But he was a privileged being in the house of Don Juan Moraquitos. He had saved the life of the Spaniard's idolized daughter.
Yes, only one brief year before the period of which we write, Tristan, the negro, had by his courage and activity, preserved Camillia from a fearful death.
Late one evening the young girl and her governess had sat talking together in Camillia's luxurious boudoir. The slave Tristan had been admitted to the apartment to amuse the capricious beauty with his songs and antics. But Camillia had soon grown weary of this diversion and, turning to Mademoiselle Corsi, she said languidly:
"Tell Tristan to leave us Pauline, he is noisy, and he wearies me."
Generous-hearted as was the Spanish girl, her education had taught her to look upon a slave as an inferior being, unblest with those finer feelings which demand our courtesy and consideration. She dismissed Tristan as she would have dismissed her lapdog when tired of his antics. A black and gloomy frown obscured the negro's glittering eyes as he was thus unceremoniously ordered from the room.
It was unobserved by Camillia, but not unmarked by Pauline Corsi.
The slave retired, but he did not go far. Between the boudoir and the saloon there was an ante-chamber, the floor of which was covered with a square Persian carpet—a carpet of immense value, thick as velvet pile.
Upon this carpet, close to the door of the boudoir, Tristan threw himself like a dog on the threshold of his master's apartment.
"She sends me from her," he said, bitterly; "I am noisy, and I weary her; it was not so in the days that are long gone by, when she and I were playfellows."
The negro gone, Camillia reclined upon a sofa, and amused herself by looking over a pile of French novels, which had lately arrived from Paris. To do this she drew toward her a little inlaid table upon which stood an elegant reading-lamp.