The Worlds Greatest Books - Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
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"In vain did Atala plead for me; I was condemned to be burnt. Happily,
the Feast of Souls was being held, and no tribe dares to kill a captive
during the days consecrated to this solemn ceremony. But after the feast
I was bound down on the ground before the sacred totem pillars, and all
the maidens and warriors of the Creek nation danced around me, chanting
songs of triumph. Again I sang my song of death.
"'I do not fear your torments! For I am brave! I defy you, for you are
all weaker than women. My father, Outalissi, has drunk from the skulls
of your bravest warriors. Burn me! Torture me! But you will not make me
groan; you will not make me sigh.'
"Angered by my song, a Creek warrior stabbed me in the arm. 'Thank you,'
I said.
"To make sure that I should not again escape, they bound cords around my
neck and feet and arms; the ends of these cords were fastened in the
earth by means of pegs, and a band of warriors set to watch over me laid
down on the cords, so that I could not make a single movement of which
they were not aware. The songs and dances gradually ceased as night came
on, and the camp fires burnt low and red, and, in spite of my pain, I,
too, fell asleep. I dreamt that someone was setting me free, and I
seemed to feel that sharp anguish which shoots along the nerves when
ropes, which are bound so tightly as to stop the flow of blood, are
suddenly cut from the numbed limbs. The pain became so keen that it made
me open my eyes. A tall, white figure was bending over me, silently
cutting my cords. It was Atala. I rose up and followed her through the
sleeping camp.
"When we were out of ear-shot she told me that she had bribed the
medicine man of her tribe, and brought some barrels of fire-water into
the camp and made all the warriors drunk with it. Drunkenness, no doubt,
prevented the Creeks from following us for a day or two. And if
afterwards they pursued us, they probably turned to the west, thinking
that we had set out in the direction of the country of Natchez. But we
had gone north, tracking our way by the moss growing on the trunks of
the trees."
_II.--The Magic of the Forest_
"The Creeks had stripped me almost naked, but Atala made me a dress out
of the inner bark of the ash-tree and sewed some rat-skins into
moccasins. I, in turn, wove garlands of flowers for her head as we
tramped along through the great forests of Florida. Oh, how wildly
beautiful the scenes were through which we passed. Nearly all the trees
in Florida are covered with a white moss which hangs from their branches
to the ground. At night-time, when the moonlight falls, pearly grey, on
the indeterminate crest of the forests, the trees look like an army of
phantoms in long, trailing veils. In the daytime a crowd of large,
beautiful butterflies, brilliant humming birds, and blue-winged jays and
parroquets come and cling to the moss, which then resembles a white
tapestry embroidered with splendid and varied hues.
"Every evening we made a great fire and built a shelter out of a large
hollow piece of bark, fixed on four stakes. The forests were full of
game, which I easily brought down with the bow and arrows I took when we
fled from the camp, and as it was now autumn, the forests were hung with
fruit. Every day I became more and more joyful, but Atala was strangely
quiet. Sometimes, as I suddenly turned my head to see why she was so
silent, I would find her gazing at me, her eyes burning with passion.
Sometimes she would kneel down, and clasp her hands in prayer and weep
like a woman with a broken heart. What frightened me above all was the
secret thought that she tried to conceal in the depths of her soul, but,
now and then, half revealed in her wild, sorrowful, and lovely eyes. Oh,
how many times did she tell me:
"'Yes, I love you, Chactas, I love you! But I can never be your wife!'
"I could not understand her. One minute she would cling round my neck
and kiss me; another, when I wished in turn to caress her, she would
repulse me.
"'But as I intend, Atala, to become a Christian, what is there to
prevent us marrying?' I said, again and again.
"And every time I asked this question she burst into tears and would not
answer. But the wild loneliness, the continual presence of my beloved,
yes, even the hardships of our wandering life, increased the force of my
longing. A hundred times I was ready to fold Atala to my breast. A
hundred times I proposed to build her a hut in the wide, uninhabited
wilderness, and live my life out there by her side.
"Oh, Rene, my son, if your heart is ever deeply troubled by love, beware
of loneliness. Great passions are wild and solitary things; by
transporting them into the wilderness you give them full power over your
soul. But in spite of this, Atala and I lived together in the great
forests like brother and sister. On and on we marched, through vaults of
flowery smilax, where lianas with strange and gorgeous blossoms snared
our feet in their twining ropy stems. Enormous bats fluttered in our
faces, rattlesnakes rattled around us, and bears and carcajous--those
little tigers that crouch on the branches of trees, and leap without
warning on their prey--made the latter part of our journey full of
strange perils and difficulties. For after travelling for twenty-seven
days, we crossed the Alleghany mountains, and got into a tract of
swampy, wooded ground.
