Francois René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, born on September 4,
1768, at St. Malo, Brittany, was as distinguished for his
extraordinary and romantic career as for the versatility of
his genius. At the height of the Revolution (1791) he left for
America with the intention of discovering the North-West
passage, but in two years returned to fight on the royalist
side, and was wounded at the siege of Thionville. Emigrating
to England, he remained in London for eight years, supporting
himself with difficulty by translating and teaching and
writing. Returning to France, Chateaubriand was appointed by
Napoleon secretary to the embassy in Rome, but the execution
of the Duke d'Enghien so repelled him that he resigned and set
out on a long Oriental journey. Living in privacy till the
fall of Napoleon, he then returned to his native land, and
from 1822 to 1824 was ambassador to the British Court. His
whole political career was eccentric and uncertain, and he
himself declared that he was by heredity and honour a
Bourbonist, by conviction a Monarchist, but by temperament a
Republican. He died on July 4, 1848. "Atala," which appeared
in 1801, formed the first part of a prose epic, "The Natchez,"
on the wild and picturesque life of the Red Indians, the idea
for which Chateaubriand had conceived while wandering about
America. It at once raised its author to the highest position
in the French literary world of the age of Napoleon. In 1802,
Chateaubriand published a work of still greater importance--at
least, from a social point of view--"The Genius of
Christianity"--which magnificent and gorgeous piece of
rhetoric produced a profound change in the general attitude of
Frenchmen in regard to religion, undid to some extent the
destructive work of Voltaire, and was instrumental in inducing
Napoleon to come to terms with the Pope. But it is on "Atala"
that Chateaubriand's title to be one of the greatest masters
of French prose literature depends.
_I.--The Song of Death_
"It is surely a singular fate," said the old, blind Red Indian chief to
the young Frenchman, "which has brought us together from the ends of the
earth. I see in you a civilised man, who, for some strange reason,
wishes to become a savage. You see in me a savage, who, also for some
strange reason, has tried to become a civilised man. Though we have
entered on life from two opposite points, here we are, sitting side by
side. And I, a childless man, have sworn to be a father to you, and you,
a fatherless boy, have sworn to be a son to me."
Chactas, the chief of the Natchez, and René, the Frenchman, whom he had
adopted into his tribe, were sitting at the prow of a pirogue, which,
with its sail of sewn skins outstretched to the night wind, was gliding
down the moonlit waters of the Ohio, amid the magnificent desert of
Kentucky. Behind them was a fleet of pirogues, which René was piloting
on a hunting foray. Seeing that all the Indians were sleeping, Chactas
went on talking to his adopted son.
"How little, even now, we know of each other, René. You never told me
what it was that made you leave France in 1725, and come to Louisiana,
and ask to be admitted to our tribe. I have never told you why I have
not married and got children to succeed me, and help me in my old age to
govern my people.
"It is now seventy-three years since my mother brought me into the world
on the banks of the Mississippi. In 1652 there were a few Spaniards
settled in the bay of Pensacola, but no white man was then seen in
Louisiana. I was scarcely seventeen years old when I fought with my
father, the famous warrior Outalissi, against the Creeks of Florida. We
were then allied with the Spaniards, but, in spite of the help they gave
us, we were defeated. My father was killed, and I was grievously
wounded. Oh, why did I then not descend into the land of the dead? Happy
indeed should I have been had I thus escaped from the fate which was
waiting for me on earth!
"But one of our allies, an old Castilian, named Lopez, moved by my youth
and simplicity, rescued me in the battle and led me to the town of St.
Augustin, which his countrymen had recently built. My benefactor took me
to his home, and he and his sister adopted me as their son, and tried to
teach me their knowledge and religion. But after passing thirteen months
at St. Augustin I was seized with a disgust for town life. The city
seemed to me a prison, and I longed to get back to the wild life of my
fathers. At last I resolved to return to my tribe, and one morning I
came to Lopez, clad in the dress of the Natchez, with bow and arrows in
one hand, and a tomahawk in the other.
"'Oh, my father,' I said to him, my face streaming with tears, 'I shall
die if I stay in this city. I am an Indian, and I must live like an
Indian.'
