I found Mrs. De Wette in a charming saloon, looking
out upon the botanic gardens. A very beautiful picture of a young lady
hung on the wall. "That _was_ my poor Clara," said Mrs. De
Wette, "but she is so altered now!"
After a while Clara came in, and I was charmed at a glance - a most
lovely creature, in deep mourning, with beautiful manners; so much
interested for the poor slaves! so full of feeling, inquiring so
anxiously what she could do for them!
"Do ministers ever hold slaves?" she said.
"0, yes; many."
"0! But how can they be Christians?"
"They reason in this way," said I; "they say, 'These people are not
fit to take care of themselves; therefore we must hold them, and
educate them, till they are fit to be free.'"
"I wish," said she, looking very pretty and fierce, "that they might
all be sold themselves, and see how they would like it."
Her husband, who speaks only French, now asked what we were talking
about, and she repeated the conversation.
"I would shoot every one of them," said he, with a significant
movement.
"Now, see," said Mrs. De Wette, "Clara would sell them, and her
husband would _shoot_ them; for my part, I would rather
_convert_ them." We all laughed at this sally.
"Ah," said Clara, "the last thing my little darling looked at was the
pictures in Uncle Tom; when she came to the death of Eva, she said,
'Now I am weary, I will go to sleep;' and so closed her eyes, and
never opened them more."
Clara said she had met the Key in Turin and Milan. The Cabin is made a
school reading book in Sardinia, for those who wish to learn English,
with explanatory notes in Italian. The feeling here on the continent
for the slave is no less earnest than in England and Scotland. I have
received most beautiful and feeling letters from many Christians of
Switzerland, which I will show you.
I am grieved to say, that there are American propagandists of slavery
here, who seem to feel it incumbent on them to recognize this hideous
excrescence as a national peculiarity, and to consider any reflection
upon it, on the part of the liberty-loving Swiss, as an insult to the
American nation. The sophisms by which slaveholding has been justified
from the Bible have left their slimy track even here. Alas! is it thus
America fulfils her high destiny? Must she send missionaries abroad to
preach despotism?
Walking the other evening with M. Fazy, who is, of course, French in
education, we talked of our English literature. He. had Hamlet in
French - just think of it. One never feels the national difference so
much as in thinking of Shakspeare in French! Madame de Stael says of
translation, that music written for one instrument cannot be played
upon another.
