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 General Miragoane. He was absent. Though Dessalines had not observed him, he had been present at the dance.

Much troubled, Jules returned to La Coupe. The house was still deserted; shortly after his arrival the darkness fell and beneath him in the valley he heard the beat of the bamboula which he cursed heartily. He ate some food; drank a bottle of wine; lit one of Fouchère's cigars and meditated upon the situation. He had little knowledge of a vaudoux orgy. Dessalines, like all Haytians of the better class, felt the stigma of the thing and was reticent upon the subject; Rosenthal had given him some idea of the debauch, but a wrong one. Such orgies as the Jew had witnessed were sham affairs, vulgar saturnalia free from the superstitious ritual, usually held beneath a roof and from which foreigners were not excluded. Rosenthal's account was less impressive than jocose, yet something told the Frenchman that the valley would prove an unhealthy locality for a white man.

The evening passed and he saw no one; the little hamlet was almost deserted; Jules became a prey to nervousness. He lay down in the hammock, but could not sleep. Beneath him the drum pounded on with the evenness of a pendulum.

Then he heard another sound; from far beneath came the clatter of a pony's hoofs on the hard, packed clay of the road; the sounds increased; a horseman drew up at the gate.

"Who is that?" called Jules.

"Oh, m'cher, is this the house of the Doctor Fouchère?" 245