CHAPTER XXV.

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THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR;

OR,

NATION-MAKING.

BY

WILFRID CHÂTEAUCLAIR

[hand written: i.e. William Douw Lighthall]

MONTREAL:

WM. DRYSDALE & CO., PUBLISHERS, 232 ST. JAMES STREET, 1888.

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one

thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, by WM. DRYSDALE & CO. in the

Office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PREFACE.

The chief aim of this book is the perhaps too bold one--_to map out a

future for the Canadian nation_, which has been hitherto drifting

without any plan.

A lesser purpose of it is to make some of the atmosphere of French

Canada understood by those who speak English. The writer hopes to have

done some service to these brothers of ours in using as his hero one of

those lofty characters which their circle has produced more than once.

The book is not a political work. It must by no means be taken for a

Grit diatribe. The writer is an old-fashioned Tory and an old-fashioned

Liberal: all his parties are dead, and he is at present in a universal

Opposition. The party names he uses are, therefore, in any present-day

application, simply typical, and the work is not a political one in any

current sense.

There are those who will say his characters are untrue and impossible.

To these he would answer: Everything here, apart from a few little

inaccuracies, is studied from the life, and you can find item, man and

date for the essential particulars.

A charge of Metaphysics will be advanced also, by a generation not too

willing to think. _Mon ami_, what we give you of that is not very hard.

If you cannot understand it, leave it out or study Emerson. The main

subject of the book cannot be treated otherwise than with an attempt to

ground it deeply.

If Bigotry may not impossibly be laid to the author by some, because he

has drawn two or three of the characters from unusual quarters and

described them freely; the many who know him will limit any phrases to

the several characters as individuals.

Lastly, the book is not a novel. It consequently escapes the awful

charge of being 'a novel with a purpose.' None can feel more conscious

of its imperfections than the writer, or will regret more if it treads

on any sensitive toes.

WILFRID CHÂTEAUCLAIR. _Dormillière, March, 1888._

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIÈRE 1

II. THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR 4

III. HAVILAND'S IDEA 7

IV. THE MANUSCRIPT 13

V. CONFRÉRIE 16

VI. ALEXANDRA 20

VII. QUINET 22

VIII. THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE 25

IX. ASSORTED ENTHUSIASMS 29

X. THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE 33

XI. THE CAVE 43

XII. LA MÈRE PATRIE 48

XIII. SOMETHING MORE OF QUINET 52

XIV. THE ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERSHIP 54

XV. THE LIFE OF LEADERSHIP 57

BOOK II.

XVI. A POLITICAL SERMON 67

XVII. ZOTIQUE'S RECEPTION 72

XVIII. THE AMERICAN FRANCE 79

XVIII. A DISAPPEARING ORDER 86

XIX. HUMAN NATURE 88

XX. CHEZ-NOUS 91

XXI. DELIVER US FROM THE-EVIL ONE 100

XXII. THE MANUFACTORY OF REFLECTIONS 104

XXIII. THE STATESMAN'S DREAM 106

XXIV. THE INSTITUTE 109

XXV. THE CAMPAIGN PLAN 111

XXV. THE LOW-COUNTRY SUNRISE 120

XXVI. THE IDEAL STATE 126

XXVII. JOSEPHTE 134

XXVIII. GRANDMOULIN 139

XXIX. CHAMILLY 145

XXX. AN ORATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES 149

XXXI. LIBERGENT 151

XXXII. MISÉRICORDE 153

XXXIII. BLEUS 156

XXXIV. THE FREEMASON 158

XXXV. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 162

XXXVI. ZOTIQUE'S MISGIVINGS 168

XXXVII. A CRIME! 170

XXXVIII. THE PASSING OF THE HOST 173

XXXIX. THE ELECTION 175

XL. HAVILAND REFUSES 178

XLI. FIAT JUSTITIA 180

BOOK III.

XLII. QUINET'S CONTRIBUTION 187

XLIII. HAVILAND'S PRINCIPLE 191

XLIV. DAUGHTER OF THE GODS 194

XLV. NOT THE END 199

BOOK I.

THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR.

CHAPTER I.

THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIÈRE.

In the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy odd, about six years

after the confederation of the Provinces into the Dominion of Canada, an

Ontarian went down into Quebec,--an event then almost as rare as a

Quebecker entering Ontario.

"It's a queer old Province, and romantic to me," said the Montrealer

with whom old Mr. Chrysler (the Ontarian) fell in on the steamer

descending to Sorel, and who had been giving him the names of the

villages they passed in the broad and verdant panorama of the shores of

the St. Lawrence.

In truth, it _is_ a queer, romantic Province, that ancient Province of

Quebec,--ancient in store of heroic and picturesque memories, though the

three centuries of its history would look foreshortened to people of

Europe, and Canada herself is not yet alive to the far-reaching import

of each deed and journey of the chevaliers of its early days.

Here, a hundred and thirty years after the Conquest, a million and a

half of Normans and Bretons, speaking the language of France and

preserving her institutions, still people the shores of the River and

the Gulf. Their white cottages dot the banks like an endless string of

pearls, their willows shade the hamlets and lean over the courses of

brooks, their tapering parish spires nestle in the landscape of their

new-world _patrie_.

"What is that?" exclaimed the Ontarian, suddenly, lifting his hand, his

eyes brightening with an interest unwonted for a man beyond middle age.

The steamer was passing close to the shore, making for a pier some

distance ahead; and, surmounting the high bank, a majestic scene arose,

facing them like an apparition. It was a grey Tudor mansion of

weather-stained stone, with churchy pinnacles, a strange-looking bright

tin roof, and, towering around the sides and back of its grounds a lofty

walk of pine trees, marshalled in dark, square, overshadowing array, out

of which, as if surrounded by a guard of powerful forest spirits, the

mansion looked forth like a resuscitated Elizabethan reality. Its mien

seemed to say: "I am not of yesterday, and shall pass tranquilly on into

the centuries to come: old traditions cluster quietly about my gables;

and rest is here."

"That is the Manoir of Dormillière," replied the Montrealer, as the

steamer, whose paddles had stopped their roar, glided silently by.

Impressive was the Manoir, with its cool shades and air of erect

lordliness, its solemn grey walls and pinnacled gables, the beautiful

depressed arch of its front door; and its dream-like foreground of river

mirroring its majestic guard of pines.

"I knew," said Chrysler, "that you had your seigniories in Quebec, and

some sort of a feudal history, far back, but I never dreamed of such

seats."

"O, the Seigneurs[A] have not yet altogether disappeared," returned the

Montrealer. "Twenty years ago their position was feudal enough to be

considered oppressive; and here and there still, over the Province, in

some grove of pines or elms, or at some picturesque bend of a river, or

in the shelter of some wooded hill beside the sea, the old-fashioned

residence is to be descried, seated in its broad _demesne_ with trees,

gardens and capacious buildings about it, and at no great distance an

old round windmill."

[Footnote A: The old French gentry or _noblesse_]

"Who lives in this one?"

"The Havilands. An English name but considered French;--grandfather an

officer, an English captain, who married the heiress of the old

D'Argentenayes, of this place."

"Mr. Haviland is the name of the person I am going to visit."

"The M.P.?"

"Yes, he is an M.P."

"A fine young fellow, then. His first name is Chamilly. His father was a

queer man--the Honorable Chateauguay--perhaps you've heard of _him_? He

was of a sort of an antiquarian and genealogical turn, you know, and

made a hobby of preserving old civilities and traditions, so that

Dormillière is said to be somewhat of a rum place."

The Ontarian thanked his acquaintance and got ready for landing at the

pier.

CHAPTER II.

THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR.

A young man stepped forward and greeted him heartily. It was the

"Chamilly" Haviland of whom they had been speaking.

Mr. Chrysler and he were members together of the Dominion Parliament and

the present visit was the outcome of a special purpose. "It is a pity

the rest of the country does not know my people more closely," Haviland

wrote in his invitation:--"If you will do my house the honor of your

presence, I am sure there is much of their life to which we could

introduce you."

"I am delighted you arrive at this time;" he exclaimed. "My election is

coming." And he talked cheerfully and busied himself making the visitor

comfortable in his drag.

As luck will have it, the enactment of one of the old local customs

occurs as they sit waiting for room to drive off the pier. The rustic

gathering of Lower-Canadian _habitants_ who are crowding it with their

native ponies and hay-carts and their stuff-coated, deliberate persons,

is beginning to break apart as the steamer swings heavily away. The

pedestrians are already stringing off along the road and each jaunty

Telesphore and Jacques, the driver of a horse, leaps jovially into his

cart; but all the carts are halting a moment by some curious common

accord. Why is this?

Suddenly a loud voice shouts:

"MALBROUCK IS DEAD!"

A pause follows.

"_It is not true_" one forcibly contradicts.

"Yes, he is dead!" reiterates the first.

"It is not true!" insists the other.

"He is dead and in his bier!"

The second is incredulous:

"You but tell me that to jeer?"

But the crowd who have been smiling gleefully over the proceedings,

affect to resign themselves to the bad news of Malbrouck's death, and

all altogether groan in hoarse bass mockery:

"ÇA VA MA-A-A-L!!"[B]

Every one immediately dashes off in all haste, whips crack, wheels fly,

and shouting, racing and singing along all the roads, the country-folk

rattle away to their homes. Our two turn their wheels towards the

Manor-house, gleefully amused.

[Footnote B: That is bad!]

"Who is Malbrouck?" Chrysler enquired.

"Marlborough. That must have been originally enacted in the French camps

that fought him in Flanders. I fancy the soldiers of Montcalm shouting

it at night among their tents here as they held the country against the

English."

They drove along looking about the country and conversing. Chrysler

breathed in the fresh draughts which swept across the wide stretches of

river-view that lay open in bird-like perspective from the crest of the

terraces on which the Dormillière _côte_, or countryside, was perched,

and along which the road ran.

"Come up, my little buds!" the young man cried in French, to a pair of

baby girls who, holding each others' hands, were crowding on the edge of

the ditch-weeds, out of the wheels' way.

"Houp-la!" he cried, helping the laughing little things up one after the

other by their hands, and then whipping forward. "How much, are you

going to give me for this? Do you think we drive people for nothing,

eh?" The children nestled themselves down with beaming faces. "Tell me,

_bidoux_,"[C] he laughed again, "What are you going to give me?"

[Footnote C: Bidoux is a term of endearment for children.]

Both hung their heads. One of them quickly threw her arms up around his

neck and, kissing him, said, "I will pay you this way," and the other

began to follow suit.

"Stop, stop, my dears. You must not stifle your seigneur," he cried in

the highest glee, returning their embraces.

One of our poets claims that there is something of earthliness in the

kisses of all but children:--

"But in a little child's warm kiss

Is naught but heaven above,

So sweet it is, so pure it is,

So full of faith and love."

So it seemed to Chrysler as he saw this first of the relations between

the young Seigneur and his people.

CHAPTER III.

HAVILAND'S IDEA.

"GRAND MASTER.--O, if you knew what our astrologers say of the coming

age and of our age, that has in it more history within a hundred years

than all the world had in four thousand years before."

--CAMPANELLA--_The City of the Sun_.

When they arrived before the Manor House front, Mr. Chrysler could

almost believe himself in some ancestral place in Europe, the pinnacles

clustered with such a tranquil grace and the walk of pines surrounding

the place seemed to frown with such cool, dark shades.

Within, he found it a comfortable mingling of ancient family portraits

and hanging swords strung around the walls, elaborate, ornate old mantel

ornaments, an immense carved fireplace, and such modern conveniences as

Eastlake Cabinets, student's lamps and electric bell. In a distant

corner of the large united dining and drawing-room, the evidently

favorite object was a full-size cast of the Apollo Belvedere.

Chamilly introduced him respectfully to his grandmother, Madame

Bois-Hébert, an aged, quiet lady, with dark eyes.

In the expressive face of the young man could be traced a resemblance to

hers, and the grace of form and movement which his firmer limbs and

greater activity gave him, were evidently something like what the

dignity of mien and carriage that were still left her by age had once

been.

He was tall and had a handsome make, and kindly, generous face. The

features of his countenance were marked ones, denoting clear intelligent

opinions; and his hair, moustache and young beard, of jet black,

contrasted well with the color which enriched his brunet cheek. Whether

it was due to a happy chance or to the surroundings of his life, or

whether descent from superior races has something in it, existence had

been generous to him in attractions.

When Madame withdrew, after the tea, he gave Mr. Chrysler a chair by the

fireplace in the drawing-room end of the apartment, for it was a cool

evening, and saying:--"Do you mind this? It is a liking of mine,"

stepped over to the lamps and turned them down, throwing the light of

the burning wood upon the pictures and _objets d'art_ which adorned the

apartment.

The great cast of Apollo, though in shadow, stood out against a

background of deep red hangings in its corner and attracted the older

gentleman's remarks.

"I have arranged the surroundings to recall my first impression of him

in the Vatican Galleries," said the other. "I was wandering among that

riches of fine statues and had begun to feel it an _embarras_, as our

own phrase goes, when I came into a chamber and saw in the midst of it

this most beautiful of the deities rising lightly before me, looking

ahead after the arrow he has shot."

"You have been in Italy, then?"

"I have, Sir," he answered, "I have had my Italian days like

Longfellow;" and, looking into the fire, he continued low, almost to

himself:--

"... Land of the Madonna:

How beautiful it is! It seems a garden

Of Paradise ... Long years ago

I wandered as a youth among its bowers

And never from my heart has faded quite

Its memory, that like a summer sunset,

Encircles with a ring of purple light

All the horizon of my youth."

As Chrysler regarded him then and heard this free expression of feeling

he could not but feel that Haviland was a foreigner, different from the

British peoples.

"And yet," mused Haviland, in a moment again, "Have we not a more than

Italy in this beautiful country of our own?"

After weighing his companion in thought for a few moments longer,

according to a habit of his, the elder man recollected another matter:--

"You have resigned your seat in the Dominion House to enter the

Provincial. Why is that?"

"A new turn has arrived in affairs, sir. The Honorable Genest's fever

has broken him down. He cannot fill a place where activity is needed.

Until the fever, he was an influence, you know, in the Dominion House,

while I was in the Local. After it, he arranged that we should exchange

seats, as the Legislature has latterly been so quiet. Lately, however,

Picault's corruptionists, whom we thought crushed, have made another

assault for the moneys, bullied, lied, and bribed, weighed their silver

to the Iscariots, and edged Genest out of his seat."

"Who is their man here?"

"Libergent, lawyer. The election was annulled for frauds, but by moving

the heavens and earth of the Courts they saved Libergent from

disqualification, and now he appears again against us. Our cause calls

for energetic action, in the Legislature, so Genest and I are changing

places back again."

"I hope you will not be lost to us long?"

"No longer than I can help. The national work will never cease to

attract me. _Is it not sublime this nation-making?_--that this

generation, and particularly a few individuals like you, sir, and myself

should be honored by Heaven with the task of founding a people! It is as

grand as the nebulous making of stars!"

The seigneur's manner was full of enthusiasm.

"I can't see it as you young men do," Chrysler said, in an inflection

suggestive of regret. "What may we effect beyond trying to keep

Government pure and prudent, and we are often powerless to do even that?

Nor can we form the future character of the people much, but must leave

that to themselves, don't you think?"

"A partial truth," he returned, meditatively,--"a great one too. When I

go into the country among the farmers, I often think: 'The people are

the true nation-makers.'"--

"And Providence has apparently designed it," the old man proceeded in

his gentle strain, "to be our modest lot to follow the lead of other

lands more developed and better situated. Where do you discover anything

striking in the outlook?"

"I do not care for a thing because it is striking; but I care for a

great thing if it is really great. Do not think me too daring if I

suggest for a moment that Canada should aim to lead the nations instead

of being led. I believe that she can do it, if she only has enough

persistence. A people should plain for a thousand years and be willing

to wait centuries. Still, merely to lead is very subordinate in my view:

a nation should only exist, and will only exist permanently, if it has a

_reason of existence_. France has hers in the needs of the inhabitants

of a vast plain; local Britain in those of an island; with Israel it was

religion; with Imperial Rome, organised civilization; Panhellenism had

the mission of intellect; Canada too, to exist, must have a good reason

why her people shall live and act together."

"What then is our 'reason of existence?'"

"It must be an _aim_, a _work_," he said soberly.

The elder man was surprised. "My dear Haviland," he exclaimed, "Are you

sure you are practical?"

"I think I am practical, Mr. Chrysler," Haviland replied firmly. "I have

that objection so thoroughly in mind, that I would not expose my news to

an ordinary man. It is because you are broad, liberal and willing

to-examine matters in a large aspect, and that I think that in a large

aspect I shall be justified, as at least not unreasonable, that I open

my heart to you. Believe me, I am not unpractical, but only seeking a

higher plane of practicality."

"But how do you propose to get the people to follow this aim?"

"If they were shown a sensible reason why they _ought_ to be a nation,"

said he with calm distinctness,--"a reason more simple and great than

any that could be advanced against it--it is all they would require. I

propose a clear ideal for them--a vision of what Canada ought to be and

do; towards which they can look, and feel that every move of progress

adds a definite stage to a definite and really worthy edifice."

"The-oretical" Chrysler murmured slowly, shaking his head.

"For a man, but not for a People!" the young Member cried.

Both were silent some moments. The elder looked up at last "What sort of

Ideal would you offer them?"

"Simply Ideal Canada, and the vista of her proper national work, the

highest she might be, and the best she might perform, situated as she

is, all time being given and the utmost stretch of aims. As Plato's

mind's eye saw his Republic, Bacon his New Atlantis, More his Utopia; so

let us see before and above us the Ideal Canada, and boldly aim at the

programme of doing something in the world."

"Can you show me anything special that we can do in the world?" the old

man asked. His caution was wavering a little. "It is not impossible I

may be with you," he added.

The Ontarian, in fact, did not object in a spirit of cavil. He did so

apparently neither to doubt nor to believe, but simply to enquire, for

in life he was a business man. His father had left him large lumber

interests to preserve, and the responsibility had framed his prudence.

He took the same kind of care in examining the joints of Haviland's

scheme as he would have exacted about the pegging or chains of a timber

crib which was going to run a rapid.

"Why, here for instance," answered Haviland, "are great problems at our

threshold:--Independence, Imperial Federation, both of them bearing on

all advance in civilized organizations,--Unification of

Races--development of our vast and peculiar areas. Education, too,

Foreign Trade, Land, the Classes--press upon our attention."

"You would have us awake to some such new sense of our situation as

Germany did in Goethe's day?"

"I pray for no long-haired enthusiasts. We have business different from

altering the names of the Latin divinities into Teutonic gutturals."

"The country itself will see to that. We have the fear of the nations

round about in our eyes," grimly said Chrysler; then he added: "I have

never known you as well as I wish, Haviland. You speak of this work as

if you had some definite system of it, while all the notions I have ever

met or formed of such a thing have been partial or vague."

Chamilly stood up and the firelight shone brightly and softly upon his

flushed cheek; the dark portraits on the walls seemed to look out upon

him as if they lived, and the statue of Apollo to rise and associate its

dignity with his.

"I _have_ a system," he said. "I almost feel like saying a commission of

revelation. The reason, sir, why I asked you here was that you, my

venerated friend, might understand my ideas and sympathize with them,

and help me."

He hesitated.

"I will ask you to read a manuscript, of which you will find the first

half in your room. The remainder is not written yet"

Pierre, the butler, brought in coffee and they talked more quietly of

other subjects.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MANUSCRIPT.

"When yellow-locked and crystal-eyed,

I dreamed green woods among

* * * * *

O, then the earth was young"

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

When Chrysler went up to his bedchamber he found the following on a

table between two candles:--

BOOK OF ENTHUSIASMS.

_Narrative of Chamilly d'Argentenaye Haviland_.

At the Friars' School at Dormillière, racing with gleeful playmates

around the shady playground, or glibly reciting frequent "Paters" and

"Ave Marias," other ideas of life scarce ever entered my head; till one

day my father spoke, out of his calm silence, to my grandmother; and

with the last of his two or three sentences, "I don't destine him for a

Thibetan prayer-mill," (she had fondly intended me for the priesthood)

he sat down to a letter, the result of which was that I found myself in

a week at the Royal Grammar School at Montreal. Here, where the great

city appeared a wilderness of palaces and the large School an almost

universe of youthful Crichtons whose superiorities seemed to me the

greater because I knew little of their English tongue, the contrasts

with my rural Dormillière were so striking and continual that I was set

thinking by almost every occurrence.