"At sunset a tempest arose and darkened all the heavens. Then the sky
opened, and the noise of the tempestuous forest was drowned in long,
rolling detonations of thunder, and the wild lightning flamed down upon
us, and set the forest on fire. Crouching down under the bent trunk of a
birch-tree, with my beloved on my lap, I sheltered her from the
streaming rain, and warmed her naked feet in my hands. What cared I,
though the very heavens broke above me, and the earth rocked to its
foundations? The soft, warm arms of Atala were around my neck, her
breast lay against my breast, and I felt her heart beating as wildly as
my own.
"'O my beloved,' I said, 'open your heart to me, and tell me the secret
that makes you so sorrowful. Do you weep at leaving your native land?'
"'No,' she said. 'I do not regret leaving the land of palm trees, for my
mother is dead, and Simaghan was only my foster father.'
"'Then who was your father, my beloved?' I cried in astonishment.
"'My father was a Spaniard,' said Atala, 'but my grandmother threw water
in his face, and made him go away, and she then forced my mother to give
herself in marriage to Simaghan, who desired her. But she died from
grief at being parted from my father, and Simaghan adopted me as his own
daughter. I have never seen my father, though my mother, before she
died, baptised me, so that his God should be my God. Oh, Chactas, I wish
I could see my father before I die!'
"'What is his name?' I said. 'Where does he live?'
"'He lives at St. Augustin,' she replied. 'His name is Philip Lopez.'
"'O, my beloved,' I cried, pressing Atala wildly to may breast. 'Oh,
what happiness, what joy! You are the daughter of Lopez, the daughter of
my foster father!'
"Atala was frightened at my outburst of passion, but when she knew that
it was her father who had rescued me from the Creeks, and brought me up
as his own son, she became as wildly joyful as I was. Rising up from my
arms, with a strange, fierce, and yet tender light in her eyes, she took
something out of her bosom and put in her mouth, and then fell on my
breast in an ecstasy of self-surrender. Just as I was about to embrace
her, the lightning fell, the sword of God, upon the surging, stormy
forest, and made a wild and terrible radiance around us, and shattered a
great tree at our feet. We rose up, overcome by a sacred horror, and
fled. And then an even more miraculous thing happened. As the rolling
thunder died away we heard in the silence and the darkness the sound of
a bell. A dog barked, and came running joyfully up to us. Behind him was
an old, white-haired priest, carrying a lantern in his hand.
"'Dear God!' said the priest. 'How young they are! Poor children! My dog
found you in the forest just before the storm broke, and ran back to my
cave to fetch me. I have brought some wine in my calabash. Drink it, it
will revive you. Did you not hear the mission bell, which we ring every
night so that strangers may find their way?'
"'Save me, father, save me!' cried Atala, falling to the ground. 'I am a
Christian, and I do not want to die in mortal sin.'
"What was the matter with her? She was as pale as death, and unable to
rise. I bent over her, and so did the missionary.
"'Oh, Chactas,' she murmured, 'I am dying. Just before the lightning
struck the tree at our feet, I took some poison. For I felt that I could
no longer resist you, my beloved, and I was resolved to save myself in
death.'
"'But here is a priest,' I said. 'I will be baptised at once, and we can
be married immediately afterwards.'
"'I could not marry you, even then,' she said. 'I was sixteen years old
when my mother died, and in order to preserve me from marrying any of
the heathen savages among whom my lot was cast, she made me vow, on the
image of Mary the Mother of my God, that I would remain all my life a
pure, Christian virgin.'
"Oh, Rene, how I hated the God of the Christians at that moment! I drew
my tomahawk, resolved to kill the missionary on the spot. But
disregarding me, he bent over Atala, and raised her head upon his knees.
"'My dear child, your vow does not prevent you from marrying your lover,
especially as he is willing to become a Christian. I will write at once
to the Bishop of Quebec, who has the power to relieve you of any vow
that you have made, and then there will be nothing to prevent your
marriage.'
