Bug Jargal - French Edition Author:Hugo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: V. " As I approached the completion of my twentieth year, I was still given over to these illusions and blind hopes. My twentieth birthday was to occur in the... more » month of August, 1791, and my uncle had fixed that time for my union with Marie. You can easily understand that the thought that the culmination of my happiness was so near at hand absorbed all my faculties, and that my mind recurred at infrequent intervals, and then only in the vaguest way to the political controversy which had kept the colony at fever heat for two years. I will not therefore undertake to tell you aught of the Comte de Peinier, nor of M. de Blanchelande, nor of the ill-fated Colonel de Mauduit, who came to such tragic end. I will not describe the rivalry between the Provincial Assembly of the North, and the Colonial Assembly, which afterward assumed the title of General Assembly, because the word Colonial smacked of slavery. These paltry disputes, which kept everybody in a ferment, are of no interest except by reason of the disasters they caused. For my own part, if I had any leaning toward either side iik the mutual jealousy existing between Capetown and Port au Prince, it must necessarily have been in favor of Capetown, for we lived within the limits of that district, and of the Provincial Assembly, of which my uncle was a member. "It only happened to me on a single occasion to take a somewhat earnest part in a discussion upon the affairs of the day. It was at the time of the unfortunate decree of May 15, 1791, whereby the National Assembly of France admitted free men of color to an equal share of political rights with the whites. At a ball given at Capetown, by the governor, several young colonists were vehemently discussing this law, which dealt so cruel a blow at the self-esteem of the whit...« less