HOW THE AUTHOR WAS LED TO 
had, on the contrary, but softened his. No man in 
this generation—a generation so much agitated, tossed 
to and fro by so many waves—had undergone such 
painful experiences. His father, an Auvergnat, the 
principal of a college, then juge consulaive in our 
most southern city, and finally summoned to the 
Assembly of Notables in ’88, had all the hard austerity 
of his country and his functions, of the school and the 
tribunals. The education of that era was cruel, a per- 
petual chastisement; the more wit, the more character, 
the more strength, the more did this education tend to 
shatter them, to break them down. My father, of a 
delicate and tender nature, could never have survived 
it, and only escaped by flying to America, where one 
of his brothers had previously established himself. <A 
change of linen was his only fortune, except his youth, 
his confidence, his golden dreams of freedom. Thence- 
forth he always cherished a peculiar tenderness for that 
land of liberty; he often revisited it, and earnestly 
wished to die there, 
‘Called by the needs of business to St. Domingo, he 
was present in that island at the great crisis of the reign 
of Toussaint L’Ouverture. This truly extraordinary 
man, who up to his fiftieth year had been a slave, who 
comprehended and foresaw everything, did not know 
how to write, or to give expression to his ideas. His 
genius succeeded better in great actions than in fine 
speeches. He lacked a hand, a pen, and more—the 
young bold heart which shall teach the hero the heroic 
language, the words in harmony with the moment and 
the situation. Toussaint, at his age, could only utter 
