He took great pride in telling Mimi of Jeannot, stalwart slave offered freedom by Kerlerec if he would become the public executioner, a job no white man would take. Mimi lived again the agony of Jeannot, now dead some one hundred and fifty years, who in horror and anguish cried out: “What! Cut off the heads of people who have never done me any harm?” She could almost see him pleading, even weeping, to be allowed to remain in bondage rather than become the public killer. No escape possible, the governor was adamant, he rose and said: “Very well, wait a moment.” Mimi shuddered as Jean told of Jeannot leaving the room, running to his cabin, seizing a hatchet in his left hand, laying his right hand on a block and chopping it off. She rejoiced that he, on exhibiting the bloody stump, created such emotion he was given his freedom anyhow.
Of Negro troops under Andrew Jackson in the famous battle of New Orleans, of the ability and courage of that Major Jean Daquin, San Domingan, quadroon whose Negro blood historians later forgot, he told her proudly. But it was sadly that he pictured the barriers, the Black Codes, the rising tide of hatred and bitterness that began to rise against the coloured Creoles and Americans. To Jean in his gentleness and love of peace these stories of dark days during and after the Civil War were horrible and painful but in his honesty he told of them while Mimi’s breath came quickly as he unfolded the scenes like sharply etched prints before her wondering eyes.
“It’s afternoon—Mary will be furious,” Jean at last exclaimed, almost with dismay.
They hurried to the gates and home.