Robert felt his pulses leaping and the hunter
whispered his warning once more.
De Mezy evidently was sincere in his belief that the three understood no
French, as he continued to talk freely about the English colonies, the
prospect of war, and the superiority of French troops to British or
American. Meanwhile he and his two satellites drank freely of the claret
and their faces grew more flushed. Robert could stand it no longer.
"Tayoga," he said clearly and in perfect French, "it seems that in
Quebec there are people of loose speech, even as there are in Albany and
New York."
"Our sachems tell us that such is the way of man," said the Onondaga,
also in pure French. "Vain boasters dwell too in our own villages. For
reasons that I do not know, Manitou has put the foolish as well as the
wise into the world."
"To travel, Tayoga, is to find wisdom. We learn what other people know,
and we learn to value also the good that we have at home."
"It is so, my friend Lennox. It is only when we go into strange
countries and listen to the tongues of the idle and the foolish that we
learn the full worth of our own.
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