Moreau de Saint-Mery filled three volumes with the noise of Cap-Francais and left its enslaved majority nearly silent, explaining that a city offered little to observe about slaves. Joseph-Gabriel takes that silence as her problem and treats walking as the speech the record withholds. Three cases carry the argument. Men of the chain gang, sentenced after repeated attempts at flight, worked unshackled in officials' houses and returned to prison at night, an autonomy that unsettled Moreau and the attorney general Neufchateau, who wanted them set to dredging swamps and their labour turned to revenue. Jasmin Thomazeau, born on the Gold Coast and sold at Le Cap, bought his freedom, built a hospice for ailing gens de couleur, and watched the administration demolish the wall marking his extension. A Chamber of Agriculture report of 1785 records black pedestrians refusing to give way on the pavement and telling a householder the street belonged to the king.