"As he spoke, Atala was seized with a convulsion which shook all her
body. In wild agony, she cried: 'Oh, it is too late, it is too late! I
thought my mother's spirit would come and drag me down to hell if I
broke my vow. I took poison with me, Chactas, when I fled with you. I
have just swallowed it. There is no remedy. Oh, God! Oh, God!'
"She was dead in my arms. I buried her where she died, and had it not
been for the missionary, Rene, I would have laid down in the grave, by
her side, and let the blood well out of all my veins. But I became a
Christian, as you know, and then, finding some work in the world to do,
I went back to my own tribe, and converted them. I have been to France.
I have seen your great king Louis XIV. I have talked with Bishop
Bossuet, and it was he who convinced me that I could best serve God by
returning to my own people, the Natchez, and trying to form them into a
great Christian nation under the guidance of the King of France."
* * * * *
CHARLES VICTOR CHERBULIEZ
Samuel Brohl & Co.
Charles Victor Cherbuliez was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in
1829, studied history and philosophy in Paris, Bonn and Berlin
and travelled widely, gathering material that he used in
social and political essays and also in fiction. He won fame
with his first novel, "Count Kostia," published in 1863. After
that date his romances followed in quick succession. Embodying
extravagant adventures, they must be classed nevertheless in
the category of the sentimental novel to which the writings of
Sand and Feuillet belong. Cherbuliez is always an interesting
story-teller and an ingenious artificer of plot, but his
psychology is conventional and his descriptive passages
superficial though clever. "Samuel Brohl & Co.," published in
1877, illustrates his power of drawing cosmopolitan types,
Russians, Poles, English, Germans and Jews, which he portrays
in all his novels. He was admitted to the French Academy in
1881, and died in 1899.
_I.--A Mountain Romance_
"Yes! she is certainly very beautiful as well as very rich," said Count
Abel Larinski, as he watched, through his hotel window, the graceful
figure of Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz. "A marriage between Count Abel
Larinski, the sole descendant of one of the most ancient and noble
families of Poland, and Mlle. Moriaz, the daughter of the President of
the French Institute, is a thing which might be arranged. But alas!
Count Abel Larinski, you are a very poor man. Let me see how long you
will be able to stay in Saint Moritz? These hotels in the Upper Engadine
are frightfully dear!"
The handsome young Polish nobleman opened his purse and looked at the
contents rather sadly. It was almost empty. He would certainly have to
sell some of his family jewels, if he wanted to stay at Saint Moritz.
Unhappily, he now had only the fine diamond ring, which he wore on his
finger, and a Persian bracelet composed of three golden plates connected
by a band of filigree work.
"Now, which shall I sell," said the Count; "the Larinski ring, or the
bracelet which belonged to Samuel Brohl? The ring, I think. It will
bring in much more money, and besides, the bracelet might be useful as a
present."
After strolling some time about the garden, Mlle. Moriaz saw her father
waiting for her at the door.
"What do you think, Antoinette, of an excursion to Silvaplana Lake?"
said M. Moriaz. "I'm feeling so much better already, and I absolutely
long, my dear, for a good walk."
"I should be delighted," said his daughter, "if you think it will not
tire you."
M. Moriaz was sure an excursion would not tire him. So they set out for
a long walk, through the wild mountain scenery. Antoinette was delighted
to find that her father was recovering his strength, but he was
alarmingly quiet and thoughtful. Was she in for one of those serious
lectures on the subject of marriage which he used to read to her at
Paris? Yes! Camille must have written to him. For as she was standing on
a mountain bridge, listening to the liquid gurgling of the torrent at
the bottom of the gorge, she said to him:
"Isn't the music of this wild stream delightful?"
"Yes!" he replied. "But I think this bridge that spans the gorge is a
more wonderful thing than all the wild works of nature around us. I
admire men, like our friend Camille Langis, who know how to build these
bridges. What a fine fellow he is! Most men, with his wealth, lead idle,
useless lives. But there he is now, building bridges across mountains
just as wild as these, in Hungary. Why don't you marry him, my dear? He
is madly in love with you, and you have known him all your life."
"That's just it," said his daughter, with a movement of impatience, "I
have known him all my life. How can I now fall wildly and suddenly in
love with him? No! If ever I lose my heart, I am sure it will be to some
stranger, to someone quite different from all the men we meet in Paris."
"You are incorrigibly romantic, Antoinette," said her father, with just
a touch of ill-humour. "You want a fairy prince, eh?--one of those
strange, picturesque, impossible creatures that only exist in the
imagination of poets and school girls. You are now twenty-four years
old, Antoinette, and if you don't soon become more reasonable, you will
die an old maid."
