“_Oui, monsieur_; he said that I must ask for health, and nothing more, for every thing else I could get myself.” A right good father, and a right sensible father was Joseph, according to my thinking; for the little Paqueta throve well under his instructions. Every morning and every night she took the medal from her neck, and placed it upon her bed and knelt before it and asked for health, and rose with the consciousness of possessing what she asked for. Her religion was a reality, and if it went not far, it at least went some way; and there was an earnestness about it which sometimes made me wish it my own. I have many neighbors, and perhaps you are slightly acquainted with others, who would show another and a better face with one half of Paqueta’s faith. CHAPTER II. Little Paqueta, nice Paqueta, sweet Paqueta, slave Paqueta, my pen runs riot when speaking of Paqueta, heaven bless her soul. Thus Paqueta lived, and breathed, and was happy during two whole years under my eyes, when a great change came over her life, and she put off the bonds of servitude never to resume them more. Her mistress, who had wealth, and who, with all of her sex among the creole French of Louisiana, looked forward to a translation to Paris with much of the expectation that fills the breast of a devotee who travels toward a “city out of sight,” removed to La Belle France. As the law then stood, it was the practice of those who went abroad to add a favorite slave to their train, as a readier and earlier means of manumission than the statute gave. All who touched la belle France returned free; so Paqueta’s mistress, knowing full well that her little maid-in-waiting, whom she had spoilt, and whom everybody had spoilt, was too white for servitude, was too white for any thing except one long Easter-day, as the pagans kept it, put her among her baggage. I saw Paqueta on shipboard, and there, standing upon the deck which was to take her forever from the clime of which she was a most true child, the wind whistling through her hair, and her tongue garrulous of the joy which childhood ever finds in all things new. I gave her my last lesson. “Paqueta,” said I, “never trouble yourself about counting five; if you should ever arrive at the counting of a hundred, you would be none the better for it; but remember always the good Father Joseph’s gift and his instructions—good bye.” And again the little slave-girl, so happy and so beautiful, rolled at my feet, and took them in her hands, and looked up, and was silent; for the long lesson of two years was ended, and was to be washed out by the wetting of a passing sorrow which I saw hanging upon her eyelids.