Виктор Мари Гюго
Under Sentence of Death
CHAPTER XXIX
As if to draw my attention from the perplexity into which I had been thrown by the strange scene that had just passed, a new and more terrible drama succeeded to the farce that had been played between Biassou and the Obi. Biassou had again taken his place upon his mahogany throne, whilst Rigaud and the Obi were seated on his right and left; the latter, with his arms crossed on his breast, seemed to have given himself up to deep thought. Biassou and Rigaud were chewing tobacco, and an aide-de-camp had just asked if he should order a general march past of the forces, when a tumultuous crowd of negroes, with hideous shouts, arrived at the entrance of the grotto. They had brought with them three white prisoners to be judged by Biassou, but what they desired was easily shown by the cries of “Muerte! Muerte!” “Death, death!” the latter, no doubt, emanating from the English negroes of Bouckmann’s band, many of whom had by this time arrived to join the French and Spanish negroes of Biassou.
The general with a gesture of his hand commanded silence, and ordered the three captives to be brought to the entrance of the grotto. I recognized two of them with considerable surprise; one was the Citizen General C–, that philanthropist who was in correspondence with all the lovers of the negro race in different parts of the globe, and who had proposed so cruel a mode of suppressing the insurrection to the governor. The other was the planter of doubtful origin, who manifested so great a dislike to the mulattoes, amongst whom the whites insisted on classing him. The third appeared to belong to a section called “poor whites”—that is to say, white men who had to work for their living: he wore a leathern apron, and his sleeves were turned up to his elbows. All the prisoners had been taken at different times, endeavouring to hide themselves in the mountains.
The “poor white” was the first one that was questioned.
“Who are you?” asked Biassou.
“I am Jacques Belin, carpenter to the Hospital of the Fathers, at Cap.”
Surprise and shame struggled for the mastery in the features of the general.
“Jacques Belin!” repeated he, biting his lips.
“Yes,” replied the carpenter; “do you not recognize me?”
“Begin,” retorted the general, furiously, “by recognizing me and saluting me.”
“I do not salute my slave,” replied the carpenter, sturdily.
“Your slave, wretch!” cried the general.
“Yes,” replied the carpenter; “yes, I was your first master, you pretend not to recognize me, but remember, Jean Biassou, that I sold you for thirty piastres in the Saint Domingo slave market.”
An expression of concentrated rage passed over Biassou’s face.
“Well,” continued the carpenter, “you appear ashamed of having worked for me; ought not Jean Biassou to feel proud of having belonged to Jacques Belin? Your mother, the old idiot, has often swept out my shop, but at last I sold her to the major-domo of the Hospital of the Fathers, and she was so old and decrepit, that he would only give me thirty-two livres and six sous for her. There is my history and yours, but it seems as if the negroes and the mulattoes are growing proud, and that you have forgotten the time when you served Master Jacques Belin, the carpenter of Cap, on your knees.”
Biassou listened to him with that sardonic smile that gave him the appearance of a tiger.
“Good,” said he; then turning to the negroes who had captured Belin, “get two trestles, two planks, and a saw, and take this man away. Jacques Belin, carpenter of Cap, thank me, for you shall have a true carpenter’s death.”
His sardonic laugh too fully explained the horrible punishment that he destined for the pride of his former master, but Jacques Belin did not blench, and turning proudly to Biassou, cried—
“Yes, I ought to thank you, for I bought you for thirty piastres, and I got work out of you to a much greater amount.”
They dragged him away.
CHAPTER XXX
More dead than alive, the other two prisoners had witnessed this frightful prologue to their own chance. Their timid and terrified appearance contrasted with the courageous audacity of the carpenter; every limb quivered with affright.
