Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo: In a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, Late Vice-President of the United States, Principally During the Command of General RochambeuSansay, Leonora
History
Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo: In a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois, to Colonel Burr, Late Vice-President of the United States, Principally During the Command of General Rochambeu
Sansay, Leonora
Haiti -- History -- Revolution, 1791-1804; Haiti -- Social life and customs
We have here a General of division, who is enriching himself by
all possible means, and with such unblushing rapacity, that he is
universally detested. He was a blacksmith before the revolution, and
his present pursuits bear some affinity to his original employment,
having taken possession of a plantation on which he makes charcoal, and
which he sells to the amount of a hundred dollars a day. A carricature
has appeared in which he is represented tying up sacks of coal. Madame
A----, his mistress, standing near him, holds up his embroidered coat
and says, "Don't soil yourself, General."
LETTER V.
_Cape Francois._
Three of your letters arriving at the same time, my dear friend, have
made me blush for my impatience, and force me to acknowledge that I
have wronged you. But your friendship is so necessary to my happiness
that the idea of losing it is insupportable. You know what clouds of
misfortune have obscured my life. An orphan without friends, without
support, separated from my sister from my infancy, and, at an age when
the heart is most alive to tenderness and affection, deprived by the
unrelenting hand of death, of him who had taught me to feel all the
transports of passion, and for whose loss I felt all its despair--Cast
on the world without an asylum, without resource, I met you:--you
raised me--soothed me--whispered peace to my lacerated breast! Ah! can
I ever forget that delightful moment when your care saved me? It was so
long since I had known sympathy or consolation that my astonished soul
knew not how to receive the enchanting visitants; fleeting as fervent
was my joy: but let me not repine! Your friendship has shed a ray of
light on my solitary way, and though removed from the influence of your
immediate presence, I exist only in the hope of seeing you again.
In restoring me to my sister, at the moment of her marriage, you
procured for me a home not only respectable, but in which all the
charms of fashionable elegance, all the attractions of pleasure are
united. Unfortunately, Clara, amidst these intoxicating scenes of
ever-varying amusement, and attended by crowds, who offer her the
incense of adulation, is wretched, and I cannot be happy!
You know her early habits have been different from mine; affluence
might have been thought necessary to her, yet the sensibility of her
heart rejects the futile splendour that surrounds her, and the tears
that often stain her brilliant robes, shew that they cover a bosom to
which peace is a stranger!
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