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Title: Shadows on the Rock
Author: Cather, Willa (1873-1947)
Date of first publication: August 1931
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931
Date first posted: 28 September 2011
Date last updated: 28 September 2011
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #860

This ebook was produced by Al Haines






_SHADOWS_

_on the_

_ROCK_



WILLA CATHER



New York

ALFRED A. KNOPF

1931




COPYRIGHT 1931 BY WILLA CATHER


_All rights reserved--no part of this book may be reprinted in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher_



_Published August 1931_

_First and Second Printings before Publication_



MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




_The Works of_

WILLA CATHER


_Novels_

  ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE (1912)
  O PIONEERS! (1913)
  THE SONG OF THE LARK (1915)
  MY ANTONIA (1918)
  ONE OF OURS (1922)
  A LOST LADY (1923)
  THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE (1925)
  MY MORTAL ENEMY (1926)
  DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (1927)


_Short Stories_

  YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA (1920)


_Verse_

  APRIL TWILIGHTS (1923)




CONTENTS


1. The Apothecary

2. Ccile and Jacques

3. The Long Winter

4. Pierre Charron

5. The Ships From France

6. The Dying Count

   Epilogue




_BOOK I_

_THE APOTHECARY_




_Vous me demandez des graines de fleurs de ce pays.  Nous en faisons
venir de France pour notre jardin, n'y en ayant pas ici de fort rares
ni de fort belles.  Tout y est sauvage, les fleurs aussi bien que les
hommes._

_Marie de l'Incarnation_

(LETTRE  UNE DE SES SOEURS)

_Quebec, le 12 aot, 1653_




BOOK ONE

_THE APOTHECARY_


I

One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the
philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant
gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him.  Empty, because an
hour ago the flash of retreating sails had disappeared behind the green
island that splits the St. Lawrence below Quebec, and the last of the
summer ships from France had started on her long voyage home.

As long as _La Bonne Esprance_ was still in sight, many of Auclair's
friends and neighbours had kept him company on the hill-top; but when
the last tip of white slid behind the curving shore, they went back to
their shops and their kitchens to face the stern realities of life.
Now for eight months the French colony on this rock in the North would
be entirely cut off from Europe, from the world.  This was October; not
a sail would come up that wide waterway before next July.  No supplies;
not a cask of wine or a sack of flour, no gunpowder, or leather, or
cloth, or iron tools.  Not a letter, even--no news of what went on at
home.  There might be new wars, floods, conflagrations, epidemics, but
the colonists would never know of them until next summer.  People
sometimes said that if King Louis died, the Minister would send word by
the English ships that came to New York all winter, and the Dutch
traders at Fort Orange would dispatch couriers to Montreal.

The apothecary lingered on the hill-top long after his fellow townsmen
had gone back to their affairs; for him this severance from the world
grew every year harder to bear.  It was a strange thing, indeed, that a
man of his mild and thoughtful disposition, city-bred and most
conventional in his habits, should be found on a grey rock in the
Canadian wilderness.  Cap Diamant, where he stood, was merely the
highest ledge of that fortified cliff which was "Kebec,"--a triangular
headland wedged in by the joining of two rivers, and girdled about by
the greater river as by an encircling arm.  Directly under his feet was
the French stronghold,--scattered spires and slated roofs flashing in
the rich, autumnal sunlight; the little capital which was just then the
subject of so much discussion in Europe, and the goal of so many
fantastic dreams.

Auclair thought this rock-set town like nothing so much as one of those
little artificial mountains which were made in the churches at home to
present a theatric scene of the Nativity; cardboard mountains, broken
up into cliffs and ledges and hollows to accommodate groups of figures
on their way to the manger; angels and shepherds and horsemen and
camels, set on peaks, sheltered in grottoes, clustered about the base.

Divest your mind of Oriental colour, and you saw here very much such a
mountain rock, cunningly built over with churches, convents,
fortifications, gardens, following the natural irregularities of the
headland on which they stood; some high, some low, some thrust up on a
spur, some nestling in a hollow, some sprawling unevenly along a
declivity.  The Chteau Saint-Louis, grey stone with steep dormer
roofs, on the very edge of the cliff overlooking the river, sat level;
but just beside it the convent and church of the Rcollet friars ran
downhill, as if it were sliding backwards.  To landward, in a low,
well-sheltered spot, lay the Convent of the Ursulines ... lower still
stood the massive foundation of the Jesuits, facing the Cathedral.
Immediately behind the Cathedral the cliff ran up sheer again, shot out
into a jutting spur, and there, high in the blue air, between heaven
and earth, rose old Bishop Laval's Seminary.  Beneath it the rock fell
away in a succession of terraces like a circular staircase; on one of
these was the new Bishop's new Palace, its gardens on the terrace below.

Not one building on the rock was on the same level with any other,--and
two hundred feet below them all was the Lower Town, crowded along the
narrow strip of beach between the river's edge and the perpendicular
face of the cliff.  The Lower Town was so directly underneath the Upper
Town that one could stand on the terrace of the Chteau Saint-Louis and
throw a stone down into the narrow streets below.

These heavy grey buildings, monasteries and churches, steep-pitched and
dormered, with spires and slated roofs, were roughly Norman Gothic in
effect.  They were made by people from the north of France who knew no
other way of building.  The settlement looked like something cut off
from one of the ruder towns of Normandy or Brittany, and brought over.
It was indeed a rude beginning of a "new France," of a Saint-Malo or
Rouen or Dieppe, anchored here in the ever-changing northern light and
weather.  At its feet, curving about its base, flowed the mighty St.
Lawrence, rolling north toward the purple line of the Laurentian
mountains, toward frowning Cap Tourmente which rose dark against the
soft blue of the October sky.  The le d'Orlans, out in the middle of
the river, was like a hilly map, with downs and fields and pastures
lying in folds above the naked tree-tops.

On the opposite shore of the river, just across from the proud rock of
Quebec, the black pine forest came down to the water's edge; and on the
west, behind the town, the forest stretched no living man knew how far.
That was the dead, sealed world of the vegetable kingdom, an uncharted
continent choked with interlocking trees, living, dead, half-dead,
their roots in bogs and swamps, strangling each other in a slow agony
that had lasted for centuries.  The forest was suffocation,
annihilation; there European man was quickly swallowed up in silence,
distance, mould, black mud, and the stinging swarms of insect life that
bred in it.  The only avenue of escape was along the river.  The river
was the one thing that lived, moved, glittered, changed,--a highway
along which men could travel, taste the sun and open air, feel freedom,
join their fellows, reach the open sea ... reach the world, even!

After all, the world still existed, Auclair was thinking, as he stood
looking up the way by which _La Bonne Esprance_ had gone out only an
hour ago.  He was not of the proper stuff for a colonist, and he knew
it.  He was a slender, rather frail man of about fifty, a little
stooped, a little grey, with a short beard cut in a point, and a fair
complexion delicately flushed with pink about his cheeks and ears.  His
blue eyes were warm and interested, even in reflection,--they often had
a kindling gleam as if his thoughts were pictures.  Except for this
lively and inquiring spirit in his glance, everything about him was
modest and retiring.  He was clearly not a man of action, no
Indian-fighter or explorer.  The only remarkable thing about his life

was that he had not lived it to the end exactly where his father and
grandfather had lived theirs,--in a little apothecary shop on the Quai
des Clestins, in Paris.

The apothecary at last turned his back to the river.  He was glancing
up at the sun to reckon the time of day, when he saw a soldier coming
up the grassy slope of Cap Diamant by the irregular earth path that led
to the redoubt.  The soldier touched his hat and called to him.

"I thought I recognized your figure up here, Monsieur Euclide.  The
Governor requires your presence and has sent a man down to your shop to
fetch you."

Auclair thanked him for his trouble and went down the hill with him to
the Chteau.  The Governor was his patron, the Count de Frontenac, in
whose service he had come out to Canada.



II

It was late in the afternoon when Auclair left the Chteau and made his
way through the garden of the Rcollet friars, past the new Bishop's
Palace, and down to his own house.  He lived on the steep, winding
street called Mountain Hill, which was the one and only thoroughfare
connecting the Upper Town with the Lower.  The Lower Town clustered on
the strip of beach at the foot of the cliff, the Upper Town crowned its
summit.  Down the face of the cliff there was but this one path, which
had probably been a mere watercourse when Champlain and his men first
climbed up it to plant the French lilies on the crest of the naked
rock.  The watercourse was now a steep, stony street, with shops on one
side and the retaining walls of the Bishop's Palace on the other.
Auclair lived there for two reasons: to be close at hand where Count
Frontenac could summon him quickly to the Chteau, and because, thus
situated on the winding stairway connecting the two halves of Quebec,
his services were equally accessible to the citizens of both.

On entering his door the apothecary found the front shop empty, lit by
a single candle.  In the living-room behind, which was partly shut off
from the shop by a partition made of shelves and cabinets, a fire
burned in the fireplace, and the round dining-table was already set
with a white cloth, silver candlesticks, glasses, and two clear
decanters, one of red wine and one of white.

Behind the living-room there was a small, low-roofed kitchen, built of
stone, though the house itself was built of wood in the earliest Quebec
manner,--double walls, with sawdust and ashes filling in the space
between the two frames, making a protection nearly four feet thick
against the winter cold.  From this stone kitchen at the back two
pleasant emanations greeted the chemist: the rich odour of roasting
fowl, and a child's voice, singing.  When he closed the heavy wooden
door behind him, the voice called: "Is it you, Papa?"

His daughter ran in from the kitchen,--a little girl of twelve,
beginning to grow tall, wearing a short skirt and a sailor's jersey,
with her brown hair shingled like a boy's.

Auclair stooped to kiss her flushed cheek.  "_Pas de clients?_" he
asked.

"_Mais, oui!  Beaucoup de clients_.  But they all wanted very simple
things.  I found them quite easily and made notes of them.  But why
were you gone so long?  Is Monsieur le Comte ill?"

"Not ill, exactly, but there is troublesome news from Montreal."

"Please change your coat now, Papa, and light the candles.  I am so
anxious about the poulet.  Mre Laflamme tried hard to sell me a cock,
but I told her my father always complained of a cock."  The daughter's
eyes were shaped like her father's, but were much darker, a very dark
blue, almost black when she was excited, as she was now about the
roast.  Her mother had died two years ago, and she made the mnage for
her father.

Contrary to the custom of his neighbours, Auclair dined at six o'clock
in winter and seven in summer, after the day's work was over, as he was
used to do in Paris,--though even there almost everyone dined at
midday.  He now dropped the curtains over his two shop windows, a sign
to his neighbours that he was not to be disturbed unless for serious
reasons.  Having put on his indoor coat, he lit the candles and carried
in the heavy soup tureen for his daughter.

They ate their soup in appreciative silence, both were a little tired.
While his daughter was bringing in the roast, Auclair poured a glass of
red wine for her and one of white for himself.

"Papa," she said as he began to carve, "what is the earliest possible
time that Aunt Clothilde and Aunt Blanche can get our letters?"

Auclair deliberated.  Every fall the colonists asked the same question
of one another and reckoned it all anew.  "Well, if _La Bonne
Esprance_ has good luck, she can make La Rochelle in six weeks.  Of
course, it has been done in five.  But let us say six; then, if the
roads are bad, and they are likely to be in December, we must count on
a week to Paris."

"And if she does not have good luck?"

"Ah, then who can say?  But unless she meets with very heavy storms,
she can do it in two months.  With this west wind, which we can always
count on, she will get out of the river and through the Gulf very
speedily, and that is sometimes the most tedious part of the voyage.
When we came over with the Count, we were a month coming from Perc to
Quebec.  That was because we were sailing against this same autumn wind
which will be carrying _La Bonne Esprance_ out to sea."

"But surely the aunts will have our letters by New Year's, and then
they will know how glad I was of my beret and my jerseys, and how we
can hardly wait to open the box upstairs.  I can remember my Aunt
Blanche a little, because she was young and pretty, and used to play
with me.  I suppose she is not young now, any more; it is eight years."

"Not young, exactly, but she will always have high spirits.  And she is
well married, and has three children who are a great joy to her."

"Three little cousins whom I have never seen, and one of them is named
for me!  Ccile, Andr, Rachel."  She spoke their names softly.  These
little cousins were almost like playfellows.  Their mother wrote such
long letters about them that Ccile felt she knew them and all their
ways, their individual faults and merits.  Cousin Ccile was seven,
very studious, _bien srieuse_, already prepared for confirmation; but
she would eat only sweets and highly spiced food.  Andr was five,
truthful and courageous, but he bit his nails.  Rachel was a baby, in
the midst of teething when they last heard of her.

Ccile would have preferred to live with Aunt Blanche and her children
when she should go back to France; but by her mother's wish she was
destined for Aunt Clothilde, who had long been a widow of handsome
means and was much interested in the education of young girls.  The
face of this aunt Ccile could never remember, though she could see her
figure clearly,--standing against the light, she always seemed to be, a
massive woman, short and heavy though not exactly fat,--square, rather,
like a great piece of oak furniture; always in black, widow's black
that smelled of dye, with gold rings on her fingers and a very white
handkerchief in her hand.  Ccile could see her head, too, carried well
back on a short neck, like a general or a statesman sitting for his
portrait; but the face was a blank, just as if the aunt were standing
in a doorway with blinding sunlight behind her.  Ccile was once more
trying to recall that face when her father interrupted her.

"What are we having for dessert tonight, my dear?"

"We have the cream cheese you brought from market yesterday, and
whichever conserve you prefer; the plums, the wild strawberries, or the
gooseberries."

"Oh, the gooseberries, by all means, after chicken."

"But, Papa, your prefer the gooseberries after almost everything!  It
is lucky for us we can get all the sugar we want from the Count.  Our
neighbours cannot afford to make conserves, with sugar so dear.  And
gooseberries take more than anything else."

"There is something very palatable about the flavour of these
gooseberries, a bitter tang that is good for one.  At home the
gooseberries are much larger and finer, but I have come to like this
bitter taste."

"_En France nous avons tons les lgumes, jusqu'aux dattes,_" murmured
Ccile.  She had never seen a date, but she had learned that phrase
from a book, when she went to day-school at the Ursulines.

Immediately after dinner the apothecary went into the front shop to
post his ledger, while his daughter washed the dishes with the hot
water left in an iron kettle on the stove, where the birch-wood fire
was now smouldering coals.  She had scarcely begun when she heard a
soft scratching at the single window of her kitchen.  Through the small
panes of glass a face was looking in,--a terrifying face, but one that
she expected.  She nodded and beckoned with her finger.  A short, heavy
man shuffled into the kitchen.  He seemed loath to enter, yet drawn by
some desire stronger than his reluctance.  Ccile went to the stove and
filled a bowl.

"There is your soup for you, Blinker."

"Merci, Ma'm'selle."  The man spoke out of the side of his mouth, as he
looked out of the side of his face.  He was so terribly cross-eyed that
Ccile had never really looked into his eyes at all,--this was why he
was called Blinker.  He took a half-loaf from his coat-pocket and began
to eat the soup eagerly, trying not to make a noise.  Eating was
difficult for him,--he had once had an abscess in his lower jaw, it had
suppurated, and pieces of the bone had come out.  His face was badly
shrunken on that side, under the old scars.  He knew it distressed
Ccile if he gurgled his soup; so he struggled between greed and
caution, dipping his bread to make it easy chewing.

This poor mis-shapen fellow worked next door, tended the oven fires for
Nicholas Pigeon, the baker, so that the baker could get his night's
sleep.  His wages were the baker's old clothes, two pairs of boots a
year, a pint of red wine daily, and all the bread he could eat.  But he
got no soup there, Madame Pigeon had too many children to feed.

When he had finished his bowl and loaf, he rose and without saying
anything took up two large wooden pails.  One was full of refuse from
the day's cooking, the other full of dish-water.  These he carried down
Mountain Hill, through the market square to the edge of the shore, and
there emptied them into the river.  When he came back, he found a very
small glass of brandy waiting for him on the table.

"Merci, Ma'm'selle, merci beaucoup," he muttered.  He sat down and
sipped it slowly, watching Ccile arrange the kitchen for the night.
He lingered while the floor was swept, the last dish put in place on
the shelves, the dish-towels hung to dry on a wire above the stove,
following all these operations intently with his crooked eyes.  When
she took up her candle, he must go.  He put down his glass, got up, and
opened the back door, but his feet seemed nailed to the sill.  He stood
blinking with that incredibly stupid air, blinking out of the side of
his face, and Ccile could not be sure that he saw her or anything
else.  He made a fumbling as if to button his coat, though there were
no buttons on it.

"Bon soir, Ma'm'selle," he muttered.

Since this happened every night, Ccile thought nothing of it.  Her
mother had begun to look out for Blinker a little before she became so
ill, and he was one of the cares the daughter had inherited.  He had
come out to the colony four years ago, and like many others who came he
had no trade.  He was strong, but so ill-favoured that nobody wanted
him about.  Neighbour Pigeon found he was faithful and dependable, and
taught him to stoke the wood fire and tend the oven between midnight
and morning.  Madame Auclair felt sorry for the poor fellow and got
into the way of giving him his soup at night and letting him do the
heavy work, such as carrying in wood and water and taking away the
garbage.  She had always called Blinker by his real name, Jules.  He
had a cave up in the rocky cliff behind the bakery, where he kept his
chest,--he slept there in mild weather.  In winter he slept anywhere
about the ovens that he could find room to lie down, and his clothes
and woolly red hair were usually white with ashes.  Many people were
afraid of him, felt that he must have crooked thoughts behind such
crooked eyes.  But the Pigeons and Auclairs had got used to him and saw
no harm in him.  The baker said he could never discover how the fellow
made a living at home, or why he had come out to Canada.  Many
unserviceable men had come, to be sure, but they were usually
adventurers who disliked honest work,--wanted to fight the Iroquois or
traffic in beaver-skins, or live a free life hunting game in the woods.
This Blinker had never had a gun in his hands.  He had such a horror of
the forest that he would not even go into the near-by woods to help
fell trees for firewood, and his fear of Indians was one of the bywords
of Mountain Hill.  Pigeon used to tell his customers that if the Count
went to chastise the Iroquois beyond Cataraqui, Blinker would hide in
his cave in Quebec.  Blinker protested he had been warned in a dream
that he would be taken prisoner and tortured by the Indians.


Dinner was the important event of the day in the apothecary's
household.  The luncheon was a mere goter.  Breakfast was a pot of
chocolate, which he prepared very carefully himself, and a fresh loaf
which Pigeon's oldest boy brought to the door.  But his dinner Auclair
regarded as the thing that kept him a civilized man and a Frenchman.
It put him in a mellow mood, and he and his daughter usually spent the
long evening very happily without visitors.  She read aloud to him, the
fables of La Fontaine or his favourite Plutarch, and he corrected her
accent so that she would not be ashamed when she returned home to the
guardianship of that intelligent and exacting Aunt Clothilde.  It was
only in the evening that her father had time to talk to her.  All day
he was compounding remedies, or visiting the sick, or making notes for
a work on the medicinal properties of Canadian plants which he meant to
publish after his return to Paris.  But in the evening he was free, and
while he enjoyed his Spanish snuff their talk would sometimes lead far
away and bring out long stories of the past.  Her father would try to
recall to her their old shop on the Quai des Clestins, where he had
grown up and where she herself was born.  She thought she could
remember it a little, though she was only four years old when they
sailed with the Count for the New World.  It was a narrow wedge, that
shop, built in next to the carriage court of the town house of the
Frontenacs.  Auclair's little chamber, where he slept from his sixth
year until his marriage, was on the third floor, under the roof.  Its
one window looked out upon the carriage court and across it to the
front of the mansion, which had only a blind wall on the street and
faced upon its own court.

When he was a little boy, he used to tell Ccile, nothing ever changed
next door, except that after a rain the cobbles in the yard were
whiter, and the ivy on the walls was greener.  Every morning he looked
out from his window on the same stillness; the shuttered windows behind
their iron grilles, the steps under the porte-cochre green with moss,
pale grass growing up between the stones in the court, the empty
stables at the back, the great wooden carriage gates that never
opened,--though in one of them a small door was cut, through which the
old caretaker came and went.

"Naturally," Auclair would tell his daughter, "having seen the
establishment next door always the same, I supposed it was meant to be
like that, and was there, perhaps, to give a little boy the pleasure of
watching the swallows build nests in the ivy.  The Count had been at
home when I was an infant in arms, and once, I believe, when I was
three, but I could not remember.  Imagine my astonishment when, one
evening about sunset, a dusty coach with four horses rattled down the
Quai and stopped at the carriage entrance.  Two footmen sprang down
from the box, rang the outer bell, and, as soon as the bar was drawn,
began pulling and prying at the gates, which I had never seen opened in
my life.  It seemed to me that some outrage was being committed and the
police should be called.  At last the gates were dragged inward, and
the coach clattered into the court.  If anything more happened that
night I do not recall it.

"The next morning I was awakened by shouting under my window, and the
sound of shutters being taken down.  I ran across my room and peeped
out.  The windows over there were not only unshuttered, but open wide.
Three young men were leaning out over the grilles beating rugs, shaking
carpets and wall-hangings into the air.  In a moment a blacksmith came
in his leather apron, with a kit of tools, and began to repair the
hinges of the gates.  Boys were running in and out, bringing bread,
milk, poultry, sacks of grain and hay for the horses.  When I went down
to breakfast, I found my father and mother and grandparents all very
much excited and pleased, talking a great deal.  They already knew in
which chamber the Count had slept last night, the names of his
equerries, what he had brought with him for supper in a basket from
Fontainebleau, and which wines old Joseph had got up from the cellar
for him.  I had scarcely ever heard my family talk so much.

"Not long after breakfast the Count himself came into our shop.  He
greeted my father familiarly and began asking about the people of the
Quarter as if he had been away only a few weeks.  He inquired for my
mother and grandmother, and they came to pay their respects.  I was
pulled out from under the counter where I had hidden, and presented to
him.  I was frightened because he was wearing his uniform and such big
boots.  Yes, he was a fine figure of a man forty years ago, but even
more restless and hasty than he is now.  I remember he asked me if I
wanted to be a soldier, and when I told him that I meant to be an
apothecary like my father, he laughed and gave me a silver piece."

Though Auclair so often talked to his daughter of the past, it was not
because there was nothing happening in the present.  At that time the
town of Quebec had fewer than two thousand inhabitants, but it was
always full of jealousies and quarrels.  Ever since Ccile could
remember, there had been a feud between Count Frontenac and old Bishop
Laval.  And now that the new Bishop, Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier, had
just come back from France after a three years' absence, the Count was
quarrelling with him!  Then there was always the old quarrel between
the two Bishops themselves, which had broken out with fresh vigour upon
de Saint-Vallier's return.  Everyone in the diocese took sides with one
prelate or the other.  Since he landed in September, scarcely a week
went by that Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier did not wreck some cherished
plan of the old Bishop.


Before they went to bed, Auclair and his daughter usually took a walk.
The apothecary believed this habit conducive to sound slumber.
Tonight, as they stepped out into the frosty air and looked up, high
over their heads, on the edge of the sheer cliff, the Chteau stood out
against the glittering night sky, the second storey of the south wing
brilliantly lighted.

"I suppose the Count's candles will burn till long past midnight,"
Ccile remarked.

"Ah, the Count has many things to trouble him.  The King has not been
very generous in rewarding his services in the last campaign.  Besides,
he is old, and the old do not sleep much."

As they climbed Mountain Hill, they passed in front of Monseigneur de
Saint-Vallier's new episcopal Palace, and that, too, was ablaze with
lights.  Ccile longed to see inside that building, toward which the
King himself had given fifteen thousand francs.  It was said that
Monseigneur had brought back with him a great many fine pieces of
furniture and tapestry to furnish it.  But he was not fond of children,
as the old Bishop was, and his servants were very strict, and there
seemed to be no way in which one could get a peep behind those heavy
curtains at the windows.

Their walk was nearly always the same.  On a precipitous rock, scored
over with dark, uneven streets, there were not many ways where one
could stroll with a careless foot after nightfall.  When the wind was
not too biting, they usually took the path up to the redoubt on Cap
Diamant and looked down over the sleeping town and the great pale
avenue of river, with black forest stretching beyond it to the sky.
From there the Lower Town was a mere sprinkle of lights along the
water's edge.  The rock-top, blocked off in dark masses that were
convents and churches and gardens, was now sunk in sleep.  The only
lighted windows to be seen were in the Chteau, in the Bishop's Palace,
and on the top floor of old Bishop Laval's Seminary, out there on its
spur overhanging the river.  That top floor, the apothecary told his
daughter, was the library, and likely enough some young Canadian-born
Seminarians to whom Latin came hard were struggling with the Church
Fathers up there.



III

Auclair did a good trade in drugs and herbs and remedies of his own
compounding, but his pay was small, and very little of it was in money.
Besides, people wasted a great deal of his time in conversation and
thus interfered with his study of Canadian plants.  Like most
philosophers, he was not averse to discourse, but here much of the talk
was gossip and very trivial.  The colonists liked to drop in at his
house upon the slightest pretext; the interior was like home to the
French-born.  On a heavy morning, when clouds of thick grey fog rolled
up from the St. Lawrence, it cheered one to go into a place that was
like an apothecary's shop at home; to glimpse the comfortable
sitting-room through the tall cabinets and chests of drawers that
separated without entirely shutting it off from the shop.

Euclide Auclair had come over with the Count de Frontenac eight years
ago, as his apothecary and physician, and had therefore been able to
bring whatever he liked of his personal possessions.  He came with a
full supply of drugs and specifics, his distilling apparatus, mortars,
balances, retorts, and carboys, all the paraphernalia of his trade,
even the stuffed baby alligator, brought long ago to Paris by some
sailor from the West Indies and purchased by Auclair's grandfather to
ornament the shop on the Quai des Clestins.

Madame Auclair had brought her household goods, without which she could
not imagine life at all, and the salon behind the shop was very much
like their old salon in Paris.  There was the same well-worn carpet,
made at Lyon, the walnut dining-table, the two large arm-chairs and
high-backed sofa upholstered in copper-red cotton-velvet, the long
window-curtains of a similar velvet lined with brown.  The same
candelabra and china shepherd boy sat on the mantel, the same colour
prints of pastoral scenes hung on the walls.  Madame had brought out to
Canada the fine store of linen that had been her marriage portion, her
feather beds and coverlids and down pillows.  As long as she lived, she
tried to make the new life as much as possible like the old.  After she
began to feel sure that she would never be well enough to return to
France, her chief care was to train her little daughter so that she
would be able to carry on this life and this order after she was gone.

Madame Auclair had kept upon her feet until within a few weeks of her
death.  When a spasm of coughing came on (she died of her lungs) and
she was forced to lie down on the red sofa there under the window, she
would beckon Ccile to the footstool beside her.  After she got her
breath again and was resting, she would softly explain many things
about the mnage.

"Your father has a delicate appetite," she would murmur, "and the food
here is coarse.  If it is not very carefully prepared, he will not eat
and will fall ill.  And he cannot sleep between woollen coverlids, as
many people do here; his skin is sensitive.  The sheets must be changed
every two weeks, but do not try to have them washed in the winter.  I
have brought linen enough to last the winter through.  Keep folding the
soiled ones away in the cold upstairs, and in April, when the spring
rains come and all the water-barrels are full of soft rain-water, have
big Jeanette come in and do a great washing; give the house up to her,
and let her take several days to do her work.  Beg her to iron the
sheets carefully.  They are the best of linen and will last your
lifetime if they are well treated."

Madame Auclair never spoke of her approaching death, but would say
something like this:

"After a while, when I am too ill to help you, you will perhaps find it
fatiguing to do all these things alone, over and over.  But in time you
will come to love your duties, as I do.  You will see that your
father's whole happiness depends on order and regularity, and you will
come to feel a pride in it.  Without order our lives would be
disgusting, like those of the poor savages.  At home, in France, we
have learned to do all these things in the best way, and we are
conscientious, and that is why we are called the most civilized people
in Europe and other nations envy us."

After such admonition Madame Auclair would look intently into the
child's eyes that grew so dark when her heart was touched, like the
blue of Canadian blueberries, indeed, and would say to herself: "_Oui,
elle a beaucoup de loyaut_."

During the last winter of her illness she lay much of the time on her
red sofa, that had come so far out to this rock in the wilderness.  The
snow outside, piled up against the window-panes, made a grey light in
the room, and she could hear Ccile moving softly about in the kitchen,
putting more wood into the iron stove, washing the casseroles.  Then
she would think fearfully of how much she was entrusting to that little
shingled head; something so precious, so intangible; a feeling about
life that had come down to her through so many centuries and that she
had brought with her across the wastes of obliterating, brutal ocean.
The sense of "our way,"--that was what she longed to leave with her
daughter.  She wanted to believe that when she herself was lying in
this rude Canadian earth, life would go on almost unchanged in this
room with its dear (and, to her, beautiful) objects; that the
proprieties would be observed, all the little shades of feeling which
make the common fine.  The individuality, the character, of M.
Auclair's house, though it appeared to be made up of wood and cloth and
glass and a little silver, was really made of very fine moral qualities
in two women: the mother's unswerving fidelity to certain traditions,
and the daughter's loyalty to her mother's wish.

It was because of these things that had gone before, and the kind of
life lived there, that the townspeople were glad of any excuse to stop
at the apothecary's shop.  Even the strange, bitter, mysterious Bishop
Laval (more accusing and grim than ever, now that the new Bishop had
returned and so disregarded him) used to tramp heavily into the shop
for calomel pills or bandages for his varicose legs, and peer, not
unkindly, back into the living-room.  Once he had asked for a sprig
from the box of parsley that was kept growing there even in winter, and
carried it away in his hand,--though, as everyone knew, he denied
himself all the comforts of the table and ate only the most wretched
and unappetizing food.

In a corner, concealed from the shop by tall cabinets, and well away
from the window draughts, stood M. Auclair's four-post bed, with heavy
hangings.  Underneath it was a child's bed, pulled out at night, where
Ccile still slept in cold weather.  Sometimes on a very bitter night,
when the grip of still, intense cold tightened on the rock as if it
would extinguish the last spark of life, the pharmacist would hear his
daughter softly stirring about, moving something, covering something.
He would thrust his night-cap out between the curtains and call:

"_Quest-ce que tu fais, petite?_"

An anxious, sleepy voice would reply:

"_Papa, j'ai peur pour le persil._"

It had never frozen in her mother's time, and it should not freeze in
hers.



IV

The accident of being born next the Count de Frontenac's house in Paris
had determined Euclide Auclair's destiny.  He had grown up a studious,
thoughtful boy, assisting his father in the shop.  Every afternoon he
read Latin with a priest at the Jesuits on the rue Saint-Antoine.
Count Frontenac's irregular and unexpected returns to town made the
chief variety in his life.

It was usually after some chagrin or disappointment that the Count came
back to the Quai des Clestins.  Between campaigns he lived at le
Savary, his estate on the Indre, near Blois.  But after some slight at
Court, or some difficulty with his creditors, he would suddenly arrive
at his father's old town house and shut himself up for days, even
weeks, seeing no one but the little people of the parish of Saint-Paul.
He had few friends of his own station in Paris,--few anywhere.  He was
a man who got on admirably with his inferiors,--seemed to find among
them the only human ties that were of any comfort to him.  He was poor,
which made him boastful and extravagant, and he had always lived far
beyond his means.  At le Savary he tried to make as great a show as
people who were much better off than he,--to equal them in hospitality,
in dress, gardens, horses and carriages.  But when he was in Paris,
living among the quiet, faithful people of the quarter, he was a
different man.  With his humble neighbours his manners were
irreproachable.  He often dropped in at the pharmacy to see his
tenants, the Auclairs, and would sometimes talk to the old grandfather
about his campaigns in Italy and the Low Countries.

The Count had begun his military life at fifteen, and wherever there
was fighting in Europe, he always managed to be there.  In each
campaign he added to his renown, but never to his fortune.  When his
military talents were unemployed, he usually got into trouble of some
sort.  It was after his Italian campaign, when he was recuperating from
his wounds in his father's old house on the Quai, that he made his
unfortunate marriage.  Euclide's father could remember that affair very
well.  Madame de la Grange-Frontenac and her husband lived together but
a short while,--and now they had been separated for almost a lifetime.
She still lived in Paris, with a brilliant circle about her,--had an
apartment in the old Arsenal building, not far from the Count's house,
and when she received, he sometimes paid his respects with the rest of
the world, but he never went to see her privately.

When Euclide was twenty-two, Count Frontenac was employed by the
Venetians to defend the island of Crete against the Turks.  From that
command he returned with great honour, but poorer than ever.  For the
next three years he was idle.  Then, suddenly, the King appointed him
Governor General of Canada, and he quitted Europe for ten years.

During that decade Euclide's father and mother died.  He married, and
devoted himself seriously to his profession.  Too seriously for his own
good, indeed.  Although he was so content with familiar scenes and
faces as to be almost afraid of new ones, he was not afraid of new
ideas,--or of old ideas that had gone out of fashion because surgeons
and doctors were too stupid to see their value.  The brilliant reign of
Louis XIV was a low period in medicine; dressmakers and tailors were
more considered than physicians.  Euclide had gone deep into the
history of medicine in such old Latin books as were stuffed away in the
libraries of Paris.  He looked back to the time of Ambroise Par, and
still further back to the thirteenth century, as golden ages in
medicine,--and he considered Fagon, the King's physician, a bigoted and
heartless quack.

When sick people in his own neighbourhood came to Euclide for help, he
kept them away from doctors,--gave them tisanes and herb-teas and
poultices, which at least could do no harm.  He advised them about
their diet; reduced the surfeit of the rich, and prescribed goat's milk
for the poorly nourished.  He was strongly opposed to indiscriminate
blood-letting, particularly to bleeding from the feet.  This
eccentricity made him very unpopular, not only with the barber-surgeons
of the parish, but with their patients, and even estranged his own
friends.  Bleeding from the feet was very much in vogue just then; it
made a sick man feel that the utmost was being done for him.  At
Versailles it was regularly practised on members of the King's
household.  Euclide's opposition to this practice lost him many of his
patrons.  His neighbours used to laugh and say that whether bleeding
from the feet harmed other people or not, it had certainly been very
bad for the son of their reliable old pharmacien, Alphonse Auclair.

Euclide's business contracted steadily, so that, with all his wife's
good management and his own devotion to his profession, he scarcely
knew where to turn; until one day the Count de Frontenac walked into
the shop and put out his hand as if to rescue a drowning man.  Auclair
had never heard of the Count's difficulties with the Jesuits in Canada,
and knew nothing about his recall by the King, until he appeared at the
shop door that morning, ten years older, but no richer or better
satisfied with the world than when he went away.

The Count was out of favour at Versailles, his estate on the Indre had
run down during his absence in Canada, and he had not the means to
repair it, so he now spent a good deal of time in the house next door.
His presence there, and his patronage, eased the strain of the
Auclairs' position.  Moreover, he restored to Euclide the ten years'
rent for the shop, which had been scrupulously paid to the Count's
agent while he was away.

The Count was lonely in his town house.  Many of his old acquaintances
had accomplished their earthly period and been carried to the Innocents
or the churchyard of Saint-Paul while he was far away in Quebec.  His
wife was still entertaining her friends at her apartment in the old
Arsenal, and the Count occasionally went there on her afternoons at
home.  Time hung heavy on his hands, and he often sent for Euclide to
come to him in a professional capacity,--a flimsy pretext, for, though
past sixty, the Count was in robust health.  Of an evening they would
sometimes sit in the Count's library, talking of New France.
Frontenac's thoughts were there, and he liked to tell an eager listener
about its great lakes and rivers, the climate, the Indians, the forests
and wild animals.  Often he would dwell upon the explorations and
discoveries of his ill-fated young friend Robert Cavelier de La Salle,
one of the few men for whom, in his long life, he ever felt a warm
affection.

Gradually there grew up in Auclair's mind the picture of a country vast
and free.  He fell into a habit of looking to Canada as a possible
refuge, an escape from the evils one suffered at home, and of wishing
he could go there.

This seemed a safe desire to cherish, since it was impossible of
fulfilment.  Euclide was a natural city-dweller; one of those who can
bear poverty and oppression, so long as they have their old
surroundings, their native sky, the streets and buildings that have
become part of their lives.  But though he was a creature of habit and
derived an actual pleasure from doing things exactly as he had always
done them, his mind was free.  He could not shut his eyes to the wrongs
that went on about him, or keep from brooding upon them.  In his own
time he had seen taxes grow more and more ruinous, poverty and hunger
always increasing.  People died of starvation in the streets of Paris,
in his own parish of Saint-Paul, where there was so much wealth.  All
the while the fantastic extravagances of the Court grew more
outrageous.  The wealth of the nation, of the grain lands and vineyards
and forests of France, was sunk in creating the pleasure palace at
Versailles.  The richest peers of the realm were ruining themselves on
magnificent Court dresses and jewels.  And, with so many new abuses,
the old ones never grew less; torture and cruel punishments increased
as the people became poorer and more desperate.  The horrible mill at
the Chatelet ground on day after day.  Auclair lived too near the
prisons of Paris to be able to forget them.  In his boyhood a harmless
old man who lodged in their own cellar was tortured and put to death at
the Chatelet for a petty theft.

One morning, in the summer when Ccile was four years old, Count
Frontenac made one of his sudden reappearances in Paris and sent for
Euclide.  The King had again appointed him Governor General of Canada,
and he would sail in a few weeks.  He wished to take Auclair with him
as his personal physician.  The Count was then seventy years old, and
he was as eager to be gone as a young man setting off on his first
campaign.

Auclair was terrified.  Indeed, he fell ill of fright, and neither ate
nor slept.  He could not imagine facing any kind of life but the one he
had always lived.  His wife was much the braver of the two.  She
pointed out that their business barely made them a livelihood, and that
after the Count went away it would certainly decline.  Moreover, the
Count was their landlord, and he had now decided to sell his town
property.  Who knew but that the purchaser might prove a hard
master,--or that he might not pull down the apothecary shop altogether
to enlarge the stables?



V

It was the day after _La Bonne Esprance_ had set sail for France.
Auclair and his daughter were on their way to the Htel Dieu to attend
the Reverend Mother, who had sprained her ankle.  Quebec is never
lovelier than on an afternoon of late October; ledges of brown and
lavender clouds lay above the river and the le d'Orlans, and the
red-gold autumn sunlight poured over the rock like a heavy southern
wine.  Beyond the Cathedral square the two lingered under the alle of
naked trees beside the Jesuits' college.  These trees were cut flat to
form an arbour, the branches interweaving and interlacing like
basket-work, and beneath them ran a promenade paved with flat
flagstones along which the dry yellow leaves were blowing, giving off a
bitter perfume when one trampled them.  Ccile loved that alle,
because when she was little the Fathers used to let her play there with
her skipping-rope,--few spots in Kebec were level enough to jump rope
on.  Behind the avenue of trees the long stone walls of the
monastery--seven feet thick, those walls--made a shelter from the wind;
they held the sun's heat so well that it was possible to grow wall
grapes there, and purple clusters were cut in September.

Behind the Jesuits' a narrow, twisted, cobbled street dropped down
abruptly to the Htel Dieu, on the banks of the little river St.
Charles.  Auclair and his daughter went through the garden into the
refectory, where Mother Juschereau de Saint-Ignace was seated, her
sprained foot on a stool, directing the work of her novices.  She was a
little over forty, a woman of strong frame, tall, upright, with a
presence that bespoke force rather than reserve; a handsome face,--the
large, open features mobile and alert, perhaps a trifle masculine.  She
was the first Reverend Mother of the foundation who was Canadian-born,
and she had been elected to that office when she was but thirty-four
years of age.  She was a religious of the practical type, sunny and
very outright by nature,--enthusiastic, without being given to visions
or ecstasies.