Biassou looked at them one after the other with his fox-like glance, and, as if he took a pleasure in prolonging their agony, began a discussion with Rigaud upon the different kinds of tobacco, asserting that that of Havana was only good for manufacturing cigars, whilst for snuff he knew nothing better than the Spanish tobacco, two barrels of which Bouchmaun had sent him, being a portion of the plunder of M. Lebattre’s stores in the island of Tortue. Then, turning sharply upon the Citizen General C–, he asked him—
“What do you think?”
This sudden address utterly confounded the timid citizen, and he stammered out.
“General, I am entirely of your Excellency’s opinion.”
“You flatter me,” replied Biassou; “I want your opinion, not mine. Do you know any tobacco that makes better snuff than that of M. Lebattres?”
“No, my lord,” answered C–, whose evident terror greatly amused Biassou.
“General, Your Excellency, My Lord! you are an aristocrat.”
“Oh no, certainly not,” exclaimed the citizen general. “I am a good patriot of ’91, and an ardent negrophile.”
“Negrophile!” interrupted the general. “Pray what is a negrophile?”
“It is a friend of the blacks,” stammered the citizen.
“It is not enough to be a friend of the blacks; you must also be a friend of the men of colour.”
“Men of colour is what I should have said,” replied the lover of the blacks, humbly. “I am mixed up with all the most famous partisans of the negroes and the mulattoes–”
Delighted at the opportunity of humiliating a white man, Biassou again interrupted him:
“Negroes and mulattoes! What do you mean, pray? Do you wish to insult me by making use of those terms of contempt invented by the whites? There are only men of colour and blacks here—do you understand that, Mr. Planter?”
“It was a slip, a bad habit that I picked up in childhood,” answered C–. “Pardon me, my lord, I had no wish to offend you.”
“Leave off this my lording business; I have already told you that I don’t like these aristocratic ways.”
C– again endeavoured to excuse himself, and began to stammer out a fresh explanation.
“If you knew, citizen–”
“Citizen indeed!” cried Biassou, in affected anger, “I detest all this Jacobin jargon. Are you by chance a Jacobin? Remember that you are speaking to the generalissimo of the king’s troops.”
The unhappy partisan of the negro race was dumbfounded, and did not know in what terms to address this man who equally disdained the titles of “my lord” or “citizen,” and the aristocratic or republican modes of salutation. Biassou, whose anger was only assumed, cruelly enjoyed the predicament in which he had placed him. “Alas,” at last said the citizen general, “you do not do me justice, noble defender of the unwritten rights of the larger portion of the human race.”
In his perplexity to hit upon an acceptable mode of address to a man who appeared to disdain all titles, he had recourse to one of those sonorous periphrases which the republicans occasionally substituted for the name and title of the persons with whom they were in conversation.
Biassou looked at him steadily and said, “You love the blacks and the men of colour?”
“Do I love them?” exclaimed the citizen C–. “Why, I correspond with Brissot and–”
Biassou interrupted him with a sardonic laugh. “Ha, ha, I am glad to find in you so trusty a friend to our cause; you must, of course, thoroughly detest those wretched colonists who punished our insurrection by a series of the most cruel executions, and you, of course, think with us, that it is not the blacks, but the whites, who are the true rebels, since they are in arms against the laws of nature and humanity? You must execrate such monsters!”
“I do execrate them,” answered C–.
“Well,” continued Biassou, “what do you think of a man who, in his endeavours to crush the last efforts of the slaves to regain their liberty, placed the heads of fifty black men on each side of the avenue that led to his house?”
C– grew fearfully pale.
“What do you think of a white man who would propose to surround the town of Cap with a circle of negro heads?”
“Mercy, mercy!” cried the terrified citizen general.
“Am I threatening you?” replied Biassou, coldly. “Let me finish; a circle of heads that would reach from Fort Picolet to Cape Caracol. What do you think of that? Answer me.”
The words of Biassou, “Do I threaten you,” had given a faint ray of hope to C–, for he fancied that the general might have heard of this terrible proposition without knowing the author of it; he therefore replied with all the firmness that he could muster, in order to remove any impression that the idea was his own: “I consider such a suggestion an atrocious crime.”
