It was a glorious day, that twelfth of June, when the _Heros_ sailed
away from the shores of Saint Domingo. Before the _Heros_ could sail
quite away, it was compelled to hover, as it were, about the shadow of
the land--to advance and retreat--to say farewell, apparently, and then
to greet it again. The wind was north-east, so that a direct course was
impossible; and the Ouverture family assembled, with the exception of
Toussaint himself, upon deck, gave vent, again and again, to their
tears--again and again strained their eyes, as the mountains with their
shadowy sides, the still forests, the yellow sands, and the quiet
settlements of the lateral valleys, came into view, or faded away.
L'Ouverture's cabin, to which he was strictly confined during the
voyage, had a window in the stern, and he, too, had therefore some
change of prospect. He gazed eagerly at every shifting picture of the
land; but most eagerly when he found himself off Cap Samana. With his
pocket-glass he explored and discovered the very point of rough ground
on the height where he stood with Christophe, less than six months
before, to watch the approach, and observe the rendezvous, of the French
fleet. He remembered, as his eye was fixed upon the point, his naming
to Henri this very ship, in which he was now a prisoner, sailing away,
never more to return.
"Be it so!" he thought, according to his wont. "My blacks are not
conquered, and will never more be slaves."
The wind soon changed, and the voyage was a rapid one. Short as it was,
it was tedious; for, with the exception of Mars Plaisir, who was
appointed to wait on him, the prisoner saw no one. Again and again he
caught the voices of his children, singing upon deck--no doubt in order
to communicate with him: but, in every instance, almost before he had
begun to listen, the song ceased. Mars Plaisir explained that it was
silenced by the captain's order. No captain's order had power to stop
the prisoner's singing. Every night was Aimee consoled, amidst her
weeping, by the solemn air of her father's favourite Latin Hymn to Our
Lady of the Sea: every morning was Margot roused to hope by her
husband's voice, singing his matin-prayer. Whatever might be the
captain's apprehensions of political danger from these exercises, he
gave over the opposition which had succeeded so well with the women.
"My father crossed this sea," thought Toussaint: "and little could he
have dreamed that the next of his race would cross it also, a prince and
a prisoner. He, the son of a king, was seized and sold as a slave. His
son, raised to be a ruler by the hand of Him who creates princes
(whether by birth or royalty of soul), is kidnapped, and sacrificed to
the passions of a rival. Such is our life! But in its evil there is
good. If my father had not crossed this sea as a slave, Saint Domingo
would have wanted me; and in me, perhaps, its freedom and civilisation.
If I had not been kidnapped, my blacks might have lacked wrath to
accomplish the victory to which I have led them. If my father is
looking back on this world, I doubt not he rejoices in the degradation
which brought elevation to his race; and, as for me, I lay the few years
of my old age a ready sacrifice on the altar of Africa."
Sometimes he amused himself with the idea of surveying, at last, the
Paris of which he had heard so much. Oftener, however, he dwelt with
complacency on the prospect of seeing Bonaparte--of meeting his rival,
mind to mind. He knew that Bonaparte's curiosity about him was eager,
and he never doubted that he should be called to account personally for
his government, in all its details. He did not consider that the great
captain of the age might fear to meet his victim--might shrink from the
eye of a brother-soldier whom he had treated worse than a felon.
Time and disappointment taught the prisoner this. None of his dreams
were verified. In Brest harbour he was hurried from the ship--allowed a
parting embrace of his family upon deck--no more; not a sentence of
conversation, though all the ship's crew were by to hear. Mars Plaisir
alone was allowed to accompany him. Two hurried whispers alone were
conveyed to his ear. Placide assured him (yet how could it be?) that
Monsieur Pascal was in France and would exert himself. And Margot told
him, amidst her sobs, that she had done the one only thing she could--
she had prayed for Bonaparte, as she promised, that night of prophetic
woe at Pongaudin.
