humble religious, a priest of God. Who the secular ruler over my parish may be is not my concern.'
Father Pascal was a great many things, but humble was none of them. Was he lying, or did he think of himself so? Galtier couldn't tell. 'Certainly, Father, I understand,' he said, still seeking a polite way out of this meeting.
'I am so glad you do,' the priest said heartily, laying one of those smooth, well-manicured hands on Lucien's arm. 'For too many people, impartiality is often mistaken for its opposite. Do you believe it, I am often accused of favouring the Americans?'
Yes, I believe that. I have good reason to believe that. 'What a pity,' Galtier said, but he could not bring himself to shake off Father Pascal's hand, climb into the wagon, and get away as fast as he could. That might arouse sus picion, too.
'If you should hear this vicious lie, I beg of you, give it no credit,' Father Pascal said, with such earnestness in his voice that for a moment Lucien won dered whether what everyone said was wrong. But then the priest continued, 'Should you hear such calumnies, my son, I would be in your debt if you would be generous enough to inform me who has spoken them, that I may pray for the salvation of his soul.'
'Of course, Father,' Lucien said. Clocks in the church towers began chiming eleven, which gave him the excuse he needed. 'Father, forgive me, but I have a long ride back to my farm, and the hour is later than I thought.'
'I would not keep you. Go with God.' Smiling, sleek, doing ever so well under the new regime, Father Pascal went on down the street with the determined strides of a man who has important places to go, important things to do. He nodded to two American soldiers and then to an old woman in mourning black.
'Does he think me a simpleton, a cretin?' Lucien asked his horse when they were well out of Riviere-du-Loup and the animal's ears were the only ones that could hear. 'Tell me who is saying bad things about me and I will pray for him, he says. He will pray, by God: pray that the Americans catch the poor fellow. And he will tell the American commandant, to help make his prayers come true. What do you think of that, my old?'
The horse did not answer. The Lord had not chosen to do for it as He had once for Balaam's ass.
To Lucien's silent, patient audience of one, he went on, 'A simpleton? A cretin? No, he thinks me worse than that. He thinks me a collaborator, as he is himself. And this, this is what I think of him.' He leaned over the side of the wagon and spat in the dirt. The very idea offended him. Why would anyone collaborate with the Americans?
Whenever Scipio went to Cassius' cottage, he went with fear and trembling in his heart. The fear was not a simple one, which only made it tougher to deal with. Half the time, he was afraid the mistress had found out what he was doing and that white patrollers — or maybe white soldiers-with rifles and bayonets and dogs with long sharp teeth were on his trail. The other half, he was afraid Cassius and his fellow would-be revolutionaries had somehow divined he was not heart and soul with them in their Red fervour, and that they were going to get rid of him because of that.
Sometimes, too, he carried both fears at once. In odd moments, he tried to figure out which was deeper, more compelling. It was like trying to decide whether you'd rather be hanged or shot — just like that, he thought uncomfortably. When all your choices were bad, did worse matter?
Here was the cottage. He felt conspicuous coming out to the huts in his fancy butler's livery, though he'd been doing it for years. He'd been passing a good deal of time in Cassius' cottage for years, too. He kept telling himself no one should notice anything amiss. Making himself believe it was harder. Never till the previous fall had he done the kinds of things in this cottage he was doing now.
He knocked. 'That you, Kip?' came the question from within: Cassius' voice.
'This me,' Scipio agreed, swallowing the misery he dared not show.
The door opened. There stood Cassius. 'Come in wid we,' he said, smiling, slim, strong, dangerous as a water moccasin in the swamps. 'Set a spell. We talk about things, you 'n' me.'
'We do dat,' Scipio said, and stepped into the cabin. He never saw any one there but the people who had been reading The Communist Manifesto together the night he'd found out they weren't just labourers but Reds. That made sense; the less he knew, the less he could betray.
'Wet yo' whistle?' Cassius asked, and pointed to a jug of corn whiskey sitting up on the mantel.
Scipio started to shake his head, but found himself nodding instead. Cassius handed him the jug. He took a long pull. The raw, illegal whiskey ran down his throat like a river of fire and exploded in his belly.
The woman named Cherry said, 'You he'p we learn dese prayers, Kip?' She handed him a paperbound book with an orange cover. The printing on that cover did indeed proclaim it a tract, just as the blue-covered book that had got him into this mess had said it was a hymnbook. You couldn't tell a book by its cover, though, not in Cassius' cottage you couldn't.
Island and a couple of other people did start to sing hymns, in case any body was snooping around outside. Under cover of their racket, Cassius sat down by Scipio at the rickety table in his cottage and bent over the book with the orange cover with him. The hunter's finger pointed out a passage. 'Read dat,' he said.
Obediently, Scipio's eyes went back and forth. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital, he read. Capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
'What you think o' that there?' Cassius asked.
'All fit in wid everything else,' Scipio answered. 'Sound like de trut'.' He almost slipped out of the dialect of the Congaree; the words he'd just read did not fit in with that ignorant speech.
Cassius' finger — scarred, callused-found another place. 'Now you read dat.'
We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing, Scipio read. With some, the word means for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and with the product of his labour. With others, the same word means for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labour. The fullness of time, I am convinced, will prove to the world which is the true definition of the word, and my earnest hope remains that the United States of America shall yet lead the way in the proving.
'Who write this?' Scipio asked. A lot of what he'd read here had the taste of being translated from a foreign language. Not this; it was simple and direct and powerful, English as it was meant to be written. One of the things he'd acquired serving Anne Colleton, and which he discovered he could not simply abandon, was a sense of style.
Cassius' eyes gleamed with amusement. 'Same fellow write the other.'
Scipio gave the hunter a dirty look. Cassius enjoyed leading him around by the nose, the same way he enjoyed all reversals and practical jokes. Cassius also enjoyed having an intellectual advantage on him. Scipio had never be lieved Cassius did much thinking at all. He hadn't even known the hunter could read. He'd turned out to be wrong. Cassius' thought was anything but wide-ranging, but in its track it ran deep.
Patiently, Scipio asked the next question. 'And who that is? Not them Marx and Engels fellers, I bet.'
Everybody looked at him. When your thought ran in a narrow track, and ran deep in that track, climbing up and peering over the edge became suspicious. These Reds despised the way all the white folks in the Confederate States thought alike. But if any of their own number presumed to deviate from their doctrine, he got in just as much trouble, maybe more.
'Why for you say dat?' Cherry demanded. She looked as if she wanted to drop Scipio in the Congaree swamp right then and there.
He wished he'd kept his mouth shut. He'd wished that a lot of times around these people. But, since he hadn't, he had to answer the question: 'It ain't wrote like t'other stuff I read.'
Cassius laughed. 'Got we a perfesser here. But is he dat smart?' He shook his head. 'No, or he know who do dat work.' Unlike a lot of jokers, he knew when to cut a joke short, as he did now. 'These words wrote by Abraham Lincoln.'
' Lincoln? Do Jesus!' Scipio thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. 'Should cipher that out my own self.'
'He see the truth early on,' Cassius said. 'He say that first one while he president of the USA, an' de second one years after, in Montana Territory.'
'Do Jesus!' Scipio said again, impressed. Lincoln had served only one term as president of the United States; he'd been unceremoniously booted out of office after the Confederacy broke away from the USA. But he hadn't left
