“The women who accompanied the troop displayed for my youth a tender pity and an amiable curiosity. They questioned me about my mother, concerning the earliest days of my life; and they wanted to know whether my cradle of moss had been hung upon the flowering branches of the maple-trees, and whether the breezes had rocked me near the nests of the little birds. Then came a thousand other questions as to the state of my heart. They asked me if I had seen a white fawn in my dreams, and whether the trees of the secret valley had advised me to love. I replied with simplicity to the mothers, to the daughters, and to the spouses of the men, saying, ‘You are the graces of the day, and the night loves you like dew. Man issues from your loins to hang upon your breast and upon your lips: you know the magic words that lull every pain. So was I told by her who brought me into the world, and who will never see me again! She told me also that maidens are mysterious flowers met with in solitary places.’ “These praises gave much pleasure to the women, who overwhelmed me with all sorts of presents, and brought me cocoa-nut cream, maple-tree sugar, saganrite, * bear-hams, beaver-skins, shells with which to ornament myself, and moss for my couch. They sang and laughed with me, and then took to shedding tears at the thought that I was to be burnt. * A description of cake made with Indian corn. “One night, when the Muscogulges had pitched their camp on the outskirt of a forest, I was seated near the war-fire with the guard who had charge of me. All of a sudden, I heard the sound of a dress upon the grass, and a female, half-veiled, came and sat down by my side. Tears were rolling from beneath her eyelids, and I saw by the light of the fire that a small golden crucifix shone upon her bosom. She was altogether beautiful, and I remarked upon her countenance an expression of virtue and passion of irresistible attraction. To that she added the most tender graces: an extreme sensitiveness, united to a profound melancholy, breathed in her looks, and her smile was heavenly. “I took her to be the Virgin of the last Loves, the virgin sent to the prisoner of war to enchant his tomb. Under this impression, I said to her stammeringly, and with an emotion that did not, however, proceed from any feeling of fear of the funeral pile, ‘O virgin, you are worthy of a first love, and you are not made for the last. The palpitations of a heart that will soon cease to beat would ill respond to the movements of your own. How can death and life lie mingled together? You would cause me to regret too much the approach of day. Let another be happier than myself, and may long embraces unite the tender plant to the oak!’