Jack (6 page)

The other looked at him in amazement. A king! this servant, whom he had seen at work all day making fires, sweeping the corridors, waiting on the table, and rinsing glasses!

The negro spoke the truth, nevertheless. The expression of his face grew very sad, and his eyes were fixed as if he were looking into the past, or toward some dear, lost land. Was it the magical word of king that led Jack to examine this black boy, seated on the edge of his bed, his white shirt open, while on his dark breast shone the ivory amulet, with new interest?

“How did all this happen?” asked the child, timidly.

The black boy turned quickly to extinguish the lantern. “M. Moronval not like it if Mβdou lets it burn.” Then he pulled his couch close to that of Jack.

“You are not sleepy,” he said; “and I never wish to sleep if I can talk of Dahomey. Listen!”

And in the darkness, where the whites only of his eyes could be seen, the little negro began his dismal tale.

He was called Mβdou,—the name of his father, an illustrious warrior, one of the most powerful sovereigns in the land of gold and ivory: to whom France, Holland, and England sent presents and envoys. His father had cannon, and soldiers, troops of elephants with trappings for war, musicians and priests, four regiments of Amazons, and two hundred wives. His palace was immense, and ornamented by spears on which hung human heads after a battle or a sacrifice. Mβdou was born in this palace. His Aunt Kιrika, general-in-chief of the Amazons, took him with her in all her expeditions. How beautiful she was, this Kιrika! tall and large as a man,—in a blue tunic; her naked arms and legs loaded with bracelets and anklets; her bow slung over her shoulder, and the tail of a horse streaming below her waist. Upon her head, in her woolly locks, she wore two small antelope horns joining in a half-moon; as if these black warriors had preserved among themselves the tradition of Diana the white huntress! And what an eye she had, what deftness of hand! Why, she could cut off the head of an Ashantee at a single blow. But, however terrible Kιrika might have been on the battlefield, to her nephew Mβdou she was always very gentle, bestowing on him gifts of all kinds: necklaces of coral and of amber, and all the shells he desired,—shells being the money in that part of the world. She even gave him a small but gorgeous musket, presented to herself by the Queen of England, and which Kιrika found too light for her own use. Mβdou always carried it when he went to the forests to hunt with his aunt.

There the trees were so close together, and the foliage so thick, that the sun never penetrated to these green temples. Then Mβdou described with enthusiasm the flowers and the fruits, the butterflies, and birds with wonderful plumage, and Jack listened in delight and astonishment. There were serpents, too, but they were harmless; and black monkeys leaped from tree to tree; and large mysterious lakes, that had never reflected the skies in their brown depths, lay here and there in the forests.

At this, Jack uttered an exclamation, “O, how beautiful it must be!”

“Yes, very beautiful,” said the black boy, who undoubtedly exaggerated a little, and saw his dear native land through the prism of absence, of childish recollections, and with the enthusiasm of his southern nature; but encouraged by his comrade’s sympathy, Mβdou continued his story.

At night the forests were very different; hunting-parties bivouacked in the jungles, building huge fires to drive away wild beasts, who were heard in the distance roaring horribly. The birds were aroused; and the bats, silent and black as shadows, attracted by the fire-light, hovered over and about it until daybreak, when they assembled on some gigantic tree, motionless, and pressed against each other, looking like some singular leaves, dry and dead.

In this open-air life the little prince grew strong and manly,—could wield a sabre and carry a gun at an age when children are usually tied to their mother’s apron-string. The king was proud of his son, the heir to his throne. But, alas! it seemed that it was not enough, even for a negro prince, to know how to shoot an elephant through the eye; he must also learn to read books and writing, for, said the wise king to his son, “White man always has paper in his pocket to cheat black man with.” Of course some European might have been found in Dahomey who could instruct the prince,—for French and English flags floated over the ships in the harbors. But the king had himself been sent by his father to a town called Marseilles, very far at the end of the world; and he wished his son to receive a similar education.

How unhappy the little prince was in leaving Kιrika; he looked at his sabre, hung his gun against the wall, and set sail with M. Bonfils, a clerk in a mercantile house, who sent him home every year with the gold dust stolen from the poor negroes.

