"What you tell me," answered the young chief, with emotion, "my heart has had a presentiment of, and I have almost guessed. For a long time I have known and appreciated, as I ought, the faithful and almost boundless friendship which you have always manifested for me. You will, therefore, render me this justice Cougar, that I have always conformed to your advice, often severe, and have allowed myself to be blindly guided by your counsels, that I have scarcely ever understood."
"It is true, my boy, you have acted thus; but when we talk between ourselves, call me Diogo. This is the name they formerly gave me when I was among the whites, and it recalls to me ineffaceable memories of joy and of grief."
"Well, my friend, as you wish it, I will call you so between ourselves, till you permit me, or till circumstances permit me to resume boldly in the face of all a name which I am sure you have honoured all the time you have borne it."
"Yes, yes," answered the old man, with complaisance, "there was a time when the name of Diogo had a certain celebrity, but who remembers it now?"
"Resume, I beg, what you commenced to tell me, and do not dwell any more on painful memories."
"You are right, Gueyma; let me forget them for a time, and return to the affair that I am going to confide to you. What I have said has no other design than that of proving to you that, if often I have apparently arrogated to myself the right of counselling you, or of wishing you to modify your plans, this right was acquired by long services and a devotion under all circumstances to yourself."
"I have never had, my friend, the thought—even for a moment—of discussing your acts or counteracting your projects. I have, on the contrary, always studied to bend my convictions to your long experience."
"I am pleased to render you this justice, my friend; but if I insist so much on this subject, it is that the circumstances in which we are now placed demand that you have entire confidence in me. In a word, here are the facts: the Brazilians, believing they no longer want us, now that they have seized upon the greater part of the towns of the Banda Oriental—thanks to the civil war which divides the Spaniards, and obliges them to fight against each other rather than against the common enemy—would not be sorry to be free of us, and to allow us to be crushed by superior forces. Forgetting the services that, from the commencement of the war, we have rendered them, the Brazilians, not only in a cowardly way abandon us, but, not content with that, they wish to deliver us to the enemy, in the hope that, succumbing, notwithstanding our courage under the weight of superior force, we shall be all massacred."
"I feared this treason," answered Gueyma, with pensive air, sadly shaking his head. "You remember my friend, that I was opposed to the conclusion of the treaty."
"Yes, I even remember that it was I who induced you to conclude it, and that from consideration to me alone you consented to throw down your quipo in acceptance in the council. Well, my friend, from that moment I foresaw this treason; I will say now—I hoped it."