more. What have you been doing since then?”
“Since then, George,” said Rouvière with nonchalance, “I have not
travelled; I have merely made excursions. First upon the
Mediterranean—but, pshaw! it was like sailing on the basin in the
Tuileries’ garden! I have visited all the countries on its shore. And by
degrees, as I grew older, my circle became smaller, so that now I live
entirely in Europe, going from city to city, according to the attraction
of the moment. Indeed, I may say, my dear fellow, that Europe is my
property, my domain!” Here the speaker began to wax warmer and louder.
“Every festival given by nature or man in Europe is given to amuse me.
For me Naples displays her bay and her volcano, and keeps open her grand
theatre, San Carlos; for my recreation Paris adorns her boulevards and
builds her opera-house; to amuse me Madrid has a Prado and bull-fights.
All the great exhibitions were made for me, beginning with that of
London. _Evviva la libertà!_ Let’s drink!” So saying, he filled for
himself a brimming bumper of punch, and tossed it off with a very
self-satisfied smile.
“Tom!” cried Dupuis delightedly, “you are a genius! But you have said
nothing about the great monuments—the Alhambra, the Coliseum, the
Parthenon.”
“Pshaw! those are your friends!” retorted Tom with his peculiar sneer.
“I’ve said nothing about them because they are dragged about everywhere.
Who hasn’t seen _them_?”
There was a minute of silence, broken by an emphatic “Ah!” breathed not
loudly but deeply by the excited listener. Starting from his seat, and
thrusting his hands into his pockets, he began hurriedly to pace up and
down the room. His friend glanced at him uneasily.
“What’s the matter? What annoys you?” he asked.
“O Tom, Tom!” cried George, still continuing his agitated walk, “I blush
when I compare your life with mine. While your heart has counted each
pulsation by some noble or beautiful emotion, mine has stupidly gone on
ticking off the hours and days and years as calmly as a kitchen clock!
Have I really lived, tell me?” He stopped in front of his friend,
gesticulating violently. “I was born, and I have slept, and I have
eaten; but what else? And what has been the result? My intelligence is
extinguished; I have dried up; I have descended in the scale of being,
until I have come to be on a level with the idiot of the Alps, with a
shellfish, with an oyster!”
“Come, come, George, you’re going too far!” said Rouvière soothingly.
“Even supposing that you no longer possess as much freshness of
imagination, as much vivacity of wit, as you used to have....”
“I thought so! I knew it!” interrupted Dupuis, resuming his hurried walk
backwards and forwards; “you acknowledge that you find me rusty!”
M. Rouvière rose slowly from his seat, and, after lighting a cigar,
remained standing with his back against the chimney-piece, his eyes
fixed on his friend, who paused in front of him at his first word.
“Listen to me, George,” said he seriously, caressing his moustache with
his fingers as he spoke; “I will be frank with you. You know that I
always used to be frank with you. The impression your house made on me
when I first entered it was, I must confess, a sinister one. I seemed to
breathe the air of a cemetery in it. I could have fancied that I was in
one of those long-buried dwellings which the patient labor of
enthusiastic antiquaries has restored to light and life. While the
servant went to call you I could not prevent myself from examining, with
a kind of wondering, stupid curiosity, the old-fashioned furniture, and
the pictures, and those dismal tapestries worthy of figuring in a
museum! I remembered the delicacy of your character, the elegance of
your manners, your intelligent taste, your love of art; and positively I
could not reconcile the bright memories I retained of you with the dull,
insipid existence of which I had the evidence before my eyes. You came
to me; I looked at you; you spoke. What was it? Was my sight affected,
or my judgment biassed by the thoughts which were literally _preying_ on
me at that moment? I can’t tell what it was—I can’t explain—but your
language astonished me! Your forehead actually seemed to me to have
grown narrower! I wiped away a secret tear, and I sighed as I should
have sighed had I been standing by your grave! I even half spoke the
words, ‘This, then, is all that remains of my friend!’ You’re not
offended, George?” added M. Rouvière, stopping short and looking
inquiringly into his victim’s anxious, attentive face.
“Not a bit, Tom; not a bit,” replied George. “I tell you I felt that I
had sunk; at least, I suspected it, and the suspicion was intolerable. I
prefer the certainty.” He turned away with an attempt at a smile, and
resumed his agitated walk up and down the room.
