The son of an African chief, Gaou-Guinon, with no drop of white blood in his veins, he had been the born slave of the Count de Breda, and had been well treated by his Manager, Bayou de Libertas. He was the husband of one wife, and the father of children. With religious aspirations, an inflexible integrity, an inquiring mind, he had been a valuable slave, and had been raised from a field hand to be M. Bayou’s coachman. Toussaint was never hungry while a slave; he was not whipped. His hut was comfortable, vines grew around his door. Bananas and potatoes luxuriated in his garden. The sky was serene over his head, and the birds sang to him, too, as at evening he sat among his children. What more could he wish in such a fool’s paradise? Is, then, a full belly all? Thomas Carlyle—he _knew_ what you do not; what Sterne said, “Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught!” Toussaint, it seems, was _not_ a beast of burden. To make sugar, he was worth no more than a Bozal just stolen, but with these rare virtues—Patience, Courage, Intelligence, Fidelity—he might have sold for five hundred dollars and might be trusted to drive horses. When the rebellion broke out, he did not join it, but assisted M. Bayou with his family to escape, and shipped a rich cargo to the United States for his maintenance. Toussaint was then fifty years old. None knew the day of his birth; the records of stock then and there were not carefully kept. For fifty years this negro had lived the life of a slave, his only occupations the hoeing of cane and the grooming of horses. What thoughts, what struggles, what hopes had taken shape in that black brain no man knows, for Toussaint was a man of few words, and he left no writings. It was late in life to begin a new trade; late to begin to find out his own powers and strength; late to trust himself to freedom, he who had always had a master; late to speculate upon the destinies of the black race; late to attempt to shape them. But in revolutionary times men learn fast; great men need only the opportunity, they rise to the emergency. Cromwell was not a _born_ or _trained_ general or ruler, nor was Washington, nor was Tell. Toussaint had bided his time. This slave was ignorant, knew nothing. He learned to read when approaching the downward years; then he studied—Raynal, Epictetus, Cesar, Saxe, Herodotus, Plutarch, Nepos, these were the books and lives he knew.[28] But the great book of his own life was before him. Nature, the page of God, was open at his feet, before his eyes, and over his head. Human beings were about him revealing the Infinite, and, more than all, through his own soul God spoke the voice of truth. Books are well, but are not the only educators.