Mβdou, however, was resigned; he wished to be a great king some day, to command the troop of Amazons, to be the proprietor of these fields of corn and wheat, and of the palace filled with jars of palm-oil and with treasures of gold and ivory. To own these riches he must deserve them, and be capable of defending them when necessary,—and Mβdou early learned that it is hard to be a king; for when one has more pleasures than the rest of the world, one has also greater responsibilities.

His departure was the occasion of great public fetes, of sacrifices to the fetish and to the divinities of the sea. All the temples were thrown open for these solemnities, the prayers of the nation were offered there, and at the last moment, when the ship set sail, fifteen prisoners of war were executed on the shore, and the executioner threw their heads into a great copper basin.

“Good gracious!” gasped Jack, pulling the bedclothes over his head.

It is certainly not very agreeable to hear such stories told by the actors in them; and Jack was very glad that he was in the Moronval Academy rather than in that terrible land of Dahomey.

Mβdou seeing the effect he had produced, dwelt no longer on the ceremonies preceding his departure, but proceeded to describe his arrival and life at Marseilles.

He told of the college there, of the high walls and the benches in the courtyard, where the pupils cut their names; of the solemn professor, who sternly said, if a whisper was heard, “Not so much noise, if you please!” The close air of the recitation-rooms, the monotonous scratching of pens, the lessons repeated over and over again, were all new and very trying to Mβdou. His one idea was to get into the sun; but the walls were so high, the courtyard so narrow, that he could never find enough to bask in. Nothing amused or interested him. He was never allowed to go out as were the other pupils, and for a very good reason. At first he had induced M. Bonfils to take him to the wharves, where he often saw merchandise from his own country, and sometimes went into ecstasies at some well-known mark.

The steamers puffing and blowing, and the great ships setting their sails, all spoke to him of departure and deliverance.

Mβdou dreamed of these ships all through school-hours,—one had brought him to that cold gray land, another would take him away. And possessed by this fixed idea, he paid no attention to his A B C’s, for his eyes saw nothing save the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky above. The result of this was, that one fine day he escaped from the college and hid himself on one of the vessels of M. Bonfils; he was found in time, but escaped again, and the second time was not discovered until the ship was in the middle of the Gulf of Lyons. Any other child would have been kept on board; but when Mβdou’s name was known, the captain took his royal Highness back to Marseilles, relying on a reward.

After that, the boy became more and more unhappy, for he was kept a very close prisoner. Notwithstanding all this, he escaped once more; and this time, on being discovered, made no resistance, but obeyed so gently, and with such a sad smile, that no one had the heart to punish him. At last the principal of the institution declined the responsibility of so determined a pupil. Should he send the little prince back to Dahomey? M. Bonfils dared not permit this, fearing thereby to lose the good graces of the king. In the midst of these perplexities Moronvol’s advertisement appeared, and the prince was at once dispatched to 23 Avenue Montaigne,—“the most beautiful situation in Paris,”—where he was received, as you may well believe, with open arms. This heir of a far-off kingdom was a godsend to the academy. He was constantly on exhibition; M. Moronval showed him at theatres and concerts, and along the boulevards, reminding one of those perambulating advertisements that are to be seen in all large cities.

He appeared in society, such society at least as admitted M. Moronval, who entered a room with all the gravity of Fιnιlon conducting the Duke of Burgundy. The two were announced as “His Royal Highness the Prince of Dahomey, and M. Moronval, his tutor.”

For a month the newspapers were full of anecdotes of Mβdou; an attachι of a London paper was sent to interview him, and they had a long and serious talk as to the course the young prince should pursue when called to the throne of his ancestors. The English journal published an account of the curious dialogue, and the vague replies certainly left much to be desired.

At first all the expenses of the academy were discharged by this solitary pupil, Monsieur Bonfils paying the bill that was presented to him without a word of dispute. Mβdou’s education, however, made but little progress. He still continued among the A B C’s, and Madame Moronval’s charming method made no impression upon him. His defective pronunciation was still retained, and his half-childish way of speaking was not changed. But he was gay and happy. All the other children were compelled to yield to him a certain deference. At first this was a difficult matter, as his intense blackness seemed to indicate to these other children of the sun that he was a slave.

