Alas, I imagined myself to be alone in that forest in which I was carrying my head so high! Suddenly I almost broke my nose against a shed. Under that shed, my amazed eyes beheld the first savages I had seen in my life. There were a score of them, men and women, all bedaubed like wizards, with half-naked bodies, slit ears, crows' feathers on their heads, and rings through their nostrils. A little Frenchman, all powdered and curled, in an apple-green coat, a drugget vest, and a muslin frill and ruffles, was scraping a pocket fiddle and making those Iroquois dance _Madelon Friquet._ M. Violet (that was his name) was the savages' dancing-master. They paid him for his lessons in beaver-skins and bear's hams. He had been a scullion in the service of General Rochambeau[474] during the American War. He remained in New York after the departure of our army, and resolved to instruct the Americans in the fine arts. His views widened with success, and the new Orpheus carried civilization to the savage hordes of the New World. In speaking to me of the Indians, he always said: "Those savage ladies and gentlemen." He took great pride in the nimbleness of his pupils; indeed I never saw such capers before or since. M. Violet, holding his little violin between his chest and his chin, tuned the fatal instrument; he cried to the Iroquois: "Take your places!" And the whole troop leaped about like a band of demons. Was it not an overwhelming thing for a disciple of Rousseau, this introduction to savage life through a ball which General Rochambeau's late scullion was giving to the Iroquois? I had a great longing to laugh, but I felt cruelly humiliated. * I bought a complete outfit of the Indians: two bearskins, one to serve as a demi-toga, the other as a bed. I added to my new equipment the red ribbed-cloth cap, the cloak, the belt, the horn to call in the dogs, the bandoleer of the _coureurs des bois._ My hair hung over my bare neck; I wore a long beard: I had something of the savage, the hunter, and the missionary. I was invited to a hunt which was to take place the next day to track a wolverine. [Sidenote: Life in Canada.] This race of animals is almost entirely destroyed in Canada, as are the beavers. We took boat before daybreak to go up a river which issued from the wood in which the wolverine had been seen. There were some thirty of us, both Indians and American and Canadian _coureurs_: one part of the troop walked alongside of the flotilla with the dogs, and the women carried our provisions. We did not find the wolverine; but we killed lynxes and musk-rats. Formerly the Indians used to go into deep mourning when they had inadvertently killed any of the latter animals; for the female of the musk-rat is, as everybody knows, the mother of the human race. The Chinese, with their finer powers of observation, know to a certainty that the rat changes into a quail, the mole into a loriot.