There is Clotilda; you see her, but you don't know her history: if
it were told it would resound through the broad expanse of our land.
Yes, it would disclose a wrong, perpetrated under the smiles of
liberty, against which the vengeance of high Heaven would be
invoked. I know the secret, and yet I dare not disclose it; the
curse handed down from her forefathers has been perpetuated by me.
She seems happy, and yet she is unhappy; the secret recesses of her
soul are poisoned. And what more natural? for, by some unlucky
incident, she has got an inkling of the foul means by which she was
made a slave. To him who knows the right, the wrong is most painful;
but I bought her of him whose trade it was to sell such flesh and
blood! And yet that does not relieve me from the curse: there's the
stain; it hangs upon me, it involves my inclinations, it gloats over
my downfall-"
"You bought her!" again interrupts Maxwell.
"True," rejoins the other, quickly, "'tis a trade well protected by
our democracy. Once bought, we cannot relieve ourselves by giving
them rights in conflict with the claims of creditors. Our will may
be good, but the will without the means falls hopeless. My heart
breaks under the knowledge that those children are mine. It is a sad
revelation to make,--sad in the eyes of heaven and earth. My
participation in wrong has proved sorrow to them: how can I look to
the pains and struggles they must endure in life, when stung with
the knowledge that I am the cause of it? I shall wither under the
torture of my own conscience.
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