Biassou chuckled.
“Good, and what punishment should be inflicted on the man who proposed it?”
The unfortunate C– hesitated.
“What!” cried Biassou, “you hesitate! Are you, or are you not, the friend of the blacks?”
Of the two alternatives the wretched man chose the least threatening one, and seeing no hostile light in Biassou’s eyes, he answered in a low voice—
“The guilty person deserves death.”
“Well answered,” replied Biassou, calmly, throwing aside the tobacco that he had been chewing.
His assumed air of indifference had completely deceived the unfortunate lover of the negro race, and he made another effort to dissipate any suspicions which might have been engendered against him.
“No one,” cried he, “has a more ardent desire for your success than I. I correspond with Brissot and Pruneau de Pomme-Gouge in France, with Magaw in America, with Peter Paulus in Holland, with the Abbé Tamburini in Italy.” And he was continuing to unfold the same string of names which he had formerly repeated, but with a different motive, at the council held at M. de Blanchelande’s, when Biassou interrupted him.
“What do I care with whom you correspond! Tell me rather where are your granaries and store-houses, for my army has need of supplies; your plantation is doubtless a rich one, and your business must be lucrative since you correspond with so many merchants.”
C– ventured timidly to remark—
“Hero of humanity, they are not merchants, but philosophers, philanthropists, lovers of the race of blacks.”
“Then,” said Biassou, with a shake of his head, “if you have nothing that can be plundered, what good are you?”
This question afforded a chance of safety of which C– eagerly availed himself.
“Illustrious warrior,” exclaimed he, “have you an economist in your army?”
“What is that?” asked the general.
“It is,” replied the prisoner, with as much calmness as his fears would permit him to assume, “a most necessary man, one whom all appreciate, one who follows out and classes in their proper order the respective material resources of an empire, and gives to each its real value, increasing and improving them by combining their sources and results, and pouring them like fertilizing streams into the main river of general utility, which in its turn swells the great sea of public prosperity.”
“Caramba,” observed Biassou, leaning over towards the Obi. “What the deuce does he mean by all these words strung together like the beads on your rosary?”
The Obi shrugged his shoulders in sign of ignorance and disdain as citizen C– continued—
“If you will permit me to observe, valiant chief of the regenerators of Saint Domingo, I have carefully studied the works of the greatest economists of the world—Turgot, Raynal, and Mirabeau the friend of man. I have put their theories into practice, I thoroughly understand the science indispensable for the government of kingdoms and states–”
“The economist is not economical of his words,” observed Rigaud, with his bland and cunning smile.
“But you, eternal talker,” cried Biassou, “tell me, have I any kingdoms or states to govern?”
“Not yet perhaps, great man, but they will come; and besides, my knowledge descends to all the useful details which are comprised in the interior economy of an army.”
The general again interrupted him: “I have nothing to do with the interior economy of the army, I command it.”
“Good,” replied the citizen; “you shall be the commander, I will be the commissary; I have much special knowledge as to the increase of cattle–”
“Do you think we are going to breed cattle?” cried Biassou, with his sardonic laugh. “No, my good fellow, we are content with eating them; when cattle become scarce in the French colony I shall cross the line of mountains on the frontier and take the Spanish sheep and oxen from the plains of Cotury, of La Vega, of St. Jago, and from the banks of the Yuna; if necessary I will go as far as the Island of Jamaica, and to the back of the mountain of Cibos, and from the mouths of the Neybe to those of Santo Domingo; besides, I should be glad to punish those infernal Spanish planters for giving up Ogé to the French. You see I am not uneasy as regards provisions, and so have no need of your knowledge.”
This open declaration rather disconcerted the poor economist; he made, however, one more effort for safety. “My studies,” said he, “have not been limited to the reproduction of cattle, I am acquainted with other special branches of knowledge that may be very useful to you; I can show you the method of manufacturing pitch and working coal mines.”
