Who can imagine the feeling with which poor Clotelle received
the intelligence of her kind friend's death? The deep gashes
of the cruel whip had prostrated the lovely form of the quadroon,
and she lay upon her bed of straw in the dark cell. The speculator
had brought her, but had postponed her removal till she should recover.
Her benefactress was dead, and--
"Hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell."
"Is Jerome safe?" she would ask herself continually.
If her lover could have but known of the sufferings of that sweet
flower,- -that polyanthus over which he had so often been
in his dreams,--he would then have learned that she was worthy
of his love.
It was more than a fortnight before the slave-trader could take his prize
to more comfortable quarters. Like Alcibiades, who defaced the images
of the gods and expected to be pardoned on the ground of eccentricity,
so men who abuse God's image hope to escape the vengeance of his wrath
under the plea that the law sanctions their atrocious deeds.
CHAPTER XXII
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT AND WHAT FOLLOWED
IT was a beautiful Sunday in September, with a cloudless sky,
and the rays of the sun parching the already thirsty earth,
that Clotelle stood at an upper window in Slater's slave-pen
in New Orleans, gasping for a breath of fresh air.
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