A French boy is nothing if not imaginative. The time seemed to me a

momentous epoch big with the question: "What path shall I follow?"

I admired the prize boys who were so clever and famous. I took a prize

myself, and felt heaven in the clapping.

I admired those equally who were skilled at athletics. I saw a

tournament of sports and envied the sparkling cups and medals.

These,--to be a brilliant man of learning _and an athlete_--seemed to me

the two great careers of existence!

The first step, out of a number that were to come, towards a great

discovery, was thus unconsciously by me taken. What is greater than

Life? what discovery is more momentous than of its profound meaning?

Anything I am or may do is the outcome of this one discovery I later

made, which seems to me the very Secret of the World.

* * * * *

But hold:--there is a memory in my earlier recollection, more fixed than

the trees--they were poplars--of the Friars' School playground. I leaped

into a seat beside my father in the carriage one day, and we drove back

far into the country. Green and pleasant all the landscape we passed. Or

did it pass us, I was thinking in my weird little mind? We arrived at

length at wide gates and drove up an avenue, lined by stately trees and

running between broad grain fields, which led to a court shaded with

leafy giants of elms and cobbled in an antique fashion; and under the

woof of boughs and leaves overhead ran a very long old country-house,

cottage-built. Surpassingly peaceful, and secluded was its air. It had

oblique-angle-faced, shingled gables, and many windows with thin-ribbed

blinds; and a high bit of gallery. On one hand near it, under the hugest

of the trees was a cool, white, well-house of stone, like a little

tower. I remember vividly the red-stained door of that. On the other

hand, a short distance off, commenced the capacious pile of the barns.

Close at the back of the house ran a long wooded hill.

It was the ancient Manoir of Esneval--the Maison Blanche.--one of the

relics of a feudal time. As we drove in and our wheels stopped, a little

exquisite girl stood on the gallery, looking. Her child's face eyed us

with wonder but courage for a few moments; then she ran within and, to

the pang and regret of my heart, she appeared no more.

The little, brave face of the Manoir d'Esneval haunted me, child as I

was, for years.

CHAPTER V.

CONFRERIE.

McGill University sits among her grounds upon the beginning of the slope

of Mount Royal which lifts its foliage-foaming crest above it like an

immense surge just about to break and bury the grey halls, the verdant

Campus and the lovely secluded corner of brookside park. It owes its

foundation to a public-spirited gentleman merchant of other days, the

Honorable James McGill, whose portrait, in queue and ruffles, is brought

forth in state at Founder's Festival, and who in the days of the

Honorable Hudson's Bay Co.'s prime, stored his merchandize in the stout

old blue warehouses[D] by the Place Jacques-Cartier, and thought out his

far-sighted gifts to the country in the retirement of this pretty manor

by the Mountain.

[Footnote D: NOTE--Now turned into the restaurant called the "Chateau de

Ramezay," and soon probably to be demolished.]

To that little corner of brookside park it was often my custom to

withdraw in the evenings. The trees, little and great, were my

companions, and the sky looked down like a friend, between their leaves.

One night, at summer's close, when the dark blue of the sky was

unusually deep and luminous, and the moon only a tender crescent of

light, I lay on the grass in the darkness, under my favorite tree, an

oak, among whose boughs the almost imperceptible moonbeams rioted. I was

hidden by the shadows of a little grove just in front of me. The path

passed between, about a couple of yards away. Every stroller seemed to

have gone, and I had, I thought, the peace of the surroundings to

myself.

All were not yet gone, however, it seemed. The peculiar echo of steps on

the hard sandy path indicated someone approaching. A shadow of a form

just appeared in the darkness along the path, and turning off,

disappeared for a moment into the dark grove. A deep sigh of despair

surprised me. I lay still, and in a moment the form came partly between

me and a glimmering of the moonlight between the branches. It was

apparently a man, at least. I strained my attention and kept perfectly

still. There was something extraordinary about the movements of the

shadow.

Suddenly, it stepped forward a stride, I saw an arm go up to the head,

both these became exposed in a open space of moonlight, and a glimmer

reached me from something in the hand. Like a flash it came across me

that I was in the presence of the extraordinary act of suicide. The

glimmer was from the barrel and mountings of a revolver! Those glintings

were unmistakable.

I would have leaped up and sprung into the midst of the scene at once

had not something else been plain at the same moment, which startled me

and froze my blood.

_The arm, the face, were those of my classmate Quinet!_ An involuntary

start of mine rustled a fallen dry branch, and the snap of a dry twig of

it seemed to dissolve his determination; the hand dropped, he sprang

off--and rushed quickly away in the darkness.

Quinet,--the life of this strange fellow always was extraordinary. There

were several of our French-Canadians in college and they differed in

some general respects from the English, but this striking-colored

compatriot of mine, with his dark-red-brown hair, and dark-red-brown

eyes set in his yellow complexion, was even from them a separated

figure. He was fearfully clever: thought himself neglected: brooded upon

it. His strange face and strange writings sometimes published, had often

fastened themselves upon me. Now it was undoubtedly my duty to save

him.

I followed him to his home, went up to his room and confronted him with

the whole story,--myself more agitated than he was. I remember his

passionate state:--"Haviland, do not wonder at me. Mankind are the key

to the universe; and I am sick of a world of turkey-cocks. To speak

frankly is to be proscribed; to be kind to the unfortunate is to lose

standing; to think deeply brings the reputation of a fool. No one

understands me. They do not understand me, the imbeciles!--_Coglioni!_"

cried he fiercely, grinding the Corsican cry in his teeth and rising to

walk about. "As Napoleon the Great despised them so do I, Quinet. They

never but made one wretched who had genius in him. And _I_ have it, and

dare to say that in their faces. The weapon for neglect is contempt! If

the wretched shallow world can make me miserable, they can never at

least take away the delight of my superiority. I, who would have

sympathized with and helped them and given my talents for them, shall

look down with but scorn. Yes, I delight in these proud expressions, I

am not ashamed of testifying, and one day I shall assert myself and make

them bow to me, and shall hate them, and persecute them, and anatomize

them for the derision of each other!"

His conduct might have seemed completely lunatical to an Englishman. It

was strange in any case. But to me it was his physique that was wrong,

and I should see that all was put right. "Stick to me, Quinet," said I

to him as soothingly as possible, "and I will always stick to you.

Soyons amis, bon marin, 'Be we friends, good sailor;' and sail over

every sea fearlessly. Neither of us is understood, perhaps because our

critics do not understand themselves."

"Be it so," he said, dejectedly resigning himself.

His odd colour and eyes gave a kind of unearthly tone to the interview.

I met him a few days later in almost as great a depression again.

"It's these English. I hate them. It is necessary that I should kill

one."

"My dearest misanthrope," I replied, "what you need is some

horse-riding."

CHAPTER VI.

ALEXANDRA.

Maintenant que la belle saison étale les splendeurs de sa robe.

--BENJ. SULTE.

Listen! A note is struck which, with an old magic, transforms the world!

In the dying beauty of an autumntide, Love Divine, last and most potent

of the goddesses, came walking through the woods and diffused the

mystery of heaven over the forest paths, the trees, the streets of the

town; and she melted into a sweet and noble human face--a face I caught

but for a moment clearly on one of our galloping rides, Quinet's and

mine; yet it remained and still looks upon me in the holy of holies of

my heart's inner chapel.

"What a rare autumn! What perfect foliage! What cool weather!" Quinet

had wakened up beyond my expectations, and soon we were racing along,

laughing and shouting repartees at each other. We reined in at last to a

walk.

"Mehercle, be Charon propitious to thee when thy soul meets him at the

river in Hades," he cried. "Be he propitious to thee, Chamilly, for

making me a horseman!"

Then the memorable picture;--we speeding along that bit of road in the

Park, the Mountain-side towering precipitously above us on the left and

sloping below us in groves on the right; our horses galloping faster and

faster; our dash into a bold rocky cutting; our consternation!--a young

maiden picking up autumn leaves within two yards before our galloping

horses! Near by, I remember quite clearly now her companion, and not far

off the carriage with golden-bay horses.

"Stop!" I shouted.

Even as I shouted, I was already past her, and the brush of Quinet's

horse flying as near on the other side of her, snatched off her bouquet

of autumn leaves and strewed them in a cloud. Thank God only that we had

not gone over her! The peril was frightful. My horse had had his head

down and I could not pull him up.

But what excited me most was the courage of the girl. She started; but

rose straight and firm, facing us as we charged. Even in that instant, I

could see changes of pallor and color leap across her brow and

cheek--could see them as if with supernatural vividness. Yet her eyes

lighted proudly, her form held itself erect, and her clear features

triumphed with the lines as if of a superior race. She could only be

compared, standing there, to an angel guarding Paradise! How fair she

was! And the face was the face of the little girl of the Manoir of

Esneval!

After the agitations of our apologies I retained just enough of my wits

about me to enquire her name. "Alexandra Grant," she said gracefully

enough. Ah yes, I recollected--the Grants, within a generation, had

bought the Esneval Seigniory, and its Manor-house.

CHAPTER VII.

QUINET.

Now a little more of Quinet. Small, gaunt and strange-looking, I pitied

him because he was a victim of our stupid educational wrecking systems.

His was too fine an organization to have been exposed to the blunders of

the scholastic managers; for his course had exhibited signs of no less

than the genius he had claimed. Most of his years of study had been

spent as a precocious youth in that great Seminary of the Sulpician

Fathers, the _Collége de Montréal_. The close system of the seminaries,

however, being meant for developing priests, is apt to produce two

opposite poles of young men--the Ultramontane and the Red Radical. Of

the bravest and keenest of the latter Quinet was. If newspapers were

forbidden to be brought into the College: he had a regular supply of the

most liberal. If all books but those first submitted to approval were

_tabu_: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any

of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even

by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from

the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the

Seraphic St. Francis. He was an _enfant terrible_; Revolutionist

Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his

literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by

subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the leader of a group who

might some day give trouble to the Reverend gentlemen who managed the

"nation Canadienne." And yet, "What a declaimer of Cicero and Bossuet! I

love him," exclaimed the professor of Rhetoric, in the black-robed

consultations. "His meridians do me credit!" cried the astronomical

Father.

No--he was far too promising a youth to estrange by the expulsion

without ceremony which any vulgar transgressor would have got for the

little finger of his offences. The record ended at length with the

student himself, towards the approach of his graduation, when an article

appeared in that unpardonable sheet _La Lanterne du Progrès_, acutely

describing and discussing the defects of the system of Seminary

education, making a flippant allusion to a circular of His Grace the

Archbishop, who prided himself on his style; and signed openly with the

boy's name at the bottom!

Imagine the severe faces of the outraged gowned, the avoidance aghast by

terrified playmates--the council with closed doors, his disappearance

into the mysterious Office to confront the Directeur alone, and the

interview with him at white-heat strain beginning mildly: "My son" and

ending with icy distinctness: "Then, sir, Go!"

He did go. He came to the Grammar School during my last session there,

and at the end of it swept away the whole of the prizes, with the Dux

Medal of the school, notwithstanding his imperfect knowledge of English,

and was head in every subject, _except good conduct and punctuality_.

At this he nearly killed himself. Proceeding, he carried off the highest

scholarship among the Matriculants at the University, where his

classical papers were said to be perfect. All through these two years

and a half of College progress since, he had been astonishing us with

similar terrible application and results. Professors encouraged, friends

applauded, we wondered at and admired him. We did not envy him, however,

for he became, as I commenced by saying, a pitiable wreck. Look at him

as he stoops upon the horse!

* * * * *

Good old Father St. Esprit--oldest and humblest of the Order in the

College--who was his friend, and whom everybody, and especially Quinet,

venerated, took a private word with him before he departed from that

institution.

"My son," said he, "I see the quality of thy mind, and that the Church

of God will not be able to contain thee. Thou mayst wander, poor child;

yet carry thou at least in thy heart ever love of what thou seest to be

good, and respect for what is venerated by another. Put this word away

in thy soul in memory of thy friend the Père St. Esprit."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE.

"What is there in this blossom-hour should knit

An omen in with every simple word?"

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

During the next few days I could do nothing of interest to me but make

prudent enquiries about Alexandra Grant. I remember an answer of Little

Steele's "Ah--_That_ is a beautiful girl!"

"You _were_ beautiful, Alexandra!"

I caught glimpses of her on the street and in her carriage; memory marks

the spots by a glow of light; they are my holy places. I saw her open

her purse for a blind man begging on a church step. I watched her turn

and speak politely to a ragged newsgirl. One day, when Quinet and I,

coming down from College and seeing a little boy fall on the path, threw

away our books and set him on his feet, it was _her_ face of approval

that beamed out of a carriage window on the opposite side of the street.

I was introduced to her at the Mackenzie's, at a toboggan party given

for Lockhart, the son, my friend.

Shall I ever forget our slide on the toboggan hill and my emotions in

that simple question, "Will you slide with me?"

I was already far into a _grande passion_,--foolish and desperate.

She assented, stepped over to my toboggan kindly, sat down and placed

her feet under its curled front. The crown of the hill about us was

illumined by a circle of Chinese lanterns, and the moon, rising in the

East, reflected a dim light on the fields of snow. I lifted the

toboggan, gave the little run and leaped on at the end of the cushion,

with my foot out behind to steer. Immediately we shot down the first

descent, and as I straightened the course of the quick-flying leaf of

maple wood, I felt it correspond as if intelligently. The second descent

spurred our rate to an electric speed. As I bent forward, the snow

flying against my face, the sound of sliding growing louder and

shriller, and my foot demanding a sterner pressure to steer, a surge of

exhilarating emotions suddenly rushed over me, and a thought cried "This

is Alexandra! Alexandra whom you love."

"Alexandra!" my heart returned, "I am so near you!" Her two thick golden

plaits of hair fell just before my eyes. She was sitting calm and

straight. The toboggan shot on like a flash, and the drift beat fiercely

in my eyes. But why should I heed? Away! Away! Leave everything behind

us and speed thou out with me, love, into some region where I can reveal

to thee alone this earnest soul which thou has awakened into such

devotion!

Yet lo, our race slackening, the moment was even then over, and having

carried us straight as an arrow, the toboggan undulated gracefully like

a serpent over a little rising in the path and came to a stand. She

rose. The light of the rising moon just enabled me to still catch the

threaded yellow of her hair and the translucent complexion.

One had been following us closely. "Permit me--this next is ours, Miss

Grant," he said, hastening eagerly forward to her, and I saw it was

Quinet.

I marked the deference which every one, old and young, paid to her, and

at the house afterwards I looked on while a boisterous knot were

teaching her euchre.

"Change your ace," whispered Annie Lockhart, that pretty gambler.

"But," she replied aloud in her frank, innocent manner, "_Wouldn't that

be wrong?_"

The words came to me with the force of an oracle.

"Let me bow my head," I thought, "My patron! My angel!" and as I looked

upon her, passionate reverence overpowered me.

"What am I that I dare to love you and raise my eyes towards your pure

light? I am not worthy to love you!"

"And you are so beautiful!"

As my meditations were pouring along in this absorbed way, a friend of

ours, Grace Carter, a girl of the light, subtly graceful English type

and a gay confidence of leadership, came across the room.

"O Mr. Haviland," she cried, "I've been watching your dolorous

expression till I determined to learn how you do it!"

I half smiled at her, helplessly.

"It is thoroughly fifth-act. The young man looks that way when he

marches around in the limelight moonlight contemplating the approach of

the catastrophe. But what have you to do with catastrophes? Off the

stage men only have that desperate look when they are in love. I trust

you are safe, Mr. Haviland."

She looked so arch that I could not help a laugh, though the effect

jarred on my mood.

"You will find me dull, I am afraid," I answered.

"That's of no consequence. Self-education is my mission. Believe me, I

thirst for this knack of lugubriousness."

I would have resented the trifling at that moment from almost any person

but Grace. She divined my discomfort, veered her questioning to College

affairs, and detailed to me some amusing information on dances and

engagements, to which I listened with what attention I could. But my

eyes persisted in resting oftener and oftener on Alexandra, and some

bread baked by her and Annie,--a triumph of amateur housekeeping--being

passed by the latter in pieces among the cake, I imagined that it tasted

like the sacrament, and utterly lost track of what the merry girl was

saying. She left me to flood out her spirits on a friend who was rising

to go; whereupon I recollected myself.

Behold Quinet, poor fellow, Quinet is too earnest for Society. Some

supercilious young creature has cut him to the quick for commencing a

historical remark. Smarting under his rebuke he withdraws a step or two.

A kind voice accosts him; it is Alexandra. "Come here and speak to me,

Mr. Quinet. You always talk what is worth while." "To talk of what is

worth while makes enemies," he answered bitterly: "I am thinking of

giving it up." "You should not do that," she said. "If I were a man I

would think of nothing but the highest things."

The night's sleep was broken by visions of her, as I had just seen her,

so near, so fair. I tried to force my imagination into snatches of

remembrance of her face as colored and clear-outlined as the

reality--bearing the noble expression it had worn when she said "Would

not that be wrong?"

How I sank into self-contempt by comparison!

I wonder if Englishmen feel the passion of love as we French do.

"I love her, I love her," was my burning ejaculation. "Yet how dare I

love her! I am unworthy to stand in her presence! There is only left for

me to purify and burn and subdue my heart until it is completely worthy

of her holy sight. Worthy of her! And what is worthy of her?"

Again her presence passed before me and a voice seemed to cry "The

highest things!"

Thenceforth "The highest things" should be my search, and nothing less.

My ambitions had advanced a second step.

CHAPTER IX.

ASSORTED ENTHUSIASMS.

"Ici bas tous les lilas meurent;

Tous les chants des oiseaux sont courts;

Je cherche aux étés qui demeurent

Toujours."

--SULLY-PRUDHOMME.

And now of the influences which shaped that quest of "the highest

things." There were the conversations in our Secret Society, the

"Centre-Seekers." Picture a winter's eve, a cosy fire, a weird hall, and

a group whose initiation oath was simply "I promise to be sincere."

"There is the solution of Epicurus," remarks Holyoake, our Agnostic;

"Pleasure, at least, is real. Wrap yourself in it, for you can do no

better. Contentment is but one pleasure, as Salvation is another, and

even sensuality may be best to you."

"How about the man who lives for his children?" asked young Fred. Lyle,

whose ruddy face was made brighter by the fire glow.

"He has his enjoyment reflected from theirs."

"What do you think of the friend in 'Vanity Fair,' who helps his rival?"

"One of the fools," replied Holyoake, with an air of settling the

matter.

Lyle reflected.

"I can't believe it that way," he said thoughtfully.

One member was Lome Riddle; a big bluff chap with a promising moustache,

encouraged by private, tuition. "Come along there, Haviland," he

exclaimed, "a nob like you should be one of the 'boys!'" These fellows

don't know what life is--but to think of a man of muscle going back on

us!

"Kick not against the prigs, Riddle!" cried Little Steele in facetious

delight.

"Riddle, Riddle, thou art but a poor Philistine."

"A man of Gath," contributed another.

"The Philistine has his uses. He is the successful of Evolution,"

pronounced Holyoake.

"The future will see methods better than Evolution," answered Brether,

our great firm Scotchman.

"If so, they will be of it," retorted the Agnostic.

"Now just kindly let up on that a little." Riddle continued, "you

fellows are too confounded theoretical for me. What's the good of going

round congesting your cerebrums about problems you can't settle? I say

let a fellow go it while he's young--moderately you know--and when he is

old he will not regret the same. You fellows swot, and I sit in the

orchestra chairs. You read your digestions to rack and ruin--or else

you've got to be so mighty careful,--while I put in a fine gourmand's

dinner every day, attended with the comforts of civilization. I dance

while you are working up unsuccessful essays. The world owes nothing to

fellows who do that. If you're fools enough to want to benefit the

world, turn your minds to steam engines and telegraphs, that cheapen

dinners and save us running, and I'll give you my blessing in spare

moments when I've nothing to do. I take a kind of melancholy interest in

this institution, you know, but honestly upon my word, I hate your

rational style, and I wouldn't for the world go round like a walking

problem and have the fellows call me '_For_lorne Riddle.' The place

where I enjoy myself most,--our private theatrical club,--is called the

'Inconsistents' on that principle. We don't care about being correct. We

know we have the prettiest girls and chummiest fellows in town, and

we're all right."