Nothing did he see of Paris but some of the dimly-lighted streets, as he
was conveyed, at night, to the prison of the Temple. During the weeks
that he was a prisoner there, he looked in vain for a summons to the
presence of the First Consul, or for the First Consul's appearance in
his apartment. One of Bonaparte's aides, Caffarelli, came indeed, and
brought messages: but these messages were only insulting inquiries about
the treasures--the treasures buried in the mornes;--for ever these
treasures! This recurring message, with its answer, was all the
communication he had with Bonaparte; and the hum and murmur from the
streets were all that he knew of Paris. When Bonaparte, nettled with
the reply--"The treasures I have lost are far other than those you
seek,"--was convinced that no better answer would be obtained, he gave
the order which had been impending during those weeks of confinement in
the Temple.
When Bonaparte found his first leisure, after the fetes and bustle
occasioned in August by his being made First Consul for life, he issued
his commands regarding the disposal of his West Indian prisoner: and
presently Toussaint was traversing France, with Mars Plaisir for his
companion in captivity--with an officer, as a guard, inside the closed
carriage; another guard on the box; and one, if not two, mounted in
their rear.
The journey was conducted under circumstances of great mystery. The
blinds of the carriage were never let down; provisions were served out
while the party was in full career; and the few baitings that were made
were contrived to take place, either during the night, or in
unfrequented places. It was clear that the complexion of the strangers
was not to be seen by the inhabitants. All that Toussaint could learn
was that they were travelling south-east.
"Have you mountains in your island?" asked the officer, letting down the
blind just so much, when the carriage turned a corner of the road, as to
permit to himself a glimpse of the scenery. "We are entering the Jura.
Have you mountains in your island?"
Toussaint left it to Mars Plaisir to answer this question; which he did
with indignant volubility, describing the uses and the beauties of the
heights of Saint Domingo, from the loftiest peaks which intercept the
hurricane, to the lowest, crested with forts or spreading their
blossoming groves to the verge of the valleys.
"We too have fortresses on our heights," said the officer. "Indeed, you
will be in one of them before night. When we are on the other side of
Pontarlier, we will look about us a little."
"Then, on the other side of Pontarlier, we shall meet no people,"
observed Mars Plaisir.
"People! Oh, yes! we have people everywhere in France."
When Pontarlier was passed, and the windows of the carriage were thrown
open, the travellers perceived plainly enough why this degree of liberty
was allowed. The region was so wild, that none were likely to come
hither in search of the captives. There were inhabitants; but few
likely to give information as to who had passed along the road. There
were charcoal-burners up on the hill-side; there were women washing
clothes in the stream which rushed along, far below in the valley; the
miller was in his mill, niched in the hollow beside the waterfall; and
there might still be inmates in the convent which stood just below the
firs, on the knoll to the left of the road. But by the wayside, there
were none who, with curious eyes, might mark, and with eager tongue
report, the complexion of the strangers who were rapidly whirled along
towards Joux.
Toussaint shivered as the chill mountain air blew in. Perhaps what he
saw chilled him no less than what he felt. He might have unconsciously
expected to see something like the teeming slopes of his own mountains,
the yellow ferns, the glittering rocks, shining like polished metal in
the sun. Instead of these, the scanty grass was of a blue-green; the
stunted firs were black; and the patches of dazzling white intermingled
with them formed a contrast of colour hideous to the eye of a native of
the tropics.
"That is snow," exclaimed Mars Plaisir to his master, with the pride of
superior experience.
"I know it," replied Toussaint, quietly.
The carriage now laboured up a steep ascent. The _brave homme_ who
drove alighted on one side, and the guard on the other, and walked up
the hill, to relieve the horses. The guard gathered such flowers as met
his eye; and handed into the carriage a blue gentian which had till now
lingered on the borders of the snows,--or a rhododendron, for which he
had scaled a crag. His officer roughly ordered him not to leave the
track.
"If we had passed this way two or three months earlier," he said
complacently to his prisoners, "we should have found cowslips here and
there, all along the road. We have a good many cowslips in early
summer. Have you cowslips in your island?"
Toussaint smiled as he thought of the flower-strewn savannahs, where
more blossoms opened and perished in an hour than in this dreary region
all the summer through. He heard Mars Plaisir compelled to admit that
he had never seen cowslips out of France.
