DESSALINES' PRAYER
the most profound quality in the negro's character, and was less the result of precept than a natural reaching out for the sublime. The Haytian was not strongly Christian; the meek Saviour failed to inspire him, but the vision of an omnipotent, omnipresent, brow-brooding Jehovah was the acme of his imaginative heights. He prayed seldom but then volubly, groveling, flat on his face, his great frame rent with convulsive heavings. When he did wrong, he dreamed of hell.
Dessalines' sense of right and wrong was instinctive, but extreme. Since his conversion to his new, stern, uncondoning Protestant faith, he had not been guilty of a single lapse. Lust, perhaps, stood at the head of his sinful category and represented hell in its direst form; he shivered while he panted. There had been times when he would have flogged his naked body with brambles had such a course been suggested to him, these flagellations being less punitive than chastening.
His earnest wish was for Truth; his infrequent, frenzied prayers for Purity. One may say that this is not characteristic, not typical. If one studies the negro he will find it to be true.
Rosenthal eyed him with the uncomfortable sense of lacking comprehension which sometimes comes over one when a nature excessively transparent reveals unlocked for depths.
"This saves us money," he observed presently. "That is if Mallock will take back some of the guns."
Dessalines roused himself as a dog shakes after a plunge.
"It is better to retain them." The negro had no conception of economy; he had no idea of when to cease
201
