CHAPTER IV. THE PRINCE OF MADAGASCAR. listening, was only the anxiety of the savage for his home; but when the latter quickly, SOME time passed. Polyglott and Colas and with an anxious look, motioned to him were in despair at the apathy of Hippolytus. to take the oar, which lay in the bottom of While the one made all preparations to teach the boat, and assist him, his anxiety increased, him the language of the promised land which and, according to appearances, was not unnow lay before them, the other negotiated founded. A dark point appeared in the blue with the chiefs, and did, in common with moon-beams in the distance, approached the bold Indian woman, everything which nearer the distressed rowers, and changed at could give success to the adventurous expedition. But what was the result of these efforts? The hero of fortune, on whose energy everything depended, remained behind the curtain. Hippolytus passed almost his whole time at the house of Mr. Cochon, where he tried the guns of his host, built a dove-cot, trained a pair of hounds, or rhapsodized with Heloise over this new country, and, in company with her, made verses. Had they only known Heloise! She would have been glorious for a queen of Madagascar. last into a long canoe, the form of which betrayed that it belonged to the savages. Arrows whizzed through the air, and when the strangers came near enough to reach the lost little craft, a long harpoon was thrown into the bottom of it, that fixed it to the spot, and made any further attempt to escape impossible. The savages drew the conquered boat on board their canoe, and Hippolytus soon found himself in the midst of half-naked savages, who were armed with clubs, long spears, and daggers. His oarsman and he were both taken, brought to the larger boat, and thrown bound upon the deck. One evening Hippolytus had stayed later than usual in the circle at Mr. Cochon's. Heloise read the first canto of a great epic Hippolytus could not doubt but that the poem, that had been written by Hippolytus dry bark, with which he was bound was and herself, in partnership. The listeners making his hands and feet raw; but yet he were compelled to remain till late in the found himself in a sort of illusion, which night, as was Hippolytus, who modestly represented what was happening to him less claimed only the stalks of the laurels which as reality than as a scene from some romance. were bestowed upon the poetical pair. But, He abstracted himself from his own situaintoxicated with the success of his talent, he tion, and asked himself whether he had before entered a boat which had been brought for him either the pirates or savages of Cooper, him under the windows of Heloise, which or Eugene Sue's cannibal, or Chateaubriand's opened toward the sea, intending to return pious Catholic Indians. The savages were to his home by water. On account of the certainly surrounded with instruments of lateness of the hour, by the advice of some martyrdom; yet these men seemed to him of the other guests, he chose this method too gigantic, and he thought that they might instead of the land path. A skilful native be engaged in whale-fishing, were belated, steered the boat over the still slumbering and had not despised such wholesome booty mirror. It was a glorious, magical, moon- as he and his companion. What will they light night. Hippolytus could discern, at a distance, the white signal which long waved for him from the window of Heloise. Our hero was not created for solitude. It troubled him to be left to himself, and he could not talk with his boatman. The latter did not keep the boat very close to the shores, but shot across from point to point, to shorten the distance. And thus they seemed to Hippolytus to be getting far out at sea. The shore looked distant, and seemed only divided by a faint line from the horizon. The Indian rower sometimes stood still, lifted his oar, and looked out into the sea-blue space of the ocean. He did not fear treason from him, for he observed that the longer his boatman had been looking out in the distance, the faster he proceeded. At first, he thought that this looking at the heavens, this anxious CCCCLXXVII. LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 7 do with you? asked he of himself, at last, and more and more earnestly; and the anxiety of some misfortune seized him with more than poetic fear. The men spoke wildly over them, and the sighing complaints that from time to time came from the heart of his companion, appeared to him to betray the nature of this passionate quarrel. "Great God!" thought he, "who will explain to me the designs of these monsters? I am afraid that the truth will lay on the side of the simple Robinson Crusoe, and I have nothing more to expect from those people than what the Carribees did to their prisoners. 