Père Souël was not long in arriving at the rendezvous. He gave his arm to the Sachem, and led him beneath a sassafras tree on the banks of the Mississippi. On the twenty-first of that month, which the Savages call the moon of flowers (May), René took himself to Chactas’s hut. He therefore spent time with them, not in recounting the story of his life, since he had experienced little, but the secret sentiments of his soul. They showed so much discretion, tenderness and authority, that he was forced in the end to satisfy their desire. They were only the more eager in exhorting him to open his heart to them. A letter he received from Europe, through the Society of Foreign Missions, added to his sadness to such a degree that he fled to his two old friends. Some years passed by in this regard, without the two old men being able to wrest his secret from him.

‘As for the events which led me to sail for America’, he added, ‘I would wish to bury them in eternal oblivion.’

René had always given as justification for his refusal, the limited interest to be found in his history which was confined, he said, to that of his thoughts and feelings. However Chactas and the missionary had a strong desire to know by what misfortune a European nobleman had been led to the strange resolution of burying himself in the wilds of Louisiana. Since the beaver-hunt, during which the blind Sachem had told his story to René, the latter had not wished to speak of his own. These two elderly men had won much influence over his feelings: the former by his friendly indulgence, the latter, in contrast, by his unrelenting severity. Except for Chactas, his adopted father, and Père Souël, the missionary at Fort-Rosalie he renounced all relations with mankind. A tendency to melancholy drew him into the woods he spent whole days there alone, and seemed a savage among the savages.

Once among the Natchez, René was obliged to take a wife, to conform to the ways of that American Indian people but chose not to live with her. This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose. Kline © Copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved

François rené de chateaubriand rené