30 



HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 



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l<% 



friend of their race. Fortune is the boon of youth ; 

 he escaped every danger. Having discovered a good 

 horse, whenever the blacks issued from their hiding- 

 places, one touch of the spear, a wave of the hat, a 

 cry : ' Advanced guard of General Toussaint ! ' and this 

 was enough. At that formidable name all took to 

 flight, and disappeared as if by enchantment. 



" Such was the tenderness of my father's soul, that 

 he did not withdraw his regard from the great man 

 who had misunderstood him. When, at a later period, 

 he saw him in Finance, abandoned by everybody, a 

 wretched prisoner in a^ fort of the Jura, where he 

 perished of cold and misery,* he alone was faithful to 

 him. Despite his errors, despite the deeds of violence 

 inseparable from the grand and terrible part which that 

 man had played, he revered in him the daring pioneer 

 of a race, the creator of a world. He corresponded 

 with him until his death, and afterwards T\dth his 

 family. 



"A singular chance ordained that my father should 

 be engaged in the isle of Elba when the First of the 

 Whites, dethroned in his turn, amved to take posses- 

 sion of his miniature kingdom. Heart and imagina- 

 tion, my father fell captive to this wonderful romance. 

 An American, and imbued with Republican ideas, he 

 became on this occasion, and for the second time, the 

 courtier of misfortune. He was the most intimate of 



* Napoleon's treatment of Toussaint L'Ouvertnre is one of the 

 darkest spots on his fame. He flung this son of the Tropics into a 

 dungeon among the icy fastnesses of the Alps, where he died, slain by- 

 cold and undeserved ill-treatment, on the 27th of April 180S,— Translator. 