As the visitors entered, the Superior made as if to rise, but Auclair
put out a detaining hand.

"I am two days late, Reverend Mother.  In your mind you have been
chiding me for neglect.  But it is a busy time for us when the last
ships sail.  We have many family letters to write; and I examine my
stock and make out my order for the drugs I shall need by the first
boats next summer."

"If you had not come today, Monsieur Euclide, you would surely have
found me on my feet tomorrow.  When the Indians have a sprain, in the
woods, they bind their leg tightly with deer thongs and keep on the
march with their party.  And they recover."

"Dear Mother Juschereau, the idea of such treatment is repugnant to me.
We are not barbarians, after all."

"But they are flesh and blood; how is it they recover?"

As he pushed back her snow-white skirt a little and began gently to
unwind the bandage from her foot, Auclair explained his reasons for
believing that the savages were much less sensitive to pain than
Europeans.  Ccile fell to admiring the work Mother Juschereau had in
hand.  Her lap and the table beside her were full of scraps of bright
silk and velvet and sheets of coloured paper.  While she overlooked the
young Sisters at their tasks, her fingers were moving rapidly and
cleverly, making artificial flowers.  She had great skill at this and
delighted in it,--it was her one recreation.

"Yes, my dear," she said, "I am making these for the poor country
parishes, where they have so little for the altar.  These are wild
roses, such as I used to gather when I was a child at Beauport.  Oh,
the wild flowers we have in the fields and prairies about Beauport!"

When he had applied his ointment and bandaged her foot in fresh linen,
the apothecary went off to the hospital medicine room, in charge of
Sister Marie Domenica, whom he was instructing in the elements of
pharmacy, and Ccile settled herself on the floor at Mother
Juschereau's knee.  Theirs was an old friendship.

The Reverend Mother (Jeanne Franc Juschereau de la Fert was her proud
name) held rather advanced views on caring for the sick.  She did not
believe in leaving everything to God, and had availed her hospital of
Auclair's skill ever since he first came to Quebec.  Quick to detect a
trace of the charlatan in anyone, she felt confidence in Auclair
because his pretensions were so modest.  She addressed him familiarly
as "Monsieur Euclide," scolded him for teaching his daughter Latin, and
was keenly interested in his study of Canadian plants.  Ccile had been
coming to the Htel Dieu with her father almost every week since she
was five years old, and Mother Juschereau always found time to talk to
her a little; but today was a very unusual opportunity.  The Mother was
seldom to be found seated in a chair; when she was not on her knees at
her devotions, she was on her feet, hurrying from one duty to another.

"It has been a long while since you told me a story, Reverend Mother,"
Ccile reminded her.

Mother Juschereau laughed.  She had a deep warm-hearted laugh,
something left over from her country girlhood.  "Perhaps I have no more
to tell you.  You must know them all by this time."

"But there is no end to the stories about Mother Catherine de
Saint-Augustin.  I can never hear them all."

"True enough, when you speak her name, the stories come.  Since I have
had to sit here with my sprain, I have been recalling some of the
things she used to tell me herself, when I was not much older than you."

While her hands flew among the scraps of colour, Mother Juschereau
began somewhat formally:

"Before she had left her fair Normandy (_avant qu'elle ait quitt sa
belle Normandie_), while Sister Catherine was a novice at Bayeux, there
lived in the neighbourhood a _pcheresse_ named Marie.  She had been a
sinner from her early youth and was so proof against all counsel that
she continued her disorders even until an advanced age.  Driven out by
the good people of the town, shunned by men and women alike, she fell
lower and lower, and at last hid herself in a solitary cave.  There she
dragged out her shameful life, destitute and consumed by a loathsome
disease.  And there she died; without human aid and without the
sacraments of the Church.  After such a death her body was thrown into
a ditch and buried like that of some unclean animal.

"Now, Sister Catherine, though she was so young and had all the duties
of her novitiate to perform, always found time to pray for the souls of
the departed, for all who died in that vicinity, whether she had known
them in the flesh or not.  But for this abandoned sinner she did not
pray, believing, as did everyone else, that she was for ever lost.

"Twelve years went by, and Sister Catherine had come to Canada and was
doing her great work here.  One day, while she was at prayer in this
house, a soul from purgatory appeared to her, all pale and suffering,
and said:

"'Sister Catherine, what misery is mine!  You commend to God the souls
of all those who die.  I am the only one on whom you have no
compassion.'

"'And who are you?' asked our astonished Mother Catherine.

"'I am that poor Marie, the sinner, who died in the cave.'

"'What,' exclaimed Mother Catherine, 'were you then not lost?'

"'No, I was saved, thanks to the infinite mercy of the Blessed Virgin.'

"'But how could this be?'

"'When I saw that I was about to die in the cave, and knew that I was
abandoned and cast out by the world, unclean within and without, I felt
the burden of all my sins.  I turned to the Mother of God and cried to
her: _Queen of Heaven, you are the last refuge of the ruined and the
outcast; I am abandoned by all the world; I have no hope but you; you
alone have power to reach where I am fallen; Mary, Mother of Jesus,
have pity upon me_!  The tender Mother of all made it possible for me
to repent in that last hour.  I died and I was saved.  The Holy Mother
procured for me the favour of having my punishment abridged, and now
only a few masses are required to deliver me from purgatory.  I beseech
you to have them said for me, and I will never cease my prayers to God
and the Blessed Virgin for you.'

"Mother Catherine at once set about having masses said for that poor
Marie.  Some days later there appeared to her a happy soul, more
brilliant than the sun, which smiled and said: 'I thank you, my dear
Catherine, I go now to paradise to sing the mercies of God for ever,
and I shall not forget to pray for you.'"

Here Mother Juschereau glanced down at the young listener, who had been
following her intently.  "And now, from this we see--" she went on, but
Ccile caught her hand and cried coaxingly,

"_N'expliquez pas, chre Mre, je vous en supplie!_"

Mother Juschereau laughed and shook her finger.

"You always say that, little naughty!  _N'expliquez pas_!  But it is
the explanation of these stories that applies them to our needs."

"Yes, dear Mother.  But there comes my father.  Tell me the explanation
some other day."

Mother Juschereau still looked down into her face, frowning and
smiling.  It was the kind of face she liked, because there was no
self-consciousness in it, and no vanity; but she told herself for the
hundredth time: "No, she has certainly no vocation."  Yet for an orphan
girl, and one so intelligent, there would certainly have been a career
among the Hospitalires.  She would have loved to train that child for
the Soeur Apothicaire of her hospital.  Her good sense told her it was
not to be.  When she talked to Ccile of the missionaries and martyrs,
she knew that her words fell into an eager mind; admiration and rapture
she found in the girl's face, but it was not the rapture of
self-abnegation.  It was something very different,--almost like the
glow of worldly pleasure.  She was convinced that Ccile read
altogether too much with her father, and had told him so; asking him
whether he had perhaps forgotten that he had a girl to bring up, and
not a son whom he was educating for the priesthood.


While her father and Mother Juschereau were going over an inventory of
hospital supplies, Ccile went into the chapel to say a prayer for the
repose of Mother de Saint-Augustin.  There, in the quiet, she soon fell
to musing upon the story of that remarkable girl who had braved the
terrors of the ocean and the wilderness and come out to Canada when she
was barely sixteen years old, and this Kebec was but a naked rock
rising out of the dark forest.

Catherine de Saint-Augustin had begun her novitiate with the
Hospitalires at Bayeux when she was eleven and a half years of age,
and by the time she was fourteen she was already, in her heart, vowed
to Canada.  The letters and _Relations_ of the Jesuit missionaries,
eagerly read in all the religious houses of France, had fired her bold
imagination, and she begged to be sent to save the souls of the
savages.  Her superiors discouraged her and forbade her to cherish this
desire; Catherine's youth and bodily frailness were against her.  But
while she went about her tasks in the monastery, this wish, this hope,
was always with her.  One day when she was peeling vegetables in the
novices' refectory, she cut her hand, and, seeing the blood flow, she
dipped her finger in it and wrote upon the table:

  _Je mourrai au Canada
    Soeur Saint-Augustin_


That table, with its inscription, was still shown at Bayeux as an
historic relic.

Though Catherine's desire seemed so far from fulfilment, she had not
long to wait.  In the winter of 1648, Pre Vimont, from the Jesuit
mission in Canada, came knocking at the door of the monastre at
Bayeux, recruiting sisters for the little foundation of Hospitalires
already working in Kebec.  Catherine was told that she was too young to
go, and her father firmly refused to give his permission.  But in her
eagerness the girl wrote petition after petition to her Bishop and
superiors, and at last her request was brought to the attention of the
Queen Mother, Anne of Austria.  The Queen's intercession won her
father's consent.

When, after a voyage of many months, unparalleled for storms and
hardships, Catherine and her companions anchored under the rock of
Kebec and were rowed ashore, she fell upon her knees and kissed the
earth where she first stepped upon it.

Made Superior of the Htel Dieu at an early age, she died before she
was forty.  At thirty-seven she had burned her life out in vigils,
mortifications, visions, raptures, all the while carrying on a steady
routine of manual labour and administrative work, observing the full
discipline of her order.  For long before her death she was sustained
by visions in which the spirit of Father Brbeuf, the martyr, appeared
to her, told her of the glories of heaven, and gave her counsel and
advice for all her perplexities in this world.  It was at the direction
of Father Brbeuf, communicated to her in these visions, that she chose
Jeanne Franc Juschereau de la Fert to succeed her as Superior, and
trained her to that end.  To many people the choice seemed such a
strange one that Pre Brbeuf must certainly have instigated it.
Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin was slight, nervous, sickly from
childhood, yet from childhood precocious and prodigious in everything;
always dedicating herself to the impossible and always achieving it;
now getting a Queen of France to speak for her, now winning the spirit
of the hero priest from paradise to direct and sustain her.  And the
woman she chose to succeed her was hardy, sagacious, practical,--a
_Canadienne_, and the woman for Canada.




_BOOK II_

_CCILE AND JACQUES_



BOOK TWO

_CCILE AND JACQUES_


I

On the last Friday of October Auclair went as usual to the market, held
in front of Notre Dame de la Victoire, the only church in the Lower
Town.  All the trade in Quebec went on in the Lower Town, and the
principal merchants lived on the market square.  Their houses were
built solidly around three sides of it, wall against wall, the shops on
the ground floor, the dwelling-quarters upstairs.  On the fourth side
stood the church.  The merchants' houses had formerly been of wood, but
sixteen years ago, just after the Count de Frontenac was recalled to
France, leaving Canada a prey to so many misfortunes, the Lower Town
had been almost entirely wiped out by fire.  It was rebuilt in stone,
to prevent a second disaster.  This square, which was the centre of
commerce, now had a look of permanence and stability; houses with walls
four feet thick, wide doorways, deep windows, steep, slated roofs and
dormers.  _La Place_, as it was called, was an uneven rectangle,
cobble-paved, sloping downhill like everything else in Quebec, with
gutters to carry off the rainfall.  In the middle was a grass plot
(pitifully small, indeed), protected by an iron fence and surmounted by
a very ugly statue of King Louis.

On market days the space about this iron fence was considered the right
of the countrywomen, who trudged into Quebec at dawn beside the dogs
that drew their little two-wheeled carts.  Against the fence they laid
out their wares; white bodies of dressed ducks and chickens, sausages,
fresh eggs, cheese, butter, and such vegetables as were in season.  On
the outer edge of the square the men stationed their carts, on which
they displayed quarters of fresh pork, live chickens, maple sugar,
spruce beer, Indian meal, feed for cows, and long black leaves of
native tobacco tied in bunches.  The fish and eel carts, because of
their smell and slimy drip, had a corner of the square to themselves,
just at the head of La Place Street.  The fishmongers threw buckets of
cold water over their wares at intervals, and usually a group of little
boys played just below, building "beaver-dams" in the gutter to catch
the overflow.

This was an important market day, and Auclair went down the hill early.
The black frosts might set in at any time now, and today he intended to
lay in his winter supply of carrots, pumpkins, potatoes, turnips,
beetroot, leeks, garlic, even salads.  On many of the wagons there were
boxes full of earth, with rooted lettuce plants growing in them.  These
the townspeople put away in their cellars, and by tending them
carefully and covering them at night they kept green salad growing
until Christmas or after.  Auclair's neighbour, Pigeon the baker, had a
very warm cellar, and he grew little carrots and spinach down there
long after winter had set in.  The great vaulted cellars of the Jesuits
and the Rcollet friars looked like kitchen gardens when the world
above ground was frozen stark.  Careless people got through the winter
on smoked eels and frozen fish, but if one were willing to take enough
trouble, one could live very well, even in Quebec.  It was the long,
slow spring, March, April, early May, that tried the patience.  By that
time the winter stores had run low, people were tired of makeshifts,
and still not a bud, not a salad except under cold-frames.

The market was full of wood doves this morning.  They were killed in
great numbers hereabouts, were sold cheap, and made very delicate
eating.  Every fall Auclair put down six dozens of them in melted lard.
He had six stone jars in his cellar for that purpose, packing a dozen
birds to the jar.  In this way he could eat fresh game all winter, and,
preserved thus, the birds kept their flavour.  Frozen venison was all
very well, but feathered creatures lost their taste when kept frozen a
long while.

Auclair carried his purchases over to the cart of his butter-maker,
Madame Renaude.  Renaude-le-livre, she was called, because she had a

hare-lip, and a bristling black moustache as well.  She was a big,
rough Norman woman, who owned seven cows, was extremely clean about her
dairy, and quite the reverse in her conversation.  In the town there
was keen competition for her wares; but as she was rheumatic, she was
more or less in thralldom to the apothecary, and seldom failed him.

"Good morning, Madame Renaude.  Have you my lard for me this morning,
as you promised?  I must buy my wood doves today."

"Yes, Monsieur Auclair, and I had to kill my pet pig to get it for you,
too; one that had slept under the same roof with me."

She spoke very loud, and the farmer at the next stall made an indecent
comment.

"Hold your dirty jaw, Joybert.  If I had a bad egg, I'd paste you."
Old Joybert squinted and looked the other way.  "Yes, Monsieur Auclair,
you never saw such lard as he made, as sweet as butter.  He made two
firkins.  Surely you won't need so much,--I can sell it anywhere."

"Yes, indeed, madame, I shall need every bit of it.  Six dozen birds I
have to put down, and I can't do with less."

"But, monsieur, what do you do with the grease after you take your
doves out?"

"Why, some of it we use in cooking, and the rest I think my daughter
gives to our neighbours."

"To that Blinker, eh?  That's a waste!  If you were to bring it back to
me, I could easily sell it over again and we could both of us make
something.  The hunters who come up from Three Rivers in winter carry
nothing but cold grease to fill their bellies.  You forget you are not
in France, monsieur.  Here grease is meat, not something to throw to
criminals."

"I will consider the matter, madame.  Now that I am sure of my lard, I
must go and select my birds.  Good morning, and thank you."

After he had finished his marketing, Auclair put his basket down on the
church steps and went inside to say a prayer.  Notre Dame de la
Victoire was a plain, solid little church, built of very hard rough
stone.  It had already stood through one bombardment from the
waterside, and was dear to the people for that reason.  The windows
were narrow and set high, like the windows in a fortress, making an
agreeable dusk inside.  Occasionally, as someone entered to pray, a
flash of sunlight and a buzz of talk came in from the Place, cut off
when the door closed again.

While the apothecary was meditating in the hush and dusk of the church,
he noticed a little boy, kneeling devoutly at one after another of the
Stations of the Cross.  He was at once interested, for he knew this
child very well; a chunky, rather clumsy little boy of six, unkept and
uncared for, dressed in a pair of old sailor's breeches, cut off in the
leg for him and making a great bulk of loose cloth about his thighs.
His ragged jacket was as much too tight as the trousers were too loose,
and this gave him the figure of a salt-shaker.  He did not look at
Auclair or the several others who came and went, being entirely
absorbed in his devotions.  His lips moved inaudibly, he knelt and rose
slowly, clumsily, very carefully, his cap under his arm.  Though all
his movements were so deliberate, his attention did not wander,--seemed
intently, heavily fixed.  Auclair carefully remained in the shadow,
making no sign of recognition.  He respected the child's seriousness.

This boy was the son of 'Toinette Gaux, a young woman who was quite
irreclaimable.  Antoinette was Canadian-born; her mother had been one
of "the King's Girls," as they were called.  Thirty years ago King
Louis had sent several hundred young Frenchwomen out to Canada to marry
the bachelors of the disbanded regiment of Carignan-Salires.  Many of
these girls were orphans or poor girls of good character; but some were
bad enough, and 'Toinette's mother proved one of the worst.  She had
one daughter, this 'Toinette,--as pretty and as worthless a girl as
ever made eyes at the sailors in any seaport town in France.  It once
happened that 'Toinette fell in love, and then she made great promises
of reform.  One of the hands on _La Gironde_ had come down with a fever
in Quebec and was lying sick in the Htel Dieu when his ship sailed for
France.  After he was discharged from the hospital, he found himself
homeless in a frontier town in winter, too weak to work.  'Toinette
took him in, drove her old sweethearts away, and married him.  But soon
after this boy, Jacques, was born, she returned to her old ways, and
her husband disappeared.  It was thought that his shipmates had hidden
him on board _La Gironde_ and taken him home.

'Toinette and another woman now kept a sailors' lodging-house in the
Lower Town, up beyond the King's warehouses.  They were commonly called
La Grenouille and L'Escargot, because, every summer, when the ships
from France began to come in, they stuck in their window two placards:
"FROGS," "SNAILS," to attract the hungry sailors, whether they had
those delicacies on hand or not.  'Toinette, called La Grenouille, was
still good to look at; yellow hair, red cheeks, lively blue eyes, an
impudent red mouth over small pointed teeth, like a squirrel's.  Her
partner, the poor snail, was a vacant creature, scarcely more than
half-witted,--and the hard work, of course, was put off on her.

This unfortunate child, Jacques, in spite of his bad surroundings, was
a very decent little fellow.  He told the truth, he tried to be clean,
he was devoted to Ccile and her father.  When he came to their house
to play, they endeavored to give him some sort of bringing-up, though
it was difficult, because his mother was fiercely jealous.

It was two years ago, soon after her mother's death, that Ccile had
first noticed Jacques playing about the market place, and begun to
bring him home with her, wash his face, and give him a piece of good
bread to eat.  Auclair thought it natural for a little girl to adopt a
friendless child, to want something to care for after having helped to
care for her mother so long.  But he did not greatly like the idea of
anything at all coming from La Grenouille's house to his, and he was
determined to deprive Ccile of her playfellow if he saw any signs of
his bad blood.  Observing the little boy closely, he had come to feel a
real affection for him.

Once, not long ago, when the children were having their goter in the
salon, and the apothecary was writing at his desk, he overheard Jacques
telling Ccile where he would kick any boy who broke down his
beaver-dam, and he used a nasty word.

"Oh, Jacques!" Ccile exclaimed, "that is some horrible word you have
heard the sailors say!"

Auclair, glancing through the partition, saw the child's pale face
stiffen and his round eyes stare; he said nothing at all, but he looked
frightened.  The apothecary guessed at once that it was not from a
sailor but from La Grenouille herself he had got that expression.

Ccile went on scolding him.  "Now I am going to do what the Sisters at
the convent do when a child says anything naughty.  Come into the
kitchen, and I will wash your mouth out with soap.  It is the only way
to make your mouth clean."

All this time Jacques said nothing.  He went obediently into the
kitchen with Ccile, and when he came back he was wiping his eyes with
the back of his hand.

"Is it gone?" he asked solemnly.

This morning, as Auclair watched Jacques at his devotions, it occurred
to him that the boatmen who brought the merchants up from Montreal to
see the Count were doubtless staying with La Grenouille.  Likely enough
something rowdy had gone on there last night, and the little boy felt a
need of expiation.  The apothecary went out of the church softly and
took up his basket.  All the way up the hill he wondered why La
Grenouille should have a boy like that.

When he reached home, he called Ccile, who was busy in the room
upstairs, where she slept until cold weather.  As he gave her his
basket, he asked her whether she had seen Jacques lately.

"No, I haven't happened to.  Why, is anything the matter?"

"Oh, nothing that I know of.  But I saw him in church just now, saying
his prayers at the Stations of the Cross, and I felt sorry for him.
Perhaps he is getting old enough to realize."

"Was he clean, Papa?"

The apothecary shook his head.

"Far from clean.  I never saw him so badly off.  His toes were sticking
out of his shoes, and when he knelt I could see that he had no
stockings on."

"Oh, dear, and I have never finished the pair I began for him!  Papa,
if you were to let me off from reading to you for a few evenings, I
could soon get them done."

"But his shoes, daughter!  It would be a mere waste to give the child
new stockings.  And shoes are very dear."

Ccile sat down for a moment and thought, while her father put on his
shop apron.  "Papa," she said suddenly, "would you allow me to speak to
the Count?  He is kind to children, and I believe he would get Jacques
some shoes."



II

That afternoon Ccile ran up the hill with a light heart.  She was
always glad of a reason for going to the Chteau,--often slipped into
the courtyard merely to see who was on guard duty.  Her little friend
Giorgio, the drummer boy, was at his post on the steps before the great
door, and the moment he saw Ccile he snatched his drumsticks from his
trousers pocket and executed a rapid flourish in the air above his
drum, making no noise.  Ccile laughed, and the boy grinned.  This was
an old joke, but they still found it amusing.  Giorgio was stationed
there to announce the arrival of the commanding officer, and of all
distinguished persons, by a flourish on his drum.  The drum-call echoed
amazingly in the empty court, could be heard even in the apothecary
shop down the hill, so that one always knew when the Count had visitors.

Ccile told the soldier on duty that she would like to see Picard, the
Count's valet, and while she waited for him, she went up the steps to
talk with Giorgio and to ask him if his cold were better, and when he
had last heard from his mother.

The boy's real name was Georges Million; his family lived over on the
le d'Orlans, and his father was a farmer, Canadian-born.  But the old
grandfather, who was of course the head of the house, had come from
Haute-Savoie as a drummer in the Carignan-Salires regiment.  He played
the Alpine horn as well, and still performed on the flute at country
weddings.  This grandson, Georges, took after him,--was musical and
wanted nothing in the world but a soldier's life.  When he was fifteen,
he came into Quebec and begged the Governor to let him enter the native
militia.  He was very small for his age, but he was a good-looking boy,
and the Count took him on as a drummer until he should grow tall enough
to enlist.  He put him into a blue coat, high boots, and a
three-cornered hat, and stationed him at the door to welcome visitors.
For some reason the Count always called him Giorgio, and that had
become his name in Quebec.

Giorgio's life was monotonous; his duties were to keep clean and trim,
and to stand perfectly idle in a draughty courtyard for hours at a
time.  There were very few distinguished persons in Quebec, and not all
of those were on calling terms with Count Frontenac.  The Intendant, de
Champigny, came to the Chteau when it was necessary, but his relations
with the Count were formal rather than cordial.  Sometimes, indeed, he
brought Madame de Champigny with him, and when they rolled up in their
_carrosse_, Giorgio had a great opportunity.  Old Bishop Laval, who
would properly have been announced by the drum, had not crossed the
threshold of the Chteau for years.  The new Bishop had called but
twice since his return from France.  Dollier de Casson, Superior of the
Sulpician Seminary at Montreal, was a person to be greeted by the drum,
and so was Jacques Le Ber, the rich merchant.  Sometimes Daniel du
Lhut, the explorer in command of Fort Frontenac, came to Quebec, and,
very rarely, Henri de Tonti,--that one-armed hero who had an iron hook
in place of a hand.  For all Indian chiefs and messengers, too, Giorgio
could beat his drum long and loud.  This form of welcome was very
gratifying to the savages.  But often the days passed one after another
when the drummer had no one to salute but the officers of the fort, and
life was very dull for him.

When a friendly soldier was on guard, Ccile would often run in to give
the drummer boy some cardamon seeds or raisins from her father's shop,
and to gossip with him for a while.  This afternoon their talk was cut
short by the arrival of the Count's valet, through whom one approached
his master.  Picard had been with the Count since the Turkish wars, and
Ccile had known him ever since she could remember.  He took her by the
hand and led her into the Chteau and upstairs to the Count's private
apartment in the south wing.

The apartment was of but two rooms, a dressing-cabinet and a long room
with windows on two sides, which was both chamber and study.  The
Governor was seated at a writing-table in the south end, a considerable
distance from his fireplace and his large curtained bed.  He was nearly
eighty years old, but he had changed very little since Ccile could
remember him, except that his teeth had grown yellow.  He still walked,
rode, struck, as vigorously as ever, and only two years ago he had gone
hundreds of miles into the wilderness on one of the hardest Indian
campaigns of his life.  When Picard spoke to him, he laid down his pen,
beckoned Ccile with a long forefinger, put his arm about her
familiarly, and drew her close to his side, inquiring about her health
and her father's.  As he talked to her, his eyes took on a look of
uneasy, mocking playfulness, with a slightly sarcastic curl of the
lips.  Ccile was not afraid of him.  He had always been one of the
important figures in her life; when she was little she used to like to
sit on his knee, because he wore such white linen, and satin waistcoats
with jewelled buttons.  He took great care of his person when he was at
home.  Nothing annoyed him so much as his agent's neglecting to send
him his supply of lavender-water by the first boat in the spring.  It
vexed him more than a sharp letter from the Minister, or even from the
King.

After replying to his courtesies Ccile began at once:

"Monsieur le Comte, you know little Jacques Gaux, the son of La
Grenouille?"

The old soldier nodded and sniffed, drooping the lid slightly over one
eye,--an expression of his regard for a large class of women.  She
understood.

"But he is a good little boy, Monsieur le Comte, and he cannot help it
about his mother.  You know she neglects him, and just now he is very
badly off for shoes.  I am knitting him some stockings, but the shoes
we cannot manage."

"And if I were to give you an order on the cobbler?  That is soon done.
It is very nice of you to knit stockings for him.  Do you knit your
own?"

"Of course, monsieur!  And my father's."

The old Count looked at her from out his deep eye-sockets, and felt for
the hard spots on her palm.  "You are content down there, keeping house
for your father?  Not much time for play, I take it?"

"Oh, everything we do, my father and I, is a kind of play."

He gave a dry chuckle.  "Well said!  Everything we do is.  It gets
rather tiresome,--but not at your age, perhaps.  I am very well pleased
with you, Ccile, because you do so well for your father.  We have too
many idle girls in Kebec, and I cannot say that Kebec is exceptional.
I have been about the world a great deal, and I have found only one
country where the women like to work,--in Holland.  They have made an
ugly country very pretty."  He slipped a piece of money into her hand.
"That is for your charities.  Get the frog's son what he needs, and
Picard will give Nol Pommier an order for his shoes.  And is there
nothing you would like for yourself?  I have never forgot what a brave
sailor you were on the voyage over.  You cried only once, and that was
when we were coming into the Gulf, and a bird of prey swooped down and
carried off a little bird that perched on one of our yardarms.  I wish
I had some sweetmeats; you do not often pay me a visit."

"Perhaps you would let me look at your glass fruit," Ccile suggested.

The Count got up and led her to the mantelpiece.  Between the tall
silver candlesticks stood a crystal bowl full of glowing fruits of
coloured glass: purple figs, yellow-green grapes with gold vine-leaves,
apricots, nectarines, and a dark citron stuck up endwise among the
grapes.  The fruits were hollow, and the light played in them, throwing
coloured reflections into the mirror and upon the wall above.

"That was a present from a Turkish prisoner whose life I spared when I
was holding the island of Crete," the Count told her.  "It was made by
the Saracens.  They blow it into those shapes while the glass is
melted.  Every piece is hollow; that is why they look alive.  Here in
Canada it reminds one of the South.  You admire it?"

"More than anything I have ever seen," said Ccile fervently.

He laughed.  "I like it myself, or I should not have taken so much
trouble to bring it over.  I think I must leave it to you in my will."

"Oh, thank you, monsieur, but it is quite enough to look at it; one
would never forget it.  It is much lovelier than real fruit."  She
curtsied and thanked him again and went out softly to where Picard was
waiting for her in the hall.  She wished that she could some time go
there when the Count was away, and look as long as she pleased at the
glass fruit and at the tapestries on the walls of the long room.  They
were from his estate at le Savary and represented garden scenes.  One
could study them for hours without seeing all the flowers and figures.



III

The next morning Auclair sent Ccile up to the Ursuline convent with
some borax de Venise which the Mother Superior required, and a bottle
of asafoetida for one of the Sisters who was ailing.  At this time of
year Ccile always felt a little homesick for the Sisters and her old
life at the Ursuline school.  She had left it so early, because of her
mother's illness, and she never passed the garden walls without looking
wistfully at the tree-tops which rose above them.  From her walks on
Cap Diamant she could look down into the rectangular courts and see,
through the leafless boughs, the rows of dormer windows in the white
roofs, each opening into a Sister's bare little room.  One teacher she
loved better than any of the others: Sister Anne de Sainte-Rose, who
taught history and the French language.  She was a niece of the Bishop
of Tours, had been happily married, and had led a brilliant life in the
great world.  Only after the death of her young husband and infant son
had she become a religious.  She had charm and wit and the remains of
great beauty--everything that would appeal to a little girl brought up
on a rude frontier.  Ccile still saw her when she went to the convent
on errands, and she was always invited to the little miracle plays
which Sister Anne had the _pensionnaires_ give at Christmas-time, for
the good of their French and their deportment.  But her little visits
with her teacher were very short,--stolen pleasures.  The nuns were
always busy, and if you once dropped out of the school life, you could
not share it any more.

This morning she did not see Sister Anne at all; and after delivering
her packages to Sister Agatha, the porteress, she turned away to enjoy
the weather.  It was on days like this that she loved her town best.
The autumn fog was rolling in from the river so thick that she seemed
to be walking through drifts of brown cloud.  Only a few roofs and
spires stood out in the fog, detached and isolated: the flche of the
Rcollet chapel, the slate roof of the Chteau, the long, grey outline
of Bishop Laval's Seminary, floating in the sky.  Everything else was
blotted out by rolling vapours that were constantly changing in density
and colour; now brown, now amethyst, now reddish lavender, with
sometimes a glow of orange overhead where the sun was struggling behind
the thick weather.

It was like walking in a dream.  One could not see the people one
passed, or the river, or one's own house.  Not even the winter snows
gave one such a feeling of being cut off from everything and living in
a world of twilight and miracles.  After loitering on her way, she set
off for the Lower Town to look for Jacques.

Ccile never on any account went to his mother's house to find him.
Sometimes, in searching for him, she went behind the King's warehouses,
as far as the stone paving extended.  Beyond the paving the strip of
beach directly underneath Cap Diamant grew so narrow that there was
room for barely a dozen houses to sit in a straight line against the
foot of the cliff, and they were the slum of Quebec.  Respectability
stopped with the cobble-stones.  This morning she did not have to go so
far; she found Jacques in a group of little boys who had kindled a fire
of sticks at the foot of Notre Dame street, behind the church.  Before
she came up to the children, a light sprinkle began to fall.  In a few
seconds all the brownish-lilac masses of vapour melted away, leaving a
lead-coloured sky, and the rain came down in streams, like water poured
from a great height.  Ccile caught Jacques by the arm and ran with him
into the church, which had often been a refuge to them in winter.  Not
that the church was ever heated, but in there one was out of the wind,
and perhaps the bright colours made one feel the cold less.  This
morning the church was empty, except for an old man and three women at
their prayers.  There were a few benches on either side of the nave,
for old people who could not stand during mass, and the children
slipped into one of these, sitting close together to keep warm.

"It's been a long time since we were in here together," Ccile
whispered.

He nodded.

"But you come in to say your prayers, don't you, every day?"

"I think so," he answered vaguely.

"That is right.  I like this church better than any other.  Even in the
chapel of the Ursulines I don't feel so much at home, though I used to
be there every day when I was going to school.  This is our own church,
isn't it, Jacques?"

He glanced up at her and smiled faintly.  This child never looked very
well.  He was not thin,--rather chunky, on the contrary,--but there was
no colour in his cheeks, or even in his lips.  That, Ccile knew, was
because he wasn't properly nourished.

"You might tell me about some nice saint," said Jacques presently.  She
began to whisper the story of Saint Anthony of Padua, who stood quite
near them, ruddy and handsome, with a sheaf of lilies on one arm and
the Holy Child on the other.

It chanced that this one church[*] in the Lower Town, near Jacques's
little world, where he and Ccile had so often made rendezvous, was
peculiarly the church of childhood.  It had been renamed Notre Dame de
la Victoire five years ago, after the Count had driven off Sir William
Phips's besieging fleet, in recognition of the protection which Our
Lady had afforded Quebec in that hour of danger.  But originally it was
called the Church of the Infant Jesus, and the furnishings and
decorations which had been sent over from France were appropriate for a
church of that name.


[*] The charm of this old church was greatly spoiled by unfortunate
alterations in the lighting, made in the autumn of 1929.


Two paintings hung in the Lady Chapel, both of Sainte Genevive as a
little girl.  In one she sat under a tree in a meadow, with a flock of
sheep all about her, and a distaff in her hand, while two angels
watched her from a distance.  In the other she was reading an
illuminated scroll,--but here, too, she was in a field and surrounded
by her flock.

The high altar was especially interesting to children, though it was
not nearly so costly or so beautiful as the altar in the Ursulines'
chapel with its delicate gold-work.  It was very simple indeed,--but
definite.  It was a representation of a feudal castle, all stone walls
and towers.  The outer wall was low and thick, with many battlements;
the second was higher, with fewer battlements; the third seemed to be
the wall of the palace itself, with towers and many windows.  Within
the arched gateway (hung with little velvet curtains that were green or
red or white according to the day) the Host was kept.  Ccile had
always taken it for granted that the Kingdom of Heaven looked exactly
like this from the outside and was surrounded by just such walls; that
this altar was a reproduction of it, made in France by people who knew;
just as the statues of the saints and of the Holy Family were
portraits.  She had taught Jacques to believe the same thing, and it
was very comforting to them both to know just what Heaven looked
like,--strong and unassailable, wherever it was set among the stars.

Out of this walled castle rose three tall stone towers, with holy
figures on them.  On one stood a grave Sainte Anne, regally clad like a
great lady of this world, with a jewelled coronet upon her head.  On
her arm sat a little dark-skinned Virgin, her black hair cut straight
across the back like a scholar's, her hands joined in prayer.  Sainte
Anne was noble in bearing, but not young; her delicately featured face
was rather worn by life, and sad.  She seemed to know beforehand all
the sorrows of her own family, and of the world it was to succour.

On the central tower, which was the tallest and rose almost to the roof
of the church, the Blessed Mother and Child stood high up among the
shadows.  Today, with the leaden sky and floods of rain, it was too
dark up there to see her clearly; but the children thought they saw
her, because they knew her face so well.  She was by far the loveliest
of all the Virgins in Kebec, a charming figure of young
motherhood,--oh, very young, and radiantly happy, with a stately crown,
and a long, blue cloak that parted in front over a scarlet robe.  The
little Jesus on her arm was not a baby,--he looked as if he would walk
if she put him down, and walk very well.  He was so intelligent and
gay, a child in a bright and joyful mood, both arms outstretched in a
gesture of welcome, as if he were giving a fte for his little friends
and were in the act of receiving them.  He was a little Lord indeed, in
his gaiety and graciousness and savoir-faire.

The rain fell on the roof and drove against the windows.  Outside, the
ledges of bare rock and all the sloping streets were running water;
everything was slippery and shiny with wet.  The children sat
contentedly in their corner, feeling the goodness of shelter.  Jacques
remarked that it would be nice if there were more candles.  The tapers
on the votive candle-stand were burning low, and nobody was coming in
now because of the downpour.  It was pleasanter, they agreed, when
there were enough candles burning before Sainte Anne to show the gold
flowers on her cloak.

"Why don't you light a candle, Ccile?" Jacques asked.  "You do,
sometimes."

"Yes, but this morning I haven't any money with me."

Jacques sighed.  "It would be nice," he repeated.

"I wonder, Jacques, if it would be wrong for me to take a candle, and
then bring the ten sous down later, when the rain stops."

Jacques brightened.  He thought that a very good idea.

"But it's irregular, Jacques.  Perhaps it would not be right."

"You wouldn't forget, would you?"

"Oh, no!  But I might be struck by lightning or something on the way
home.  And then, I expect, I'd die in sin."

"But I would tell your father, and he would give me the ten sous to put
in the box.  I wouldn't forget."

She saw he wanted very much to light a candle.  "Well, perhaps.  I'll
try it this once, and I'll light one for you, too.  Only be sure you
don't forget, if anything happens to me."

They went softly up to the feet of Sainte Anne, where the candles were
burning down in the metal basin.  Each of them took a fresh taper from
the box underneath, lit it, and fitted its hollow base upon one of the
little metal horns.  After saying a prayer they returned to their bench
to enjoy the sight of the two new bright spots in the brownish gloom.
Sure enough, when the fresh tapers were burning well, the gold flowers
on Sainte Anne's cloak began to show; not entire, but wherever there
was a fold in the mantle, the gold seemed to flow like a glistening
liquid.  Her figure emerged from the dusk in a rich, oily, yellow light.

After a long silence Jacques spoke.

"Ccile, all the saints in this church like children, don't they?"

"Oh, yes!  And Our Lord loves children.  Because He was a child
Himself, you know."

Jacques had something else in mind.  In a moment he brought it out.
"Sometimes sailors are fond of children, too."

"Yes," she agreed with some hesitation.

He sensed a reservation in her voice.

"And they're awful brave," he went on feelingly.  "If it wasn't for the
sailors, we wouldn't have any ships from France, or anything."

"That's true," Ccile assented.

Jacques relapsed into silence.  He was thinking of a jolly Breton
sailor who had played with him in the summer, and carved him a
marvellous beaver out of wood and painted its teeth white.  He had
sailed away on _La Garonne_ three weeks ago, nearly breaking Jacques's
heart.  With that curious tact of childhood, which fails less often
than the deepest diplomacy, Jacques almost never referred to his mother
or her house or the people who came there, when he was with Ccile and
her father.  When he went to see them, he left his little past behind
him, as it were.

At last the fall of water on the roof grew fainter, and the light
clearer.  Ccile said she must be going home now.  "Come along with me,
Jacques.  Never mind about your clothes," seeing that he hung back,
"that will be all right.  Perhaps my father will give you a bath while
I am getting our djeuner, and we will all have our chocolate together."

As they quitted their bench, someone entered the church; a very heavy,
tall old man with wide, stooping shoulders and a head hanging forward.
When he took off his shovel hat at the door, a black skull-cap still
remained over his scanty locks.  He carried a cane and seemed to move
his legs with some difficulty under his long, black gown.  It was old
Bishop Laval himself, who had been storm-bound for an hour and more at
the house of one of the merchants on the square.  Ccile hurried up to
him before he should have time to kneel.

"Excuse me, Monseigneur l'Ancien," she said respectfully, "but if it is
quite convenient would you be so kind as to lend me twenty sous?"

The old man looked down at her, frowning.  His eyes were large and
full, but set deep back under his forehead.  He had such a very large,
drooping nose, and such a grim, bitter mouth, that he might well have
frightened a child who didn't know him.  With considerable difficulty
he got a little black purse out from under his gown.  There was not
much in it.

"You see," Ccile explained, "the little boy and I wished to offer
candles, and I had no money with me.  I was going up to my father's
shop to get some, but I would rather not leave the church owing for the
candles."

