Road from Ennery. Toussaint’s sons are received there; Toussaint reads Bonaparte’s letter.

When they were brought into the presence of Leclerc, he said to them, handing them the letter addressed to their father by the First Consul: “I think that this writing, which you will give to General Toussaint, will establish the most perfect accord between your father and me.” On 7 February at eleven o’clock at night, Citizen Coisnon, Isaac and Placide left Le Cap, leaving behind them a scene of devastation and carnage; everywhere they recognized the traces of General Christophe’s passage. When they reached the outposts of General Desfourneaux, the adjutant-commandant Dampierre gave them the most flattering welcome. They spent the night in the camp. At dawn they set out and urged on their horses. When the sun flooded with its rays the countryside of Ennery, of a prodigious richness of vegetation and covered with a fine population and numerous herds, vistas of rare magnificence roused their admiration. Neither sword nor fire had yet laid waste these districts. They had left the point of the Mornet far behind them. The road was full of women and cultivators; they were stopped and questioned. They told the purpose of their journey; everyone congratulated them on their return to their country, and the crowd followed them with acclamations. It accompanied them as far as the village of Ennery. Their mother, told of their arrival by the cries of enthusiasm she heard, ran out to meet them. They entered their father’s residence at nine o’clock in the evening, two days after leaving Le Cap. A courier was at once sent to the headquarters at Les Gonaïves, where Toussaint Louverture was. The next day, in the night of 9 February, he arrived at Ennery followed by his staff. He had at once grasped the motive of this courtesy on the part of General Leclerc: his fatherly feeling was being put to the test. He pressed his sons to his heart, covered them with kisses and said to them: “My children, if you abandon me you will open in my heart a wound that will never close.” Citizen Coisnon, seeing his emotion and the tears that streamed down his face, seized this favorable moment to address him: “Is it the faithful servant of the Republic that I see?” Toussaint, whom dissimulation almost never deserted, answered him: “Can you doubt it?” Citizen Coisnon went on: “The First Consul sends you your children, so that they may be the interpreters of the French government at your side.” Then Isaac told his father how happy he had been in France; that he had seen at the palace of the Tuileries the First Consul, who wished only for his father’s glory and the happiness of Saint-Domingue. At the same time he presented to him a golden box containing a letter from Bonaparte bearing the seal of the State, which hung from a silk cord. Toussaint opened it and read it attentively: