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,