The old man nodded and looked slightly amused.  He put two pieces in
her hand, and she went to the front of the church to slip them in the
box, leaving Jacques, who had got back against the wall as far as he
could go, to bear the scrutiny of the Bishop's smouldering eyes.  When
she came back, she found them regarding each other in silence, but very
intently; the old man staring down from his height, the little boy, his
finger in his mouth, looking up at the Bishop shyly, but in a way that
struck her as very personal.  Ccile took him by the hand and led him
to the door.  Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the Bishop sink
heavily to his knees with something between a sigh and a groan.

Everything was glittering when they stepped out into the square; no sun
yet, but a bright rain-grey light, silver and cut steel and pearl on
the grey roofs and walls.  Long veils of smoky fog were caught in the
pine forests across the river.  And how fresh the air smelled!

"Jacques," Ccile asked wonderingly, "do you know Monseigneur Laval?
Did he ever talk to you?"

"I think once he did."

"What about?"

"I don't remember."

They went hand in hand up the hill.


He both did and did not remember; it came back to him in flashes,
unrelated pictures, like a dream.  Perhaps it was a dream.  He could
never have told Ccile about it, since it was hard for him to talk even
about things he knew very well.  But whenever he chanced to see old
Bishop Laval, he felt that once, long ago, something pleasant had
happened between them.

It had happened two years ago, when he was only four, before he knew
the Auclairs at all.  It was in January.  A light, sticky snow had
fallen irresolutely, at intervals, all day.  Toward evening the weather
changed; the sun emerged, just sinking over the great pine forest to
the west, hung there, an angry ball, and all the snow-covered rock
blazed in orange fire.  The sun became a half-circle, then a mere red
eyebrow, then dropped behind the forest, leaving the air clear blue,
and much colder, with a pale lemon moon riding high overhead.  There
was no wind, it was a night of still moonlight, and within an hour
after sunset the wet snow had frozen fast over roofs and spires and
trees.  Everything on the rock was sheathed in glittering white ice.
It was a sight to stir the dullest blood.  Some trappers from Three
Rivers were in town.  They had supper with La Grenouille, and
afterwards persuaded her to go for a ride in their dog-sledges up the
frozen St. Lawrence.  Jacques was in bed asleep.  'Toinette threw an
extra blanket over him and put an armful of wood in the stove, then
went off with the young men, taking L'Escargot with her.  She meant to
be out only an hour or two; but they had plenty of brandy along to keep
them warm, and so they made a night of it.  Dog-sledging by moonlight
on that broad marble highway, with no wind, was fine sport.

After she had been gone a couple of hours, Jacques wakened up very cold
and called for his mother.  Presently he got up and went to look for
her.  He went to L'Escargot's bed, and that, too, was empty.  The
moonlight shone in brightly, but the fire had gone out, and all about
him things creaked with the cold.  He found his shoes and an old shawl
and went out into the snow to look for his mother.  The poor neighbour
houses were silent.  He went behind the King's storehouse and up Notre
Dame street to the market square.  The worthy merchants were long ago
in bed, and all the houses were dark except one, where the mother of
the family was very sick.  The statue of King Louis, with a cloak and
helmet of snow, looked terrifying in the moonlight.  Jacques already
knew better than to knock at that solid, comfortable house where he saw
a lighted window; he knew his mother wasn't well thought of by these
rich people.  Not knowing where to turn, he took the only forward way
there was, up Mountain Hill.

Luckily, one other person was abroad that night.  Old Bishop Laval, who
never spared himself, had been down to the square to sit with the sick
woman.  He came toiling up the hill in his fur cloak and his tall fur
cap, which was almost as imposing as his episcopal mitre, a cane in one
hand, a lantern in the other.  His valet followed behind.  They were
passing the new Bishop's Palace, now cold and empty, as Monseigneur de
Saint-Vallier was in France.  Just as they wound under the retaining
wall of the terrace, they heard a child crying.  The Bishop stopped and
flashed his lantern this way and that.  On the flight of stone steps
that led up through the wall to the episcopal residence, he saw a
little boy, almost a baby, sitting in the snow, crouching back against
the masonry.

"Where does he belong?" asked the Bishop of his _donn_.

"Ah, that I cannot tell, Monseigneur," replied Houssart.

"Pick him up and bring him along," said the Bishop.  "Unbutton your
coat and hold him against your body."  The lantern moved on.

The old Bishop lived in the Priests' House, built as a part of his
Seminary.  His private rooms were poor and small.  All his silver plate
and velvet and linen he had given away little by little, to needy
parishes, to needy persons.  He had given away the revenues of his
abbeys in France, and had transferred his vast grants of Canadian land
to the Seminary.  He lived in naked poverty.

When they reached home, he commanded Houssart to build a fire in the
fireplace at once (had he been alone he would have undressed and gone
to bed in the cold) and to heat water, that he might give the child a
warm bath.

"Is there any milk?" he asked.

Houssart hesitated.  "A little, for your chocolate in the morning,
Monseigneur."

"Get it and put it to warm on the hearth.  Pour a little cognac in it,
and bring any bread there is in the house."

One strange thing Jacques could remember afterwards.  He was sitting on
the edge of a narrow bed, wrapped in a blanket, in the light of a
blazing fire.  He had just been washed in warm water; the basin was
still on the floor.  Beside it knelt a very large old man with big eyes
and a great drooping nose and a little black cap on his head, and he
was rubbing Jacques's feet and legs very softly with a towel.  They
were all alone then, just the two of them, and the fire was bright
enough to see clearly.  What he remembered particularly was that this
old man, after he had dried him like this, bent down and took his foot
in his hand and kissed it; first the one foot, then the other.  That
much Jacques remembered.

When the servant returned, they gave the child warm milk with a little
bread in it, and put him into the Bishop's bed, though Houssart begged
to take him to his own.

"No, we will not move him.  He is falling asleep already.  I do not
know if that flush means a fever or not."

"Monseigneur," Houssart whispered, "now that I have seen him in the
light, I recognize this child.  He is the son of that 'Toinette Gaux,
the woman they call La Grenouille."

"Ah!" the old man nodded thoughtfully.  "That, too, may have a meaning.
Throw more wood on the fire and go.  I shall rest here in my arm-chair
with my fur coat over my knees until it is time to ring the bell."  The
Bishop got up at four o'clock every morning, dressed without a fire,
went with his lantern into the church, and rang the bell for early mass
for the working people.  Many good people who did not want to go to
mass at all, when they heard that hoarse, frosty bell clanging out
under the black sky where there was not yet even a hint of daybreak,
groaned and went to the church.  Because they thought of the old Bishop
at the end of the bell-rope, and because his will was stronger than
theirs.  He was a stubborn, high-handed, tyrannical, quarrelsome old
man, but no one could deny that he shepherded his sheep.

When his _donn_ had gone and he was left with the sleeping child, the
Bishop settled his swollen legs upon a stool, covered them with his
cloak, and sank into meditation.  This was not an accident, he felt.
Why had he found, on the steps of that costly episcopal residence built
in scorn of him and his devotion to poverty, a male child, half-clad
and crying in the merciless cold?  Why had this reminder of his Infant
Saviour been just there, under that house which he never passed without
bitterness, which was like a thorn in his flesh?  Had he been too much
absorbed in his struggles with governors and intendants, in the heavy
labour of founding and fixing his church upon this rock, in training a
native priesthood and safeguarding their future?

Monseigneur de Laval had not always been a man of means and measures.
Long ago, in Bernires's Hermitage at Caen, his life had been wholly
given up to meditation and prayer.  Not until he was sent out to Canada
to convert a frontier mission into an enduring part of the Church had
he become a man of action.  His life, as he reviewed it, fell into two
even periods.  The first thirty-six years had been given to purely
personal religion, to bringing his mind and will into subjection to his
spiritual guides.  The last thirty-six years had been spent in bringing
the minds and wills of other people into subjection to his own,--since
he had but one will, and that was the supremacy of the Church in
Canada.  Might this occurrence tonight be a sign that it was time to
return to that rapt and mystical devotion of his earlier life?

In the morning, after he returned from offering early mass in the
church, before it was yet light, the Bishop sent his man about over the
hill, to this house and that, wherever there were young children,
begging of one shoes, of another a little frock,--whatever the mother
could spare from the backs of her own brood.

'Toinette Gaux had returned home meanwhile, and was frightened at
missing her son.  But she was ashamed to go out and look for him.  Some
neighbour would bring him back, she thought,--and, insolent as she was,
she dreaded the moment.  She got her deserts, certainly, when two long,
black shadows fell upon the glistening snow before her door; the Bishop
in his tall fur cap, prodding the icy crust with his cane, and behind

him Houssart, carrying the little boy.

The Bishop came in without knocking, and motioned his man to put the
child down and withdraw.  He stood for some moments confronting the
woman in silence.  'Toinette was no fool; she felt all his awfulness;
the long line of noble blood and authority behind him, the power of the
Church and the power of the man.  She wished the earth would swallow
her.  Not a shred of her impudence was left her.  Her tongue went dry.
His silence was so dreadful that it was a relief when he began to
thunder and tell her that even the beasts of the forest protected their
young (_Les ourses et les louves protgent leurs petits_).  He meant to
watch over this boy, he said; if she neglected him, he would take the
child and put him with the Sisters of the Congregation, not here, but
in Montreal, to place him as far as possible from a worthless mother.

'Toinette knew that he would do it, too.  When she was a little girl,
she used to hear talk about just such a high-handed proceeding of the
Bishop's.  A rich man in Quebec had brought a girl over from France to
work as a bonne in his family.  The Bishop thought she did not come to
mass often enough and was not receiving proper religious training.  So
one day when he met her on the street, he took her by the hand and led
her to the Ursuline convent and put her with the cloistered Sisters.
There she stayed until the Governor gave her master a warrant to search
the rock for his maid and take her wherever he found her.  But
'Toinette knew that a woman of her sort, without money or good repute,
had little chance of getting her boy back if once the Bishop took him
away.

She kept Jacques in the house all the rest of the winter, and never
went out herself except L'Escargot was there to watch him.  It was not
until the summer ships came, bringing new lovers and new distractions,
that Jacques was allowed to go into the streets to play.



IV

Ccile was taking Jacques to Nol Pommier to be measured for his shoes.
The cobbler lived half-way down Holy Family Hill, the steep street that
plunged from the Cathedral down toward the St. Lawrence.  There were
other shoemakers in Quebec, but all persons of quality went to Pommier,
unless they had had a short answer from him at some time.  He would not
hurry a piece of work for anybody,--not for the Count or the Intendant
or the Bishop.  If anyone tried to hurry him, he became surly and was
likely to say something that a self-important person could not allow
himself to overlook.  It was rumoured that he had spoken unbecomingly
to the valet of Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier, and had told him it would
be better if his master had all his shoes made in Paris, where he spent
so much of his time.  Certainly the new Bishop had ceased to patronize
him, which was a grief to Pommier's pious mother.

When the children entered the cobbler's door, they found him seated at
his bench with a shoe between his knees, sewing the sole to the upper.
Seeing that it was M. Auclair's daughter, he rose and put down his
work.  He was a thick-set man with stooped shoulders; his head was
grown over with coarse black hair cut short like bristles, his fleshy
face was dark red, and seamed with hard creases.  The purple veins that
spread like little roots about his nostrils suggested an occasional
indulgence in brandy.  When Pommier stood up, with his blackened hands
hanging beside his leather apron, and his corded, hairy arms bare to
the elbow, he looked like a black bear standing upright.  His eyes,
too, were small like a bear's, and somewhat bloodshot.

"Bonjour, Mademoiselle Ccile, what can I do for you?"

"If you please, Monsieur Pommier, I have brought little Jacques Gaux to
be measured for his shoes.  Has the Count's valet spoken to you about
it?"

Pommier nodded.  "Sit down there, little man, and let me see."  He put
Jacques down on a straw-topped stool (an old one his father had brought
from Rouen, along with his bench and tools), took off the wretched
foot-gear he had on, and began to study his feet and to make
measurements.

While this was going on in deep silence, a door at the back of the
house opened, and Pommier's mother, a thin, lively old woman with a
crutch, came tapping lightly across the living-room and into the shop.
She embraced Ccile with delight, and spoke very kindly to Jacques when
he was presented to her.

"I have never seen this little fellow before, since I don't get about
much, but I like to know all the children in Quebec.  You will be very
content with fine new shoes, my boy?"

"Oui, madame," Jacques murmured.

"And you have quite neglected me of late, Ccile.  I know you are busy
enough down there, but I have been looking for you every day since the
ships sailed.  My son saw your father at the market yesterday and
observed that he was laying in good supplies for you."  Madame Pommier
seated herself on one of the wooden chairs without backs and rested her
crutch across her knees.  She always came into the shop when there were
clients, and she liked to know what her son was doing every minute of
the day.

When Ccile was little, Madame Pommier used to come to see her mother
very often.  She was one of the first friends Madame Auclair made in
Quebec, and had given her a great deal of help in her struggle to keep
house in a place where there were none of the conveniences to which she
was accustomed.  The Pommiers themselves were old residents, had lived
here ever since this Nol was a young lad, and his father had been the
Count's shoemaker during his first governorship, twenty-odd years ago.
Just about the time that Madame Auclaire's health began to fail, Madame
Pommier had fallen on the icy hill in front of her own door and broken
her hip.  The good chirurgien Gervaise Beaudoin attended her, but
though the bone knit, it came together badly and left one leg much
shorter than the other.  M. Auclair had made a crutch for her, and as
she was slight and very active, she was soon able to get about in her
own house and attend to her duties.  Many a time Ccile had found her
by her stove, the crutch under her left arm, handling her pots and
casseroles as deftly as if she were not propped up by a wooden stick.
Sometimes in winter she even got to mass.  Her son had set an arm-chair
upon runners, and in this he pushed her up the hill over the snow to
the Cathedral.

After the cobbler had made his measurements and noted them down, he
took up his work again and began driving his awl through the leather,
drawing the big needle with waxed thread through after it.  Tools of
any sort had a fascination for Ccile; she loved to watch a shoemaker
or a carpenter at work.  Jacques, who had never seen anything of the
kind before, followed Pommier's black fingers with astonishment.  They
both sat quietly, and the old lady joined them in admiringly watching
her clever son.  Suddenly she bethought herself of something, and
pointed with her crutch to a little cabinet of shelves covered by a
curtain.  There ladies' shoes, sent in for repair or made to order,
were kept, as being rather too personal to expose on the open shelves
with the men's boots.

"_Tirez, tirez_," whispered Madame Pommier.  Ccile got up and drew
back the curtain, and at once knew what the old lady wished her to see:
a beautiful pair of red satin slippers, embroidered in gold and purple,
with leather soles and red leather heels.

"Oh, madame, how lovely!  To whom do they belong?"

"To Monseigneur l'Ancien.  They are his house slippers.  My son is to
put new soles on them,--see, they are almost worn through.  Houssart
says he paces his chamber in the night when he is at his devotions, so
that he will not be overcome by sleep."

"But these are so small, can he possibly wear them?  And his walk is so
heavy, too."

"Ah, that is because of his legs, which are bad.  But he has a very
slender foot, very distinguished.  That is the Montmorency in him; he
is of noble blood, you know."

Here Pommier himself reached up to a row of wooden lasts over his head
and handed one of them to Ccile.

"That is his foot, mademoiselle."

Ccile took the smoothly shaped wood in her hands and examined it
curiously.  On the sole Nol had scratched with his awl: "Mgr. Lav'."

"And next it," said Madame Pommier, "you will find the Governor's.  He,
too, has a fine foot, very high in the arch, but large, as is needful
for a soldier.  And there to the left is the Intendant's, and Madame de
Champigny's."

"Oh, Monsieur Pommier, you have the feet of all the great people here!
Did you make them all yourself?"

"Ah, no!  Some are from my father's time.  Yes, you may look at them if
it amuses you."

Ccile took them down one after another.  To be sure, they all looked a
good deal alike to her, but she could guess the original of each form
from the awl scratches on the sole.  On one she spelled the letters "R.
CAV."  She was trying to think whose that might be, when Pommier
startled her a little by saying in a very peculiar tone of voice:

"That foot will not come back."

She could not tell whether he was angry or sorry,--there was something
so harsh in his tone.

"But why, Monsieur Nol, why not?"

"It went too far," he replied with the same bitter shortness.

She stared at the letters.  The old lady beckoned her and traced over
the inscription with her finger.  "That is my husband's marking; he
always made capitals.  It means Robert Cavelier de La Salle."

Ccile drew a deep breath.  "Monsieur Nol believes he is really dead,
then?"

Nol looked up from his black threads.  "Everyone knows he is dead,
mademoiselle.  The people who say he will come back are fools.  He was
murdered, a thousand miles from here.  Tonti brought the word.  Robert
de La Salle has come into this shop many a time when I was a lad.  He
was a true man, mademoiselle, and nobody was true to him, except
Monsieur le Comte; not his own brother, nor his nephew, nor his King.
It is always like that when there is a great one in a family.  But I
shall always keep his last.  That foot went farther than any other in
New France."  He dropped his eyes and began driving his awl again.

Ccile knew it would be useless to question him,--such an outburst was
most unusual from Pommier.  But when she got home, she brought the
matter up to her father and asked him whether it was true that the Abb
Cavelier had turned against his brother.

"I don't know, my dear.  Nobody knows what happened down there.  The
Count blames him, but then, the Count always hated the Abb."



V

It was the afternoon of All Saints' Day, and Jacques had come up the
hill through a driving sleet storm to put on his new shoes for the
first time.  When he had carefully laced them, he stood up in them and,
looking from one to the other of his friends, smiled a glad, surprised,
soft smile.  He was certainly not a handsome child, but he had one
beauty,--his baby teeth.  When his pale lips parted, his teeth showed
like two rows of pearls, really; even, regular, all the same size,
lustrous like those pearls that have just a faint shimmer of lilac.
The hard crusts, which were his fare for the most part, kept them
polished like veritable jewels.  Ccile only hoped that when his second
teeth came in, they would not be narrow and pointed, of the squirrel
kind, like his mother's.

When M. Auclair asked Jacques if the shoes were comfortable, he looked
up wonderingly and said: "Mais, oui, monsieur," as if they could not
possibly be otherwise.

The apothecary went back into his shop, where he was boiling pine tops
(_bourgeons des pins_) to make a cough-syrup.  Ccile told Jacques she
had found in her _Lives of the Saints_ the picture of a little boy who
looked very much like him.

"I shall always keep it for a picture of you, Jacques.  Look, it is
little Saint Edmond.  He was an English saint, and he became Archbishop
of Cantorbry.  But he died in France, at the monastery of Pontigny.
Sit here beside me, and I will read you what it says about him.


"_Edmond tait tout enfant un modle de vertu, grce aux tendres soins
de sa pieuse mre.  On ne levoyait qu' l'cole et  l'eglise,
partageant ses journes entre la prire et l'tude, et se privant des
plaisirs les plus innocents pour s'entretenir avec Jsus et sa divine
Mre  laquelle il voua un culte tout spcial.  Un jour qu'il fuyait
ses compagnons de jeu, pour se recueillir intimement, l'Enfant Jsus
lui apparat, rayonnant de beaut et le regarde avec amour en lui
disant: 'Je te salue, man bien-aim.'  Edmond tout bloui n'ose
rpondre et le divin Sauveur reprend: 'Vous ne me connaissez donc
pas?--Non, avoue l'enfant, je n'ai pas cet honneur et je crois que vous
ne devez pas me connatre non plus, mais me prenez pour un
autre.--Comment, continue le petit Jsus, vous ne me reconnaissez pas,
moi qui suis toujours  vos cts et vous accompagne partout.
Regardez-moi; je suis Jsus, gravez toujours ce nom en votre coeur et
imprimez-le sur votre front et je vous prserverai de mort subite ainsi
que tous ceux qui feront de mme.'_"


The little woodcut in Ccile's old book showed the boy saint very like
Jacques indeed; a clumsy little fellow, abashed at the apparition,
standing awkwardly with his finger in his mouth; his chin had no tip,
because the old block from which he was printed was worn away.  Beside
him stood the Heavenly Child, all surrounded by rays, just Edmond's
height, friendly like a playfellow, and treading on the earth, not
floating in the air as visions are wont to do.  Jacques bent over the
book, his thumb on the page to keep it flat, and asked Ccile to read
it over again, so that he could remember.  When she finished, he drew a
long, happy sigh.

"I wish the little Jesus would appear to me like that, standing on the
ground.  Then I would not be frightened," he murmured.

"I don't believe He ever does, in Canada, Jacques.  Though perhaps He
appears to the recluse in Montreal, she is so very holy.  I know angels
come to her.  But I expect He is often near you and keeps you from
harm, as He said to Saint Edmond; _moi qui suis toujours  vos cts et
vous accompagne partout_.  Now you can look at the other pictures while
I make our chocolate.  Since this is All Saints' Day, we ought to think
a great deal about the saints."

Left in the corner of the red sofa, Jacques held the book, but he did
not turn the pages.  He sat looking at the logs burning in the
fireplace and making gleams on the china shepherd boy, the object of
his especial admiration.  He heard the sleet pecking on the
window-panes and thought how nice it was to have a place like this to
come to.  When the chocolate began to give off its rich odour, his
nostrils quivered like a puppy's.  Ccile carried her father's cup to
him in the shop, and then she and Jacques sat down at one corner of the
table, where she had spread a napkin over the cloth.

Much as Jacques loved chocolate (in so far as he knew, this was the
only house in the world in which that comforting drink was made), there
was something he cared more about, something that gave him a kind of
solemn satisfaction,--Ccile's cup.  She had a silver cup with a
handle; on the front was engraved a little wreath of roses, and inside
that wreath was the name, "_Ccile_" cut in the silver.  Her Aunt
Clothilde had given it to her when she was but a tiny baby, so it had
been hers all her life.  That was what seemed so wonderful to Jacques.
His clothes had always belonged to somebody else before they were made
over for him; he slept wherever there was room for him, sometimes with
his mother, sometimes on a bench.  He had never had anything of his own
except his toy beaver,--and now he would have his shoes, made just for
him.  But to have a little cup, with your name on it ... even if you
died, it would still be there, with your name.

More than the shop with all the white jars and mysterious implements,
more than the carpet and curtains and the red sofa, that cup fixed
Ccile as born to security and privileges.  He regarded it with

respectful, wistful admiration.  Before the milk or chocolate was
poured, he liked to hold it and trace with his finger-tips the letters
that made it so peculiarly and almost sacredly hers.  Since his
attention was evidently fixed upon her cup, more than once Ccile had
suggested that he drink his chocolate from it, and she would use
another.  But he shook his head, unable to explain.  That was not at
all what her cup meant to him.  Indeed, Ccile could not know what it
meant to him; she was too fortunate.

They had scarcely finished the last drop and the last crumb, when the
shop door opened and they heard a woman's voice.  Without a word
Jacques slipped to the floor and began to take off his new shoes.
Ccile sat still.

In the front shop Auclair was confronted by a vehement young woman,
slightly out of breath, her head and shoulders tightly wrapped in a
shawl, her cheeks reddened by the wind, and her fair hair curling about
her forehead and glistening with water drops.  The apothecary rose and
said politely:

"Good day, 'Toinette, what will you have?"

She tossed her head.  "None of your poisons, thank you!  I believe my
son is here?"

"I think so.  He is in very good hands when he is here."

'Toinette struck an attitude, her hand on her hip.  "Je suis mre, vous
savez!  The care of my son is my affair."

"Very true."

"What is this I hear about your getting shoes for him?  I am his
mother.  I will get him shoes when I think it necessary.  I am poor, it
is true; but I want none of your money that is the price of poisons."

"Bien.  I will take care that you get none of it.  But I did not pay
for the shoes.  They were bought with the Governor's money."

'Toinette looked interested.  Sharp points showed in her eyes, like the
points of her teeth.  "The Governor?  Ah, that is different.  The
Governor is our protector, he owes us something.  And the King owes
something to the children of those poor creatures, like my mother, whom
he sent out here under false pretences."

Auclair held up a warning finger.  He was sorry for her, because he saw
how ill at ease she was under her impertinence.  "Do not quarrel with
the Government, my girl.  That can do you no good, and it might get you
into trouble."

'Toinette loosened her shawl and then wound it tight.  She wished she
had been more civil; perhaps they would have offered her some
chocolate.  She called shrilly for Jacques.  He came at once, without
saying a word, his new shoes in his hands, his old ones on his feet.
His mother caught him by the shoulder with a jerk,--she could not cuff
him in the apothecary's presence.  "Au revoir, monsieur," she snapped,
as Auclair opened the door for her.  She went down the hill with her
defiant stride, her head high, and Jacques walked after her as fast as
he could, wearing an expression of intense gravity, blinking against
the sleet, and carrying his new shoes, soles up, out in front of him in
a most unnatural way, as if he were carrying a basin full of water and
trying not to spill it.

Auclair thrust his head out and watched them round the turn, then
closed the door.  He looked in upon his daughter and remarked:

"She has shown her teeth; now she will not make any more trouble for a
while.  She will let him wear his shoes.  She was pleased and was
afraid of showing it."

"He pulled off his new stockings and stuffed them inside his shirt,
Papa!"

Auclair laughed.  "How often I have seen children and dogs, and even
brave men, take on quick sly ways to protect themselves from an
ill-tempered woman!  I doubt whether she is very rough with him at
home.  When she is among people who look down on her, she takes it out
on him."


That night after dinner they did not go for their usual walk, since the
weather was so bleak, but sat by the fire listening to the rattle of
the sleet on the windows.

"Papa," said Ccile, "shall you have a mass said for poor Bichet this
year, as always?"

"Yes, on the tenth of November, the day on which he was hanged."

This mass Auclair had said at the Rcollets' chapel where Count
Frontenac heard mass every morning.

"Please tell me about Bichet again, and it will be fresh in my mind
when I go to the mass."

"It will not keep you awake, as it did the first time I told you?  We
must not grieve about these things that happened long ago,--and this
happened when the Count was in Canada the first time, while your
grandfather and grandmother were both living.

"Poor old Bichet had lodged in our cellar since I was a boy.  He was a
knife-grinder and used to go out every day with his wheel on his back,
and he picked up a few sous at his trade.  But he could never have kept
himself in shoes, having to walk so much, if your grandfather had not
given him his old ones.  He paid us nothing for his lodging, of course.
He had his bed on the floor in a dry corner of our cellar, where the
sirops and elixirs were kept.  In very cold weather your grandmother
would put a couple of bricks among the coals when she was getting
supper, and old Bichet would take these hot bricks down and put them in
his bed.  And she often saved a cup of hot soup and a piece of bread
for the old man and let him eat them in the warm kitchen, for he was
very neat and cleanly.  When I had any spending-money, or when I was
given a fee for carrying medicines to some house in the neighbourhood,
I always saved a little for the old knife-grinder.  He was reserved and
uncomplaining and never inflicted his troubles upon us, though he must
have had many.  On Saturdays, when your grandmother cooked a joint and
had a big fire, she used to heat a kettle of water for him, and he
carried it down to his corner and washed himself.  He was a Christian
and went to mass.  He was a kind man, gentle to creatures below
him,--for there were those even worse off.

"Now, on the rue du Figuier stood a house that had long been closed,
for the family had gone to live at Fontainebleau, and the empty
coach-house was used as a store-room for old pieces of furniture.  The
care-taker was a careless fellow who went out to drink with his cronies
and left the place unguarded.  In the coach-house were two brass
kettles which had lain there for many years, doing nobody any good.
Bichet must have seen them often, as he went in and out to sharpen the
care-taker's carving-knife.

"One night, when this fellow was carousing, Bichet carried off those
two pots.  He took them to an ironmonger and sold them.  Nobody would
ever have missed them; but Bichet had an enemy.  Near us there lived a
degenerate, half-witted boy of a cruel disposition.  He tortured street
cats, and even sparrows when he could catch them.  Old Bichet had more
than once caught him at his tricks and reproved him and set his victims
at liberty.  That boy was cunning, and he used to spy on Bichet.  He
saw him carrying off those brass kettles and reported him to the
police.  Bichet was seized in the street, when he was out with his
grindstone, and taken to the Chatelet.  He confessed at once and told
where he had sold the pots.  But that was not enough for the officers;
they put him to torture and made him confess to a lifetime of crime; to
having stolen from us and from the Frontenac house--which he had never
done.

"Your grandfather and I hurried to the prison to speak for him.  Your
grandfather told them that a man so old and infirm would admit anything
under fright and anguish, not knowing what he said; that a confession
obtained under torture was not true evidence.  This infuriated the
Judge.  If we would take oath that the prisoner had never stolen
anything from us, they would put him into the strappado again and make
him correct his confession.  We saw that the only thing we could do for
our old lodger was to let him pass quickly.  Luckily for Bichet, the
prison was overcrowded, and he was hanged the next morning.

"Your grandmother never got over it.  She had for a long while
struggled with asthma every winter, and that year when the asthma came
on, she ceased to struggle.  She said she had no wish to live longer in
a world where such cruelties could happen."

"And I am like my grandmother," cried Ccile, catching her father's
hand.  "I do not want to live there.  I had rather stay in Quebec
always!  Nobody is tortured here, except by the Indians, in the woods,
and they know no better.  But why does the King allow such things, when
they tell us he is a kind King?"

"It is not the King, my dear, it is the Law.  The Law is to protect
property, and it thinks too much of property.  A couple of brass pots,
an old saddle, are reckoned worth more than a poor man's life.  Christ
would have forgiven Bichet, as He did the thief on the cross.  We must
think of him in paradise, where no law can touch him.  I believe that
harmless old man is in paradise long ago, and when I have a mass said
for him every year, it is more for my own satisfaction than for his.  I
should like him to know, too, that our family remembers him."

"And I, Father, as long as I live, I will always have a mass said for
Bichet on the day he died."



VI

On All Souls' Day Ccile went to church all day long; in the morning to
the Ursuline chapel, in the afternoon to the Htel Dieu, and last of
all down to the Church of Notre Dame de la Victoire to pray for her
mother in the very spot where Madame Auclair had always knelt at mass.
All the churches were full of sorrowful people; Ccile met them coming
and going, and greeted them with lowered eyes and subdued voice, as was
becoming.  But she herself was not sorrowful, though she supposed she
was.

The devotions of the day had begun an hour after midnight.  Old Bishop
Laval had no thought that anyone should forget the solemn duties of the
time.  He was at his post at one o'clock in the morning to ring the
Cathedral bell, and from then on until early mass he rang it every
hour.  It called out through the intense silence of streets where there
were no vehicles to rumble, but only damp vapours from the river to
make sound more intense and startling, to give it overtones and
singular reverberations.

  "_Priez pour les Morts,
  Vous qui reposez,
  Priez pur les tr-pas-ss!_"

it seemed to say, as if the exacting old priest himself were calling.
One had scarcely time to murmur a prayer and turn over in one's warm
bed, before the bell rang out again.

At twelve years it is impossible to be sad on holy days, even on a day
of sorrow; at that age the dark things, death, bereavement, suffering,
have only a dramatic value,--seem but strong and moving colours in the
grey stretch of time.

On such solemn days all the stories of the rock came to life for
Ccile; the shades of the early martyrs and great missionaries draw
close about her.  All the miracles that had happened there, and the
dreams that had been dreamed, came out of the fog; every spire, every
ledge and pinnacle, took on the splendour of legend.  When one passed
by the Jesuits', those solid walls seemed sentinelled by a glorious
company of martyrs, martyrs who were explorers and heroes as well; at
the Htel Dieu, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin and her story rose
up before one; at the Ursulines', Marie de l'Incarnation overshadowed
the living.

At Notre Dame de la Victoire one remembered the miraculous preservation
for which it had been named, when this little church, with the banner
of the Virgin floating from its steeple, had stood untouched through
Sir William Phips's bombardment, though every heretic gun was aimed at
it.  Ccile herself could remember that time very well; the Lower Town
had been abandoned, and she and her mother, with the other women and
children, were hidden in the cellars of the Ursuline convent.  Even
there they were not out of gun range; a shell had fallen into the court
just as Sister Agatha was crossing it, and had taken off the skirt of
her apron, though the Sister herself was not harmed.

To the older people of Kebec, All Souls' was a day of sad remembrance.
Their minds went back to churches and cemeteries far away.  Now the
long closed season was upon them, and there would be no letters, no
word of any kind from France for seven, perhaps eight, months.  The
last letters that came in the autumn always brought disturbing news to
one household or another; word that a mother was failing, that a son
had been wounded in the wars, that a sister had gone into a decline.
Friends at home seemed to forget how the Canadians would have these
gloomy tidings to brood upon all the long winter and the long spring,
so that many a man and woman dreaded the arrival of those longed-for
summer ships.

Fears for the sick and old so far away, sorrow for those who died last
year--five years ago--many years ago,--memories of families once
together and now scattered; these things hung over the rock of Kebec on
this day of the dead like the dark fogs from the river.  The cheerful
faces were those in the convents.  The Ursulines and the Hospitalires,
indeed, were scarcely exiles.  When they came across the Atlantic, they
brought their family with them, their kindred, their closest friends.
In whatever little wooden vessel they had laboured across the sea, they
carried all; they brought to Canada the Holy Family, the saints and
martyrs, the glorious company of the Apostles, the heavenly host.

Courageous these Sisters were, accepting good and ill fortune with high
spirit,--with humour, even.  They never vulgarly exaggerated hardships
and dangers.  They had no hours of nostalgia, for they were quite as
near the realities of their lives in Quebec as in Dieppe or Tours.
They were still in their accustomed place in the world of the mind
(which for each of us is the only world), and they had the same
well-ordered universe about them: this all-important earth, created by
God for a great purpose, the sun which He made to light it by day, the
moon which He made to light it by night,--and the stars, made to
beautify the vault of heaven like frescoes, and to be a clock and
compass for man.  And in this safe, lovingly arranged and ordered
universe (not too vast, though nobly spacious), in this congenial
universe, the drama of man went on at Quebec just as at home, and the
Sisters played their accustomed part in it.  There was sin, of course,
and there was punishment after death; but there was always hope, even
for the most depraved; and for those who died repentant, the Sisters'
prayers could do much,--no one might say how much.

So the nuns, those who were cloistered and those who came and went
about the town, were always cheerful, never lugubrious.  Their voices,
even when they spoke to one through the veiled grille, were pleasant
and inspiriting to hear.  Most of them spoke good French, some the
exquisite French of Tours.  They conversed blithely, elegantly.  When,
on parting from a stranger, a Sister said pleasantly: "I hope we shall
meet in heaven," that meant nothing doleful,--it meant a happy
appointment, for to-morrow, perhaps!

_Inferretque deos Latio_.  When an adventurer carries his gods with him
into a remote and savage country, the colony he founds will, from the
beginning, have graces, traditions, riches of the mind and spirit.  Its
history will shine with bright incidents, slight, perhaps, but
precious, as in life itself, where the great matters are often as
worthless as astronomical distances, and the trifles dear as the
heart's blood.



VII

A heavy snowfall in December meant that winter had come,--the deepest
reality of Canadian life.  The snow fell all through the night of St.
Nicholas' Day, but morning broke brilliant and clear, without a wisp of
fog, and when one stepped out of the door, the sunlight on the
glittering terraces of rock was almost too intense to be borne; one
closed one's eyes and seemed to swim in throbbing red.  Before noon
there was a little thaw, the snow grew soft on top.  But as the day
wore on, a cold wind came up and the surface froze, to the great
delight of the children of Quebec.  By three o'clock a crowd of them
were coasting down the steep hill named for the Holy Family, among them
Ccile and her protg.  Before she and her father had finished their
djeuner, Jacques had appeared at the shop door, wearing an expectant,
hopeful look unusual to him.  Ccile remembered that she had promised
to take him coasting on her sled when the first snow came.  She
unfastened his ragged jacket and buttoned him into an old fur coat that
she had long ago outgrown.  Her mother had put it away in one of the
chests upstairs, not because she expected ever to have another child,
but because all serviceable things deserve to be taken care of.

When they reached the coasting-hill, the sun was already well down the
western sky (it would set by four o'clock), and the light on the snow
was more orange than golden; the long, steep street and the little
houses on either side were a cold blue, washed over with rose-colour.
They went down double,--Jacques sat in front, and Ccile, after she had
given the sled a running start, dropped on the board behind him.  Every
time they reached the bottom, they trudged back up the hill to the
front of the Cathedral, where the street began.

When the sun had almost sunk behind the black ridges of the western
forest, Ccile and Jacques sat down on the Cathedral steps to eat their
goter.  While they sat there, the other children began to go home, and
the air grew colder.  Now they had the hill all to themselves,--and
this was the most beautiful part of the afternoon.  They thought they
would like to go down once more.  With a quick push-off their sled shot
down through constantly changing colour; deeper and deeper into violet,
blue, purple, until at the bottom it was almost black.  As they climbed
up again, they watched the last flames of orange light burn off the
high points of the rock.  The slender spire of the Rcollet chapel, up
by the Chteau, held the gleam longest of all.

Ccile saw that Jacques was cold.  They were not far from Nol
Pommier's door, so she said they would go in and get warm.

The cobbler had pulled his bench close to the window and was making the
most of the last daylight.  Ccile begged him not to get up.

"We have only come in to get warm, Monsieur Pommier."

"Very good.  You know the way.  Come here, my boy, let me see whether
your shoes keep the snow out."  He reached for Jacques's foot, felt the
leather, and nodded.  Ccile passed into the room behind the shop,
called to Madame Pommier in her kitchen, and asked if they might sit by
her fire.

"Certainly, my dear, find a chair.  And little Jacques may have my
footstool; it is just big enough for him.  Nol," she called, "come put
some wood on the fire, these children are frozen."  She came in
bringing two squares of maple sugar--and a towel for Jacques to wipe
his fingers on.  He took the sugar and thanked her, but she saw that
his eyes were fixed upon a dark corner of the room where a little
copper lamp was burning before some coloured pictures.  "That is my
chapel, Jacques.  You see, being lame, I do not get to mass very often,
so I have a little chapel of my own, and the lamp burns night and day,
like the sanctuary lamp.  There is the Holy Mother and Child, and Saint
Joseph, and on the other side are Sainte Anne and Saint Joachim.  I am
especially devoted to the Holy Family."

Drawn out by something in her voice, Jacques ventured a question.

"Is that why this is called Holy Family Hill, madame?"

Madame Pommier laughed and stooped to pat his head.  "Quite the other
way about, my boy!  I insisted upon living here because the hill bore
that name.  My husband was for settling in the Basse Ville, thinking it
would be better for his trade.  But we have not starved here; those for
whom the street was named have looked out for us, maybe.  When we first
came to this country, I was especially struck by the veneration in
which the Holy Family was held in Kebec, and I found it was so all out
through the distant parishes.  I never knew its like at home.
Monseigneur Laval himself has told me that there is no other place in
the world where the people are so devoted to the Holy Family as here in
our own Canada.  It is something very special to us."

Ccile liked to think they had things of their own in Canada.  The
martyrdoms of the early Church which she read about in her _Lives of
the Saints_ never seemed to her half so wonderful or so terrible as the
martyrdoms of Father Brbeuf, Father Lalemant, Father Jogues, and their
intrepid companions.  To be thrown into the Rhone or the Moselle, to be
decapitated at Lyon,--what was that to the tortures the Jesuit
missionaries endured at the hands of the Iroquois, in those savage,
interminable forests?  And could the devotion of Sainte Genevive or
Sainte Philomne be compared to that of Mother Catherine de
Saint-Augustin or Mother Marie de l'Incarnation?

