“Caramba!” exclaimed the master, with gentle emphasis, “how so?”

“Perhaps senor had better ride down to the quarters,” replied the overseer.

It was a great sacrifice of dignity, but the master made it.

“Bring him out.”

They brought him out—­chains on his feet, chains on his wrists, an iron yoke on his neck.  The Spanish Creole master had often seen the bull, with his long, keen horns and blazing eye, standing in the arena; but this was as though he had come face to face with a rhinoceros.

“This man is not a Congo,” he said.

“He is a Jaloff,” replied the encouraged overseer.  “See his fine, straight nose; moreover, he is a candio—­a prince.  If I whip him he will die.”

The dauntless captive and fearless master stood looking into each other’s eyes until each recognized in the other his peer in physical courage, and each was struck with an admiration for the other which no after difference was sufficient entirely to destroy.  Had Bras-Coupe’s eye quailed but once—­just for one little instant—­he would have got the lash; but, as it was—­

“Get an interpreter,” said Don Jose; then, more privately, “and come to an understanding.  I shall require it of you.”

Where might one find an interpreter—­one not merely able to render a Jaloff’s meaning into Creole French, or Spanish, but with such a turn for diplomatic correspondence as would bring about an “understanding” with this African buffalo?  The overseer was left standing and thinking, and Clemence, who had not forgotten who threw her into the draining-ditch, cunningly passed by.

“Ah, Clemence—­”

“Mo pas capabe!  Mo pas capabe! (I cannot, I cannot!) Ya, ya, ya! ’oir Miche Agricol’ Fusilier! ouala yune bon monture, oui!”—­which was to signify that Agricola could interpret the very Papa Lebat.

“Agricola Fusilier!  The last man on earth to make peace.”

But there seemed to be no choice, and to Agricola the overseer went.  It was but a little ride to the Grandissime place.

“I, Agricola Fusilier, stand as an interpreter to a negro?  H-sir!”

“But I thought you might know of some person,” said the weakening applicant, rubbing his ear with his hand.

“Ah!” replied Agricola, addressing the surrounding scenery, “if I did not—­who would?  You may take Palmyre.”

The overseer softly smote his hands together at the happy thought.

“Yes,” said Agricola, “take Palmyre; she has picked up as many negro dialects as I know European languages.”

And she went to the don’s plantation as interpreter, followed by Agricola’s prayer to Fate that she might in some way be overtaken by disaster.  The two hated each other with all the strength they had.  He knew not only her pride, but her passion for the absent Honore.  He hated her, also, for her intelligence, for the high favor in which she stood with her mistress, and for her invincible spirit, which was more offensively patent to him than to others, since he was himself the chief object of her silent detestation.