RENÉ.

Translated from the French of Chateaubriand.

BY ISAAC W. TAYLOR, ESQ.

In arriving among the Natchez, René was obliged to take a wife, according to the custom of the Indians, but he did not pretend at all to live with her. A certain predisposition to melancholy led him continually to the depths of the forest, where he would pass entire days, seeming imbued with all the wildness of the savage natures by which he was surrounded. Except with Chactas, the father of his adoption, and father Souel, a missionary at Fort Rosalie, he appeared to have renounced all commerce with mankind. These two old men had acquired almost unbounded dominion over his heart; the first, by the most amiable indulgencies, and the latter, on the contrary, by the extremest severity. From the time of the beaver-hunt, when the blind Sachem had related to René the history of his adventures, the latter had exhibited no disposition to recount his own. Nevertheless, both Chactas and the missionary, desired ardently to know by what misfortune, a wellborn and well-educated European had been driven to the strange resolution of burying himself in the wilds of Louisiana.

René always assigned as a reason for his silence the slender interest which attached to his history, confining itself, as he protested, simply to an account of his thoughts and emotions. "As to the event," added he, "which drove me to America, duty requires that I consign its memory to eternal oblivion."

Some years had thus rolled by, and the two old men were still unable to drag from René the story of his secret. In the mean time, a letter which he received from Europe, through the office of foreign missions, increased his sadness to such a degree, that he fled even the sight of his aged friends. They, on this account, were more than ever urgent with him, to open to them the secret of his heart; and they plied their task with such consummate address, such tact of gentleness and authority, that René was finally obliged to yield to their solicitations. He chose a day then, to recount to them, not the adventures of his life, for of these he had experienced none, but the hidden sentiments of his soul.

On the 21st of that month which the savages call "the flowermoon," René presented himself at the wigwam of Chactas. He

gave his arm to the old Sachem, and conducted him beneath the shade of a sassafras, on the borders of the Mississippi. Father Souel did not keep them waiting for his presence at the place of meeting. The first blush of morn had tinged the eastern sky: on the distant plain was visable the village of the Natchez, with its grove of mulberries and its tiny wigwams, resembling bee-hives, in the distance. The French colony and Fort Rosalie, appeared to the right, on the border of the river. The tents, the half-finished houses, the fortresses commenced, the newly cleared ground dotted over with negroes, and the groups of whites and Indians, afforded, in that little space, a striking contrast between the social customs of civilized and savage man.

Toward the East, terminating the perspective, the first rays of the advancing sun, could be seen between the unequal summits of the Apalaches, which were painted in colors of azure against the golden skies; to the West, the Mississippi, magnificent border of the picture, rolled its flood in majestic silence.

The young man and the missionary admired for some moments the enchanting prospect, and deplored the fate of the blind Sachem who could no longer behold and enjoy it; then father Souel and Chactas, seating themselves on the turf, at the foot of the tree, René took his place between them, and after a moment of silence, thus addressed his aged friends:

"I am not able, in the commencement of my story, to preserve myself from some slight emotion of shame. The peace of your hearts, venerable old men, and the calm presence of nature about me, call the blush to my cheek for the unquiet and the agitation of my soul. soul. How can you pity me! How miserable must appear to you the inquietudes which leave me no repose! You who have quaffed deeply of all the actual sorrows of life, what will you think of a young man, without firmness or virtue, who finds his sole torment in himself, and has little to bewail in his fortunes, except the ills himself, hath made? Alas! condemn him not; he is already too greatly punished!"

"My birth occasioned the death of my mother. I was torn with iron implements from her womb! I had one brother on whom my father doated because in him he beheld the eldest born. As for me, delivered over, from early infancy into the hands of strangers, I was reared far away from the sanctuary of the paternal roof. My mood was impetuous, and my character capricious. By turns,

stormy and joyous, silent and sad, I would assemble about me my young companions, then quitting them suddenly, would hasten to seat myself in some sequestered spot, to contemplate the vagrant cloud or listen to the rain-drops as they beat upon forest leaves. Each autumn I returned to the parental castle, which was situated in a wood, near a lake, in a retired province. Timid and con. strained in presence of my father, I never felt myself easy and happy except when near my sister Amelie. A pleasant conformity of humor and of tastes had attracted me closely to that sister, who was a little older than myself. We delighted to climb the hills together, to row upon the lake, and to course through the woods strewn with autumnal leaves. The recollection of these rambles to this moment thrills my soul with delight. Oh! illusions of infancy and of country! Will ye never loose your charm?"