"Of course if a fellow's legs are so crooked that he can't dance or

appear in a play, he has got to solace himself with billiards or eating,

or some of the elegant accomplishments like playing the guitar. That's

my system. There's philosophy in it too, by jove! I've done lots of

philosophy by the smoke of a cigarette. It's philosophy properly tamed,

in evening dress. It's philosophy made into a good Churchman, and Tory!"

"La morale de la cigarette!" suggested Quinet.

After all was not the highest thing simply to live the natural life of

the time and place?

"I refuse that," I cried to myself, "I ask a Permanent, an Eternal!"

* * * * *

In speculative Philosophy I sought it, urged by the saying reported of

Confucius:

"The Master said: 'I seek an all-pervading Unity,'" and much useless

labor did I spend upon the profound work of the monarch of modern

thinkers--Immanuel Kant.

In a depression at the end of this labor I finally threw my books aside.

It was afternoon, dull and dusty: a thunderstorm was brewing. I walked

to the Square. What is that carriage with golden-bay horses?--that fresh

image of loveliness--so calm--serene in queenly peace--the spiritual

eyes! "Alexandra, I am miserable; elevate and purify my hopes with a

smile, when I need thy presence--ma belle Anglaise"--No, she looks

coldly and drives on in her equipage without even a recognition.--Is

anything wrong?--I am deeply dispirited.--Another street--she passes

again without bowing--not even looking this time.

Wretched Haviland!--Where is mercy and what is left for me in the

world?--I will rebel about this.--I will give up trying to seek the

best, and turn away from Alexandra.

At dinner that night, my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's

ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go

among our people now. I am about to send you to France."

The prospect of that journey, to which it had been my joy at other times

to look forward, affected me little in my disturbed condition.

CHAPTER X.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE.

Grace Carter came over on the way to the ball, and when I descended I

found her entertaining my grandmother, while a young man named Chinic,

teaming with good nature and compliments, sat near her and rising with

the rest grasped me by the hand as I entered. Grace too, smiling, held

out her hand. As we went to the door my grandmother delivered me over to

her, saying playfully: "Chamilly will be in your charge this evening. He

is melancholy. C'est à toi de le guérir."

"I will be his sister of Charity!" she cried merrily and pressed my arm.

I laughed. It was not so undelightful to be taken into the companionship

of a graceful girl.

As we whirled along in the carriage, the half-moon in the dark blue sky,

making heavy shadows on the trees and mansions, lit her cheek and

Greek-knotted hair on the side next me with a glamour so that her head

and shoulders shone softly in it like a bust of Venus.

Picault's was an extensive family mansion of sandstone, built thirty

years before for one of the wealthiest merchants of Montreal. It was on

a corner.

One end rose into a rococo tower, lit then with the curious kind of

clearness produced by a half-moon's light. In the centre, before the

hospital door, projected a pillared portico, under which our carriage

drove, and at the other end lurked the shades of a massive gate-way with

cobbled road leading through. The carriage-road past the front was

bordered by lilacs in bloom--on the one side, as we went through, all

shadows, on the other faintly colored, mingling their fragrance with

that of huge rose-bushes.

The doors were thrown open, and we saw a great staircase in a wide hall

hung with colored lights, and entering passed into one of the most

lavish of interiors. As I looked around the dressing-room to which

Chinic and myself were shown and saw the windows stacked with tropical

plants, the colored candles set about the walls in silver sconces; the

bijou paintings and the graceful carving of the furniture; the deep

blending of tints and shades in the carpets, curtains and ornaments, I

felt another new experience--the sensation of luxury--and dropping back

in an easy chair, asked my companion:

"Chinic, what does Picault do?"

"Ma foi, I do not pretend to say," replied the young Frenchman, half

turning towards me from the mirror where he was brushing his hair."

Suffice it he is a millionaire, and I get summoned to drink his wine.

Some say he is in politics, others that he deals with stocks; for me it

is enough that he deals with the dance and good table. Is it not

magnificent to so live? I would sell my soul for fifteen years of it."

The remark set me thinking a moment, but it only complicated the charm

of delivering oneself over to sensations.

We met Grace at the head of the staircase. She had never looked more

Venus-like than in this fairy glow, with a plant-filled window behind

her, opening out into the summer darkness. The music of a waltz of

Strauss was rising from below, and I felt a wonderful thrill as she

again took my arm.

Our respects being paid to the hostess, Madame Picault, Grace gave me a

couple of dances on her card, and introducing me to a slender young

girl, with pretty eyes, and two very long, crisp plaits of hair, went

off on the arm of some one else.

As my father's plan of education had taken me hitherto wholly into

English society, so far as into any, the unique feeling of being a

stranger to my own race came with full force upon me for a moment and I

stood silent beside the pretty eyes and looked at the scene. The walls

were a perfect gallery of sublime landscapes, and small pictures heavily

set; four royal chandeliers threw illumination over a maze of flowered

trains and flushed complexions, moving through a stately "Lancers,"

under a ceiling of dark paintings, divided as if framed, by heavy gilded

mouldings, like the ceiling of a Venetian Palace.

"Is it not gay--that scene there!" I exclaimed.

"It is charming, Monsieur," said the pretty eyes. "Montreal is

altogether charming."

"Ah, you come from Quebec, Mademoiselle?"

"No, Monsieur, from New Orleans," she replied confidingly.

Now the Louisiana French are very interesting to us French of Canada.

Once we formed parts of one continuous Empire, though now divided by

many thousands of miles, and their fate is naturally a bond of strong

sympathy to us.

"We have there only the Carnival," she continued with the winning

prettiness of a child. "That is in the spring, and the young men dress

up for three or four days and throw bon-bons and flowers at us. When the

carnival is over, they present the young ladies with the jewels they

have worn?"

"And the ladies return them smiles more prized than jewels?"

She looked up at me in fresh-natured delight.

"Monsieur, you must come to New Orleans sometime, during the season of

the Carnival."

"I shall most certainly if you will assure me the ladies of New Orleans

are all of one kind."

"You are pleased to jest, sir. But judge from my sister. Is she not

handsome?"

Her sister,--a Southern beauty, the sensation just then of

Montreal,--was truly a noble type. The pretty one watched my rising

admiration.

"What do you think of her?"

"She is wonderful.--And she is your sister?"

"My married sister, Monsieur. She is on her way to France. I will tell

you a little romance about her. Last year she came to Montreal with our

father, and they were delighted with it. She used to say she would not

marry a Frenchman; nor a blonde. Above all she detested Paris, and

declared she would never live there. While she was here she left her

portrait with Mde. De Rheims as a souvenir. Soon a young officer in the

army of France comes out and visits Mde. De Rheims and sees the picture

of my sister. He was struck with it, declared he would see the original,

travelled straight to New Orleans, and has married my sister. See him

there--_he is a blonde_ and _he is taking her to Paris_."

"How strange that is! Montreal is a dangerous place for the ladies of

your family."

She glanced at me with sly pleasure.

"But we are not dangerous to Montreal, sir."

"Ah non, ma'm'selle."

Then this was my first type to begin on, of our French society world.

Were they all like her? I watched the ladies and gentlemen who stood and

sat chatting about, and saw that everyone else too made an art of

charming. Grace also. She frequently passed, and I could catch her

silvery French sentences and cheerful laugh.

As a partner now took away my little Southern friend, I caught Chinic on

the wing, got introduced once more, and found myself careering in a

galop down the room with a large-looking girl--Mlle. Sylphe--whose

activity was out of proportion to her figure, though in more harmony

with her name. Her build was commanding, she was of dark complexion and

hair, in manner demure, alluring with great power by the instrumentality

of lustrous eyes, though secretly, I felt, like the tigress itself in

cruelty to her victims. She was a magnificent figure, and gave me a

merry dance. After it, she set about explaining the meaning of her

garland decorations and the language of flowers, the Convent school at

Sault-au-Recollet, dinner parties, and the young men of her

acquaintance.

"You seem very fond of society?" I advanced.

"I adore society--it is my dream. I waltz, you see. I know it is wrong,

and the church forbids it; but--I do not dance in Lent. After all,"

shrugging her shoulders, "we can confess, you know, and when we are old

it will suffice to repent and be devout. I shall begin to be excessively

devout," (toying with a jet cross on her necklace)--"the day I find my

first grey hair."

"You have then a number of years to waltz."

Her dark eyes looked over my face as a possible conquest.

"I tremble when I think it is not for ever. But look at my aunt's and

that of Madame de Rheims!"

These ladies were indeed distinguished by their hair; but I suspect that

it was not the mere fact of its greyness to which she wished to draw my

attention--rather it was to the manner in which they wore it, brushed up

high and away from their foreheads, like dowagers of yore. Standing in a

corner together very much each other's counterpart, both a trifle too

dignified, they were obviously proud leaders of society. She watched my

shades of expression, and cried:

"There is my favorite quadrille--Là là-là-là-là-là-à-là," softly humming

and nodding her head, an action not common among the English.

"Pardon me, sir, your name is Mr. 'Aviland, I believe," interrupted a

young man with a close-cut, very thick, very black beard, and the waxed

ends of his moustache fiercely turned up.

I bowed.

"Our Sovereign Lady De Rheims requests the pleasure of your

conversation."

On turning to Mlle. Sylphe to make my excuses, she smiled, saying with a

regretful grimace: "Obeissez."

Mde. De Rheims stood with Mde. Fée, the aunt of Mile. Sylphe, near the

musicians, receiving and surveying her subjects,--a woman of majestic

presence. Nodding dismissal to the fierce moustache, she acknowledged my

deep bow with a slight but gracious inclination.

"Madame Fée, permit me to introduce Monsieur Chamilly Haviland, a

D'Argentenaye of Dormillière,--and the last. My child, your attractions

have been too exclusively of the 'West End.' You have lived among the

English; enter now into _my_ society." Mde. Fée smiled, and Mde. de

Rheims taking a look at me continued: "The stock is incomparable out of

France. Remember, my child, that your ancestors were grande noblesse,"

haughtily raising her head. A novel feeling of distinction was added to

my swelling current of new pleasures.

A ruddy, simply-dressed, black-haired lady, but of natural and cultured

manner, was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an

opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations.

Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people

markedly foreign,--not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that

general atmosphere to which we often apply the term.

In the first place there was the language--not patois as of _habitants_

and barbers, nor the mode of the occasional caller at our house, whose

pronunciation seemed an individual exception; but an entire assemblage

holding intercourse in dainty Parisian, exquisite as the famous dialect

of the Brahmans. There was the graceful compliment, the antithetic

description, the witty repartee. One could say the poetical or

sententious without being insulted by a stare. Some of the ladies were

beautiful, some were not, but they had for the most part a quite ideal

degree of grace and many of them a kind of dignity not too often

elsewhere found. Every person laughed and was happy through the homely

cotillion that was proceeding. The feelings of the young seemed to issue

and mingle in sympathy, with a freedom naturally delightful to my

peculiar nature, and the triumphant strains of music excited my pulses.

Mde. De Rheims touched my arm and pointed individuals by name. "That

strong young man is a d'Irumberry--the pale one, a Le Ber--that young

girl's mother is a Guay de Boisbriant. Do not look at her partner, he is

some _canaille_."

There was, true enough, some difference. The descendants of gentry were

on the average marked with at least physical endowments quite distinctly

above the rest of the race. But there was a ridiculous side, for I

recognized some about whom my grandmother was used to make merry, such

as the youth who could "trace his ancestry five ways to Charles the

Fat," and the stout-built brothers in whose family there was a rule

"never to strike a man twice to knock him down.". My grandmother said

that "those who could _not_ knock him down kept the tradition by not

striking him once!"

Mde. De Rheims now introduced me to two people simultaneously--Sir

Georges Mondelet, Chief-Justice, and the ruddy lady, Mde. Fauteux of

Quebec. The Chief Justice was of that good old type, at sight of which

the word gentil-homme springs naturally to one's lips He was small in

figure, but his features were clearly cut, and the falling of the cheeks

and deepening of lines produced by approach of age, had but imparted to

them an increased, repose. His clear gaze and fine balance of expression

denoted that remarkable common sense and personal honor for which I

divined his judgments and conduct must be respected. His smile was

charming, and displayed a set of well-preserved teeth. The few words he

spoke to me were not remarkable. They were simple and kind like his

movements.

To Mde. Fauteux I offered my arm, and conducted her into the large

conservatory opening off the parlors, where we walked.

"Is it not a great privilege, Monsieur, to be an Englishman?" she began

with polite banter. "You are the conquerors, the millionaires; yours are

the palaces, and the high and honorable places! But you, Monsieur, you

are not too proud to patronize our little receptions."

"Pardon me, Madame, I am not English."

"Is that true? But you have the air."

"There is no air I could prefer to that of a man like Sir Georges

Mondelet."

"Nor I too, in seriousness. That is the true French gentleman. He cares

little even for his title, and prefers to be called _Mr._ Mondelet,

holding his judicial office in greater esteem. I once heard him say in

joke, 'that there could be many Knights but only one Chief Justice.'"

"That is true," I said.

"Yes, it is true," she echoed. "Law is a noble philosophy, and its

profession the most brilliant of the highways to fame."

"Do you know," she continued, "that we inherit our law from the Romans.

This beautiful system, this philosophic justice of our Province, is the

imperial legacy bequeathed us by that Empire in which we once took our

share as rulers of the world--the shadow of the mighty wings under which

our ancestors reposed. We all have Roman, blood in our veins. Do you see

that face there?--that is a Roman face. Our Church speaks Latin, and

looks to the city of Cæsar. Our own speech is a Latin tongue. The

classics of our young men's study are still those that were current on

the Forum. Our law is Roman law."

If the gaiety of the French world had satisfied me, what was not my

wonder and joy at discovering in it a reflective side; and for half an

hour I remained in a leafy alcove listening to her refined

converse,--dealing with books like "Corinne," and "La Chaumière

Indienne,"--La Fontaine, Molière, Montesquieu,--and especially

interesting me in the society which moved around us, which as she

touched it with her wand of history and eloquence, acquired an

inconceivable interest for me, and I was for the first time proud of

being a French-Canadian.

In the midst of these excitements, as I stood so listening, and now

joined by two others,--

"Chamilly, my brother, I have come for you," suddenly broke in Grace;

and stood before me all radiance, dropping somebody's arm. Excusing

myself, I took her in charge and we moved gaily off. Waltzing with her

was so easy that it made me feel my own motion graceful; the swirl of

mingled feelings impelled me to recognize how superior she was in other

things, and to proudly set her off against each lovely or dignified or

sprightly figure there; and when the music closed abruptly, we started

laughing together for the conservatory of which I have spoken, at the

end of the vast rooms. This conservatory ended in a circular enlargement

divided into several nooks or bowers, and we wandered into one in which

the moonlight came faintly on our faces through the glass and the vines.

Again the Greek head with the light upon it!

Strains of other music floated in. Every sense was enraptured.

"Let Alexandra go!" I thought. "Let me live as my people have discovered

how to live."

"Mon cher, am I tending you faithfully."

"Charmingly, my sister."

She laughed at the way I said it, because I spoke with perfect

resignation.

The thread running through all my other experiences of the evening had

been admiration of Grace. Pleased as I was with this society, I had

compared her with each of the best members of it, to her advantage. She

had in her young way, the dignity of Madame de Rheims; all the

gracefulness of the Southern girl with the pretty eyes; beauty as

striking, though not the same as that girl's sister; the gaiety of

Chinic; and now I was to find that she was apparently as cultured as

Mde. Fauteux. For she did talk seriously and brightly about books and

languages and artistic subjects:

"I would abhor beyond everything a life of fashionable vanity. My desire

for life is to always keep progressing."

Whilst she talked I was reflecting, and mechanically looking around at

the divisions into nooks.

"Don't you think this arrangement inviting, Chamilly? It has a history.

An engagement has taken place in each of these alcoves except one."

I looked around at them again; then asked:

"Which is the one?"

"The alcove we are in, mon frère."

I glanced at her, the moonlight still falling brokenly-upon the Venus

head, and could see a crimson blush sweep over her countenance and her

eyelids droop.

"Grace," I said--agitatedly, "Will you give me more of your evening

after the next dance you promised?"

"Take from then to the end!--three dances that I have kept for you

especially; I wish they were longer. But I am ashamed to sit here after

what I have happened to say."

CHAPTER XI.

THE "CAVE."

A whirl of rapid thoughts made it some time till I could regain presence

of mind, and I found my eyes following her feverishly into the weavings

of another waltz, and was roused by the "Salut, Monsieur," of a quiet

man who did not know me, but turned out from his remarks, to be Picault,

the owner of the mansion. His observations were general and of a kind of

a conciliatory tone, and seemed to be each uttered after grave

deliberation. There was a prudence and respectability and an air of

inoffensiveness about his manner which indicated the quiet merchant of

means. He spoke of Madame De Rheims with great respect, and drew my

attention to quondam Mlle. Alvarez, the New Orleans beauty, as though

her presence was a marked honor to his house; and hearing that I was not

acquainted with her, he insisted on an introduction and I found myself

leading her into the alcove Grace and I had left. She spoke first of New

Orleans, where English, she said, was taking the place of our language,

and I gathered that the latter was becoming gradually confined to a

limited circle. There was a French quarter apart from the American city,

though in its midst.

"The fate of your people should make you intensely French," said I.

"Monsieur has an English descent, to judge by his name. Well then, I

will say something I say at home. I do not admire Frenchmen."

"But Mlle.--your patriotism!"

"I am not very French," she said haughtily, "My father is the son of a

Spanish Minister."

"But why do you disapprove of the French? As to me, I find them

excessively attractive."

"It is because I know them well," she said gaily. "My husband is the

only Frenchman I would have married. Their quest is self-gratification,

to which they sacrifice no matter what. I despise them."--She laughed

mock-heroically,--"Take now your Englishman! Let him love a Frenchwoman,

for it is only a Frenchwoman who can return such love! Domestic, silent,

energetic,--he adores, protects, provides, and yet accomplishes

ambitions. This is because he sacrifices none of such things to the

Myself, who is the god of Frenchmen!"

These words seemed of more importance to me than the beautiful speaker

could have thought. I had almost committed my soul; was it to a cup of

Comus, to a fatal household of Circe?

The lady smilingly glided away with her husband.

Then new characteristics seemed in face of race patriotism, to dawn as I

looked at those passing around. I imagined each facial expression

thoughtless, heartless, jaded or disgusted. I had taken the beautiful

Creole's cynical words seriously, and thought I saw the search for

self-gratification everywhere.

Instead of striking a balance of impressions, I passed for the time from

the extreme of admiration to the extreme of criticism, and at last

turned into the supper room to think. A dapper man of sanguine

complexion and grey moustache and hair, a cynical gentleman-of-leisure

and old-established visitor at my grandmother's, was taking wine there,

and he addressed me familiarly. I began to question him about several

people:

"Who is that man with the mass of locks and the queer beard?"

"That," replied he like a showman, "is the Honorable Grandmoulin, the

National Liar, Premier Minister of the Province, and First Juggler of

its finances:--a profligate in public in the name of the Church--in

secret in the name of Free-Thought--_beau diseur_--demagogue of the

rabble and chieftain of the Cave."

"The Cave?"

He lifted his glass of ruby liquid and faced me across it. "You may not

know, my simple Ali Baba, that the Government of this Province is the

private property of Forty Thieves."

"What are these thieves--this Cave?--I do not understand what you mean,

sir."

"Chevaliers of the highway my child," (he had just enough in him to make

him free of speech), "who obtain office through the credulity of Jean

Baptiste the industrious Beaver, who, like Jacques in France, bears

everything. Jean Baptiste labors. It is the duty of Jean Baptiste to

believe everything he is told. Monsieur of the Forty and Company must

live upon something. Tsha! The Beavers were created to sweat--to load up

their pack mules and be plundered. Quebec is the cave of the Forty,--and

plunder is their sesame."

