"But will you stand by and see your children torture an Englishman in time of peace?" I asked.
His eyes fairly sparked from the shelter of their cavernous retreats.
"Peace?" he rasped. "There is no peace—there can be no peace—between England, the harlot nation, and holy France. France follows her destiny, and her destiny is to rule America on behalf of the Church."
"Yet peace there is," I insisted.
"I refuse to admit it. We know no peace here. We are at war, endless war, physically, spiritually, mentally, with England. If you come amongst us, you do so at your bodily peril. But"—and the challenge left his voice and was replaced by a note of pleading, soft and compelling—"it may be, monsieur, that in your bodily peril you have achieved the salvation of your soul. Repent, I urge you, and though your body perish your soul shall live."
Murray and de Veulle stirred restlessly during this harangue, but the savages were so silent you could hear the birds in the trees. I was interested in this man, in his fanatic sincerity, his queer conception of life.
"But if I repented, as you say," I suggested, "would not you save my body?"
His eyes burned with contempt.
"Would you drive a bargain with God?" he cried. "For shame! Some may tolerate that, but I never will! What matters your miserable body! It has transgressed the rights of France. Let it die! But your soul is immortal; save that, I conjure you!"
"Aye; but do you think it Christian to permit a fellow-man, whether he be of your faith or not, to be tortured by savages?"