and, whenever it did take place, it was invariably against the wishes of
the young ladies.

But the wife of master George was of a disposition entirely the reverse.
Feeble, languid, and inert, sitting motionless for hours at her window,
or moving her small fingers over the strings of her guitar, to some soft
and languishing air, she would have seemed to a stranger incapable of
rousing herself from that indolent repose, in which mind as well as body
participated. But, the slightest disregard of her commands--and
sometimes even the neglect to anticipate her wishes, on the part of the
servants; was sufficient to awake her. The inanimate and delicate beauty
then changed into a stormy virago. Her black eyes flawed and sparkled
with a snaky fierceness, her full lips compressed, and her brows bent
and darkened. Her very voice, soft and sweet when speaking to her
husband, and exquisitely fine and melodious, when accompanying her
guitar, was at such times, shrill, keen, and loud. She would order the
servants of my young mistresses upon her errands, and if they pleaded
their prior duty to obey the calls of another, would demand that they
should be forthwith whipped for their insolence. If the young ladies
remonstrated with her, she met them with a perfect torrent of invective
and abuse. In these paroxysms of fury she always spoke in French, with a
vehemence and volubility, which strongly contrasted with the calmness
and firmness of the young ladies. She would boast of what she had done
in New-Orleans, and of the excellent discipline of her father's slaves.
She said she had gone down in the night to the cell under her father's
house, and whipped the slaves confined there with her own hands. I had
heard the same thing from her father's servants at New-Orleans, when I
was there with my master. She brought with her from New-Orleans a girl
named Frances. I have seen her take her by the ear, lead her up to the
side of the room, and beat her head against it. At other times she would