154 Luck and Ill-Luck. [FEB. 



dishonoured her course of life, devoted to pensiveness and contemplation. 

 You have already guessed that Bernard, the vulture ceaselessly clinging to 

 his continually re-growing prey, was riot far off. Again he profited by my 

 mishap; and I learned that, in some time after, he married my fair co- 

 quette. 



*' My love, although foolish, was sincere. All taste for retirement, all 

 desire of returning to France, had left me. I felt an ardent necessity for 

 new emotion?, which would extinguish, or at least alleviate, the regret oc- 

 casioned, in spite of myself, by my silly passion. I learned that a new 

 colonial company was organizing to explore the coasts of Guinea, from the 

 Volta to Jacldn ; and I soon became one of the passengers on board the 

 first vessel bound on this expedition. After having sojourned some time in 

 tho fertile kingdom of Juida, and finding that my companions, whom until 

 then I considered as new argonauts, destined to carry tho blessings of 

 civilization among barbarous tribes, were only busy in carrying on the 

 slave trade, I wished to realize, by my own exertions, the honourable in- 

 tentions which I had so generously supposed for them ; and traversing the 

 territory of Ardra, I pushed forward into the continent. The first Africans 

 I met in this excursion fled at my approach, terrified at such a sight ; but 

 they speedily returned in greater numbers, surrounded me with piercing 

 shouts, formed a circle round me, seized me, manacled me, and brought 

 me before their chief. I was in the kingdom of Dahomay, which had not 

 till then been visited by any European. 



*' The great Dahomay, king of the country, was himself a little terrified 

 when he saw me : but he recollected, as I learnt afterwards, that his grand- 

 father, Trudo Audati, the hero of that part of Africa, had often related to 

 him that, in his time, white men had fallen into his power during the 

 course of his conquests. This idea encouraged him, and it was so much the 

 better for me ; for at first he was more inclined to consider me a devil than 

 a man. In some months-^-thanks to the scanty vocabulary and syntax 

 which compose the jargon of savage tribes I was able to converse with 

 bim. Initiated by me into the mysteries of the civilization of our wonder- 

 ful Europe, he took a great affection towards me. A terrible distemper, 

 of which I cured him (by means of water, regimen, and bleeding), ad- 

 vanced me still further in his good graces. I became his most intimate 

 counsellor, and I hoped to become at last the legislator of these unknown 

 regions. This idea pleased my imagination ; and I exerted all my ener- 

 gies to destroy in Dahomay the atrocious and superstitious customs which 

 infect that quarter of the African continent. 



" The king, who was a man of good sense and excellent disposition, 

 seemed to enter sometimes into my projects ; but his belief in his fetiches 

 that power of consecration which time gives to the most absurd things 

 opposed continual obstacles to my philanthropic views. Nevertheless, I 

 triumphed over every thing. Slaves were no longer sacrificed on the tomb 

 of their masters, with his favourite wives ; human victims were no longer 

 offered up to shapeless gods of wood or stone ; punishments, proportioned 

 to transgressions, no longer crushed and confounded together crime and 

 error; armies were recruited, without devouring all the active part of the 

 population ; and agriculture, hitherto confined to feeble women, incapable 

 of sustaining fora long time such labours, devolved upon the men who no 

 longer thought that cultivating the earth, and forming provident habits, 

 were unworthy of them, when they saw abundance and comfort succeeding 

 to misery and ennui. 



