“Monsieur, adieu!” she added swiftly.
I bent and kissed her hand. “Madam, au
revoir!”
“No, adieu! Go!”
A HUNTER OF BUTTERFLIES
I love men, not because
they are men, but because they are not
women.—Queen
Christina.
There was at that time in Montreal a sort of news
room and public exchange, which made a place of general
meeting. It was supplied with newspapers and
the like, and kept up by subscriptions of the town
merchants—a spacious room made out of the
old Methodist chapel on St. Joseph Street. I
knew this for a place of town gossip, and hoped I might
hit upon something to aid me in my errand, which was
no more than begun, it seemed. Entering the place
shortly before noon, I made pretense of reading, all
the while with an eye and an ear out for anything that
might happen.
As I stared in pretense at the page before me, I fumbled
idly in a pocket, with unthinking hand, and brought
out to place before me on the table, an object of
which at first I was unconscious—the little
Indian blanket clasp. As it lay before me I felt
seized of a sudden hatred for it, and let fall on
it a heavy hand. As I did so, I heard a voice
at my ear.
“Mein Gott, man, do not! You break
it, surely.”
I started at this. I had not heard any one approach.
I discovered now that the speaker had taken a seat
near me at the table, and could not fail to see this
object which lay before me.
“I beg pardon,” he said, in a broken speech
which showed his foreign birth; “but it iss
so beautiful; to break it iss wrong.”
Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention.
He was a tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age,
of gray hair and beard, with the glasses and the unmistakable
air of the student. His stooped shoulders, his
weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray
hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked
him not as one acquainted with a wild life, but better
fitted for other days and scenes.
I pushed the trinket along the table towards him.
“’Tis of little value,” I said,
“and is always in the way when I would find
anything in my pocket.”
“But once some one hass made it; once it hass
had value. Tell me where you get it?”
“North of the Platte, in our western territories,”
I said. “I once traded in that country.”
“You are American?”
“Yes.”
“So,” he said thoughtfully. “So.
A great country, a very great country. Me, I
also live in it.”
“Indeed?” I said. “In what
part?”
“It iss five years since I cross the Rockies.”
“You have crossed the Rockies? I envy you.”
“You meesunderstand me. I live west of
them for five years. I am now come east.”
“All the more, then, I envy you! You have
perhaps seen the Oregon country? That has always
been my dream.”
