in peace and profound tranquillity, until a certain Madame Fayolle conceived the brilliant, but unfortunate idea of bringing a stock of handsome young damsels from Paris to Guadaloupe. You may imagine the excitement their arrival caused among Frenchmen who had not seen a white female face for years. Scarcely had the ship's anchor dropped into the roadstead of Basse Terre, ere she was surrounded by men in boats, clamouring to get on board, all clad in their best attire, displaying purses of money, and striving to pay their court, and make selections. Parbleu! the rape of the Sabines was a joke to it! They fought, bit, scratched, and stabbed each other; several of their boats were overturned, and thus many of their crews, instead of rushing into the jaws of matrimony, found themselves in those of the blue sharks that were gliding about in the waves below.