Toussaint was never hungry while a slave; he was not whipped. His hut was comfortable; vines twined around his door. Bananas and potatoes grew in his garden. 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 occupation the hoeing of cane and the grooming of horses. What thoughts, what struggles, what hopes had taken shape in that uncultivated 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 William Tell. Toussaint had bided his time. This slave was ignorant, knew nothing. He learned to read when approaching his declining years; then he studied: Raynal, Epictetus, Cæsar, Saxe, Herodotus, Plutarch, Nepos--these were the books and lives he knew. He decided to join his race, and having some knowledge of simples was made physician of the forces commanded by Jean François. Here he served well, as he always did, and learned the trade of war. Shocked at the cruelties of whites and blacks he took the side of mercy and saved lives from the sword as well as from disease. He saw the vanity of François, the rashness of Biassou, the cruelty of Jeannot; but he retired disgusted to no stupid monastery; he returned not to the ease and degradation of slavery, but was equal to the facts of life, however hard, and grappled with them and mastered them as a man should. He was then loyal to the King, and he was loyal to the Church, a devout Catholic.