“At sunset a tempest arose and darkened all the heavens.  Then the sky opened, and the noise of the tempestuous forest was drowned in long, rolling detonations of thunder, and the wild lightning flamed down upon us, and set the forest on fire.  Crouching down under the bent trunk of a birch-tree, with my beloved on my lap, I sheltered her from the streaming rain, and warmed her naked feet in my hands.  What cared I, though the very heavens broke above me, and the earth rocked to its foundations?  The soft, warm arms of Atala were around my neck, her breast lay against my breast, and I felt her heart beating as wildly as my own.

“‘O my beloved,’ I said, ’open your heart to me, and tell me the secret that makes you so sorrowful.  Do you weep at leaving your native land?’

“‘No,’ she said.  ’I do not regret leaving the land of palm trees, for my mother is dead, and Simaghan was only my foster father.’

“‘Then who was your father, my beloved?’ I cried in astonishment.

“‘My father was a Spaniard,’ said Atala, ’but my grandmother threw water in his face, and made him go away, and she then forced my mother to give herself in marriage to Simaghan, who desired her.  But she died from grief at being parted from my father, and Simaghan adopted me as his own daughter.  I have never seen my father, though my mother, before she died, baptised me, so that his God should be my God.  Oh, Chactas, I wish I could see my father before I die!’

“‘What is his name?’ I said.  ‘Where does he live?’

“‘He lives at St. Augustin,’ she replied.  ‘His name is Philip Lopez.’

“‘O, my beloved,’ I cried, pressing Atala wildly to may breast.  ’Oh, what happiness, what joy!  You are the daughter of Lopez, the daughter of my foster father!’

“Atala was frightened at my outburst of passion, but when she knew that it was her father who had rescued me from the Creeks, and brought me up as his own son, she became as wildly joyful as I was.  Rising up from my arms, with a strange, fierce, and yet tender light in her eyes, she took something out of her bosom and put in her mouth, and then fell on my breast in an ecstasy of self-surrender.  Just as I was about to embrace her, the lightning fell, the sword of God, upon the surging, stormy forest, and made a wild and terrible radiance around us, and shattered a great tree at our feet.  We rose up, overcome by a sacred horror, and fled.  And then an even more miraculous thing happened.  As the rolling thunder died away we heard in the silence and the darkness the sound of a bell.  A dog barked, and came running joyfully up to us.  Behind him was an old, white-haired priest, carrying a lantern in his hand.

“‘Dear God!’ said the priest.  ’How young they are!  Poor children!  My dog found you in the forest just before the storm broke, and ran back to my cave to fetch me.  I have brought some wine in my calabash.  Drink it, it will revive you.  Did you not hear the mission bell, which we ring every night so that strangers may find their way?’