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See Raphelius on Acts vii. 43. where mention is made of the same offence against the positive commands of God. It may be distinctly proved, that the gods and goddesses of the heathens were accustomed to have their tabernacula and fana, and that some of them were portable. Virgil, we see in the Eneid, speaks of the Errantesque deos, agitataque numina Trojæ, as a great misfortune.
"Stop the singing so that we may hear what is said," said one of the chiefs in the taumualua. The song ceased; the hail was heard again, "Au mai le fana bring the gun"; and the natives report themselves to have replied in the affirmative, and declare that they had begun to back the boat. It is perhaps not needful to believe them.
He lit his pipe, and began to pace to and fro on the sandy path under the cool shade of the coco-palms and bread-fruit trees, thinking of an incident of his past life, which, although six long years had passed, neither his subsequent wanderings in many lands, nor his three latter years' monotonously happy and lazy existence with Melanie at Fana 'alu, had yet quite banished from his memory.
Melanie, who, native-like, was combing her hair in the sitting-room, rose from the mat upon which she was sitting and came to the door. 'What is it, Tom? she asked, leaning against the wall and drawing the comb slowly through her long, black locks. He will come for her again in about six weeks. Melanie's dark eyes glistened with pleasure. White women were rare visitors at lonely Fana 'alu.
The fana- ticism aroused in the townsfolk by this incident; the execution by torture of Jean Calas, accused as a Protestant of having hanged his son, who had gone over to the Church of Rome; the ruin of the family; the claustration of the daughters; the flight of the widow to Switzerland; her introduction to Voltaire; the excited zeal of that incomparable partisan, and the passionate persistence with which, from year to year, he pursued a reversal of judgment, till at last he obtained it, and devoted the tribunal of Toulouse to execration and the name of the victims to lasting wonder and pity, these things form part of one of the most interesting and touching episodes of the social history of the eighteenth century.
And now he was settled down at Fana 'alu, was doing well as a trader, and had acquired, in all its intensity, the usual dislike to the idea of ever going back to the world again, common enough to men of his nature in Polynesia. Besides that, Melanie understood him and he understood her. She was as open and honest as the day, worked hard for him in his store, and was sincerely attached to him.
Such was the end of the vision of Charles du Breil and the Colony of New France. Masters, the trader at Fana 'alu, was walking up the beach to his house, reading a letter which he had just received from the captain of a passing vessel. It was from his employers in Sydney, 'We are confident that Mrs Masters and yourself will do all you can to render the lady's stay at Fana 'alu agreeable to her.
A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of this class seek in the crowd circum fana for a warmth in common, which they do not possess singly.
Perhaps, among the women of Fana 'alu, she stood highest in public estimation, notwithstanding her bar sinister, for she was open-handed and generous, and both the chiefs wife and Lepeka, the teacher's grand lady, were of common blood whilst she, despite her antecedents in Apia, was of the best in Manono the birthplace of the noble families of Samoa.
So he was well content. There was much commotion in the village when the trading barque arrived and lay-to off Fana 'alu. Melanie, in a dress of spotless white muslin, flitted to and fro within the house, smoking cigarettes and cursing her women assistants' laziness and stupidity.
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