"Would that be a very great misfortune, father darling?" said Antoinette
with a roguish smile. "If ever I marry, you know, I shall have to leave
you. And what would you do then? You would be driven to marry your
cook!"
This sally put the old scientist in a good humour. His daughter was the
charm and solace of his life, and though he would have liked to see her
happily married, he did not know what he should do when she left him. On
the way back to the hotel, Antoinette tried to find some edelweiss, but
she was not able to clamber up to the high rocks on which this rare
flower grows. Great therefore were her joy and surprise, on returning to
the hotel, to find on the table of her room a wicker basket, full of
edelweiss, and rarer Alpine flowers. Was it for her? Yes! For in the
basket was a note addressed, "Mlle. Moriaz." Fluttering with excitement
she opened it, and read:
"I arrived in this valley, disgusted with life, sad, and
weary to death. But I saw you pass by my window, and some
strange, new power entered my soul. Now I know that I shall
live, and accomplish my work in the world. 'What does this
matter to me?' you will say when you read these lines--and you
will be right. My only excuse for writing to you in this way
is that I shall depart in a few days, and that you will never
see me, and never know who I am."
After getting over her first impression of profound astonishment,
Antoinette laughed, and then gave way to curiosity. Who had brought the
flowers? "A little peasant boy," said the hotel porter, "but I did not
know him. He must have come from another village."
For some days, Mlle. Moriaz glanced at everybody she met, but she never
found a single romantic figure in the crowd of invalids that sauntered
about St. Moritz. If, however, she had always accompanied her father,
who, growing stronger every day, began to go out on long geological
excursions, she might have met a very picturesque and striking young
man. For Count Abel Larinski now always followed M. Moriaz, and watched
over him like a guardian angel. "Oh, if he would only fall down one of
the rocks he is always hammering at, and break a leg, or even sprain an
ankle!" said the gallant Polish nobleman. "Wouldn't that be a lucky
accident for me!"
All things, it is said, come to those who know how to wait. One
afternoon M. Moriaz climbed up a very steep slope of crumbling rock, and
came to a narrow gorge over which he was afraid to leap. He could not
descend by the way he had come up, for the slope was really dangerous.
It looked as though he should have to wait hours, and perhaps, days,
until some herdsman passed by; and he began to shout wildly in the hopes
of attracting attention. To his great joy, his shout was answered, and
Count Larinski climbed up the other side of the gorge, carrying a plank,
torn from a fence he passed on his way. By means of this, he bridged the
gorge, and rescued the father of Antoinette, and naturally, he had to
accompany him to the hotel, and stay to dinner. As we have said, Count
Larinski was a very handsome man; tall, broad-shouldered, with strange
green eyes touched with soft golden tints. When he began to talk, simply
and modestly of the part he had played in the last Polish Revolution
against the despotic power of Russia, Antoinette felt at last that she
was in the presence of a hero. And what a cultivated man he was! He
played the piano divinely, and they passed many pleasant evenings
together. One night, the Count left behind him a piece of music,
inscribed "Abel Larinski." "Surely," Mlle. Moriaz thought, "I have seen
that writing somewhere!" Her breath came quickly, as with a trembling
hand she took out of her bosom the letter which had been sent with the
flowers, and compared the handwritings. They were identical.
_II.--A Conversation with a Dead Man_
Just a week afterwards, Count Larinski had a very serious conversation
with his partner, Samuel Brohl. The strange thing about the conversation
was that there was only one man in the room, and he talked all the time
to himself. Sometimes he spoke in German with lapses into Yiddish, and
any one would then have said that he was Samuel Brohl, a notorious
Jewish adventurer. Then, recovering himself, he talked in Polish, and he
might have been mistaken for a Polish gentleman. He seemed to be a man
who was trying to study a difficult matter from two different points of
view, and he undoubtedly had an actor's talent for throwing himself into
the character of the nobleman he was impersonating.
"Do you see," said Samuel Brohl, "fortune at last smiles upon us. The
charming girl is ours. I have won her for you, dear Larinski, by the
means Othello used to charm the imagination and capture the heart of
Desdemona. Do you not remember, my dear Count, the tales you used to
tell us, when we were living together in a garret in Bucharest? How you
fought in the streets of Warsaw against the Cossacks? How they tracked
you through the snow-covered forest by the trail of blood you left
behind you? Oh, I recollected it all, and I flatter myself that I
related it with just that proud, sombre, subdued melancholy with which
you used to speak of your sufferings."