“What do I care for that!” exclaimed Biassou. “When I want charcoal I burn a few leagues of forest.”
“I can tell you the proper kinds of wood to use for shipbuilding—the chicarm and the sabicca for the keels, the yabas for the knees, the medlars for the framework, the hacotnas, the gaïacs, the cedars, the acomas–”
“Que te lleven todos los demonios de los diez-y-siete infernos!” (“May the devils of the thirty-seven hells fly away with you!”), cried Biassou, boiling over with impatience.
“I beg your pardon, my gracious patron,” said the trembling economist, who did not understand Spanish.
“Listen,” said Biassou, “I don’t want to build vessels; there is only one vacancy that I can offer you, and that is not a very important one; I want a man to wait upon me; and now, Mr. Philosopher, tell me if that will suit you; you will have to serve me on your bended knees, you will prepare my pipe, cook my calalou and turtle soup, and you will stand behind me with a fan of peacock or parrot feathers like those two pages; now will the situation suit you?”
Citizen C–, whose only desire was to save his life, bent to the earth with a thousand expressions of joy and gratitude.
“You accept my offer, then?” asked Biassou.
“Can you ask such a question, generous master? do you think that I should hesitate for a moment in accepting so distinguished a post as that of being in constant attendance on you?”
At this reply the diabolical sneer of Biassou became more pronounced. He rose up with an air of triumph, crossed his arms on his chest, and thrusting aside with his foot the white man’s head who was prostrate on the ground before him, he cried in a loud voice—
“I am delighted at being able to fathom how far the cowardice of the white man could go, I have already measured the extent of his cruelty. Citizen C–, it is to you that I owe this double experience. I knew all; how could you have been sufficiently besotted to think that I did not? It was you who presided at the executions of June, July, and August; it was you who placed fifty negro heads on each side of your avenue; it was you who proposed to slaughter the five hundred negroes who were confined in irons after the revolt, and to encircle the town of Cap with their heads from Fort Picolet to Cape Caracol. If you could have done it you would have placed my head amongst them, and now you think yourself lucky if I will take you as my body-servant. No, no! I have more regard for your honour than you yourself have, and I will not inflict this affront on you; prepare to die!”
At a gesture of his hand the negroes removed the unhappy lover of the blacks to a position near me, where overwhelmed by the honour of his position, he fell to the ground without being able to articulate a word.
CHAPTER XXXI
“It is your turn now,” said the general, turning to the last of the prisoners, the planter who was accused by the white men of having black blood in his veins, and who had on that account sent me a challenge.
A general clamour drowned the reply of the planter. “Muerte! Death! Mort! Touyé!” cried the negroes, grinding their teeth, and shaking their fists at the unhappy captive.
“General,” said a mulatto, making himself heard above the uproar, “he is a white man, and he must die.”
The miserable planter, by cries and gesticulations, managed to edge in some words. “No, general, no, my brothers, it is an infamous calumny, I am a mulatto like yourselves, of mixed blood; my mother was a negress, like your mothers and sisters.”
“He lies,” cried the infuriated negroes, “he is a white man, he has always detested the coloured people.”
“Never,” retorted the prisoner; “it is the whites that I detest; I have always said with you, ‘Negre cé blan, blan cé negre’ (‘The negroes are the masters, the whites are the slaves’).”
“Not at all,” cried the crowd, “not at all; kill the white man, kill him!”
Still the unhappy wretch kept repeating in heart-rending accents, “I am a mulatto, I am one of yourselves.”
“Give me a proof,” was Biassou’s sole reply.
“A proof,” answered the prisoner, wildly, “the proof is that the whites have always despised me.”
“That may be true,” returned Biassou, “but you are an insolent hound to tell us so.”
A young mulatto stepped to the front and addressed the planter in an excited manner.
“That the whites despised you is a fact; but, on the other hand, you affected to look down upon the mulattoes amongst whom they classed you. It has even been reported that you once challenged a white man who called you a half caste.”