Rouvière applied himself to the fire, put on a new log of wood,
shovelled up the glowing embers and ashes and threw them with much care
and skill to the back, gazed on his work for a minute, and, finally
assuming again his favorite _pose_, with his back leaning against the
chimney-piece, started the conversation afresh in a lively, chatty tone.
“Let us change the subject,” said he. “You have sold your business; what
do you think of doing now?”
“What do you expect me to do?” cried Dupuis vehemently. “I shall finish
by dying!”
“_Morbleu!_ you had better resuscitate. Let us talk seriously, George.
When you married you created for yourself new duties, which you have
fulfilled to the utmost, honestly and generously. You have provided
amply for the future of your wife and daughter. What is there, then, to
prevent you now from plunging yourself for two or three years into the
vortex of life, and so awaken and reinvigorate your benumbed faculties?
The facilities of travel nowadays are wonderful. In the space of two
years you can run over the whole of Europe, and even explore a part of
Asia and Africa. All the freshness and vivacity of thought you once
possessed will return to you when you find yourself in contact with the
most glorious creations of art and nature. In the course of two
years—two years, mark you!—you can lay at rest for ever every one of
those regretful feelings which are now eating out your heart and
shortening your life! Choose now: suicide or travel? Remember that you
are free in your choice—you are free to do as you like!”
“Pish!” cried George, turning on his heel and pursuing his walk. “Is it
probable that at my time of life I shall set out alone to scour the
highways of Europe?”
“But who wants you to go alone?” said Rouvière, going up to him and
laying a hand on his shoulder. “Am not I ready to go with you? My
experience, my post-chaise, my servant—everything I have is at your
service, George!”
“Is it possible, Tom? Are you really in earnest?” exclaimed Dupuis,
gratified beyond expression at this proof of his friend’s affection.
“You really will accompany me?”
“I will lead you by the hand, my boy!” answered Rouvière gaily; and,
falling into step with George, the two friends paced the room together.
“I will spare you the torment of guides and ciceroni, and all that
species of vermin which besets the tourist. No, don’t thank me,” he
continued, when Dupuis began to express his gratitude. “The thought
delights me as much as it does you. Your new impressions will revive
mine of past days. And won’t it be delicious, George, to end our lives
as we began them—participating in the same adventures, in the same
pleasures, and even sharing our purses? Come, now, is it settled?”
“My dear friend,” replied Dupuis, with a slight hesitation in his voice,
“I will confess to you that no project was ever more agreeable to me,
but....”
“No buts! no buts!” cried Rouvière imperatively; “it _is_ settled! We
will go direct from this to Paris and wait there until the spring. The
museums and theatres will help us to while away the time. I will take
you behind the scenes; you shall hear Ristori and Patti! You used to
love music!”
“I love it still,” said George, smiling; “I play the flute!”
“So much the better!” cried Tom with increasing animation, as they
continued to pace the room side by side; “so much the better! You shall
bring your flute with you. What was I saying? Oh! yes; well, the winter
in Paris—that’s settled; but at the very beginning of spring we’ll cross
the Pyrenees and spend three glorious months in Spain. Then we’ll take
advantage of the summer to visit all the principal cities of Germany;
and after that we’ll get down into Italy by Trieste and Venice. What do
you say to this programme?”
“I say,” replied Dupuis, stopping in his walk and speaking in a strong,
decisive tone—“I say that it opens Paradise to me. Give me a cigar, Tom.
I say that you are right. I _have_ lived long enough for others. I
_have_ offered up a sufficiently large portion of my life as a
sacrifice. Bah! a man has duties towards himself.” He lighted his cigar
and puffed vigorously for a minute or two. “Providence has conferred
gifts on us,” he resumed, “for which we have to render an account.
Intellect, imagination, the feeling of the beautiful—these are gifts
which bind us. Savages only ought to be capable of such a crime as to
allow these sacred flames to die out for want of nourishment!”
“Well said!” exclaimed Rouvière exultingly; “that’s my old George again!
Now let us strike while the iron’s hot. Marianne!” He went towards the
door to open it as he spoke.
“Hush! hush!” cried Dupuis, stopping him and speaking under his breath;
“what do you want with her?”