"Sometimes we walked in silence, with ears attentive to the mournful sighs of autumn, or to the sad rustle of dead leaves beneath our feet; then, in our joyous mirth, we pursued the swallow to the moor or chased the rainbow upon the misty hill-tops. Sometimes also, we murmured those verses of poetry which the contemplation of nature had inspired. Though young, I wooed the muses, for there is nothing of higher poetic sensibility, than a heart in the fresh bloom of its passions, and touched only by the wing of sixteen departed years. The morning of life, like the morning of day, is full of purity and images of harmony. On sabbath and fete days, I have often heard, in the grand forest, through the trees, the sounds of the distant bell which called to the temple of the Most-High, the rural peasantry. Leaning against the trunk of an elm, I have listened in contemplative silence to the murmurs of devotion. Each trembling sound of the brass reminded my uncorrupted heart of the innocence of rural manners, the calm of solitude, the charm of religion and the pleasing melancholy of infantile recollections. Oh, what heart so dead as not to leap at the sound of natal bells! of those bells which peal joyously over the sense of earliest infancy, which announce one's advent into life, and mark the first beating of one's heart, which publish to all the world a father's joy; a mother's woe and her still more unbounded transport! We experienced all these emotions in those enchanting reveries united by the sound of the natal bell: reveries of religion, family, country, the cradle and the tomb-the past and the future! It is true that both Amelie and myself enjoyed ourselves unusual

ly, in cherishing grave and tender thoughts, for each of us had a heart profoundly touched with melancholy, a trait bestowed upon us by nature or derived from our mother. In the meantime, my father was attacked by a disease, which speedily consigned him to the grave. He expired in my arms, and I first learned of death, from the lips of him who gave me life. That impression was profound and still endures. It was the first time that the immortality of the soul was presented clearly to my comprehension. I could not believe that the inanimate dust before me was the author in me, of thought, of reason; I felt that this should come from an. other source, and in a sacred sorrow bordering upon joy, I hoped at some future, to join the spirit of my father. Another phenomenon confirmed me in this elevated conception. The lineaments of my father's face had assumed in his cerements, an aspect approaching to sublimity. Why should not that astonishing mystery seal the truth of our immortality? Why should not death, which unlocks all mysteries, stamp the secrets of another world upon the brow of its victim? Why should there not be, in the tomb, a sublime vision of eternal truths?"

"Amelie, overwhelmed with sorrow, had retired to the recesses of a tower, whence she could hear the echoes of the funeral dirge and the tolling bell, resounding through the arches of the Gothic castle. I accompanied my father's body to its last resting-place; -the earth closed upon his remains;-eternity and oblivion rested upon him. The same evening, the unconscious wayfarer wandered indifferently by his tomb, and except for the tender sorrow of his bereaved daughter and son, the world would not have known that he ever had existed. It now became necessary that I should take my departure from the paternal roof, which had become the heritage of my brother. I retired, with Amelie, to the homes of some aged relatives."

"Checked at the very threshhold of life's deceptive paths, I meditated upon each, without daring to enter upon either. Amelie often discoursed to me upon the happiness of a religious life, and regarding me with touching sadness, would protest that I was the only tie that bound her to the world. My heart being affected by these pious conversations, I oftentimes directed my steps towards a monastery, near to my new place of abode. At one time, indeed, I was tempted to bury my life in this holy retreat. Happy those who end the voyage without quitting the post, and who have

not struggled through days of useless toil, as I have done! European society, in eternal commotion, has been obliged to subdue the wilderness for homes. In proportion as our passions are tumultuous and stormy, is the ratio of our enjoyment of quietude and silence. The monasteries in my native country, ever open to the unhappy and the defenceless, are often concealed in valleys, which convey to the heart a vague notion of misfortune hoping for sheltered security. Sometimes also, these asylums are seen in the most conspicuous situations, where the religious soul, as a mountain flower, can raise towards heaven, the perfumed incense of its devotions. I can still vividly recall the mingled majesty of forest and of flood which surrounded that venerable abby, where I thought to seclude my life from the waywardness of fortune; and I wander yet, in fancy, through its solitary and resounding cloisters. When the moon illuminated one side of the arch-crowned pillars, and cast their shadows upon the opposing wail, I have paused to contemplate the cross which marked the city of the Dead, and the creeping vines which twined among the tomb-stones. Oh! mortals, who have lived far from the stormy tumults of the world, and have passed from the silence of such a life to the silence of death, with what disgust am I filled, by the sight of your tombs, for all the pomps and vanities of earth !"

"Either a natural inconstancy of disposition, or a prejudice against monastic life, induced me to change my purpose, and resolve to travel. I bid adieu to my sister, who clasped me in her arms, in a sort of joyous transport, as if she was happy at the separation. I could not prevent some bitter thoughts upon the incongruities of human friendship."

"In the meantime, full of enthusiasm, I launched my barque upon the stormy ocean of life, knowing neither its havens of safety, or its hidden rocks of destruction. I first visited the abodes of nations that have vanished from the earth. I went abroad, and seating myself amid the ruins of Rome and of Greece, countries of great and glorious memory, where palaces are buried in dust, and the tombs of kings are overrun with brambles, exhibiting the resistless might of time, and the puny weakness of man. Oftentimes the tiny blade of grass would make its way through these marble mausoleums, now strewn in ruins, and which all the mighty dead, puissant as they were in life, could never rear again."

"Sometimes a solitary column would show its majestic form in