There were many speeches by Tahitians, most of them long, and some referring to the happy couple and their progeny in the quaint way of the medieval French in the chamber scenes after marriage, as related in story and drama.  The pastors depressed their mouths, the deacons filled theirs with food to stifle their laughter, and the groom was the subject of flattering raillery.  The women did not sit down, because mostly occupied in the service; but the hetairae, Miri, Caroline, and Maraa, entertained the bachelors without criticism or competition.  The Tahitian women had no jealousy of these wantons, or, at least, no condemnation of them.  They have always had the place in Polynesia that certain ancient nations gave them, half admired and half tolerated.  They had official note once a year when the most skilful of them received the government cachet for excellence in dances before the governor and his cabinet celebrating the fall of the Bastile.  They became quite as well known in their country by their performance on those festal days as our greatest dancers or actresses.

When the mats became deserted, and the pastors had taken their carts for their homes, a little elated but still quoting holy writ, the nymphs and a dozen other girls of seething mirth took possession of the temple with a score of young men, and sang their love-songs and set the words to gesture and somatic harmony.  Brooke and I lay and mused as we listened and gazed.  When a youth crowned with ferns began to play a series of flageolets with his nose, the poet put his foot on mine.

“We are on Mount Parnassus,” he whispered.  “The women in faun skins will enter in a moment, swinging the thyrsus and beating the cymbals.  Pan peeps from behind that palm.  Those are his pipes, as sure as Linus went to the dogs.”

I met others of the royal family than the former queen, Marao, and her daughters, the Princesses Tekau and Boots, at an amuraa maa given at the mansion of Tetuanui.  The preparations occupied several days, and we all assisted in the hunt for the oysters, shrimp, crabs, mao, and fish, going by twos and threes to the lagoon, the reef, the stream, and the hills for their rarest titbits.  The pigs and fowl were out of the earth by the day of the feast, and Haamoura and Tatini set the table, a real one on legs.  The veranda was elegantly decorated with palms, but the table was below stairs in the cooler, darker, unwalled rooms, on the black pebbles brought from a far-away beach.  The pillars of the house were hung with banana-leaves and ferns, but the atmosphere was not vividly gay because of the high estate and age of Tetuanui and his visitors.