“I want to tell her that you are going away to-night, and that she must
look after your portmanteau. Marianne!” he called again.
“Hush, I beg of you!” repeated poor George earnestly. “Surely we are not
going to start to-night?”
“At nine o’clock to-night,” answered Rouvière decisively; “you know very
well that I ordered horses for nine o’clock.”
“Yes, I know,” said Dupuis, hesitating and embarrassed; “but the night
is going to be deucedly cold—Siberian. I think we should do better to
wait until to-morrow morning.”
“Now, just let me tell you this, George,” cried the other impatiently:
“if you’re afraid of frosted fingers or toes, and of a night in a
post-chaise, you’d better pull your night-cap over your ears at once and
go to bed, and never talk again about travelling!”
“I’m afraid of nothing and of nobody,” replied poor Dupuis, driven to
his wits’ end; “but the truth is this haste rather puts me out. I had
reckoned upon two or three days to look about me and to make my
preparations.”
“Preparations! What preparations?” cried Tom in a tone of indignant
surprise. “You need a portmanteau and a few shirts and stockings, and
you have an hour before you to get them together, and that’s more than
time enough. Come, now, George, no childishness; if you defer your
departure for two or three days, you know just as well as I do that you
won’t go at all. I’ve no need to tell you what influences will be
brought to bear on you, what obstacles will rise up before you, to unman
you and break down your resolution. Believe me, my dear fellow, in such
cases as this, however you yourself may suffer and _make_ suffer, you
_must_ cut down to the quick or give up....”
“Once more you are right, Tom,” said Dupuis after a moment’s silent
thought. “I’m your man; there’s my hand on it.”
“Marianne!” shouted Rouvière, shaking his friend’s hand with a will.
“No, no, don’t call Marianne,” cried Dupuis hurriedly, and getting
between Rouvière and the door. “I know better than she does what I shall
need. I shall pack my portmanteau myself as soon as my wife comes in.
It’s just eight now,” looking at the clock; “she’ll not be long. Well,”
he continued with some agitation, “I shall have to pass a few
minutes—sad ones they will be, I know—but my conscience reproaches me
with nothing; ... and after all, if my cup be filled with generous wine,
what does it matter though the edge be a little bitter?... O Tom!” he
continued after a moment’s pause, during which he seemed to have roused
his courage, “what a perspective you have opened out before me—what a
horizon! Granada! Venice! Naples! It is a dream!” He glanced at the
clock and his voice fell. “Five minutes past eight! I would willingly
give twenty-five louis to be a quarter of an hour older—a quarter of an
hour! I know that I am very weak, but....”
“Shall I tell your wife for you?” interrupted Rouvière, who was watching
him anxiously.
“Well, frankly, Tom, you would do me a service,” cried Dupuis eagerly.
“Go and pack your trunk, then, and I’ll settle the business.”
“There’s no danger of a scene,” said George, stopping short near the
door; “you would be quite mistaken in your estimate of her character if
you feared that.”
“I shall see,” returned his friend laconically.
“Tell her that I entreat her to keep calm. Tears might unman me, but
could change nothing in my plans.”
“I’ll tell her. Go to your trunk.”
“I’m going, Tom.”
He opened the door, hesitated, then closed it again and came back to the
fireplace, near which Rouvière was still standing.
“My dear friend,” said he softly, laying his hand on Tom’s arm, “you
will be very gentle with her, will you not?”
A kind smile gleamed in the usually cold, sharp eyes of the traveller,
as he looked in his friend’s anxious, agitated face.
“Don’t be afraid,” he replied; “but you—don’t you desert me when I’ve
gone to the front.”
“Desert during the battle! You don’t know me, Tom!”
“Why, you see,” said Tom, “I should look wondrous silly if you did!”
“Tom Rouvière,” cried Dupuis solemnly, “permit me to assure you that my
mind is made up, and that this evening at nine o’clock, come what will,
I go with you. I pledge you my word of honor. Are you satisfied?”
“Go and pack your trunk!” laughed Rouvière, taking him by the shoulders
and pushing him out of the room.
Left to himself, M. Rouvière returned to the chimney-piece and stood
over the fire, rubbing his hands meditatively, and from time to time
breaking out into words.
