"Good evening, child, I was awaiting you impatiently: come, sit down by my side, we have to talk."
These words were uttered in the same language, and in a gentle voice.
Natah Otann took a few steps forward, and let the curtain fall behind him. If, externally, the hut the Chief had just entered was not distinguished from the others, that was not the case with the interior. All that human industry can imagine, when reduced to its simplest expressions, that is to say, when deprived of tools and matters of primary necessity to express its thoughts, had been as it were invented by the master of this house. Hence the interior of this hut was a sort of strange pandemonium, in which were collected the most discordant articles, apparently least suited to be side by side. Differing from the other wigwams, this cabin had two windows, in which oiled paper was substituted for glass; in one corner was a bed, in the centre a table, a few scattered chairs, and armchair by the table, but all these articles carved with an axe, and clumsily. Such was the furniture of this singular room.
On shelves, some forty volumes, for the most part out of their binding; stuffed animals hanging by cords, insects, &c.; in a word, an infinite number of things without name, but classified, arranged, and labelled, completed this singular abode, which more resembled the cell of an anchorite, or the secret den of a mediaeval alchemist, than the abode of an Indian chief; and yet this hut belonged to White Buffalo, one of the first Kenha chiefs. But, as we have said, this chief was a European, and had, doubtlessly, kept up some reminiscences of his past life, the last rays of a lost existence.
At the moment when Natah Otann entered the hut, White Buffalo, seated in the easy chair at the table, with his head resting on his hands, was reading by the light of a lamp, whose smoky wick only spread a flickering and uncertain light around, from a large folio, with yellow and worn leaves. He raised his head, took off his spectacles, which he placed in the book, and, turning the chair half round, the old man smiled, and, pointing to a chair in a kindly way, said—
"Come, my child, sit down there."
The Chief took a chair, drew it to the table, and sat down, without any reply. The old man looked at him attentively for a few moments, and then said:—
"Hem! you appear to me very thoughtful for a man who, as I suppose, has just obtained a grand result so long expected. What can render you so gloomy? Would you hesitate, now you are on the point of success? or are you beginning to understand that the work which, in spite of me, you wished to undertake, is beyond the strength of a man left to himself, and who has only an old man to support him?"
"Perhaps so," the Chief answered, in a hollow voice. "Oh why, my father, did you let me taste the bitter fruit of that accursed civilization, which was not made for me? Why have your lessons made of me a man differing from those who surround me, and with whom I am compelled to live and die?"
"Blind man! when I showed you the sun, you allowed yourself to be dazzled by the beams; your weak eyes could not endure the light; in the place of that ignorance and brutalization in which you would have vegetated all the days of your life, I developed in you the only feeling which elevates man above the brute. I taught you to think, to judge, and this is the way in which you recompense me. This is the reward you give me for the pains I have taken, and the cares I have never ceased to bestow on you."