Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/183

 in splendor, Toussaint himself lived with an austere sobriety, which bordered on abstemiousness.

Clad in a common dress, with a red Madras handkerchief tied around his head, he would move amongst the people as though he were a laborer. On such occasions he would often take a musket, throw it up into the air, and catching it, kiss it; again hold it up, and exclaim to the gazing multitude, "Behold your deliverer; in this lies your liberty!" Toussaint was entirely master of his own appetites and passions.

It was his custom to set off in his carriage with the professed object of going to some particular point of the Island, and when he had passed over several miles of the journey, to quit the carriage, which continued its route under the same escort of guards, while Toussaint mounted on horseback, and followed by his officers, made rapid excursions across the country to places where he was least expected. It was upon one of these occasions that he owed his life to his singular mode of travelling. He had just left his carriage when an ambuscade of mulattoes, concealed in the thickets of Boucassin, fired upon the guard; several balls pierced the carriage, and one of them killed an old servant, who occupied the seat of his master.

No person knew better than he the art of governing the people under his jurisdiction. The greater part of the blacks loved him to idolatry. Veneration for Toussaint was not confined to the boundaries of St. Domingo; it ran through Europe; and in France his name was frequently pronounced in the senate with the eulogy of polished eloquence. No one can look back