“Men of colour is what I should have said,” replied the lover of the blacks, humbly. “I am mixed up with all the most famous partisans of the negroes and the mulattoes——”
Delighted at the opportunity of humiliating a white man, Biassou again interrupted him:
“Negroes and mulattoes! What do you mean, pray? Do you wish to insult me by making use of those terms of contempt invented by the whites? There are only men of colour and blacks here—do you understand that, Mr. Planter?”
“It was a slip, a bad habit that I picked up in childhood,” answered C——. “Pardon me, my lord, I had no wish to offend you.”
“Leave off this my lording business; I have already told you that I don’t like these aristocratic ways.”
C—— again endeavoured to excuse himself, and began to stammer out a fresh explanation.
“If you knew, citizen——”
“Citizen indeed!” cried Biassou, in affected anger, “I detest all this Jacobin jargon. Are you by chance a Jacobin? Remember that you are speaking to the generalissimo of the king’s troops.”
The unhappy partisan of the negro race was dumbfounded, and did not know in what terms to address this man who equally disdained the titles of “my lord” or “citizen,” and the aristocratic or republican modes of salutation. Biassou, whose anger was only assumed, cruelly enjoyed the predicament in which he had placed him. “Alas,” at last said the citizen general, “you do not do me justice, noble defender of the unwritten rights of the larger portion of the human race.”
In his perplexity to hit upon an acceptable mode of address to a man who appeared to disdain all titles, he had recourse to one of those sonorous periphrases which the republicans occasionally substituted for the name and title of the persons with whom they were in conversation.