"You have
married a woman of great spirit, monsieur," he said, with a touch of
his hand on my sleeve. "They are rare,--most rare." He stopped. "Yet
the roedeer is not made for the paddock," he said impersonally.
I laughed, and it sounded exultant. I felt the blood hammer in my
temples. "Nor can the thrush be tamed to sit the finger like the
parrakeet," I completed. "I understand that, Father Nouvel."
The wedding feast followed. Madame de Montlivet, the priest,
Onanguisse, and I sat in a semicircle on the ground, and slaves served
us with wooden trenchers of food. We each had our separate service,
like monks in a refectory, but we were not treated with equal state,
for the woman drank from a copper-trimmed ladle, made from the polished
skull of a buffalo, while my cup was a dried gourd. We ate in
ceremonial silence, and were sunk in our own thoughts. There was food
till the stomach sickened at its gross abundance: whitefish, broth,
sagamite, the feet of a bear, the roasted tail of a beaver. I watched
the slaves bring the food and bear it away, and I said to myself that I
was sitting at my wedding feast,--a feast to celebrate a false marriage.
After the feast, the calumet was danced before us.
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