At length, after several mountings and dismountings of the driver and
guard, they seemed, on entering a defile, to apply themselves seriously
to their business. The guard cast a glance along the road, and up the
sides of the steeps, and beckoned to the horsemen behind to come on; and
the driver repeatedly cracked his whip. Silence settled down on the
party within the carriage; for all understood that they drew near the
fortress. In silence they wound through the defile, till all egress
seemed barred by a lofty crag. The road, however, passed round its
base, and disclosed to view a small basin among the mountains, in the
midst of which rose the steep which bore the fortress of Joux. At the
foot of this steep lay the village; a small assemblage of sordid
dwellings. At this village four roads met, from as many defiles which
opened into this centre. A mountain-stream gushed along, now by the
road-side, now winding and growing quieter among the little plot of
green fields which lay in the rear of the castle rock. This plot of
vivid green cheered, for a moment, the eye of the captives; but a second
glance showed that it was but a swamp. This swamp, crags, firs, and
snow, with the dirty village, made up the prospect. As for the
inhabitants--as the carriage stopped short of the village, none were to
be seen, but a girl with her distaff amidst a flock of goats, and some
soldiers on the castle walls above.
There appeared to be but one road up the rock--a bridle or foot road to
the right, too narrow and too steep for any carriage. Where this joined
the main road the carriage stopped; and the prisoners were desired to
alight.
"We must trouble you to walk up this hill," said the officer, "unless
you prefer to mount, and have your horse led."
Before he had finished speaking, Toussaint was many paces in advance of
his guards. But few opportunities had he enjoyed, of late, of
exercising his limbs. He believed that this would be the last; and he
sprang up the rocky pathway with a sense of desperate pleasure. Panting
and heated, the most active of the soldiers reached the summit some
moments after him. Toussaint had made use of those few moments. He had
fixed in his memory the loading points of the landscape towards the
east--the bearings of the roads which opened glimpses into two valleys
on that side--the patches of enclosure--the nooks of pasture where cows
were grazing, and children were at play--these features of the landscape
he eagerly comprehended--partly for use, in case of any opportunity of
escape; partly for solace, if he should not henceforth be permitted to
look abroad.
A few, and but a few, more moments he had, while the drawbridge was
lowered, the portcullis raised, and the guard sent in with some order
from his officer. Toussaint well knew that that little plot of fields,
with its winding stream, was the last verdure that he might ever see.
The snowy summits which peered over the fir-tops were prophets of death
to him; for how should he, who had gone hither and thither under the sun
of the tropics for sixty years, live chained among the snows? Well did
he know this; yet he did not wait to be asked to pass the bridge.
The drawbridge and the courtyard were both deserted. Not a soldier was
to be seen. Mars Plaisir muttered his astonishment, but his master
understood, that the presence of negro prisoners in the fortress was not
to become known. He read in this incident a prophecy of total
seclusion.
They were marched rapidly through the courtyard, into a dark passage,
where they were desired to stop. In a few moments Toussaint heard the
tramp of feet about the gate, and understood that the soldiers had been
ordered back to their post.
"The Commandant," the officer announced to his prisoners; and the
Commandant Rubaut entered the dim passage. Toussaint formed his
judgment of him, to a certain extent, in a moment. Rubaut endeavoured
to assume a tone of good-humoured familiarity; but there appeared
through this a misgiving as to whether he was thus either letting
himself down, on the one hand, or, on the other, encroaching on the
dignity of the person he addressed. His prisoner was a negro; but then
he had been the recognised Commander-in-Chief of Saint Domingo. One
symptom of awkwardness was, that he addressed Toussaint by no sort of
title.
"We have had notice of your approach," said he; "which is fortunate, as
it enables me to conduct you at once to your apartment. Will you
proceed? This way. A torch, Bellines! We have been looking for you
these two days; which happens very well, as we have been enabled to
prepare for you. Torches, Bellines! This way. We mount a few steps,
you perceive. We are not taking you underground, though I call for
lights; but this passage to the left, you perceive, is rather dark.
Yes, that is our well; and a great depth it is--deeper, I assure you,
than this rock is high. What do they call the depth, Chalot? Well,
never mind the depth! You can follow me, I believe, without waiting for
a light. We cannot go wrong. Through this apartment to the left."
