But it was upon the mulatto girl Fanny, particularly, that the
tyrannical cruelty of Mrs. Wilde was poured out in all its severity.
From some cause,--whether because her duties rendered her more liable
to commit irritating faults, or whether, being always in sight, she was
simply the most convenient object of abuse, or whether on account of the
alleged former intimacy between this girl and her master,--certain it
is that the hatred with which the mistress pursued her had something in
it almost diabolical. And she seemed to take a peculiar satisfaction
in making her husband the instrument of her persecutions: an ingenious
method of punishing both her victims, if the motive were the last of
those above suggested. And truly bitter it must have been to both, when
the hand that had been only too kind was now forced to the infliction
even of stripes; so that one hardly knows which to pity most: though,
if the essence of punishment be degradation, certainly the legal slave
suffered less of it than the moral one who had fallen so low beneath the
dominion of a termagant wife. But let it be ever remembered to the honor
of this wretched daughter of bondage, that, in spite of all, she never
lost that devoted attachment for her master which in one of a more
favored race might be called by a softer name. For, whatever may have
been his feelings toward her, there can remain no doubt of the nature of
hers for him,--so touchingly displayed at a subsequent period, when she
cast away the terror of violent death, so strong in all her race, and
sought, by a voluntary confession of guilt never imputed to her, to
save him by taking his place upon the scaffold. Surely, such heroic
self-sacrifice suffices to

"sublime
Her dark despair and plead for its one crime."

It was probably on a discovery of this feeling in the girl that the