Before a will so firmly expressed, the priest found himself powerless; he did not recognise the right of insisting longer; he merely tried to spare his companion the fatigue of his journey as far as possible.
They, therefore, started for Galveston, proceeding by short stages to the Far West. On reaching the border of civilised countries, Father Seraphin took an escort of devoted Indians to protect his companion. They had been in the desert for six days, when suddenly heaven brought them face to face with Red Cedar, dying without help in the heart of the primeval forest.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
RETURN TO LIFE.
Charity is a virtue loudly preached in our age, but unfortunately practised by few. The story of the good Samaritan finds but scanty application in the Old World, and if we would discover charity exercised sacredly and simply, as the gospel teaches, we must obtain our examples from the deserts of the New World.
This is sad to say, even more sad to prove, but mankind is not to blame for it; the age alone must be held responsible for this egotism, which has for some years past been planted in the heart of man, and reigns there supreme. To two causes must be attributed the personalism and egotism which crown the actions of the great human family in Europe; the discovery of gold in California, Australia, and on Frazer River, and, above all, the Stock Exchange.
The Bourse is the scourge of the Old World; so soon as everybody fancied that he was enabled to enrich himself between today and tomorrow, no one thought any longer of his neighbour, who remained poor, save as being incapable of ameliorating his position. The result is, that the men who have the courage to leave the intoxicating maëlstrom that surrounds them, to despise those riches which flash around them, and go under the impulse of Christian Charity, the holiest and least rewarded of all the virtues, to bury themselves among savages, amid hordes most hostile to every good and honourable feeling, in the most deadly countries—such men, we say, who, impelled solely by a divine feeling, abandon all earthly enjoyments, are chosen vessels, and in every respect deserve well of humanity.
Their number is much larger than might be supposed at the first blush, and that is very logical; the passion for devotion must go side by side with the thirst for gold, in order that the eternal balance of good and evil which governs the world should remain in those equal proportions which are conditions of its vitality and prosperity.
Red Cedar's condition was serious; the moral commotion he underwent in recognising the man whom he had once attempted to assassinate, had brought on a frightful attack of delirium. The wretch, a prey to the most gnawing remorse, was tortured by the hideous phantoms of his victim, evoked by his diseased imagination, and which stalked round his bed like a legion of demons. The night he passed was terrible. Father Seraphin, Ellen, and Valentine's mother did not leave him for a second, watching over him anxiously, and frequently compelled to struggle with him in order to prevent him dashing his head against the trees, in the paroxysms of the crisis that tortured him.