"A seducer flourishes, and a poor maid is undone."
_All's Well That Ends Well._
The advocate was by birth an Englishman, and a cadet of an ancient
family, who, after having spent a dissolute youth and early manhood,
had come to Canada. Here he became acquainted with an old, half-pay
Highland officer of Wolfe's Army, who for his signal services
rendered during the operations of the British force before Quebec,
had been rewarded with a grant of land in that vicinity. Like others
of his countrymen, the Highlander had settled in the Province, and
married into a French Canadian family. But, soon, after their
union, his wife died in giving birth to a daughter, which he reared
to womanhood with all the strength of an undivided affection. The
Englishman's frank bearing and singular mental powers won the
admiration of the old soldier, and, at the same time, dazzled and
captivated his comely and unsophisticated daughter, to whom the
stranger was soon understood to stand in the light of a lover. But
Macdonald--for such was the name of the warm-hearted clansman--was
not destined to see his dearest wishes realized in the union of
the two. A sudden sickness laid low his hardy frame, and, dying,
he called the pair to his bedside, and joined their hands in
anticipation of the rite of wedlock. The father dead, the lover
betook himself to the study of the law, and with an extraordinary
aptitude and diligence, not only mastered the details of legal
practice, but comprehended, beyond others, the great principles
both of English and of French jurisprudence as practised in Lower
Canada. Ambitious of excellence, he resolved to complete his studies
of the latter in France itself. Of means he had little, but she,
confiding in his honor, consented that the estate left to her by
her father should be sold, to furnish him with the necessary funds
for his maintenance in Paris. In that gay capital--whilst taking
advantage of libraries, and sitting at the feet of the Gamaliels
of the French Bar,--he associated with gamesters and courtezans,
and was at length left with resources barely sufficient to enable
him to return to Canada. Settling in Montreal, his extraordinary
acquaintance with both schools of law, his impassioned and versatile
eloquence, his ready repartee, his habitual, grim and grotesque
humour, his outrageous sallies of wit, his unmerciful logic, his
fierce invective, his irony, his sarcasm, and his deep, irresistible
scorn, all heightened by his singularly expressive personal presence,
and eyes kindling with lambent fire, made him a forensic antagonist
with whom few willingly chose to deal. He soon became the favorite
counsel for the defence. Extensive practice, and its concomitant,
a large income, were now his, and his betrothed, who, in giving
him her fortune, felt as though she had given him nothing till with
it she had given him herself, day by day looked for the nuptial
tie, and at length besought him to relieve her from what had become
a doubtful and even a dishonorable position. But such was no longer
in his thoughts. Instead of performing towards her his long plighted
vows, he sent her to a lonely dwelling on the then unpeopled Ottawa
to hide her shame. There she remained till the scandal of their
connection was forgotten, and he brought her, along with her female
child, a creature of surpassing beauty, to a new retreat, called
Stillyside, bought by him for that purpose, and situated behind
the bluff known as Mount Royal, or popularly the "mountain," that
lifts its wooded sides in the rear of, and gives name to, the City
of Montreal. During these years of their separation, whilst laborious
in his profession, he continued to indulge his vein for pleasure;
not openly and abroad, as in his earlier days, but in the semi-secrecy
of his home; and with a still increasing income, his expenditure
from this ungracious cause also augmented. Moreover, in those days,
the province was, in great measure, ruled by irresponsible officials,
and often unscrupulous but energetic adventurers like himself;--men
of powerful parts and free lives, whom a community of race, religion,
language, and interest, united in a sort of Masonic association,
whereof his house became one of the centres of reunion. There,
aware of his gentle descent, and impressed with his transcendent
abilities; charmed with his conversation--as pithy as it was apt
to be impure--his wit, his taste, his information, his judgment;
sensible, too, of the excellence of his wines, and luxuriance of
his table, around which military officer and civil servant, merchant
and judge, were accustomed to assemble, rank and office were
forgotten, etiquette laid aside, and abandon ruled the hour.
