m, if ever, was
there witnessed a more touching scene than this. There lay the young
woman, pale and feeble, with death stamped upon her countenance,
surrounded by the sons and daughters of Africa, some of whom had been
separated from every earthly tie, and the most of whose persons had been
torn and gashed by the negro-whip. Some were upon their knees at the
bedside, others standing around, and all weeping.

Death is a leveler; and neither age, sex, wealth, nor condition, can
avert when he is permitted to strike. The most beautiful flowers
must soon fade and droop and die. So, also, with man; his days are as
uncertain as the passing breeze. This hour he glows in the blush of
health and vigor, but the next, he may be counted with the number no
more known on earth. Oh, what a silence pervaded the house when this
young flower was gone! In the midst of the buoyancy of youth, this
cherished one had dropped and died. Deep were the sounds of grief and
mourning heard in that stately dwelling when the stricken friends, whose
office it had been to nurse and soothe the weary sufferer, beheld her
pale and motionless in the sleep of death.

Who can imagine the feeling with which poor Clotelle received the
intelligence of her kind friend's death? The deep gashes of the cruel
whip had prostrated the lovely form of the quadroon, and she lay upon
her bed of straw in the dark cell. The speculator had brought her, but
had postponed her removal till she should recover. Her benefactress was
dead, and--

"Hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell."

"Is Jerome safe?" she would ask herself continually. If her lover could
have but known of the sufferings of that sweet flower,--that polyanthus
over which he had so often been in his dreams,--he would then have
learned that she was worthy of his love.

It was more than a fortnight before the slave-trader could take his
prize to more comfortable quarters. Like Alcibiades, who defaced
the images of the gods and expected to be pardoned on the ground of
eccentricity, so men who abuse God's image hope to escape the vengeance
of his wrath under the plea that the law sanctions their atrocious
deeds.

CHAPTER XXII. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT AND WHAT FOLLOWED

IT was a beautiful Sunday in September, with a cloudless sky, and the
rays of the sun parching the already thirsty earth, that Clotelle stood
at an upper window in Slater's slave-pen in New Orleans, gasping for
a breath of fres