Presently, loud shouts, or rather howls of triumph, announced that the overseer’s place of concealment was discovered. Bartoletti, pale or rather yellow, limp, stammering, and beside himself with terror, was dragged out of the house and consigned to sundry ferocious-looking negroes, who proceeded to amuse themselves by alternately kicking, cuffing, and threatening him with instantaneous death. The Marquise listened eagerly; horror, pity, and disgust succeeding each other on her haughty, resolute face. Once, something like contempt swept over it, while she caught the tone of Bartoletti’s abject entreaties for mercy. He only asked for life—bare life, nothing more; they might make a slave of him then and there. He was their property, he and his wife, and all that he had, to do what they liked with. Only let him live, he said, and he would join them heart and hand; show them where the rum was kept, the money, the jewels; nay, help them cheerfully to cut every white throat on the island. The man was convulsed with terror, and the negroes danced round like fiends, mocking, jeering, flouting him, exulting in the spectacle of a _buckra_ overseer brought so low. “There is something in _race_ after all,” observed the Marquise, as if discussing an abstract proposition. “I suppose it is only the _canaille_ that can thus degrade themselves from mere dread of death. Though our families have not always _lived_ very decently, I am glad to think that there was never yet a Montmirail or La Fierté who did not know how _to die_. My child, it is the pure old blood that carries us through such moments as these; neither of us are likely to disgrace it now.” Again her daughter’s lips moved, although no sound escaped them. Cerise was prepared to die, but she could not bring herself to reason on the advantages of noble birth at such a moment, like the Marquise; and indeed the girl’s weaker frame and softer heart quailed in terror at the prospect of the ordeal they had to go through. From their chamber of refuge the two ladies could hear the insulting jests and ribald gibberish of the slaves, now bursting into the sitting-room, breaking the furniture, shivering the mirrors, and wantonly destroying all the delicate articles of use and ornament, of which they could neither understand the purpose nor appreciate the value. Presently a discordant scream from Pierrot announced that the parrot had protested against the intrusion of these riotous visitors, while a shout of pain, followed by loud bursts of laughter, proclaimed the manner in which he had resented the familiarity of one more daring than the rest. Taking the bird roughly off its perch, a stout young negro named Achille had been bitten to the bone, and the cross-cut wound inflicted by the parrot’s beak so roused his savage nature, that twisting its neck round with a vindictive howl, he slew poor Pierrot on the spot.