Thereupon a green serpent darts from the bushes, glides towards him and stings him on the arm, then attacks the horse, which succumbs first. Then Chiwantopel says to his horse:
"'Adieu, faithful brother! Enter into rest! I have loved you,
and you have served me well. Adieu. Soon I will rejoin you!'
Then to the snake: 'Thanks, little sister, you have put an end to
my wanderings.'"
Then he cried with grief and spoke his prayer:
"'Sovereign God, take me soon! I have tried to know thee,
and to keep thy law! O, do not suffer my body to fall into corruption
and decay, and to furnish the vultures with food!' A
smoking crater is perceived at a distance, the rumbling of an
earthquake is heard, followed by a trembling of the ground."
Chiwantopel cries in the delirium of suffering, while
the earth covers his body:
"I have kept my body inviolate. Ah! She understands. Ja-ni-wa-ma,
Ja-ni-wa-ma, thou who comprehendeth me."
Chiwantopel's prophecy is a repetition of Longfellow's
"Hiawatha," where the poet could not escape sentimentality,
and at the close of the career of the hero, Hiawatha,
he brings in the Savior of the white people, in the
guise of the arriving illustrious representatives of the
Christian religion and morals. (One thinks of the work
of redemption of the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru!)
With this prophecy of Chiwantopel, the personality of the
author is again placed in the closest relation to the hero,
and, indeed, as the real object of Chiwantopel's longing.