"Do you think that she has really fallen in love with me?" asked Count
Larinski. "I am afraid of her father. In spite of all that I have done
for that famous man of science, he does not seem to fancy me as a
son-in-law. Do you imagine it is merely because of my poverty? Or does
he find anything wrong with me?"
This last question profoundly disturbed the soul of Samuel Brohl. What!
were all the skilful intrigues which he had spent four years in weaving,
to come to nothing? For it was now four years since Samuel Brohl had
entered into his strange partnership with the Polish nobleman. Brohl
himself was the son of a Jewish tavern-keeper in Gallicia. A great
Russian lady, Princess Gulof, attracted by his handsome presence, and
strange green eyes, had engaged him as her secretary and educated him.
He had repaid her by robbing her of her jewels and running off with them
to Bucharest. There he had met Count Larinski, who, for more honourable
motives, was also hiding from the Russian secret police. By representing
himself as a persecuted anarchist, Brohl completely won the confidence
of large-hearted, chivalrous Polish patriot.
"Ah, it was a lucky chance that brought us together!" said Samuel Brohl.
"If you had not met me, you would have been dead, four years ago, and
clean forgotten. Do you remember your last instructions? After giving me
every bit of money you had--a little over two thousand florins, wasn't
it?--you showed me a box containing your family jewels, your letters,
your diary, your papers, and you said to me: 'Destroy everything it
contains. Poland is dead. Let my name die too!'
"But, my dear Count," continued Samuel Brohl, "how could I let a man of
your heroic worth and romantic character be forgotten by the world? No,
it was Samuel Brohl who died and was buried in an unknown grave. I have
the certificate of his death. Count Abel Larinski still lives. It is
true that he is so changed by all his sufferings that his oldest friends
would never recognise him. His hair used to be black, it is now brown;
his blue eyes have become golden green; moreover he has grown
considerably taller. But what does it matter? He is still a handsome
man, with a noble air and charming manner."
"Very well," said Count Larinski. "I must take the risk of meeting in
Paris anyone who used to know me before my transformation. I will pack
up and depart."
It was indeed a terrible ordeal which he had to face. By a strange irony
of fate, all his skilfully conceived plans were imperilled at the very
moment when his success seemed absolutely certain. As he had foreseen,
M. Moriaz was not at first inclined to consent to the marriage; but
Antoinette soon won her father over, and when Count Larinski called at
their charming villa at Cormeilles, on the outskirts of Paris, he had as
warm a welcome as the most ardent of suitors could desire.
"We must introduce you, my dear Count, to all our friends," said M.
Moriaz. "We are giving a party to-morrow evening for the purpose. Of
course you will be able to attend?"
"Naturally," said Larinski, "I am looking forward with the greatest
eagerness to making the acquaintance of all Antoinette's friends. The
only thing I regret is that none of my old comrades in the great
struggle against Russia can be at my side at the happiest moment of my
life. Alas! many are working in fetters in the mines of Siberia, and the
rest are scattered over the face of the globe."
_III.--Samuel Brohl Comes to Life_
But, though none of Count Larinski's friends was able to appear at
Cormeilles, one of Samuel Brohl's old acquaintances came to the party.
On entering the drawing-room, he saw an old, ugly, sharp-faced woman,
talking in a corner with Camille Langis. It was Princess Gulof. It
seemed to him as if the four walls of the room were rocking to and fro,
and that the floor was slipping from under his feet like the deck of a
ship in a wild storm. By a great effort of will, he recovered himself.
"Never mind, Samuel Brohl," he said to himself. "Let us see the game
through. After all she is very shortsighted, and you may have changed in
the last four years."
Antoinette presented him to the Princess, who examined him with her
little, blinking eyes, and smiled on him kindly and calmly.
"What luck! What amazing luck!" he thought. "She is now as blind as an
owl. If only I can escape from talking to her, I'm safe."
Unfortunately, Antoinette asked him to take the Princess in to dinner.
He offered her his arm, and led her to the table, in absolute silence.
She, too, did not speak; but when they sat down, she began to talk gaily
to the priest of the parish, who was sitting on her right. Her sight was
so bad that she had to bend over her wineglasses to find the one she
wanted. Seeing this, Samuel Brohl recovered his self-confidence.