Lacandon people

“ Lacheneur took his friend’s hand and pressed it tenderly.
“Ah! you are noble people,” he exclaimed, “and God will reward you for your kindness to a poor fugitive. But you have done too much already. I should be the basest of men if I consented to uselessly expose you to danger. I can bear this life no longer; I have no wish to escape.”
He drew the sobbing woman to him and kissed her upon the forehead.
“I have a daughter, young and beautiful like yourself, as generous and proud. Poor Marie-Anne! And I have pitilessly sacrificed her to my hatred! ”

“ DICÆOPOLIS
Friends, leave the Laconians out of debate and consider only whether I have not done well to conclude my truce.
CHORUS
Done well! when you have treated with a people who know neither gods, nor truth, nor faith.
DICÆOPOLIS
We attribute too much to the Laconians; as for myself, I know that they are not the cause of all our troubles. ”

“ They obeyed, and as soon as the door had closed behind them, Lacheneur said:
“I know very well, Monsieur, the arguments you intend to advance; and the reason of your coming. You come to ask me again for Marie-Anne. I know that my refusal has nearly killed Maurice. Believe me, I have suffered cruelly at the thought; but my refusal is none the less irrevocable. There is no power in the world capable of changing my resolution. Do not ask my motives; I shall not reveal them; but rest assured that they are sufficient.” ”

“ Left standing alone like the survivors of a world of giants, loaded with the opprobrium of the human race, they could hold no sort of communion with the living. I could quite understand the effect which Lakanal must have produced when he returned from America in 1833 and appeared among his colleagues of the Academic des Sciences Morales et Politiques like a phantom. ”

“ You have just passed the Croix d’Arcy; did you tell any of those people what you have just told me?”
“Not a word.”
“How many men are there at the rendezvous?”
“At least two thousand.”
“And what is their mood?”
“They are burning to begin the struggle. They are cursing our slowness, and told me to entreat you to make haste.”
“In that case our cause is not lost,” said Lacheneur, with a threatening gesture. “Wait here until the peasants come up, and say to them that you were sent to tell them to make haste. Bring them on as quickly as possible, and have confidence in me ”

“ Marie-Anne felt that her apprehensions were correct. “Take care, take care,” she said entreatingly. “Do not tamper with such matters. God’s justice will punish those who have wronged us.”
But nothing could move Jean Lacheneur, or divert him from his purpose. With a hoarse, discordant laugh, he clapped his hand on his gun and retorted, “That’s my justice!” ”

“ Lacheneur could restrain his furious passion no longer.
“Well, yes!” he exclaimed, with a frightful oath, “yes, you have spoken the truth. Marie-Anne must be, and will be, the instrument of my plans. A man situated as I am is free from the considerations that restrain other men. Fortune, friends, life, honor—I have been forced to sacrifice all. Perish my daughter’s virtue—perish my daughter herself—what do they matter, if I can but succeed?” ”

“ But he who withdraws and separates himself from the body [12] at large, must live not after the custom of men, but after the manner of wild beasts. But if this cannot be done, the bond of human society is by all means to be retained, because man can in no way live without man. But the preservation [13] of society is a mutual sharing of kind offices; that is, the affording help, that we may be able to receive it. But if, as those others assert, the assembling together of men has been caused on account of humanity itself, man ought undoubtedly to recognise man. ”

“ No doubt careful research would still reveal many surviving traits in the present populations of these countries but such studies have not been sufficiently numerous to assist us. As suggestions we may cite Tozzer's [18] study of the Lacandones as a surviving Maya people. ”

“ The territories of Laconia shared the fate of the Achæn confederacy, and the whole was conquered by Mummius, 147 B.C., and converted into a Roman province. The inhabitants of Lacedæmon have rendered themselves illustrious for their courage and intrepidity, for their love of honour and liberty, and for their aversion to sloth and luxury. They were inured from their youth to labour, and their laws commanded them to make war their profession. They never applied themselves to any trade, but their only employment was arms, and they left everything else to the care of their slaves. ”

“ Alas! it must be confessed that Lacheneur had not hesitated to utter the grossest falsehoods in his anxiety to gain followers to his cause. Madame d’Escorval, before whom this peasant was conducted, could not be deceived by these ridiculous stories, but she could and did believe that the baron was the prime mover in the insurrection. And this belief, which would have carried consternation to many women’s hearts, absolutely reassured her. She had entire, unlimited faith in her husband. She believed him superior to all other men—infallible, in short. ”

“ Baron d’Escorval and Abbe Midon.
They were in advance of Lacheneur. They thought they had arrived in time.
Alas! here, as on the Reche, all their efforts, all their entreaties, and all their threats were futile.
They had come in the hope of arresting the movement; they only precipitated it.
“We have gone too far to draw back,” exclaimed one of the neighboring farmers, who was the recognized leader in Lacheneur’s absence. “If death is before us, it is also behind us. To attack and conquer—that is our only hope of salvation. ”

“ For if there is no providence, how is it that the world was made with such order and arrangement? He says: There is no arrangement, for many things are made in a different manner from that in which they ought to have been made. And the divine man found subjects of censure. Now, if I had leisure to refute these things separately, I could easily show that this man was neither wise nor of sound mind. ”

“ What, if wounded and faint from loss of blood, Lacheneur only had strength enough to drag himself to the nearest house and implore the hospitality of its inmates?”
“Oh! even in that case he is safe; I know our peasants. There is not one who is capable of selling the life of a proscribed man.”
This youthful enthusiasm elicited a sad smile from the priest. “You forget the dangers to be incurred by those who shelter him,” he said. “Many a man who would not soil his hands with the price of blood might deliver up a fugitive from fear.” ”

“ To-day, I’ve twenty thousand francs in my pocket, and yet I’m treated as if I were a venomous beast. If I approach any one he draws back, and if I enter a room, those who are there hasten out of it.” At the recollection of the insults heaped upon him since Lacheneur’s capture, the old rascal’s rage reached a climax. ”

“ Am I not an old friend? It may be that your father in his despair has adopted extreme resolutions. Let me know them and we will conquer them together. Lacheneur knows how deeply I am attached to him. I will speak to him: he will listen to me.”
“I can tell you nothing, sir.”
“What! you remain inflexible when a father entreats you to assist him, when he says to you: ‘Marie-Anne, you hold my son’s happiness, life, and reason in your hands. Can you be so cruel——’ ”
“Ah! it is you who are cruel, sir,” answered Marie-Anne with tears glittering in her eyes; “it is you who are without pity. ”

“ Lanark had deeply impressed him with the conviction that to make it possible for all people to live equally happy and moral lives they must have equal material resources and conditions of life, and he could not understand why it had never occurred to others before him. ”

“ Lacheneur understood this only too well, and seemed to despair.
“Ah! you are like Abbe Midon,” he said, sadly; “you will not believe. Who knows how much your coming here this morning will cost you? It is said that no one can escape his destiny. But if some day the hand of the executioner is laid upon your shoulder, remember that I warned you, and do not curse me.”
He paused, and seeing that even this sinister prophecy produced no impression upon the baron, he pressed his hand as if to bid him an eternal farewell, and opened the door to admit the Marquis de Sairmeuse. ”

“ We had all ceased to weep, we were reconciled and of peaceable, quiet hearts, when Lacoste entered in the midst of our pathetic emotion and religious conversation. Beauvais made known to him what he had learned from Lucy, and that he (Lacoste) must quit our society in order that he might not disturb the happiness of the lovers and their approaching marriage, perhaps even render it impossible. ”

“ His restless eyes betokened a prying curiosity of mind, and his smile betrayed an unusual degree of shrewdness, amounting almost to cunning. He made a deep bow when his father introduced him; but he was evidently out of temper.
“Having no longer the means to keep Jean in Paris,” resumed M. Lacheneur, “I have made him return as you see. My ruin will, perhaps, prove a blessing to him. The air of great cities is not good for a peasant’s son. Fools that we are, we send our children to Paris that they may learn to rise above their fathers. But they do nothing of the kind. ”