"My child, I believe you are sleepy," said Madame Pommier presently,
when both her visitors had been silent a long while.  She liked her
friends to be entertaining.

Ccile started out of her reverie.  "No, madame, but I was thinking of
a surprise I have at home, and perhaps I had better tell you about it
now.  You remember my Aunt Clothilde?  I am sure my mother often talked
to you of her.  Last summer she sent me a box on _La Licorne_: a large
wooden box, with a letter telling me not to open it.  We must not open
it until the day before Christmas, because it is a crche; so, you see,
we shall have a Holy Family, too.  And we have been hoping that on
Christmas Eve, before the midnight mass, Monsieur Nol will bring you
to see it.  You have not been in our house, you know, since my mother
died."

"Nol, my son, what do you say to that?"

The cobbler had come in from the shop to light his candle at the fire.

"The invitation is for you too, Monsieur Nol, from my father."

The cobbler smiled and stood with the stump of candle in his hand
before bending down to the blaze.

"That can be managed, and my thanks to monsieur your father.  If there
is snow, I will push my mother down in her sledge, and if the ground is
naked, I will carry her on my back.  She is no great weight."

"I shall like to see the inside of your house again, Ccile.  I miss
it.  I have not been there since that time when your mother was ill,
and Madame de Champigny sent her carriage to convey me."

Ccile remembered the time very well.  It was after old Madame Pommier
was crippled; Madame Auclair had long been too ill to leave the house.
There was then only one closed carriage in Quebec, and that belonged to
Madame de Champigny, wife of the Intendant.  In some way she heard that
the apothecary's sick wife longed to see her old friend, and she sent
her _carrosse_ to take Madame Pommier to the Auclairs'.  It was a mark
of the respect in which the cobbler and his mother were held in the
community.

When Jacques and Ccile ran out into the cold again, from the houses
along the tilted street the evening candle-light was already shining
softly.  Up at the top of the hill, behind the Cathedral, that second
afterglow, which often happens in Quebec, had come on more glorious
than the first.  All the western sky, which had been hard and clear
when the sun sank, was now throbbing with fiery vapours, like rapids of
clouds; and between, the sky shone with a blue to ravish the
heart,--that limpid, celestial, holy blue that is only seen when the
light is golden.

"Are you tired, Jacques?"

"A little, my legs are," he admitted.

"Get on the sled and I will pull you up.  See, there's the evening
star--how near it looks!  Jacques, don't you love winter?"  She put the
sled-rope under her arms, gave her weight to it, and began to climb.  A
feeling came over her that there would never be anything better in the
world for her than this; to be pulling Jacques on her sled, with the
tender, burning sky before her, and on each side, in the dusk, the
kindly lights from neighbours' houses.  If the Count should go back
with the ships next summer, and her father with him, how could she bear
it, she wondered.  On a foreign shore, in a foreign city (yes, for her
a foreign shore), would not her heart break for just this?  For this
rock and this winter, this feeling of being in one's own place, for the
soft content of pulling Jacques up Holy Family Hill into paler and
paler levels of blue air, like a diver coming up from the deep sea.



VIII

On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December Ccile lay snug in her
trundle-bed, while her father lit the fires and prepared the chocolate.
Although the heavy red curtains had not yet been drawn back, she knew
that it was snowing; she had heard the crunch of fresh snow under the
Pigeon boy's feet when he brought the morning loaf to the kitchen door.
Even before that, when the bell rang for five o'clock mass, she knew by
its heavy, muffled tone that the air was thick with snow and that it
was not very cold.  Whenever she heard the early bell, it was as if she
could see the old Bishop with his lantern at the end of the bell-rope,
and the cold of the church up there made her own bed seem the warmer
and softer.  In winter the old man usually carried a little basin as
well as his lantern.  It was his custom to take the bowl of holy water
from the font in the evening, carry it into his kitchen, and put it on
the back of the stove, where enough warmth would linger through the
night to keep it from freezing.  Then, in the morning, those who came
to early mass would not have a mere lump of ice to peck at.
Monseigneur de Laval was very particular about the consecrated oils and
the holy water; it was not enough for him that people should merely go
through the forms.

Ccile did not always waken at the first bell, which rang in the
coldest hour of the night, but when she did, she felt a peculiar sense
of security, as if there must be powerful protection for Kebec in such
steadfastness, and the new day, which was yet darkness, was beginning
as it should.  The punctual bell and the stern old Bishop who rang it
began an orderly procession of activities and held life together on the
rock, though the winds lashed it and the billows of snow drove over it.

With the sound of the crackling fire a cool, mysterious fragrance of
the forest, very exciting because it was under a roof, came in from the
kitchen,--the breath of all the fir boughs and green moss that Ccile
and Blinker had brought in yesterday from the Jesuits' wood.  Today
they would unpack the crche from France,--the box that had come on _La
Licorne_ in midsummer and had lain upstairs unopened for all these
months.

Auclair brought the chocolate and placed it on a little table beside
his daughter's bed.  They always breakfasted like this in winter, while
the house was getting warm.  This morning they had finally to decide
where they would set out the crche.  Weeks ago they had agreed to
arrange it in the deep window behind the sofa,--but then the sofa would
have to be put on the other side of the room!  This morning they found
the thought of moving the sofa, where Madame Auclair used so often to
recline, unendurable.  It would quite destroy the harmony of their
salon.  The room, the house indeed, seemed to cling about that sofa as
a centre.

There was another window in the room,--seldom uncurtained, because it
opened directly upon the side wall of the baker's house, and the
outlook was uninteresting.  It was narrow, but Auclair said he could
remedy that.  As soon as his shop was put in order, he would construct
a shelf in front of the window-sill, but a little lower; then the scene
could be arranged in two terraces, as was customary at home.

Ccile spent the morning covering the window and the new shelf with
moss and fir branches until it looked like a corner in the forest, and
at noon she waylaid Blinker, just getting up from his bed behind the
baker's ovens, and sent him to go and hunt for Jacques.

When Blinker returned with the boy, he himself looked in through the
door so wistfully that Ccile asked him to come and open the box for
her in the kitchen.  There were a great number of little figures in the
crate, each wrapped in a sheath of straw.  As Blinker took them one at
a time out of the straw and handed them to Ccile, he kept exclaiming:
"Regardez, ma'm'selle, un beau petit ne!" ... "Voil, le beau mouton!"
Ccile had never seen him come so far out of his shell; she had
supposed that his shrinking sullenness was a part of him, like his
crooked eyes or his red hair.  When all the figures were unwrapped and
placed on the dining-table in the salon, Blinker gathered up the straw
and carried it with the crate into the cellar.  She had thought that
would be the last of him, but when he came back and stood again in the
doorway, she hadn't the heart to send him away.  She asked him to come
in and sit down by the fire.  Her mother had never done that, but today
there seemed no way out of it.  The fte which she meant so especially
for Jacques, turned out to be even more for Blinker.

Jacques, indeed, was so bewildered as to seem apathetic, and was afraid
to touch anything.  Only when Ccile directed him would he take up one
of the figures from the table and carry it carefully to the window
where she was making the scene.  The Holy Family must be placed first,
under a little booth of fir branches.  The Infant was not in His
Mother's arms, of course, but lay rosy and naked in a little
straw-lined manger, in which he had crossed the ocean.  The Blessed
Virgin wore no halo, but a white scarf over her head.  She looked like
a country girl, very nave, seated on a stool, with her knees well
apart under her full skirt, and very large feet.  Saint Joseph, a grave
old man in brown, with a bald head and wrinkled brow, was placed
opposite her, and the ox and the ass before the manger.

"Those are all that go inside the stable," Ccile explained, "except
the two angels.  We must put them behind the manger; they are still
watching over Him."

"Is that the stable, Ccile?  I think it's too pretty for a stable,"
Jacques observed.

"It's a little _cabine_ of branches, like those the first missionaries
built down by Notre Dame des Anges, when they landed here long ago.
They used to say the mass in a little shelter like that, made of green
fir boughs."

Jacques touched one of the unassorted figures on the table with the tip
of his finger.  "Ccile, what are those animals?"

"Why, those are the camels, Jacques.  Did you never see pictures of
them?  The three Kings came on camels, because they can go a long time
without water and carry heavy loads.  They carried the gold and
frankincense and myrrh."

"I don't think I know about the Kings and the Shepherds very well,"
Jacques sighed.  "I wish you would tell me."

While she placed the figures, Ccile began the story, and Jacques
listened as if he had never heard it before.  There was another
listener, by the fireplace behind her, and she had entirely forgotten
him until, with a sniffling sound, Blinker suddenly got up and went out
through the kitchen, wiping his nose on his sleeve.  Then Jacques
noticed how dusky it had grown in the room; the window behind the sofa
was a square of dull grey, like a hole in the wall of the house.  He
caught up his cap and ran out through the shop, calling back: "Oh, I am
late!"

Jacques had been gone only a few minutes when Giorgio, the drummer boy
from the Chteau, came in to see the crche, and to bid Ccile good-bye
for three days, as the Count had let him off to go home to his family
on the le d'Orlans.  He had left his drum in the guard-house, and
already he felt free.  He would walk the seven miles up to Montmorency
(perhaps he would be lucky enough to catch a ride in some farmer's
sledge for part of the way), then cross the river on the ice.  The
north channel had been frozen hard for several weeks now.  He would
have a long walk after he got over to the island, too; but even if the
night were dark, he knew the way, and he would get there in time to
hear mass at his own paroisse.  After mass his family would make
rveillon,--music and dancing, and a supper with blood sausages and
pickled pigs' feet and dainties of that sort.


"And before daybreak, mademoiselle, my grandfather will play the Alpine
horn.  He always does that on Christmas morning.  If you were awake,
you would hear it even over here.  Such a beautiful sound it has, and
the old man plays so true!"

Georges bought some cloves and bay-leaves for his mother (he had just
been paid, and rattled the coins in his pocket), then started up the
hill with such a happy face that Ccile wished she were going with him,
over those seven snowy miles to Montmorency.

"He will almost certainly catch a ride," her father told her.  "Even on
the river there will be sledges coming and going tonight."



IX

That evening, soon after the dinner-table was cleared, the Auclairs
heard a rapping at the shop door and went out to receive Madame Pommier
in her chair on runners, very like the sledges in which great ladies
used to travel at home.  Her son lifted her out in all her wrappings
and carried her into the salon, where the apothecary's armchair was set
for her.  But before she would accept this seat of honour, she must
hobble all over the house to satisfy herself that things were kept just
as they used to be in Madame Auclair's time.  She found everything the
same, she said, even to Blinker, having his sip of brandy in the
kitchen.

After they had settled down before the fire to wait for the Pigeons,
who were always late, Jacques Gaux came hurrying in through the shop,
looking determined and excited.  He forgot to speak to the visitors and
went straight up to Ccile, holding out something wrapped in a twist of
paper, such as the merchants used for small purchases.

"I have a surprise for you," he said.  "It is for the crche, for the
little Jesus."

When she took off the paper, she held in her hand Jacques's well-known
beaver.

"Oh, Jacques, how nice of you!  I don't believe there was ever a beaver
in a crche before."  She was a little perplexed; the animal was so
untraditional--what was she to do with him?

"He isn't new," Jacques went on anxiously.  "He's just my little old
beaver the sailor made me, but he could keep the baby warm.  I take him
to bed with me when I'm cold sometimes, and he keeps me warm."

Madame Pommier's sharp ears had overheard this conversation, and she
touched Ccile with the end of her crutch.  "Certainly, my dear, put it
there with the lambs, before the manger.  Our Lord died for Canada as
well as for the world over there, and the beaver is our very special
animal."

Immediately Madame Pigeon and her six children arrived.  Auclair
brought out his best liqueurs, and the Pommiers and Pigeons, being from
the same parish in Rouen, began recalling old friends at home.  Ccile
was kept busy filling little glasses, but she noticed that Jacques was
content, standing beside the crche like a sentinel, paying no heed to
the Pigeon children or anyone else, quite lost in the satisfaction of
seeing his beaver placed in a scene so radiant.  Before the evening was
half over, he started up suddenly and began looking for his coat and
cap.  Ccile followed him into the shop.

"Don't you want your beaver, Jacques?  Or will you leave him until
Epiphany?"

He looked up at her, astonished, a little hurt, and quickly thrust his
hands behind him.  "Non, c'est pour toujours," he said decisively, and
went out of the door.

"See, madame," Madame Pommier was whispering to Madame Pigeon, "we have
a bad woman amongst us, and one of her clients makes a toy for her son,
and he gives it to the Holy Child for a birthday present.  That is very
nice.

"C'est a, madame, c'est a," said matter-of-fact Madame Pigeon, quite
liking the idea, now that her attention was called to it.

By eleven o'clock the company had become a little heavy from the heat
of the fire and the good wine from the Count's cellar, and everyone
felt a need of the crisp out-of-doors air.  The weather had changed at
noon, and now the stars were flashing in a clear sky,--a sky almost
over-jewelled on that glorious night.  The three families agreed that
it would be well to start for the church very early and get good
places.  The Cathedral would be full to the doors tonight.  Monseigneur
de Saint-Vallier was to say the mass, and the old Bishop would be
present, with a great number of clergy, and the Seminarians were to
sing the music.  Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier would doubtless wear the
aube of rich lace given him by Madame de Maintenon for his consecration
at Saint-Sulpice, in Paris, ten years ago.  In one matter he and the
old Bishop always agreed; that the services of the Church should be
performed in Quebec as elaborately, as splendidly, as anywhere else in
the world.  For many years Bishop Laval had kept himself miserably poor
to make the altar and the sacristy rich.

After everyone had had a last glass of liqueur, Madame Pommier was
carried out to her sledge and tucked under her bearskin.  The company
proceeded slowly; pushing the chair up the steep curves of Mountain
Hill and around the Rcollet chapel, over fresh snow that had not
packed, was a little difficult.  When they reached the top of the rock,
many houses were alight.  Across the white ledges that sloped like a
vast natural stairway down to the Cathedral, black groups were moving,
families and friends in little flocks, all going toward the same
goal,--the doors of the church, wide open and showing a ruddy vault in
the blue darkness.




_BOOK III_

_THE LONG WINTER_



BOOK THREE

_THE LONG WINTER_


I

One morning between Christmas and New Year's Day a man still young, of
a handsome but unstable countenance, clad in a black cassock with
violet piping, and a rich fur mantle, entered the apothecary shop,
greeted the proprietor politely, and asked for four boxes of sugared
lemon peel.

It was not the young Bishop's custom to do his shopping himself; he
sent his valet.  This was the first time he had ever come inside the
pharmacy.  Auclair took off his apron as a mark of respect to a
distinguished visitor, but replied firmly that, much to his regret, he
had only three boxes left, and one of them he meant to send as a New
Year's greeting to Mother Juschereau, at the Htel Dieu.  He would be
happy to supply Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier with the other two; and he
had several boxes of apricots put down in sugar, if they would be of
any use to him.  Monseigneur declared they would do very well, paid for
them, and said he would carry them away himself.  Auclair protested
that he or his little daughter could leave them at the Palace.  But no,
the Bishop insisted upon carrying his parcel.  As he did not leave the
shop at once, Auclair begged him to be seated.

Saint-Vallier sat down and threw back his fur mantle.  "Have you by any
chance seen Monseigneur de Laval of late?" he inquired.  "I am deeply
concerned about his health."

"No, Monseigneur, I have not seen him since the mass on Christmas Eve.
But the bell has been ringing every morning as usual."

Saint-Vallier's arched eyebrows rose still higher, and he made a
graceful, conciliatory gesture with his hand.  "Ah, his habits, you
know; one cannot interfere with them!  But his valet told mine that the
ulcer on his master's leg had broken out again, and that seems to me
dangerous."

"I am sorry to hear it," said Auclair.  "It is hardly dangerous, but
painful and distressing."

"Especially so, since he will not remain in bed, and conceals the
extent of his suffering even from his own Seminarians."  The Bishop
paused a moment, then continued in a tone so confidential as to be
flattering.  "I have been wondering, Monsieur Auclair, whether,
provided we could obtain his consent, you would be willing to try a
cauterization of the arm, to draw the inflammation away from the
affected part.  This was done with great success for Pre La Chaise,
the King's confessor, who had an ulcer between the toes while I was in
office at Versailles."

"That was probably a form of gout," Auclair observed.  "Monseigneur de
Laval's affliction is quite different.  He suffers from enlarged and
congested veins in the leg.  Such ulcers are hard to heal, but they are
seldom fatal."

"But why not at least try the simple remedy which was so beneficial in
the case of Pre La Chaise?" urged the Bishop.  There was a shallow
brilliance in his large fine eyes which made Auclair antagonistic.

"Because, Monseigneur," he said firmly, "I do not believe in it; and
because it has been tried already.  Two years ago, when you were in
France, Doctor Beaudoin made a cauterization upon Monseigneur de Laval,
and he has since told me that he believes it was useless."

The Bishop looked thoughtfully about at the white jars on the shelves.
"You are very advanced in your theories of medicine, are you not,
Monsieur Auclair?"

"On the contrary, I am very old-fashioned.  I think the methods of the
last century better than those of the present time."

"Then you do not believe in progress?"

"Change is not always progress, Monseigneur."  Auclair spoke quietly,
but there was meaning in his tone.  Saint-Vallier made some polite
inquiry about the condition of old Doctor Beaudoin, and took his leave.
His call, Auclair suspected, was one of the overtures he occasionally
made to people who were known partisans of old Bishop Laval.

During the stay in France from which he had lately returned,
Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier had induced the King to reverse entirely
Laval's system for the training and government of the Canadian clergy,
thus defeating the dearest wishes of the old man's heart and undoing
the devoted labour of twenty years.  Everything that made Laval's
Seminary unique and specially fitted to the needs of the colony had
been wiped out.  His system of a movable clergy, sent hither and
thither out among the parishes at the Bishop's discretion and always
returning to the Seminary as their head and centre, had been changed by
royal edict to the plan of appointing curs to permanent livings, as in
France,--a method ill fitted to a new, wild country where within a year
the population of any parish might be reduced by half.  The Seminary,
which Laval had made a thing of power and the centre of ecclesiastical
authority, a chapter, almost an independent order, was now reduced to
the state of a small school for training young men for the priesthood.

These were some of the griefs that made the old Bishop bear so mournful
a countenance.  The wilfulness of his successor (chosen by himself, he
must always bitterly remember!) went even further; Saint-Vallier had
taken away books and vases and furniture from the Seminary to enrich
his new Palace.  It was whispered that he had made his Palace so large
because he intended to take away the old Bishop's Seminarians and
transfer them to the episcopal residence, to have them under his own
eye.  If this were done, Bishop Laval would be left living in the
Priests' House, guarding a lofty building of long, echoing corridors
and empty dormitories, round a deserted courtyard where the grass would
soon be growing between the stones.  Monseigneur Laval's friends could
but hope that de Saint-Vallier would be off for France again before he
carried out this threat.

Saint-Vallier was a man of contradictions, and they were stamped upon
his face.  One saw there something slightly hysterical, and something
uncertain,--though his manner was imperious, and his administration had
been arrogant and despotic.  Auclair had once remarked to the Count
that the new Bishop looked less like a churchman than like a courtier.
"Or an actor," the Count replied with a shrug.  Large almond-shaped
eyes under low-growing brown hair and delicate eyebrows, a long, sharp
nose--and then the lower part of his face diminished, like the neck of
a pear.  His mouth was large and well shaped, but seldom in repose; his
chin narrow, receding, with a dimple at the end.  He had a dark skin
and flashing white teeth like an Italian,--indeed, his face recalled
the portraits of eccentric Florentine nobles.  He was still only
forty-four; he had been Bishop of Quebec now twelve years,--and seven
of them had been spent in France!

Auclair had never liked de Saint-Vallier.  He did not doubt the young
Bishop's piety, but he very much doubted his judgment.  He was rash and
precipitate, he was volatile.  He acted too often without counting the
cost, from some dazzling conception,--one could not say from impulse,
for impulses are from the heart.  He liked to reorganize and change
things for the sake of change, to make a fine gesture.  He destroyed
the old before he had clearly thought out the new.  When he first came
to Canada, he won all hearts by his splendid charities; but he went
back to France leaving the Seminary many thousand francs in debt as the
result of his generous disbursements, and the old Bishop had to pay
this debt out of the Seminary revenues.  For years now, he had seemed
feverishly determined to undo whatever he could of the old Bishop's
work.  This was the more galling to the old man because he himself had
gone to France and chosen de Saint-Vallier and recommended him to Rome.
Saint-Vallier had at first exhibited the most delicate consideration
for his aged predecessor, but this attitude lasted only a short while.
He was as changeable and fickle as a woman.  Indeed, he had received a
large part of his training under a woman, though by no means a fickle
or capricious one.

When Jean Baptiste de la Croix de Chevrires de Saint-Vallier came to
Court in the capacity of the King's almoner, Madame de Maintenon was
past the age of youthful folly,--if indeed she had ever known such an
age.  (A poor girl from the West Indies, landing penniless in France
with all her possessions in a band-box, she had had little time for
follies, except such as helped her to get on in the world.)  The young
priest who was one day to be the second Bishop of Quebec knew her only
after she had become the grave and far-seeing woman who so greatly
influenced the King for the last thirty years of his reign.

Saint-Vallier was the seventh child of a noble family of Dauphine.  His
eldest brother, Comte de Saint-Vallier, was Captain of the King's
Guard, and secured for the young priest the appointment of _Aumnier
ordinaire_ to the King when he was but twenty-three years of age.  He
retained that office for nearly ten years, and was constantly in accord
with Madame de Maintenon in emptying the King's purse for worthy
charities.  Saint-Vallier was by no means without enemies at Court.
The clergy and even the Archbishop of Paris disliked him.  They
considered that he made his piety too conspicuous and was lacking in
good taste.  His oval face, with the bloom of youth upon it, his
beautiful eyes, full of humility and scorn at the same time, were seen
too much and too often.  He had a hundred ways of making himself stand
out from the throng, and his exceptional piety was like a reproach to
those of the clergy who were more conventional and perhaps more
worldly.  He obtained from the King special permission to wear at Court
the long black gown, which at that time was not worn by the priests at
Versailles.  So attired, he was more conspicuous than courtiers the
most richly apparelled.  His fellow abbs found de Saint-Vallier's acts
of humility undignified, and his brother, the Captain of the Guard,
found them ridiculous.  One day the Captain met the Abb following the
Sacrament through the street, ringing a little hand-bell.  The Captain
awaited his brother's return to the Palace and told him angrily that
his conduct was unworthy of his family, and that he had better retire
to La Trappe, where his piety would be without an audience.  But to be
without an audience was the last thing the young Abb desired.
Nevertheless, in his own way he was a sincere man.  He refused the rich
and honourable bishopric of Tours, repeatedly offered him by the King,
and accepted the bishopric of Quebec,--the poorest and most comfortless
honour the Crown had to offer.

By the time de Saint-Vallier made his third trip back to France, the
King knew very well that he was not much wanted in Canada; every boat
brought complaints of his arrogance and his rash impracticality.  The
King could not unmake a bishop, once he was consecrated, but he could
detain him in France,--and that he did, for three years.  During de
Saint-Vallier's long absences in Europe his duties devolved upon
Monseigneur de Laval.  There was no one else in Canada who could ordain
priests, administer the sacrament of confirmation, consecrate the holy
oils.  Though in the performance of these duties the old Bishop had to
make long journeys in canoes and sledges, very fatiguing at his age, he
undertook them without a murmur.  He was glad to take up again the
burdens he had once so gladly laid down.



II

After Epiphany, Auclair was away from home a great deal.  The old
chirurgien Gervaise Beaudoin was ill, and the apothecary went to see
him every afternoon, leaving Ccile to tend the shop.  When he was at
home, he was much occupied in making cough-syrups from pine tops, and
from horehound and honey with a little laudanum; or he was compounding
tonics, and linaments for rheumatism.  The months that were dull for
the merchants were the busiest for him.  He and his daughter seldom
went abroad together now, but their weekly visit to the Htel Dieu they
still managed to make.  One evening at dinner, after one of these
visits, Ccile spoke of an incident that Mother Juschereau had related
to her in the morning.

"Father, did you ever hear that once long ago, when an English sailor
lay sick at the Htel Dieu, Mother Catherine de Saint-Augustin ground
up a tiny morsel of bone from Father Brbeuf's skull and mixed it in
his gruel, and it made him a Christian?"

Her father looked at her across the table and gave a perplexing chuckle.

"But it is true, certainly?  Mother Juschereau told me only today."

"Mother Juschereau and I do not always agree in the matter of remedies,
you know.  I consider human bones a very poor medicine for any purpose."

"But he was converted, the sailor.  He became a Christian."

"Probably Mother de Saint-Augustin's own saintly character, and her
kindness to him, had more to do with the Englishman's conversion than
anything she gave him in his food."

"Why, Father, Mother Juschereau would be horrified to hear you!  There
are so many sacred relics, and they are always working cures."

"The sacred relics are all very well, my dear, and I do not deny that
they work miracles,--but not through the digestive tract.  Mother de
Saint-Augustin meant well, but she made a mistake.  If she had given
her heretic a little more ground bone, she might have killed him."

"Are you sure?"

"I think it probable.  It is true that in England, in every apothecary
shop, there is a jar full of pulverized human skulls, and that terrible
powder is sometimes dispensed in small doses for certain diseases.
Even in France it is still to be found in many pharmacies; but it was
never sold in our shop, not even in my grandfather's time.  He had seen
a proof made of that remedy.  A long while ago, when Henry of Navarre
was besieging Paris, the people held out against him until they starved
by hundreds.  I have heard my grandfather tell of things too horrible
to repeat to you.  The famine grew until there was no food at all;
people killed each other for a morsel.  The bakers shut their shops;
there was not a handful of flour left, they had used all the forage
meant for beasts; they had made bread of hay and straw, and now that
was all gone.  Then some of the starving went to the cemetery of the
Innocents, where there was a great wall of dry bones, and they ground
those bones to powder and made a paste of it and baked it in ovens; and
as many as ate of that bread died in agony, as if they had swallowed
poison.  Indeed, they had swallowed poison."

"But those were ordinary bones, maybe bones of wicked people.  That
would be different."

"No bones are good to be taken into the stomach, Ccile.  God did not
intend it.  The relics of the saints may work cures at the touch, they
may be a protection worn about the neck; those things are outside of my
knowledge.  But I am the guardian of the stomach, and I would not
permit a patient to swallow a morsel of any human remains, not those of
Saint Peter himself.  There are enough beautiful stories about Mother
de Saint-Augustin, but this one is not to my liking."

Ccile could only hope it would never happen that her father and Mother
Juschereau would enter into any discussion of miraculous cures.  Her
father must be right; but she felt in her heart that what Mother
Juschereau told her had certainly occurred, and the English sailor had
been converted by Father Brbeuf's bone.



III

"Ma'm'selle, have you heard the news from Montreal?"

Blinker had just come in for his soup, and Ccile saw that he was
greatly excited.

No, she had heard nothing; what did he mean?

"Ma'm'selle, there has been a miracle at Montreal.  The recluse has had
a visit from the angels,--the night after Epiphany, when there was the
big snow-storm.  That day she broke her spinning-wheel, and in the
night two angels came to her cell and mended it for her.  She saw them."

"How did you hear this, Blinker?"

"Some men got in from Montreal this morning, in dog-sledges, and they
brought the word.  They brought letters, too, for the Reverend Mother
at the Ursulines'.  If you go there, you will likely hear all about it."

"You are sure she saw the angels?"

He nodded.  "Yes, when she got up to pray, at midnight.  They say her
wheel was mended better than a carpenter could do it."

"The men didn't say which angels, Blinker?"

He shook his head.  He was just beginning his soup.  Ccile dropped
into one of the chairs by the table.  "Why, one of them might have been
Saint Joseph himself; he was a carpenter.  But how was it she saw them?
You know she keeps her spinning-wheel up in her work-room, over the
cell where she sleeps."

"Just so, ma'm'selle, it is just so the men said.  She goes into the
church to pray every night at midnight, and when she got up on Epiphany
night, she saw a light shining from the room overhead, and she went up
her little stair to see what was the matter, and there she found the
angels."

"Did they speak to her?"

"The men did not say.  Maybe the Reverend Mother will know."

"I will go there tomorrow, and I will tell you everything I hear.  It's
a wonderful thing to happen, so near us--and in that great snow-storm!
Don't you like to know that the angels are just as near to us here as
they are in France?"

Blinker turned his head, glancing all about the kitchen as if someone
might be hiding there, leaned across the table, and said to her in such
a mournful way:

"Ma'm'selle, I think they are nearer."

When he had drunk his little glass and gone away for the last time,
Ccile went in and told her father the good news from Montreal.  He
listened with polite interest, but she had of late begun to feel that
his appreciation of miracles was not at all what it should be.  They
were reading Plutarch this winter, and tonight they were in the middle
of the life of Alexander the Great, but her thoughts strayed from the
text.  She made so many mistakes that her father said she must be
tired, and, gently taking the book from her, continued the reading
himself.

Later, while she was undressing, her father filled the kitchen stove
with birch logs to hold the heat well through the night.  He blew out
the candles, and himself got ready for bed.  After he had put on his
night-cap and disappeared behind his curtains, Ccile, who had feigned
to be asleep, turned over softly to watch the dying fire, and with a
sigh abandoned herself to her thoughts.  In her mind she went over the
whole story of the recluse of Montreal.

Jeanne Le Ber, the recluse, was the only daughter of Jacques Le Ber,
the richest merchant of Montreal.  When she was twelve years old, her
parents had brought her to Quebec and placed her in the Ursuline
convent to receive her education.  She remained here three years, and
that was how she belonged to Quebec as well as to Ville-Marie de
Montral.  Sister Anne de Sainte-Rose saw at once that this pupil had a
very unusual nature, though her outward demeanour was merely that of a
charming young girl.  The Sister had told Ccile that in those days
Jeanne was never melancholy, but warm and ardent, like her complexion;
gracious in her manner, and not at all shy.  She was at her ease with
strangers,--all distinguished visitors to Montreal were entertained at
her father's house.  But underneath this exterior of pleasing girlhood,
Sister Anne felt something reserved and guarded.  While she was at the
convent, Jeanne often received gifts and attentions from her father's
friends in Quebec; and from home, boxes of sweets and dainties.  But
everything that was sent her she gave away to her schoolmates, so
tactfully that they did not realize she kept nothing for herself.

Jeanne completed her studies at the convent, returned home to Montreal,
and was in a manner formally introduced to the world there.  Her father
was fond of society and lavish in hospitality; proud of his five sons,
but especially devoted to his only daughter.  He loved to see her in
rich apparel, and selected the finest stuffs brought over from France
for her.  Jeanne wore these clothes to please him, but whenever she put
on one of her gay dresses, she wore underneath it a little haircloth
shirt next her tender skin.

Soon after Jeanne's return from school her father and uncle gave to the
newly-completed parish church of Montreal a rich lamp of silver, made
in France, to burn perpetually before the Blessed Sacrament.  The Le
Bers' house on Saint Paul street was very near the church, and from the
window of her upstairs bedroom Jeanne could see at night the red spark
of the sanctuary lamp showing in the dark church.  When everyone was
asleep and the house was still, it was her custom to kneel beside her
casement and pray, the while watching that spot of light.  "_I will be
that lamp_," she used to whisper.  "_I will be that lamp; that shall be
my life_."

Jacques Le Ber announced that his daughter's dowry would be fifty
thousand gold cus, and there were many pretendants for her hand.
Ccile had often heard it said that the most ardent and most favoured
of these was Auclair's friend Pierre Charron, who still lived next door
to the Le Bers in Montreal.  He had been Jeanne's play-fellow in
childhood.

Jeanne's shining in the _beau monde_ of Ville-Marie de Montral was
brief.  For her the only real world lay within convent walls.  She
begged to be allowed to take the vows, but her father's despair
overcame her wish.  Even her spiritual directors, and that noble
soldier-priest Dollier de Casson, Superior of the Sulpician Seminary,
advised her against taking a step so irrevocable.  She at last obtained
her parents' consent to imitate the domestic retreat of Sainte
Catherine of Siena, and at seventeen took the vow of chastity for five
years and immured herself within her own chamber in her father's house.
In her vigils she could always look out at the dark church, with the
one constant lamp which generous Jacques Le Ber had placed there,
little guessing how it might affect his life and wound his heart.

Upon her retirement Jeanne had explained to her family that during the
five years of her vow she must on no account speak to or hold
communication with them.  Her desire was for the absolute solitariness
of the hermit's life, the solitude which Sainte Marie l'gyptienne had
gone into the desert of the Thebais to find.  Her parents did not
believe that a young girl, affectionate and gentle from her infancy,
could keep so harsh a rule.  But as time went on, their hearts grew
heavier.  From the day she took her vow, they never had speech with her
or saw her face,--never saw her bodily form, except veiled and stealing
down the stairway like a shadow on her way to mass.  Jacques Le Ber no
longer gave suppers on feast-days.  He stayed more and more in his
counting-room, drove about in his sledge in winter, and cruised in his
sloop in summer; avoided the house that had become the tomb of his
hopes.

Before her withdrawal Jeanne had chosen an old serving-woman,
exceptional for piety, to give her henceforth such service as was
necessary.  Every morning at a quarter to five this old dame went to
Jeanne's door and attended her to church to hear early mass.  Many a
time Madame Le Ber concealed herself in the dark hallway to see her
daughter's muffled figure go by.  After the return from mass, the same
servant brought Jeanne her food for the day.  If any dish of a rich or
delicate nature was brought her, she did not eat it, but fasted.

She went always to vespers, and to the high mass on Sundays and
feast-days.  On such occasions people used to come in from the
neighbouring parishes for a glimpse of that slender figure, the richest
heiress in Canada, clad in grey serge, kneeling on the floor near the
altar, while her family, in furs and velvet, sat in chairs in another
part of the church.

At the end of five years Jeanne renewed her vow of seclusion for
another five years.  During this time her mother died.  On her
death-bed she sent one of the household to her daughter's door, begging
her to come and give her the kiss of farewell.

"Tell her I am praying for her, night and day," was the answer.

When she had been immured within her father's house for almost ten
years, Jeanne was able to accomplish a cherished hope; she devoted that
_dot_, which no mortal man would ever claim, to build a chapel for the
Sisters of the Congregation of the Blessed Virgin.  Behind the high
altar of this chapel she had a cell constructed for herself.  At a
solemn ceremony she took the final vows and entered that cell from
which she would never come forth alive.  Since that time she had been
known as la recluse de Ville-Marie.

Jeanne's entombment and her cell were the talk of the province, and in
the country parishes where not much happened, still, after two years,
furnished matter for conversation and wonder.  The cell, indeed, was
not one room, but three, one above another, and within them the
solitaire carried on an unvarying routine of life.  In the basement
cubicle was the grille through which she spoke to her confessor, and by
means of which she was actually present at mass and vespers, though
unseen.  There, through a little window, her meagre food was handed to
her.  The room above was her sleeping-chamber, constructed by the most
careful measurements for one purpose; her narrow bed against the wall
was directly behind the high altar, and her pillow, when she slept, was
only a few inches from the Blessed Sacrament on the other side of the
partition.

The upper cell was her atelier, and there she made and embroidered
those beautiful altar-cloths and vestments which went out from her
stone chamber to churches all over the province: to the Cathedral at
Quebec, and to the poor country parishes where the altar and its
ministrant were alike needy.  She had begun this work years before, in
her father's house, and had grown very skilful at it.  Old Bishop
Laval, so sumptuous in adorning his Cathedral, had more than once
expressed admiration for her beautiful handiwork.  When her eyes were
tired, or when the day was too dark for embroidering, she spun yarn and
knitted stockings for the poor.

In her work-room there was a small iron stove with a heap of faggots,
and in the most severe cold of winter the recluse lit a little fire,
not for bodily comfort, but because her fingers became stiff with the
cold and lost their cunning,--indeed, there were sometimes days on
which they would actually have frozen at their task.  Every night at
midnight, winter and summer, Jeanne rose from her cot, dressed herself,
descended into her basement room, opened the grille, and went into the
church to pray for an hour before the high altar.  On bitter nights
many a kind soul in Montreal (and on the lonely farms, too) lay awake
for a little, listening to the roar of the storm, and wondered how it
was with the recluse, under her single coverlid.

She bore the summer's heat as patiently as the winter's cold.  Only
last July, when the heat lay so heavy in her chamber with its one small
window, her confessor urged her to quit her cell for an hour each day
after sunset and take the air in the cloister garden, which her window
looked out upon.

She replied: _Ah, mon pre, ma chambre est mon paradis terrestre; c'est
mon centre; cest mon lment.  Il n'y a pas de lieu plus dlicieux, ni
plus salutaire pour moi; point de Louvre, point de palais, qui me soit
plus agrable.  Je prfre ma cellule  tout le reste de l'univers_.


For long after the night when Ccile first heard of the angels' visit
to Mademoiselle Le Ber, the story was a joy to her.  She told it over
and over to little Jacques on his rare visits.  Throughout February the
weather was so bad that Jacques could come only when Blinker (who was
always a match for 'Toinette) went down and brought him up Mountain
Hill on his back.  The snows fell one upon another until the houses
were muffled, the streets like tunnels.  Between the storms the weather
was grey, with armies of dark clouds moving across the wide sky, and
the bitter wind always blowing.  Quebec seemed shrunk to a mere group
of shivering spires; the whole rock looked like one great white church,
above the frozen river.

By many a fireside the story of Jeanne Le Ber's spinning-wheel was told
and re-told with loving exaggeration during that severe winter.  The
word of her visit from the angels went abroad over snow-burdened Canada
to the remote parishes.  Wherever it went, it brought pleasure, as if
the recluse herself had sent to all those families whom she did not
know some living beauty,--a blooming rose-tree, or a shapely fruit-tree
in fruit.  Indeed, she sent them an incomparable gift.  In the long
evenings, when the family had told over their tales of Indian massacres
and lost hunters and the almost human intelligence of the beaver,
someone would speak the name of Jeanne Le Ber, and it again gave out
fragrance.

The people have loved miracles for so many hundred years, not as proof
or evidence, but because they are the actual flowering of desire.  In
them the vague worship and devotion of the simple-hearted assumes a
form.  From being a shapeless longing, it becomes a beautiful image; a
dumb rapture becomes a melody that can be remembered and repeated; and
the experience of a moment, which might have been a lost ecstasy, is
made an actual possession and can be bequeathed to another.



IV

One night in March there was a knock at the apothecary's door, just as
he was finishing his dinner.  Only sick people, or strangers who were
ignorant of his habits, disturbed him at that hour.  Peeping out
between the cabinets, Ccile saw that the visitor was a thick-set man
in moccasins, with a bearskin coat and cap.  His long hair and his face
covered with beard told that he had come in from the woods.

"Don't you remember me, Monsieur Auclair?" he asked in a low, sad
voice.  "I am Antoine Frichette; you used to know me."

"It is your beard that changes you, Antoine.  Sit down."

"Ah, it is more than that," the man sighed.

"Besides, I thought you were in the Montreal country,--out from the
Sault Saint-Louis, wasn't it?"

"Yes, monsieur, I went out there, but I had no luck.  My brother-in-law
died in the woods, and I got a strain that made me no good, so I came
back to live with my sister until I am cured."

"Your brother-in-law?  Not Michel Proulx, surely?  I am grieved to hear
that, Antoine.  He cannot well be spared here.  We have few such good
workmen."

