Count de la Galissonière, accompanied by his distinguished attendants,
proceeded again on their round of inspection. They were everywhere
saluted with heads uncovered, and welcomed by hearty greetings. The
people of New France had lost none of the natural politeness and ease of
their ancestors, and, as every gentleman of the Governor's suite was at
once recognized, a conversation, friendly even to familiarity, ensued
between them and the citizens and habitans, who worked as if they were
building their very souls into the walls of the old city.
“Good morning, Sieur de St. Denis!” gaily exclaimed the Governor to a
tall, courtly gentleman, who was super-intending the labor of a body of
his censitaires from Beauport. “'Many hands make light work,' says the
proverb. That splendid battery you are just finishing deserves to be
called Beauport. What say you, my Lord Bishop?” turning to the smiling
ecclesiastic. “Is it not worthy of baptism?”
“Yes, and blessing both; I give it my episcopal benediction,” replied
the Bishop, “and truly I think most of the earth of it is taken from the
consecrated ground of the Hôtel Dieu--it will stand fire!”
“Many thanks, my Lord!”--the Sieur de St. Denis bowed very low--“where
the Church bars the door Satan will never enter, nor the English either!
Do you hear, men?” continued he, turning to his censitaires, “my Lord
Bishop christens our battery Beauport, and says it will stand fire!”
“Vive le Roi!” was the response, an exclamation that came spontaneously
to the lips of all Frenchmen on every emergency of danger or emotion of
joy.
A sturdy habitan came forward, and doffing his red tuque or cap,
addressed the Governor: “This is a good battery, my Lord Governor, but
there ought to be one as good in our village. Permit us to build one and
man it, and we promise your Excellency that no Englishman shall ever get
into the back door of Quebec while we have lives to defend it.” The old
habitan had the eye of a soldier--he had been one. The Governor knew the
value of the suggestion, and at once assented to it, adding, “No better
defenders of the city could be found anywhere than the brave habitans of
Beauport.”
The compliment was never forgotten; and years afterwards, when Wolfe
besieged the city, the batteries of Beauport repelled the assault of his
bravest troops, and well-nigh broke the heart of the young hero over the
threatened defeat of his great undertaking, as his brave Highlanders and
grenadiers lay slain by hundreds upon the beach of Beauport.
The countenances of the hardy workers were suddenly covered with smiles
of welcome recognition at the sight of the well-known Superior of the
Recollets.
“Good morning!” cried out a score of voices; “good morning, Father de
Berey! The good wives of Beauport send you a thousand compliments.
They are dying to see the good Recollets down our way again. The Gray
Brothers have forsaken our parish.”
“Ah!” replied the Superior, in a tone of mock severity, while his eyes
overran with mirthfulness, “you are a crowd of miserable sinners who
will die without benefit of clergy--only you don't know it! Who was it
boiled the Easter eggs hard as agates, which you gave to my poor brother
Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell me that, pray! All the salts
and senna in Quebec have not sufficed to restore the digestion of my
poor monks since you played that trick upon them down in your misnamed
village of Beauport!”
“Pardon, Reverend Father de Berey!” replied a smiling habitan, “it was
not we, but the sacrilegious canaille of St. Anne who boiled the Easter
eggs! If you don't believe us, send some of the good Gray Friars down
to try our love. See if they do not find everything soft for them at
Beauport, from our hearts to our feather beds, to say nothing of our
eggs and bacon. Our good wives are fairly melting with longing for a
sight of the gray gowns of St. Francis once more in our village.”
“Oh! I dare be bound the canaille of St. Anne are lost dogs like
yourselves--catuli catulorum.”
The habitans thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed
themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father de
Berey of a clerical jest.
“Oh!” continued he, “if fat Father Ambrose, the cook of the convent,
only had you, one at a time, to turn the spit for him, in place of the
poor dogs of Quebec, which he has to catch as best he can, and set to
work in his kitchen! but, vagabonds that you are, you are rarely set to
work now on the King's corvée--all work, little play, and no pay!”
The men took his raillery in excellent part, and one, their spokesman,
bowing low to the Superior, said,--“Forgive us all the same, good
Father. The hard eggs of Beauport will be soft as lard compared with the
iron shells we are preparing for the English breakfast when they shall
appear some fine morning before Quebec.”