A howl of execration arose from the crowd, and the cry of “death” was repeated more loudly than ever, whilst the planter, casting an appealing glance at me, continued, with tears in his eyes—
“It is a calumny, my greatest glory and happiness is in belonging to the blacks, I am a mulatto.”
“If you really were a mulatto,” observed Rigaud, quietly, “you would not make use of such an expression.”
“How do I know what I am saying?” asked the panic-stricken wretch. “General, the proof that I am of mixed blood is in the black circle that you see round the bottom of my nails.”
Biassou thrust aside the suppliant hand.
“I do not possess the knowledge of our chaplain, who can tell what a man is by looking at his hand. But listen to me: my soldiers accuse you—some, of being a white man; others, of being a false brother. If this is the case you ought to die. You, on the other hand, assert that you belong to our race, and that you have never denied it. There is one method by which you can prove your assertions. Take this dagger and stab these two white prisoners!”
As he spoke, with a wave of his hand, he designated the citizen C– and myself.
The planter drew back from the dagger which, with a devilish smile on his face, Biassou presented to him.
“What,” said the general, “do you hesitate? It is your only chance of proving your assertion to the army that you are not a white, and are one of ourselves. Come, decide at once, for we have no time to lose.”
The prisoner’s eyes glared wildly; he stretched out his hand towards the dagger, then let his arm fall again, turning away his head, whilst every limb quivered with emotion.
“Come, come,” cried Biassou, in tones of impatience and anger, “I am in a hurry. Choose—either kill them, or die with them!”
The planter remained motionless, as if he had been turned to stone.
“Good!” said Biassou, turning towards the negroes, “he does not wish to be the executioner, let him be the victim. I can see that he is nothing but a white man—away with him!”
The negroes advanced to seize him. This movement impelled him to immediate choice between giving or receiving death.
Extreme cowardice produces a bastard species of courage.
Stepping forward, he snatched the dagger that Biassou still held out to him, and without giving himself time to reflect upon what he was about to do, he precipitated himself like a tiger upon citizen C–, who was lying on the ground near me. Then a terrible struggle commenced. The lover of the negro race, who had, at the conclusion of his interview with Biassou, remained plunged in a state of despair and stupor, had hardly noticed the scene between the general and the planter, so absorbed was he in the thought of his approaching death; but when he saw the man rush upon him, and the steel gleam above his head, the imminence of his danger aroused him at once. He started to his feet, grasped the arm of his would-be murderer, and exclaimed in a voice of terror—
“Pardon, pardon! What are you doing? What have I done?”
“You must die, sir,” said the half-caste, fixing his frenzied eyes upon his victim, and endeavouring to disengage his arm. “Let me do it; I will not hurt you.”
“Die by your hand,” cried the economist; “but why? Spare me; you wish perhaps to kill me because I used to say that you were a mulatto. But spare my life, and I vow that I will always declare that you are a white man. Yes, you are white, I will say so everywhere, but spare me!”
The unfortunate man had taken the wrong method of sueing for mercy.
“Silence, silence!” cried the half-caste, furious at the idea of the danger he was incurring, and fearing that the negroes would hear the assertion.
But the other cried louder than ever, that he knew that he was a white man, and of good family.
The half-caste made a last effort to impose silence on him; then finding his efforts vain, he thrust aside his arms, and pressed the dagger upon C–’s breast.
The unhappy man felt the point of the weapon, and in his despair bit the arm that was driving the dagger home.
“Monster! wretch!” exclaimed he, “you are murdering me.” Then casting a glance of supplication towards Biassou, he cried, “Defend me, avenger of humanity.”
Then the murderer pressed more heavily on the dagger; a gush of blood bubbled over his fingers, and spattered his face. The knees of the unhappy lover of the negro race bent beneath him, his arms fell by his side, his eyes closed, he uttered a stifled groan, and fell dead.
