"Adele! Adele! I am your father!"
"You! Who are you? The white men; our foes! Touch me not! Away,
white men! away!"
"Dear, dearest Adele! do not repel me--me, your father! You remember--"
"My father! My father was a great chief. He is dead. This is my
father now. The Sun is my father. I am a daughter of Montezuma! I am
a queen of the Navajoes!"
As she utters these words, a change seems to come over her spirit. She
crouches no longer. She rises to her feet. Her screaming has ended,
and she stands in an attitude of pride and indignation.
"Oh, Adele!" continues Seguin, more earnest than ever, "look at me!
look! Do you not remember? Look in my face! Oh, Heaven! Here, see!
Here is your mother, Adele! See! this is her picture: your angel
mother. Look at it! Look, oh, Adele!"
Seguin, while he is speaking, draws a miniature from his bosom, and
holds it before the eyes of the girl. It arrests her attention. She
looks upon it, but without any signs of recognition. It is to her only
a curious object.
She seems struck with his manner, frantic but intreating. She seems to
regard him with wonder. Still she repels him. It is evident she knows
him not. She has lost every recollection of him and his. She has
forgotten the language of her childhood; she has forgotten her father,
her mother: she has forgotten all!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I could not restrain my tears as I looked upon the face of my friend,
for I had grown to consider him such. Like one who has received a
mortal wound, yet still lives, he stood in the centre of the group,
silent and crushed. His head had fallen upon his breast, his cheek was
blanched and bloodless; and his eye wandered with an expression of
imbecility painful to behold. I could imagine the terrible conflict
that was raging within.
He made no further efforts to intreat the girl. He no longer offered to
approach her; but stood for some moments in the same attitude without
speaking a word.
"Bring her away!" he muttered, at length, in a voice husky and broken;
"bring her away! Perhaps, in God's mercy, she may yet remember."