"But how does such a man come to be received into society?" exclaimed I,

disturbed.

The answer was prompt.

"He is successful."

Reason only too obvious. It staggered me to watch the man receiving and

being greeted.

Presently I asked again: "Are more of them present?" "Assuredly. Like

devils they fly in swarms: like the Apostles they never travel less than

two--one to preach you the relics and the other to pick the pocket in

the tails of your coat. The man with the Oriental beard there looks

respectable, does he not? Tell me,--does he not?"

"It is true."

"He is the honest-man-figure-head and book-keeper of the Cave. This

fellow near us," (gesturing towards a scraggy-looking little man), "has

got himself appointed a judge and once securely off the raft, poses as a

little tyrant to young advocates, on the Kamouraska Bench."

"What does our host, Mr. Picault do?" I said, to change the subject.

What was my surprise when he answered:

"Picault is the Arch Devil--the organizer of the Cave--the man who

manipulates the Government for the profit of his accomplices. When they

require money the Province calls a loan; it is members of the Cave who

negociate it, exacting a secret commission which is itself a fortune.

The loan is expended," he went on, marking each step of his narration by

appropriate gestures of his right forefinger, as one who is expounding a

science, "on salaries to the Cave supporters, who are appointed to

ingenious sinecures. Vast contracts are given at extravagant prices to

persons who pay a large share to our friends. Then the works, such as

railways, are sold,--if possible to Picault, or through him in the same

manner. And finally, by this system no burden is left upon the Treasury

except the loan to be paid. Between this and all sorts of minor

applications of the principle, though they have not long begun, the end

is clear;--yet the electorate persists in being duped by these ruffians.

Men cherish their prejudices," he closed oracularly. "Men cherish their

prejudices with more care than their interests."

"Until, he began to control the politicans," he immediately resumed,

"Picault was a bankrupt financier. Now he is nominally a banker with

millions. Once bribed or scandalized, your politician is broken in; and

Picault's favourite maxim is 'You can buy the Pope, and pay less for a

Cardinal.'"

"I want to get out of this house!" I cried, no longer able to retain my

indignation, "Am I a thief to associate with these criminals?"

"My young man," said he, holding me quiet by the shoulder. "Accept the

good points of Picault and drink your lemonade. The chieftain of fools

is ever a knave; he has been tempted by the ignorance of the people."

Such feelings of contempt and determination nevertheless took possession

of me that the relish of Picault's magnificence and the charms of his

assembly soured to very repulsion.

Indignation above all with my own self took possession of me; for this

circle was what I was to have exchanged for the world of Alexandra.

Must I endure to be detained here till the time of my appointment with

Grace? I went up to her to tell her abruptly I must go--what reason to

give I knew not--and as I looked into those trustful, believing eyes and

flushed face, feelings of desperate abandon for an instant almost

overcame me. But natural resolution increased with the antagonism, "I

must leave, Grace," said I, shortly and fiercely. "I cannot tell you the

reason. Good night."

Next morning my father sent me to France with Quinet.

CHAPTER XII.

LA MERE PATRIE.

"Et pour la France un chant sacré s'éleve;

Qu'il brille pur, le ciel de nos aieux!"

--F.X. GARNEAU.

"Chamilly! Chamilly! This is the soil of our forefathers!" Quinet and I

stood at last on the shores of France. We trod it with veneration, and

looked around with joy. It was the sea-port of Dieppe, whose picturesque

mediæval Gothic houses ranged their tall gables before us. Hence my

ancestor had sailed to the wild new Canada two centuries before.--O

enchanted land!

"Behold the Middle Ages!"--cried Quinet again, looking at the Gothic

houses--"of which we have heard and read."

"Is it not strange!"--I exclaimed--"Yes, this is the old Patrie.--Is it

possible to believe ourselves here?--Stamp and see if the ground is

real!"

"There is a _blouse_!--a _paysan_, as in the pictures--he wears the cap!

he has the wooden shoes!"

"It is our brother--the Frenchman!"

There was more nevertheless. Celestial angels,--I too have been in

heaven. I have been a French Canadian in Paris!

Dieppe was the first note of the music, the noble and quaint Cathedral

of Rouen and our railway glimpses of rural Normandy were the prelude. At

last our pilgrim feet were in the Beautiful City. O much we wandered in

its Avenues, with throbbing delight and love towards every face, that

first memorable day. This river is the _Seine_! that Palace so proud and

rich, the world-renowned _Louvre_. What is yon great carved front with

twin towers--that pile with the light of morning melting its spires and

roofs and flying buttresses as they rise into it--that world of

clustered mediæval saints in stone, beautiful, pointed-arched portals

and unapproached and unapproachable dignity--from which the edifices of

the City seem to stand afar off and leave it alone, and which wears not

the air of to-day or yesterday?--_Nôtre Dame de Paris_, O vast monument

of French art, recorder of chivalric ages, all the generations have had

recourse to thine aisles and the heart of Paris beats within thee as the

hearts of Quinet and this d'Argentenaye beat under the ribs of their

human breasts.

Paris knew and loved us. The fountains and great trees of the Tuilleries

Gardens were palatial for us; the Champs Elysees laughed to us as we

moved through their groves; the Arch de l'Etoile had a voice to us

grandly of the victories of our race; the Bois de Boulogne was gay with

happy groups and glistening equipages.

How well they do everything in Paris! When shall the streets of Montreal

be so smooth, the houses so artistically built, when shall living be

reduced to such system of neatness and saving?

Quinet betook himself much to the obscure cheese shops and cafés in the

quarters of the people, and ate and chatted with such villains that I

called him "The Communard." He, on the other hand, called me "Le Grand

Marquis," because I made use of some relatives who were among the

nobility.

Between us we missed little. On the one hand the heart of the masses

affected us. Once we bought bread of a struggling baker hard by the

famous abbey of St. Denis. We asked for a cup of water to drink with

it,--"But Messieurs will not drink water!" he cried, and rushed in his

generosity for his poor bottle of wine.--My French-Canadian countrymen,

that was a trait of yours!

I remember too,--when my shoe hurt me and I limped badly one evening

along the Avenue of the Bois,--the numbers of men and women who said to

one another: "O, le pauvre jeune homme." Ye world-wide Pharisees, erring

Paris cannot be so deeply wicked while its heart flows so much goodness!

But the enthusiasms will run away with my story. Resolutely, _revenons_.

While Quinet, the positive pole of our expedition, was ever edging our

march towards his Bastille Column and his cut-throat Quartier

Montmartre, I, the negative; drew it a little into more polished circles

where wit and talent sparkled. The Vicomte D'Haberville, a French

d'Argentenaye, took us to a reception--not too proud of us I daresay,

for the gloss of his shoes and the magnificence of his cravat outshone

us as the sleek skin of a race-horse does a country filly. Especially

did he eye Quinet a little coldly, so that I could scarcely persuade the

proud fellow to come.

To the astonishment of the Vicomte, however, Quinet was the attraction

of the evening. Taine and Thiers were there, and fired by a remark from

one of these his famous men, the young Radical had ventured a clever

saying.

Thiers looked at him a sharp glance as he heard the accent:

"Vous êtes des Provinces, monsieur?"

"No, sir--from New France."

"We had once,--in America--a colony of the name," replied the statesman,

reflecting.

"France has it still. It is a colony of hearts!"

Quinet awakened interest; was inquired into and drawn out, and we were

invited to a dozen of the most interesting salons of the capital.

O but those Parisians are clever! Why is it they are so much more

brilliant than we? Perhaps because there intellect is honored.

Quickly, through these surroundings, our knowledges and tastes

advanced--Quinet's verging to the path of social science--mine to an

artistic sense which suddenly unfolded into life and became my chief

delight. The enthusiasm for Paris gradually led me to another offer by

Life of a Highest Thing. To say it shortly--the salons led to a pleasure

in the artistic, the society of artists to a growing appreciation of

fine works of skill, and these, to Italy and Rome.

Do you desire to rest eyes upon the noblest products of the hand of man?

Go into the Land of Romance as we did, and wander among its castled

hill-tops, its ruins of Empire, its cathedrals in the skill of whose

exhaustless grandeurs Divinity breathes through genius. Meditate in

reverence before the famous masterpieces of antiquity--the Venus of

Milo--the silent agony of the Laocoon, the Hyperion Belvedere. Learn

from Canova's pure marble, and Raphael's Chambers, and from Titian, and

Tintoret, and the astonishing galaxies of intellect that shine in their

constellations in the sky of the true Renaissance.

Then you may say as I did, "At length, I am finding something great and

best. The beautiful is the whole that mankind can directly apprehend,

and as for other things hoped for, symbolism is the true outlet for his

soul. Art is the union of this beauty and symbolism. No aspiration

exists but can be expressed in pleasing forms."

Does man desire God, he paints--O how raptly!--a saint; does he feel

after immortality, he sculptures an ever-young Apollo. Looking to them,

he has faith, as of an oracle, in their emblematic truth, and through

them instructs the world.

Art seemed to me then the Highest Thing.

CHAPTER XIII.

SOMETHING MORE OF QUINET?

One evening as we sat on the Pincian Hill, in the semi-tropical garden,

overlooking the domes and towers of the Imperial City, Quinet broke our

silence, and surprised me by saying abruptly:

"Let us go to England."

"What for?"

"Let us go; I wish to go."

"But what is your press about England. I thought you hated the English."

"I do not hate the English. Among whom are there more amiable friends,

more beautiful women. I am seized with a wish to see that great people

in their country."

"You hated them some time ago."

"In the present tense, that verb has with me the peculiarity of parsing

itself negatively."

I reflected a little on this change of opinion in Quinet, and its

possible causes, till he again broke out abruptly:

"Miss Carter gave me a message for you."

The recollection of my conduct at Picault's sent a pang through me.

"What is it?" I said. The tropical plants around us brought up vividly

those at the ball.

"I did not ask her,"--his voice was curious--"what it meant, but she

desired me to say for her; 'I beg you to write me why you left the

ball.'"

"So you do her page-work," I returned, for I thought I could now divine

the reason of his change towards the English. "Pretty work for a grown

knight! If you know her so well, you know the picturesque groves of St.

Helen's Island where she lives. Why stop at page-work? One would think

with an enchanted isle, and an enchanting maiden, the Chevalier would

find his proper occupation."

Quinet changed aspect. "Do you not then admire her?" he advanced

quickly, with uncontrollable feeling.

"Not admire Grace Carter!" said I, for I felt as if I had done her

injustice when I last left her,--"Yet no more than a friend, Quinet."

"Is that the fact?" he cried, springing up--"I thought it was she you

were in love with! I heard you were in one of Picault's alcoves

together."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERSHIP.

"Dans quelle terre a borderez-vous qui vous soit plus chère que celle

où vous êtes né?"

--PAUL ET VIRGINIE.

When I reached home my father took me to Dormillière. "The purpose is

very special," he said, so gravely that I trusted his wisdom and hastily

despatching to Alexandra a brooch of Roman mosaic, which I had bought

for her in Italy, I left with him.

Life had another offer now to extend to me--Dormillière, and the power

thereof. As we approached the pier, and I beheld its three green

terraces one over another; the grove of pines on the hill-top above the

terraces; and cottages, white, red and grey, appearing among the

pines;--dear home unvisited so long;--and the spires of the Church in

the sky glinting the light of the setting sun, and on the shore and pier

familiar faces of old men and young men changed; boys grown into

stalwart fellows, and babes into boys and girls; many quiet visions of

youth rose and mingled with my thoughts, and this spell began its

working, as those of Society and Art had done.

"V'la Monseigneur!" called out Pierre, our coachman, on the pier, the

lineaments of whose face half seemed a memory suddenly grown vivid and

real.--"Mon Dieu!" he cried laughing and crying, as he looked at me

closely, "It's M'sieu Chamilly! My dear child, it was painful to have

you absent so long. Why did you not come even to see us?--Please give me

your hand again. But how you are loaded! Come, where is your valise? Let

me do something for you, M'sieu Chamilly."

"Les v'la!"

"V'la Monseigneur!"

"V'la M'sieu Chamilly!" the shouts went up.

"It's the young Seigneur! the young Seigneur!" spread among the

villagers,--they welcomed, they addressed us, the kind spirit of French

Canadians took us to itself, and I was drawn to my people, as I had not

been even during the conversation of the delightful Madame Fauteux. My

father received them with both hands and all sorts of gay remarks, "How

do you like this, Chamilly?" he laughed, with the satisfaction of an

Archduke returned to his dominions.

"Are you come to fish, Monsieur?" asked Pierre, in affectionate

garrulity, as he took up the reins.

"No, good Pierre, I do not know what I am coming for."

"You will troll as formerly? Our magnificent maskinongé are polite as

guests for a wedding. Yesterday I took one of ninety-seven pounds!"

The good hearted fellow kept talking as we drove.

One familiar scene after another! The village street of which I knew

every doorstep. Ah!--a new wayside across in front of Widow

Priedieu's--and the gay mast before the Captain Martinet's--the

blacksmith's dusty shop--the inn-keepers' poles holding out their oval

hotel-signs--the merry little cocked house where they had that famous

jollification immortalized in the song:

"Au grand bal chez Boulé."

But my friends! my friends!--to see my old friends was the great

enjoyment. "Holà," deliberate Pierre; and you three Jeans--gros Jean,

grand Jean and petit Jean; "Monsieur le Notaire, bon jour!" the faces at

the panes and the heads at the door!

And lo, the gardens,--the broad fields so generous of harvest--the

Manoir trees in the distance!

And as of yore,--driving up the road those merrymen in the carts singing

that well remembered "En roulant":

"Le fils du roi s'en va chassant

En roulant, ma boule."[E]

And with sympathetic exhilaration, I swing into the old life again on

the current of the jovial chorus:

"En roulant, ma boule roulant:

En roulant, ma boule!"

[Footnote E: "The Dauphin forth a hunting goes.

Roll, roll on, my rolling ball."

--OLD CHANSON.]

CHAPTER XV.

THE LIFE OF LEADERSHIP.

.... "Pourvu qu'ils vivent noblement et ne fassent aucun acte dérogeant à

noblesse."

PATENTS OF NOBLESSE.

"Light the lamps," my father ordered.

Tardif, the butler, did so with alacrity.

"Tardif, thou canst withdraw," added my father.

"Oui, monseigneur," replied Tardif, bowing respectfully, and went.

The room and its antiquated splendors looked ancestral to me. Its size

struck me. It was larger than any in our town house. The family

portraits and furniture revived lifelong memories. We had a fine

collection of forefathers.

"Chamilly"--began my father, walking up before the picture of one who

was to me childhood's holy dream. He stopped for some moments, gazing up

to her face with intense affection, and then turning to me, said in a

broken voice--"Never forget your mother."

"No, sir," I replied, bending my head.

In a moment he went on to the other portraits, and his manner altered to

more of pride.

"Your grandfather, the Honorable Chateauguay, this. This is his Lady,

your grandmother. Here is her father, a LeGardeur de Repentigny. There

is the old Marshal in armor. Here is Louise d'Argentenaye, of the time

of Henry IV., who married a Montcalm. Here is the Count d'Argentenaye in

armor." And thus he took me about on a singular round, and informed me

concerning the whole gallery.

He stopped at an old, solid wood cabinet, with spiral legs, bent over

and opened it with a key.

"Now," thought I, "these mysteries are going to be explained."

"This is a dress sword," he went on, "worn in France, at the court of

Louis XIII. It was worn by one of your forefathers. Here are two

decorations--Crosses of St. Louis--what beautiful little things they

are. They belong to two of us who were Chevaliers."

I was only still more mystified.

"Come into the office, my son," said he, leading me into a room used for

collecting the feudal rents and other business.

"It is coming now," I exclaimed to myself.

My father lifted out an iron box, ornamented with our arms in color, and

handed to me a parchment, having an immense wax seal, which I took and

read.

Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, Councillor of the King in his

Councils of the State and Privy Council, Governor and Lieutenant-General

of His Majesty in Canada, Acadia, and other countries of Septentrional

France. To All Those who shall see these present letters: HIS MAJESTY

having at all times sought to act with "zeal proper to the just title of

Eldest Son of the Church, has passed into this Country good number of

his subjects, Officers of his troops in the Regiment of Carignan and

others, whereof the most part desiring to attach themselves to the

country by founding Estates and Seigniories proportionate to their

force; and the Sieur JEAN CHAMILIE D'ARGENTENAY, Lieutenant of the

Company of D'Ormillière, having prayed us to grant him some such: WE,

in consideration of the good, useful, and praiseworthy services he has

rendered to His Majesty as well in Old France as New, do concede to the

said Sieur Jean Chamilie D'Argentenay, the Extent of Lands which shall

be found on the River St. Lawrence from those of Sieur Simon de la

Lande to those heretofore granted to the Sieur de Bois-Hébert, to enjoy

said land _en Fief et Seigneurie_ at charge of the Faith and Homage,

the said Sieur Jean Chamilie D'Argentenay his heirs and representatives

shall he held to render at Our Castle of St. Louis at Quebec.

"DE FRONTENAC."

I laid down the parchment.

"This is the original grant of the seigniory?"

"Yes," he replied with animation, "The 'HIS MAJESTY' there is the Grand

Monarque himself! De Frontenac is the Great Count, and that Jean

Chamilly D'Argentenaye, cadet of the Chamillys of Rouen, is our first

predecessor on these lands."

Taking a large genealogical tree out of the box, and spreading it on the

table, he showed me my descent. "The Honorable Chateauguay drew this up

at the time of my marriage," he began.

"The whole tree is mine then?" I ventured, surveying it.

"Yes," he cried, "and these are brave and honorable names! The wish of

my heart has been that you preserve their record. See: the first

marriage is a Mlle. Boucher de Boucherville, whose father, Pierre,

Governor of Three Rivers, was so honest and wise in the perilous early

course of the Colony! Madeline de Verchères, heroic holder of the fort

surprised by Iroquois, is near her. See! we date from the fourteenth

century, and are allied with the Montaignes, Grammonts, Sullys, La

Rochefoucaulds. Here is Le Moyne d'Iberville, and there De Hertel, brave

and able,--a Juchereau du Chesnay; a Joybert de Soulanges. Down here is

De Salaberry, the Leonidas of Lower Canada. There behold Philippe de

Gaspé, who wrote 'Les Anciens Canadiens;' there Gaspard Joly, the Knight

of Lotbinière.--But you can inform yourself about these names. They will

be useful in your enterprises by raising you above the reproach of being

an adventurer. Seat yourself over there."

"My father," thought I to myself, "you and your pride are both very much

out of date," but I obeyed him and seated myself where he indicated.

"The reason why I have brought you here, is to tell you, that it has

always been intended that you should in some way, succeed in these

properties. Before you developed, it was not possible to predict exactly

how you might do it; but within the last few years you have surpassed

our hopes; and I have no trepidation in putting before you my views of

your future position. You may think I am strong in health, but I shall

soon pass away."

My heart suddenly started.

"And you will find yourself here with revenues ample for the moderate

purposes of a gentleman. You may live in the country, or in the city, as

you please; but my desire is that you should live here, and continue in

the paths of your grandfather and myself: for he was a just Englishman,

and taught me that no one must take without an equivalent; and that a

landlord owed duties to his people, of the value of the moneys they paid

him. Formerly the lord gave his vassals armed protection for their

rents: now there is nothing to which the law forces him; thus his

returns must be fixed by his sense of duty."

"Do not fear that I am proposing anything too sombre, Chamilly: It is an

agreeable life. There is no demand for your being shut up in the place;

and one can surround himself very conveniently with his private tastes."

But I did not feel the scheme repugnant. The house and locality had

struck me before as a comfortable retirement to prosecute the study of

Art, "and perhaps, I might bring here"--(I dared not put her name into

syllables in such a flight of hope.)

"You will find, though, more than you anticipate to do"

I looked up.

"And greater undertakings to accomplish properly than I have been

strong enough to meet."

"What do you mean, sir?" I enquired.

"These poor simple people," he said, "have many enemies, and they

sometimes do not know their friends. You are their hereditary guardian.

Instead of mediæval protection, you must give them that of a nineteenth

century Chief."

