There is
room for everybody yonder; there are new lands, there is open air that
none has breathed, and there is a task to be accomplished which will make
all of you heroes, strong, sturdy men, well pleased to live! Come with
me. I will take the men, I will take all the women who are willing, and
you will carve for yourselves other provinces and found other cities for
the future glory and power of the great new France."
He laughed so gayly, he was so handsome, so spirited, so robust, that
once again the whole table acclaimed him. They would certainly not follow
him yonder, for all those married couples already had their own nests;
and all those young folks were already too strongly rooted to the old
land by the ties of their race--a race which after displaying such
adventurous instincts has now fallen asleep, as it were, at its own
fireside. But what a marvellous story it all was--a story to which big
and little alike, had listened in rapture, and which to-morrow would,
doubtless, arouse within them a passion for glorious enterprise far away!
The seed of the unknown was sown, and would grow into a crop of fabulous
magnitude.
For the moment Benjamin was the only one who cried amid the enthusiasm
which drowned his words: "Yes, yes, I want to live.
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