nough has been said to show why Moipu should be deposed; and
in Paaaeua the French had found a reputable substitute. He went always
scrupulously dressed, and looked the picture of propriety, like a dark,
handsome, stupid, and probably religious young man hot from a European
funeral. In character he seemed the ideal of what is known as the good
citizen. He wore gravity like an ornament. None could more nicely
represent the desired character as an appointed chief, the outpost of
civilisation and reform. And yet, were the French to go and native
manners to revive, fancy beholds him crowned with old men's beards and
crowding with the first to a man-eating festival. But I must not seem to
be unjust to Paaaeua. His respectability went deeper than the skin; his
sense of the becoming sometimes nerved him for unexpected rigours.

One evening Captain Otis and Mr. Osbourne were on shore in the village.
All was agog; dancing had begun; it was plain it was to be a night of
festival, and our adventurers were overjoyed at their good fortune. A
strong fall of rain drove them for shelter to the house of Paaaeua,
where they were made welcome, wiled into a chamber, and shut in.
Presently the rain took off, the fun was to begin in earnest, and the
young bloods of Atuona came round the house and called to my
fellow-travellers through the interstices of the wall. Late into the
night the calls were continued and resumed, and sometimes mingled with
taunts; late into the night the prisoners, tantalised by the noises of
the festival, renewed their efforts to escape. But all was vain; right
across the door lay that god-fearing householder, Paaaeua, feigning
sleep; and my friends had to forego their junketing. In this incident,
so delightfully European, we thought we could detect three strands of
sentiment. In the first place, Paaaeua had a charge of souls: these were
young men, and he judged it right to withhold them from the primrose
path. Secondly, he was a public character, and it was not fitting that
his guests should countenance a festival of which he disapproved. So
might some strict clergyman at home address a worldly visitor: "Go to
the theatre if you like, but, by your leave, not from my house!"
Thirdly, Paaaeua was a man jealous and with some cause (as shall be
shown) for jealousy; and the feasters were the satellites of his
immediate rival, Moipu.

For the adoption had caused much excitement in the village; it made the
strangers popul