"A nineteenth century Chief?" I could not but exclaim, "What is a

nineteenth century Chief?"

"The people's friend and leader."

"Yes, but what am I to do, sir?"

"In the first place, discourage litigation and its miseries. Offer

mediation wherever you can. Keep drink out of the villages. Preserve the

ancient forms of courtesy. Grow timber, and introduce improvements in

farming."

He spoke of other things. I was to fight especially the Ultramontanes

and the demagogues. My father was an uncompromising Liberal of the old

school.

"But what can I do about this?" I asked, my artistic skies beginning to

cloud with the prospect.

"You can speak! I know you will make an orator. You will be a member at

Quebec; and then you can effect something. I mourn over the state of

affairs, but I do not fear for the true end; and I yearn, as if across

the grave to see the vigor of another generation of us pressing into the

struggle. Remember our ancient motto," and he laid his finger on the

little coat of arms on the iron box, with its scroll: "_Sans Hésiter_."

I did not answer him, but sat thinking, while gathering up the documents

into the box, he carried it back to the office.

END OF THE FIRST PART OF THE

BOOK OF ENTHUSIASMS.

When Chrysler arrived next morning at the break in Chamilly's

manuscript, the sun was rising high and shining upon the river and

front hedge, and on the green lawn before the Ontarian's window, and he

could see Haviland walking backwards and forwards meditatively across

the grass waiting for him to descend to breakfast. He hurried down, and

as he came to his host, remarked, "The drift of your story is not quite

clear to me."

"I wish I had the sequel written," the young man replied, "I am trying

to lead on to a great matter."

BOOK II.

CHAPTER XVI.

A POLITICAL SERMON.

"In the crowded old Cathedral all the town were on their knees."

--D'ARCY MCGEE

"That's not preaching _la morale_. And it's _actionable_!" a vigorous

man energetically gesticulated among the crowd in the Circuit Court

Room.

The subject of excitement was a sermon by the Curé.

Messire L'Archeveque, of Dormillière, was in most respects an

unimpeachable priest. He ministered to the sick faithfully, after the

rites of the Church, he gave to the poor, he rendered unto Cæsar.

But--but, he hated Liberalism. On this point he was rabid; and as his

Reverence was a stout, apoplectic person, of delivery and opinions not

accustomed to criticism, it sometimes laid him somewhat open to

ridicule.

How the sermon was delivered, matters little to us. Suffice it that it

was a bold denunciation of the Liberals, named by their party name, and

that there were some strong expressions in it:

"My brothers--when the priest speaks, it is not he who speaks,--but God."

"My brethren, when the Priest commands you, it is the Church which

commands you; and the voice of the Church is the voice of the Eternal.

... Look at France. Remind yourselves what she was in the centuries of

her faith, devout and glorious, the lily among the kingdoms of the

earth, because she was the Eldest Daughter of the Church. Behold her at

this time, among the nations, dying in the terrible embraces of

FREE-MASONRY!!"

"Take warning by her, brethren. Follow her not! It is the Liberals who

have done this. Crush out the seeds of that doctrine! Let the spirits

which call themselves by this name never have peace among you. Avoid

them! Distrust them! Have nothing to do with that people! May the wrath

of our Father descend upon them, the damnation of the infernal dungeons!

and--" he brought down his book's edge loudly on the pulpit,--"the

excommunication of the Church of God, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman!"

The book was taken up once more, and slamming it down again with all its

force, the good curé turned and waddled from the pulpit.

* * * * *

Since the first moments when Chrysler's eyes rested on the village of

Dormillière from the steamer's deck, the observations of the place and

its people were to him a piquant and suggestive study.

He had been there but a few hours when he discovered its central fact.

The Central Fact of Dormillière was the Parish Church.

First, it was the centre in prominence as a feature of the view, for

with the exception of the Convent school, no one of the string of

cottages and buildings, stone, brick and wood, which constitute the

single street of the place, presumed to rival it even in size, but all

of them disposed themselves about it, and, as it were, rested humbly in

its protection, particularly the Convent school itself, a plain

red-brick building, which stood by its side.

It was also the centre by position; being situate about mid-way between

the ends of the long street, standing back commanding the only square,

which was flanked on its two sides by the sole other edifices of public

character, the priest's residence, or _presbytère_, and the friars'

school for boys.

It is needless to say that the Church was the central fact

architecturally also. Large and of ancient look, its wrinkled, whited,

rude-surfaced face was impressive, notwithstanding that it was relieved

by but little ornament; for its design was from the hand of some by-gone

architect of broad and quiet ability.

Be in no hurry, friend reader, but let us look it over, for it is an

antiquity, and worthy of the title.

The facade consisted of a great gable, flanked by two square towers. The

gable roof had a steep mediæval pitch, and was pinnacled by the statue

of a saint. A small circular window was set in the angle, and looked

like the building's eye. Three larger windows and the great door came

below in the broad front at their proper stages of the design; and in

the centre a cut stone oval, bore the date "1761," in quaint figures--a

date that seemed a monument of the fatal storming of Quebec, just over,

and the final surrender of Montreal, just to be made--the end of French

dominion over three quarters of North America!

A number of details afforded entertainment to the curious eye. There

were the rude capitals "St. J.B." and "St. F.X." on the keystone of the

round-arched side doors at the foot of the towers. There were the series

of circular windows leading one above another, on the towers, up to the

charming belfry spire which crowned them. There were high up in the air

on the latter, the fleur-de-lys and cock weather-vane, symbolical of

France. Nine gables too, had the church, of various sizes. Its roof was

shingled and black, and where it sloped down in the rear, a little third

belfry pointed its spire. A stout, stone sacristy grew out behind. A low

pebbled platform, two steps high, extended in front, and had a crier's

pulpit upon it. And amid these varied features, the body of the church

on all sides cloaked itself in its black roof with a mien of dignity,

and its graceful tin-covered belfries, fair in their mediæval patterns

and pointing sweetly to heaven, glinted far over the leagues of the

River.

Yet it was not alone as to prominence of appearance, situation, and

architectural attractiveness--that Dormillière found its centre in the

Parish Church. No relation of life, no thought, no interest, no age in

years, but had its most intimate relation with it. There alike weary

souls crept to pray for consolation, and vain minds sought the pomp of

its ecclesiastic spectacles and ceremonies; the bailiff cried his

law-sales before it, the bellman his advertisements; there was holy

water for the babe, holy oil for the dying, masses for the departed; the

maiden and the laborer unveiled their secret lives in its

confessional-box; and all felt the influence, yea some at that period,

the sternly asserted rule, of the Master of the institution.

Chamilly went with Chrysler to it on the first morning of his stay in

Dormillière, which was a Sunday. As they approached it through the

square, filled with the tied teams of the congregation, a beadle,

gorgeous in livery of black and red, with knee-breeches and cocked hat,

emerged from the side door and proceeded to drive the groups of

stragglers gently inwards with his staff, as a shepherd guides a flock.

Haviland looked at his friend, smiling.

"You are not in Ontario," he said.

"Clearly not," replied Chrsyler, "In my democratic Province, such a

proceeding would be impossible."

When they entered, the gorgeous beadle led them soberly up one of the

aisles,--carrying his staff in a stately manner--to the seigneurial pew,

a large, high enclosure, with a railing about the top like a miniature

balustrade, and a coat-of-arms painted on the door; and into this he

ushered them with grave form, and the Ontarian vividly began to realize

that he was in a feudal land: after which he took a glance about him.

Filling the great phalanx of soiled and common pews in the nave, were

the first representative mass of French-Canadians whom he had been

brought to face. "Here," he thought, "are those who speak the partner

voice in our Confederation, and whom we should know as brothers."

A few stood out in the quality of parts of the whole, but only to

emphasize it as a mass. Above the crowd, he marked, for instance, the

sober, responsible faces of the Marguilliers. A girl's face too,

particularly attracted him--that of one who sat beside the Sisters

attendant over the convent children in their gallery. No romantic

seraphieness glowed upon her features or her form; but she was following

the service with the light of simply such spiritual earnestness and

intelligence about her that she seemed to sit there a superior being.

But it was the faces of the laborer and the solid farmer that oftenest

dotted the surface of the sea of heads. So typical to him were the

features and responses of all, that he could not shake off the feeling

that it was not individuals he saw, but a People.

A People! No flippant thing is it to feel oneself in the presence of so

great an Organism. If some hour of one man's pain, or of the grandeur of

some other one, may be thought-worthy things, how reverently must breath

be hushed as we stand in presence of a race's life, and think we hear

its sorrows, cries and voices! Ever, thou People's Song, must thou stir

the heart that listens, sweeping its tenderest chords of pity, and

chanting organ music to its aspirations.

The curé's sermon following as before detailed, the congregation

appeared oppressed with its denunciation, but it produced, no effect

whatever upon Haviland, the Liberal leader, whose countenance rested its

dark eyes on the tablets of his ancestors in the transept wall before

him.

CHAPTER XVII.

ZOTIQUE'S RECEPTION.

A noble looking man of fifty years, stood waiting to meet them as they

made their way out. Of olive complexion, small cherry mouth and

features, yet fine head and person, and smiling benignly, he advanced a

step before Chrysler noticed him.

"Salut, M'sieu L'Honorable," bowed Haviland.

"Good-day, Chamilly," he replied quickly, without ceasing to smile

directly towards the other man and holding out his hand.

Chrysler looked closer at his features.

"Ah, Mr. Genest!" he exclaimed, with pleasure, recognizing the Hon.

Aristide Genest, a personage potent in his time in Dominion Councils.

"I hope now to know the gentleman as completely as I have admired him,"

Genest complimented in the French way, twinkling his eyes merrily. "Many

a time I have listened to your advices in the Parliament. I say to you

'Welcome.'"

Chamilly started off to talk with his innumerable constituents in the

crowd.

"Let us cross over here, sir, and hear what they have to say about the

sermon," proposed Genest.

They crossed to a stone building on the other side of the road, and

passed through a group of countrymen into a hall of some length, where

sat sunk in a rustic rocking-chair, a singular individual, whose

observations seemed to be amusing the crowd.

In appearance, he reminded one of no less remarkable a person than the

Devil, for he bore the traditional nose and mouth of that gentleman, and

his body was lean as Casca's; but he seemed at worst a Mephistopheles

from the extravagance of the delivery of his sarcasms.

The subject of discussion was the sermon.

"Baptême, it is terrible!" exclaimed the cadaverous humorist. "Ever

this indigenous Pius IX--fulminating, fulminating, fulminating!--Too

much inferno. The curé does half his burning for Beelzebub! We are

served in a constant auto-da-fé."

"Heh, heh, heh," creaked an old skin-and-bones, with one tooth visible,

which shook as the laugh emerged. Stolid men smoking, deigned to smile.

People seemed prepared to laugh at anything he said.

"What is it that an auto-da-fé is?" a young man demanded from a corner.

"You don't know auto-da-fes?--A dish, my child.--An auto-da-fé is

Liberal broiled."

The character of the room, at which Chrysler now had time to glance,

explained itself by a large painting of that lion-and-unicorn-supporting

-the-British-arms, which embellishes Courts of Justice.

"This room is the Circuit Court," Genest remarked--"Zotique there,

calls it the Circuitous Court--A very poor pun is received with

hospitality here."

"I should like to know that man," said Chrysler.

"Nothing easier. Zotique, come here, my cousin."

He caught sight of them, and rising, without altogether dropping his

broadly humorous expression, extended an invitation to take his

rocking-chair, which Chrysler accepted.

Zotique was like the Mephistopheles he resembled, one of those who have

been every where, seen much, done everything. Born respectably,--a

cousin of L'Honorable's--he had executed in his younger days a record

of pranks upon the neighbors, which at a safe-distance of time became

good humoredly traditional. The trial and despair of Père Galibert, and

the disapproved of Chamilly's father, he ran away to Trois-Rivières as

soon as he knew enough to do so; thence to Montreal, and Joliette; and a

Fur Post near Saipasoù (or, "Nobody-knows-Where," for Zotique asserts

the region has that name); then was a veracious steamboat guide for

tourists to the Gulf; edited a comic weekly at Quebec, "illustrated" it,

itself cheerfully and truly confessed, "with execrable wood-engravings;"

as Papal Zouave, he embarked for Rome to gallant in voluminous trousers

on four sous a day; fought wildly, for the fun of it, at the Pia Gate

against Victor Emmanuel's red-shirted patriots,--and came back to

Dormillière disgusted. The Registrarship of the county being vacant, a

pious government appointed him to the position, upon recommendation by

the "high Clergy," as a martyr for the good cause; and on a similar

sacred ground he obtained the passage of a private bill through the

Legislature, admitting him to the honorable profession of notary without

the trouble of studying.

So it came to pass that our friend was installed in the Registry Office

end of the long cottage known as the Circuit Court House, and made use

of the Court Hall itself for his Sunday receptions to the people.

The people themselves were worth a brief catalogue.

Jacques Poulin, the horse trader, stood against a window, with his big

straw hat on. His trotting sulky was outside. Gagnant, the established

merchant, with contented reticence of well-to-do-ness, was remarking of

some enterprise, "It won't pay its tobacco." Toutsignant, his insecure

and overdaring young rival; who was bound to cut trade, and let

calculation take care of itself, sat on the opposite side of the room,

and, bantering with him, the shrewd _habitants_, Bourdon and Desrochers,

who were to profit by his theory of an advance in rye. The young

doctor, Boucher from Boucherville, leaned near, superior in broad-cloth

frock coat, red tie, and silk hat. Along a bench, squeezed a jolly

half-dozen "_garçons,"_ and a special mist of tobacco smoke hung

imminent over their heads. About the floor, the windows, the corners of

the room, the bar of the court, sat, lounged, smoked, and stood, in

friendly groups, a host of neighbors, amiably listening, more or less,

to Zotique's harangues and conversations. It cannot be said, however,

that they abated much of their own little discussions. Every now and

then some private Babel would break in like a surge, over the general

noise, and attract attention for an instant.

"The auto-da-fé--alas, it recalls me the ravishing country of Spain! O

those Sierras!--those Vegas! the mountains shirting with snow! the green

plains watered!--but misère! hot as--the disposition of the Curé.

To-day, gentlemen, the affair becomes serious, for lo, the approach of a

doubtful election, and a trifle of clerical interference, like a seed

upon the balance, might well--" the sentence was appendixed by an

explosive shrug.

"Now, the Council of war! we must have a command to him from the Bishop;

and it is I, Zotique Genest, as prominent citizen! as Registrar! as

_Zouave_! who will write and get it."

"But more--that sacré Grandmoulin is coming, and we must receive him at

point of bayonet, _à la charge de cuirasse_! that sacré Grandmoulin!"

"He will be received!" called out a voice.

"The National Liar!" proposed another.

"The breach in our wall is the Curé," continued Zotique.

"Mais."

Qu'allons nous faire,

Dans cette gallère?

"If we could only strap him up with, every mark of respect, like the

sacred white elephant of the Indies!--But first, the Bishop's order!

Remark my brother, I am not advocating disobedience:--only coercion."

The laugh rose again. It was not so much anything he said, but his

extraordinarily grotesque ways--a roll of his large eyes, or a drawing

down of his long, thin mouth, with some quick action of the head, arms

or shoulders, that amused them.

"Me, I say _sacré_ to the Curés," boasted a heavy, bleared fellow,

stepping forward and looking round. His appearance indicated the class

of parodies on the American citizen, known vulgarly as "Yankees from

Longueuil," and as he continued, "I say to them,"--he added a string of

blasphemy in exaggerated Vermontese.

"Be moderate, Mr. Cuiller," Zotique interposed, "None of us have the

honor of being ruffians."

"In the Unyted Staytes," continued Cuiller, however, jerking his heavy

shoulder forward, "when a curé comes to them they say 'Go on, cursed

rascal,'" More oaths in English. The hearers looked on without knowing

how to act, some of them, without doubt, in that atmosphere, tremblingly

admiring his hardihood.

"Cuiller,"--commenced the Honorable, easily.

"My name is Spoon," the Yankee from Longueuil drawled, "I've got a white

man's name."

Cuiller, in fact, was of the host who have Anglicised their patronymics.

Many a man who goes as "White" in New England, is really Le Blanc;

Desrochers translates himself "Stone," Monsieur Des Trois-Maisons calls

himself "Mr. Three-Houses," and it is well authenticated that a certain

Magloire Phaneuf exists who triumphs in the supreme ingenuity of

"My-glory Makes-nine."

"There is a respect due," proceeded the Honorable, ignoring the

correction "to what others consider sacred, even by those who themselves

respect nothing. This gentleman, besides, sir, is an English gentleman,

and your use of his tongue cannot but be a barbarism to his taste."

The big fellow shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his striped

trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a

man named Benoit, who was regarding him with admiration.

This was an orator and a Solomon. He was a farmer, middle-aged, and

somewhat short, whose shaven lips were drawn so over-soberly as to

express a complete self-conviction of his own profundity, while his

unstable averted glance warned that his alliances were not to be

depended on where he was likely to be a material loser. A particularly

"fluent" man, accomplished in gestures such as form an ingredient in all

French conversation, he was in Zotique's Sunday afternoons a zestful

contestant. His clothes were of homespun, dyed a raw, light blue, and he

was proud of his choice of the color, for its singularity.

"Monsieur Genest," he began, with oratorical impressiveness, coming

forward, and bowing to Zotique, "Monsieur l'Honorable; Monsieur;" bowing

low; "and Messieurs. I speak not against the clergy, whom the good God

and His Pontifical Holiness have set over us for instruction and

guidance. I am not speaking against those holy men. But it seems to me

to-day that you, my friend, are a little rash--a very little severe--in

reproaching my friend, Mr. Cuiller, upon the language which he uses,

coming from a foreign country where neither the expressions, nor the

customs, are the same as ours; and it seems to me that there is a point

a little subtle which should have been noticed by you before commencing,

and on which I dare to base my exception to the form; and this point is,

I pretend, that Mr. Cuiller has said nothing directly himself against

the clergy, but has simply told how they were treated in the United

States."

This beginning, delivered with appropriate gestures--now a bow, now an

ultra-crossing of the arms, only to throw them apart again, now a

chopping down with both hands from the elbow, now again a graceful

clasping of them in front, made a satisfactory impression on Benoit

himself, who prepared to continue indefinitely had not Zotique

interrupted.

"Benoit, you are too fine for good millstone. But respecting friend

Cuiller, we are willingly converted to your delusion. He is honorably

acquitted of his crime."

"And now," he cried, "Oyez! Let all who have not forgotten how to make

their marks, sign the requisition which I observe in the hands of Maître

Descarries."

Maître Descarries, Notary, an elderly, active little man, carefully

attired and wearing his white hair brushed back from his forehead, in a

manner resembling a halo, or some silvery kind of old-time wig, stood at

the door holding a document,--a paper nominating Sieur Chamilly Haviland

to represent the Electoral District of Argentenaye.

The Notary, advancing, laid it on the bar of the Court, and everybody

crowded to look on and see those requested to sign do so.

The Honorable, the first to be called, went forward and affixed his

name, and Maître Descarries turned to a person who was apparently an old

farmer, but a man with a face of conspicuous dignity.

"Will you sign, Mr. De La Lande?"

"Ah yes, Monsieur Descarries--'with both hands,'"--answered he, bowing

quickly; and his signature read, to the Ontarian's astonishment: "De La

Lande, Duke of St. Denis, Peer of France."

Thus, at this after-mass reception, Chrysler was introduced to a circle

of whom he was to see much in the events to follow.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE AMERICAN FRANCE.

Chrysler and Genest, after reaching the Manoir, sat conversing under the

large triple tree on the side of the lawn.

"You have no idea of the simplicity of life here," l'Honorable

philosophised. "We dwell as peacefully, in general, and almost as much

in one spot as these great trees. After all, is there any condition in

which mortal existence is happier than that of pure air and tranquility.

We have a proverb, 'Love God and go thy path.' To love God, to live, to

die, are the complete circle."

Chamilly's entrance put an end to these idyllic observations. He was

driven up in a cart by a country jehu, and leaping out, there followed

him a couple of friends.

Haviland called Tardif, the head servant, who appeared at the door of

the house, bareheaded, with an apron on:

"Bring the dinner out here, Tardif," he ordered; and a light table was

set under the spreading boughs.

