"A sweet specimen of a Roman you are," thought I, and I fell into a short reverie; but it was broken up most agreeably, by seeing Josephine trip before the open jalousies with a basket of flowers in her hand. She paused for a moment before us, and looked kindly at her father and smilingly at me. It was the first joyous, really joyous smile that I had seen in her expressive countenance. It went right to my heart, and brought with it a train of the most rapturous feelings. "God bless her heart; I do love her dearly!" said the old man. "I'll give you a convincing proof of it, my young friend, Rattlin. Ah! bah-- but you other English have spoiled all--you have taken him with you." "Who?" "Why, Captain Durand. That large low black schooner was his. Yes, he would have treated her well (said Monsieur le Pere, musing), and he offered to sign an agreement, never to put her to field-work, or to have her flogged." "Put whom to field-work?--flog whom?" said I, all amazement. "Josephine, to be sure; had you not taken him prisoner, I was going, next month, to sell her to him for two hundred doubloons." "Now, may God confound you for an unholy, unnatural villain!" said I, springing up, and overturning the table and wine into the fatherly lap of Monsieur Manuel. "If you did not stand there, my host, I would, with my hand on your throat, force you on your knees to swear that--that-- that you'll never sell poor, poor Josephine for a slave. Flog her!" said I, shuddering, and the tears starting into my eyes--"I should as soon have thought of flogging an empress's eldest daughter." "Be pacified, my son," said the old slave-dealer, deliberately clearing himself of the _debris_ of the dessert--"be pacified, my son." The words "my son" went with a strange and cheering sound into my very heart's core. The associations that they brought with it were blissful--I listened to him with calmness. "Be pacified, my son," he continued, "and I will prove to you that I am doing everything for the best. The old colonel, our late governor, would have given three times the money for her. I could not do better than make her over to a kind-hearted man, who would use her well, and who, I think, is fond of her. Not to part with her for a heavy sum would be fixing a stigma upon her;" and wretched as all this reasoning appeared to be, I was convinced that the man had really meant to have acted kindly by selling his own daughter. What a pernicious damnable, atrocious social system that must have been where such a state of things existed! CHAPTER FORTY NINE. RALPH DESERTETH HIS DUTY--ALL FOR LOVE, OR "THE WORLD WELL LOST," WITH HIS WITS INTO THE BARGAIN--VERY NICE DISQUISITIONS ON HONOUR.