I remained silent.
“Now, sir,” he continued, after a pause, “would you marry my daughter, the child of a wholesale murderer?”
“Your crimes are not hers. She is innocent even of the knowledge of them, as you have said. You may be a demon; she is an angel.”
There was a sad expression on his countenance as I said this.
“Crimes! demon!” he muttered, half in soliloquy. “Ay, you may well think this; so judges the world. You have heard the stories of the mountain men in all their red exaggeration. You have heard that, during a treaty, I invited a village of the Apaches to a banquet, and poisoned the viands—poisoned the guests, man, woman, and child, and then scalped them! You have heard that I induced to pull upon the drag rope of a cannon two hundred savages, who know not its use; and then fired the piece, loaded with grape, mowing down the row of unsuspecting wretches! These, and other inhuman acts, you have no doubt heard of?”
“It is true. I have heard these stories among the mountain hunters; but I knew not whether to believe them.”
“Monsieur, they are false; all false and unfounded.”
“I am glad to hear you say this. I could not now believe you capable of such barbarities.”
“And yet, if they were true in all their horrid details, they would fall far short of the cruelties that have been dealt out by the savage foe to the inhabitants of this defenceless frontier. If you knew the history of this land for the last ten years; its massacres and its murders; its tears and its burnings; its spoliations; whole provinces depopulated; villages given to the flames; men butchered on their own hearths; women, beautiful women, carried into captivity by the desert robber! Oh, God! and I too have shared wrongs that will acquit me in your eyes, perhaps in the eyes of Heaven!”
The speaker buried his face in his hands, and leant forward upon the table. He was evidently suffering from some painful recollection. After a moment he resumed—“I would have you listen to a short history of my life.” I signified my assent; and after filling and drinking another glass of wine, he proceeded.