0, if these men only knew that I am their legitimate king! if I could only say it to them or express it by some signs! if my nurse were now here - that extravagant woman might be of extraordinary service to me. O God, what tears will Colas and Polyglott shed for me!" Hippolytus sank down exhausted, his bands pressed him, the blood stopped, and a pitiful wail was the expression in which a sense of his unhappy condition was expressed. We could not have heard him so moan without feeling the deepest compassion for the poor pretender. The moon withdrew behind the stars, and the stars vanished with the breaking morning. The charming shore of the great island of Madagascar stretched itself out in unmeasured view before the boat, as it reached the shore. A soft sleep had given Hippolytus strength, and helped him to bear the pains of his bondage. He awoke, and, with difficulty, made out the chain of events which had brought him to his present condition. They loosed the bands which hindered his walking. Hippolytus stood up and saw the shores of a country which he had once hoped to reach under very different circumstances. The gigantic trees, the fragrant, carpeted meadows, the many-colored birds, the way-side plants, which are so carefully tended by the botanists of the Jardin des Plantes, all he saw, even the men who stood in numbers collected on the shore, everything answered the description which Colas had given him of his native land. But his own condition, his own circumstances, differed so much from the expectations which he, in St. Marie, had himself already began to give up. This was a sad Jardin des Plantes. How strange is the constitution of the human mind, which is capable of receiving such different impressions at the same moment; when even the most extreme evils, can, by some little circumstance, take a ridiculous form! A man stands by the death-bed of his father, and a fly compels him to turn aside. All men are not so constructed, but only those who, either, by a kind of stoical philosophy, are accustomed to a certain want of feeling, or whose natural inclination is always to make sport of everything. Hippolytus belonged to this latter class. He remarked how awkwardly these men used his lieutenant's uniform; how one put on the coat so that the skirts came in front; some hung the epaulets on their ears, and other mistakes. He looked at all this, not with blank, glazed eyes, but found it laughable, though he had the expectation that, in the next moment, he should have looked upon everything these men, this beautiful country, the ocean, St. Marie, Colas, Polyglott, Heloise, the poodle of his landlady at Paris-that he had seen them all for the last time. But the fate of Hippolytus was not to be so cruel. He soon discovered that his present exposition was only intended to procure a purchaser for him. He reflected that he was not a negro, that Madagascar did not belong to the Barbary powers, and concluded that the fate of a slave was, perhaps, here not so dreadful. Then he continued his reflections: "If I can reason so correctly on my situation, it is certain that it is not a dream. Let me, then, accustom myself to put the truth of the actual in the place of the apparent of poetry. Everything is different when one tries it himself. These savages belong neither to Cooper nor Chateaubriand-it is an entirely new race; men, who, as I judge from the smell of food, and the furniture of various kinds I see about the huts, take pleasure in the fine arts and sciences. We must thank the romance He followed his robber-like subjects into a large village which stretched out along the shore, and was carried forward by a steaming crowd of curious and apparently kind natives. The procession stopped before a hut which was superior to the rest, and a large, old man, of respectable appearance, came out, and was received with visible marks of re-writers for their fearful pictures of the state spect by the surrounding multitude. "The Cacique," thought Hippolytus, "or the priest who presides at the human sacrifices." In fact, they brought a large, high block, placed near it a still higher stake, undressed the deadly pale Hippolytus, who struggled in vain, and forced him to mount the block. All these manipulations were the more painful to the poor Parisian, as they were accompanied by wild shouts from a thousand throats. He did not understand one word of this torrent of speech, and felt himself, with his dark surroundings, most solitary and hopeless. Meantime, he was tied fast to the stake, and, as he looked expectingly on the surrounding multitude, he saw the different parts of his uniform which had been taken from him. of slavery, because they need gigantic motives. I believe nothing of it, and will accustom myself to hold everything better than report makes it. Poetry is here a fable, and what is apparent is exactly that which does not admit of proof." While he was carrying on this soliloquy, a man, whose form and bearing distinguished him from the rest, and who seemed to be a stranger here, mounted up to Hippolytus, examined him on all sides, and bought him for two oxen. Hippolytus understood this barter, and found it so droll, that, forgetting his situation, and, falling back into his old thoughtlessness, he broke out into a laugh, for which he might have been chastised by his master, if the latter had not been engaged in an active dispute with the seller. He imagined himself lithographed in the of Madagascar bought for two oxen." Charivari, with the inscription, "The King | faults which he should be able to correct in the descriptions of nature in the new romance