QUEBEC CITY, the 10th of May, 1756.
MY DEAR LUCIE: I wish I knew how to tell you all I have been
thinking since we parted at the door of the Ursulines a year ago.
Then we were going to meet again in a few weeks, and now twelve
months have gone! How have I spent them? Not wickedly, I hope,
and yet sometimes I wonder if Mere St. George would quite approve
of me; for I have such wild spirits now and then, and I shout and
sing in the woods and along the river as if I were a mad youngster
home from school. But indeed, that is the way I feel at times,
though again I am so quiet that I am frightened of myself. I am a
hawk to-day and a mouse to-morrow, and fond of pleasure all the
time. Ah, what good days I have had with Juste! You remember him
before he went to Montreal? He is gay, full of fancies, as brave
as can be, and plays and sings well, but he is very hot-headed,
and likes to play the tyrant. We have some bad encounters now and
then. But we love each other better for it; he respects me, and
he does not become spoiled, as you will see when you come to us.
I have had no society yet. My mother thinks seventeen years too
few to warrant my going into the gay world. I wonder will my wings
be any stronger, will there be less danger of scorching them at
twenty-six? Years do not make us wise; one may be as wise at twenty
as at fifty. And they do not save us from the scorching. I know
more than they guess how cruel the world may be to the innocent as
to--the other. One can not live within sight of the Intendant's
palace and the Chateau St. Louis without learning many things; and,
for myself, though I hunger for all the joys of life, I do not
fret because my mother holds me back from the gay doings in the
town. I have my long walks, my fishing and rowing, and sometimes
hunting, with Juste and my sweet sister Georgette, my drawing,
painting, music, and needlework, and my housework.
Yet I am not entirely happy, I do not know quite why. Do you
ever feel as if there were some sorrow far back in you, which now
and then rushed in and flooded your spirits, and then drew back,
and you could not give it a name? Well, that is the way with me.
Yesterday, as I stood in the kitchen beside our old cook Jovin,
she said a kind word to me, and my eyes filled, and I ran up to
my room, and burst into tears as I lay upon my bed. I could not
help it. I thought at first it was because of the poor hawk that
Captain Moray and I set free yesterday morning; but it could not
have been that, for it was FREE when I cried, you see. You know,
of course, that he saved my father's life, some years ago? That is
one reason why he has been used so well in Quebec, for otherwise
no one would have lessened the rigours of his captivity. But there
are tales that he is too curious about our government and state,
and so he may be kept close jailed, though he only came here as a
hostage. He is much at our home, and sometimes walks with Juste
and me and Georgette, and accompanies my mother in the streets.
This is not to the liking of the Intendant, who loves not my
father because he is such a friend of our cousin the Governor.
If their lives and characters be anything to the point the
Governor must be in the right.
In truth, things are in a sad way here, for there is robbery on
every hand, and who can tell what the end may be? Perhaps that we
go to the English after all. Monsieur Doltaire--you do not know
him, I think--says, "If the English eat us, as they swear they
will, they'll die of megrims, our affairs are so indigestible." At
another time he said, "Better to be English than to be damned." And
when some one asked him what he meant, he said, "Is it not read
from the altar, 'Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man'? The
English trust nobody, and we trust the English." That was aimed at
Captain Moray, who was present, and I felt it a cruel thing for him
to say; but Captain Moray, smiling at the ladies, said, "Better
to be French and damned than not to be French at all." And this
pleased Monsieur Doltaire, who does not love him. I know not
why, but there are vague whispers that he is acting against the
Englishman for causes best known at Versailles, which have nothing
to do with our affairs here. I do believe that Monsieur Doltaire
would rather hear a clever thing than get ten thousand francs. At
such times his face lights up, he is at once on his mettle, his
eyes look almost fiendishly beautiful. He is a handsome man, but
he is wicked, and I do not think he has one little sense of morals.
I do not suppose he would stab a man in the back, or remove his
neighbour's landmark in the night, though he'd rob him of it in
open daylight, and call it "enterprise"--a usual word with him.
He is a favourite with Madame Cournal, who influences Bigot most,
and one day we may see the boon companions at each other's throats;
and if either falls, I hope it maybe Bigot, for Monsieur Doltaire
is, at least, no robber. Indeed, he is kind to the poor in a
disdainful sort of way. He gives to them and scoffs at them at the
same moment; a bad man, with just enough natural kindness to make
him dangerous. I have not seen much of the world, but some things
we know by instinct; we feel them; and I often wonder if that is
not the way we know everything in the end. Sometimes when I take my
long walks, or go and sit beside the Falls of Montmorenci, looking
out to the great city on the Heights, to dear Isle Orleans,
where we have our pretty villa (we are to go there next week for
three months--happy summer months), up at the blue sky and into
the deep woods, I have strange feelings, which afterwards become
thoughts; and sometimes they fly away like butterflies, but oftener
they stay with me, and I give them a little garden to roam in--you
can guess where. Now and then I call them out of the garden and
make them speak, and then I set down what they say in my journal;
but I think they like their garden best. You remember the song we
used to sing at school?
"'Where do the stars grow, little Garaine?
The garden of moons, is it far away?
The orchard of suns, my little Garaine,
Will you take us there some day?'
"'If you shut your eyes,' quoth little Garaine,
'I will show you the way to go
To the orchard of suns, and the garden of moons,
And the field where the stars do grow.
"'But you must speak soft,' quoth little Garaine,
'And still must your footsteps be,
For a great bear prowls in the field of the stars,
And the moons they have men to see.
"'And the suns have the Children of Signs to guard,
And they have no pity at all--
You must not stumble, you must not speak,
When you come to the orchard wall.
"'The gates are locked,' quoth little Garaine,
'But the way I am going to tell?
The key of your heart it will open them all:
And there's where the darlings dwell!'"
You may not care to read these lines again, but it helps to show
what I mean: that everything is in the heart, and that nothing
is at all if we do not feel it. Sometimes I have spoken of these
things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell
my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods
that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or
scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she
never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it--looks beautiful.
But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish
philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. You would not know
your friend. I can not tell what has come over me. Voila!
To-morrow we go to visit General Montcalm, who has just arrived
in the colony. Bigot and his gay set are not likely to be there.
My mother insists that I shall never darken the doors of the
Intendant's palace.
Do you still hold to your former purpose of keeping a daily
journal? If so, I beg you to copy into it this epistle and your
answer; and when I go up to your dear manor house at Beauce next
summer, we will read over our letters and other things set down,
and gossip of the changes come since we met last. Do sketch the
old place for me (as will I our new villa on dear Isle Orleans),
and make interest with the good cure to bring it to me with your
letter, since there are no posts, no postmen, yet between here
and Beauce. The cure most kindly bears this to you, and says he
will gladly be our messenger. Yesterday he said to me, shaking
his head in a whimsical way, "But no treason, mademoiselle, and
no heresy or schism." I am not quite sure what he meant. I dare
hardly think he had Captain Moray in his mind. I would not for
the world so lessen my good opinion of him as to think him
suspicious of me when no other dare; and so I put his words
down to chance hitting, to a humorous fancy.
Be sure, dear Lucie, I shall not love you less for giving me a
prompt answer. Tell me of what you are thinking and what doing. If
Juste can be spared from the Governor's establishment, may I bring
him with me next summer? He is a difficult, sparkling sort of
fellow, but you are so steady-tempered, so full of tact, getting
your own way so quietly and cleverly, that I am sure I should find
plenty of straw for the bricks of my house of hope, my castle in
Spain!
Do not give too much of my share of thy heart elsewhere, and
continue to think me, my dear Lucie, thy friend, loyal and
loving,