“The Provincial Assembly should at once be convoked,” said the planter who had been speaking when first I entered.
“The Provincial Assembly?” retorted his antagonist; “what is the Provincial Assembly?”
“You do not know because you are a member of the Colonial Assembly,” replied the favourer of the White Cockade.
The Independent interrupted him. “I know no more of the Colonial than the Provincial—I only recognize the General Assembly.”
“Gentlemen,” exclaimed a planter, “whilst we are losing time with this nonsense, tell me what is to become of my cotton and my cochineal?”
“And my indigo at Lumbé?”
“And my negroes, for whom I paid twenty dollars a-head all round?” said the captain of a slave ship.
“Each minute that you waste,” continued another colonist, “costs me ten quintals of sugar, which at seventeen piastres the quintal makes one hundred and thirty livres, ten sous, in French money, by the——”
Here the rival upholders of the two Assemblies again sought to renew their argument.
“Morbleu,” said M. de Rouvray in a voice of thunder, striking the table violently, “what eternal talkers you are! What do we care about your two assemblies. Summon both of them, your Excellency, and I will form them into two regiments, and when they march against the negroes we shall see whether their tongues or their muskets make the most noise.”