"Now tell us, De La Lande, about your trip to Montreal."

Of the two friends who drove up with their host in the cart, one was

Breboeuf, a hunchback. This little creature on being introduced, bowed

and shook hands with an aspect of hopeless resignation, and sitting

down, relapsed into thought, telescoping his neck into his squarish

shoulders. His companion was a young man of small build, but spirited,

good-looking face--De La Lande, schoolmaster of the village, a son of

the farmer "Duke."

"And where commence?" responded the schoolmaster to the request for an

account of the trip to Montreal.

"In the middle, as I am doing," retorted Haviland, flourishing the

carving-knife over the joint.

"Ah well. The middle was the climax with me. It was the Fête of St. Jean

Baptiste!"

"You saw Notre Dame, and the great procession?" inquired the Honorable.

"Yes, I saw that vast Cathedral fifteen thousand full! And the Curé of

Colonization climbed up in the midst, and I heard the most glorious

words that were ever spoken to French Canadians!"

"Was the procession like ours here?"

"At Dormillière? Pah!--we have two Curés, a beadle and the choir-boys!

Theirs was a mile in length. There were nineteen bands playing music,

all in fine uniforms, and there were all the Societies of St. Jean

Baptiste walking, with their gold chains and their badges, and as many

as forty magnificently decorated cars, bearing representations of the

discovery of Canada by Jacques Cartier, and the workings of all the

trades, and innumerable splendid banners, of white, and blue, and red

and green, with gold inscriptions and pictures--and the Curé of Col----"

"Were the streets well decorated? How were the arches and flags?"

"They were good. The streets were full of flying tricolors and Union

Jacks stretched across them. They were lined with green saplings as we

do here. The crowd was enormous. There were thousands from the States.

And the Cathedral of Notre Dame was all excitement; for the Curé----,"

"Tell us about it! Every one speaks of it! What did he say?"

(A well-known priest had just electrified the people of the land with an

extraordinary declaration.)

"But, to speak of his aims, I must recollect the numbers of our

people."

"Breboeuf, mon brebis," said Chamilly, turning to the little fellow,

"what is the number of the French Canadians?"

The hunchback lifted his face gravely, and issued in a monotonous voice,

but with the precision of a machine:--"One million, eighty-two thousand,

nine hundred and forty-three, in Canada, by the census of 1870; one

million, one hundred and ten thousand, in Canada, by the computation of

the Abbé Zero; four hundred and thirty-five thousand in the United

States by the computation of the same."

The Ontarian was surprised at his odd, machine-like accuracy, but

Haviland only laughed a little chuckle and Chrysler's glance was drawn

away towards a figure entering the gate, walking abstractedly, his hands

in his hip pockets and eyes on the path. He was of slender but agile

person, the decision which marked every movement showing his

consciousness of latent activity. Haviland espied him presently:

"Bravo, here is Quinet. Quinet, what are you doing?"

"Cultivating dulness," replied the figure, scarcely glancing up.

"Come and cultivate us, for a contrast, my friend."

"Would I be changing occupation?"

"Sit here and we will show you. Yourself may be as dull as you like."

The stranger, nonchalantly, and half-defiantly, seated himself, after

introduction. Chrysler scanned him curiously in recollection of the

references to him in Haviland's Book of Enthusiasms, and recognized the

strange red-brown scale of hues of hair, eyebrows and moustache, which

gave character to his appearance; but the pale countenance was strong

now, and tanned, though spare, and all the signs of former weakness had

departed.

Chamilly continued to Chrysler:

"I am not a little proud of the cheerfulness, the spirit, the

respectability, the intelligence of my little people. And if you had

seen the mottoes which I have read on cars and banners in the

processions of our national saint; such as, "GOD HAS MADE LAW TO EVERY

MAN TO LABOR," and: "TO MAKE THE PEOPLE BETTER,"--you would have felt

with me that it must be a people responsive to sober and admirable

aims."

"I have no doubt of it," remarked the visitor genially.

"But I scarcely think you can be familiar with a group of startling

projects lately cherished in our circles."

"Plots against everybody," Quinet remarked. "Have the goodness to pass

me the asparagus."

"The Continent of North America is a large acre," continued Haviland.

"Can you fancy a race who a century ago were but ninety thousand,

aspiring and actually planning for its complete control?"

Chrysler looked amused at the idea, for the handful of French-Canadians.

"That is our firmly-persuaded future!" asserted the young man, De La

Lande, eagerly and boldly. "The Curé of Colonization has demonstrated

that it is possible. We shall reconquer the continent!"

"Is it your view?" Chrysler asked of Chamilly.

"I instance it," he returned, "because it shows that my people are

capable of thinking high."

"There is a progression of plans!" went on the eager De La Lande. "The

first is to get control of the six English counties!"

"I will trust the Anglo-Saxon for holding his own," the Ontarian

laughed, in the amusement of vigorous confidence.

"But we gain!" the young man cried. "Our race is always French! We win

fast the British strongholds in our dear Province."

"This the least, of the plans," Haviland remarked. "All are founded on

a curious fact."

"What fact is that?"

"Our phenomenal multiplication in numbers," returned the seigneur,

smiling.

"What?" cried Chrysler.

He stopped a moment open-eyed, and then laughed heartily and long. He

could not satisfy his laughter at such a basis for conquest of a

continent, and it burst forth again at intervals for some time.

"Nevertheless it is true,--and Biblical," continued the undaunted

schoolmaster. "_Sicut saggittae in manu potentis, ita filii

excussorum_."

"Breboeuf," said Haviland, who took some part with De La Lande but

joined in Chrysler's amusement, "help us. What was the number of

French-Canadians at the conquest by the English?"

"Sixty-nine thousand two hundred and sixty-five, by the census of the

General Murray in 1765, including approximately 500 others."

"And now?"

"One million and eight-two thousand nine hundred and forty, by the

census of 1870."

"You see, sir, what a growth. The clergy encourage it with satisfaction.

It is not comfortable for bachelors in some of our parishes."

All at the table were laughing, more or less, except De La Lande and the

hunchback, who were perfectly serious.

"One plan, sir, I confess freely," said the former, "affects yourself.

You are perfectly acquainted with the Ottawa River, separating your

Province from our own, and that it cuts across and above yours, which is

a peninsula. The fourth great plan (out of six), is to plant centres

along the Ottawa which shall exert their expansive force downwards to

overrun your peninsula."

"What a dangerous race!"

"While another contingent meets it further south, where our progress is

well known. So we shall win the centre itself of the Dominion. Let us

possess the North, says our Peter the Hermit, and we can rest sure of

the whole. Yes, let us possess the North! let us populate the shores of

Hudson's Bay!" the enthusiast cried, losing himself in his vision, "Let

us possess the shores of Hudson's Bay, where d'Iberville of old

dislodged our enemies!"

"Peter the Hermit!" laughed Chamilly. "What a name for our jolly old

Curé of Colonization. But all that is well enough for ecclesiastics to

recommend, since none others would invite their friends to die on those

refrigerated wastes.--Yet the people themselves are heroically willing."

"Our next ambition," proceeded De La Lande, absorbed in his enthusiasm

and quite guileless of any personal enmities, "is the conquest of the

United States. Northern Maine is French Canadian. In New England we

count half a million. Lowell, Worcester, Lawrence, Nashua and Fall River

are ours. In farms, in parishes, in solid masses, we shall establish

ourselves on the banks of the Merrimac as we have on our own historic

streams, to increase and multiply and possess the land, replacing the

degenerate New Englander, _possedentes januas hostium_, performing a

divine mission, working out a high destiny for our language and the

Catholic faith, and establishing a new, magnificent State out of the

portions of those destroyed, over which shall fly the lilies of old--"

"And perhaps reign a duly fat Bourbon," interrupted Quinet over his

salad.

"We shall re-unite at last again with France! The affection of this

remnant of her children, turned adrift in their few arpents of snow, has

never died towards the land so changed from the time of our forefathers.

It is still to us the Palestine of our speech, our history and our faith

of St. Louis! We are the American France! We are all ready. We are the

people of God. In the words of a brother: 'This blood was set in

America in the midst of a material world, like France in Europe, to

regenerate these peoples and perpetuate the reign of ideals. God has

willed it: 'GESTA DEI PER FRANCOS!'"

Chamilly turned to Chrysler as the school master ended, and said with a

smile: "Do you not think there is enterprise in a people like this?"

CHAPTER XVIII.

A DISAPPEARING ORDER.

"Qu'il est triste d'etre vaincu!--"

--DU CALVET.

From Quinet who had been deliberately dealing with his dessert, now came

words:

"Mistaken impulses! Led after will o' the wisps by dreamers and

designers! If it were not that all movements work but one way, like the

backward and forward of a machine--towards _advancement_, these things

would make a man despond."

"What then, sir," Chrysler asked, "are your ideas?"

"Hear me, like a different messenger from the same battle. The motto,

'God has made Law to Every Man to Labour,' means that the slaves of

priestcraft are to be contented with their servitude. 'To Make the

People Better,' means to blind the second eye of their obedience."

"To--?"

"Stop my dear friend," Chamilly interrupted with emotion, "that motto's

words are sacred to me and will ever justly be to all our people. Do not

disparage that motto?"

"I will never disparage making the people truly better. It is to the

tone of those who usurp the aim, you should apply my critique. The men

who lip these terms are none other than the evil geniuses of history. It

is the _Jesuits_ who would make us poor and miserable,--who have wrecked

French America, past and future. Without them we should have welcomed to

our dominions from the first, an immigration twice larger than

England's: we should have held the continent north, south and centre;

our people would have been vitalized by education instead of so ignorant

that no commoner but one ever wrote a book; they would have built and

flourished and extended; and in place of a poor and helpless people they

would have been rich, powerful, and self-reliant, like the Bostonians;

Bigot and his nest of horse-leeches would never have sucked our blood

and left us to ruin!"

He paused, but as if not yet quite finished. His hearers listened.

"And _since_--," he suddenly and energetically added, with a stern look

around and a bitter suggestiveness on the word as if it were enough to

pronounce it; and in truth, it silenced both De La Lande and Chamilly,

and appeared to make a completely effective ending.

In the evening, walking out on the road before retiring, Chamilly and

Chrysler commented on the discussion, and Chrysler said, "I must say I

was unprepared for this debate. I was a poor helpless Briton, caught

like Braddock in Mr. De La Lande's ambush. Tell me what you think

yourself of these things."

"It is a sad thing to belong to a disappearing order," Haviland replied,

"Sympathising with my people, I am grieved in a sense to believe their

present aspirations dreams. It is sad to behold any race, and deeply so

if it is your own, blind in the presence of unalterable forces which

will soon begin their removal of what it considers to be dearest."

"I sympathize with them and you," Chrysler said.

"Ecclesiasticism ruins us!" exclaimed Quinet the Radical, who was with

them:

"Quiconque me résiste et me brave est impie

Ce qu'ici-bas j'écris, là-haut Dieu la copie."

"You should moderate your animosity," Chamilly said. "These Jesuits are

most certainly humble, self-devoted men?"

"I detest them as machines, not as men!" retorted the Radical.

CHAPTER XIX.

HUMAN NATURE.

"Va ...

A monsieur le Curé

Lui dire que sa paroisse

Est tout bouleversee."

--POPULAR BALLAD.

Curé L'Archeveque, black skull-cap on head, was in the best of humour,

playing with his little dog in the ample reception-room of the

parsonage, when a laborer came and brought an account of several late

doings in the village.

When Messiré heard what had been said at Zotique's, his rotund black

stole writhed as if founts of lava boiled in him; his face swelled to

the likeness of a fiery planet; indignation choked his speech for four

minutes by the face of the tall clock in his sitting-room; and then the

lava rose to the surface in jets:

"Gang of accurseds!"

"Atheists!"

"Freemasons!"

He turned for a moment to the laborer again who had come to inform him.

Then he exploded successively as before:

"They laughed?"

"They laughed!"

"I will make them laugh!"

The young curé, his vicar, who was present, tried to calm him, but could

not.

His energies turned to action; he dismissed the parishioner, who, hat

in hand, stood humbly by the door, and sitting down began to write

letters and concoct vows.

The first of the latter was to announce a spiritual boycott from the

pulpit on Zotique and his iniquitous hall; and with this he wrote to the

Attorney-General on the scandal of the gross misuse of the Circuit Court

and the bad character of the local Registrar.

The second bitter vow was that the Liberals should lose their election:

this inspired a letter to Grandmoulin, the "Cave" Chief.

There were other vows and other letters; one each to the Bishop and the

Archbishop,--whose contents are unknown.

At similar times, however, the Reverend gentleman had a recreation to

which he was accustomed to turn for refreshment, and this was not long

in rising in his mind. By law he was Visitor to the secular school: than

which there was nothing he considered more nearly the root of all evil.

He therefore took up his brown straw hat and black cane, and started

determinedly out to exercise his habit of vexing the high spirit of the

school master, De La Lande.

"Ah bon, fratello!" cried Zotique that afternoon when de La Lande

appeared at his door, "How goes it? Come in and speak to Mr. Chrysler,

here."

"It goes ill, Zotique," answered the school master, gloomily, "I have

had the Curé again."

"And what did he say to you?"

"Quarrels with everything in the system. Our geography was galimatias,

and book-keeping a crime: the people must not think they were on a level

with the learned, and the children must do this and that. At last--at

last--I was exasperated, and told him I had a right under the laws to my

position and powers. He said there can be no right against the Right! I

told him there were many wrongs against the Right! And he went away

saying he would bring me to a bed of straw."

"Let him do!" laughed the Registrar.

But Zotique himself was not to escape quite scot-free, for when Chrysler

stopped next day at his office, as he was getting accustomed to do, he

found him in one of his excitements.

[F]"Àc-ré-yé!" he was ejaculating.

[Footnote F: NOTE--An evasive form of "Sacre," analogous to "Sapre,"

"Sacristie," "Sac," "St. Christophe," &c.]

"Ah, good day, sir. Come in and take a seat Àa-a-créyé, how they enrage

us!"--and he cast an impatient glance on the floor at a large envelope

deeply marked with his heel.

"What is the matter?" Chrysler queried.

"The matter, sir, is that!"--spurning the envelope.

"An official notification?"

"Not official!--No, sir, unofficial! ultra-official, contra-official,

pseud-official! See, read it!"

He picked up and handed over the objectionable letter, which was headed

with the stamp of the Attorney-General's Office:--"Dear Sir,--You are

requested to grant Mr. Cletus Libergent the use of the Circuit Court

edifice and rooms, which are in your charge, for whatever purpose he may

desire, for the space of three weeks from the present date."

T. OUAOUARON,

Attorney-General.

Chrysler smiled to Zotique. Could a Government that openly granted the

public buildings to partisans pretend to a sense of right or dignity?

As to the effects of the Curé's second vow, they remain matter for

narration to come.

CHAPTER XX.

CHEZ NOUS.

"Bonjour le maître et la maîtresse

Et tous les gens de la maison."

--THE GUIGNOLEE CAROL.

The crimson and gold of sunset were stained richly across the west.

Chrysler was walking leisurely out in the country. A mile from

Dormillière, a white stone farm-house stood forward near the road. In

front, across the highway, the low cliff swelled out into the stump of a

headland, which bore spreading on its grassy top three mighty and

venerable oaks.

Chrysler, pondering as was his wont upon this and everything, noting the

surges of color in the sky, the clear view, the procession of

odd-looking homesteads down the road; their narrow fields running back

indefinitely; the resting flocks and herds; here a group of

thatched-roof barns, and there a wayside cross; passed along and mused

on the peace of life in this prairie country, and the goodness of the

Almighty to His children of every tongue.

The strains of a violin in the farm-house struck his ear. Someone was

fiddling the well-known sprightly air, "Vive la Canadienne:"

"Long live the fair Canadian girl,

With her sweet, tender eyes."

The house was a large cottage, having around its door a slender gallery,

at whose side went down a stair. Its chimnies were stout, and walls

thick, its roof pitched very steep and clipped off short at the eaves;

a garden of lilac-bushes and shrubs, some of which pressed their dark

green against its spotless white-wash, surrounding it in front and on

one side, while on the other lay the barn-yard, with a large wooden

cross in its centre, protected by a railing. Two hundred years ago such

houses were built in Brittany.

Chrysler's glances took in with curiosity the tiny window up in the

gable, the quaint-cut iron bars of the cellar openings, the small-paned

sashes of the four front windows.

Above the door, was the rude-cut inscription:

A DIEU LA GLOIRE

J.B.

1768.

The fiddler drew his attention particularly, however, to the people on

the gallery. There was one at least whom he had seen before. A

_cavalier_ of much shirt-front and large mouth, and on whose make-up,

Nature had printed "BAR-TENDER" in capitals--in short the "Spoon" of

Zotique's reception--was sitting on the balustrade of the little

gallery, making courtship over the shoulder of a dark-eyed maid, whose

mother--a square-waisted archetype of her--stood in the door.

Paterfamilias sat on the top step with his back to Chrysler, barring the

stair rather awkwardly with his legs. A second young man slender, and

dressed in a frock coat of black broad-cloth, and silk hat, and with

face pale, but of undiscourageable obserfulness, though without doubt

repulsed by the father's attitude from a front attack on the position,

was taking the three steps in the garden necessary to bring him

alongside the gallery. And, unobserved, down beside her dress, the

maiden's fair hand was dropping him a sprig of lilac.

Within, the grandfather bent crooked over his violin.

Our traveller halted, there was a whisper, and the music stopped.

"Salut, Monsieur," cried the householder, stumbling down the steps and

hurrying half-way across the garden, where he took up a position,

"Monsieur is tired. Will he honour my roof? All here is yours, and I and

my family are at your service. Enter, Monsieur."

A dramatic gesture of humility recalled at once the man in blue

homespun, who had addressed the crowd at Zotique's.

"Good evening, Mr. Benoit," the Ontarian said, opening the gate and

mustering his French, "I shall be charmed."

The air immediately bustled with hospitality.

"Come in, sir, come in," feebly rasped the voice of the old man from the

door. "Josephte, bring a chair for Monsieur." "I will fetch one!" cried

the good-wife. The girl Josephte, rose from her seat and followed her

mother quickly into the house; the pale young man in the garden doubled

his cheerful smile; and only the bar-tender endued himself in an

aggressive grin of independence.

"I assure you, monsieur," pronounced Jean Benoit, with his full armory

of oratorical gestures, "that a friend of Monseigneur Chamilly will

always have our best. Ascend, sir.--Josephte, place Monsieur the chair."

Never was there a greater occasion of state.

Their guest raised his hat to the young lady and her mother, who threw

into her carriage all the dignity and suavity she could command. Then he

ascended and sat gratefully down, for he was fatigued.

The grandfather had laid his instrument on a spinning-wheel within the

door, and slowly lit a pipe with both hands. The bar-tender jumped from

his perch and stood with a familiar leer, of which when Benoit said "Mr.

Cuiller, monsieur," Chrysler took trifling notice. On the other hand the

pale lover remained modestly down the steps, and his cheerfulness

redoubled when Chrysler nodded to him, passingly introduced as "Le

Brun."

"Does the gentleman take white whiskey,[G] or well milk?" asked the old

man. "Josephte, bring some milk."

[Footnote G: Highwines.]

The daughter darted into the house.--"There is tea on the stove,

Josephte!" Madame called hurriedly inwards, "and bring out some cakes

and apples, and perhaps Monsieur would like new honey.--Be comfortable,

sir."

"Monsieur has come into the parish for the election?" the old man

queried politely.

"Only to see what passes," he replied, accepting the bowl of milk which

Josephte tendered him, and a piece of raisin cake from a pile on a

blue-pattern plate.--"What do you think of it?"

But a diversion occurred. The wife had retired a few moments, and a

veteran piano commenced playing, while a spirited boy's voice struck up

a hymn from the services of the Church,--"O Salutaris Hostia." It was

her youngest son, whom she had not been able to resist showing off a

little. Chrysler praised the voice, which was excellent, and the boy,

attired in a neat, black, knee-breeches suit with white stockings, was

proudly brought forward and presented.

The grandfather had the twinkle in his eye of a true country violinist.

