"An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own."
_As You Like It._
It was near mid-day, and the advocate was engaged in his office,
when the notary with whom Narcisse had been placed, suddenly
entering, angrily demanded:
"Where is Narcisse, where is your son, sir? Here I am wanting his
assistance, now, and he is missing, he is gone, no one knows where,
nor where he has stowed those papers. Where is he, sir; where is
the boy, I say; where is your son?"
The advocate looked up at this sudden disturbance, and, drawing a
deep sigh, exclaimed with bitter emphasis:
"I would he were nowhere; that he were erased from the book of
being; I would he were in heaven,--or else--in your office, Monsieur
Veuillot. Is that a bad wish for either?"
"But he is not in my office," said Veuillot.
"Nor in heaven neither, I fear," rejoined the advocate.
"Where is he, then?" demanded the excited notary: "where is your
son?"
"Such a son!" murmured the advocate, shrugging his shoulders. "Do
you wish to be pleasant with me, Monsieur Veuillot? my evil genius
call him. Son! I own I feed him, as I do other vermin that infest
my house."
"But where is he?" reiterated the notary with growing impatience,
and seeming resolved to take no denial.
"Where is he?" echoed the advocate: "ask his mother; yes, sir, ask
his dam. Oh, Monsieur Veuillot, is there not deep damnation in thus
having an idiot for one's child? Here is your purgatory:--purgatory?
no: for purgatory is a kind of half-way house to heaven, but this
son of mine is to me a slippery stepping-stone to perdition. Sir,
a child should be a cherub to lift its parents' spirit to the skies;
but mine, oh!"--and a spasm of agony passed over the old man's
visage, succeeded by a forced expression of calmness, as he continued:
"Veuillot, you have heard of Solomon. He speaks of the foolish son
of a wise father. He was himself the father of a fool, that rent
the kingdom,--Rehoboam I mean,--and he kept concubines, too; so
I suppose he waxed fruitful in fools. I have but one fool, therefore
I am thankful;--but then he is a thorough fool, a most unmitigated,
and unmitigatable fool; the fool of fools, a finished fool, the
pink of fools; a most preposterous, backwards-going, crab-like
fool; a filthy fool; an idiot, sir, without either parts or particle
of ambition; an ape, an owl that flits about by day; a bat, and a
bad bat, that flits from tavern to sty; chief of the devil's
nightingales; a raven that, roving to foul roosts, goes beating
the bosom of the night; a soul that loves the darkness; a mole,
sir, a blind mole; a piece of animated perversity, a creature
that persists to go astray."
"Where has he strayed to now?" demanded the notary.
"Into the hands of justice, perhaps;" was the fierce reply: "into
the grip of the law; up to the foot of the gallows; on to the hill
of my extreme disgrace."
"Where is he, where can I find him? tell me only where," cried
Veuillot.
"Where! let echo answer,--would you wish to hunt him?" said the
advocate, mocking. "Did you ever gallop, sir, after a hedgehog? have
you assisted to draw a badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame
him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not
curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for
a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting
shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, that creeps
in and out of its hole when the old cat is away. Away, Mr. Notary,
away; go, good Monsieur Veuillot. There are more conceptions in
man than he has yet expressed either in statutes or in testaments.
Go; you are a deed-drawer; I'll be a deed doer: I'll do, I'll do,--I
do not know what I'll do, but something shall be done. He shall be
shaken over perdition; sent to grind in the prison house; sold into
slavery:--fool! he shall be banished to Caughnawaga, or to
Loretto;--the further the better; he shall be sent to the Lake of
the Two Mountains, sir, or to Saint Regis to learn the war-whoop
and gallant the squaws. You smile:--but to your errand, Veuillot;
it is not known where my son is: I saw him last night, may I never
see him again! Then, dying, my old age, perhaps, may close in
peace: not else, not else."
The notary departed, but the exasperated lawyer still conversed
with himself. "I cannot decently die," he said, "any more than I
can devoutly live, pricked through the very reins and kidneys with
that skewer. Alas! he is my goad, my thorn in the flesh, the
messenger of satan sent to buffet me. He is the mosquitto that
stings my knuckles; the little, black, abominable fly that will
insist to assail my nose; he is my bruise, my blain, my blister,
my settled, ceaseless source of irritation: the cause, the cause--of
what is he the cause? Alas! that I should ever have been the cause
of such a foul effect! But let it be so; the whitest skins have
moles, the sun has spots; he is my mole, my spot; and I, I am the
father of the fool, Narcisse."
Narcisse was that moment at a tavern in the beautiful village of
Cote des Neiges, adjacent to Stillyside, and much resorted to by
pleasure seekers from Montreal. His companions, too, were there,
bewailing the loss of one of their fowling-pieces, and devising
means for revenge on their interrupter and successful assailant.
There they remained, and, instead of spending the day, as was their
first intention, on the side of the mountain, in popping at small
birds they passed many of its hours in quaffing large potations,
the effects of which they in some degree slept off by a long
afternoon nap. It was now nightfall, and they were returning
homewards, conversing in loud and angry tones on the humiliation
of the morning, and threatening retribution against its cause, the
gallant stranger. Narcisse, with the litigiousness of his maternal
race, and prompted by his inkling of law, was for launching an
action for assault and battery against their assailant's purse,
whilst the others, pot-valiant, declared their anxiety to meet him
in bodily conflict on another field; and thus discoursing in the
deepening gloom, the party arrived opposite the mansion at Stillyside.
For a few moments they halted, undetermined whether to approach,
and demand the delivery of the captured weapon; but at last agreed
to waive the requisition, chiefly at the instance of Narcisse, who
authoritatively ruled, that to demand and accept of the feloniously
acquired gun, would be to compound a felony. Hereupon, being
somewhat more at ease in their minds, they proceeded, and now less
noisily, continuing on their way with only occasional bursts of
abuse, and the firing off of fag ends of French songs, accompanied
with a fitful fusilade of low, horselaughter; and thus, mollified
and maudlin, unsteadily continued their straggling march, until
they halted at a gate on the roadside, and some distance behind
which, loomed a large, dingy and deserted-looking dwelling, half
concealed by tall trees. No light was to be seen, but, after a
brief consultation, the party swung open the gate, entered, and
having reached the house, one of the number gave a peculiar tapping
at a window, followed by a low whistle or call, that was immediately
answered by a corresponding sound from within, and this again by
a counter signal, which was repeated like the faintly returning
tone of an echo; and, after some delay, the door slowly opened,
the voices of men and women, mingling in boisterous mirth, burst
forth like the roar of a suddenly opened furnace, the party entered,
and the door was closed again.