Felix wuz a favorite with the company, and though he had not Victor’s
genius nor the native gifts of prudence and foresight that he had
possessed, his long apprenticeship to sorrow and peril had made him
wise and patient.
He wuz helped, too, greatly by the calm fortitude and Christian
principle of Cousin John Richard and the fervid devotion of Father
Gasperin.
There wuz a rumor that the Government wuz bein’ importuned by one in
high authority, and wuz only waitin’ to learn the success of this
venture, to send Government vessels over with the freedmen, with help
to maintain the poorer ones for a year and get them started in their
new life. But it might have been only a rumor. As I said, Victor’s
death made a delay in the exodus, and it wuz durin’ those weeks of
delay that Genieve received a large packet of law letters.
Her father had died in France, and Genieve had been left his heiress. A
goodly sum had been left to this lawyer if he wuz successful in findin’
his child. Perhaps by reason of this the search had proved successful.
Genieve wuz a great heiress, for Monseur De Chasseny had no children by
his French marriage—his lawful wife wuz dead. And the memory of the
great love of his life wuz with him to the last. In a will made on his
death-bed, he left all his large fortune to Genieve, “the child of the
only woman he had ever loved.”
So said a letter left in the same package with the will.
This wealth enabled her to do much for the colony, helpin’ them to good
schools, good books, good food and clothin’, and the teachin’ and the
trainin’ that would make them self-supportin’.
Genieve studied harder than ever, worked harder than ever for the
good of her people, after the livin’ Victor passed from her life. The
immortal Victor, the saint, the hero Victor, always stood beside her.
He would not let her sink into the gloom and inactivity of hopeless
sorrow. He nerved her to new activities. He held her hand that wrote
stirrin’ appeals, and helpful, encouragin’ words for the New Republic.
He inspired the vision that saw it risin’ fair and proud from the ashes
of a dead past.
She studied history that she might help make a noble history for the
new land; she studied law, and literature, and music, all with this
sole ambition of helpin’ her mother’s race.
The children of the colony almost idolized her, and in their love and
constant companionship she found her greatest earthly comfort.
She taught them all that she learned herself, taught them with the
present love of all her lovin’ heart, and with the fur-seein’ eye
of one who sees in this new generation the future blessing and
regeneration of her people.
And above all other lessons she taught them the Bible with the
childlike faith of one who sits at the feet of the Christ.
She studied it and taught it with the rapt vision and earnestness of
a prophet who saw that the best future of her beloved New Land rested
upon the victories of the bloodless armies of the cross.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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