“ M. Lacheneur shook his head.
“Monsieur Maurice,” said he, “is young; he will console himself—he will forget.”
“Never!” interrupted the unhappy lover—“never!”
“And your daughter?” inquired the baroness.
Ah! this was the weak spot in his armor; the instinct of a mother was not mistaken. M. Lacheneur hesitated a moment; but he finally conquered the weakness that had threatened to master him.
“Marie-Anne,” he replied, slowly, “knows her duty too well not to obey when I command. When I tell her the motive that governs my conduct, she will become resigned ”

“ Lacheneur had a perception of the truth, and regretted that the bullets just discharged had not pierced his own heart. He put spurs to his horse and galloped past the cross-roads towards Montaignac. At last he perceived the fugitives approaching in the distance. He dashed forward to meet them, and mingling curses and insults together he vainly tried to stay their flight. “You cowards!” he vociferated, “you traitors! you fly and you are ten against one! Where are you going? To your own homes? Fools! you will only find the gendarmes there, waiting your coming to conduct you to the scaffold. ”

“ Of all the women I have had, she is the only one of whom I take pleasure in speaking ill. Your motive, I must own, is truly ridiculous, and you was right in thinking I should not guess the successor:—What, then, is it for Danceny you have taken all this trouble? Ah, my dear friend, let him alone to adore his virtuous Cecilia, and do not commit yourself in this children’s play; leave the scholars to be formed by good old women, or play with the pensioners at pretty innocent games. What, would you instruct a novice who neither knows how to take or leave you, for whom you must do every thing? ”

“ Oppressed and despised, a sullen indifference has settled upon the race, and caused it to neglect even its traditions. The greater portion still endeavor to keep up tribal distinctions and certain customs; certain tribes of lesser culture, as the cognate Manches and Lacandones, retired before the Spaniards to the north and north-east, where they still live in a certain isolation and independence. The name Lacandones has been applied to a number of tribes, of which the eastern are described to be quite harmless as compared with the western. ”

“ My miserable life is not worth such a struggle.”
But the wife of the traitor rose, and grasping the unfortunate man’s clothing, she shook him, she dragged him to the door—she would have carried him had she possessed sufficient strength.
“You shall not remain here,” said she, with extraordinary vehemence. “Fly, save yourself. You shall not be taken here; it will bring misfortune upon our house!”
Bewildered by these violent adjurations, and urged on by the instinct of self-preservation, so powerful in every human heart, Lacheneur stepped out upon the threshold. ”

“ And this saying of the poet ought so to be taken, not as suggesting the idea that individuals at that time had no private property, but it must be regarded as a poetical figure; that we may understand that men were so liberal, that they did not shut up the fruits of the earth produced for them, nor did they in solitude brood over the things stored up, but admitted the poor to share the fruits of their labour:—
“Now streams of milk, now streams of nectar flowed.” [6]
And no wonder, since the storehouses of the good liberally lay open to all. ”

“ LYSISTRATA. Now 'tis to you I address myself, Laconians. Have you forgotten how Periclides, [463] your own countryman, sat a suppliant before our altars? How pale he was in his purple robes! He had come to crave an army of us; 'twas the time when Messenia was pressing you sore, and the Sea-god was shaking the earth. Cimon marched to your aid at the head of four thousand hoplites, and saved Lacedaemon. And, after such a service as that, you ravage the soil of your benefactors!
ATHENIAN. They do wrong, very wrong, Lysistrata.
LACONIAN. We do wrong, very wrong. ”

“ Maurice seized it and read:
“Yesterday, Lacheneur, the leader of the revolt in Montaignac, was executed. The miserable mischief-maker exhibited upon the scaffold the audacity for which he has always been famous.”
“My father has been put to death!” cried Marie-Anne, “and I—his daughter—was not there to receive his last farewell!”
She rose, and in an imperious voice:
“I will go no farther,” she said; “we must turn back now without losing an instant. I wish to return to France.” ”