IN the midst of these blind illusions and hopes, my twentieth birthday
approached. It was now the month of August, 1791, and my uncle had
decided that this should be the date of my marriage with Marie. You can
well understand that the thoughts of happiness, now so near, absorbed
all my faculties, and how little notice I took of the political crisis
which was then felt throughout the colony. I will not, therefore, speak
of the Count de Pernier, or of M. de Blanchelande, nor of the tragical
death of the unfortunate Colonel de Marchiste; nor will I attempt to
describe the jealousies of the Provincial House of Assembly of the
North, and the Colonial Assembly, which afterwards called itself the
General Assembly, declaring that the word “Colonial” had a ring of
slavery in it.
For my own part, I sided with neither; and if I did espouse any cause,
it was in favour of Cap, near which town my home was situate, in
opposition to Port au Prince.
Only once did I mix myself up in the question of the day. It was on the
occasion of the disastrous decree of the 15th of May, 1791, by which the
National Assembly of France admitted free men of colour to enjoy the
same political privileges as the whites.
At a ball given by the Governor of Cap, many of the younger colonists
spoke in impassioned terms of this law, which levelled so cruel a blow
at the instincts of supremacy assumed by the whites, with perhaps too
little foundation. I had, as yet, taken no part in the conversation,
when I saw approaching the group a wealthy planter, whose doubtful
descent caused him to be received merely upon sufferance by the white
society. I stepped in front of him, and in a haughty voice I exclaimed,
“Pass on, sir! pass on! or you may hear words which would certainly be
disagreeable to those with _mixed blood_ in their veins.”
He was so enraged at this insinuation, that he challenged me. We fought,
and each was slightly wounded. I confess that I was in the wrong to have
thus provoked him, and it is probable that I should not have done so on
a mere _question of colour_, but I had for some time past noticed that
he had had the audacity to pay certain attentions to my cousin, and had
danced with her the very night upon which I had insulted him.
However, as time went on, and the date so ardently desired approached, I
was a perfect stranger to the state of political ferment in which those
around me lived; and I never perceived the frightful cloud which already
almost obscured the horizon, and which promised a storm that would sweep
all before it.
No one at that time thought seriously of a revolt amongst the slaves—a
class too much despised to be feared; but between the whites and the
free mulattos there was sufficient hatred to cause an outbreak at any
moment, which might entail the most disastrous consequences.
During the first days of August a strange incident occurred, which threw
a slight shade of uneasiness over the sunshine of my happiness.