“Ah, well, in that case I must pardon the trick you played upon Brothers
Mark and Alexis; and I give you my blessing, too, on condition you send
some salt to our convent to cure our fish, and save your reputations,
which are very stale just now among my good Recollets.”
A general laugh followed this sally, and the Reverend Superior went off
merrily, as he hastened to catch up with the Governor, who had moved on
to another point in the line of fortifications.
Near the gate of St. John they found a couple of ladies, encouraging
by their presence and kind words a numerous party of habitans,--one an
elderly lady of noble bearing and still beautiful, the rich and powerful
feudal Lady of the Lordship, or Seigniory, of Tilly; the other her
orphan niece, in the bloom of youth, and of surpassing loveliness, the
fair Amélie de Repentigny, who had loyally accompanied her aunt to the
capital with all the men of the Seigniory of Tilly, to assist in the
completion of its defences.
To features which looked as if chiselled out of the purest Parian
marble, just flushed with the glow of morn, and cut in those perfect
lines of proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites
at intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amélie de
Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked smaller
than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and held
fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved
or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its
movements preserves somewhat of the coyness and easy grace of its free
life.
Her hair was very dark and thick, matching her deep liquid eyes, that
lay for the most part so quietly and restfully beneath their long
shading lashes,--eyes gentle, frank, and modest, looking tenderly on
all things innocent, fearlessly on all things harmful; eyes that
nevertheless noted every change of your countenance, and read unerringly
your meaning more from your looks than from your words. Nothing seemed
to hide itself from that pure, searching glance when she chose to look
at you.
In their depths you might read the tokens of a rare and noble
character--a capability of loving which, once enkindled by a worthy
object, might make all things that are possible to devoted womanhood
possible to this woman, who would not count her life anything either for
the man she loved or the cause she espoused. Amélie de Repentigny will
not yield her heart without her judgment; but when she does, it will be
a royal gift--never to be recalled, never to be repented of, to the end
of her life. Happy the man upon whom she shall bestow her affection! It
will be his forever. Unhappy all others who may love her! She may pity,
but she will listen to no voice but the one which rules her heart, to
her life's end!
Both ladies were in mourning, yet dressed with elegant simplicity,
befitting their rank and position in society. The Chevalier Le Gardeur
de Tilly had fallen two years ago, fighting gallantly for his King and
country, leaving a childless widow to manage his vast domain and succeed
him as sole guardian of their orphan niece, Amélie de Repentigny, and
her brother Le Gardeur, left in infancy to the care of their noble
relatives, who in every respect treated them as their own, and who
indeed were the legal inheritors of the Lordship of Tilly.
Only a year ago, Amélie had left the ancient Convent of the Ursulines,
perfected in all the graces and accomplishments taught in the famous
cloister founded by Mère Marie de l'Incarnation for the education of
the daughters of New France, generation after generation of whom were
trained, according to her precepts, in graces of manner as well as in
the learning of the age--the latter might be forgotten; the former,
never. As they became the wives and mothers of succeeding times, they
have left upon their descendants an impress of politeness and urbanity
that distinguishes the people of Canada to this day.
Of all the crowd of fair, eager aspirants contending for honors on the
day of examination in the great school, crowns had only been awarded to
Amélie and to Angélique des Meloises--two girls equal in beauty,
grace, and accomplishments, but unlike in character and in destiny.
The currents of their lives ran smoothly together at the beginning. How
widely different was to be the ending of them!
The brother of Amélie, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, was her elder by a
year--an officer in the King's service, handsome, brave, generous,
devoted to his sister and aunt, but not free from some of the vices
of the times prevalent among the young men of rank and fortune in the
colony, who in dress, luxury, and immorality, strove to imitate the
brilliant, dissolute Court of Louis XV.
Amélie passionately loved her brother, and endeavored--not without
success, as is the way with women--to blind herself to his faults. She
saw him seldom, however, and in her solitary musings in the far-off
Manor House of Tilly, she invested him with all the perfections he did
and did not possess; and turned a deaf, almost an angry ear, to tales
whispered in his disparagement.