“Atala perceiving that her language had melted us into tears, said softly, ‘Pardon me, my kind friends; I am very weak, but perhaps I shall get stronger. And yet to die so young, all at once, when my heart was so full of life! Chief of prayer, take pity on me; support me. Do you think my mother will be satisfied, and that God will forgive what I have done?’
“‘My daughter,’ replied the holy man, shedding tears, and wiping them away with his trembling, mutilated fingers, ‘all your misfortunes are the result of your ignorance. Your savage education and the want of instruction have been your ruin. You did not know that a Christian cannot dispose of his life. Console yourself, therefore, my dear lamb; God will pardon you, on account of the simplicity of your heart. Your mother, and the imprudent missionary who guided her, are more to be blamed than you; they exceeded their power in imposing an indiscreet vow upon you: but may the Lord be with them! You all three offer a terrible example of the dangers of enthusiasm, and of the want of enlightenment on religious matters. Be of good cheer, my child; He who fathoms our thoughts and our hearts will judge you according to your intentions, which were pure, and not from your action, which was condemnable.
“‘As for life, if the moment has come for you to sleep in the Lord, ah! my child, you lose but little by losing this world! In spite of the solitude in which you have lived, you have known sorrow; what would you have felt, then, if you had witnessed the evils of society?—if, on visiting the shores of Europe, your ear had been stricken by the long cry of suffering heard throughout that old land? The dweller in the cabin, the inhabitant of a palace, both suffer and groan here below: queens have been seen to cry like simple women, and people have been astonished at the quantity of tears shed by kings!
“‘Is it your love that you regret? My daughter, you might as well weep over a dream. Do you know the heart of man, and could you reckon upon the inconstancies of his affection? Sacrifices and kindnesses, Atala, are not eternal ties. One day, perhaps, disgust would have come with satiety, the past would have been considered as nothing, and naught would have remained but the inconveniences of a poor and despised union. Doubtless, my dear daughter, the most beautiful loves were those of the man and woman who issued from the hand of the Creator. A paradise had been prepared for them. They were innocent and immortal. Perfect in soul and body, they suited each other in every respect. Eve had been created for Adam, l and Adam for Eve. If they, nevertheless, could not remain in that state of happiness, what couple after them could do so? I will not speak to you of the marriages of the first-born of men, of those ineffable unions between sister and brother, in which love and friendship were confounded in the same heart, and the purity of the one increased the delights of the other. All those unions were troubled; jealousy crept over the altar of turf upon which the goat was sacrificed, it existed beneath the tent of Abraham, and even in the abodes of the patriarchs, where they experienced so much joy that they forgot the death of their mothers.
“‘Do you suppose, then, my child, that you are more innocent and more fortunate in your ties than those holy families from which Jesus Christ deigned to descend? Again, woman renews her sufferings each time she becomes a mother, and she weeps on her marriage-day. What grief there is for her in the mere loss of her new-born babe, to whom she gave nourishment, and who dies upon her bosom! The mountain was full of groans: nothing could console Rachel for the loss of her sons. The bitterness attendant upon human affections is so powerful that I have in my country seen grand ladies, the beloved of kings, quit the life of a court to bury themselves in a cloister, and mutilate that rebellious flesh, the pleasures of which are only the precursors of sorrow.
“‘But perhaps you would say that these last examples do not affect you; that all your ambition was limited to the desire of living in an obscure cabin with the man of your choice; that you sought less after the sweets of marriage than after the charms of that folly which youth calls love? Delusion, chimera, vanity—the dream of a diseased imagination! I also, my daughter, have known the troubles of the heart. This head has not been always bald, nor this breast always so calm as it appears to you to-day. Believe in my experience: if man, constant in his affections, could unceasingly respond to a sentiment constantly renewed, solitude and love would doubtless render him the equal of God Himself; for those are the two eternal pleasures of the Great Being. But the soul of man becomes weary, and never loves the same object long and fully. There are always some points upon which two hearts do not agree, and in the end those points suffice to render life insupportable.
“‘Finally, my dear child, the great error of men, in their dream of happiness, is that they forget the infirmity of death inseparable from their nature; the end must come. Sooner or later, whatever might have been your felicity, your beautiful visage would have been changed into that uniform face which the sepulchre gives to the family of Adam. Even the eye of Chactas would not have been able to distinguish you from amongst your sisters of the tomb. Love does not extend its empire so far as the worms in the coffin. What have I to say (O vanity of vanities!), what can I say concerning the durability of earthly friendships? Would you, my dear daughter, know its extent? If a man were to return to light some years after his death, I do not believe he would be received with joy even by those who had shed the most tears to his memory; so quickly are new ties contracted, so easily fresh habits are indulged in, so entirely is inconstancy natural to man, and so little is our life even in the hearts of our friends!
“‘Thank, therefore, the Divine goodness, my dear daughter, for taking you away thus early from this valley of misery. Already the white robe and the brilliant crown of virgins are being prepared for you in the skies; already I hear the Queen of the Angels crying out to you, “Come, my worthy servant; come, my dove; come and sit down upon the throne of candor, amidst all those maidens who have sacrificed their beauty and their youth in the service of humanity, in the education of children, and in works of penitence.”’
“As the last ray of daylight stills the winds and spreads tranquillity through the sky, so the old man’s calm language appeased the passions in the bosom of my lover. She no longer thought of anything but my grief, and of the means for enabling me to support her loss. At first she said that she should die happy if I would promise her to dry my tears; then she spoke to me of my mother and of my country, and endeavored to distract me from present grief by referring to past sufferings. She exhorted me to patience and virtue. ‘You will not always be unhappy,’ she said; ‘if Heaven tries you to-day, it is merely to render you more compassionate for the ills of others. The heart, Chactas, is like those trees that only yield their balm for healing men’s wounds after having been themselves seared with iron.’
“When she had thus spoken, Atala turned towards the missionary, seeking from him the consolation she had been endeavoring to impart to me; and, by turns consoling and consoled, she gave and received the word of life; upon the couch of death.