Votaries of Venus and of Bacchus were all of them, however disguised;
and, secure in that close conclave, where no pure female presence
was found to check the bacchanalian song, or forbid the ribald
jest, all sat to listen to and applaud their host's inimitable
stories, his grotesque descriptions, his wayward thoughts and
fantastic images; to hearken to his close analysis, his robust
reasoning, his wondrous pathos, his sublime exaggeration; and, as
the wine circulated, to observe yet more his chameleon aspect and
Protean character unfold itself; now grovelling like the Paradisal
toad, wherein, at the ear of Eve, was hidden the form of Lucifer;
now, touched by the Ithuriel spear of some keen conception, suddenly
soaring, like to the bright expanded shape of the surprised and
fallen Archangel, till the guests themselves, like the startled
Ithuriel recoiling from the instant apparition of the fiend, drew
back in amazement, or, as if at the jests of another Yorick, raised
over the table a long, eruptive roar. Nor was that all. For a moment
he would assume the moralist, the theologian, or,--leaving both
revelation and the pandects,--become the philosopher, pacing the
universe for occult truth; or the metaphysician, tracking the region
of the supersensuous; and, over every theme, flying on mocking
mental pinions, seeming an intellectual satan, passing through the
region of vain questionings and doubtful disquisition, dim out to
the abyss. And thus he lived, using, and abusing, his rare gifts;
no virtuous and accomplished wife presiding at these feasts, ever
degenerating into orgies, or giving sanctity to these walls; within
which were gathered the brightest, gayest, noblest, most powerful
--often most dissolute--of the land. But now the guests were thinned
in numbers by death, by marriage, by worn out passions; and many
a fierce spirit had been tamed by adversity, till the mirth had
grown to be half moody, and the saturnalia gross rather in intention
than in fact.
[Illustration: "As if at the jests of another Yorick, raised over
the table a long, eruptive roar."]
Yet ever amidst these distracting pleasures his heart reverted,
first, to the woody wilds of Ottawa, and afterwards, to the sylvan
shades of Stillyside, which latter he still took delight to visit
and adorn; cherishing its mistress, and watching over and nurturing
her child, the fruit of her fondness and of his falsehood;--but
commonly known and publicly acknowledged, only as her foster
daughter, and, in his own prouder circle, as his ward. For himself,
he never occupied other than a handsome suburban residence, situated
between the city and the foot of Mount Royal, and whose doors Mona
Macdonald seldom entered; and when she did so, it was to be scowled
upon by its menial mistress, a French Canadian, named Babet Blais,
who viewed the melancholy visitor with angry and jealous eyes. Into
this house many comely Abigails had come and gone; but Babet Blais
remained in spite of him, having, as she deemed, acquired a wife's
settlement and privileges, by virtue of the presence of a dwarfish,
swarthy creature, half oaf, half imp, their mutual offspring. This
strange being, as if in mockery, for he was ugly from the womb,
was named Narcisse, and flitted about the house rather than made
it his home; rarely entering it, except in his father's absence,
and then chiefly to obtain largess from his mother, who loved and
indulged him the more because others disliked or despised him.
Reckless, stupid, savage; ignoble and stubborn; with thick, black,
stubby hair, and dark, bushy, beetling brows; his protuberant eyes
filled with cunning, and burning with a lustre like live coals;
deep-chested, and with shoulders raised and rounded, giving him an
air of pugnacity; snarl written upon his countenance, and pride in
the pose of his pygmean figure; dull, dissolute, and disobedient,
he was, nevertheless, the idol of his mother. She, poor woman,
reverenced, almost worshipped, him, as being something superior to
her plebeian self, by reason of the father's part that was in him;
wondering how his sire should be so blind to his merits, and so
severe upon his alleged faults and foibles. She the rather encouraged
him in his irregularities since others rebuked them, and was the
more liberal towards him, because of his father's stint; deeming
his vices and extravagance to be not only excusable, but proper,
in one who had to uphold and play the part of a gentleman. His
father strove to instil into him some knowledge of law, but soon
relinquished the distasteful and hopeless task, and articled him
to a Notary, who, for a tempting premium, consented to take him
into his office. But, instead of applying himself there, he spent
most of his time in idleness and debauchery; by night frequenting
the abodes of vice and infamy, and by day, haunting the doors and
corridors of the court-house, in the latter always instinctively
seeking to avoid a rencontre with his sullen and offended parent.