It was to have such unpleasant manners, invariably, that you were never admitted to the dining-table of any decent house nor to the assemblies of most labor unions which, objectionable though they were to a conscientious banker like himself, still did have enough sense to see that all Negroes are scabs and spies and loafers.

It was to be an animal physically. It was to be an animal culturally, deaf to Beethoven and St. Augustine. It was to be an animal ethically, unable to keep from stealing and violence, from lying and treachery. It was literally and altogether to be an animal, somewhere between human beings and the ape.

It was to know that your children, no matter how much you loved them or strove for them, no matter if they were fair as Biddy, were doomed to be just as ugly and treacherous and brainless and bestial as yourself, and their children’s children beyond them forever, under the curse of Ezekiel.

–-But I’m not like that—Mum isn’t—Biddy isn’t—old Julie isn’t. We’re decent, regular people. So there’s some mistake. We aren’t Negroes, not one drop, and there were two Xavier Pics.

–-You know that’s phony, Kingsblood. Somehow, you know, way down, that he was your ancestor. Oh, damn him for being black! Poor sweet Biddy!

–-All right. If Bid is a Negro, then everything I’ve ever heard about the Negroes—yes, and maybe everything I’ve heard about the Jews and the Japs and the Russians, about religion and politics—all of that may be a lie, too.

–-If you are a Negro, you be one and fight as one. See if you can grow up, and then fight.

–-But I’ve got to learn what a Negro is; I’ve got to learn, from the beginning, what I am!

Behind his struggle to think rationally there was a picture of the pert and candid face of Biddy—the little Duchess of Picardy, royal heir of Catherine of Aragon—and of her being unmasked by jeering neighbors as a Negro—a nigger, a zigaboo, a disgusting imitation of a real human child, flat-headed and obscenely capering, something to be driven around to the back door.

–-She’s not like that. We’re not like that. Negroes are not like that. Are we?

* * * * *

Dr. Werweiss, he informed Neil, had found an original letter from Xavier Pic to General Henry Sibley, and he handed it over.

The paper had turned brown, but the ink was unfaded and the script delicate and precise, the writing of a literate man. Neil wondered if he was not the first, except for Dr. Werweiss and his assistant and General Sibley, who had touched this letter since Xavier had written it, by candlelight or northern sun, on a puncheon table or the side of a birch canoe, a hundred dead years ago: