In his labored way the quadroon stated his knowledge that Frowenfeld had been three times to the dwelling of Palmyre Philosophe.  Why, he further intimated, he knew not, nor would he ask; but he—­when he had applied for admission—­had been refused.  He had laid open his heart to the apothecary’s eyes—­“It may have been unwisely—­”

Frowenfeld interrupted him; Palmyre had been ill for several days; Doctor Keene—­who, Mr. Grandissime probably knew, was her physician—­

The landlord bowed, and Frowenfeld went on to explain that Doctor Keene, while attending her, had also fallen sick and had asked him to take the care of this one case until he could himself resume it.  So there, in a word, was the reason why Joseph had, and others had not, been admitted to her presence.

As obviously to the apothecary’s eyes as anything intangible could be, a load of suffering was lifted from the quadroon’s mind, as this explanation was concluded.  Yet he only sat in meditation before his tenant, who regarded him long and sadly.  Then, seized with one of his energetic impulses, he suddenly said: 

“Mr. Grandissime, you are a man of intelligence, accomplishments, leisure and wealth; why” (clenchings his fists and frowning), “why do you not give yourself—­your time—­wealth—­attainments—­energies—­everything—­to the cause of the downtrodden race with which this community’s scorn unjustly compels you to rank yourself?”

The quadroon did not meet Frowenfeld’s kindled eyes for a moment, and when he did, it was slowly and dejectedly.

“He canno’ be,” he said, and then, seeing his words were not understood, he added:  “He ‘ave no Cause.  Dad peop’ ’ave no Cause.”  He went on from this with many pauses and gropings after words and idiom, to tell, with a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld almost unmanly, the reasons why the people, a little of whose blood had been enough to blast his life, would never be free by the force of their own arm.  Reduced to the meanings which he vainly tried to convey in words, his statement was this:  that that people was not a people.  Their cause—­was in Africa.  They upheld it there—­they lost it there—­and to those that are here the struggle was over; they were, one and all, prisoners of war.

“You speak of them in the third person,” said Frowenfeld.

“Ah ham nod a slev.”

“Are you certain of that?” asked the tenant.

His landlord looked at him.

“It seems to me,” said Frowenfeld, “that you—­your class—­the free quadroons—­are the saddest slaves of all.  Your men, for a little property, and your women, for a little amorous attention, let themselves be shorn even of the virtue of discontent, and for a paltry bait of sham freedom have consented to endure a tyrannous contumely which flattens them into the dirt like grass under a slab.  I would rather be a runaway in the swamps than content myself with such a freedom.  As your class stands before the world to-day—­free in form but slaves in spirit—­you are—­I do not know but I was almost ready to say—­a warning to philanthropists!”