noon
The proprietors , their bailiffs , the clergy , the magistrates , might all be seen along the roads , in the cool of the morning ; and there was a holiday air about the estates they left behind . The negroes were left for this week to do their work pretty much as they liked , or to do none at all . There was little time to think of them , and of ordinary business , when there were the mulattoes to be ostentatiously insulted , and the mother-country to be defied . So the negroes slept at noon , and danced at night , during these few August days , and even had leave to visit one another to as great an extent as was ever allowed . Perhaps they also transacted other affairs of which their masters had little suspicion . All that ever was allowed was permitted to the slaves on the Breda estate , in the plain , a few miles from Cap Francais . The attorney , or bailiff of the estate , Monsieur Bayou de Libertas , was a kind-hearted man , who , while insisting very peremptorily on his political and social rights , and vehemently denouncing all abstract enmity to them , liked that people actually about him should have their own way .