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Their front door steps were on the street. As Madame Karl came up to them Eva stood in the open door much occupied with her approach, for she had not seen her for two years. Another woman, a stranger, was with Madame Karl. As they reached the threshold and the two old-time friends exchanged greetings, Eva said:

“Why, it is two years since last I saw you. Is that a German woman?–I know her!”

“Well,” said Madame Karl, “if you know her, who is she?”

“My God!” cried Eva,–“the long-lost Salome Mueller!”

“I needed nothing more to convince me,” she afterwards testified in court. “I could recognize her among a hundred thousand persons.”

Frank Schuber came in, having heard nothing. He glanced at the stranger, and turning to his wife asked:

“Is not that one of the girls who was lost?”

“It is,” replied Eva; “it is. It is Salome Mueller!”

On that same day, as it seems, for the news had not reached them, Madame Fleikener and her daughter–they had all become madams in Creole America–had occasion to go to see her kinswoman, Eva Schuber. She saw the stranger and instantly recognized her, “because of her resemblance to her mother.”

They were all overjoyed. For twenty-five years dragged in the mire of African slavery, the mother of quadroon children and ignorant of her own identity, they nevertheless welcomed her back to their embrace, not fearing, but hoping, she was their long-lost Salome.

But another confirmation was possible, far more conclusive than mere recognition of the countenance. Eva knew this. For weeks together she had bathed and dressed the little Salome every day. She and her mother and all Henry Mueller’s family had known, and had made it their common saying, that it might be difficult to identify the lost Dorothea were she found; but if ever Salome were found they could prove she was Salome beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was the remembrance of this that moved Eva Schuber to say to the woman:

“Come with me into this other room.” They went, leaving Madame Karl, Madame Fleikener, her daughter, and Frank Schuber behind. And when they returned the slave was convinced, with them all, that she was the younger daughter of Daniel and Dorothea Mueller. We shall presently see what fixed this conviction.

The next step was to claim her freedom. She appears to have gone back to Belmonti, but within a very few days, if not immediately, Madame Schuber and a certain Mrs. White–who does not become prominent–followed down to the cabaret. Mrs. White went out somewhere on the premises, found Salome at work, and remained with her, while Madame Schuber confronted Belmonti, and, revealing Salome’s identity and its proofs, demanded her instant release.

Belmonti refused to let her go. But while doing so he admitted his belief that she might be of pure white blood and of right entitled to freedom. He confessed having gone back to John F. Mueller[3] soon after buying her and proposing to set her free; but Mueller, he said, had replied that in such a case the law required her to leave the country. Thereupon Belmonti had demanded that the sale be rescinded, saying: “I have paid you my money for her.”

“But,” said Mueller, “I did not sell her to you as a slave. She is as white as you or I, and neither of us can hold her if she chooses to go away.”

Such at least was Belmonti’s confession, yet he was as far from consenting to let his captive go after this confession was made as he had been before. He seems actually to have kept her for a while; but at length she went boldly to Schuber’s house, became one of his household, and with his advice and aid asserted her intention to establish her freedom by an appeal to law. Belmonti replied with threats of public imprisonment, the chain-gang, and the auctioneer’s block.

Salome, or Sally, for that seems to be the nickname by which her kindred remembered her, was never to be sold again; but not many months were to pass before she was to find herself, on her own petition and bond of $500, a prisoner, by the only choice the laws allowed her, in the famous calaboose, not as a criminal, but as sequestered goods in a sort of sheriff’s warehouse. Says her petition: “Your petitioner has good reason to believe that the said Belmonti intends to remove her out of the jurisdiction of the court during the pendency of the suit”; wherefore not he but she went to jail. Here she remained for six days and was then allowed to go at large, but only upon giving still another bond and security, and in a much larger sum than she had ever been sold for.