"But you see, monsieur, no building goes on in Kebec in the winter, and
there was the chance to make something in the woods.  But he is dead,
and I am not much better.  I got down from Montreal only today,--we had
a hard fight coming in this snow.  I came to you because I am a sick
man.  I tore something loose inside me.  Look, monsieur, can you do
anything for that?"  He stood up and unbuttoned his bearskin jacket.  A
rupture, Auclair saw at once,--and for a woodsman that was almost like
a death-sentence.

Yes, he told Frichette, he could certainly do something for him.  But
first they would be seated more comfortably, and have a talk.  He took
the poor fellow back into the sitting-room and gave him his own
arm-chair by the fire.

"This is my daughter, Ccile, Antoine; you remember her.  Now I will
give you something to make you feel better at once.  This is a very
powerful cordial, there are many healing herbs in it, and it will reach
the sorest spot in a sick man.  Drink it slowly, and then you must tell
me about your bad winter."

The woodsman took the little glass between his thick fingers and held
it up to the fire-light.  "_C'est jolie, la couleur_," he observed
childishly.  Presently he slid off his fur jacket and sat in his
buckskin shirt and breeches.  When he had finished the cordial, his
host filled his glass again, and Antoine sighed and looked about him.
"_C'est tranquille, chez vous, comme toujours_," he said with a faint
smile.  "I bring you a message, monsieur, from Father Hector Saint-Cyr."

"From Father Hector?  You have seen him?  Come, Ccile, Antoine is
going to tell us news of our friend."  Auclair rose and poured a little
cordial for himself.

"He said he will be here very soon, God willing, while the river is
still hard.  He had a letter from the new Bishop telling him to come
down to Kebec.  He asked me to say that he invited himself to dinner
with you.  He is a man in a thousand, that priest.  We have been
through something together.  But that is a long story."

"Begin at the beginning, Frichette, my daughter and I have all evening
to listen.  So you and Proulx went into the woods, out from the Sault?"

"Yes, we went early in the fall, when the hunting was good, and we took
Joseph Choret from Three Rivers.  We put by plenty of fish, as soon as
it was cold enough to freeze them.  We meant to go up into the
Nipissing country in the spring, and trade for skins.  The Nipissings
don't come to the settlements much, and I know a little of their
language.  We made a good log house in the fall, good enough, but you
know what a man my brother-in-law was for hewing; he wasn't satisfied.
When the weather kept open, before Christmas, he wanted to put in a
board floor.  I cannot say how it happened.  You know yourself,
monsieur, what a man he was with the ax,--he hewed the beams for Notre
Dame de la Victoire when he was but a lad, and how many houses in Kebec
didn't he hew the beams and flooring for?  He could cut better boards
with his ax than most men can with a saw.  He was not a drinking man,
either; never took a glass too much.  Very well; one day out there he
was hewing boards to floor our shack, and something happens,--the ax
slips and lays his leg open from the ankle to the knee.  There is a big
vein spouting blood, and I catch it and tie it with a deer-gut string I
had in my pocket.  Maybe that gut was poisoned some way, for the wound
went bad very soon.  We had no linen, so I dressed it with punk wood,
as the Indians do.  I boiled pine chips and made turpentine, but it did
no good.  He got black to the thigh and began to suffer agony.  The
only thing that eased him was fresh snow heaped on his leg.  I don't
know if it was right, but he begged for it.  After Christmas I saw it
was time to get a priest.

"It was three days' journey in to the Sault mission, and the going was
bad.  There wasn't snow enough for snowshoes,--just enough to cover the
roots and trip you.  I took my snowshoes and grub-sack on my back, and
made good time.  The second day I came to a place where the trees were
thin because there was no soil, only flint rock, in ledges.  And there
one big tree, a white pine, had blown over.  It hadn't room to fall
flat, the top had caught in the branches of another tree, so it lay
slanting and made a nice shelter underneath, like a shanty, high enough
to stand in.  The top was still fresh and green and made thick walls to
keep out the wind.  I cleared away some of the inside branches and had
a good sleep in there.  Next morning when I left that place, I notched
a few trees as I went, so I could find it when I brought the priest
back with me.  Ordinarily I don't notch trees to find my way back.
When there is no sun, I can tell directions like the Indians."

Here Auclair interrupted him.  "And how is that, Antoine?"

Frichette smiled and shrugged.  "It is hard to explain,--by many
things.  The limbs of the trees are generally bigger on the south side,
for example.  The moss on the trunks is clean and dry on the north
side,--on the south side it is softer and maybe a little rotten.  There
are many little signs; put them all together and they point you right.

"I got to the mission late the third night and slept in a bed.  Early
the next morning Father Hector was ready to start back with me.  He had
two young priests there, but he would go himself.  He carried his
snowshoes and a blanket and the Blessed Sacrament on his back, and I
carried the provisions--smoked eels and cold grease--enough for three
days.  We slept the first night in that shelter under the fallen pine,
and made a good start the next day.  That was Epiphany, the day of the
big snow all over Canada.  When we had been out maybe two hours, the
snow began to fall so thick we could hardly see each other, and I told
Father Hector we better make for that shelter again.  It took us nearly
all day to get back over the ground we had covered in two hours before
the storm began.  By God, I was glad to see that thin place in the
woods again!  I was afraid I'd lost it.  There was our tree, heaped
over with snow, with the opening to the south still clear.  We crept in
and got our breath and unrolled our blankets.  A little snow had sifted
in, but not much.  It had packed between the needles of that pine top
until it was like a solid wall and roof.  It was warm in there; no wind
got through.  Father Hector said some prayers, and we rolled up in our
blankets and slept most of the day and let the storm come.

"Next day it was still snowing hard, and I was afraid to start out.  We
ate some lard, and an eel apiece, but I could see the end of our
provisions pretty soon.  We were thirsty and ate the snow, which
doesn't satisfy you much.  Father Hector said prayers and read his
breviary.  When I went to sleep, I heard him praying to himself, very
low,--and when I wakened he was still praying, just the same.  I lay
still and listened for a long while, but I didn't once hear an Ave
Maria, and not the name of a saint could I make out.  At last I turned
over and told Father Hector that was certainly a long prayer he was
saying.  He laughed.  'That's not a prayer, Antoine,' he says; 'that's
a Latin poem, a very long one, that I learned at school.  If I am
uncomfortable, it diverts my mind, and I remember my old school and my
comrades.'

"'So much the better for you, Father,' I told him.  'But a long prayer
would do no harm.  I don't like the look of things.'

"The next day the snow had stopped, but a terrible bitter wind was
blowing.  We couldn't have gone against it, but since it was behind us,
I thought we'd better get ahead.  We hadn't food enough to see us
through, as it was.  That was a cruel day's march on an empty belly.
Father Hector is a good man on snowshoes, and brave, too.  My pack had
grown lighter, and I wanted to carry his, but he would not have it.
When it began to get dark, we made camp and ate some cold grease and
the last of our eels.  I built a fire, and we took turns, one of us
feeding the fire while the other slept.  I was so tired I could have
slept on into eternity.  Father Hector had to throw snow in my face to
waken me.

"Before daylight the wind died, but the cold was so bitter we had to
move or freeze.  It was good snowshoeing that day, but with empty
bellies and thirst and eating snow, we both had colic.  That night we
ate the last of our lard.  I wasn't sure we were going right,--the snow
had changed the look of everything.  When Father Hector took off the
little box he carried that held the Blessed Sacrament, I said: 'Maybe
that will do for us two, Father.  I don't see much ahead of us.'

"'Never fear, Antoine,' says he, 'while we carry that, Someone is
watching over us.  Tomorrow will bring better luck.'

"It did, too, just as he said.  We were both so weak we made poor
headway.  But by the mercy of God we met an Indian.  He had a gun, and
he had shot two hares.  When he saw what a bad way we were in, he made
a fire very quick and cooked the hares,--and he ate very little of that
meat himself.  He said Indians could bear hunger better than the
French.  He was a kind Indian and was glad to give us what he had.
Father Hector could speak his language, and questioned him.  Though I
had never seen him before, he knew where our shack was, and said we
were pointed right.  But I told him I was tired out and wanted a guide,
and I would pay him well in shot and powder if he took us in.

"We got back to our shack six days after we left the mission, and they
were the six worst days of the winter.  My brother-in-law was very bad.
He died while Father Hector was there, and had a Christian burial.  The
Indian took Father Hector back to the mission.  Soon after that I got
this strain in my side, and I lost heart.  I left our stores for Joseph
Choret to trade with, and I went down to the Sault and then to
Montreal.  I found a sledge party about to come down the river, and
they brought me to Kebec.  Now I am here, what can you do for me,
Monsieur Auclair?"

The apothecary's kindly tone did not reassure Frichette.  He looked
searchingly into his face and asked:

"Will it grow back, my inside, like it was?"

Auclair felt very sorry for him.  "No, it will not grow back, Antoine.
But tomorrow I will make you a support, and you will be more
comfortable."

"But not to carry canoes over portages, I guess?  No?  Nor to go into
the woods at all, maybe?"  He sank back in the chair.  "Then I don't
know how I'll make a living, monsieur.  I am not clever with tools,
like my brother-in-law."

"We'll find a way out of that, Antoine."

Frichette did not heed him.  "It's a funny thing," he went on.  "A man
sits here by the warm fire, where he can hear the bell ring for mass
every morning and smell bread baked fresh every day, and all that
happened out there in the woods seems like a dream.  Yet here I am, no
good any more."

"_Courage, mon bourgeois_, I am going to give you a good medicine."

Frichette shook his head and spread his thick fingers apart on his
knees.  "There is no future for me if I cannot paddle a canoe up the
big rivers any more."

"Perhaps you can paddle, Antoine, but not carry."

Antoine rose.  "In this world, who paddles must carry, monsieur.  Good
night, Mademoiselle Ccile.  Father Hector will be surprised to see how
you have grown.  He thinks a great deal about that good dinner you are
going to give him, I expect.  You ask him if it tastes as good as those
hares the Indian cooked for him when he was out with Frichette."



V

Father Hector Saint-Cyr was not long in following his messenger.  On
the day of his arrival in Kebec he stopped at the apothecary shop, but,
Auclair being out, he saw only Ccile, and they arranged that he should
come to dinner the following evening.

He came after hearing vespers at the Cathedral, attended to the door of
the pharmacy by a group of Seminarians, who always followed him about
when he was in town.  This was his first meeting with Auclair, and
there was a cordial moisture in the priest's eyes as he embraced his
old friend and kissed him on both cheeks.

"How many times on my way from Ville-Marie I have enjoyed this moment
in anticipation, Euclide," he declared.  "Only solitary men know the
full joys of friendship.  Others have their family; but to a solitary
and an exile his friends are everything."

Father Hector was the son of a noted family of Aix-en-Provence; his
good breeding and fine presence were by no means lost upon his Indian
parishioners at the Sault.  The savages, always scornful of meekness
and timidity, believed that a man was exactly what he looked.  They
used Father Hector better than any of his predecessors because he was
strong and fearless and handsome.  If he was humble before Heaven, he
was never so with his converts.  He took a high hand with them.  If one
were drunk or impertinent, he knocked him down.  More than once he had
given a drunken Indian a good beating, and the Indian had come and
thanked him afterwards, telling him he did quite right.

Ccile thought it a great honour to entertain a man like Father Hector
at their table, and she was much gratified by his frank enjoyment of
everything; of the fish soup with which she had taken such pains, and
the wood doves, cooked in a casserole with mushrooms and served with
wild rice.  Her father had brought up from the cellar a bottle of fine
old Burgundy which the Count had sent them for New Year's.  She
scarcely ate at all herself, for watching their guest.

When Auclair said that this dinner was to make up to Father Hector for
the one he missed on Epiphany, he laughed and protested that on
Epiphany he had dined very well.

"Smoked eels and cold lard--what more does a man want in the woods?  It
was on the day following that we began to feel the pinch,--and the next
day, and the next.  Frichette made a great fuss about it, but certainly
it was not the first time either he or I had gone hungry.  If one had
not been through little experiences of that kind, one would not know
how to enjoy a dinner like this."  He reached out and put his hand
lightly on Ccile's head.  "How I wish you could keep her from growing
up, Euclide!"

She blushed with joy at the touch of that large, handsome hand which
the Indians feared.

"Yes," he went on, looking about him, "these are great occasions in a
missionary's life.  The next time I am overtaken by a storm in the
woods, the recollection of this evening will be food and warmth to me.
I shall see it in memory as plainly as I see it now; this room, so like
at home, this table with everything as it should be; and, most of all,
the feeling of being with one's own kind.  How many times, out there, I
shall live over this evening again, with you and Ccile."  Father
Hector tasted his wine, inhaling it with a deep breath.  "Very clearly,
Euclide, it was arranged in Heaven that I should be a missionary in a
foreign land.  I am peculiarly susceptible to the comforts of the
fireside and to the charm of children.  If I were a teacher in the
college at home, where I have many young nieces and nephews, I should
be always planning for them.  I should sink into nepotism, the most
disastrous of the failings of the popes."

Auclair had to remind Ccile when it was time to bring in the dessert.
She had quite forgot where they were in the dinner, so intent was she
upon Father Hector's talk, upon watching his brown face and white
forehead, with a sweep of black hair standing out above it.

"And now, Ccile," said her father, "shall we tell Father Hector our
secret?  Next autumn the Count expects to return to France, and we go
with him.  We think you have been a missionary long enough; that it is
time for you to become a professor of rhetoric again.  We expect you to
go back with us,--or very soon afterwards."

Father Hector smiled, but shook his head.  "Ah, no.  Thank you, but no.
I have taken a vow that will spoil your plans for me.  I shall not
return to France."

Auclair had put his glass to his lips, but set it down untasted.  "Not
return?" he echoed.

"Not at all, Euclide; never."

"But when my wife was here, you both used to plan--"

"Ah, yes.  That was my temptation.  Now it is vanquished."  He sat for
a moment smiling.  Then he began resolutely:

"Listen, my friend.  No man can give himself heart and soul to one
thing while in the back of his mind he cherishes a desire, a secret
hope, for something very different.  You, as a student, must know that
even in worldly affairs nothing worth while is accomplished except by
that last sacrifice, the giving of oneself altogether and finally.
Since I made that final sacrifice, I have been twice the man I was
before."

Auclair felt disturbed, a little frightened.  "You have made a vow, you
say?  Is it irrevocable?"

"Irrevocable.  And what do you suppose gave me the strength to make
that decision?  Why, merely a good example!"  At this point Father
Hector glanced at Ccile and saw that she had almost ceased to breathe
in her excitement; that her eyes, in the candlelight, were no longer
blue, but black.  Again he put out his hand and touched her head.
"See, she understands me!  From the beginning women understand
devotion, it is a natural grace with them; they have only to learn
where to direct it.  Men have to learn everything.

"There was among the early missionaries, among the martyrs, one whom I
have selected for my especial reverence.  I mean Nol Chabanel,
Euclide.  He was not so great a figure as Brbeuf or Jogues or
Lalemant, but I feel a peculiar sympathy for him.  He perished, you
remember, in the great Iroquois raid of '49.  But his martyrdom was his
life, not his death.

"He was a little different from all the others,--equal to them in
desire, but not in fitness.  He was only thirty years of age when he
came, and was from Toulouse, that gracious city.

"Chabanel had been a professor of rhetoric like me, and like me he was
fond of the decencies, the elegancies of life.  From the beginning his
life in Canada was one long humiliation and disappointment.  Strange to
say, he was utterly unable to learn the Huron language, though he was a
master of Greek and Hebrew and spoke both Italian and Spanish.  After
five years of devoted study he was still unable to converse or to
preach in any Indian tongue.  He was sent out to the mission of Saint
Jean in the Tobacco nation, as helper to Father Charles Garnier.
Father Garnier, though not at all Chabanel's equal in scholarship, had
learned the Huron language so thoroughly that the Indians said there
was nothing more to teach him,--he spoke like one of themselves.

"His humiliating inability to learn the language was only one of poor
Chabanel's mortifications.  He had no love for his converts.
Everything about the savages and their mode of life was utterly
repulsive and horrible to him; their filth, their indecency, their
cruelty.  The very smell of their bodies revolted him to nausea.  He
could never feel toward them that long-suffering love which has been
the consolation of our missionaries.  He never became hardened to any
of the privations of his life, not even to the vermin and mosquitos
that preyed upon his body, nor to the smoke and smells in the savage
wigwams.  In his struggle to learn the language he went and lived with
the Indians, sleeping in their bark shelters, crowded with dogs and
dirty savages.  Often Father Chabanel would lie out in the snow until
he was in danger of a death self-inflicted, and only then creep inside
the wigwam.  The food was so hateful to him that one might say he lived
upon fasting.  The flesh of dogs he could never eat without becoming
ill, and even corn-meal boiled in dirty water and dirty kettles brought
on vomiting; so that he used to beg the women to give him a little
uncooked meal in his hand, and upon that he subsisted.

"The Huron converts were more brutal to him than to Father Garnier.
They were contemptuous of his backwardness in their language, and they
must have divined his excessive sensibility, for they took every
occasion to outrage it.  In the wigwam they tirelessly perpetrated
indecencies to wound him.  Once when a hunting party returned after a
long famine, they invited him to a feast of flesh.  After he had
swallowed the portion in his bowl, they pulled a human hand out of the
kettle to show him that he had eaten of an Iroquois prisoner.  He
became ill at once, and they followed him into the forest to make merry
over his retchings.

"But through all these physical sufferings, which remained as sharp as

on the first day, the greatest of his sufferings was an almost
continual sense of the withdrawal of God.  All missionaries have that
anguish at times, but with Chabanel it was continual.  For long months,
for a whole winter, he would exist in the forest, every human sense
outraged, and with no assurance of the nearness of God.  In those
seasons of despair he was constantly beset by temptation in the form of
homesickness.  He longed to leave the mission to priests who were
better suited to its hardships, to return to France and teach the
young, and to find again that peace of soul, that cleanliness and
order, which made him the master of his mind and its powers.
Everything that he had lost was awaiting him in France, and the
Director of Missions in Quebec had suggested his return.

"On Corpus Christi Day, in the fifth year of his labours in Canada and
the thirty-fifth of his age, he cut short this struggle and overcame
his temptation.  At the mission of Saint Matthias, in the presence of
the Blessed Sacrament exposed, he made a vow of perpetual stability
(_perpetuam stabilitatem_) in the Huron missions.  This vow he recorded
in writing, and he sent copies of it to his brethren in Kebec.

"Having made up his mind to die in the wilderness, he had not long to
wait.  Two years later he perished when the mission of Saint Jean was
destroyed by the Iroquois,--though whether he died of cold in his
flight through the forest, or was murdered by a faithless convert for
the sake of the poor belongings he carried on his back, was not surely
known.  No man ever gave up more for Christ than Nol Chabanel; many
gave all, but few had so much to give.

"It was perhaps in memory of his sufferings that I, in my turn, made a
vow of perpetual stability.  For those of us who are unsteadfast by
nature, who have other lawful loves than our devotion to our converts,
it is perhaps the safest way.  My sacrifice is poor compared with his.
I was able to learn the Indian languages; I have a house where I can,
at least, pray in solitude; I can keep clean, and am seldom hungry,
except by accident in the journeys I have to make.  But Nol
Chabanel--ah, when your faith is cold, think of him!  How can there be
men in France this day who doubt the existence of God, when for the
love of Him weak human beings have been able to endure so much?"

Ccile looked up at him in bewilderment.  "Are there such men, Father?"
she whispered.

"There are, my child,--but it is the better for you if you have never
heard of them."

Presently it was time that Father Hector should get back to Monseigneur
de Saint-Vallier's Palace, where he was lodged during his stay in
Quebec.

"And your books, Father Hector?  Will you not take them back to the
Sault with you?  If I leave Canada before you visit Quebec again, what
shall I do with them?"  Auclair opened a cabinet and pointed to a row
of volumes bound in vellum.  Father Hector's eyes brightened as he
looked at them, but he shook his head.

"No, I shall not take them this time.  If you go away, give them to
Monseigneur l'Ancien to keep for me.  If they could be eaten, or worn
on the back, he would give them to the poor, certainly.  But Greek and
Latin texts will be safe with him.  I will not say good-bye, for I
shall come tomorrow to lay in a supply of medicines for my mission."


After Auclair had disappeared behind his bed-curtains that night, he
lay awake a long while, regretting that a man with Father Hector's
gifts should decide to live and die in the wilderness, and wondering
whether there had not been a good deal of misplaced heroism in the
Canadian missions,--a waste of rare qualities which did nobody any good.

"Ah, well," he sighed at last, "perhaps that is the box of precious
ointment which was acceptable to the Saviour, and I am like the
disciples who thought it might have been used better in another way."

This solution allowed him to go to sleep.



VI

About the middle of March, soon after Father Hector's visit, the
weather went sick, as it were.  The air suddenly grew warm and
springlike, and for three days there was a continuous downpour of rain.
The deep snow drank it up like a thirsty sponge, but never melted.  Not
a patch of ground showed through, even on the hill-sides.  But the snow
darkened; everything grew grey like faintly smoked glass.  The ice in
the river broke up before Quebec, and olive-green water carried grey
islands of ice and snow slowly northward.  The great pine forests,
across the river and on the western sky-line, were no longer bronze,
but black.  The only colours in the world were black and white and
grey,--bewildering variations of clouded white and grey.  The
Laurentian mountains, to the north, sometimes showed a little blue in
their valleys, when the fogs thinned enough to let them be seen.  After
the interval of rain everything froze hard again and stayed
frozen,--but no fresh snow fell.  The white winter was gone.  Only the
smirched ruins of winter remained, mournful and bleak and impoverished,
frozen into enduring solidity.

Behind the Auclairs' little back yard and the baker's, the cliff ran up
to the Chteau in a perpendicular wall, and the face of it was
overgrown with wild cherry bushes and knotty little Canadian willows.
It was up there that one looked, from the back door, for the first sign
of spring.  But all through April those stumps and twigs were so
forbidding, so black and ugly, that Ccile often wondered whether
anything short of a miracle of the old-fashioned kind could ever make
the sap rise in them again.

A great many people in the town were sick at this time, and Ccile
herself caught a cold and was feverish.  Her father wrapped her in
blankets and made her sit with her feet in a hot mustard bath while she
drank a great quantity of sassafras tea.  Then he put her to bed and
entertained her with an account of the cures his father and grandfather
had effected with sassafras.  It was one of the medicinal plants of the
New World in which he had great faith.  It had been first brought to
Europe by Sir Walter Raleigh, he said, and had been for a time a very
popular remedy in France.  Even when it went out of fashion, the
pharmacy on the Quai des Clestins had remained loyal to it, and
continued to use sassafras after it became expensive because of
infrequent supply.  His father got it from London, where it still came
in occasional shipments from the Virginia colony.

Ccile was kept in bed for three days,--in her father's big bed, with
the curtains drawn back, while her father himself attended to all the
household duties.  He was an accomplished cook, and continual practice
in making medicines kept his hand expert in handling glass and
earthenware and in regulating heat.  He debated the advisability of
sending for Jeanette, the laundress, or of asking Madame Pigeon to come
in and help him.  "_Mais non, nous sommes plus tranquilles comme a_,"
he decided.  That was the important thing--tranquillity.  In the
evenings he read aloud to his daughter; and even when he was in the
shop, she could hear everything his clients had to say, so she was not
dull.  If her father was disengaged: for a moment, he came in to chat
with her.  They talked about Father Hector, and of how soon they could
hope for green salads in the market, and of whether it could be true
that Pierre Charron was home from the Great Lakes already, since there
was a rumour that he had been seen in Montreal.

It was a pleasant and a novel experience to lie warm in bed while her
father was getting dinner in the kitchen, and to feel no responsibility
at all; to listen to the drip of the rain, to watch the grey daylight
fade away in the salon, and the firelight grow redder and redder on the
old chairs and the sofa, on the gilt picture-frames and the brass
candlesticks.  But her mind roamed about the town and was dreamily
conscious of its activities and of the lives of her friends; of the
dripping grey roofs and spires, the lighted windows along the crooked
streets, the great grey river choked with ice and frozen snow, the
never-ending, merciless forest beyond.  All these things seemed to her
like layers and layers of shelter, with this one flickering, shadowy
room at the core.

They dined on the little table beside the bed (as they so often
breakfasted even when she was well), and after dinner her father closed
the door so that she would not be disturbed by the noise he made in
washing the dishes, or even by Blinker's visit.  It was while he was
thus alone in the kitchen that he had, one evening, a strange interview
with Blinker.

When Blinker had finished his tasks, he asked timidly if monsieur would
please give him a little of that medicine again, to make him sleep.

Auclair looked at him doubtfully.

"How long is it you have not been sleeping?"

"Oh, a long time!  Please, monsieur, give me something."

"Sit down, Jules.  What is the matter?  You are strong and healthy.
You do not overeat.  I cannot understand why you have this trouble.
Perhaps you have something on your mind."

"Perhaps."

"That will often keep one awake.  I am not a man to meddle, but if you
told me what worries you, I should know better what to do for you."

Blinker's head drooped.  He looked very miserable.

"Monsieur, I am an unfortunate man.  If I told you, you might put me
out."

"You have told your confessor?"

"It was not a sin.  Not what they call a sin.  It was a misfortune."

"Well, we will never put you out, Jules, be sure of that."

Blinker, with his hands knotted on his knees, seemed to be trying to
bring something up out of himself.  "Monsieur," he said at last, "I am
unfortunate.  I was brought up to a horrible trade.  I was a torturer
in the King's prison at Rouen."

Auclair started, but he caught himself quickly.

"Well, Jules," he said quietly, "that, too, is the King's service."

"_Sale service, monsieur_," the poor wretch exclaimed bitterly, "_sale
mtier_!  It was my father who did those things,--he was under the
chief, he had to do it.  I was afraid of him, for he was a hard man.  I
had no chance to learn another trade.  Nobody wanted the prison folks
about.  In the street people would curse us.  My father gave me brandy
when he made me help him, all I could hold.  He said it was right to
punish the wicked, but I could never get used to it.  Then something
dreadful happened."  Blinker was shivering all over.

Auclair poured him a glass of spirits and put some more wood into the
stove.  "You had better get it out, my boy.  That will help you," he
told him.

Hard as it was for Blinker to talk, he managed to tell his story.  In
Rouen there was a rough sort of woman who lived down near the river and
did washing.  She was honest, but quarrelsome; her neighbours didn't
like her.  She had a little son who was a bad boy, and she often
thrashed him.  When he grew older, he struck back, and they used to
fight, to the great annoyance of the neighbours.  One summer this boy
disappeared.  A search was made for him.  His mother was examined, and
contradicted herself.  The neighbours remembered hearing angry shouts
and a smashing of bottles one night; they began to say she had done
away with him.  Someone made an accusation.  The laundress was taken
before the examiners again, but was sullen and refused to talk.  She
was put to the torture.  After half an hour she broke down and
confessed that she had killed her son, had put his body into a sack
with stones and dragged it to the river.  A few weeks later she was
hanged.

Not long afterwards Blinker began to have trouble with his lower jaw,
some decomposition of the bone; pieces of bone came out through his
cheek.  For weeks he never lay down, but walked the floor all night.
Sometimes when he was full of brandy, he could doze in a chair for half
an hour.

But he had another misery, harder to bear than his jaw.  This was the
first time he had ever suffered great pain, and ghosts began to haunt
him.  The faces of people he had put to torture rose before him, faces
he had long forgotten.  When everybody else was asleep, he could think
of nothing but those faces.  He told himself it was the law of the land
and must be right; someone had to do it.  But they never gave him any
peace.

The suppuration in his jaw stopped at last.  The scars on his face had
begun to heal, when that murdered boy came back,--walked insolently in
the streets of Rouen.  The truth came out.  After his quarrel with his
mother he had hidden himself away on a boat tied up to the wharf, had
got to Le Havre undiscovered, and there shipped as _mousse_ on a bark
bound for the West Indies.  He made the voyage and came home.

Blinker began to walk the floor at night again, just as when his jaw
was at its worst.  How many of the others had been innocent?  He could
never get the big washerwoman's screams out of his ears.  He would have
made away with himself then, but he was afraid of being punished after
death.  If he dropped asleep from exhaustion, he would dream of her.
He had only one hope; that miserable boy's adventure had put a thought
into his head.  If he could get away to a new country, where nobody
knew him for the executioner's son, perhaps he would leave all that
behind and forget it.  That was why he had come to Kebec.  But
sometimes, he never knew when or why, these things would rise up out of
the past ... faces ... voices ... even words, things they had said.

"They are inside me, monsieur, I carry them with me." Blinker closed
his eyes and slowly dropped his head forward on his hands.

"Your sickness was a good chance for you, my poor fellow.  Suffering
teaches us compassion.  There are some in Kebec, in high places, who
have not learned that yet.  If Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier had ever
known chagrin and disappointment, he would not cross the old Bishop as
he does.  I will give you something to make you sleep tomorrow, but
afterwards you will not need anything.  When God sent you that
affliction in your face, he showed his mercy to you.  And, by the way,
who is your confessor?"

"Father Sbastien, at the Rcollets'.  But I have wanted to tell you,
monsieur, ever since All Souls' Eve.  I came back late with my buckets,
and the door there was a little open,--you were telling Ma'm'selle
about the old man who stole the brass pots.  I wanted to make away with
myself--but you said something.  You said the law was wrong, not us
poor creatures.  Monsieur, I never hurt an animal to amuse myself, as
some do.  I was brought up to that trade."  Blinker stopped and wiped
the sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve.

The poor fellow had begun to give off a foul odour, as creatures do
under fear or anguish.  Auclair watched with amazement the twisted face
he saw every day above an armful of wood,--grown as familiar to him as
an ugly piece of furniture,--now become altogether strange; it brought
to his mind terrible weather-worn stone faces on the churches at
home,--figures of the tormented in scenes of the Last Judgment.  He
hastened to measure out a dose of laudanum.  After Blinker had gone out
of the kitchen door, he made the sign of the cross over his own heart
before he blew out the candle and went in to his daughter.

Ccile was flushed and excited; she had been crying, he saw.

"Oh father, why were you so long with Blinker, and what was he telling
you?  He sounded so miserable!"

Her father put her head back on the pillow and smoothed her hair.  "He
was telling me all his old troubles, my dear, and when you are well
again, I will tell them to you.  We must be very kind to him.  Your
mother was right when she said there was no harm in him.  Tomorrow I
will go to Father Sbastien, and between us we will cure his distress."

"Then it was not a crime?  You know some people say he was in the
galleys in France."

"No, he was never in the galleys.  He was one of the unfortunate of
this world.  You remember, when Queen Dido offers neas hospitality,
she says: _Having known misery, I have learned to pity the miserable_.
Our poor wood-carrier is like Queen Dido."


The next morning Ccile's recovery began.  As soon as she had drunk her
chocolate, her father brought a pair of woollen stockings and told her
to put them on.  When she looked up at him wonderingly, he said:

"I have something to show you."

He wrapped her in a blanket, took her up in his arms, and carried her
into the kitchen, where the back door stood open.

"Look out yonder," he said, "and presently you will see something."

She looked out at the dreary cliff-side with its black, frozen bushes
and dirty snow, and long, grey icicles hanging from the jagged rocks.
She wondered if there could be yellow buds on the willows, perhaps; but
they were still naked, like stiff black briars.

Suddenly there was a movement up there, a flicker of something swift
and slender in the grey light, against the grey, granulated snow,--then
a twitter, a scolding anxious protest.  Now she knew why her father had
smiled so confidently when he lifted her out of bed.

"Oh, Papa, it is our swallow!  Then the spring is coming!  Nothing can
keep it back now."  She put her head down on his shoulder and cried a
little.  He pretended not to notice it, but stood holding her fast,
patting her back, so muffled in folds of blanket.

"She is hunting her old nest, up among the crags.  I cannot see whether
it is still there.  But if it has been blown away, she can easily build
herself another.  She can get mud, because there is a thaw every day
now about noon, and the dead leaves are sticking up wherever the snow
melts."

"Is she the only one?  Is she all alone?"

"She is the only one here this morning, but her friends will be close
behind.  Listen, how she scolds!"

"Father," said Ccile suddenly, "where has she been, our swallow?
Where, do you think?"

"Oh, far away in the South!  Somewhere down there where Robert de La
Salle was murdered.  By the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps."

"And in France where do the swallows go in winter?"

"Very far.  Across the Mediterranean to Algrie, where the oranges
grow."

"Has our swallow been where there are oranges?  Do they grow by the
Gulf of Mexico?  Oh, Papa, I wish I could see an orange, on its little
tree!"

"You will see them when we go home.  There are fine old orange-trees
growing under glass in our own parish, and they are brought out into
the courtyards in summer."

"But couldn't we possibly grow one here in Quebec?  The Jesuits have
such great warm cellars; I am sure they could, if they tried."

Her father laughed as he carried her back to bed.  "I am afraid not
even the Jesuits could do that!  Now I am going to leave you for a
little while.  I will put a card on the door announcing that we are
closed until noon.  You are so much better, that I can make my visit to
the Htel Dieu this morning."

"And on your way, Papa, will you stop and tell Monseigneur l'Ancien
that our swallow has come?  For his book, you know."

Ever since he first came out to Canada, old Bishop Laval had kept a
brief weather record, noting down the date of the first snowfall, when
the river froze over, the nights of excessive cold, the storms and the
great thaws.  And for nearly forty years now he had faithfully recorded
the return of the swallow.




_BOOK IV_

_PIERRE CHARRON_



BOOK FOUR

_PIERRE CHARRON_


I

It was the first day of June.  Before dawn a wild calling and
twittering of birds in the bushes on the cliff-side above the
apothecary's back door announced clear weather.  When the sun came up
over the le d'Orlans, the rock of Kebec stood gleaming above the
river like an altar with many candles, or like a holy city in an old
legend, shriven, sinless, washed in gold.  The quickening of all life
and hope which had come to France in May had reached the far North at
last.  That morning the Auclairs drank their chocolate with all the
doors and windows open.

Euclide was at his desk, making up little packets of saffron flowers to
flavour fish soups, when a slender man in buckskins, with a quick
swinging step, crossed the threshold and embraced him before he had
time to rise.  He was not a big fellow, this Pierre Charron, hero of
the fur trade and the coureurs de bois, not above medium height, but
quick as an otter and always sure of himself.  When Auclair, after
returning his embrace with delight, drew back to look at him and asked
him how he was, he threw up his chin and answered:

"_Je me porte bien, comme toujours._"

"And have you had a good winter, Pierre?"

"But yes.  I always have a good winter, monsieur.  I see to it."

"And how do you happen to be down so early?"

Charron's face changed.  He frowned.  "That is not so good.  My mother
was ailing.  They brought me word, out to Michilimackinac, so I
returned to Montreal in March.  She was better; the Sisters of the
Congregation had been taking care of her.  But I did not leave her
again.  No one can nurse her so well as I.  I stayed at home and let
the other fellows have my spring trade this year.  I can afford it."

"But I must hear about your mother's ailment, my son; and first let me
call Ccile.  She will not want to lose even a minute of your visit."

Auclair went back to the kitchen, and Ccile ran in without stopping to
take off her _tablier_.  It flashed across Pierre that she was perhaps
growing too tall to be kissed.  But she was quicker than his thought,
threw her arms about his neck, and gave him the glad kiss of welcome.

"Oh, Pierre Charron, I am delighted at you, Pierre Charron!"

He stood laughing, holding both her hands and swinging them back and
forth in a rhythm of some sort, so that though they were standing
still, they seemed to be dancing.  Ccile was laughing, too, as
children do where they never have been afraid or uncertain.  "Oh,
Pierre, have you been to the great falls again, and Michilimackinac?"

"Everywhere, everywhere!"  He swung her hands faster and faster.

"And you will tell me about the big beaver towns?"

"Gently, Ccile," her father interposed.  "Pierre's mother has been
ill, and he will tell us first about her.  What was it like this time,
my boy, a return of her old complaint?"  The one long journey Auclair
had ever made away from Quebec since he landed here was to go up to
Montreal in Pierre's shallop to examine and prescribe for Madame
Charron.

From his first meeting with him, Auclair had loved this restless boy
(he was a boy then) who shot up and down the swift rivers of Canada in
his canoe; who was now at Niagara, now at the head of Lake Ontario, now
at the Sault Sainte Marie on his way into the fathomless forbidding
waters of Lake Superior.  To both Auclair and Madame Auclair, Pierre
Charron had seemed the type they had come so far to find; more than
anyone else he realized the romantic picture of the free Frenchman of
the great forests which they had formed at home on the bank of the
Seine.  He had the good manners of the Old World, the dash and daring
of the New.  He was proud, he was vain, he was relentless when he
hated, and quickly prejudiced; but he had the old ideals of
clan-loyalty, and in friendship he never counted the cost.  His goods
and his life were at the disposal of the man he loved or the leader he
admired.  Though his figure was still boyish, his face was full of
experience and sagacity; a fine bold nose, a restless, rather
mischievous mouth, white teeth, very strong and even, sparkling hazel
eyes with a kind of living flash in them, like the sunbeams on the
bright rapids upon which he was so skilful.

Pierre's father, a soldier of fortune from Languedoc, had done well in
the fur trade and built himself a comfortable dwelling in Montreal, on
Saint Paul street, next the house of Jacques Le Ber.  Pierre was almost
exactly the same age as Le Ber's daughter, Jeanne; the two children had
been playmates and had learned their catechism together.  After
Pierre's father was drowned in a storm on Lake Ontario, Jacques Le Ber
took the son into his employ to train him for the fur business.  Of all
the suitors for Mademoiselle Le Ber's hand Pierre was thought to have
the best chance of success, and the merchant would have liked him for a
son-in-law.  At the time when Mademoiselle Le Ber, then fifteen, came
home from her schooling in Quebec, Pierre was her father's clerk and
was often at the house.  She had seemed favourably disposed toward him.
It was an old story in Montreal that after Jeanne took her first vow
and immured herself in her father's house, disappointment had driven
young Charron into the woods.  He had learned the Indian languages as a
child, and the Indians liked and trusted him, as they had liked his
father.  All along the Great Lakes, as far as Michilimackinac, he had a
name among them for courage and fair dealing, for a loyal friend and a
relentless enemy.  Every year he gave half the profits of his ventures
to his mother; the rest he squandered on drink and women and new guns,
as his comrades did.  But in Montreal his behaviour was always
exemplary, out of respect to his mother.

After accepting Auclair's invitation to come to supper that evening,
Charron said he must go to Nol Pommier to order a pair of hard
boots,--he was wearing moccasins.  "And will you come along, little
monkey?" he asked, making a face.  When Ccile was little, he had
always called her his _petit singe_.

She glanced eagerly at her father.  He nodded.  "Run along, and give my
respects to Madame Pommier."

Ccile slipped her hand into Charron's, and they went out into the
street.  Across the way, they saw Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier in his
garden, directing some workmen who were apparently building an arbour
for him.

"I see your grand neighbour has come home," Pierre observed.

"Oh yes, last September.  But you must have heard?  People say he
brought such beautiful things for his house; furniture and paintings
and tapestry and silver dishes.  Wouldn't you love to see the inside of
his Palace?"

"Not a bit!  He is too French for me."  Charron threw up his chin.

Ccile laughed.  "But my father is French, and so is Father Hector; you
like them."

"Oh, that is different.  But the man over there goes against me.  He
smells of Versailles.  The old man is my Bishop.  But I could do
without any of them."

"Hush, Pierre Charron!  You are foolish to quarrel with the priests.  I
love Father Hector.  You can't say he isn't a brave man."

Pierre shrugged.  "Oh, he is brave enough.  All the same, he's a little
too Frenchified for me.  You and I are Canadians, monkey.  We were born
here."

"Why, I wasn't at all!  You know that."