“Now then, Mme. Dupuis, it’s between you and me,” said he, half-aloud,
with a kind of chuckle. “It’s very certain that my principal object is
to make poor George something like himself again, but I really sha’n’t
be sorry to try the effect of a thunder-bolt on that serene-looking
lady!” Here M. Rouvière rubbed his hands gleefully and laughed heartily;
picturing to himself, probably, the poor wife’s consternation and
despair when he should announce the fatal news.
“I’m not a Turk,” he muttered presently—“far from it, I’m sure; until
now I always believed, like every true Christian, that polygamy deserved
the gallows; but, hang it! only think of a decent man condemned to
perpetual communion with such a disagreeable creature as that old
village sauce-pan! Such a life is clearly impossible!” A minute’s silent
thought followed, and then M. Rouvière roused himself, and sat down
before the fire to warm the soles of his feet. But not for long.
“I understood that woman,” he suddenly exclaimed, starting up from his
seat and beginning to pace rapidly up and down the floor—“I understood
her and judged her before I saw her! I knew her to be exactly what she
is, from her cap to her shoes! She was always odious to me! Just see
with what stupid symmetry all this furniture is arranged: two chairs
here and two chairs there, everything square with its neighbor, all at
equal distances—how wearisome! That old barometer, too, and these absurd
curiosities”—he stopped, as he spoke, in front of the chimney: “a
stuffed bird, a shell-box, spun-glass, and horrid cocoanut cups carved
by galley-slaves! They absolutely give one the height and the breadth
and the weight of the woman, both physically and morally. Poor George!
an intelligent man, too. I was sorry for him,” he continued, taking a
seat in front of the fire, “but I couldn’t help it. How I pegged into
her all dinnertime! Ha, ha, ha! I was as disgusting as a Kalmuck! I
really _was_ ashamed of myself! but, the deuce take it! every one’s
nerves are not made of bronze. M. du Luc! Mme. le Rendu! and her fish
... and her cat ... and her _curé_ ... hang it! I _couldn’t_ stand it.”
Here M. Rouvière interrupted his monologue for a minute to examine the
toe of his boot; satisfied that it was intact, he resumed his train of
thought.
“No, I really don’t believe that it would be possible to meet with a
more perfect type of the humdrum existence, the narrow-minded ideas, and
flat conversation prevalent in these provincial mole-hills than this
dowdy female presents! That good fellow—how much he must have suffered
before he learnt to bow his intellect beneath her imbecile yoke! God
bless me! I know the whole story. He probably struggled hard at first,
and then, little by little, he was bowed and bent and broken, as so many
others have been, by the continued pressure of a feminine will! Thirty
years’ martyrdom. But, ha! ha! Mme. Dupuis, _your_ hour has come; he
shall be avenged.”
Here M. Rouvière drew himself up straight in his chair and laughed
merrily. “It reminds me,” continued he half-aloud, “of my battle with
that old Indian woman when I stole her idol while she was asleep. What a
good-for-nothing hussy she was! Extraordinary how much old women
resemble one another all the world over.”
[TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A GLANCE AT THE INDIAN QUESTION.[40]
Let us begin by considering the Indian himself. As soon as he is able to
stand alone he commences that practice with the bow and arrow which
makes him a good marksman before he is well in his teens. He is tied in
his saddle before he can walk, and a horse becomes as much a part of his
nature as if he were a Centaur. While yet a child he learns the
subterfuges of the chase: the quiet, patient, breathless watchfulness,
the stealthy, snake-like advance, which enable him in adult life to
crawl, unseen and unheard, upon his unsuspecting victim, to take him at
a disadvantage, surprise and kill him without the risk of a wound. From
his earliest years he hears the warriors of his tribe relate their acts
of treachery and blood, of rapine and violence, and boast of them as
brave and glorious deeds. He is taught to consider treachery courage,
robbery and murder honorable warfare, and the most renowned warrior the
one who despatches his foe with the least possibility of danger to
himself. For him revenge is a sacred duty. He hears shouts of savage
laughter and applause greet the warrior who devises the worst tortures
for the miserable captive. His initiation to the order of warriors is a
terrible ordeal of physical suffering, which must be borne without
flinching or murmuring to ensure the success of the candidate. The
grossest sensuality is practised openly under his childish eyes. He
learns to regard cunning and falsehood as virtues, and to look upon the
warrior most skilled in the arts of deceit as the greatest hero of his
tribe. Until he has committed some signal act of murder, treachery, or
robbery, he is without influence among the braves or attractions for the
squaws.
