e with which I, this morning, receive
monsieur, your friend, at my humble cottage! For the first time after
nine years on this hateful island, I see again a European face; I hear
again the sound, the beautiful sound of that charming French language. My
emotion, believe me, was too profound for words. When monsieur was gone,
I retired to my hut, I sat down on the floor, I gave myself over to
tears, tears of joy and gratitude, to think I should once more catch a
glimpse of civilization! This afternoon, I ask myself, can I venture
to go out and pay my respects, thus attired, in these rags, to a European
lady? For a long time I doubt, I wonder, I hesitate. In my quality of
Frenchman, I would have wished to call in civilized costume upon a
civilized household. But what would you have? Necessity knows no law. I
am compelled to envelope myself in my savage robe of office as a
Polynesian god--a robe of office which, for the rest, is not without an
interest of its own for the scientific ethnologist. It belongs to me
especially as King of the Birds, and in it, in effect, is represented
at least one feather of each kind or color from every part of the body
of every species of bird that inhabits Boupari. I thus sum up, _pour
ainsi dire_, in my official costume all the birds of the island, as
Tu-Kila-Kila, the very high god, sums up, in his quaint and curious
dress, the land and the sea, the trees and the stones, earth and air, and
fire and water."

Familiarity with danger begets at last a certain callous indifference.
Muriel was surprised in her own mind to discover how easily they could
chat with M. Peyron on such indifferent subjects, with that awful doom of
an approaching death hanging over them so shortly. But the fact was,
terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival
on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of
execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook
of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting
with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of
promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened
end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even
M. Peyron himself, who had spent nine long years of exile in the island,
felt that the arrival of two new Europeans gave him some hope of
effecting at last his own retreat from this unendurable position. His
talk was al