"And every time I asked this question she burst into tears and would not answer. But the wild loneliness, the continual presence of my beloved, yes, even the hardships of our wandering life, increased the force of my longing. A hundred times I was ready to fold Atala to my breast. A hundred times I proposed to build her a hut in the wide, uninhabited wilderness, and live my life out there by her side.
"Oh, René, my son, if your heart is ever deeply troubled by love, beware of loneliness. Great passions are wild and solitary things; by transporting them into the wilderness you give them full power over your soul. But in spite of this, Atala and I lived together in the great forests like brother and sister. On and on we marched, through vaults of flowery smilax, where lianas with strange and gorgeous blossoms snared our feet in their twining ropy stems. Enormous bats fluttered in our faces, rattlesnakes rattled around us, and bears and carcajous--those little tigers that crouch on the branches of trees, and leap without warning on their prey--made the latter part of our journey full of strange perils and difficulties. For after travelling for twenty-seven days, we crossed the Alleghany mountains, and got into a tract of swampy, wooded ground.
"At sunset a tempest arose and darkened all the heavens. Then the sky opened, and the noise of the tempestuous forest was drowned in long, rolling detonations of thunder, and the wild lightning flamed down upon us, and set the forest on fire. Crouching down under the bent trunk of a birch-tree, with my beloved on my lap, I sheltered her from the streaming rain, and warmed her naked feet in my hands. What cared I, though the very heavens broke above me, and the earth rocked to its foundations? The soft, warm arms of Atala were around my neck, her breast lay against my breast, and I felt her heart beating as wildly as my own.
"'O my beloved,' I said, 'open your heart to me, and tell me the secret that makes you so sorrowful. Do you weep at leaving your native land?'
"'No,' she said. 'I do not regret leaving the land of palm trees, for my mother is dead, and Simaghan was only my foster father.'
"'Then who was your father, my beloved?' I cried in astonishment.
"'My father was a Spaniard,' said Atala, 'but my grandmother threw water in his face, and made him go away, and she then forced my mother to give herself in marriage to Simaghan, who desired her. But she died from grief at being parted from my father, and Simaghan adopted me as his own daughter. I have never seen my father, though my mother, before she died, baptised me, so that his God should be my God. Oh, Chactas, I wish I could see my father before I die!'
"'What is his name?' I said. 'Where does he live?'
"'He lives at St. Augustin,' she replied. 'His name is Philip Lopez.'
"'O, my beloved,' I cried, pressing Atala wildly to may breast. 'Oh, what happiness, what joy! You are the daughter of Lopez, the daughter of my foster father!'