"Well, if you weren't, you couldn't help it.  You got here early.  You
were very little when I first saw you with your mother.  Ccile, every
autumn, before I start for the woods, I have a mass said at the
_paroisse_ in Ville-Marie for madame your mother."

Ccile pressed his hand softly and drew closer to him.  Whenever
Charron spoke of her mother, or of his own, his voice lost its tone of
banter; he became respectful, serious, simple.  It was clear enough
that for him the family was the first and final thing in the human lot;
and it was so engrafted with religion that he could only say: "Very
well; religion for the fireside, freedom for the woods."

As they passed the end of the long Seminary building, the door of the
garden stood open, and within they saw Bishop Laval, walking up and
down the sanded paths, his breviary open in his hand.  It was a very
small garden; a grass plot in the centre, a row of Lombardy poplars
along the wall, some lilac bushes, now in bloom, a wooden seat with no
back under a crooked quince-tree.  The old man caught sight of Pierre,
though he walked so noiselessly,--beckoned to him and called out his
name.  The Bishop knew everyone along the river so well that it was
said he could recognize a lost child by the family look in its face.

Pierre snatched off his cap and they went inside the garden door.
Monseigneur inquired after the health of Madame Charron, and of the
aged nun Marguerite Bourgeoys.  And had Pierre heard whether
Mademoiselle Le Ber was in health?

Not directly.  He supposed she was as usual; he had heard nothing to
the contrary.

The Bishop breathed heavily, like a tired horse.  "All the sinners of
Ville-Marie may yet be saved by the prayers of that devoted girl," he
said with a certain meaning in his tone.  "And you, my son, have you
been to your confessor since your return from the woods?"

Pierre said respectfully that he had.  The Bishop then turned to Ccile
and placed his hand upon her head, with the rare smile which always
seemed a little sad on his grim features.

"And here we have a child who borrows money,--and of a poor priest,
too!  Why did you never come to pay me back my twenty sous?"

"But Monseigneur l'Ancien, I gave them to Houssart, the very day after!"

"I know you did, my child, but I should have liked it better if you had
come to me when you paid your debt.  You are not afraid of me?"

"Oh, no, Monseigneur!  But you are always occupied, and I did not know
whether you liked to have children come."

"I do.  I like it very much.  Make me a visit here in my garden some
morning at this hour, and I will share my lilacs with you; they are
coming on now.  Bring the little boy, if you like.  I hear from the
Pommiers that you and your father are making a good boy of him, and
that is very commendable in you."

During the rest of the short walk to the cobbler's, Pierre asked what
the Bishop meant by the twenty sous, but he seemed to pay little
attention to the story; he was rather overcast, indeed.  It was not
until he greeted Madame Pommier that he recovered his high spirits.



II

For Charron, that evening, the apothecary brought up from his cellar
some fiery Bordeaux, proper for a son of Languedoc, and the hours flew
by.  After Ccile had said good-night and gone upstairs to her summer
bed-room, the two men talked on until after midnight; of the woods, of
the state of the fur trade, of the results of the Count's last Indian
campaign, and the ingratitude of the King, who had rewarded his
services so inadequately.

Pierre lost his reserve after a bottle or two of fine Gaillac, and the
conversation presently took a very personal turn.  Auclair, in speaking
of Madame Charron's illness, remarked that it was fortunate she had
such nurses at hand as the Sisters of the Congregation.

"Oh, yes, they took good care of her, to be sure," Pierre admitted.
"And why not?  By Heaven, they owe me something, those women!  Fifty
thousand gold cus, perhaps!"

"Charron," said his host reprovingly, "you do yourself wrong to pretend
that you are chagrined at having lost that dowry.  You are not a
mean-spirited man.  You have never cared much about money."

"Perhaps not, but I care about defeat.  If the venerable Bourgeoys had
not got hold of that girl in her childhood and overstrained her with
fasts and penances, she would be a happy mother today, not sleeping in
a stone cell like a prisoner.  There are plenty of girls, ugly, poor,
stupid, awkward, who are made for such a life.  It was bad enough when
she was shut up in her father's house; but now she is no better than
dead.  Worse."

"Still, if it is the life she desires, and if her father can bear it--"

"Oh, her father, poor man!  I do not like to meet him on the
street,--and he does not like to meet me.  I recall to him the days
when she first came home from Quebec and used to be at her mother's
side, at the head of a long table full of good company, always looking
out for everyone, saying the right thing to everyone.  It did his eyes
good to look at her.  He was never the same man after she shut herself
away.  I was in his employ then, and I know.  He used to talk to me and
say: It is like a fever; it will burn itself out in time.  We shall all
be happy again.'  This went on three years, and he was always hoping.
But not I.  I saw her before I broke away to the woods, though.  I made
sure."

Pierre took out a pouch of strong Indian tobacco, pulverized it in his
brown palm, and put it into his pipe.  He drew the smoke in deep, like
a man overwrought.  Auclair had meant to bring out some old brandy to
flavour their talk, but he thought: "No, better not."  Aloud he said:

"You mean that you had an interview with Mademoiselle Le Ber after she
went into retreat?"

"Call it an interview.  I made sure."  Charron took the pipe out of his
mouth and spoke rapidly.  "It was in the fourth year of her retreat.  I
had lost hope, but I wanted to know.  She always went out of the house
to early mass.  One morning in the spring, when it gets light early, I
went to the narrow alle between her garden and the church and waited
there under an apple-tree that hung over the wall.  When she came along
with her old servant, I stepped out in front of her and spoke.  Ah,
that was a beautiful moment for me!  She had not changed.  She did not
shrink away from me or reproach me.  She was gracious and gentle, as
always, and at her ease.  She put back her grey veil as we talked, and
looked me in the eyes.  There was still colour in her cheeks,--not rosy
as she used to be, but her face was fresh and soft, like the apple
blossoms on that tree where we stood.  She had no hard word for me.
She said she was glad of a chance to see me again and to bid me
farewell; she meant to renew her vows when the five years were over,
and we should never meet again.  When I began to cry,--I was young
then,--and knelt down before her, she put her hand on my head; she did
not fear me or the few people who hurried past us into the
church,--they seemed frightened enough at such a sight, but she was
calm.  She told me it would be better if I left her father, and that I
must marry.  _I will always pray for you, she said, and when you have
children, I will pray for them.  As long as we are both in this world,
you may know I pray for you every day; that God may preserve you from
sudden death without repentance, and that we may meet in heaven._"

Charron sat silent for a moment, then bent over the candle and lit his
pipe, which had gone out.  "You know, monsieur, three times in the
woods my comrades have thought it was all over with me; a powder
explosion, my canoe going down under me in the rapids, and then the
gunshot wound I had in the Count's last campaign.  I have remembered
that promise; for I have certainly been delivered from sudden death.  I
remember, too, her voice when she said those words,--it was still her
own voice, which made people love to go to her father's house, and one
felt gay if she but spoke one's name.  And now it is harsh and hollow
like an old crow's--terrible to hear!"

Auclair began to wonder whether Pierre might have had anything to drink
before he came to dinner.  "Now you are talking wildly, my boy.  We
cannot know what her voice is like now."

"I know," said Charron sullenly.  He crossed the room to the door of
the enclosed staircase, and examined it to see that it was shut.  "The
little one cannot hear, up there?  No?"  He sat down and leaned
forward, his elbows on the table.  "I know.  I have heard her.  I have
seen her."

"Pierre, you have not done anything irreverent, that the nuns will
never forgive?"  Auclair was alarmed by the very thought that the sad
solitaire, who asked for nothing on this earth but solitude, had
perhaps been startled.

Charron was too much excited and too sorry for himself at that moment
to notice his friend's apprehensions.

"It was like this," he went on presently.  "You know, because of my
mother, this year I got back to Montreal early, months before my time.
There is not much to do there, God knows, except to be a pig, and I
never behave like dirt in my mother's town.  We live so near the chapel
of the Congregation that I can never get the recluse out of my mind.
You remember there were two weeks of terrible cold in March, and it
made me wretched to think of her walled up there.  No, don't
misunderstand me!"  Charron's eyes came back from their far-away point
of vision and fixed intently, distrustfully, on his friend's face.
"All that is over; one does not love a woman who has been dead for
nearly twenty years.  But there is such a thing as kindness; one
wouldn't like to think of a dog that had been one's playfellow, much
less a little girl, suffering from cold those bitter nights.  You see,
there are all those early memories; one cannot get another set; one has
but those."  Pierre's voice choked, because something had come out by
chance, thus, that he had never said to himself before.  The candles
blurred before Auclair a little, too.  God was a witness, he murmured,
that he knew the truth of Pierre's remark only too well.

After he had relit his pipe and smoked a little, Charron continued.
"You know she goes into the church to pray before the altar at
midnight.  Well, I hid myself in the church and saw her.  It is not
difficult for a man who has lived among the Indians; you slide into the
chapel when an old sacristan is locking up after vespers, and stay
there behind a pillar as long as you choose.  It was a long wait.  I
had my fur jacket on and a flask of brandy in my pocket, and I needed
both.  God's Name, is there any place so cold as churches?  I had to
move about to keep from aching all over,--but, of course, I made no
noise.  There was only the sanctuary lamp burning, until the moon came
round and threw some light in at the windows.  I knew when it must be
near midnight, you get to have a sense of time in the woods.  I hid
myself behind a pillar at the back of the church.  I felt a little
nervous, sorry I had come, perhaps.--At last I heard a latch lift,--you
could have heard a rabbit breathe in that place.  The iron grille
beside the altar began to move outward.  She came in, carrying a
candle.  She wore a grey gown, and a black scarf on her head, but no
veil.  The candle shone up into her face.  It was like a stone face; it
had been through every sorrow."

Charron stopped and crossed himself.  He shut his eyes and dropped his
head in his hands.  "My friend, I could remember a face!--I could
remember Jeanne in her little white furs, when I used to pull her on my
sled.  Jacques Le Ber would have burned Montreal down to keep her warm.
He meant to give her every joy in the world, and she has thrown the
world away....  She put down her candle and went toward the high altar.
She walked very slowly, with great dignity.  At first she prayed aloud,
but I scarcely understood her.  My mind was confused; her voice was so
changed,--hoarse, hollow, with the sound of despair in it.  Why is she
unhappy, I ask you?  She is, I know it!  When she prayed in silence,
such sighs broke from her.  And once a groan, such as I have never
heard; such despair--such resignation and despair!  It froze everything
in me.  I felt that I would never be the same man again.  I only wanted
to die and forget that I had ever hoped for anything in this world.

"After she had bowed herself for the last time, she took up her candle
and walked toward that door, standing open.  I lost my head and
betrayed myself.  I was well hidden, but she heard me sob.

"She was not startled.  She stood still, with her hand on the latch of
the grille, and turned her head, half-facing me.  After a moment she
spoke.

"_Poor sinner_, she said, _poor sinner, whoever you are, may God have
mercy upon you!  I will pray for you.  And do you pray for me also._

"She walked on and shut the grille behind her.  I turned the key in the
church door and let myself out.  No man was ever more miserable than I
was that night."



III

Ever since Ccile could remember, she had longed to go over to the le
d'Orlans.  It was only about four miles down the river, and from the
slopes of Cap Diamant she could watch its fields and pastures come
alive in the spring, and the bare trees change from purple-grey to
green.  Down the middle of the island ran a wooded ridge, like a
backbone, and here and there along its flanks were cleared spaces,
cultivated ground where the islanders raised wheat and rye.  Seen from
the high points of Quebec, the island landscape looked as if it had
been arranged to please the eye,--full of folds and wrinkles like a
crumpled table-cloth, with little fields twinkling above the dark
tree-tops.  The climate was said to be more salubrious than that of
Quebec, and the soil richer.  All the best vegetables and garden fruits
in the market came from the le, and the wild strawberries of which
Ccile's father was so fond.  Giorgio, the drummer boy, had often told
her how well the farmers lived over there; and about the great
eel-fishings in the autumn, when the islanders went out at night with
torches and seined eels by the thousand.

Pierre Charron had a friend on the island, Jean Baptiste Harnois, the
smith of Saint-Laurent, and he meant to go over and pay him a visit
this summer, before he went back to Montreal.  He had promised to take
Ccile along,--every time he came to the shop, he reminded her that
they were to make this excursion.  One fine morning in the last week of
June he dropped in to say that the wind was right, and he would start
for the island in about an hour, to be gone for three days.

Very well, Auclair told him, Ccile would be ready.

"But three days, father!" she exclaimed; "can you manage for yourself
so long?  You bought so many things at the market for me to cook."

"I can manage.  You must go by all means.  You may not have such a
chance again."

"Good," said Pierre.  "I will be back in an hour.  And she must bring a
warm coat; it will be cold out on the water."

Ccile had never gone on a voyage before,--had never slept a night away
from home, except during the Phips bombardment, when she and her mother
had taken refuge at the Ursuline convent, along with the other women
and children from the Lower Town.

"What shall I take with me, Father?  I am so distracted I cannot think!"

"The little valise that was your mother's will hold your things.  You
will need a night-gown, and a pair of stockings, and a clean cotton
blouse, and some handkerchiefs; I should think that would be all.  And
I will give you a package of raisins as a present for Madame Harnois."

She ran upstairs and began to pack her mother's bag, finding it hard to
assemble her few things in her excitement.

"Are you ready, Ccile?" her father presently called from the foot of
the stairs.

"I am not sure, Father--I think so.  I wish I had known yesterday."

"Then you would not have slept all night.  Come along, and I will put
the raisins in your valise."

Pierre was waiting, seated on the long table that served as a counter.
Her father looked into her bag to see that she had the proper things,
then handed it to him.  Ccile put on her cap and coat.  Auclair kissed
her and wished them bon voyage.  "Take good care of her, Pierre."

Pierre touched his hand to his black forelock.  "As you would yourself,
monsieur."  He pushed Ccile out of the door before him.

"Papa," she called back, "you will not forget to keep the fire under
the soup?  It has been on only an hour."

Pierre's boat was a light shallop with one sail.  He rowed out far
enough to catch the breeze and then sat in the stern, letting the wind
and current carry them.  He had made a change in his clothes during the
hour he was absent from the shop, Ccile noticed (later in the day she
wondered why!), had put on a white linen shirt and knotted a new red
silk neckerchief about his throat.  He soon took off his knitted cap,
lit his pipe, and lounged at his ease.  On one shore stretched the dark
forest, on the other the smiling, sunny fields that ran toward Beaupr.
Behind them the Lower Town grew smaller and smaller; the rock of Kebec
lost its detail until they could see only Cap Diamant, and the Chteau,
and the spires of the churches.  The sunlight on the river made a
silver glare all about the boat, and from the water itself came a deep
rhythmic sound, like something breathing.

"Think of it, Pierre, in all these years I have never been on the river
before!"  Such a stretch of lost opportunity as life seemed just then!

Pierre smiled.  "Not so many years, at that!  Your father is
over-cautious, maybe, but squalls come up suddenly on this river, and
most of these young fellows had as lief drown as not.  I'd rather you
never went with anyone but me.  If you like it, you can go with me any
time."

"But I'd like to go the other way,--to Montreal, and up those rivers
that are full of rapids.  I want to go as far as Michilimackinac."

"Some time, perhaps.  We'll see how you like roughing it."

Ccile asked what he had in the stone jug she saw in the bow, along
with his blanket and buckskin coat.

"That is brandy, for the smith.  But it will come back full of good
country wine.  He makes it from wild grapes.  The wild grapes on the
island are the best in Canada; Jacques Cartier named it the le de
Bacchus because he found such fine grapes growing in the woods.  That
ought to please you, with all your Latin!"

"Are you like Mother Juschereau, do you think it wrong for a girl to
know Latin?"

"Not if she can cook a hare or a partridge as well as Mademoiselle
Auclair!  She may read all the Latin she pleases.  But I expect you
won't like the food at the Harnois', _ la campagnarde_, you
know,--they cook everything in grease.  As for me, it doesn't matter.
When you can go to an Indian feast and eat dogs boiled with
blueberries, you can eat anything."

Ccile shuddered.  "I don't see how you can do it, Pierre.  I should
think it would be easier to starve."

"Oh, do you, my dear?  Try starving once; it's a long business.  I've
known the time when dog meat cooked in a dirty pot seemed delicious!
But the worst food I ever swallowed was what they call _tripe de
roche_.  I went out to Lac la Mort with some Frenchmen early in the
spring once.  They were a green lot, and they let most of our
provisions get stolen on the way.  As soon as we reached the lake, we
were caught in a second winter; a heavy snow, and everything frozen.
No game, no fish.  We had to fall back on _tripe de roche_.  It's a
kind of moss that grows on the rocks along the lake, something like a
sponge; the cold doesn't kill it, when everything else is frozen hard
as iron.  You gather it and boil it, and it's not so bad as it goes
down,--tastes like any boiled weed.  But afterwards--oh, what a
stomach-ache!  The men sat round tied up in a knot.  We had about a
week of that stuff.  We scraped the hair off our bear skins and roasted
them, that time.  But it's a truth, monkey, I wouldn't like a country
where things were too soft.  I like a cold winter, and a hot summer.
My father used to boast that in Languedoc you were never out of sight
of a field or a vineyard.  That would mean people everywhere around
you, always watching you!  No hunting,--they put you in jail if you
shoot a partridge.  Even the fish in the streams belong to somebody.
I'd be in prison in a week there."

The settlement at Saint-Laurent was Pierre's destination.  After he had
passed the point at Saint-Petronille and turned into the south channel,
a sweet, warm odour blew out from the shore, very like the smell of
ripe strawberries.  Each time the boat passed a little cove, this
fragrance grew stronger, the air seemed saturated with it.  All the
early explorers wrote with much feeling about these balmy odours that
blew out from the Canadian shores,--nothing else seemed to stir their
imagination so much.  That fragrance is really the aromatic breath of
spruce and pine, given out under the hot sun of noonday, but the early
navigators believed it was the smell of luscious unknown fruits, wafted
out to sea.

When Pierre had made a landing and tied his boat, they went up the path
to the smith's house, to find the family at dinner.  They were warmly
received and seated at the dinner-table.  The smith had no son, but
four little girls.  After dinner Ccile went off into the fields with
them to pick wild strawberries.  She had never seen so many wild
flowers before.  The daisies were drifted like snow in the tall meadow
grass, and all the marshy hollows were thatched over with buttercups,
so clean and shining, their yellow so fresh and unvarying, that it
seemed as if they must all have been born that morning at the same
hour.  The clumps of blue and purple iris growing in these islands of
buttercups made a sight almost too wonderful.  All the afternoon Ccile
thought she was in paradise.

The little girls did not bother her much.  They were timid with a guest
from town and talked very little.  Two of them had been to Quebec, and
even to her father's shop, and they asked her about the stuffed baby
alligator, where it came from.  They wanted to know, too, why her
father bought so many pigs' bladders in the market.  Did he eat them,
or did he fill them with sausage meat?  Ccile explained that he washed
and dried them, and when people were sick, he filled the bladders with
hot water and put them on the sore place, to ease the pain.

The little girls wore moccasins, but no stockings, and their brown legs
were badly marked by brier scratches and mosquito bites.  When they
showed her the pigs and geese and tame rabbits, they kept telling her
about peculiarities of animal behaviour which she thought it better
taste to ignore.  They called things by very unattractive names, too.
Ccile was not at all sure that she liked these children with pale eyes
and hay-coloured hair and furtive ways.

At supper she was glad to see Pierre and the genial blacksmith again,
but the kitchen where they ate was very hot and close, for Madame
Harnois shut all the doors and windows to keep out the mosquitos.
There were mosquitos at home, on Mountain Hill, too, but her father
drove them away by making a smudge of eucalyptus balls, which were sent
to him from France every year.

The family went to bed early, and after darkness had shut off the
country about them, and bedtime was approaching, Ccile felt uneasy and
afraid of something.  Pierre had brought his own blanket, and said he
would sleep in the hayloft.  She wished she could follow him, and with
a sinking heart heard him go whistling across the wagon-yard.

There were only three rooms in this house, the kitchen and two
bedrooms.  In one of these slept the smith and his wife.  In the other
was a wide, low bed made of split poles, and there slept all the four
daughters.  There, Ccile soon gathered, she too must sleep!  The
mother told them to give Ccile the outside place in the bed, for
manners.  Slowly she undressed and put on her nightgown.  The little
Harnois girls took off their frocks and tumbled into bed in their
chemises,--they told her they only wore night-gowns in winter.  When
they kicked off their moccasins, they did not stop to wash their legs,
which were splashed with the mud of the marsh and bloody from mosquito
bites.  One candle did not give much light, but Ccile saw that they
must have gone to bed unwashed for many nights in these same sheets.
The case on the bolster, too, was rumpled and dirty.  She felt that she
could not possibly lie down in that bed.  She made one pretext after
another to delay the terrible moment; the children asked whether she
said so many prayers every night.  At last the mother called that it
was time to put out the candle.  She blew it out and crept into the
bed, spreading a handkerchief from her valise down on the bolster-cover
where she must put her head.

She lay still and stiff on the very edge of the feather bed, until the
children were asleep and she could hear the smith and his wife snoring
in the next room.  His snore was only occasional, deep and guttural;
but his wife's was high and nasal, and constant.  Ccile got up very
softly and dressed carefully in the dark.  There was only one window in
the room, and that was shut tight to keep out mosquitos.  She sat down
beside it and watched the moon come up,--the same moon that was shining
down on the rock of Kebec.  Perhaps her father was taking his walk on
Cap Diamant, and was looking up the river at the le d'Orlans and
thinking of her.  She began to cry quietly.  She thought a great deal
about her mother, too, that night; how her mother had always made
everything at home beautiful, just as here everything about cooking,
eating, sleeping, living, seemed repulsive.  The longest voyage on the
ocean could scarcely take one to conditions more different.  Her mother
used to reckon Madame Pigeon a careless housekeeper; but Madame
Pigeon's easy-going ways had not prepared one for anything like this.
She tried to think about the buttercups in the marsh, as clean as the
sun itself, and the long hay-grass with the star-white daisies.

Ccile sat there until morning, through the endless hours until
daylight came, careful never to look back at the rumpled bed behind
her.  When Madame Harnois stuck her head in at the door to waken her
children, she complimented Ccile upon being up so early.  All the
family washed in a wooden basin which stood on a bench in the kitchen,
and they all wiped their faces on the same towel.  The mother got
breakfast in her night-cap because she had not taken time to arrange
her hair.  Ccile did not want much breakfast; the bread had so much
lard in it that she could not eat it.  She had sagamite and milk.

When they got up from the table, Pierre announced that he was going
fishing, and he did not even suggest taking her along.  The little
girls were expected to help their mother in the morning, so Ccile got
away unobserved into the nearest wood.  She went through it, and
climbed toward the ridge in the middle of the island.  At last she came
out on a waving green hayfield with a beautiful harp-shaped elm growing
in the middle of it.  The grass there was much taller than the daisies,
so that they looked like white flowers seen through a driving
grey-green rain.  Ccile ran across the field to that symmetrical tree
and lay down in the dark, cloud-shaped shadow it threw on the waving
grass.  The tight feeling in her chest relaxed.  She felt she had
escaped for ever from the Harnois and their way of living.  She went to
sleep and slept a long while.  When she wakened up in the
sweet-smelling grass, with the grasshoppers jumping over her white
blouse, she felt rested and happy,--though unreal, indeed, as if she
were someone else.  She was thinking she need not go back to the
smith's house at all that day, but could lunch on wild strawberries,
when she heard the little girls' voices calling her, "C-cile,
C-cile!" rather mournfully, and she remembered that she ought not to
cause the family anxiety.  She looked for a last time at the elm-tree
and the sunny field, and then started back through the wood.  She
didn't want the children to come to that place in their search for her.
She hoped they had never been there!

After dinner she escaped into the fields again, but this time the girls
went with her.  They had a grape-vine swing in the wood; as she had
never had a swing when she was little, she found it delightful.  These
children were nicer when they played at games and did not stand staring
at one.

But as the sunlight began to grow intensely gold on the tree-tops and
the slanting fields, dread and emptiness awoke in Ccile's breast
again, a chilling fear of the night.  The mother had found her
handkerchief spread out on the bolster and had put on a clean
bolster-slip.  But that made little difference.  She couldn't possibly
lie in that bed all night, not even if the children had taken a bath
before they got into it.  As soon as they were asleep, she got up and
sat by the window as on the first night.

At breakfast Pierre Charron noticed that Ccile did not look at all
like herself.  When they left the table, he asked her to go down to the
spring with him, and as soon as they were alone, inquired if she were
not feeling well.

"No, I don't feel well, and truly I can't stay here any longer.
Please, please, Pierre, take me home today!"

Pierre had never seen her cry before, and he was greatly surprised.
"Very good.  There is not much wind, and perhaps we had better go
today, anyhow.  Get your things, and I'll tell the smith I've changed
my mind."

Ccile ran swiftly back to the house.  She knew she had not been a very
satisfactory visitor, and she felt remorseful.  She gave the little
girls all the handkerchiefs she had brought with her,--they hadn't any,
but wiped their sweaty faces on their sleeves or their skirts.  Several
of her handkerchiefs had come from her aunts, and she was very fond of
them, but she parted with them gladly and only wished she had more
things to give the children.

She could scarcely believe in her good fortune when Pierre's boat
actually left the shore and he began pulling out into the river, while
the Harnois children stood waving to them from the cove.

"We needn't hurry, eh?" Pierre asked.

"Oh, no!  I love being on the river," she replied unsteadily.  He asked
no further questions, but handled his oars, singing softly to himself.
Of course, she thought sadly, he would never want to take her anywhere
again.  She used to dream that one day he might take her to Montreal in
his boat, perhaps even to see the great falls at Niagara.

As soon as they were out of the south channel and had cleared the point
of the island, they could see the rock of Kebec and the glare of the
sun on the slate roofs.  Ccile began to struggle with her tears again.
It was as if she were home already.  For a long while it did not grow
much plainer; then it rose higher and higher against the sky.

"Now I can see the Chteau, and the Rcollet spire," she cried.  "And,
oh, Pierre, there is the Seminary!"

"Yes?  It's a fine building, but I never had any particular affection
for it."  He saw that she was much too happy to notice his banter.

Soon they could see the spire of Notre Dame de la Victoire--and then
they were in the shadow of the rock itself.  When she stepped upon the
shore, Ccile remembered how Sister Catherine de Saint-Augustin, when
she landed with her companions, had knelt down and kissed the earth.
Had she been alone, she would have loved to do just that.  They went
hand in hand up La Place street, across the market square, down Notre
Dame street beside the church, and into Mountain Hill.  It was
wonderful that everything should be just the same, when she had been
away so long!  Pierre did not bother her with questions, but she knew
he was watching her closely.  She was ashamed, but it couldn't be
helped; some things are stronger than shame.

When they burst in upon her father, he was seated at his desk, rolling
pills on a sheet of glass.

"What, back already?"  He did not seem so overjoyed as Ccile had
thought he would be.

"Yes, monsieur," Pierre replied carelessly, "we were a little bored in
the country, both of us."

How grateful she was for that "_tous les deux_!"  She might have known
Pierre would not betray her.

"Father," she said as she kissed him again, "please ask Pierre Charron
to come to dinner tonight.  I want to make something very nice for him.
I've given him a lot of trouble."

After Pierre was gone, and she had peeped into the salon and the
kitchen to see that everything was as she had left it, Ccile came back
into the shop.

"Father, Pierre took it on himself, but it was my fault we came home.
I didn't like country life very well.  I was not happy."

"But aren't they kind people, the Harnois?  Haven't they kind ways?"

"Yes, they have."  She sighed and put her hand to her forehead, trying
to think.  They had kind ways, those poor Harnois, but that was not
enough; one had to have kind things about one, too....

But if she was to make a good dinner for Pierre, she had no time to
think about the Harnois.  She put on her apron and made a survey of the
supplies in the cellar and kitchen.  As she began handling her own
things again, it all seemed a little different,--as if she had grown at
least two years older in the two nights she had been away.  She did not
feel like a little girl, doing what she had been taught to do.  She was
accustomed to think that she did all these things so carefully to
please her father, and to carry out her mother's wishes.  Now she
realized that she did them for herself, quite as much.  Dogs cooked
with blueberries--poor Madame Harnois' dishes were not much better!
These coppers, big and little, these brooms and clouts and brushes,
were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet-work, but life
itself.  One made a climate within a climate; one made the days,--the
complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as
it passed; one made life.

Suddenly her father came into the kitchen.  "Ccile, why did you not
call me to make the fire?  And do you need a fire so early?"

"I must have hot water, Papa.  It is no trouble to make a fire."  She
wiped her hands and threw her arms about him.  "Oh, Father, I think our
house is so beautiful!"




_BOOK V_

_THE SHIPS FROM FRANCE_



BOOK FIVE

_THE SHIPS FROM FRANCE_


I

At four o'clock in the morning Ccile was sitting by her upstairs
window, dressed and wide awake.  Across the river there was already a
red and purple glow above the black pines; but overhead spread the dark
night sky, like a tent with its flap up, letting in a new day,--the
most important day of the year.

Word had come down by land that five ships from France had passed
Tadousac and were beating up the river against head winds.  During the
night the wind had changed; Ccile had only to hold her handkerchief
outside her window and watch it flutter, to reassure herself that a
strong breeze was blowing in from the east, and the ships would be in
today.  She wondered how her father could go on sleeping.  Nicholas
Pigeon and Blinker had been up all night, making a great deal of noise
as they turned out one baking after another to feed the hungry sailors.
The smell of fresh bread was everywhere, very tempting to one who had
been awake so long.

At last she heard a door below open softly, and she ran down the stairs
to the salon and out into the kitchen, where her father was just
beginning to make his fire.

"Oh, Father, the wind is right!  I knew it would come!  Yesterday all
the nuns at the Ursulines' were praying for the wind to change.  How
soon do you suppose they will get in?  You remember last year it rained
all day when the first ships came.  But today will be beautiful.  I
expect Kebec will look very fine to them."

"No better than they will to us, certainly.  But there is no hurry.
They will not be along for hours yet."

Ccile told him she had been awake nearly all night and was very
hungry, so would he please hurry the chocolate.  She herself ran out
through the board fence that divided their back yard from the Pigeons',
to get a loaf from Blinker, as it was not nearly time for the baker's
boy to come on his rounds.

They had just sat down to their breakfast when they heard the front
door open, and heavy, rapid little steps crossed the bare floor of the
shop.  Jacques came in, his pale eyes so round that he looked almost
frightened.

"Hurry, Ccile, they're coming!" he called.  Then, remembering where he
was, he snatched off his cap and murmured: "Pardon, monsieur.  Bonjour,
monsieur.  Bonjour, Ccile."

Ccile sprang up.  "You mean they are in sight, Jacques?"

"People say they are, nearly," he answered vaguely.

"What nonsense, Ccile!  You are as foolish as the little boy.  You
know the cannon would be sounding and the whole town shouting if the
ships were in sight.  Sit down and calm yourselves, both of you.
Jacques, here is some chocolate for you."

"Thank you, monsieur."  He sat down on the edge of the chair and took
the cup carefully in both hands, at the same time glancing at the
clock.  "But we must not be late," he added fearfully.

"We shall not be.  The ships cannot possibly pass this end of the
island before noon."

"Which ones do you think they will be, monsieur?"

"They will probably be old friends, that have come to us often before."

"Jacques means he hopes one of them will be _La Garonne_, with the nice
sailor who made our beaver," Ccile explained.

Jacques blushed and looked up at her trustfully.  But his anxiety was
too strong for him.  In a few moments he stole another glance at the
clock and resolutely put down his cup.

"If you please, monsieur, I think I will go now."

Auclair laughed.  "You may both go!  You are as restless as kittens.  I
can do nothing with either of you about.  I will follow you in an hour
or two.  You will have a long wait."

The children agreed they wouldn't mind that, and they ran out into the
early sunshine and down the hill hand in hand.

"Oh, look at the market square, Jacques, look!  I have never seen so
many carts before."

Since long before daybreak the country people had been coming into
town, bringing all they could carry in their carts and on their backs;
fresh pork, dressed rabbits and poultry, butter and eggs, salad, green
beans, leeks, peas, cucumbers, wild strawberries, maple sugar, spruce
beer.  The sailors, after two or three months on salt meat and ship's
bread, would sell their very ear-rings for poultry and green
vegetables.  All the market-women, and the men, too, were dressed in
their best, in whatever was left of the holiday costume they used to
wear at home, in their native town.  A sailor would always make
straight for the head-dress or bonnet or jacket of his own _pays_.

The children found there was already a crowd at the waterside, and
while they ran about, hunting for an advantageous post of observation,
people kept streaming down Mountain Hill.  The whole of the Upper Town
was emptying itself into the Lower.  The old people, who almost never
left the house, came with the rest, and babies at the breast were
carried along because there was no one at home to leave them with.  Not
even on great feast-days did one see so many people come together.
Bishop Laval and his _donn_ came down the hill and took their places
in the crowd.  Giorgio, the drummer boy, and Picard, the Count's valet,
were sitting on one of the cannon that guarded the landing-place.  Nol
Pommier and his friend the wagon-maker came carrying old Madame Pommier
between them, and a boy followed bringing her chair.  There were even
new faces: a company of Montreal merchants, who had been staying at the
Chteau for several days, awaiting the ships.

All the poor and miserable were on the water front, as well as the
great.  'Toinette was moving about in the crowd, looking fresh and
handsome in a clean dress and a new kerchief.  Her partner, the snail,
with her hair curled very tight and her hands hidden under her apron,
was standing among the poor folk over by the King's warehouse.  Jacques
was careful to keep out of his mother's way; but she had no wish to be
bothered with him and was blind to his presence in the crowd.  The
Count did not come down the hill, but he was in plain view on the
terrace in front of the Chteau, and with him were the Intendant and
Madame de Champigny, and a group of officers with their wives.
Everyone in Kebec, Ccile believed, except the cloistered nuns, was out
today.  Even Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier, though he was so proud, had
a chair placed in the highest part of his garden and sat there looking
down over the roofs, watching for the ships.

The hours dragged on.  Babies began to cry and old people to murmur,
but nobody went away.  Giorgio and Picard made a place for Jacques
between them on the cannon.  By the time her father arrived, Ccile was
beginning to wonder whether she could possibly stand any longer.  But
very soon a shout went up--something flashed in the south channel
against the green fields of the le d'Orlans.  Ccile held her breath
and gripped her father's hand.  It dipped, it rose again, a gleam of
white.  There could be no doubt now; larger and larger, the canvas of
sails set full, with the wind well behind them.  Soon the whole rigging
rose above the rapidly dropping shore, then the full figure of a
square-rigged ship emerged, passed the point of the island, and glided
into the broad, undivided river.  The cannon on the redoubt boomed the
Governor's salute, and all the watchers on the waterside shouted a
great welcoming cry, waving their caps, kerchiefs, aprons, anything at
hand.  Women, and men, too, cried for joy.  Ccile hid her face on her
father's shoulder, and Jacques stood up on the cannon, waving his
little cap.

"_Les Deux Frres, Les Deux Frres!_" people began to shout, while
others laughed at them.  She was not near enough for anyone to be sure,
but the townspeople knew those carrying boats by heart, held their
lines and shape in mind all year.  Sure enough, as the vessel bore up
the river toward the rock, everyone agreed that it was _Les Deux
Freres_, from Le Havre.  Her anchor-chains had scarcely begun to rattle
when the sound was drowned by new shouts; a second set of sails was
sighted between the green fields and the pine-clad shore.

"_Le Profond, Le Profond!_" the people cried, and again the ordnance
thundered from the redoubt.

Within half an hour the Captain of _Les Deux Frres_ came ashore in a
little boat, bringing dispatches for the Governor.  But before he could
make his way up to the Chteau, he had to stop to greet old friends and
to answer the questions of the crowd that pressed about him.

The King was well, and Monsieur le Dauphin was in good health.  The
young Duc de Bourgogne--the King's grandson--was married to a little
Princess of Savoie, only twelve years old, _mais bien sage_.  The war
was at a standstill; but of that they would hear later,--he tapped his
dispatch-case.  The wheat-harvest had been good last year, the vintage
one of the best within memory.  Of the voyage he had no time to speak;
they had got here, hadn't they?  That was the important thing.

The Captain made his way up the hill, and Bishop Laval went into the
church of Notre Dame de la Victoire to thank God for preserving the
King's health.

Sometimes, owing to bad weather and high winds, the ships of the first
fleet came in four or five days apart; but this year they came in close
succession.  By sunset five vessels were anchored in the roadstead
before Quebec: _Les Deux Frres, Le Profond, La Reine du Nord, La
Licorne, Le Faucon_.  They stood almost in a row, out in the river.
Worn, battered old travellers they looked.  It brought tears to the
eyes to think how faithful they were, and how much they had endured and
overcome in the years they had been beating back and forth between
Canada and the Old World.  What adverse winds those sails had been
trimmed to, what mountains of waves had beaten the sides of those old
hulls, what a wilderness of hostile, never-resting water those bows had
driven through!  Beaten southward, beaten backward, out of their course
for days and even weeks together; rolling helpless, with sails furled,
water over them and under them,--but somehow wearing through.  On bad
voyages they retraced their distance three and five times over,
out-tiring the elements by their patience, and then drove forward
again--toward Kebec.  Sometimes they went south of Newfoundland to
enter the Gulf, sometimes they came south of Labrador and through the
straits of Belle le; always making for this rock in the St. Lawrence.
Ccile wondered how they could ever find it,--a goal so tiny, out of an
approach so vast.

Many a time a boat came in wracked and broken, and it took all summer
to make repairs, before the captain dared face the sea again.  And all
summer the hardships and mischances of the fleet were told over and
over in Quebec.  The greater part of the citizens had made that voyage
at least once, and they knew what a North Atlantic crossing meant:
little wooden boats matched against the immensity and brutality of the
sea; the strength that came out of flesh and blood and goodwill, doing
its uttermost against cold, unspending eternity.  The colonists loved
the very shapes of those old ships.  Here they were again, in the
roadstead, sending off the post-bags.  And tomorrow they would give out
of their insides food, wine, cloth, medicines, tools, fire-arms,
prayer-books, vestments, altars for the missions, everything to comfort
the body and the soul.



II

The next few days were like a continual festival, with sailors
overrunning the town, and drinking and singing in the Place half the
night.  Every day was market day, and both Blinker and his master
worked double shifts, trying to bake bread enough for five crews.  The
waterside was heaped with merchandise and casks of wine.  The merchants
employed every idle man and boy to help them store their goods, and all
the soldiers were detailed to receive the supplies for the Chteau and
the forts.  Even the churches and the priests were busier than usual.
The sailors, though they might indulge in godless behaviour, were pious
in their own way; went to confession soon after they got into port, and
attended mass.  They lived too near the next world not to wish to stand
well with it.  Nobody begrudged them their rough pleasures; they never
stole, and they seldom quarrelled.  Even the strictest people, like
Bishop Laval, recognized that men who were wet and cold and poorly fed
for months together, who had to climb the rigging in the teeth of the
freezing gales that blew down from Labrador, must be allowed a certain
licence during the few weeks they were on shore.  The colony owed its
life to these fellows; whatever else they did, they got the ships to
Quebec every year.

Ccile was allowed to take Jacques for an escort and go down to the
waterside in the morning to watch the unloading,--until the third day,
when Auclair's own goods, from the old drug house in the parish of
Saint-Paul, were brought ashore from _Le Profond_.  In a few hours the
orderly shop, and the salon behind it, were full of bales and boxes.
M. Auclair said they must begin unpacking at once, as with this
confusion there was no room for customers to come and go.  Jacques had
followed the carriers up the hill, and he decided that he would rather
stay and see these boxes opened than share in the general excitement on
the waterside.