which Heloise had endeavored to interest him in. The master of Hippolytus remained but a short time, for he was a travelling slavedealer, and intended to sell his young purchase again as soon as possible. Hippolytus was taken to the inn, necessary clothing put upon him, taken care of well as regarded food-badly in respect to company. Prisoners of war, the heedless wanderers, who had strayed from the highways, laborers, who had come down here, younger sons, shared with him the same fate. In his sight they all had a fabulous appearance. All colors, which are found in Madagascar most wonderfully shaded, appeared on their naked bodies, from the suspicious half-green of Hippolytus, to the negro black of the later emigrants. To observe these peculiarities amused Hippolytus; he became uncommonly gay, and made so many silent jokes with his companions, that they were attracted to him, and would certainly have entered into his plans of conquest, if they had known about them. But, with evening, a sense of his misfortunes returned to the soul of Hippolytus. He had, perhaps, imagined that this farce, in which he was playing a part, would only last till sunset. He had not lost sight of the sea, and ever kept hoping that the whole population of St. Marie would finally come over to his rescue. But night came, and, for the second time in his life, he must submit to sleep without a bed. Yet, it was still more painful to him, that a stout negro, the guard of the slaves, waked him from his sweetest dreams, and, not without some strokes of his whip, compelled him to rise from his maize husks. Hippolytus made an outcry, and informed his disturber, in his best French, that he was not accustomed to arise before eight o'clock. But the fearful truth was all about him-the scarcely gray morning, Colas absent at his dressing, no hissing coffee, the straps on his ancles, the whip, the march. The mistcovered sea was constantly disappearing, and the path of the wanderers was directed inland. Hippolytus had received from nature such an inexhaustibly gay temperament, that, spite of his desperately miserable condition, many days broke before he ceased to regain his lost courage at the rising of the sun. The mountains with their free summits smiling in the distance, the rivers with their flowery banks, all the wonders of this magnificent but tropical nature, excited with new life his weary hopes. He became gay, like everything about him, and entered into the cheating illusion that he was on a picturesque journey. He persuaded himself that hundreds in his place would consider themselves happy to linger in these spots, and he counted in spirit all the Yet this pleasure only lasted as long as his strength of body held out. When that was overpowered by the long journeys. - when evening, with its uncertain shadows came when they reached the inns with their plebeian inconveniences, these difficulties broke his spirit at last, and a single dull tone of melancholy sounded within him. He felt himself as entirely ruined, as he really was. This march was continued for two days before the slave-dealer reached his market; though at the last part of the journey it was made more easy, that his wares might not be fatigued; yet Hippolytus found constantly fewer sources of help to enable him to bear his lot. If, on the first day, he was interested in the natural scenery if, on the second, an heroic poem, which he mentally planned, employed his mind-if, in the morning of the last day, he found some repose in his entire want of thought, yet, at the last hours of it, all strength and hope vanished, and he was forced to confess that it was very ill with him. The country continued almost the same in fruitfulness and beauty, but the men were different. Their color was yellowish, their appearance warlike, their bristly hair hung about their brows. They dwelt in more populous settlements, which were pleasantly situated, and bore the marks of an independence which was unknown to the inhabitants of the sea-shore, who were constantly under the eye of the French and English ships, under whose supervision they were stantly placed. The slave caravan came, as night fell, into the great capital of Hovas, that warlike race, whose early king, Rhadama, was known to all travellers, and which had often been in vain attacked by the Europeans. con This was the race which had disturbed the inheritance of Hippolytus; had killed his parents, and had delivered him over to the adventurous fluctuations of an uncertain fate. Colas had related to him many fabulous stories of the wars of these people, their possessions, their skilful manufactures, their polished manners; and his nurse, in St. Marie, had added what was unknown to the old man, of what had since taken place. Queen Ranavola was particularly interesting. She had murdered her husband, and now, unexampled power and luxury, she ruled over Hovas. Here ought Hippolytus, at the head of his conquering army, to have enforced his rights. But, alas! it was in the guise of a slave that he entered the capital of the assassin. with The scene of his first appearance was re peated on the morning of the following day, | in the great market-place of the wonderful of this man, which