"I was going to tell them a story of the old times, sir. Will you pardon

me?" he said, with the twinkle sparkling.

Chrysler protested his own desire to listen.

"We always like to hear about the old times," said young Le Brun,

apologetically.

"It's about a rascality of Zotique's, the droll boy, when we were

young--the delectable history of Mouton. Mouton, the servant of Père

Galibert, who in those times was Curé, was a fat man, of the air of a

tallow image. You know Legros--the butcher's son,--just like that. If he

had had red hair there would have been spontaneous combustion."

"Someone stole the sacramental wine of Pére Galibert, and everyone

except the Pére knew it was Mouton. Messire would never believe them,

though it so angered him he preached fourteen discourses against the

thief. They were eloquent sermons."

"One Sunday afternoon--it was about the Day of St. Michel, when we went

in to pay the seigneur his rents--Zotique was at the presbytère with me

and his brother the Honorable, and all of us playing cards with Pére

Galibert. Zotique had come down from the city with a new keg of wine for

the Sacrament, and they were discussing the disappearance. Mouton was

there, and he says never a word. "Let it alone," says Zotique, and he

looks around and takes up the inkbottle carelessly from the shelf and

goes off to the kitchen and down into the cellar, where he puts away the

wine, and then he comes back to us, upstairs. Mouton disappears in a

moment. Zotique pretends to play,--but he is calculating the seconds.

Presently he says, "Monsieur le Curé, you and I are too good players.

Let Mouton take my place, and do you play against Benoit and my cousin,"

and without waiting for any answer he flies out to the kitchen, and

cries sharply: "Mouton, Messire wants you!" adding, "Quick, quick, tête

de Mouton!" Mouton rushes upstairs, brushing his mouth. There he stands

before us, solid as the image of tallow; but his mouth was as black as

an oven's, _and his features indistinguishable with ink_."

The circle, all eagerly listening, burst forth:

"How did Zotique do it?" they cried.

"Voila the mystery."

"What was done to Mouton?"

"Pére Galibert boiled him down into tapers, and sold him to the

congregation."

The old man put his pipe, which had gone out, once more to his lips and

nonchalantly repeated the operation of lighting it between his hands.

Spoon, his low felt hat tipped over his eyes made Josephte blush crimson

with his attentions. Her glances and smiles were to François.

Chrysler as he watched her, saw that it was she whose spiritual

expression had attracted him at church. Near at hand, he took notes of

her appearance. She was of modest face, regular and handsome in

features, though not striking, and her cheek wore just a suggestion of

color. Dressed in black, her apparel and demeanor were quietly perfect.

The fine sweep of view from the gallery across the water attracted him,

and his eyes rested upon the leafy monarchs shadowing the river-bank

before them.

"Your house is well placed," he said in admiration.

"Yes, Monsieur," replied the old man, simply, and he pointed out the

various parishes whose spires could be descried across the water.

Thus conversing and observing, the Ontarian spent an instructive and

delightful hour. When he rose to go, calm and rested, the hospitality

again became profuse. "The gentleman will not walk!" shrilly protested

highly-pleased mater familias. "Go François," turning to young Le Brun:

"row Monsieur to the Manoir, you and Mr. Cuiller. Take the rose

_chaloupe_, and Josephte shall go too."

Chrysler made a very admirable guest. He would have struck you as a

fine, large man, of kindly face, and influential manner, and people

pressed upon him their best wherever he went. "You speak our tongue,

sir," said the grandfather, "That is a great thing. I have often thought

that if all the people of the earth spoke but one speech they would all

be brothers. What an absurdity to be divided by mere syllables."

So they parted, with many "Au revoirs" and mutual compliments at the

water-side. The willing François planted one foot on a stone in the

water and handed the young lady into the boat, and Cuiller hastening for

the seat next her, made a pretended accidental lunge of his heavy

shoulder at him into the water. François kept his balance and, quite

unconscious of the malicious stratagem, held the ill-wisher himself from

going over, which he almost did, to Josephte's demure amusement; next

Chrysler got in and François essayed to push off. But as the boat stuck

in the bottom and refused to stir, he suddenly dropped his hold, and

with an "Avance done!" gallantly slushed his way into the water

alongside, in his Sunday trousers, lifted the gunwale and started her

afloat, amidst a shower of final "Au revoirs," and the rose _chaloupe_

moved with noiseless smoothness down the current.

Peace reigned over every surrounding. The broad, molten-like surface;

the dusky idealizing of the lines of cottages and delicate silhouetting

of the trees along the shore near them; the artistic picture of the old

white farm-house, mystic-looking in the soft evening light, with its

shapes of lilac-trees rioting about it and the three great oaks

darkening the bank in front; the ghost of light along the distant

horizon; the gentle coolness of the air; the occasional far-off echo of

some cry; and the regular splash and gleam of the oars as they leave the

water or dip gently in again. A fish leaps. An ocean steamer, low in the

distance, can be descried creeping noiselessly on. The islands and

shores mirror themselves half-distinctly in the water.

A mile above, some boatful of pensive hearts are singing. So calm is the

evening that the cadences come distinctly to us, and almost the words

can be plainly caught. In a lull of their song, faint sounds of another

arrive from far away. Rising and falling, now heard and now not,

plaintive and recurring, it is like the voices of spirits.

But farther, farther yet, a still more distant echo--a suggestion

scarcely real--floats also to us. The whole river, in its length and

breadth, from Soulanges and the Lake of Two Mountains, and the tributary

Ottawa, to Quebec and Kamouraska and the shores of the Gulf beyond, all

is alive with plaintive sweetness, echoing from spirit to spirit, (for

it is a fiction that music is a thing of lips and ears), old accents of

Normandy, Champagne, and Angoulême.

The brimming François strikes up by natural suggestion of his dipping

oars;

A la claire fontaine

M'en allant promener.

I.

Beside the crystal fountain

Turning for ease to stray,

So fair I found the waters

My limbs in them I lay.

Long is it I have loved thee,

Thee shall I love alway,

My dearest.

Long is it I have loved thee,

Thee shall I love alway.

So fair I found the waters,

My limbs in them I lay:

Beneath an oak tree resting,

I heard a roundelay.

Long is it, &c.

III

Beneath an oak tree resting,

I heard a roundelay,

The nightingale was singing

On the oak tree's topmost spray.

Long is it, &c.

IV.

The nightingale was singing

On the oak tree's topmost spray:--

Sing, nightingale, keep singing,

Thou who hast heart so gay!

Long is it, &c.

V.

Sing, nightingale, keep singing,

Thou hast a heart so gay,

Thou hast a heart so merry,

While mine is sorrow's prey.

Long is it, &c.

VI.

For I have lost my mistress,

Whom I did true obey,

All for a bunch of roses,

Whereof I said her nay.

Long is it, &c.

VII.

I would those luckless roses,

Were on their bush to-day,

And that itself the rosebush

Were plunged in ocean's spray.

Long is it I have loved thee,

Thee shall I love alway,

My dearest

Long is it I have loved thee,

Thee shall I love alway.

The melody was of a quiet, haunting strangeness, and from the end of the

words "Thou who hast heart so gay," the maiden perfected it by

interweaving an exquisite contralto into the chorus,

Long is it I have loved thee,

Thee shall I love alway.

In this fashion was Chrysler delivered at the Manoir, and when Chamilly

asked him "Where have you been-this evening?" as he entered the grounds,

he answered, "In Arcadia!"

CHAPTER XXI.

DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE.

"Aië! cela ressemble un peu à certaine fable celèbre, dont la morale se

résume ceçi ne comptez pas sans votre hôte."

--BENJAMIN SULTE

"St. Gregory the Great! Here comes the Small-pox!" exclaimed Zotique, as

he and Chamilly, with their guest, were off behind the Manoir, and

standing by the weather-worn Chapel in the hayfields, which served as

the tomb of the first Haviland, "the Protestant Seigneur."

The name "Picault" offered itself so readily to the pun of

"Picotte,"--Small-pox,--that the jest had become almost a usage.

Startled by Zotique's exclamation, Mr Chrysler looked from the

commemorative table on the Chapel's side (whose rivulet of eulogies he

was reading line by line), towards the pine-walk round the Manoir,

whence a distant figure was sauntering towards them along the path,

meditatively smoking a cigar.

"That's a fact," exclaimed Chamilly, straining his eyes towards the

figure; and the three looked at each other in astonishment. "Has he

actually the enterprise to try me again? Or what can he want?"

"I can answer you," the veracious Zotique undertook, "my eyes are

good.--He is smiling fully a second hundred thousand."

"That is courage after what I gave him for the first."

"It is doubtless, then, glory:--say Member of the Council."

"Did I ever tell you of the last time he came to me, and offered not

only that Membership, but finally advanced to the Presidency of it.

Imagine the recklessness of the Province's interests--A President of the

Council at twenty-four years! More than that, if I wished for active

glory, he would give either the local Premiership, or undertake to

combine the French parties at Ottawa, and put me at their head, with a

surety of being Premier of the whole country. And this again for a youth

of twenty-four years!--He tried to flatter me that I was a Pitt or a

Napoleon. And I answered, that no man guilty of such a compact could be

either."

"You will do it without him," replied Zotique, confidently.

Chrysler looked closely at the approaching figure, growing larger and

clearer.

"Where is he Member for?" he asked.

"Member for Hoang-ho _in partibus infidelium_," replied Zotique,

sarcastically.

Picault sauntered up with a smile of unfaltering genial sang-froid,

bowed, removed his cigar, and addressed them.

"Salut, my dear Haviland, salut Messieurs. Oh! my dear Genest, how goes

it?" offering his hand, which Zotique took with a caricature of

extravagant joy and imitation of the other's style:

"My dear Small-pox--pardon me--my dear friend, I am charmed to meet

again a man of so much sense and honor."

"Ah yes, we have fought on many a field, but we respect each other

'Honneur au plus vaillant.' But why, my dear Haviland," turning, "why

should the valiant oppose each other, and half of them lose at each

battle? Is it not because they are divided? Union makes strength!"

"Yes, it is because they are divided by impassable gulfs," said

Chamilly, coldly. "Did you come to see me, Monsieur?"

"My dear fellow, can't we have a little private conversation together?

I am, of course, in the country to oppose your politics, but being in

Dormillière, I cannot forget our social acquaintanceship."

"Do me the honor of saying here what you desire to say, Monsieur. I have

no political secrets from these friends."

"Pardon me, what I have to tell you, is strictly private."

"If it is in political matters, I do not wish it to be so."

"It is personal, I assure you."

"Then you will humor me, sir, by writing it."

"My friend, do not let party differences put grimaces at each other on

our real faces:--I would say rather party names; for I am in reality as

much a Red as yourself. If you were willing we would prove that to you

by changing the title, of our side to yours."

"At that moment, sir, there would be what I live for in the name

'Blue.'"

Picault drew a deliberative puff at his cigar, and lowered it again.

"You will not, then, do me the honor of a personal interview?" he asked,

smiling unprovokably still.

"Cease, cease!" replied Haviland, "It will soon be the noon of plain

words!"

The tempter with nice discernment, perceiving that this short and bold

interview was useless, and that he ought to withdraw, put his cigar

between his lips, puffed a "Good-day, gentlemen," and turned back

meditatively, along the path towards the pines of the Manoir.

"Au plaisir!" returned Zotique to him with facetious exactitude.

Haviland was furious.

"Shall the children of these men, enriched perhaps and elevated through

their crimes," he exclaimed, "pretend in time to come that they obtained

their 'Honorables,' and Knighthoods, and seats on the Bench of Justice,

and of Cabinets fairly from their country, and were the world's great

and true? Forbid it, and forbid that their names should live except in

memory of their paltriness!"

"But dear Mr. Chrysler," he added in a moment, "you must not take us for

party bigots. The masses of the Bleus are honest, and any day our own

name may be desecrated by a clique of knaves, our principles represented

by the other name."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE MANUFACTORY OF REFLECTIONS.

Haviland's approaching election kept him very busy from this time

forward, and deluged him with interviews, canvasses, meetings, great and

little, and perpetual calls on his attention. His conscientiousness made

him work almost unremittingly, for he determined his part in the

struggle to be far more than a matter of mere verbiage and smiles. Mr.

Chrysler, like a sensible fellow-Member, quite comprehended the

situation, and was content to note the admirable way in which his friend

did everything; to receive a smile or friendly direction here and there,

and to fall back on the attentions of l'Honorable, and the over-zealous

Zotique. He felt his entry free, however, to the office where Haviland

was principally employed, and which was not uninteresting of itself.

There the young man had gathered a library of statistical volumes and

other statesman's lore, with busts of Thiers and Cæsar and strangely

ideal and unlike the rest,--a pure white classic mask of Minerva on the

wall opposite his chair, as if to strike the note of a higher life;

while Breboeuf, curious little object, devoured some blue-book in a

corner.

Now what were those great aims of Haviland's? NATION-MAKING, we know in

general. But what was the work upon which he was employed as the means?

On the occasion of one of Chrysler's quiet entries, Haviland rose from

his table as the light began to fall, threw off his toils with a breath

of relief, and turning towards the older gentleman, called his

attention to a large green tin case of pigeon-holes and drawers of

different sizes, labelled.

"Here," he said, "is my manufactory of reflections."

One compartment was marked "FINANCES," another "LABOUR," a small one

"DEFENCE," and a drawer lying open for use was titled "THE UNITY OF

RACES."

"Take out a paper, Mr. Chrysler."

Chrysler put forth his hand willingly, and withdrawing one, held it to

the window and read as follows:

"A great thought can be thought in any place. A great Empire may be

planned in any corner."

The second was a note from "GENERAL NEEDS."

"What the country most requires is Devoted Men."

Others read similarly, some long, some short.

"I can show you what will strike you more," exclaimed Chamilly, in a

moment. "I have been planning your visit a little."

"Have you a geyser or a catacomb?"

"No sir,--a fountain of life," replied he, jocosely. "Let us get our

hats."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE STATESMAN'S DREAM.

As they went down the village, he continued to banter.

"You great Ontarians believe too firmly that there is no progress here.

According to you there is no being to be met in these forsaken wastes,

except a superstitious peasant, clothed all the year in 'beefs' and

homespun, capped with the tuque, girded with the sash, and carrying the

capuchin hood on his shoulders, like the figure on some of our old

copper _sous_;--who sows, after the manner of his fathers, a strip of

the field of his grandfathers, and cherishes to his heart every

prejudice of his several great, great-grandfathers."

"I do not think so," interrupted Chrysler laughing, "I might put you

fifty years behind the age, but no further."

"Yes, but you, sir, have seen us. Why do not more of you come and see?"

"For some of the same reasons perhaps why you do not know us."

Some distance past the Church northward, the village, obscured by the

great, irregularly-occurring pines, takes a turn and a sudden dip. The

dip and the pines, which are thick at that end, obscure a section of the

village known locally as La Reveillière.

As they came to the high ground where the dip occurs, the vista appeared

below of a spacious avenue, down whose centre ran a straight and smooth

road-bed, and on either side twice its breadth of lawn, rolled and cut,

forming a sort of common, ornamented by a sparing group or two of the

ubiquitous pines of the neighbourhood. Along the edges of this avenue or

common, lay what could only be called a sort of _transfigured

French-Canadian village_, looking, in the quiet light of evening, as if

pictured by some artist out of studies of the places in the country

about. The dwellings were larger, better drawn, their windows, attics

and wings more varied in design, but amid their picturesque variety

could be discerned in several, a suggestion of the chimney of a certain

wild little cot in a dell near the Manoir; in others, of the solid stone

home of Jean Benoit; in many the châlet-eaved pattern of the ordinary

cottage. Perhaps the latter were made prettiest of all--they were at

least the airiest looking. It was in the colors and stainings applied to

the gables and other parts that the greatest care had been taken. These

were selected out of the ordinary red, yellow, white, and sage-green

washes in common use, with such taste as to effect a deeply harmonious

and ideal issue. Again, the plan of the village was peculiar. It was

simply an improvement on that of the local villages in general, the

dwellings being upon the border of the street and not far apart, with

their little, foot-wide flower-gardens close against the front. The

circular fan of a patent windmill lifted itself lightly, the most

prominent object in the settlement, and a charming Gothic schoolhouse

crouched farther down on the opposite side. Behind the houses, growths

of trees formed an enclosing background, according to the tastes of the

owners, but guided by some harmonizing supervision like the colors. And

at a short distance the avenue was crossed by a white poplar grove,

which brought the scene to a limit, and separated this dream of a rural

statesman from the common world.

"V'là, monsieur," said Zotique, who had joined them, stretching his

hand, "Behold the cherished work of our young seigneur."

Upon the galleries, the verandahs, the green lawn, the picture moved

with life. A half-haze, precursive of the twilight, lent scenic softness

to the forms of old men puffing their pipes before the doors, a maiden

listlessly strolling on the sward, a swarm of children playing near the

road, a distant toiler making his way home, bearing his scythe. The

visitors went down into the place and Chrysler saw that the artistic

shapes and ideal colors were worn with daily use, the men and women,

serene-looking, were still the every day mortals of the region.

"I think I have gained a great step in the houses and street," said

Haviland.

"And the Reveillière is proud of its founder," added l'Honorable.

"We have a little newspaper--_Le Coup d'Oeil_,"--cried Zotique.

Chrysler congratulated Chamilly on his felicity of design in the

dwellings.

The greater size of the houses was chiefly for better ventilation. The

windmill was part of a simple water-works system, which supplied the

village with draughts from the bottom of the river. The school was a

gift of Chamilly's.

"If we had some great architect among us," replied he, "he would

transmute for our country a national architecture."

A little house, conspicuous for the delicacy of its architecture, stood

near them, and a young man--the schoolmaster--who was on the verandah,

reading, in his shirtsleeves, threw down his newspaper at the call of

Zotique, came forward and entered eloquently into the work of

information about the Reveillière, flinging his cotton-clad arms

recklessly towards the winds of heaven.

"The Institute--the fountain of all--the gentleman has not seen the

Institute?" inquired he, looking to the two Frenchmen.

"I believe not," Zotique said. "Have you seen it, sir?"

"Not that I know of."

"Monsieur, you must see the Institute."

"What is this Institute?"

"The _enfant perdu_ of Liberalism, the mainspring of Dormillière, the

hope of French America!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE INSTITUTE.

"The battle for the sway,

Of liberty,

Fraternity,

And light of the new day"

--MARY MORGAN.

"About eighteen hundred and fifty," explained the Honorable, "L'Institut

Canadien was our national thinking Society, and the spark of an

awakening of great promise."

"Under the French regime, our people received no education. They knew

the forests, the rapids, the science of trapping beaver, and when to

expect the Iroquois, and sow grain. The English, conquest came next and

cut us off from the new birth, of modern France, and the Church, our

only institution, was very willing to ignore that stimulation of ideas.

We lived on; we read little; we labored much.--But, monsieur," said

l'Honorable, with his quiet dignity, "we were of the race of Descartes."

"We slept. At last the awakening! Our griefs and our grievances forced

the Rebellion; they brought our thoughts together and made us reason in

common; we demanded a new Canada, relieved of bureaucracy, of political

disabilty, of seignioral oppression, some said even of abuses of the

Church--a Canada of the People, in which every citizen should stand up

equal and free."

"The first result demanded--and obtained--was responsible government.

Among others came preparations for the abolition of feudal tenure,

making a vassal population freeholders!"

"The next cry was Education! The French-Canadians were delighted with

the opening world of knowledge and ideas, and there is no race which

ever rose with greater enthusiasm to pursue progress and science. A few

young men of Montreal were banded into a Society for mutual advancement,

to hold debates at which all races were to be free to contribute

opinions, to open a library of useful books, and to seek truth without

any conditions. That was the Institut Canadien!"

"These noble young enthusiasts soon attracted chosen spirits, a precious

essence of the race. They sprang into fame;--fourteen were returned to

Parliament in one year. They called all the world freely to their

discussions, and created eclat by the brillancy of their programme. The

province kindled--every village had its Institute!" "But 'sa-a-a-cr!'"

savagely ejaculated Zotique, and his eyes grew intense in their

fierceness."