Toussaint, however, chose to wait for Bellines and his torch. He chose
to see what he could of the passages of his prison. If this vault in
which he stood were not underground, it was the dreariest apartment from
which the daylight had ever been built out. In the moment's pause
occasioned by his not moving on when desired, he heard the dripping of
water as in a well.
Bellines appeared, and his torch showed the stone walls of the vault
shining with the trickling of water. A cold steam appeared to thicken
the air, oppress the lungs, and make the torch burn dim.
"To what apartment can this be the passage?" thought Toussaint. "The
grave is warm compared with this."
A glance of wretchedness from Mars Plaisir, seen in the torchlight, as
Bellines passed on to the front, showed that the poor fellow's spirits,
and perhaps some visions of a merry life among the soldiers, had melted
already in the damps of this vault. Rubaut gave him a push, which
showed that he was to follow the torch-bearer.
Through this vault was a passage, dark, wet, and slippery. In the
left-hand wall of this passage was a door, studded with iron nails
thickly covered with rust. The key was in this door. During the
instant required for throwing it wide, a large flake of ice fell from
the ceiling of the passage upon the head of Toussaint. He shook it off,
and it extinguished the torch.
"You mean to murder us," said he, "if you propose to place us here. Do
you not know that ice and darkness are the negro's poison? Snow, too,"
he continued, advancing to the cleft of his dungeon wall, at the outward
extremity of which was his small grated window. "Snow piled against
this window now! We shall be buried under it in winter."
"You will have good fires in winter."
"In winter! Yes! this night; or I shall never see winter."
"This night! Oh, certainly! You can have a fire, though it is not
usual with us at this season. Bellines--a fire here immediately."
He saw his prisoner surveying, by the dim light from the deep window,
the miserable cell--about twenty-eight feet by thirteen, built of blocks
of stone, its vaulted ceiling so low that it could be touched by the
hand; its floor, though planked, rotten and slippery with wet; and no
furniture to be seen but a table, two chairs, and two heaps of straw in
opposite corners.
"I am happy," said the Commandant, "to have been able to avoid putting
you underground. The orders I have had, from the First Consul himself,
as to your being _mis au secret_, are very strict. Notwithstanding
that, I have been able, you see, to place you in an apartment which
overlooks the courtyard; and which, too, affords you other objects"--
pointing through the gratings to the few feet of the pavement without,
and the few yards of the perpendicular rock opposite, which might be
seen through the loop-hole.
"How many hours of the day and night are we to pass in tills place?"
"How many hours? We reckon twenty-four hours to the day and night, as
is the custom in Europe," replied Rubaut; whether in ignorance or irony,
his prisoner could not, in the dim twilight, ascertain. He only learned
too surely that no exit from this cell was to be allowed.
Firewood and light were brought. Rubaut, eager to be busy till he could
go, and to be gone as soon as possible, found fault with some
long-deceased occupant of the cell, for having covered its arched
ceiling with grotesque drawings in charcoal; and then with Bellines, for
not having dried the floor. Truly the light gleamed over it as over a
pond. Bellines pleaded in his defence that the floor had been dried
twice since morning; but that there was no stopping the melting of the
ice above. The water would come through the joints till the winter
frosts set in.
"Ay, the winter frosts--they will set all to rights. They will cure the
melting of the ice, no doubt." Turning to his prisoners, he
congratulated himself on not being compelled to search their persons.
The practice of searching was usual, but might, he rejoiced to say, be
dispensed with on the present occasion. He might now, therefore, have
the pleasure of wishing them a good evening.
Pointing to the two heaps of straw, he begged that his prisoners would
lay down their beds in any part of the cell which pleased them best.
Their food, and all that they wanted, would be brought to the door
regularly. As for the rest, they would wait upon each other. Having
thus exhausted his politeness, he quitted the cell; and lock, bolt, and
bar were fastened upon the captives.
By the faint light, Toussaint then perceived that his companion was
struggling with laughter. When Mars Plaisir perceived by his master's
smile that he had leave to give way, he laughed till the cell rang
again, saying--
"Wait upon each other! His Excellency wait upon me! His Excellency
wait upon anybody!"
"There would be nothing new in that. I have endeavoured to wait upon
others all my life. Rarely does Providence grant the favour to wait
upon so many."