"I did not say so," he replied, "and such is not my thought; still, I confess that all I have seen during the last few days is so strange to me, that, in spite of all my attempts, I can form no settled opinion either about men or things, and that causes me deep reflection."
"Ah!" the Indian said, coldly, "and what is it so strange you see around you? Would you be kind enough to inform me?"
"I see no harm in doing so, if you wish it."
"You will cause me intense pleasure by explaining yourself."
"I am quite ready to do so; the more so, as I have ever been accustomed to express my thoughts freely, and I see no reason for disguising them today."
The two Chiefs bowed, and said nothing; the Count rested his hands on the muzzle of his gun, and continued, while regarding them fixedly—
"My faith, gentlemen, since you wish me to unveil my thoughts, you shall have them in their entirety: we are here in the wilds of the American prairies, that is, in the wildest countries of the new Continent; you are always on hostile terms with the whites; you Blackfeet are regarded as the most untameable, savage, and ferocious of the Indians; or, in other words, the most devoid of the civilization of all the aboriginal nations."
"Well," Natah Otann remarked, "what do you find strange in that? Is it our fault if our despoilers, since the discovery of the new world, have tracked us like wild beasts, driven us back in the desert, and regarded us as beings scarcely endowed with the instinct of the brute? You must blame them, and not us. By what right do you reproach us with a brutalization and barbarism, produced by our persecutors and not by ourselves?"
"You have not understood me, sir: if, instead of interrupting me, you had listened patiently a few minutes longer, you would have seen that I not merely do not reproach you for that brutalization, but pity it in my heart; for, although I have been only a few months in the desert, I have been on several occasions in a position to judge the unhappy race to which you belong, and appreciate the good qualities it still possesses, and which the odious tyranny of the whites has not succeeded in eradicating, despite all the means employed to attain that end."
The two Chiefs exchanged a glance of satisfaction; the generous words uttered by the young man gave them hopes as to the success of their negotiation.