This does not accord with the liberty French ladies are supposed to enjoy. But I believe Clara is not the first wife that has been locked up at St. Domingo, yet she excites little sympathy because she has not the good fortune to be one of the privileged.
In Continuation.
Certain events, which shall be related, prevented me from finishing my letter. The same events have produced an entire change in our affairs, and we are now fixed at St. Domingo for some time.
The embargo is raised:—the general in chief is gone to Port-au-Prince; all the belles of the Cape have followed him. Clara is at liberty, and her husband content!
As soon as we had an opportunity of conversing together, Clara related to me occurrences which seem like scenes of romance, but I am convinced of their reality. Under the window of the little apartment in which she was confined, there is an old building standing in a court surrounded by high walls. The general informed himself of the position of Clara's chamber, and his intelligent valet, who makes love to one of her servants, found that it would not be difficult to give her a letter, which his dulcinea refused charging herself with. He watched the moment of St. Louis's absence, entered the deserted court, mounted the tottering roof, and, calling Clara to the window, gave her the letter, glowing with the warmest professions of love, and suggesting several schemes for her escape, one of which was, that she should embark on board a vessel that he would indicate, and that he would agree with the captain to put into Port-au-Prince, whither he would speedily follow her.—Another was, to escape in the night by the same window, and go to his house, where he would receive and protect her. But the heart of Clara acknowledged not the empire of general Rochambeau, nor had she even the slightest intention of listening to him.
If her husband knew all this it would cure him, I suppose, of his passion for locking up. But, incapable of generosity himself, he cannot admire it in another, and would attribute her refusal of the general's offers to any motive but the real one.
How often has she assured me that she would prefer the most extreme poverty to her present existence, but to abandon her husband was not to be thought of. Yet to have abandoned him, and to have been presented as the declared mistress of General Rochambeau, would not have been thought a crime nor have excluded her from the best society!
Madame G——, who has nothing but her beauty to recommend her, (and no excess of that) lives with the admiral on board his vessel. She is visited by every body; and no party is thought fashionable if not graced by her presence, yet her manners are those of a poissarde and she was very lately in the lowest and most degraded situation. But she gives splendid entertainments: and when good cheer and gaiety invite, nobody enquires too minutely by whom they are offered.
Clara laughs at the security St. Louis felt when he had her locked up. Yet in spite of bolts and bars love's messenger reached her. The general's letters were most impassioned, for, unaccustomed to find resistance, the difficulty his approach to Clara met added fuel to his flame.