l’homme qui attend, le rôle de l’humanité, et préluder au concert que feront sur sa tombe ses descendants. Elle doit faire les noms, faire les gloires. Il est bon que quelqu’un soit là, debout et vaillant, qui puisse, après l’Amérique découverte, n’ayant ni calomnié, ni trahi, regarder en face Christophe Colomb. »
Extrait du NEW ORLEANS DAILY CITY ITEM, February 24 1879 A LOUISIANA IDYLL.
We have before us the advance pages of a romance which we do not hesitate to term the most idyllic work in the literature of Louisiana,—a creation insired by the Spirit of forest-solitudes,—a prose-pœm melodious as an autumn wind chanting a language, mystic and unwritten, through woods o pine. Fresh and pure as that unfettered wind, fragrant as wild flowers, there is a strange charm about this story unlike anything, perhaps, except the magic of Chateaubriand. Perhaps the modest, yet aspiring title, La Nouvelle Atala, would seem to suggest the inspiration of that mighty master ; but the uniqueness of the New Atala is too strongly announced to allow of this idea. There is indeed a remote kinship between the romanticism of the French and the Louisiana author ; but only sufficient to justify the criticism that La Nouvelle Atala comes from the hand