was placed near the city, which was built in a fantastical, religious style. The rest of his companions stood around him, all tied to stakes, upon which the name, the country, and the age of the person was marked. The slave-dealer was no wiser from the answers of Hippolytus, than was the latter from his questions; and so the tablet over him remained empty. This remarkable circumstance attracted the purchasers to him. Hippolytus scolded like a fishwoman, when he was handled, measured, questioned on all sides. They opened his mouth, as if he were a horse, to count his teeth an impertinence which he would have resisted by cries and kicks; but some significant threats of the old negro, who watched the merchandise while the purchasers were examining it, brought him to his senses, and he allowed the yellow gentlemen of the capital to look at his teeth, which were not so very white as they might have been, but here and there were hollow, and had been filled, showing the effects of Paris sweetmeats. The slave-dealer did not make a bargain with the first comers; he apparently waited for the richer people, who rose later, and took more time to dress above all for one who made his appearance when the sun was high. A short, thick man, with the air of an oriental inspector of the harem, clad in silk, and costly furs, accompanied by a crowd of servants, was saluted with deep reverence by all those around the market. This person was much pleased with the animated features of Hippolytus. He examined him with smiles, and, calling to his treasurer, gave what was demanded for the poor fellow. As Hippolytus followed his new master, he cast a friendly look on his remaining companions in captivity; for he was of so kindly a nature, that he would have gained the love of his enemies if he had been forced to go about with them for three days longer. But as he lost sight of these, and the splendor of his purchaser and the honor shown him met his eyes, his curiosity was excited, and the charms of expectation, with the doubts of what might happen to him, appeared in a shining light. But so it was. Hippolytus saw the house splendid palace of the queen, richly ornamented with gay-colored woods, and soon perceived, from the furniture, and the manip│ulations in the new circuit of his involuntary activity, in whose service he was. He was with the Executioner-in-chief of the State! How romantic! Again a reminiscence of the Porte St. Martin, in Paris. He was seized with a kind of æsthetic disgust. Hippolytus was not the man to parade his own principles upon critical questions of beauty. He was, however, troubled with some singular prejudices, and had certain antipathies that he carried everywhere. He had a horror of the melodrama, of the Porte St. Martin, of body-stealers, of hangmen, of gamblers, and other such hair-bristling circumstances, which, only by a cruel confusion, make a scaffolding for the beautiful. He stamped his feet with vexation, and seemed almost disposed to ask for satisfaction for the stupidity which had brought an executioner into the romance of his life, and might soon have received it in a corporeal form from the overseer of his master's garden. The drollest thing in his new situation was the contradictions in the Lord High Executioner himself. He was in no way a blood-thirsty Samson, no Persian Fetta, who only appears before the public in a red cap, with a bow-string; but he resembled more the sentimental German executioners, who take off but four heads in a life-time, that they may not become dangerously cruel. The master of Hippolytus seemed in no wise blood-thirsty, though he lived in the daily exercise of his office, and performed it in no measure by proxy. He was a gay gentleman, fond of quiet, innocent pleasures; he loved nothing more than to smoke tobacco, and arrange the flower-beds in his garden. Hippolytus was placed in the garden of the sentimental headsman, and his business was to water the flowers of the tender-hearted man. Some days after our hero had been initiated into his delicate but nevertheless fatiguing duties, early in the morning, the Lord High Executioner, with his heavy step, in Let us take an observation. There was a silk slippers, and a tasteful oriental negligée, queen at the head of these states, who had walked up to him, plucked a papilionaceous raised her lover, a young officer of the body-blossom from the tender anduranga plant, guard, to an equal rank with herself. Who, tapped his slave on the shoulder, and said then, would have a harem? No, we may put Everything in the world has its office and ourselves at ease about Hippolytus. The its object. What you sow, my son, I reap; effeminate appearance of his master, the lux- what you plant, I gather; one stands at the ury of his attendants, pointed to a different cradle of man, another at his bier. Man can station than his dress indicated; for, who, enter the world but in one way; he can lay under this Sybarite exterior of enjoyment down this earthly covering, his life, in many. would have discerned the Lord High Execu- One is crushed by a falling tree; another dies tioner? of yellow fever; a third from the melan choly tone of his mind; a fourth by accident, which is the most