One of the proudest and most reticent men who ever trod the soil of the New World was thus reduced to woo before his enemy and his kindred; to argue against those unseen forces represented by the Indian girl, and to fight death in his own body with every pleading respiration. For blindness was growing over his eyes. His lungs were tightened. When his back was turned in the room below, Jolycœur had mixed a dish for him.
La Salle’s hardihood was the marvel of his followers. A body and will of electric strength carried him thousands of miles through ways called impassable. Defeat could not defeat him. But this struggle with Jeanne le Ber was harder than any struggle with an estranged king, harder than again bringing up fortune from the depths of ruin, harder than tearing his breath of life from the reluctant air. He reared himself against the chimney-side, pressing with palms and stretched fingers for support, yet maintaining a roused erectness.
“Jeanne!” he spoke; and eyes less blind than his could detect a sinking of her figure at the sound, “I have this to say.”
With a plunging gait which terrified Barbe by its unnaturalness, La Salle attempted to place himself nearer the silent object he was to move. As he passed through the doorway he caught at the sides, and then stretched out and braced one palm against the wall. Thus propped he proceeded, articulating thickly but with careful exactness.
“Jeanne, when I have again brought success out of failure, I shall demand you in marriage. Your father permits it.”
Her trembling lips prayed on, and she gave no token of having heard him, except the tremor which shook even the folds of her gown.
Too proud to confess his peril and make its appeal to her, and suppressing before so many witnesses her tender name of Sainte, he labored on as La Salle the explorer with the statement of his case.
“Perhaps I cannot see you again for some years. I do not ask words—of acceptance now. It is enough—if you look at me.”
La Salle leaned forward. His eyeballs appeared to swell and protrude as he strained sight for the slightest lifting of the veil before that self-restraining spirit.
Barbe’s wailing suddenly broke all bounds in the outer room. “My uncle the Abbé! Look at my uncle La Salle! He cannot breathe—he is going to die! Somebody has poisoned or stabbed my uncle La Salle!”