If I wished to describe a mulatto of the most unscrupulous type, I should have selected the late General Lorquet, but I have already referred to him. There are among the mulattoes men eminently agreeable, and perhaps the one who best pleased me was Auguste Elie, at one time Minister for Foreign Affairs. He had been brought up in France, was highly educated, and had an astonishing memory. My Spanish colleague and myself used to visit him almost every evening, and pass a pleasant hour in varied conversation. One day my friend remarked, “I am often surprised at the knowledge shown by Auguste Elie, and the elegance of the language in which it is expressed.” I replied, “This evening turn the conversation on agriculture in the South of France.” He did so, and he was again struck by the minute knowledge shown and the manner in which it was conveyed. On our return home, I opened the last number of “La Revue des Deux Mondes,” and showed him paragraph after paragraph which Auguste Elie had repeated almost word for word. I knew that he read the review regularly, and was persuaded he had not missed reading the article on the agriculture of that part of France which interested him most, and his memory was so exact that he had forgotten nothing. I had often remarked his quotations, but he could digest what he read as well as remember. A few men like Auguste Elie would have given a better tone to Haytian society. A strong desire to appear what they are not is a defect from which the best-known Haytians are not free. A French colleague once called upon a Secretary of State, whose _writings have been compared to those of Plato_, and found him, book in hand, walking up and down his verandah. “Ah! my friend, you see how I employ my leisure hours. I am reading Demosthenes in the original.” But the sharp Frenchman kept his eye on the volume, and soon found that it was an interlinear translation. Every Haytian appears fully persuaded that his countrymen never seek office except for the purpose of improving their private fortunes, and the most precise stories of official robbery were falsely made against Auguste Elie and M. Bauce, both Secretaries of State. At Auguste Elie’s death there was little left for the family, and Madame Bauce declined the succession to her husband’s effects, as the debts were not covered by the inheritance. Liaulaud Ethéart and M. Darius Denis, though long Secretaries of State, afterwards honourably supported their families, the one in retail trade, the other by keeping a school. Perhaps, as a rule, the accusation is well founded, and nearly all, black and coloured, believe in the saying, “Prendre l’argent de l’état, ce n’est pas volé.”