JULES ENTERS THE VALLEY
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?"
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