"The Institut Canadien gradually excited the jealousy of certain

ecclesiastics by its free admissions and the liberality of its

researches. What is known as the "Struggle" commenced. A series of

combined assaults by episcopal summons, a pulpit crusade,

excommunication, refusal of burial, encouragement of dissensions, and

the establishment of rival Institutes bearing names such as "Institut

Canadien Français," most of which existed only on paper, finally

succeeded in crushing the movement."

"Ac"--ejaculated Zotique.

"The Institute at Dormillière is the insignificant sole survivor."

"I understand now your Reveillière," Chrysler said.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE CAMPAIGN PLAN.

On Saturday evening of Chrysler's first week at the Manoir, they went to

the Institute. It was a house down the Dormillière Street, that held its

head somewhat higher, and tipped it back a little more proudly than the

rest,--a long old fashioned wooden cottage, of many windows, and some

faded pretensions to the ornamental: still elegant in the light curve of

its capacious grey roof, the slender turned pillars of its gallery,

separated by horizontal oval arches, its row of peaked and moulded

dormer windows, its ornaments, its broad staircase climbing up to the

doorway, and the provincial-aristocratic look of its high set-back

position in its garden. The name of a rich money-lender, who had been

feared in days gone by--"Cletus the Ingrate,"--was mentioned under

breath in the stories about it. But ever since his death, many years

before, it had been the faded outer shell into which the intellectual

kernel of Dormillière life withdrew itself, and in the passage as one

entered, the sign "INSTITUT CANADIEN," which had once had its place on

the front, might be seen resting on the floor,--a beehive and the motto

"Altius Tendimus," occupying the space between the two words.

The interior was a very great contrast to the outside. Its fittings were

in the pleasantest of light-hued paints and varnished pine: maps, casts,

and pictures enlivened the walls and corners; a handsome library and

nucleus of a museum, with reading tables, opened to the left, and a

large debating hall to the right--together occupying the whole of the

principal floor.

That evening the row of front windows shone with particular

illumination for a meeting of Chamilly's supporters, and as Chrysler

entered with Haviland and Zotique, they caught from De La Lande the

fragmentary assertion, "It is France that must be preached!"

"Aux armes, citoyens!" roared Zotique, entering like a captain on the

stage. "Give me my battalion! Write me my letters of marque:" Then

throwing one hand in air: "Allons! what has been done?"

The audience sitting around on tables and windowsills, as well as on

groups of chairs, laughed boisterously and thumped the floor, and

recalled to the proper work of the meeting, commenced a cry of

"l'Honorable!"

"The Honorable presides!" intoned Benoit, like a crier; and Genest,

accustomed to understand their wishes, seated himself in the chair,

while a momentary lull fell over the noisiness.

"A Secretary!"

"De La Lande!"

"Calixte Lefebvre!"

"Le Brun, Le Brun, Le Brun, Le Brun!"

"I nominate our good friend Descarries," smilingly spoke the Chairman.

"Does the meeting agree?"

"Yes!" "Yes!" "Maitre Descarries for Secretary!" "Maitre Descarries!"

"Carried!" were the responses shouted together from all sides.

"We have to consider this evening," continued the Chairman, after the

white-wigged official had seated himself in his place as Secretary, "our

general organization and appointment of districts. The aim is to work

hard for Monsieur during the times coming. The people's meeting to take

place to-morrow, is to be addressed for Libergent by Grandmoulin

himself, and Picault will be in the county with them till the election.

So you see our task is not less than to defeat the whole strength of

the Cave. As we fight with men of stature, there is need of valor and

address."

"We'll have to pull the devil by the tail!" cried one. The words were

those of a common proverb referring to "close shaving."

The Chairman added: "Mr. De La Lande, the floor seems to be already

yours."

"I have heard," began De La Lande, "that Grandmoulin has commenced to

raise the issue of French patriotism."

"You are right," said Zotique.

"Well, then, why can we not use a like word, that shall go to the heart

of the people? Give us a national cry! Let the struggle rest on our

fundamental emotions of race! Why can we not"--The face of the impetuous

schoolmaster began to flame into eagerness and fire.

"Because," interrupted Haviland, firmly, "we are in this particular

country. Would you have us enter upon a campaign of injustice and

ill-will? Leave that, and the glory of it, to Grandmoulin and to

Picault!"

"But, my chief, the positions of the French and the English!--We who

were first, are becoming last!"

"Come here if you please, sir," Haviland said, turning to Chrysler, who

rose and advanced to him surprised. Haviland took him, and passing over

to De La Lande, placed the hand of the Ontario gentleman in that of the

high-spirited schoolmaster, who accepted it, puzzled. "There!" cried

Haviland, raising his voice to a pitch of solemnity. "Say whatever you

can in that position. _That is the position of the Canadian races_?"

A shout rose in the hall, and every man sprang to his feet. Cheer rose

upon cheer, while De La Lande shook the hand in his with feeling; and

the cheering, smiling, and hand shaking, lasted nearly a minute.

It ended at a story by Zotique.

"When I was a boy,"--he began, in a deep, exaggerated voice, and

whirling his two arms so as to include the whole of those present in the

circle of his address. The cheers and confusion broke into a roar of

laughter for a moment, that stifled itself almost as quickly, as they

listened.

"We lived for a year in the Village Ste. Aldegonde, near to Montreal. In

the Village Ste. Aldegonde there was a nation of boys. All these boys

marched in daily to town to the great School of the Blessed Brothers.

Along the way to the School of the Blessed Brothers, many English boys

lay in wait between us and learning, and we passed certain streets like

Hurons passing through the forests of Iroquois. Often we went in large

war parties, and repeated the charges of Waterloo for hours up and down

streets."

"One afternoon I passed there alone--accompanied by a great boaster. We

behold three big English boys. We cross the street. They come

after:--get before us:--command us to stop!"

The audience were worked up into suppressed fits, for Zotique's gestures

were inimitable.

"My friend the boaster steps forward with the air Napoleonic! He sticks

out his breast like this; he shortens his neck, like this; he frowns his

brows; he glares at them a terrible look; he cries: 'I am of the

Canadian blood!'"

"And what does he do next, gentlemen?" Zotique paused a moment.

--"Runs for his life!"

The roar that followed shook the apartment. Zotique stopped it.

"But what did _I_ do, gentlemen?"

No one ventured to guess.

"I--perhaps because I was of the Dormillière blood--did not run, but

looked at the English.--We laughed all together.--And I passed along

unmolested."

"Messieurs,--with the exception of our excellent De La Lande, I am

afraid it is too often those who lack the virtues of their race who make

most cry of it."

The meeting now resumed its discussions.

"We require strategy!" asserted a burly, red-haired lawyer from the

City.

"I confess myself in favor of strategy," admitted Zotique also;

"I am always in favor," said Chamilly, "of the strategy of organized

tactics, of the avoidance of useless by-questions, and of spirit and

intelligence in attack and defence."

"But you will not let us lie a little in protection of you," retorted

Zotique. "To me the moral law is to beat Picault."

"Assuredly!" the red-haired lawyer said indignantly, looking a half air

of patronage towards Chamilly, and breathing in for a steady blast of

eloquence: "It is time these ridiculous ideas which forbid us so many

successes were sent back to Paradise, and that such elections as the

present were governed upon rational principles. We cannot offer the

people directly what is good for them; because it is not what they want.

What they want, is what we must first of all assume to provide. Once in

power we can persuade them afterwards. Gentlemen, _to get into power_ is

the first absolute necessity. We cannot defeat the enemy except by

opposing to them some of their own methods. Revive the courage of the

young men by offering what they deserve--good places in case of success!

Replenish the coffers by having our army of contractors to oppose to the

ranks of theirs. If they lie, we have a right to lie. If they spend

money, we must spend it. If they cajole with figures, surely our

advantage as to the facts would enable us to produce others still more

astonishing. Human nature is not angelic--and you can never make it

otherwise."

"My friend," answered Chamilly, raising his strong frame deliberately,

"these are the very principles that I am resolutely determined to battle

with all my forces, I care not whether among my foes or my friends. Must

our young Liberals learn over again what Liberalism is? The true way to

enter polities is none other at any time than to deliberately choose a

higher stand and methods. Trickeries are easier and sometimes lead to a

kind of success: if our objects were sordid, we might descend to

demeaning hypocrisies, we might cheat, we might thieve, perjure, and be

puppets, and perhaps so win our way to power; we might think we could

use these to better ends, though that doctrine succeeds but rarely;--and

perhaps what we might achieve may appear to you of some value, even of

great value to you."

"Yet, no, my friends of Dormillière, your very work is to lay the

foundations of sincerity deep in this sphere, and to withstand and

eradicate the existing political evils. 'One must determine,' said a

very great man, 'to serve the people and not to please them.' If some

youth replies, 'This is a laborious, troublesome, hopeless occupation,

in which there is not reward enough to make it worth my while,' I tell

him but 'Attack it: rejoice to see something so near to challenge your

mettle, and if you meet the battle boldly so, and ennoble yourself, you

will immediately understand how to think of the ennoblement of your

people and your country as glorious.' '_Altius tendimus_! We move

towards a higher!'--The country reads our motto, and is watching what we

practise. Give it an answer in all your acts!"

Chamilly's manner of uttering these words produced the only perfect

stillness the meeting observed during the evening, for the

French-Canadians have a custom of talking among themselves throughout

any ordinary debate. Their respect for Chamilly was striking.

L'Honorable listened with a smile of pleasure; Zotique looked all

loyalty: and the young men beamed their over-flowing flowing

endorsation of sentiments worthy of the Vigers, Dorions, and Papineaus,

those grand men whose portraits hung upon their walls.

As he stopped, there was a sudden movement all about. A spirit of energy

took hold on all. Zotique, posing at the head of a large table in front

of the Chair, almost at once had installed De La Lande assistant-secretary,

to do the real work of which punctilious old Maître Descarries could only

make a courageous show; had swept towards him an inkstand, shaken open a

drawer and whipped out some foolscap, and darting his cadaverous eyes from

one to another around, despotically appointed them to places of various

service, now sharply answering, now ignoring a question by the appointee,

while De La Lande scribbled his directions; and everyone was so anxious to

find some post that there was no grumbling at his heedless good

generalship. In a trice they were all being called for at various tables

and corners, which he fixed for the operations of the Committees.

The most zealous and loquacious of those who pressed forward to be given

positions of trust was Jean Benoit.

"What pig will you shear?" demanded Zotique, (looking for an instant, as

he turned to shout towards another quarter, "En'oyez done; en'oyez!")

"I take the Reveillière."

"The Reveillère is parted among three."--("Be quiet there!")

"Well then,"--grandiloquently,--"I take from St. Jean de Dieu to the

parish Church of Dormillière."

"Too much for four?" pronounced Zotique.

Spoon pressed heavily behind Benoit, and whispered something.

"La Misericoide then," said Benoit, hastily.

Zotique shouted to the Secretary: "Jean Benoit the countryside of La

Misericorde!" And to Benoit again:

"There is your committee."

But Jean would have a hand in shoving forward his admired bar-tender:

"Give monsieur something near my own."

"Cuiller--the village of La Misericorde," directed Zotique. "Now, both

of you, the chief thing you have to do is to report to us if the Bleus

commence to work there. Go; go!"

"Salut, Benoit; how goes it; how is the wife? and the father?--the

children also? I hope you are well. Comment ça-va-t-il Cuiller?"--asked

Chamilly.

Spoon took the proffered hand with his sleepy grin. Benoit responded by

an obsequiously graceful shaking and deliberative loquacity:

"Well; well, Monsieur the Seigneur,--We are very well. The wife is well,

the father, the children also. And how is Madame the Seigneuresse? and

yourself? The crisis approaches, does it not? Eh bien, at that point you

will find Jean Benoit strong enough. I have a good heart, Monseigneur.

Once Xiste Brin said to me, 'Monsieur the Director, you have a good

heart.' Deign to accept my professions, monseigneur, of a loyalty the

most solemn, of a breast for ever faithful."

"I have always accepted your friendship, Benoit, and trusted you,"

smiled generous Haviland. "See here, Zotique, give Benoit a responsible

post.--How different must be our feelings at this priceless service of

personal affection from those of our opponents, served only for money."

"No money!" blurted Spoon. "Taurieu! An election without money?"

Chamilly, with one quiet glance, turned away to L'Honorable. "Without

'tin,'--St. Christophe, I say!--St. Laurent!"

"Keep quiet--silence, I pray thee," returned Benoit, and drew his

companion aside.

"Why did Benoit call himself Director?" Chrysler asked.

Haviland and the Honorable smiled. Chamilly answered:

"It is a weakness of his ever since he was put on the Board of our

Agricultural Society. Do not laugh, unless at the common vanity of

mankind."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE LOW-COUNTRY SUNRISE.

"Chacun son goût. Moi, j'aime mieux la nature primitive qui n'est pas à

la mode du jour mais que l'on ne pourra jamais démoder ... J'aime ce que

j'aime, et vous, vous aimez autre chose. Grand bien vous fasse--je vous

admire, Monsieur Tout-le-Monde."

--Ben Sulte

"I am going to rise before the sun to-morrow. Would you like to come out

fishing?" remarked Haviland, cheerfully, on the way home. Chrysler

signified assent.

At grey dawn, before it was yet quite daybreak, they were on the road.

All the houses in the neighbourhood looked asleep. Heavy dews lay upon

the grass. The scene was chilly, and a little comfortless and suggestive

of turning back to bed.

"Where are we going?" the visitor asked, trying to collect his spirits.

"To find Bonhomme Le Brun, who superintends the boating

interest.--'Bonhomme'--'Good Man'--is a kind of jocular name we give to

every simple old fellow. 'Le Brun' is not quite correct either. His real

name--or rather the only one extant among the _noms-de-guerre_ of his

predecessors, is Vadeboncoeur--'Go willingly,' which the Notaries I

suppose would write 'Vadeboncoeur _dit_ Le Brun.'"

Notwithstanding the early hour they were not alone on the road. A

wrinkled woman, bent almost double, was toiling slowly along with heavy

sighs, under a sack of firewood.

"See here, madame," Charnilly called out, stepping forward to her,

"give me the sack;" which he unloaded from her back and threw over his

shoulder.

"You are always so good, monseigneur Chamilly," the old woman groaned in

a plaintive, palsied voice, without straightening her doubled frame.

"Is the Bonhomme at the house?" he enquired.

"I think not, sir; he was preparing to go to Isle of Ducks."

"Just where I thought," exclaimed Haviland in English. "This Le Brun is

of the oddest class--a secular hermit on the solitudes of the river--a

species of mystery to the others. Sometimes he is seen paddling among

the islands far down; sometimes seining a little, by methods invented by

himself; sometimes carrying home an old gun and more or less loaded with

ducks; sometimes his torch is seen far out in the dark, night-fishing;

but few meet him face to face besides myself. When a boy I used to think

he lived on the water because his legs were crooked, though more

probably his legs are crooked because he avoids the land. He keeps my

sail-boat for me and I let him use the old windmill we shall come to by

those trees."

The windmill and the cot of Le Brun stood in a birch-grown hollow, not

far off, where a stream cascaded into the St. Lawrence, and had worn

down the precipitous bank of earth. It was a wild picture. The gable of

the cot was stained Indian red down to the eaves, and a stone chimney

was embedded irregularly in its log side. The windmill, towering its

conical roof and rusty weather-vane a little distance off, and

stretching out its gray skeleton arms as if to creak more freely in the

sweep of gales from the river, was one of those rembrandtesque relics

which prove so picturesquely that Time is an artist inimitable by man. A

clay oven near the cot completed this group of erections, around and

behind which the silver birches and young elms grew up and closed.

No, Messieurs, Le Brun was not at home; he had gone to Isle of Ducks;

and all the blessings of the saints upon Monseigneur for his kindness to

a poor old woman.--"Ah, Seigneur!"

Chamilly took his skiff from the boathouse himself, and was soon pulling

swiftly from the shore, while as they got out upon it the vastness and

power of the stream became apparent.

From its broad surface the mists began to rise gracefully in long

drifts, moved by the early winds and partly obscuring the distant

shores, whose fringe of little shut up houses still suggested slumber.

The dews had freshened the pines of Dormilliere, and the old Church

stood majestically forward among them, throwing back its head and

keeping sleepless watch towards the opposite side. Gradually receding,

too, the Manoir showed less and less gable among its mass of foliage.

If the Church is one great institution of that country, the St. Lawrence

is no less another,--displaying thirty miles unbroken blue on a clear

day in the direction of the distant hill of Montreal, and on the other

hand, towards Lake St. Peter, a vista oceanlike and unhorizoned. In

certain regions numerous flat islands, covered by long grasses and

rushes intersected by labyrinthine passages, hide the boatman from the

sight of the world and form innumerable nooks of quiet which have a

class of scenery and inhabitants altogether their own. As the chaloupe

glides around some unsuspected corner, the crane rises heavily at the

splash of a paddle, wild duck fly off low and swiftly, the plover circle

away in bright handsome flocks, the gorgeous kingfisher leaves his

little tree. In the water different spots have their special finny

denizens. In one place a broad deep arm of the river--which throws off a

dozen such arms, each as large as London's Thames, without the main

stream appearing a whit less broad--shelters among its weeds exhaustless

tribes of perch and pickerel; in another place a swifter and profounder

current conceals the great sturgeon and lion-like maskinongé; while

among certain shallower, less active corners, the bottom is clothed with

muddy cat fish.

They approached a region of this kind, skimmed along by spirited

athletic strokes, and had arrived at the head of the low-lying

archipelago just described, where they came upon a motionless figure

sitting fishing in a punt, some distance along a broad passage to the

left.

Short blue blouse, little cap and flat-bottomed boat, the appearance of

the figure at that hour made one with the drifting mists and rural

strangeness of the landscape, and Chrysler knew it was Le Brun, and

remarked so to Haviland.

"Without doubt, Bonhomme is part of nature and unmistakable--Hola

Bonhomme!"

"Mo-o-o-o-nseigneur," he sung in reply, without looking up or taking

further notice of them.

Haviland gave a few more vigorous strokes.

"How does it bite, Bonhomme?"

"A little badly, monseigneur; all perch here; one pickerel. Shall we

enter the little channels?"

"I do not wish to enter the little channels: I remain here."

They were soon fishing beside him, Chamilly at one end of the skiff

intent upon his sport. The old man's flat punt was littered with perch.

How early he must have risen! He was small of figure, weathered of face,

simple and impassive of manner.

"Good day," Chrysler opened; "the weather is wettish."

"It is morningy, Monsieur."--

"My son knows you, Monsieur," he said again humbly, after a pause.

As Chrysler could not recall his son, as such, he waited before

replying.

"He saw you at Benoit's."

Still Chrysler paused.

"On Sunday."

"A--ha, now I remember. That fine young man is your son?"

"That fine young man, sir," he assented with perfect faith.

After adjusting a line for Chrysler, he continued.

"Do you not think, monsieur, that my son is fine enough for Josephte

Benoit?"

"Assuredly. Does he like her?"

"They are devoted to each other."

"If she accepts him then, why not? You do not doubt your son?"

"Never, Monsieur! what is different is Jean. He thinks my Francois too

poor for his Josephte, and he is for ever planning to discourage their

love. Grand Dieu, he is proud! Yet his father and I were good friends

when we were both boys. He wants Mlle. Josephte to take the American."

"Reassure yourself; that will never be. No, Bonhomme, trust to me; that

shall never he," exclaimed Chamilly.

"How did you come to know these parties, sir," he put in English. But

without awaiting an answer he continued: "Benoit is crazy to marry his

daughter to that rowdy. Benoit was always rather off on the surface, but

he has usually been shrewder at bottom. Cuiller infatuates him. He

hasn't a single antecedent, but has been treating Benoit so much to

liquor and boasting, that the foolish man follows him like a dog."

"My son has been to Montreal,--he has done business," said the Bonhomme

with pride--"he is a good young man--and he had plenty of money before

he lost it on the journey."

"How did he lose his money?"

"Some one stole it. He was coming down to marry Josephte. If he had had

his money Jean would have let her take him.--But he can earn more."

"There was a mysterious robbery of François' money on the steam boat a

couple of weeks ago," said Chamilly in English again, "I shall have to

lend him some to set him up in business here, but mustn't do it till

after my election."