powerful sovereign of the earth. All the rest die by the arm of justice; and this arm I am, by the grace of our God, our queen, and the prince co-regent. I am truly only the step-brother of death, and must, by my own exertions, win my inheritance, that comes to others without labor. Therefore, I enjoy great honor, and am held by the princes and gods of the earth in great consideration. I own my sheep, and drive my herds of cattle on my mountainside. I cannot count the fish in my ponds; and I own slaves, who must obey me, because I treat them kindly. I am an enemy of slavery; I do not willingly see one tread upon the neck of another. But what can be done? My cotemporaries are not yet ripe for humanity-the rights of man will not be understood for fifty years. In the mean time water my flowers, and console yourself, if the storms of life grow rough, with faith, love, and hope.' Hippolytus naturally did not understand one word of this speech; but there was one near him, who understood it all, and who began to explain it to him as we have set it forth, as soon as the philosophical executioner had sauntered away smilingly with his slippers and his flower. tomed to be waited on, and to whom attention was almost a necessary, could hardly help placing himself under the influence of the young girl. She had scarcely passed the age of childhood, was of an olive-colored complexion, with dark, long hair, and differed in her whole beautiful form entirely from the small, heavy-built Hovas, to whose race she did not belong. Hippolytus, by degrees, was entrusted with the story of her fate; for though the tones of her language were foreign to him, they did not always remain so. Solitude, resignation, the similarity of their fate, made them easily understand each other. In the place of signs and speaking, looks came, by degrees, articulate sounds, the meaning of which remained no longer doubtful to Hippolytus; and thus a language grew out of looks and single tones, which established a perfect understanding between the two. Araxata's story was this. She was a near relation of the cruel queen. Ranavalona had murdered, not only her husband, but had endeavored to destroy all his kindred. Araxata's father was a brother of the murdered king; he fell under the sword of the executioner, who was now her master. She seemed to the humane man either still too young, or he had compassion upon her, or This interpreter was Araxata, a female she had, among the numerous sacrifices of the slave of the house, in whom a similar fate crown-stealing Megara, escaped her knowlawakened a sympathy for Hippolytus. But edge. She was saved by a mistake in the the language in which she translated it was counting of those delivered over to the scafalso unknown to the Parisian as much as that fold. The overseer of the gardens brought of the humane headsman. He listened to the her up, and apparently would have adopted smooth, strange, unaccustomed tones, which her for his child, if his wife had not sudshe transferred in the same language from the mouth of her master. But he understood her better because she spoke with the eyes of love. denly richly blessed him with children. This fruitfulness degraded Araxata into the state of a slave; and so it happened that she stood upon the same footing as Hippolytus. Both were of royal blood- - she a princess, he a crown prince. Both now were compelled to water the flowers of the chief executioner of their enemy. Ah! it is too certain that IIippolytus began to lead a joyless life. His gayety was gone, his fate was truly no feuilleton jest, and it soon overpowered him. Fear had entered his free, proud spirit, and fear puts the With the possibility of making himself damper on all the higher feelings of the understood, a more cheerful frame of mind mind and heart. The circle of his contem- returned to Hippolytus. He ventured to plations grew narrower. He vegetated on in allow himself in some reminiscences, sinco an employment which was every day the they would not make his present situation same, and his wishes extended no farther more intolerable, and he could gratify thereby than to the hour in which he took his food, the curiosity and the imagination of Araxata. or a short repose. One in civilized Europe He told her, as well as he could, about Paris can understand this, when it is seen, how and the occupations of his early life there. prison, poverty, sickness, can tame the proud- He filled the soul of his friend with a magical est spirit, and change the most active feel-wonder-world, in which she desired to live at ings into unhappy weakness, anxiety, and any price. More strongly than ever did it exdepression. The aspect of the house in which Hippolytus lived increased the impressions which acted most destructively on his whole being. cite again in Hippolytus the longing for Europe, and the desire of freedom employed his shrewdness to discover some means of flight. He had resolved not to attempt it for himself This state of his mind was calculated to alone, in any case, but at all events to unite make Araxata's approaches more welcome. the fate of Araxata with his own. The inHippolytus, who had always been accus-clination he felt for the young savage could |