"White woman sorcery is the worst sorcery. You thought I never saw it. But I did see it. You went after her to Paris. You did not think of being the king. So you had to come back with nothing. That's what woman sorcery does. Now you have power with the tribes. The President sees you are a big man! And she sends a book to you to bewitch you! I knew she sent the book as soon as I saw it."
"Madame de Ferrier does not know I have the book."
"If she wrote and sent a letter she expected it would be received."
"When I said a letter I meant what is called a journal: the writing down of what happens daily. Johnny Appleseed got the book from an Indian. That is how it was sent to me."
"If you read it you will want to drop everything else and go to find her."
This was the truth, for I was not under military law.
I ran my hand over his chest, finding nothing but bone and brawn.
"There it is," he said, pointing to a curled wisp of board at the edge of the fire. "I burnt it."
I turned and left him sitting like an image by the fire.
Before I left Fort Stephenson, I wrote a letter to Count de Chaumont, telling him about Paul's death and asking for news of the De Ferriers. The answer I begged him to send to Sandusky, which the British now despaired of taking. But although Skenedonk made a long journey for it twice during the half year, I got no answer.
The dangerous work of the next few months became like a long debauch. Awake, we were dodging betwixt hostile tribes, or dealing with those inclined to peace. Asleep, I was too exhausted to dream. It was a struggle of the white force of civilization with the red sense of justice. I wrestled with Algonquin dialects as I had wrestled with Greek. Ottawas and Chippewas, long friendly to the French, came more readily than other tribes to agreement with Americans.
Wherever I went I pushed the quest that was uppermost in my mind, but without finding any trace of Madame de Ferrier.
From the measure constantly taken betwixt other men of my time and myself, this positive knowledge resulted.
In spite of the fact that many treated me as a prince, I found myself an average man. I had no military genius. In argument, persuasive, graceful--even eloquent--were the adjectives applied to me; not sweeping and powerful. I should have made a jog-trot king, no better than my uncle of Provence; no worse than my uncle of Artois, who would rather saw wood than reign a constitutional monarch, and whom the French people afterward turned out to saw wood. My reign might have been neat; it would never have been gaudily splendid. As an average man, I could well hold my own in the world.