“After having sought the tomb of his sister and of the hermit in vain, he was on the point of abandoning the spot, when the fawn from the grotto set to leaping in front of him. She stopped at the foot of the Mission cross. That cross was then half surrounded by water; the wood of it was covered with moss, and the pelican of the wilderness loved to perch upon its worm-eaten arms. Chactas judged that the graceful fawn had led him to the tomb of his host. “He dug below the rock that had formerly served as an altar, and there found the remains of a man and woman. He had no doubt but they were those of the priest and of the virgin, buried, perhaps, by the angels in that place; so he wrapped them in bear-skins, and started on his way back to his country, carrying off the precious remains, which sounded on his shoulders like the quiver of death. At night he placed them under his pillow, and had dreams of love and of virtue. O stranger! you may here contemplate that dust, and also the remains of Chactas himself.” As the Indian finished speaking, I rose, went towards the sacred ashes, and prostrated myself before them in silence. I afterwards walked away slowly, and with long strides, saying to myself, “Thus ends upon earth all that is good, virtuous and feeling! Man, thou art but a rapid and painful dream! Thou only existest by misfortune; and if thou art anything at all, it is merely by the sadness of thy soul and the eternal melancholy of thy thoughts!” I was preoccupied with such reflections all night. The next morning, at day-break, my hosts left me. The young warriors opened the march, and their wives closed it. The former were charged with the holy relics, the latter carried their infants. The old men walked slowly in the middle--placed between their forefathers and their posterity, between remembrance and hope, between the lost country and the country to be found. O what tears are shed when we thus abandon our native land!--when, from the summit of the mountain of exile, we look for the last time upon the roof beneath which we were bred, and see the hut-stream still flowing sadly through the solitary fields surrounding our birth-place! Unfortunate Indians!--you whom I have seen wandering in the deserts of the New World with the ashes of your ancestors;--you who gave me hospitality in spite of your misery--I could not now return your generosity, for I am wandering, like you, at the mercy of men; but less fortunate than you in my exile, I have not brought with me the bones of my fathers. [Illustration: 118] THE END. End of Project Gutenberg’s Atala, by François Auguste de Chateaubriand