And how amiable the professors were to this bullet-headed boy, who, in spite of his natural amiability, so sturdily refused to profit by their instructions! Every one of the teachers had his own private idea of what could be done in the future under the patronage of this embryo king. It was the refrain of all their conversations. As soon as Mβdou was crowned, they would all go to Dahomey. Labassandre intended to develop the musical taste of Dahomey, and saw himself the director of a conservatory, and at the head of the Royal Chapel.

Madame Moronval meant to apply her method to class upon class of crisp black heads. But Dr. Hirsch saw innumerable beds in a hospital, upon the inmates of which he could experiment without fear of any interference from the police. The first few weeks, therefore, of his sojourn at Paris seemed to Mβdou very sweet. If only the sun would shine out brightly, if the fine rain would cease to fall, or the thick fog clear away; if, in short, the boy could once have been thoroughly warm, he would have been content; and if Kιrika, with her gun and her bow, her arms covered with clanking bracelets, could occasionally have appeared in the Passage des Douze Maison, he would have been very happy.

But Destiny altered all this. M. Bonfils arrived suddenly one day, bringing most disastrous news of Dahomey. The king was dethroned, taken prisoner by the Ashantees, who meant to found a new dynasty. The royal troops and the regiment of Amazons had all been conquered and dispersed. Kιrika alone was saved, and she dispatched M. Bonfils to Mβdou to tell him to remain in France, and to take good care of his Gri-gri, for it was written in the great book that if Mβdou did not lose that amulet, he would come into his kingdom. The poor little king was in great trouble. Moronval, who placed no faith in the gri-gri, presented his bill—and such a bill!—to M. Bonfils, who paid it, but informed the principal that in future, if he consented to keep Mβdou, he must not rely upon any present compensation, but upon the gratitude of the king as soon as the fortunes and chances of war should restore him to his throne. Would the principal oblige M. Bonfils by at once signifying his intentions? Moronval promptly and nobly said, “I will keep the child.” Observe that it was no longer “his Royal Highness.” And the boy at once became like all the other scholars, and was scolded and punished as they were,—more, in fact, for the professors were out of temper with him, feeling apparently, that they had been deluded by false pretences. The child could understand little of this, and tried in vain all the gentle ways that had seemed to win so much affection before. It was worse still the next quarter, when Moronval, receiving no money, realized that Mβdou was a burden to him. He dismissed the servant, and installed Mβdou in his place, not without a scene with the young prince. The first time a broom was placed in his hands and its use explained to him, Mβdou obstinately refused. But M. Moronval had an irresistible argument ready, and after a heavy caning the boy gave up. Besides, he preferred to sweep rather than to learn to read. The prince, therefore, scrubbed and swept with singular energy, and the salon of the Moronvals was scrupulously clean; but Moronval’s heart was not softened. In vain did the little fellow work; in vain did he seek to obtain a kindly word from his master; in vain did he hover about him with all the touching humility of a submissive hound: he rarely obtained any other recompense than a blow.

The boy was in despair. The skies grew grayer and grayer, the rain seemed to fall more persistently, and the snow was colder than ever.

O Kιrika! Aunt Kιrika! so haughty and so tender, where are you? Come and see what they are doing with your little king! How he is treated, how scantily he is fed, how ragged are his clothes, and how cold he is! He has but one suit now, and that a livery—a red coat and striped vest! Now, when he goes out with his master, he does not walk at his side—he follows him.

Mβdou’s honesty and ingenuity had, however, so won the confidence of Madame Moronval, that she sent him to market. Behold, therefore, this last descendant of the powerful Tocodonon, the founder of the Dahomian dynasty, staggering daily from the market under the weight of a huge basket, half fed and half clothed, cold to the very heart; for nothing warms him now, neither violent exercise, nor blows, nor the shame of having become a servant; nor even his hatred of “the father with a stick,” as he called Moronval.