"Lopez tried to detain me by pointing out the peril I was running. But I
already knew that in order to join the Natchez I should have to pass
through the country of the Creeks, and might fall into the hands of our
old enemies; and this did not deter me. At last, Lopez, seeing how
resolute I was, said, 'Go, my boy, and God be with you! Were I only
younger, I, too, would return with you to the wilderness, where the
happiest part of my life was spent. But when you get back to the forest,
think sometimes of the old Spaniard of St. Augustin, and if ever a white
man falls into your hands, treat him, my son, as I have treated you.'
"It was not long, René, before I was punished for my ingratitude in
running away from my protector. I had forgotten in the city my knowledge
of wood-craft, and I lost my way in the great forest, and was captured
by a band of Creeks. My costume and the feathers in my hair proclaimed
me one of the Natchez, and when Simaghan, the chief of the band, bound
me, and demanded who I was, I proudly answered. 'I am Chactas, the son
of the Outalissi who took more than a hundred scalps from the warriors
of the Creeks.'
"'Chactas, son of Outalissi,' said Simaghan, 'rejoice! We will burn you
before our wig-wams.'
"'That is good news,' I said, and thereupon I sang my song of death.
"Although the Creeks were my enemies, I could not help admiring them.
They were fine, handsome men of a merry and open nature, and their women
were beautiful, and full of pity towards me. One night, while I was
lying sleepless beside their camp fire, one of their maidens came and
sat by my side. Her face was strangely lovely; her eyes shone with
tears; and a little golden crucifix on her bosom glittered as the
firelight played upon it.
"'Maiden,' I said, 'your beauty is too great to be wasted on a dying
man. Let me die without tasting the delights of love. They would only
make death more bitter to me. You are worthy to be the squaw of a great
chief. Wait till you can find a lover with whom you can live in joy and
happiness all your life.'
"'Are you a Christian?' asked the maiden.
"'No,' I replied. 'I have not betrayed the faith of my forefathers.'
"'Oh, you are only a wicked heathen,' she exclaimed, covering her face
with her hands and weeping. 'I have been baptised by my mother. I am
Atala, daughter of Simaghan of the golden bracelets, and the chief of
this band. We are going to Cuscowilla, where you will be burnt.'
"And with a look of anger, Atala rose up and went away."
Here Chactas for a moment became silent. Tears rolled from his blind
eyes down his withered cheeks.
"Oh René, my son," he said, "you see that Chactas is very foolish in
spite of his reputation for wisdom! Why do men still weep, even when age
has blinded their eyes? Every night Atala came to see me, and a strange
love for her was born in my heart. After marching for seventeen days, my
captors brought me to the great savannah of Alachua, and camped in a
valley not far from Cuscowilla, the capital of the Creeks. I was bound
to the foot of a tree outside the town, and a warrior was set to watch
over me.
"But in the evening Atala came, and said to him, 'If you would like to
go hunting, I will look after the prisoner.'
"The young warrior leaped up, full of joy at being relieved by the
daughter of his chief, and when he had gone, Atala released me.
"'Now, Chactas,' she murmured, turning her face away from me, 'you can
escape.'
"'I do not want to escape,' I cried, 'unless I can escape with you!'
"'But they will burn you,' she said. 'They will burn you to-morrow!'
"'What does it matter,' I exclaimed, 'if you do not love me?'
"'But I do love you,' said Atala, and she bent over and kissed me.
"Then with a wild look of terror, she pushed me away from her, and
staggering up to the tree, she covered her face with her hands, and
sobbed, rocking herself to and fro in her grief.
"'Oh, my mother, my mother!' she sobbed. 'I have forgotten my vow. I
cannot follow you,' she said, turning to me. 'You are not a Christian.'
"'But I will be a Christian,' I cried. 'Only come with me, Atala, and I
will be baptised by the first priest that we meet. There are several
missionaries among the Natchez.'
"To my utter astonishment, instead of this comforting Atala, it only
made her weep more passionately. Her body shook with sobs as I took her
up in my arms and carried her away from the town into the great forest.
At last she grew calmer, and asked me to set her down, and, striking a
narrow track between the dark trees, we marched along silently and
quickly, stopping now and then to listen if we were being followed. We
heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey,
or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening
in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself
at my feet, and clasped my knees, and again begged me to leave her. But
I swore that, if she returned to the camp, I would follow her, and give
myself up. As we were talking, the cry of death rang through the forest,
and four warriors fell upon me and bound me. Our flight had been
discovered, and Simaghan had set out in pursuit with all his band.
"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, René, 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, René, 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, René, 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."
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