All is fair in the wars of Indians, either with the white man or foes of
their own color. The Sioux kills the Crow—man, woman, or papoose at the
breast—at sight. The Crow will brain the sleeping Sioux equally without
regard to age or sex. A small party of Minneconjon Sioux went to the
Tongue River Cantonment, last December, to surrender. They carried a
flag of truce. Unfortunately, they rode into the camp of some Crow
scouts which was situated within a few hundred yards of the cantonment.
The Crows received them in a friendly manner, shook hands with them, and
while with one hand they gave the pledge of amity, with the other they
poured the contents of their revolvers into the breasts of the bearers
of the white flag. The Crows could not understand the indignation of the
officers and soldiers at such an act of treachery and cowardice (we
regret to say that it was not without apologists and applauders among
white frontiersmen), but they feared it enough to run away to their
agency, where the leader in the bloody deed was the recipient of high
honors. There he was the hero of the time.
HOW THE INDIAN IS CIRCUMSTANCED.
Next let us consider the circumstances in which this creature, so
savagely nurtured and developed, is placed.
We find him in a district of country which he believes to be his by
immemorial right of possession. It is the land of his fathers. The white
man formally recognizes his claim by making solemn treaties for the
transfer of portions of the Indian’s heritage. The land being his, the
game is his. The Great Spirit created the buffalo for the sustentation
of his red children. The buffalo-hunter enters the Indian’s domain, and
slaughters the buffalo by tens of thousands for the robes, leaving the
flesh to rot upon the plain. Thousands are wantonly destroyed by wealthy
idlers who call themselves sportsmen. The buffalo supplies the Indian
not only with food, but with raiment and shelter. It furnishes him the
article of exchange which enables him to obtain the necessaries of his
savage life. The diminution of the buffalo means privation, suffering,
nakedness, starvation to the Indian and his family.
The white man by formal compact purchases from the Indian some certain
district, and solemnly binds himself to respect the Indian’s remaining
rights within certain prescribed limits, to keep trespassers from
entering the now diminished territory, and to ensure it to him and his
tribe for ever. But this does not stop the insatiate adventurer, who
again crosses the newly-defined limit.[41] The government seems
powerless to compel its citizens to respect its treaty obligations or to
punish their infraction. The exasperated Indian kills some of the
trespassers. Would it be astonishing that he should do so, even if he
had been reared under the influences of Christianity instead of those of
barbarism? Troops are now sent against the Indians. After the sacrifice
of a greater or less number of brave soldiers the hostile tribe is
subjected, compelled to return to a quasi-peaceful condition, and to
consent to a further reduction of its territorial limits. Before the ink
is dry with which the so-called treaty is written the adventurer again
crosses the newly-designated boundary. Thus the process goes on _ad
infinitum_, or until the Indian, driven from the last foot of his
ancestral earth, starving, naked, the cries of his suffering women and
children ringing in his ears, is compelled to accept any terms which
will give him food and covering.
THE INDIANS ON THE RESERVATIONS.
The Indian is now taken to a reservation. Even his removal may be a
transportation job by which some politicaster in New York or Boston or
friendly Philadelphia, who never saw a hostile Indian, and who invests
no money in the enterprise, makes a fortune. From this time on he is a
means of money-making for a crowd of sharpers. A scanty supply of bad
beef at a high price, a little coffee and sugar of the lowest grade,
with sometimes indifferent flour, compose his ration. If he happens to
be where he can occasionally kill a buffalo, a deer, or a wolf, his
squaw dresses the skin, and he takes it to the trader’s store, where he
barters it for a little sugar, coffee, or pemican to add to his meagre
ration. He gets in exchange for his peltries what the trader chooses to
give him. For a calf-robe or a wolf-skin he may get a few cupfuls of the
coarsest sugar, or a tin cup worth about ten cents in New York. For a
fair calf-robe the trader will ask _three dollars_! “We make every white
man rich who comes to our country,” said Sitting Bull to Gen. Miles in
the council which preceded the fight on Cedar Creek, in Montana, last
October. The remark was not without truth, so far as Indian traders and
reservation rings are concerned.