The awful news reached the capital on the Tuesday afternoon. It was the evening of the _Fàndròana_, the annual festival of the Bath; but it was the saddest annual festival that had ever been held. General Duchesne and his staff were present, but it was more like a funeral feast than a festival. French troops were sent out west the following morning, and so the plot to massacre was frustrated. Several members of the London Missionary Society mission had also very narrow escapes, myself, I believe, among the number. In the case of two members whose murder had been planned escape was due in one case to the absence of the proposed victim, through his being called to the capital; and in the case of the other, no one was courageous or cruel enough to make the attack. We did not know of all this until afterwards, and it was well we did not. [Illustration: WILLIAM AND LUCY JOHNSON.] General Duchesne, having accomplished his mission in the island, in the performance of which he had gained a name among the natives, as well as the Europeans, for justice and humanity, returned to France. On January 17, 1896, M. Laroche arrived in Antanànarìvo as the first governor-general of the island. He remained in office only until September of the same year. He was a man of high principle, with a love of fairness and justice, not only to Europeans, but also to the natives, which amounted to a passion. He was full of generous impulses, devoid of all ostentation, and very courteous and gracious to Queen Rànavàlona. The Malagasy remember M. Laroche with feelings of kindliness to the present day, and his name will ever be associated with the emancipation of the slaves, which he accomplished by a single _coup d’état_. One of the most notable days in the history of Madagascar was Sunday, September 27, 1896, for on that day there appeared in the _Journal Officiel_ the sudden and, by the natives, altogether unexpected announcement that _tous les habitants de Madagascar sont personnes libres_. Thus by a single stroke of the pen, as it were, the time-honoured but execrable institution of slavery, which had its roots so deeply implanted in the fabric of Malagasy social life, was razed to the ground. It was M. Laroche, who was then on the point of handing the reins of government to his successor, General Gallieni, who thus struck off the fetters from ten thousand slaves. It had of course been known to all the Europeans that, from the time the island became a French colony, slavery was doomed, as being altogether incompatible with the principles of a people whose national motto is _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_.