Chapter I
The King of France was walking on the terrace of Versailles; the fairest, not only of Queens, but of women, hung fondly on the Royal arm; while the children of France were indulging in their infantile hilarity in the alleys of the magnificent garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo’s garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk in the ears of high-bred beauty.
“Marie, my beloved,” said the ruler of France, taking out his watch, “’tis time that the Minister of America should be here.”
“Your Majesty should know the time,” replied Marie Antoinette, archly, and in an Austrian accent; “is not my Royal Louis the first watchmaker in his empire?”
The King cast a pleased glance at his repeater, and kissed with courtly grace the fair hand of her who had made him the compliment. “My Lord Bishop of Autun,” said he to Monsieur de Talleyrand Perigord, who followed the royal pair, in his quality of arch-chamberlain of the empire, “I pray you look through the gardens, and tell his Excellency Doctor Franklin that the King waits.” The Bishop ran off, with more than youthful agility, to seek the United States’ Minister. “These Republicans,” he added, confidentially, and with something of a supercilious look, “are but rude courtiers, methinks.”
“Nay,” interposed the lovely Antoinette, “rude courtiers, Sire, they may be; but the world boasts not of more accomplished gentlemen. I have seen no grandee of Versailles that has the noble bearing of this American envoy and his suite. They have the refinement of the Old World, with all the simple elegance of the New. Though they have perfect dignity of manner, they have an engaging modesty which I have never seen equalled by the best of the proud English nobles with whom they wage war. I am told they speak their very language with a grace which the haughty Islanders who oppress them never attained. They are independent, yet never insolent; elegant, yet always respectful; and brave, but not in the least boastful.”
“What! savages and all, Marie?” exclaimed Louis, laughing, and chucking the lovely Queen playfully under the royal chin. “But here comes Doctor Franklin, and your friend the Cacique with him.” In fact, as the monarch spoke, the Minister of the United States made his appearance, followed by a gigantic warrior in the garb of his native woods.
Knowing his place as Minister of a sovereign state, (yielding even then in dignity to none, as it surpasses all now in dignity, in valor, in honesty, in strength, and civilization,) the Doctor nodded to the Queen of France, but kept his hat on as he faced the French monarch, and did not cease whittling the cane he carried in his hand.
“I was waiting for you, sir,” the King said, peevishly, in spite of the alarmed pressure which the Queen gave his royal arm.
“The business of the Republic, sire, must take precedence even of your Majesty’s wishes,” replied Dr. Franklin. “When I was a poor printer’s boy and ran errands, no lad could be more punctual than poor Ben Franklin; but all other things must yield to the service of the United States of North America. I have done. What would you, Sire?” and the intrepid republican eyed the monarch with a serene and easy dignity, which made the descendant of St. Louis feel ill at ease.
“I wished to—to say farewell to Tatua before his departure,” said Louis XVI., looking rather awkward. “Approach, Tatua.” And the gigantic Indian strode up, and stood undaunted before the first magistrate of the French nation: again the feeble monarch quailed before the terrible simplicity of the glance of the denizen of the primaeval forests.
The redoubted chief of the Nose-ring Indians was decorated in his war-paint, and in his top-knot was a peacock’s feather, which had been given him out of the head-dress of the beautiful Princess of Lamballe. His nose, from which hung the ornament from which his ferocious tribe took its designation, was painted a light-blue, a circle of green and orange was drawn round each eye, while serpentine stripes of black, white, and vermilion alternately were smeared on his forehead, and descended over his cheek-bones to his chin. His manly chest was similarly tattooed and painted, and round his brawny neck and arms hung innumerable bracelets and necklaces of human teeth, extracted (one only from each skull) from the jaws of those who had fallen by the terrible tomahawk at his girdle. His moccasins, and his blanket, which was draped on his arm and fell in picturesque folds to his feet, were fringed with tufts of hair—the black, the gray, the auburn, the golden ringlet of beauty, the red lock from the forehead of the Scottish or the Northern soldier, the snowy tress of extreme old age, the flaxen down of infancy—all were there, dreadful reminiscences of the chief’s triumphs in war. The warrior leaned on his enormous rifle, and faced the King.
“And it was with that carabine that you shot Wolfe in ‘57?” said Louis, eying the warrior and his weapon. “’Tis a clumsy lock, and methinks I could mend it,” he added mentally.
“The chief of the French pale-faces speaks truth,” Tatua said. “Tatua was a boy when he went first on the war-path with Montcalm.”
“And shot a Wolfe at the first fire!” said the King.
“The English are braves, though their faces are white,” replied the Indian. “Tatua shot the raging Wolfe of the English; but the other wolves caused the foxes to go to earth.” A smile played round Dr. Franklin’s lips, as he whittled his cane with more vigor than ever.
“I believe, your Excellency, Tatua has done good service elsewhere than at Quebec,” the King said, appealing to the American Envoy: “at Bunker’s Hill, at Brandywine, at York Island? Now that Lafayette and my brave Frenchmen are among you, your Excellency need have no fear but that the war will finish quickly—yes, yes, it will finish quickly. They will teach you discipline, and the way to conquer.”
“King Louis of France,” said the Envoy, clapping his hat down over his head, and putting his arms a-kimbo, “we have learned that from the British, to whom we are superior in everything: and I’d have your Majesty to know that in the art of whipping the world we have no need of any French lessons. If your reglars jine General Washington, ’tis to larn from HIM how Britishers are licked; for I’m blest if YU know the way yet.”
Tatua said, “Ugh,” and gave a rattle with the butt of his carabine, which made the timid monarch start; the eyes of the lovely Antoinette flashed fire, but it played round the head of the dauntless American Envoy harmless as the lightning which he knew how to conjure away.
The King fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a Cross of the Order of the Bath. “Your Excellency wears no honor,” the monarch said; “but Tatua, who is not a subject, only an ally, of the United States, may. Noble Tatua, I appoint you Knight Companion of my noble Order of the Bath. Wear this cross upon your breast in memory of Louis of France;” and the King held out the decoration to the Chief.
Up to that moment the Chief’s countenance had been impassible. No look either of admiration or dislike had appeared upon that grim and war-painted visage. But now, as Louis spoke, Tatua’s face assumed a glance of ineffable scorn, as, bending his head, he took the bauble.
“I will give it to one of my squaws,” he said. “The papooses in my lodge will play with it. Come, Medecine, Tatua will go and drink fire-water;” and, shouldering his carabine, he turned his broad back without ceremony upon the monarch and his train, and disappeared down one of the walks of the garden. Franklin found him when his own interview with the French Chief Magistrate was over; being attracted to the spot where the Chief was, by the crack of his well-known rifle. He was laughing in his quiet way. He had shot the Colonel of the Swiss Guards through his cockade.
Three days afterwards, as the gallant frigate, the “Repudiator,” was sailing out of Brest Harbor, the gigantic form of an Indian might be seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with Commodore Bowie, the commander of the noble ship. It was Tatua, the Chief of the Nose-rings.