"Certainly. But I foresee a difficulty. Will the General dare to found such an office, and set aside public money for its salary? I suppose he has no legal right to do it. Detach an officer for the purpose--that is all very simple and allowable; it's army fashion. But when it comes to founding new civil offices, you trench upon State or Federal authority. Besides, this superintendency of negro labor is going to be a heavy thing, and the General may want to keep it directly under his own thumb, as he can do if the superintendent is an army officer. However, I will ask your question. And, if the civil office can be founded, you will accept it; is it not so?"
"I do accept. Most gratefully, most proudly."
"But how if the superintendency can't be had without the colonelcy?"
"Why, then I--I fear I shall be forced to decline. I really don't feel that I can place myself in a false position. Only don't suppose that I am unconscious of my profound obligations to you."
"What an old trump of a Don Quixote!" mused the Colonel as he lit his segar in the street for the walk homeward. "It's devilish handsome conduct in him; but, by Jove! I don't believe the old fellow can afford it. I'm afraid it will be up-hill work for him to get a decent living in this wicked world, however he may succeed in the next."
A few minutes later a cold chill of worldly wisdom struck through his enthusiasm.
"He hasn't starved long enough to bring him to his milk," he thought. "When he gets down to his last dollar, and a thousand or two below it, he won't be so particular as to how he lines his pockets."
The Colonel almost felt that a civilian had no right to such a delicate and costly sense of honor. He would have been rather glad to have the Doctor enter into some of these schemes for getting money, inasmuch as this same filthy lucre was all that Miss Ravenel needed to make her a very attractive _partie_. The next day he repaired at the earliest office hours to head-quarters, and plead earnestly to have the proposed superintendency founded on the basis of a civil office, the salary to be furnished by the State, or by the city, or by a per-centage levied on the wages of the negroes. But the Proconsul did not like to assume such a responsibility, and moreover would not sympathise with the Doctor's fastidiousness on the subject of the uniform. The Colonel hurried back to Ravenel and urged him to accept the military appointment. He repeated to him, "Remember, this is a matter of twenty-six hundred a year," with a pertinacity which was the same as to say, "You know that you cannot afford to refuse such a salary." The Doctor did not dispute the correctness of the insinuation, but persisted with smiling obstinacy in declining the eagles. I am inclined to think that he was somewhat unreasonable on the subject, and that the Colonel was not far from right in being secretly a little angry with him. The latter did not care a straw for the niggers, but he desired very earnestly to put the Ravenels on the road to fortune, and he foresaw that a superintendent of colored labor would infallibly be tempted by very considerable side earnings and perquisites. Even Miss Lillie was rather disappointed at the failure of the project. To arm negroes, to command a colored regiment, was abolitionistic and abominable; but to set the same negroes to work on a hundred plantations, would be playing the southerner, the planter, the sugar aristocrat, on a magnificent scale; and she thought also that in this business her father might do ever so much good, and make for himself a noble name in Louisiana, by restoring thousands of runaway field-hands to their lawful owners. Let us not be too severe upon the barbarian beliefs of this civilized young lady. She had not the same geographical reasons for loving human liberty in the abstract that we have who were nurtured in the truly free and democratic North. Moreover, for some reason which I shall not trouble myself to discover, all women love aristocracies.