The apothecary took off his coat and set to work with his hammer and
chisel.  Blinker, very curious to see everything that came out of the
boxes, ran in between bakings to carry the lumber and straw down into
the cellar.  One by one the white jars on the shelves, and the drawers
of the cabinets, were filled up again; with powders, salts, gums, blue
crystals, strong-smelling spices, bay-leaves, lime flowers, camomile
flowers, senna, hyssop, mustard, dried plants and roots in great
variety.  There was the usual crate of small wooden boxes containing
fruits conserved in sugar, very costly and much prized in Quebec.
These boxes could not be opened, of course, as they were the most
expensive articles in Auclair's stock, but it delighted the children to
read the names on the covers: figs, apricots, cherries, candied lemon
rind, and crystallized ginger.

While Ccile and Jacques were counting over these boxes of sweetmeats
and wondering who would buy such luxuries, Auclair told them he was
much more interested in a jar labelled "_Bitumen--oleum terr_" than in
the conserves.  It contained a dark, ill-smelling paste which looked
like wagon grease; a kind of petroleum jelly that seeped out of the
rocks in a certain cairn on the island of Barbados and was carried from
thence to France.  He had great need for it here in Canada; he purified
it, added a small amount of alcohol and borax, and prepared a remedy
for snow-blindness, with which hunters and trappers and missionaries
were so cruelly afflicted in winter.  So far, no cure had been
discovered that gave such relief.  A physician in Montreal had tried a
similar treatment, using goose grease and lard instead of the _oleum
terr_, with very bad results.  This, Auclair explained to the
children, was because all animal fat contained impurities, and this
"Barbados tar," as it was vulgarly called, might be regarded as a
mineral fat.  He went on to say that in general he distrusted remedies
made of the blood or organs of animals, though he must admit that some
were of exceptional value.  For a hundred years and more the Breton
fishermen, who went as far as Newfoundland and Labrador for their
catch, had been making a medicinal oil from the fat livers of the
codfish, and had an almost fanatical faith in its benefits.  He himself
had used it in Quebec for cases of general decline, and found it
strengthening.

"But I detest all medicines made from lizards and serpents," he
concluded his lecture, "even viper broth."

"Viper broth, Father?  I have never heard of that.  Is it an Indian
medicine?"

"My dear, at the time when we came out to Canada, it was very much the
fashion at home.  Half the great ladies of France were drinking a broth
made from freshly killed vipers every morning, instead of their milk or
chocolate, and believed themselves much the better for it.  Medicine is
a dark science, as I have told you more than once."

"Yes, but everything here in our shop is good for people.  We know
that, don't we, Jacques?  You shouldn't speak against medicines,
Father, when our new ones have just come and we are feeling so happy to
have them.  You always worry, you know, when any of the jars are nearly
empty."

"Oh, we do what we can, my dear!  We can but try."  Her father took up
his chisel again and began to pry the lid from another box.  "The
perplexing thing is that honest pharmaciens get such different results
from the same remedy.  Your grandfather, all his life, believed that he
had helped many cases of epilepsy with powdered unicorn's horn, which
he got from Africa at great expense; while I have so low an opinion of
it that I never keep it in my shop."

"But your cough-sirops, Papa, both kinds, help everyone.  And Madame
Renaude says she could never milk her cows in the morning if she did
not put your rheumatism ointment on her hands at night."

Auclair laughed.  "You are your mother over again.  No matter on whom I
tried a new remedy, she was always the first to feel its good effects.
But what is this, Ccile?  A package addressed to you, and in Aunt
Blanche's handwriting, here among my Arabian spices!  Why, she must
have taken it to the pharmacie and persuaded Monsieur Neuillant to pack
it with his drugs, to ensure quick delivery.  Now we shall have
something of whose goodness there can be no doubt.  No, you must open
it yourself.  Jacques and I will look on."

Night-gowns, with yokes beautifully embroidered by Aunt Blanche
herself; a pair of stockings knit by the little cousin Ccile; a
woollen dressing-gown; two jerseys, one red and one blue; a blue silk
dress, all trimmed with velvet bands, to wear to mass; a gold brooch
and a string of coral beads from Aunt Clothilde.  Ccile unfolded them
one after another and held them up to view.  Never had a box from home
brought such fine things before.  What did it mean?

"It means that you are growing up now and must soon dress like a young
lady.  The aunts bear that fact in mind,--more than I, perhaps."
Auclair sighed and became thoughtful.

Jacques clasped his two hands together and looked up at Ccile with his
slow, utterly trustful and self-forgetful smile.

"Oh, Ccile," he breathed, "you will look so beautiful!"



III

Pierre Charron had come down from Montreal and was giving a supper
party for his friend Matre Pondaven, captain of _Le Faucon_.  Ccile
and her father were the only guests invited, though Pierre had said
they might bring Jacques along to see the Captain's parrot.  It was to
be a party in the open air, down by the waterside, under the full moon.

Ccile had no looking-glass upstairs--the only one in the house was in
the salon--so she always dressed by feeling rather than by sight.  This
afternoon she put on the blue silk dress with black velvet bands,
walked about in it, then took it off and spread it out on her bed,
where she smoothed it and admired it.  It was too different from
anything she had ever worn before, too long and too grand--quite right
to wear to mass or to a wedding, perhaps, but not for tonight.  She
slipped on one of her new jerseys and felt like herself again.  The
coral beads she would wear; they seemed appropriate for a sailor's
party.  She left the beautiful dress lying on her bed and went down to
see that her father had brushed his Sunday coat, and to give Jacques's
hands a scrubbing.  She and the little boy sat down on the sofa to wait
for Pierre, while Auclair was arranging his shop for the night.  To
Ccile the time dragged very slowly.  She was thinking, not about the
novelty of having supper by moonlight, or of the _tte de veau_ they
were promised, or of the celebrated Captain Pondaven, but of his parrot.

All her life she had longed to possess a parrot.  The idea of a talking
bird was fascinating to her--seemed to belong with especially rare and
wonderful things, like orange-trees and peacocks and gold crowns and
the Count's glass fruit.  Her mother, she whispered to Jacques, had
often told her about a parrot kept in one of the great houses at home,
which saw a servant steal silver spoons and told the master.  Then
there was the imprisoned princess who taught her parrot to say her
lover's name, and her cruel brothers cut out the bird's tongue.
Magpies were also taught to speak, but they could say only a word or
two.

At last she heard Pierre's voice at the front door.

"All ready, Monsieur Euclide?"

Ccile jumped up from the sofa and ran into the shop.

"We have been ready a long while, Pierre.  I thought you had forgotten
us."

"Little stupid!"  Pierre pinched her ear.

Auclair now looked at his daughter for the first time.  "But I supposed
you would wear the new dress from Aunt Blanche?"

Ccile coloured a little.  "I feel better like this.  You don't mind,
Pierre Charron?"

"Not a bit!  This is a picnic, not a dinner of ceremony.  Monsieur
Auclair, will you be kind enough to bring some of those little nuts you
burn to keep off mosquitoes?"

"Ah yes, the eucalyptus balls!  Certainly, that is a good idea.  I will
fill my pockets."  The apothecary put on the large beaver hat which he
wore only to weddings and funerals, and they set off down the hill, the
two men before, Ccile and Jacques following.

Down on the water-front, at some distance behind the church of Notre
Dame de la Victoire, a row of temporary cabins were put up each summer,
where hot food was served to the sailors on shore leave.  In one of
these Renaude-le-livre, the butter-woman, and an old dame from Dinan
sold fresh milk and butter and Breton pancakes to the seamen from that
part of the world.  Tonight they had prepared a special supper for the
Captain, of whom all the Bretons were proud; he had come up from a
_mousse_ and had made his own way in the world.  Pierre had ordered
things he knew the Captain liked; a dish made of three kinds of
shell-fish, a _tte de veau_, which la Renaude did very well, a roast
capon with a salad, and for dessert Breton pancakes with honey and
preserves.

When the party arrived, their table was waiting for them, with a white
cloth, and a lantern hung from a pole--already lit, though it was not
yet dark and a pale moon was shining in a clear evening sky.  While
Pierre was giving instructions to the cooks, Captain Pondaven was being
rowed ashore by two of his crew.  He came up from the landing, his
parrot on his shoulder, dressed as no one there had ever seen him
before, in his Breton holiday suit, which he carried about the world
with him in his sailor's chest; a black jacket heavily embroidered in
yellow, white knee-breeches, very full and pleated at the belt, black
cloth leggings, and a broad-brimmed black hat with a shallow crown.  He
was a plain, simple man, direct in his dealings as in his glance, and
he came from Saint-Malo, where the grey sea breaks against the town
walls.

At first Ccile thought him a little sombre and solemn, but after a mug
of Jamaica rum he was more at his ease, and as the supper went on he
grew very companionable.  She had hoped he would begin to tell at once
about his voyages and the strange countries he had seen, but he seemed
to wish to talk of nothing but his own town and his family.  He had
four boys, he said, and one little girl.

"And she is the only one who was born when I was at home.  I am always
a little anxious about her.  The boys are strong like me and can take
care of themselves, but she is more delicate,--not so sturdy as
Mademoiselle here, though perhaps Mademoiselle is older."

"I was thirteen last month," Ccile told him.

"And she will be eleven in December.  I am nearly always at home for
her birthday."

Auclair asked him whether by home he meant Le Havre or Saint-Malo.  The
seaman looked surprised.

"Saint-Malo, naturally.  I was born a Malouin."

"I know that.  But since you take on your cargo at Le Havre, I thought
you perhaps lived there now."

"Oh, no!  One is best in one's own country.  I run back to Saint-Malo
after my last trip, and tie up there for the winter."

"But that must add to your difficulties, Monsieur Pondaven."

"It is nothing to me.  I know the Channel like my own town.  All my
equipage are glad to get home.  They are all Malouins.  I should not
know how to manage with men from another part."

"You Malouins stick together like Jesuits," Pierre declared.  "Yet by
your own account you were not so well treated there that you need love
the place."

Captain Pondaven smiled an artless smile.  "Perhaps that is the very
reason!  He means, Monsieur Auclair, that the town brought me up like a
stepmother.  My father was drowned, fishing off Newfoundland, and my
mother died soon afterwards.  With us, when an orphan boy is twelve
years old, he is given a suit of clothes and a chest and is sent to sea
as a _mousse_.  They sent me out with a hard master my first voyage.
But when I came back from Madagascar and showed how my ears were torn
and my back was scarred, the townspeople took up my case and got my
papers changed.  My townspeople did not do so badly by me.  When I was
ready for a command, they saw that I had my chance.  They put their
money behind me, and I have been half-owner in my boat for five years
now."

Though she liked the Captain very much and gave polite attention to his
talk, Ccile's mind was on the parrot.  He sat forgotten on the back of
the chair, attached to his master's belt by a long cord.  He seemed of
a sullen disposition--there was nothing gay and bird-like about him.
Neither was he so brilliant as she had expected.  He was all grey,
except for rose-coloured tail-feathers, and his plumage was ruffled and
untidy, for he was moulting.  He gave no sign of his peculiar talent,
but sat as silent as the stuffed alligator at home, never moving except
to cock his head on one side.  When the leek soup put a temporary stop
to conversation, she ventured a question.

"And what is your parrot's name, if you please, Monsieur Pondaven?"

The Captain looked up from his plate and smiled at her.  "His name is
Coco, mademoiselle, and he will make noise enough presently.  He is a
little shy with strangers, not seeing many on board."

Then the shell-fish came on, and Auclair asked the Captain what people
at home thought of the King's peace with the English.

He said he did not know what the inland people thought.  "But with us
on the coast it will make little difference.  The King cannot make
peace on the sea.  Our people will take an English ship whenever they
have a chance.  They are looking for good plunder this summer.  We must
have our revenge for the ships they took from us last year."

"They are fine seamen, the English," Pierre Charron declared.  Ccile
had noticed that he was in one of his perverse moods, when he liked to
tease and antagonize everyone a little.

The Captain answered him mildly.  "Yes, they are good sailors, but we
usually get the better of them.  They are a blasphemous lot and have no
respect for good manners or religion.  That never pays."

Auclair reminded him that last summer the English had captured one of
the boats bound for Canada.

"I remember well, _Le Saint-Antoine_, and the Captain is a friend of
mine.  They took the boat into Plymouth and sold her at auction.  Many
of our merchants lost heavily.  Your Bishop, Monseigneur de
Saint-Vallier, had sent some things for the missions over here by _Le
Saint-Antoine_.  Some bones of the saints and other holy relics were
packed in an oak chest, and the Captain, out of respect, put it in his
own cabin.  The English, when they plundered the ship, came upon this
chest and supposed it was treasure.  When they opened it, they were
furious.  After committing every possible sacrilege they took the
relics to the cook's galley and threw them into the stove where their
dinner was cooking."

Ccile asked whether no punishment had come upon those sailors.

"Not at the time, mademoiselle, but I shouldn't like to put to sea with
such actions on my soul,--and I am no coward, either."

"_Sales cochons anglais, sales cochons_!" said another voice, and she
realized that at last the parrot had spoken.  Jacques put his hand over
his mouth to stifle a cry.  Pierre and her father laughed, and
applauded the parrot, but Ccile was much too startled to laugh.  She
had supposed that the speech of parrots called for a good deal of
imagination on the part of the listener, like the first efforts of
babies.  But nobody could possibly mistake what this bird said.  Had he
been out of sight, in the shed kitchen with Mre Renaude, she would
have thought some queer old person was in there, talking in a
vindictive tone.

"Oh, monsieur, isn't he wonderful!" she gasped.

The Captain was pleased.  "You find him amusing?  Yes, he is a clever
bird; you will see.  Now let us all clink our cups together,--you, too,
little man,--and perhaps he will say something else."

They rattled their pewter mugs several times, and the bird came out
with: "_Vive le Roi, vive le Roi_!"  Jacques began jumping up and down
with excitement.

"He is a loyal subject of the King," said Pondaven.  "He has been
taught to say that when the cups clink.  But for the most part, I don't
teach him; he picks up what he likes."

"And do you always take him to sea with you, monsieur?"

"Nearly always, mademoiselle.  My men believe he brings us good luck;
they like to have him on board.  I have his cage swung in my cabin, and
when the ship pitches badly, I tie it down."

"But how does he endure the cold?" Auclair asked.  "These are tropical
birds, after all."

"Yes, his brother died of a chill on his first voyage--I had two of
them.  But this one seems to stand it.  When he begins to shiver, I
give him a little brandy in warm water--he is very fond of it--and I
put a blanket over him.  He will live to be a hundred if I can keep him
from taking cold."

Conscious that he was the centre of attention, the parrot began to
croon softly: "_Bon petit Coco, bon petit Coco.  Ici, ici_!"

Jacques and Ccile left their places and stood behind the Captain's
chair to watch the bird's throat.  Pondaven explained that he was an
African parrot, and that was why he had so many tones of voice, harsh
and gentle, for the African birds have a much more sensitive ear than
the West Indian.

"Should you like to hear him whistle a tune, mademoiselle?  He can, if
he will.  We will try to have a little concert."  He put the parrot on
his knee, took a piece of maple sugar from the table, and held it
before the unblinking yellow eyes.  Then the Captain began to whistle a
song of his own country:

  _A Saint-Malo, beau port de mer,
  Trois gros navires sont arrivs,_


After a few moments the bird repeated the air perfectly--his whistle
was very musical, sounded somewhat like a flute.  He was given the
sugar, and stood on one foot while he fed himself with the other.  The
company now became interested in the _tte de veau_, but Jacques and
Ccile scarcely tasted the dish for watching Coco.  They were both
wishing they could carry him off and keep him in the apothecary shop
for ever.

"Has Coco a soul, Ccile?" Jacques whispered.

"I wonder!  I will ask the Captain after a while, but we must listen
now."

Captain Pondaven was relating some of the wonderful happenings in his
own town.  Presently he told them the story of how a great she-ape,
brought to Saint-Malo as a curiosity by the Indian fleet, had one day
broken her chain and run about the town.  She dashed into a house,
snatched a baby from its cradle, and ran up to the house-tops with
it,--and in Saint-Malo, he reminded them, the houses are four and even
five storeys high.  While all the terrified neighbours gathered in the
street, the mother fell on her knees, shut her eyes, and appealed to
the Blessed Virgin.  The ape clambered along the roofs until she came
to a house where an image of Our Lady stood in a little alcove up under
the eaves.  Into this recess the beast thrust the baby, and left it
there, as safe as if it were with its own mother.

The children and the apothecary thought this a charming story, but
Pierre sniffed.  "Oh, you have nothing over us in the way of miracles!"
he told the Captain.  "Here we have them all the time.  Every Friday
the beaver is changed into a fish, so that good Catholics may eat him
without sin.  And why do you look at me like that, Mademoiselle Ccile?"

"Everyone knows he is not changed, Pierre.  He is only considered as a
fish by the Church, so that hunters off in the woods can have something
to eat on Fridays."

"And suppose in Montreal some Friday I were to consider a roast capon
as a fish?  I should be put into the stocks, likely enough!"

Captain Pondaven smiled and shook his head.  "Mademoiselle has the
better of you, Charron.  A man can make fun of the angels, if he sets
out to.  But I was going to tell the little boy here that in our town,
when a child is naughty, we still tell him the she-ape will get him;
and the children are as much afraid of that beast as if she were alive."

The time had come for story-telling; Pondaven and Pierre Charron began
to entertain each other with tales of the sea and forest, as they
always did when they got together.

At about ten o'clock Father Hector Saint-Cyr came out from the Chteau,
where he had been to lay before Count Frontenac a petition from the
Christianized Indians of his mission at the Sault.  He lingered on the
terrace to enjoy the prospect,--he got to Quebec but seldom.  The moon
was high in the heavens, shining down upon the rock, with its orchards
and gardens and silvery steeples.  The dark forest and the distant
mountains were palely visible.  This was not the warm white moonlight
of his own Provence, certainly, which made the roads between the
mulberry-trees look like rivers of new milk.  This was the moonlight of
the north, cold, blue, and melancholy.  It threw a shimmer over the
land, but never lay in velvet folds on any wall or tower or
wheat-field.  Out in the river the five ships from France rode at
anchor.  Some sailors down in the Place were singing, and when they
finished, their mates on board answered them with another song.

Why, the priest wondered, were these fellows always glad to get back to
Kebec?  Why did they come at all?  Why should this particular cliff in
the wilderness be echoing tonight with French songs, answering to the
French tongue?  He recalled certain naked islands in the Gulf of the
St. Lawrence; mere ledges of rock standing up a little out of the sea,
where the sea birds came every year to lay their eggs and rear their
young in the caves and hollows; where they screamed and flocked
together and made a clamour, while the winds howled around them, and
the spray beat over them.  This headland was scarcely more than that; a
crag where for some reason human beings built themselves nests in the
rock, and held fast.

Down yonder by the waterside, before one of the rustic booths, he could
see a little party seated about a table with lanterns.  He could not
see who they were, but he felt a friendliness for that company.  A
little group of Frenchmen, three thousand miles from home, making the
best of things,--having a good dinner.  He decided to go down and join
them.



IV

The apothecary, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing on a wooden bench,
taking down from the shelves of a high cabinet large sheets of paper,
to which dried plants were attached by narrow strips of muslin gummed
down with gum Arabic.  This was his herbarium, his collection of
medicinal Canadian plants which he meant to take back to France.
Ccile, busily knitting, had been watching him for a long while.  When
at last he got down and began assorting the piles of paper, she spoke
to him.

"Papa, what will become of Jacques when we go back to France?"

Her father was engaged with a plant of the milkweed kind, which the
French colonists called _le cotonnier_.  He did not look up.

"Ah, my dear, I have the Count's perplexities and my own,--I cannot
arrange a future for your little protg."

"But, Father, how can we leave him, with no one to look after him?  I
shall always be thinking of him, and it will make me very unhappy."

"You will soon have your little cousins for companions; Ccile, and
Andr, and Rachel.  Cousin Andr will fill Jacques's place in your
heart."

"No, Papa.  My heart is not like that."

She spoke quickly, almost defiantly, in a tone she had never used to
her father before.  He did not notice it; he was trying to decide which
of two gentians was the better preserved.  For a month now he had been
distracted and absent-minded.  Ccile went quietly into the salon.  She
almost hated that little Andr who was so fortunate, who had a wise and
charming mother to watch over him, a father to provide for him, and a
rich aunt to give him presents.  Laying aside her knitting, she put on
her cap and went out to walk about the town.

This was the first week of October.  The autumn had been warm and
sunny,--but rather sad, as always.  After the gay summer, came the
departures.  First Pierre Charron had gone back to Montreal.  Then
Captain Pondaven, who had been coming to the apothecary shop so often
that he seemed like a familiar friend, had suddenly set sail for his
old town where the grey sea beat under the castellated walls.  Three
new ships had come in during September: _La Garonne, Le Duc de
Bretagne, Le Soleil d'Afrique_.  But _La Garonne_ did not bring the
Breton sailor Jacques waited for, and his mates reported that he had
shipped on a boat in the West India trade.

None of the ships brought the word Ccile's father and the Governor
were so impatiently expecting.  A dark spirit of discontent and
restlessness seemed to be sitting in the little salon behind the shop.
All peace and security had departed.  The very furniture looked ill at
ease, as if it did not believe in its own usefulness any more.  Perhaps
the sofa and the table and the curtains had overheard her father say
that he could not take them home with him, but must leave them to be
scattered among the neighbours.  Ccile wished that she could be left
and scattered, too.  She stayed out of doors and away from the house as
much as possible.  Her father cared little about his dinner
now--sometimes forgot to go to market.  So why should she spend the
golden afternoons indoors?

The glorious transmutation of autumn had come on: all the vast Canadian
shores were clothed with a splendour never seen in France; to which all
the pageants of all the kings were as a taper to the sun.  Even the
ragged cliff-side behind her kitchen door was beautiful; the wild
cherry and sumach and the blackberry vines had turned crimson, and the
birch and poplar saplings were yellow.  Up by Blinker's cave there was
a mountain ash, loaded with orange berries.

In the Upper Town the grey slate roofs and steeples were framed and
encrusted with gold.  A slope of roof or a dormer window looked out
from the twisted russet branches of an elm, just as old mirrors were
framed in gilt garlands.  A sharp gable rose out of a soft drift of
tarnished foliage like a piece of agate set in fine goldsmith's work.
So many kinds of gold, all gleaming in the soft, hyacinth-coloured haze
of autumn: wan, sickly gold of the willows, already dropping; bright
gold of the birches, copper gold of the beeches.  Most beautiful of all
was the tarnished gold of the elms, with a little brown in it, a little
bronze, a little blue, even--a blue like amethyst, which made them melt
into the azure haze with a kind of happiness, a harmony of mood that
filled the air with content.  The spirit of peace, that acceptance of
fate, which used to dwell in the pharmacy on Mountain Hill, had left it
and come abroad to dwell in the orchards and gardens, in the little
stony streets where the leaves blew about.  Day after day Ccile had
walked about those streets trying to capture that lost content and take
it home again.  She felt almost as if she no longer had a home; often
wished she could follow the squirrels into their holes and hide away
with them for the winter.

This afternoon she saw that her father scarcely cared at all for those
they would leave behind,--the only friends she had ever known.  She was
miserable, too, because she had spoken angrily to him.  All the way up
the hill her heart grew heavier, and the neat garden of the Rcollets,
where she was always welcome, seemed so full of sadness that she could
not stay.  She went into the Cathedral, found a dark corner behind the
image of Saint Anthony, and knelt to pray.  But she could only hide her
face and cry.  Once giving way to tears, she wept bitterly for all that
she had lost, and all that she must lose so soon.  Her mother had had
the courage to leave everything she loved and to come out here with her
father; she in turn ought to show just that same courage about going
back, but she could not find it in her heart.  "_O ma mre, je suis
faible_!  _Je nai pas l'esprit fort comme toi_!" she whispered under
her sobs.

Bishop Laval, who was kneeling in the recess of a chapel, heard a sound
of smothered weeping.  He rose, turned about, and regarded her for some
moments.  Without saying a word he took her hand and led her out
through the sacristy door into the garden of the Priests' House, where
his poplar-trees were all yellow and the ground was covered with fallen
leaves.  He made her sit down beside him on a bench and waited until
she had dried her tears.

"We are old friends, little daughter," he said kindly.  "Your mother
was a woman of exemplary piety.  Have you been to your spiritual
director with your troubles?"

"Oh, excuse me, Monseigneur l'Ancien!  I am sorry to give way like
this.  I did not know it was coming on me."

"Can I help you in any way, my child?"

Ccile thought perhaps he could.  At any rate, she felt a longing to
confide in him.  She had never been intimidated by his deep-set,
burning eyes or his big nose.  She always felt a kind of majesty in his
grimness and poverty.  Seventy-four years of age and much crippled by
his infirmities, going about in a rusty old cassock, he yet commanded
one's admiration in a way that the new Bishop, with all his personal
elegance, did not.  One believed in his consecration, in some special
authority won from fasting and penances and prayer; it was in his face,
in his shoulders, it was he.

Ccile turned to him and told him in a low voice how she and her father
expected to leave Quebec very soon and go back to France, and how hard
it would be for her to part from her friends.  "And what troubles me
most is the little boy, Jacques Gaux.  You have been so kind as to ask
about him sometimes, mon pre, and perhaps after we are gone you will
not forget him.  I wish someone would bear him in mind and look after
him a little."

"You must pray for him, my child.  It is to such as he that our Blessed
Mother comes nearest.  You must unceasingly recommend him to her, and I
will not forget to do so."

"I shall always pray for him," Ccile declared fervently, "but if only
there were someone in this world, here in Quebec--Oh, Monseigneur
l'Ancien," she turned to him pleadingly, "everyone says you are a
father to your people, and no one needs a father so much as poor
Jacques!  If you would bid Houssart keep an eye on him, and when he
sees the little boy dirty and neglected, to bring him here, where
everything is good and clean, and wash his face!  It would help him
only to sit here with you--he is like that.  Madame Pommier would look
after him for me, but she cannot get about, and Jacques will not go to
her, I am afraid.  He is shy.  When he is very dirty and ragged, he
hides away."

"Compose yourself, my child.  We can do something.  Suppose I were to
send him to the Brothers' school in Montreal, and prepare him for the
Seminary?"

She shook her head despondently.  "He could never learn Latin.  He is
not a clever child; but he is good.  I don't think he would be happy in
a school."

"Schools are not meant to make boys happy, Ccile, but to teach them to
do without happiness."

"When he is older, perhaps, Monseigneur, but he is only seven."

"I was only nine when I was sent to La Flche, and that is a severe
school," said the Bishop.  Perhaps some feeling of pity for his own
hard boyhood, the long hours of study, the iron discipline, the fasts
and vigils that kept youth pale, rose in his heart.  He sighed heavily
and murmured something under his breath, of which Ccile caught only
the words: "... _domus_ ... _Domine_."

She thanked him for his kindness and curtsied to take her leave.  He
walked with her to the garden door.  "I will not forget what you have
confided to my care, and I will seek out this child from time to time
and see what can be done for him.  But our Blessed Mother can do more
for him than you or I.  Never omit to present him to her compassion, my
daughter."

Ccile went away comforted.  Merely sitting beside the Bishop had given
her an escape from her own thoughts.  His nature was so strong of its
kind, and different from that of anyone else she knew.  She was
hurrying home with fresh courage when she met Jacques himself, coming
up the hill to look for her.

"I went to your house," he said, "but monsieur your father was
occupied, so I came away."

"That was right.  Have you had a bite of anything?"

He shook his head.

"Neither have I.  If my father is busy with his plants, we should only
bother him.  Let us get a loaf from Monsieur Pigeon and take it up by
the redoubt, and watch the sun go down."

By the time they had called at the baker's and climbed to the top of
Cap Diamant, the sun, dropping with incredible quickness, had already
disappeared.  They sat down in the blue twilight to eat their bread and
await the turbid afterglow which is peculiar to Quebec in autumn; the
slow, rich, prolonged flowing-back of crimson across the sky, after the
sun has sunk behind the dark ridges of the west.  Because of the haze
in the air the colour seems thick, like a heavy liquid, welling up wave
after wave, a substance that throbs, rather than a light.

That crimson flow, that effulgence at the solemn twilight hour, often
made Ccile think about the early times and the martyrs--coming up, as
it did, out of those dark forests that had been the scene of their
labours and their fate.  The rainbow, she knew, was set in the heavens
to remind us of a promise that all storms shall have an ending.
Perhaps this afterglow, too, was ordained in the heavens for a reminder.

"Jacques," she said presently, "do you ever think about the martyrs?
You ought to, because they were so brave."

"I don't like to think about them.  It makes me feel bad," he murmured.
He was sitting with his hands on his knees, looking vaguely into the
west.

Ccile squeezed his arm.  "Oh, it doesn't me!  It makes me feel happy,
as if I could never be afraid of anything again.  I wish you and I
could go very far up the river in Pierre Charron's canoe, and then off
into the forests to the Huron country, and find the very places where
the martyrs died.  I would rather go out there than--anywhere."  Rather
than go home to France, she was thinking.

But perhaps, after she grew up, she could come back to Canada again,
and do all those things she longed to do.  Perhaps some day, after
weeks at sea, she would find herself gliding along the shore of the le
d'Orlans and would see before her Kebec, just as she had left it; the
grey roofs and spires smothered in autumn gold, with the Rcollet
flche rising slender and pure against the evening, and the crimson
afterglow welling up out of the forest like a glorious memory.




_BOOK VI_

_THE DYING COUNT_



BOOK SIX

_THE DYING COUNT_


I

Count Frontenac sat at the writing-table in his long room, driving his
quill across sheets of paper.  He was finishing a report to
Pontchartrain, the Minister, which was to go by _Le Soleil d'Afrique_,
sailing now in three days.  Auclair stood by the fireplace, where the
birch logs were smouldering,--it was now the end of October.  He was
remarking to himself that his master, often so put about by trifles,
could bear with calmness a crushing disappointment.

All summer the Count had been waiting for his release from office, had
confidently expected a letter summoning him to return to France to fill
some post worthy of his past services.

When the King had sent him out here nine years ago, it had been to save
Canada--nothing less.  The fur trade was completely demoralized, and
the Iroquois were murdering French colonists in the very outskirts of
Montreal.  The Count had accomplished his task.  He had chastised the
Indians, restored peace and order, secured the safety of trade.  He was
now in his seventy-eighth year, and although he had repeatedly asked
for his recall to France, the King had made no recognition of his
services beyond sending him the Cross of St. Louis last autumn.

It was sometimes hinted that there was a personal reason for the King's
neglect.  There was an old story that because Madame de Montespan had
been Count Frontenac's mistress before she became King Louis's, His
Majesty disliked the sight of the Count.  But Madame de Montespan had
long ago fallen out of favour; she had been living in retirement for
many years and never came to Court.  The King himself was no longer
young.  Auclair doubted whether one old man would remember an affair of
youthful gallantry against another old man,--when the woman herself was
old and long forgotten.

He was thinking of this as he stood by the fire, awaiting his master's
pleasure.  At last the Governor pushed back his papers and turned to
him.

"Euclide," he began, "I am afraid I cannot promise you much for the
future.  When the last ships came in, I had no doubt that I should go
home on one of them,--and you and your daughter with me.  By _La
Vengeance_ the Minister sends me a letter concerning the peace of
Rijswijk, but ignores my petition for recall.  He assures me of His
Majesty's esteem, and of his desire to reward my services more
substantially in the future.  The future, for a man of my age, is an
inconsiderable matter.  His Majesty prefers that I shall die in Quebec."

The Count rose and walked to the window behind his desk, where he stood
looking down at the ships anchored in the river, already loading for
departure.  As he stood there lost in reflection, Auclair thought he
seemed more like a man revolving plans for a new struggle with fortune
than one looking back upon a life of brilliant failures.  The Count had
the bearing of a fencer when he takes up the foil; from his shoulders
to his heels there was intention and direction.  His carriage was his
unconscious idea of himself,--it was an armour he put on when he took
off his night-cap in the morning, and he wore it all day, at early
mass, at his desk, on the march, at the Council, at his dinner-table.
Even his enemies relied upon his strength.

"I have never been a favourite," he said, turning round suddenly.  "I
have not the courtier's address.  Without that, a military man cannot
go far nowadays.  Perhaps I offended His Majesty by trying to teach him
geography.  Nothing is more unpopular at Court than the geography of
New France.  They like to think of Quebec as isolated, French, and
Catholic.  The rest of the continent is a wilderness, and they prefer
to disregard it.  Any advance to the westward costs money--and Quebec
has already cost them enough."

The Count returned to his desk, sat down, and went on talking in the
impersonal, remote tone which he often adopted with his apothecary.
Indeed, Auclair's chief service to his patron was not to administer
drugs, but to listen occasionally, when the Governor felt lonely, to
talk of places and persons,--talk which would have been
incomprehensible to anyone else in Kebec.

"After my reappointment to Canada I had two audiences with His Majesty.
The first was at Versailles, when he was full of a project to seize New
York and the Atlantic seaports from the English.  I was not averse to
such an enterprize, but I explained some of the difficulties.  With a
small fleet and a few thousand regulars, I would gladly have undertaken
it.

"My second audience was at Fontainebleau, shortly before we embarked
from La Rochelle.  The King received me very graciously in his cabinet,
but he was no longer in a conqueror's mood; he had consulted the
treasury.  When I referred to the project he had advanced at our
previous meeting, he glanced at the clock over his fireplace and
remarked that it was the hour for feeding the carp.  He asked me to
accompany him.  An invitation to attend His Majesty at the feeding of
the carp is, of course, a compliment.  We went out to the carp basins.
I like a fine pond of carp myself, and those at Fontainebleau are
probably the largest and fiercest in France.  The pages brought baskets
of bread, and His Majesty threw in the first loaves.  The carp there
are monsters, really.  They came grunting and snorting like a thousand
pigs.  They piled up on each other in hills as high as the rim of the
basin, with all their muzzles out; they caught a loaf and devoured it
before it could touch the water.  Not long before that, a care-taker's
little girl fell into the pond, and the carp tore her to pieces while
her father was running to the spot.  Some of them are very old and have
an individual renown.  One old creature, red and rusty down to his
belly, they call the Cardinal.

"Well, after the ravenous creatures had been fed by the royal hand, the
King accompanied me a little way down the chestnut avenue.  He wished
me God-speed and said adieu.  I took my departure by the great gate,
where my carriage waited, and the King went back to the carp pond.
That was my last interview with my royal master.  That was the end of
his bold project to snatch the seaports from the English and make this
continent a French possession, as it should be.  I sailed without
troops, without money, to do what I could.  Unfortunately for you, I
brought you with me."  The Count unlocked a drawer of his desk.  He
took out a leather bag and dropped it on his pile of correspondence.
From its weight and the sound it made, Auclair judged it contained gold
pieces.

"When I persuaded you to come out here," the Governor continued, "I
promised you a return.  I have already seen the captain of _Le Soleil
d'Afrique_ and bespoken his best cabin in case I have need of it.  As
you know, I am always poor, but in that sack there is enough for you to
begin a modest business at home.  If I were in your place, I should get
my belongings together and embark the day after tomorrow."

"And you, Monsieur le Comte?"

"It is just possible that I may follow you next year.  If not, Kebec is
as near heaven as any place."

"Then I prefer to wait until next year also."  Auclair spoke quietly,
but without hesitation.  "I came to share your fortunes."

The Governor frowned.  "But you have your daughter's future to
consider.  At the present moment, I can in some degree assure you
another start in the world.  But if I terminate my days here, you will
be adrift, and I doubt if you will ever get home at all.  You are not
very adept in practical matters, Euclide."

Auclair flushed faintly.  "I have made my choice, patron.  I remain in
Kebec until you leave it.  And I have no need for that," indicating the
leather bag.  "You pay me well for my services."

When the apothecary left the chamber, the Count looked after him with a
shrug, and a smile in which there was both contempt and kindness.  He
remembered an incident very long ago: He had just come home from the
foreign wars, and had nearly ruined himself providing a new coach and
horses and liveries to make a suitable re-entrance in the world.  The
first time he went abroad in his new carriage, to pay calls in the
fashionable part of Paris, the occupants of every coach he passed
either were looking the other way, or saluted him carelessly, as if
they had seen him only the day before.  Not even a driver or a footman
glanced twice at his fine horses.  The gate-keepers and equerries at
the houses where he stopped were insolently indifferent.  Late in the
afternoon, when he was crossing the Pont-Neuf at the crowded hour, in a
stream of coaches, he saw among the foot-passengers the first admirers
of his splendour: an old man and a young boy, gazing up and following
his carriage with eager eyes--the grandfather and grandson who lived in
the pharmacy next his stables and were his tenants.



II

The Count de Frontenac awoke suddenly out of a curious dream--a dream
so vivid that he could not at once shake it off, but lay in the
darkness behind his bed-curtains slowly realizing where he was.  The
sound of a church-bell rang out hoarse on the still air: yes, that
would be the stubborn old man, Bishop Laval, ringing for early mass.
He knew that bell like a voice.  He was, then, in Canada, in the
Chteau on the rock of Kebec; the St. Lawrence must be flowing seaward
beneath his windows.

In his dream, too, he had been asleep and had suddenly awakened;
awakened a little boy, in an old farm-house near Pontoise, where his
nurse used to take him in the summer.  He had been awakened by fright,
a sense that some danger threatened him.  He got up and in his bare
feet stole to the door leading into the garden, which was ajar.
Outside, in the darkness, stood a very tall man in a plumed hat and
huge boots--a giant, in fact; the little boy's head did not come up to
his boot-tops.  He had no idea who the enormous man might be, but he
knew that he must not come in, that everything depended upon his being
kept out.  Quickly and cleverly the little boy closed the door and slid
the wooden bar,--he had no trouble in finding it, for he knew the house
so well.  But there was the front door,--he was sleeping in the wing of
the cottage, and that front door was three rooms away.  Still barefoot,
he went softly and swiftly through the kitchen and the living-room to
the hallway behind that main door, which could be fastened by an iron
bolt.  It was pitch-dark, but he did not fumble, he found the bolt at
once.  It was rusty, and stuck.  He felt how small and weak his hands
were--of that he was very conscious.  But he turned the bolt gently
back and forth in its hasp to loosen the rust-flakes, and coaxed it
into the iron loop on the door-jamb which made it fast.  Then he felt
suddenly faint.  He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of
his night-gown, and waited.  That terrible man on the other side of the
door; one could hear him moving about in the currant bushes, pulling at
the rose-vines on the wall.  There were other doors--and windows!
Every nook and corner of the house flashed through his mind; but for
the moment he was safe.  The broad oak boards and the iron bolt were
between him and the great boots that must not cross the threshold.
While he stood gathering his strength, he awoke in another bed than the
one he had quitted a few moments ago, but he was still covered with
sweat and still frightened.  He did not come fully to himself until he
heard the call of the old Bishop's bell-clapper.  Then he knew where he
was.

