I did not quite know what to reply, and thought for a moment. Just then
my gaze, wandering towards the window, fell upon a sort of picture that
hung outside like a sign. It was a sign, as a matter of fact, a picture
of a young and pretty woman, decolletee, wearing an enormous beplumed
hat and carrying an infant in her arms; the whole in the style of the
chimney boards of the time of Louis XVIII. Above the picture stood out
this inscription in big letters:

Mme. BECOEUR

Midwife

BLEEDS AND VACCINATES

"Madam," said I, "I want to see Mme. Becoeur."

The sow metamorphosed into a woman replied with an amiable smile:

"I am Mme. Becoeur, Monsieur."

II. PILLAGE. THE REVOLT IN SANTO DOMINGO.

I thought that I must be dreaming. None who did not witness the
sight could form any idea of it. I will, however, endeavour to depict
something of it. I will simply recount what I saw with my own eyes. This
small portion of a great scene minutely reproduced will enable you to
form some notion as to the general aspect of the town during the three
days of pillage. Multiply these details _ad libitum_ and you will get
the ensemble.

I had taken refuge by the gate of the town, a puny barrier made of long
laths painted yellow, nailed to cross laths and sharpened at the top.
Near by was a kind of shed in which some hapless colonists, who had been
driven from their homes, had sought shelter. They were silent and seemed
to be petrified in all the attitudes of despair. Just outside of the
shed an old man, weeping, was seated on the trunk of a mahogany tree
which was lying on the ground and looked like the shaft of a column.
Another vainly sought to restrain a white woman who, wild with fright,
was trying to flee, without knowing where she was going, through the
crowd of furious, ragged, howling negroes.

The negroes, however, free, victorious, drunk, mad, paid not the
slightest attention to this miserable, forlorn group of whites. A short
distance from us two of them, with their knives between their teeth,
were slaughtering an ox, upon which they were kneeling with their feet
in its blood. A little further on two hideous negresses, dressed as
marchionesses, covered with ribbons and pompons, their breasts bare, and
their heads encumbered with feathers and laces, were quarrelling over a
magnificent dress of Chinese satin, which one of them had grasped with
her nai