She looked a queen, yet she had the graces of the English and French people. She was a most accomplished woman. She spoke both English and French readily, her education having been conducted by an American agent to whom she had been commended by her father.
"This is good news," she said.
"What?" said Jasper. "Good news comes from God. Yet all events are news from heaven. The people seem greatly exercised. What has happened?"
"Lafayette, the great Lafayette—have you not heard?—the marquis—he is on his way to Kaskaskia, and that is why I am here. My father fought under him, and the general sent him a letter thanking him for his services in the American cause. It was written forty years ago. I have brought it. I hope to meet him. Would you like to see it?—a letter from the great Lafayette."
Mary Panisciowa took from her bosom a faded letter, and said:
"My father fought for the new people, and I have taken up their religion and customs. I suppose that you have done the same," she said to Waubeno.
"No; that can not be, for me."
"Why? I supposed that you were a Christian, as you travel with the Tunker."
"Mary Panisciowa knows how my father died. I am his son. I swore to be true to his name. The Tunker says that I must forswear myself to become a Christian. That I shall never do. I respect the teachings of your new religion, and I love the Tunker and shall always be true to him, but I shall be true to the memory of my father. Mary Panisciowa, think how he died, and of the men who killed him. They claimed to be Christians. Think of that! I am not a Christian. Mary Panisciowa, there is a spot that burns in my heart. I do not dissemble. I do not deceive. But that fire will burn there till I have kept my vow, and I shall do it."
"Waubeno," said the woman, "listen to better counsels. Revenge only spreads the fires of evil. Forgiveness quenches them.—That is a noble letter," she said to Jasper.