Of all the houses he had slept in all over the world, in Flanders,
Holland, Italy, Crete, why had he awakened in that one near Pontoise,
and why had he remembered it so well?  His bare feet had avoided every
unevenness in the floor; in the dark he had stepped without hesitation
from the earth floor of the kitchen, over the high sill, to the wooden
floor of the living-room.  He had known the exact position of all the
furniture and had not stumbled against anything in his swift flight
through the house.  Yet he had not been in that house since he was
eight years old.  For four summers his nurse, Nomi, had taken him
there.  It was her property, but on her son's marriage the
daughter-in-law had become mistress, according to custom.  Nomi had
taken care of him from the time he was weaned until he went to school.
His own mother was a cold woman and had little affection for her
children.  Indeed, the Count reflected, as he lay behind his
bed-curtains recovering from his dream, no woman, probably, had ever
felt so much affection for him as old Nomi.  Not all women had found
him so personally distasteful as his wife had done; but not one of his
mistresses had felt more than a passing inclination for him.
Tenderness, uncalculating, disinterested devotion, he had never known.
It was in his stars that he was not to know it.  Nomi had loved his
fine strong little body, grieved when he was hurt, watched over him
when he was sick, carried him in her arms when he was tired.  Now, when
he was sick indeed, his mind, in sleep, had gone back to that woman and
her farm-house on the Oise.

It struck him that a dream of such peculiar vividness signified a
change in himself.  A change had been coming on all summer--during the
last few months it had progressed very fast.  When from his windows he
saw the last sail going out between the south shore and the le
d'Orlans, he knew he would never live to see those boats come back.
Now, after this dream, he decided to make his will before another night
fell.

Of late the physical sureness and sufficiency he had known all his life
had changed to a sense of limitation and uncertainty.  He had no wish
to prolong this state.  There was no one in this world whom he would be
sorry to leave.  His wife, Madame de la Grange Frontenac, he had no
desire to see again, though he would will to her the little property he
had, as was customary.  Once a year she wrote him a long letter,
telling him all the gossip of Paris and informing him of the changes
which occurred there.  From her accounts it appeared that the sons of
most of his old friends had turned out badly enough.  He could not feel
any very deep regret that his own son had died in youth,--killed in an
engagement in the Low Countries many years ago.

The Count himself was ready to die, and he would be glad to die here
alone, without pretence and mockery, with no troop of expectant
relatives about his bed.  The world was not what he had thought it at
twenty--or even at forty.

He would die here, in this room, and his spirit would go before God to
be judged.  He believed this, because he had been taught it in
childhood, and because he knew there was something in himself and in
other men that this world did not explain.  Even the Indians had to
make a story to account for something in their lives that did not come
out of their appetites: conceptions of courage, duty, honour.  The
Indians had these, in their own fashion.  These ideas came from some
unknown source, and they were not the least part of life.

In spiritual matters the Count had always accepted the authority of the
Church; in governmental and military matters he stoutly refused to
recognize it.  He had known absolute unbelievers, of course; one, a
witty and blasphemous scapegrace, the young Baron de La Hontan, he had
sheltered here in the Chteau, under the noses of two Bishops.  But it
was for his clever conversation, not for his opinions, that the Count
offered La Hontan hospitality.

When the grey daylight began to sift through the hangings of his bed,
Count Frontenac rang for Picard to bring his coffee.

"I shall not get up today, Picard," he remarked.  "You may shave me in
bed.  Afterwards, go to the notary and fetch him here to transact some
business with me.  Stop at the apothecary shop on your way, and tell
Monsieur Auclair I shall not need him until four o'clock."

When Auclair arrived in the afternoon, he found his patron still in
bed, in his dressing-gown.  To his inquiries the Count replied
carelessly:

"Oh, I do very well indeed!  I find myself so comfortable that I have
almost decided to stay in bed for the rest of my life.  I have been
making my will today, and that reminded me of a promise I once gave
your daughter.  That bowl of glass fruit on the mantel: do not forget
to take it to her when you go home tonight, with my greetings.  She has
always admired it.  And there is another matter.  In the leather chest
in my dressing-room you will find a large package wrapped in brown
Holland.  It is table linen that I brought out from le Savary.
Tonight, when you will not be observed, I wish you to take it home with
you for safe keeping.  Upon Ccile's marriage, you will present it to
her from me.  Why do you look sober, Euclide?  You know very well that
I must soon change my climate, as the Indians say, and this Chteau
will be in other hands.  I merely arrange to dispose of my personal
belongings as I wish."

"Monsieur le Comte, if you would permit me to try the remedy I
suggested yesterday--"

"Tut-tut!  We will have no more remedies.  A little repose and comfort.
The machine is worn out, certainly; but if we let it alone, it may go a
little longer, from habit.  When you come up tonight, you may bring me
something to make me sleep, however.  These long hours of wakefulness
do a man no good.  Draw up a chair and sit down by the fire, where I
can speak to you without shouting.  If you are to be in constant
attendance here, you cannot be forever standing."

Picard was called to put more wood on the fire, and after he withdrew
the Governor lay quiet for a time.  The grey light of the rainy
afternoon grew so pale that Auclair could no longer see his patient's
face, and supposed he had fallen asleep.  But suddenly he spoke.

"Euclide, do you know the church of Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs, out some
distance?"

"Certainly, Monsieur le Comte.  I remember it very well."

"Many of my family are buried there; a sister of whom I was fond.  I
shall be buried here, in the chapel of the Rcollets, but I should like
my heart to be sent back to France, in a box of lead or silver, and
buried near my sister in Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs.  I have left
instructions to that effect in my will, but I prefer to tell you, as I
suppose you will have to attend to it.  That is all we need say on the
subject.

"Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier called here today, but as I was engaged
with the notary, he left word that he would make his visit of ceremony
tomorrow.  I should be pleased if some indisposition were to keep him
at home.  If he looks for any apologies or recantations from me, he
will be disappointed.  The old one will not bother me with civilities."
Auclair heard the Count chuckle.  "The old one knows where he stands,
at least, and never bends his neck.  All the same, a better man for
this part of the world than the new one.  Saint-Vallier belongs at the
Court--where he came from."

The Count fell into reflection, and his apothecary sat silent, waiting
for his dismissal.  Both were thinking of a scene outside the windows,
under the low November sky--but the river was not the St. Lawrence.
They were looking out on the Pont-Marie, and the hay-barges tied up at
the Port-au-Foin.  On an afternoon like this the boatmen would be
covering the hay-bales with tarpaulins, Auclair was thinking, and about
this time the bells always rang from the Clestins' and the church of
Saint-Paul.

When the fire fell apart and Auclair got up to mend it, the Count spoke
again, as if he knew perfectly well what was in the apothecary's mind.
"The Countess de Frontenac writes me that the le Saint-Louis has
become a very fashionable quarter.  I can remember when it was hardly
considered a respectable place to live in,--when they first began
building there, indeed!"

"And my grandfather could remember when it was a wood-pile, patron;
before the two islands were joined into one.  He was never reconciled
to the change, poor man.  He always thought it the most convenient
place for the wood-supply of our part of Paris."



III

One dark afternoon in November Ccile was sitting in the front shop,
knitting a stocking.  She sat in her own little chair, placed beside
her father's tall stool, on which she had put a candle, as the daylight
was so thick.  Though the street outside was wet and the fog brown and
the house so quiet, and though the Count was ill up in the Chteau, she
was not feeling dull, but happy and contented.  As she knitted and
watched the shop, she kept singing over Captain Pondaven's old song,
about the three ships that came

  _A Saint-Malo, beau port de mer,
  Chargs d'avoin', chargs de bld,_


No more boats from France would come to Quebec as late as this, even
her father admitted that, and his herbarium had been put back on the
high shelves of the cabinet, where it belonged.  As soon as those dried
plants were out of sight, the house itself changed; everything seemed
to draw closer together, to join hands, as it were.  Ccile had
polished the candlesticks and pewter cups, rubbed the table and the
bed-posts and the chair-claws with oil, darned the rent in her father's
counterpane.  A little more colour had come back into the carpet and
the curtains, she thought.  Perhaps that was only because the fire was
lit in the salon every evening now, and things always looked better in
the fire-light.  But no, she really believed that everything in the
house, the furniture, the china shepherd boy, the casseroles in the
kitchen, knew that the herbarium had been restored to the high shelves
and that the world was not going to be destroyed this winter.

A life without security, without plans, without preparation for the
future, had been terrible.  Nothing had gone right this fall; her
father had not put away any wood-doves in fat, or laid in winter
vegetables, or bought his supply of wild rice from the Indians.  "But
we will manage," she sometimes whispered to her trusty pole when she
stuffed him with birch and pine.

Ccile tended the shop alone every afternoon now.  A notice on the door
requested messieurs les clients to be so good as to call in the
morning, as the pharmacien was occupied elsewhere in the afternoon.
Nevertheless clients came in the afternoon, especially country people,
and her father placed all the most popular remedies on one shelf and
marked them clearly, so that Ccile could dispense them when they were
called for.

This afternoon, just as she was about to go for another candle, she
thought she heard her father coming home; but it proved to be Nol
Pommier, the cobbler, who wanted a mixture of rhubarb and senna that M.
Auclair sometimes made up for his mother.

Ccile sprang up and told him it was ready at hand, plainly marked.
"_Et prfrriez-vous les pilules, ou le liquide, Monsieur Nol?_"

"_Les pilules, s'il vous plat, mademoiselle.  Et votre pre?_"

"He is always at the Chteau after three o'clock.  The Governor had
been indisposed for two weeks now."

"Everyone knows that, mademoiselle," said the cobbler with a sigh.
"Everyone is offering prayers for his recovery.  It will be bad for all
of us if anything goes wrong with the Count."

"Never fear, monsieur!  My father is giving him every care, and he
grows a little stronger each day."

"God grant it, mademoiselle.  Picard is very much discouraged about his
master.  He says he cannot shave himself any more and does not look
like himself.  Picard thinks he ought to be bled."

"Oh, Monsieur Pommier, I wish you could hear what my father has to say
to that!  And what does Picard know about medicine?  But he is not the
only one.  Other people have tried to persuade my father to bleed the
Governor, but he is as firm as a rock."

"I have no doubt Monsieur Auclair knows best, Mademoiselle Ccile; but
people will talk at such times, when a public man is ill."

Pommier had scarcely gone when her father came in, with a dragging step
and a mournful countenance.

"Papa," said Ccile as she brought him his indoor coat, "I know you are
tired, but the dinner will soon be ready.  Sit down by the fire and
rest a little.  And, Father, won't you try to look a little more
confident these days?  The people watch you, and when you have a
discouraged air, they all become discouraged."

"You think so?" He spoke anxiously.

"I am sure of it, Papa.  I can tell by the things they say when they
call here in your absence.  You must look as if the Governor were much,
much better."

"He is not.  He is failing all the time."  Her father sighed.  "But you
are right.  We must put on a better face for the public."

Ccile kissed him and went into the kitchen.  Just as she was moving
the soup forward to heat, she heard a sharp knock at the shop door.
Her father answered it, and Bishop de Saint-Vallier entered.  Auclair
hurriedly brought more candles into the shop and set a chair for his
visitor.  After preliminary civilities the Bishop came to the point.

"I have called, Monsieur Auclair, to inquire concerning the Governor's
condition.  Do you consider his illness mortal?"

"Not necessarily.  If he were ten years younger, I should not consider
it serious.  However, he has great vitality and may very easily rally
from this attack."

The Bishop frowned and stroked his narrow chin.  He was clearly in some
perplexity.  "When I called upon the Comte de Frontenac some days ago,
he stated that his recovery would be a matter of a week, at most.  In
short, he refused to consider his indisposition seriously, though to my
eyes the mark of death was clearly upon him.  Does he really believe he
will recover?"

"Very probably.  And that is a good state of mind for a sick man."

"Monsieur Auclair," Saint-Vallier spoke up sharply, "I feel that you
evade me.  Do you yourself believe that the Count will recover?"

"I must ask your indulgence, Monseigneur, but in a case like the
Count's a medical adviser should not permit himself to believe in
anything but recovery.  His doubts would affect the patient.  If the
Count still has the vital force I have always found in him, he will
recover.  His organs are sound."

Saint-Vallier seemed to pay little heed to this reply.  His eyes had
been restlessly sweeping the room from floor to ceiling and now became
fixed intently upon one point--on the stuffed alligator, as it
happened.  He began to speak rapidly, with gracious rise and fall of
the voice, but in his most authoritative manner.

"If the Governor's illness is mortal, and he does not realize the fact,
he should be brought to realize it.  He has a great deal to put right
with Heaven.  He has used his authority and his influence here for
worldly ends, rather than to strengthen the kingdom of God in
Septentrional France!"  For the first time he flashed a direct glance
at the apothecary.

Auclair bowed respectfully.  "Such matters are beyond me, Monseigneur.
The Governor does not discuss his official business with me."

"But there is always open discussion of these things!  Of the
Governor's stand on the brandy traffic, for example, which is
destroying our missions.  I have denounced his policy openly from the
pulpit, and on occasions when I noted that you were present in the
church.  You cannot be ignorant of it."

"Oh, upon that subject the Governor has also spoken publicly.  Everyone
knows that he considers it an unavoidable evil."

Saint-Vallier drew himself up in his chair and adopted an argumentative
tone.  "And why unavoidable?  You doubtless refer to his proposition
that the Indians will sell their furs only to such traders as will
supply them with brandy?"

"Yes, Monseigneur; and since the English and Dutch traders give them
all the brandy they want, and better prices for their skins as well, we
must lose the fur trade altogether if we deny them brandy.  And our
colony exists by the fur trade alone."

"That is our unique opportunity, Monsieur l'apothicaire, to sacrifice
our temporal interests for the glory of God, and impress by our noble
example the Dutch and English."

"If Monseigneur thinks the Dutch traders can be touched by a noble
example--"  Auclair smiled and shook his head.  "But these things are
all beyond me.  I know only what everyone knows,--though I have my own
opinions."

"If the Count's illness is as serious as it seems to me, Monsieur
Auclair, he should be given an opportunity to acknowledge his mistakes
before the world as well as to Heaven.  Such an admission might have a
salutary influence upon the administration which will follow his.
Since he relies upon you, it is your duty to apprise him of the gravity
of his condition."

Auclair met Saint-Vallier's glittering, superficial glance and
plausible tone rather bluntly.

"I shall do nothing to discourage my patient, Monseigneur, any more
than I shall bleed him, as many good people urge me to do.  The mind,
too, has a kind of blood; in common speech we call it hope."

The Bishop flushed--his sanguine cheeks were apt to become more ruddy
when he was crossed or annoyed.  He rose and gathered the folds of his
cloak about him.  "It is time your patient dropped the stubborn mask he
has worn so long, and began to realize that none of his enterprises
will benefit him now but such as have furthered the interests of
Christ's Church in this Province.  I have seen him, and I believe he is
facing eternity."

Auclair expressed himself as much honoured by the Bishop's visit and
accompanied him to the door, holding it open that the light might guide
him across the street to the steps of his episcopal Palace.  When he
returned to the salon, Ccile was bringing in the soup.

"I began to think Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier would never go, Papa.
How people do bother us about everything since the Count is ill!  I am
glad we can keep them away from him, at least."

Her father sat down and took a few spoonfuls of soup.  "Why, I find I
am quite hungry!" he declared.  "And when I came home, I did not think
I could eat at all.  For some reason, our neighbour's visit seems to
have made me more cheerful."

"That is because you were so resolute with him, Father!"

He smiled at her between the candles.

"What restless eyes he has, Ccile; they run all over everything, like
quicksilver when I spill it.  He kept looking in again and again at
your glass fruit, there on the mantel.  Do you know, I believe he drew
some conclusion from that; he has seen it at the Chteau, of course.
These men who are trained at Court all become a little crafty; they
learn to put two and two together.  I have always believed that is why
our patron never got advancement at Versailles: he is too downright."



IV

It was late afternoon, and Ccile was alone--as she was nearly always
now.  The Count had died last night.  To-day her father had gone to the
Chteau to seal his heart up in a casket, so that it could be carried
back to France according to his wish.  It was already arranged that
Father Joseph, Superior of the Rcollets, should take the casket to
Montreal, then to Fort Orange, and down the river to New York, where
the English boats came and went all winter.  On one of those boats he
would go to England, cross over to France, and journey to Paris with
the Count's heart, to bury it in the Montmort chapel at
Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs.

Auclair had been gone all the afternoon, and Ccile knew that he would
come home exhausted from sorrow, from his night of watching, and from
the grim duty which had taken him today to the Count's death-chamber.
Ccile regarded this rite with awe, but not with horror; autopsies, she
knew, must be performed upon kings and queens and all great people
after death.  That was the custom.  Her father would have the
barber-surgeon to help him,--though they were not very good friends,
because they disagreed about bleeding people.  The barber complained
that the meddlesome apothecary took the bread out of his mouth.

Many times that afternoon Ccile went out to the doorstep and looked up
at the Chteau.  A light snow was falling, and the sky was grey.  It
was very strange to look up at those windows in the south end, and to
know that there was no friend, no protection there.  She felt as if a
strong roof over their heads had been swept away.  She was not sure
that they would even have a livelihood without the Count's patronage.
Their sugar and salt and wine, and her father's Spanish snuff, had
always come from the Count's storehouses.  The colonists paid very
little for their remedies; if they brought a basket of eggs, or a
chicken, or a rabbit, they thought they were treating their medical man
very handsomely.  But what she most dreaded was her father's
loneliness.  He had lived under the Count's shadow.  The Count was the
reason for nearly everything he did,--for his being here at all.

About four o'clock, as the darkness began to close in, Ccile put more
wood on the fire in the salon and set some milk to warm before it.
There was very little to eat in the house.  Her father had not been to
market for a week.  Running to the door every few minutes, she at last
saw him coming down the hill, with his black bag full of deadly
poisons.  He looked grey and sick as she let him in.  Before he threw
his black bag into the cupboard, he took out of it a lead box, rudely
soldered over.  She looked at it solemnly.

"Yes," he said, "it is all we have left of him.  Father Joseph will set
out for France in two days.  I am in charge of this box until it starts
upon its journey."

He placed it in the cabinet where he kept his medical books, then went
into the salon and sank down in his chair by the fire.  Ccile knelt on
the floor beside him, resting her arms upon his knee.  He bent and
leaned his cheek for a moment on her shingled brown hair.

"So it is over, my dear," he sighed softly.  "It has lasted a lifetime,
and now it is over.  Since I was six years old, the Count has been my
protector, and he was my father's before me.  To my mother, and to your
mother, he was always courteous and considerate.  He belonged to the
old order; he cherished those beneath him and rendered his duty to
those above him, but flattered nobody, not the King himself.  That time
has gone by.  I do not wish to outlive my time."

"But you wish to live on my account, don't you, Father?  I do not
belong to the old time.  I have got to live on into a new time; and you
are all I have in the world."

Her father went on sadly: "The Count and the old Bishop were both men
of my own period, the kind we looked up to in my youth.  Saint-Vallier
and Monsieur de Champigny are of a different sort.  Had I been able to
choose my lot in the world, I would have chosen to be like my patron,
for all his disappointments and sorrows; to be a soldier who fought for
no gain but renown, merciful to the conquered, charitable to the poor,
haughty to the rich and overbearing.  Since I could not be such a man
and was born in an apothecary shop, it was my good fortune to serve
such a man and to be honoured by his confidence."

Ccile slipped quietly away to pour the warm milk into a cup, and with
it she brought a glass of brandy.  Her father drank them.  He said he
would want no dinner tonight, but that she must prepare something for
herself.  Without noticing whether she did so or not, he sat in a
stupor of weariness, dreaming by the fire.  The scene at the Chteau
last night passed again before his eyes.

The Count had received the Sacrament in perfect consciousness at seven
o'clock.  Then he sank into a sleep which became a coma, and lay for
three hours breathing painfully, with his eyes rolled back and only a
streak of white showing between the half-open lids.  A little after ten
o'clock he suddenly came to himself and looked inquiringly at the group
around his bed; there were two nursing Sisters from the Htel Dieu, the
Intendant and Madame de Champigny, Hector de Callires, Auclair, and
Father Joseph, the Rcollets' Superior, who had heard the Count's
confession and administered the last rites of the Church.  The Count
raised his eyebrows haughtily, as if to demand why his privacy was thus
invaded.  He looked from one face to another; in those faces he read
something.  He saw the nuns upon their knees, praying.  He seemed to
realize his new position in the world and what was now required of him.
The challenge left his face,--a dignified calm succeeded it.  Father
Joseph held the crucifix to his lips.  He kissed it.  Then, very
courteously, he made a gesture with his left hand, indicating that he
wished every one to draw back from his bed.

"This I will do alone," his steady glance seemed to say.

All drew back.

"Merci," he said distinctly.  That was the last word he spoke.  While
the group of watchers stood four or five feet away from the bed,
wondering, they saw that his face had become altogether natural and
lost all look of suffering.  He breathed softly for a few moments, then
breathed no more.  One of the nuns held a feather to his lips.  Madame
de Champigny got a mirror and put it close to his mouth, but there was
no cloud on it.  Auclair laid his head down on his patron's chest;
there all was still.

As Auclair was returning home after midnight, under the glitter of the
hard bright northern stars, he felt for the first time wholly and
entirely cut off from France; a helpless exile in a strange land.  Not
without reason, he told himself bitterly as he looked up at those
stars, had the Latin poets insisted that thrice and four times blessed
were those to whom it befell to die in the land of their fathers.

While Auclair sat by the fire thinking of these things, numb and
broken, Ccile was lying on the sofa, wrapped up in the old shawl
Madame Auclair had used so much after she became ill.  She, too, was
thinking of what they had lost.  They would indeed have another winter
in Quebec; but everything was changed almost as much as if they had
gone away.  That sense of a strong protector had counted in her life
more than she had ever realized.  To be sure, they had not called upon
the Count's authority very often; but to know that they could appeal to
him at any moment meant security, and gave them a definite place in
their little world.

The hours went by.  Her father did not speak or move, not even to fix
the fire, which was very low.  For once, Ccile herself had no wish to
set things right.  Let the fire burn out; what of it?

At last there came a knock at the door, not very loud, but
insistent,--urgent, as it were.  Auclair got up from his chair.

"Whoever it is, send him away.  I can see no one to-night."  He went
into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.

Ccile was a little startled,--death made everything strange.  She took
a candle into the shop, set it down on the counter, and opened the
door.  Outside there, against the snow, was the outline of a man with a
gun strapped on his back.  She had thrown her arms around him before
she could really see him,--the set of his shoulders told her who it was.

"Oh, Pierre, Pierre Charron!"  She began to cry abandonedly, but from
joy.  Never in all her life had she felt anything so strong and so
true, so real and so sure, as that quick embrace that smelled of
tobacco and the pine-woods and the fresh snow.

"_Petite tte de garon_!" he muttered running his hand over her head,
which lay on his shoulder.  "There, don't try to tell me.  I know all
about it.  I started for Kebec as soon as I heard the Count was
sinking.  Today, on the river, I passed the messengers going to
Montreal; they called the word to me.  And your father?"

"I don't know what to do, Pierre.  It is worse with him than when my
mother died.  There seems to be no hope for us."

"I understand," he stroked her soothingly.  "I knew this would be a
blow to him.  I said to myself in Ville-Marie: 'I must be there when it
happens.'  I came as quickly as I could.  Never did I paddle so fast.
The breeze was against me, there was no chance of a sail.  I had only a
half-man to help me--Antoine Frichette, you remember?  That poor fellow
for whom your father made the belly-band.  He did his best, but since
his hurt he has no wind.  I'm here at last, to be of any use I can.
Command me."  He had loosed the big kerchief from his neck, and now he
gently wiped her cheeks dry with it.  Turning her face about to the
candlelight, he regarded it intently.

"I wish you would go to him, Pierre.  He is in the kitchen."

He kissed her softly on the forehead, unslung his gun, and went out
into the kitchen.  He, too, closed the door behind him.  In the few
moments while she was left alone in the shop, Ccile opened the outer
door again and looked up toward the Chteau.  The falling snow and the
darkness hid it from sight; but she had once more that feeling of
security, as if the strong roof were over them again; over her and the
shop and the salon and all her mother's things.  For the first time she
realized that her father loved Pierre for the same reason he had loved
the Count; both had the qualities he did not have himself, but which he
most admired in other men.

When they came in from the kitchen, Charron had his arm over Auclair's
shoulder.

"_Ccile_," he called, "_je n'ai pas de chance_.  Evidently I am too
late for supper, and I have not had a morsel since I broke camp before
daybreak."

"Supper?  But we have had no supper here tonight.  We had no appetite.
I will make some for you, at once.  There is not much in the house, I
am afraid; my father has not been to market.  Smoked eels, perhaps?"

Charron made a grimace.  "Detestable!  Even I can do better than that.
I shot a deer for our supper in the forest last night, and I brought a
haunch along with me,--outside, in my bag.  What else have you?"

"Not much."  Ccile felt deeply mortified to confess this, though it
was not her fault.  "We have some wild rice left from last year, and
there are some carrots.  We always have preserves, and of course there
is soup."

"Excellent; all that sounds very attractive to me at the moment.  You
attend to everything else, but by your leave I will cook the venison in
my own way.  It's enough for us all, and there will be good pickings
left for Blinker."

When Charron went out to get his game-bag, Auclair whispered to his
daughter: "Are we really so destitute, my child?  Do the best you can
for him.  I will open a box of the conserves from France."

He now seemed very anxious about his dinner, and she could not forbear
a reproachful glance at the head of the house, who had been so
neglectful of his duties.

"And you, Monsieur Euclide," said Pierre, when he came back with the
haunch in his hand, "you ought to produce something rather special from
your cellar for us."

"It shall be the best I have," declared his host.


The supper lasted until late.  After the dessert the apothecary opened
a bottle of heavy gold-coloured wine from the South.

"This," he said, "is a wine the Count liked after supper.  His family
was from the South, and his father always kept on hand wines that were
brought up from Bordeaux and the Rhone vineyards.  The Count inherited
that taste."  He sighed heavily.

"Euclide," said Charron, "tomorrow it may be you or I; that is the way
to look at death.  Not all the wine in the Chteau, not all the wines
in the great cellars of France, could warm the Count's blood now.  Let
us cheer our hearts a little while we can.  Good wine was put into the
grapes by our Lord, for friends to enjoy together."

When it was almost midnight, the visitor said he was too tired to go
hunt a lodging, and would gladly avail himself of the invitation, often
extended, but never before accepted, of spending the night here and
sleeping on the sofa in the salon.

Ccile, in her upstairs bedroom, turned to slumber with the weight of
doubt and loneliness melted away.  Her last thoughts before she sank
into forgetfulness were of a friend, devoted and fearless, here in the
house with them, as if he were one of themselves.  He had not a throne
behind him, like the Count (it had been very far behind, indeed!), not
the authority of a parchment and seal.  But he had authority, and a
power which came from knowledge of the country and its people; from
knowledge, and from a kind of passion.  His daring and his pride seemed
to her even more splendid than Count Frontenac's.




_EPILOGUE_

On the seventeenth day of August 1713, fifteen years after the death of
Count Frontenac, the streets of Quebec and the headland overlooking the
St. Lawrence were thronged with people.  By the waterside the
Governor-General and Monsieur Vaudreuil, the Intendant, with all the
clergy, regular and secular, the magistrates, and the officers from the
garrison, stood waiting to receive a long-expected guest.  Down the
river lay a ship from France, _La Manon_, unable to come in against the
wind.  A small boat had been sent out to bring in one of her
passengers.  As the little boat drew near the shore, all the cannon on
the fortifications, and the guns on the vessels anchored in the
roadstead, thundered a salute of welcome to Monseigneur de
Saint-Vallier, at last returning to his people after an absence of
thirteen years.

When the prelate put foot upon the shore of Quebec, the church-bells
began to ring, and continued to ring while the Governor-General, the
Intendant, and the Archidiacre made addresses of welcome.  The
Indendant's carriage stood ready to convey the Bishop, but he
preferred, characteristically, to ascend on foot to the Cathedral in
the Upper Town, surrounded by the clergy and preceded by drums and
hautbois.

Euclide Auclair, the old apothecary, standing before his door on
Mountain Hill to watch the procession, was shocked at the change in
Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier.  When he sailed for France thirteen years
ago, he was a very young man of forty-seven; now he came back a very
old man of sixty.  Every physical trait by which Auclair remembered the
handsome and arrogant churchman had disappeared.  He would never have
recognized, in this heavy, stooped, lame old man going up the hill, the
slender and rather dramatic figure he had so often seen mounting the
steps of the episcopal Palace across the way.  The narrow, restless
shoulders were fat and bent; the Bishop carried his head like a man
broken to the yoke.

Auclair watched the procession until the turn of the way shut
Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier from sight, then went back to his shop and
sat down, overcome.  The thirteen years which for him had passed
quietly, happily, had been bitter ones for the wandering Bishop.  Nine
years ago Saint-Vallier was on his way back to Canada after one of his
long absences, when his ship, _La Seine_, was captured by the English,
taken into London, and sold at auction.  The Bishop himself was
declared a prisoner of state, and was sequestered in a small English
town near Farnham until the French King should ransom him.

Politics intervened: King Louis had lately seized and imprisoned the
Baron of Man, Dean of the Cathedral of Lige.  The German Emperor was
much offended at this, and besought Queen Anne not to release the
Bishop of Quebec under any other terms than as an exchange for the
Baron of Man.  For five years Saint-Vallier remained a prisoner of
state in England, until King Louis at last set the Baron of Man at
liberty and recalled the Bishop of Quebec to France.  But this did not
mean that he was free to return to Canada.  During his captivity his
enemies in Quebec and Montreal had been busy, had repeatedly written
the Minister, Pontchartrain, that the affairs of the colony went better
with the Bishop away; that the King would be assisting his Canadian
subjects by keeping Saint-Vallier in France.  This the King did.  He
kept him, indeed, almost as long as the Queen of England had done.

That period of detention in France had sobered and saddened the wilful
Bishop.  His captivity in England he could ascribe to the hostilities
of nations; to himself and to others he was able to put a very good
face on it.  But he could not pretend that he was kept in France for
any other reason than that he was not wanted in Quebec.  He had to
admit to the Minister that he had made mistakes; that he had not taken
the wise course with the Canadian colonists.  Only by unceasing
importunities, and by working upon the sympathies of Madame de
Maintenon, who had always befriended him, had he ever wrung from the
King permission to sail back to his diocese.

On this day of his return, even his enemies were softened at seeing how
the man was changed.  In place of his former assurance he seemed to
wear a leaden mantle of humility; he climbed heavily up the hill to the
Cathedral as if he were treading down the mistakes of the past.

Auclair, the apothecary, on the other hand, had scarcely changed at
all.  His delicate complexion had grown a trifle sallow from staying
indoors so much, but the years which had made the Bishop an old man had
passed lightly over the apothecary.  Even his shop was still the same;
perhaps a trifle dustier than it used to be, and opposite his counter
there was a new cabinet screwed fast to the wall, full of brilliant
sea-shells, starfish and horseshoe crabs, dried seaweed and branches of
coral.  Everyone looked at this case on entering the shop,--there was
something surprising and unexpected about such a collection.  It
suggested the South and blue seas far away.

On the third day after the Cathedral had welcomed its long absent
shepherd, that prelate himself came to call upon the apothecary,
arriving at the door on foot and unattended.  He greeted Auclair with
friendliness and took the proffered chair, admitting that he felt the
summer heat in Quebec more than he used to do.

"But you yourself, Monsieur Auclair, are little altered.  I rejoice to
see that God has preserved you in excellent health."

Auclair hastened to bring out a glass of fortifying cordial, and the
Bishop accepted it gratefully.  While he drank it, Auclair regarded
him.  It was unfortunate that Saint-Vallier, of all men, should have
grown heavy--it took away his fine carriage.  His once luxuriant brown
hair was thin and grey, his triangular cheeks had become full and soft,
like an old woman's, and they were waxy white.  Between them, the sharp
chin had almost disappeared.

"I have been thinking how fortunate I shall be to have you for my
neighbour once more, Monseigneur," said Auclair.  "Every spring I have
given some little advice to the workmen who were attending to your
garden, and I have often wished you could see your shrubs coming into
bloom."

The Bishop smiled faintly and shook his head.

"Ah, monsieur, I shall not live in the episcopal Palace again.  Perhaps
that was a mistake; I should have waited to understand the designs of
Providence more perfectly."

"Not live in your own residence, Monseigneur?  That will be a great
disappointment to all of us.  The building is in excellent condition."

The Bishop again shook his head.  "I find myself too poor now to
maintain such an establishment.  I suppose you do not know anyone who
would care to rent the Palace?  The rental would be very helpful to me
in my present undertakings.  No, I shall reside at the Hpital
Gnral.[*]  My good daughters there have arranged un petit appartement
of two rooms which will meet my needs very well.  I shall reside with
them for the remainder of my life, God willing.  Their chaplain is old
and must soon retire, and I shall take his place.  The office of
chaplain will be quite compatible with my other duties."


* Some years before he sailed for France in 1770, Bishop de
Saint-Vallier had founded the Hpital Gnral, for the aged and
incurable.  The hospital still stands today, much enlarged; the wards
which Saint-Vallier built and the two small rooms in which he lived
until his death are unchanged.


Auclair was amazed.  "In a hospital the duties of a chaplain are
considerable, are they not?"

"But very congenial to me--" (the old man folded his hands over the
kerchief he had taken out to wipe his brow)--"to celebrate the morning
mass for the sisters and to hear their confessions; to administer the
consolations of the Church to the sick and the dying.  As chaplain I
shall be in daily attendance upon the unfortunate, as is my wish."

Auclair sat silent for some moments, stroking his short beard in
perplexity.  Evidently nothing in his former relations with Monseigneur
de Saint-Vallier was a guide for future intercourse.  He changed the
subject and began to speak of happenings in Quebec during the Bishop's
absence, of common acquaintances who had died in that time, among them
old Monseigneur de Laval.

Saint-Vallier sighed.  "Would it had been permitted me to return in
time to thank him for the labours he underwent for my flock during the
years of my captivity, and to close his eyes at the last.  I can never
hope to be to this people all that my venerable predecessor became,
through his devotion and his long residence among them.  But I shall be
with them now for as long as God spares me, and I hope to be deserving
of their affection."

At this moment a countrywoman appeared at the door.  She was about to
withdraw when she saw what visitor the apothecary was entertaining, but
the Bishop called her back and insisted that his host attend to her
needs.  He waited patiently in his chair while she bought foxglove
water for her dropsical father-in-law, and liquorice for her baby's
cough.  While he was serving her, Auclair wondered how he could give a
turn to the Bishop's talk and learn from him what was going on at home.
When the farmer woman had gone, he took the liberty of questioning his
visitor directly.

"You have been at Versailles lately, Monseigneur?  And how are things
there, pray tell me?"

"Very sad since the death of the young Duc and Duchesse de Bourgogne
last year.  The King will never recover from that double loss.  In the
Duc, his grandson, he foresaw a wise and happy reign for France; and
the young Duchesse had been the idol of his heart ever since she first
came to them from Savoie.  She was the life of the Court,--as dear to
Madame de Maintenon as to the King.  The official mourning is over, but
the Court mourns, nevertheless."

Auclair nodded.  "And the King, I suppose, is an old man now."

"Yes, the King is old.  He still comes down to supper to the music of
twenty-four violins, still works indefatigably with his ministers;
there is dancing and play and conversation in the Salle d'Apollon every
evening.  His Court remains the most brilliant in Europe,--but his
heart is not in it.  There is no one left who can charm away his years
and his cares as the little Duchesse de Bourgogne did, and nothing can
make him forget for one hour the death of the Duc de Bourgogne.  All
Christendom, monsieur, has suffered an incalculable loss in the death
of that pious prince."

"They died within a few days of each other, we heard."

Saint-Vallier bowed his head.  "They were buried in the same tomb, and
their little son with them."

"There is still talk of poison?"

"Popular opinion accuses the Duc d'Orlans.  Their second son, an
infant in arms, showed the same symptoms of poisoning, but he survived."

"Ah," said Auclair, "a bad situation!  The King is seventy-seven, and
the Dauphin a child in arms.  That will mean a long regency.  I suppose
the young Duc de Berry will fill that office?"

"God grant it, monsieur, God spare him!" exclaimed the Bishop
fervently.  "If any mischance were to befall the Duc de Berry, then
that arch-atheist and suspected poisoner the Duc d'Orlans would be
regent of France!"  Saint-Vallier's voice cracked at a high pitch.

Auclair crossed himself devoutly.  "I should have liked to see my King
once more.  He has been a great King.  Is he much altered in person?"

"He is old.  I had a private interview with His Majesty last November,
late in the afternoon, when he was taking his exercise in the Parc of
Versailles.  We had scarcely begun our conference when a wind arose,
stripping the trees that were already half-bare.  The King invited me
to go indoors to his cabinet, remarking that it distressed him now to
hear the autumn winds and to see the leaves fall.  That seemed to me to
indicate a change."

"Yes," said Auclair, "that tells a story."

"Monsieur," began the Bishop sadly, "we are in the beginning of a new
century, but periods do not always correspond with centuries.  At home
the old age is dying, but the new is still hidden.  I felt the same
condition in England, during my long captivity there.  There is now no
figure in the world such as our King was thirty years ago.  The changes
in the nations are all those of the old growing older.  You have done
well to remain here where nothing changes.  Here with you I find
everything the same."  He glanced about the shop and peered into the
salon.  "And the little daughter, whom I used to see running in and
out?"

"She is married, to our old friend Pierre Charron of Ville-Marie.  He
has built a commodious house in the Upper Town, beyond the Ursuline
convent.  They are well established in the world."

"You live alone, then?"

"For part of the year.  Perhaps you remember a little boy whom my
daughter befriended, Jacques Gaux?  His mother was a loose woman--she
died in your Hpital Gnral, some years ago.  The boy is now a sailor,
and when he is in Quebec, between voyages, he lives with me.  He
occupies my daughter's little chamber upstairs."  Auclair pointed to
the cabinet of shells and corals.  "He brings me these things back from
his voyages; he is in the West India trade.  I should like to keep him
here all the time; but his father was a sailor--it is natural."

"No," said the Bishop, "I do not recall him.  But your daughter I
remember with affection.  Heaven has blessed her with children?"

The apothecary's eyes twinkled.  "Four sons already, Monseigneur.  She
is bringing up four little boys, the Canadians of the future."

"Ah yes, the Canadians of the future,--the true Canadians."

There was something in Saint-Vallier's voice as he said this which
touched Auclair's heart; a note humble and wistful, something sad and
defeated.  Sometimes a neighbour whom we have disliked a lifetime for
his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that
shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and
puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.  Had his visitor not been a
Bishop, Auclair would have reached out and grasped his hand and
murmured: "Courage, mon bourgeois," as he did to down-hearted patients.
The two men sat together in a warm and friendly silence until
Saint-Vallier rose and said he must be going.  "I shall have the
pleasure of confirming your grandsons, I hope?  They will live to see
better times than ours."

Auclair accompanied him to the door and watched him tread his way up
the hill and round the turn of the street.  Then he went back to his
desk with the feeling that old feuds were forgotten.  He would have a
great deal to tell Ccile when he went to supper there tonight.  She
would be quicker than anyone to sense the transformation in their old
neighbour, who had built himself an episcopal residence approached by
twenty-four stone steps, and who now proposed to spend the rest of his
life in two small rooms in the hospital out on the river Charles.  To
be sure, the Bishop was a little theatrical in his humility, as he had
been in his grandeur; but that was his way, Auclair reflected, and,
after all, nobody can help his way.  If a man admits his mistakes, that
is a great deal, when he is a proud man and a Dauphinois--always a
stiff-necked race.

While he was closing his shop and changing his coat to go up to his
daughter's house, he thought over much that his visitor had told him,
and he believed that he was indeed fortunate to spend his old age here
where nothing changed; to watch his grandsons grow up in a country
where the death of the King, the probable evils of a long regency,
would never touch them.




[End of Shadows on the Rock, by Willa Cather]
