Spoon took the proffered hand with his sleepy grin. Benoit responded by an obsequiously graceful shaking and deliberative loquacity:
"Well; well, Monsieur the Seigneur,—We are very well. The wife is well, the father, the children also. And how is Madame the Seigneuresse? and yourself? The crisis approaches, does it not? Eh bien, at that point you will find Jean Benoit strong enough. I have a good heart, Monseigneur. Once Xiste Brin said to me, 'Monsieur the Director, you have a good heart.' Deign to accept my professions, monseigneur, of a loyalty the most solemn, of a breast for ever faithful."
"I have always accepted your friendship, Benoit, and trusted you," smiled generous Haviland. "See here, Zotique, give Benoit a responsible post.—How different must be our feelings at this priceless service of personal affection from those of our opponents, served only for money."
"No money!" blurted Spoon. "Taurieu! An election without money?"
Chamilly, with one quiet glance, turned away to L'Honorable. "Without 'tin,'—St. Christophe, I say!—St. Laurent!"
"Keep quiet—silence, I pray thee," returned Benoit, and drew his companion aside.
"Why did Benoit call himself Director?" Chrysler asked.
Haviland and the Honorable smiled. Chamilly answered:
"It is a weakness of his ever since he was put on the Board of our Agricultural Society. Do not laugh, unless at the common vanity of mankind."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE LOW-COUNTRY SUNRISE.
"Chacun son goût. Moi, j'aime mieux la nature primitive qui n'est pas à la mode du jour mais que l'on ne pourra jamais démoder … J'aime ce que j'aime, et vous, vous aimez autre chose. Grand bien vous fasse—je vous admire, Monsieur Tout-le-Monde."
—Ben Sulte
"I am going to rise before the sun to-morrow. Would you like to come out fishing?" remarked Haviland, cheerfully, on the way home. Chrysler signified assent.
At grey dawn, before it was yet quite daybreak, they were on the road. All the houses in the neighbourhood looked asleep. Heavy dews lay upon the grass. The scene was chilly, and a little comfortless and suggestive of turning back to bed.
"Where are we going?" the visitor asked, trying to collect his spirits.
"To find Bonhomme Le Brun, who superintends the boating interest.—'Bonhomme'—'Good Man'—is a kind of jocular name we give to every simple old fellow. 'Le Brun' is not quite correct either. His real name—or rather the only one extant among the noms-de-guerre of his predecessors, is Vadeboncoeur—'Go willingly,' which the Notaries I suppose would write 'Vadeboncoeur dit Le Brun.'"
Notwithstanding the early hour they were not alone on the road. A wrinkled woman, bent almost double, was toiling slowly along with heavy sighs, under a sack of firewood.
"See here, madame," Charnilly called out, stepping forward to her, "give me the sack;" which he unloaded from her back and threw over his shoulder.
"You are always so good, monseigneur Chamilly," the old woman groaned in a plaintive, palsied voice, without straightening her doubled frame.
"Is the Bonhomme at the house?" he enquired.
"I think not, sir; he was preparing to go to Isle of Ducks."
"Just where I thought," exclaimed Haviland in English. "This Le Brun is of the oddest class—a secular hermit on the solitudes of the river—a species of mystery to the others. Sometimes he is seen paddling among the islands far down; sometimes seining a little, by methods invented by himself; sometimes carrying home an old gun and more or less loaded with ducks; sometimes his torch is seen far out in the dark, night-fishing; but few meet him face to face besides myself. When a boy I used to think he lived on the water because his legs were crooked, though more probably his legs are crooked because he avoids the land. He keeps my sail-boat for me and I let him use the old windmill we shall come to by those trees."
The windmill and the cot of Le Brun stood in a birch-grown hollow, not far off, where a stream cascaded into the St. Lawrence, and had worn down the precipitous bank of earth. It was a wild picture. The gable of the cot was stained Indian red down to the eaves, and a stone chimney was embedded irregularly in its log side. The windmill, towering its conical roof and rusty weather-vane a little distance off, and stretching out its gray skeleton arms as if to creak more freely in the sweep of gales from the river, was one of those rembrandtesque relics which prove so picturesquely that Time is an artist inimitable by man. A clay oven near the cot completed this group of erections, around and behind which the silver birches and young elms grew up and closed.
No, Messieurs, Le Brun was not at home; he had gone to Isle of Ducks; and all the blessings of the saints upon Monseigneur for his kindness to a poor old woman.—"Ah, Seigneur!"
Chamilly took his skiff from the boathouse himself, and was soon pulling swiftly from the shore, while as they got out upon it the vastness and power of the stream became apparent.
From its broad surface the mists began to rise gracefully in long drifts, moved by the early winds and partly obscuring the distant shores, whose fringe of little shut up houses still suggested slumber. The dews had freshened the pines of Dormilliere, and the old Church stood majestically forward among them, throwing back its head and keeping sleepless watch towards the opposite side. Gradually receding, too, the Manoir showed less and less gable among its mass of foliage.
If the Church is one great institution of that country, the St. Lawrence is no less another,—displaying thirty miles unbroken blue on a clear day in the direction of the distant hill of Montreal, and on the other hand, towards Lake St. Peter, a vista oceanlike and unhorizoned. In certain regions numerous flat islands, covered by long grasses and rushes intersected by labyrinthine passages, hide the boatman from the sight of the world and form innumerable nooks of quiet which have a class of scenery and inhabitants altogether their own. As the chaloupe glides around some unsuspected corner, the crane rises heavily at the splash of a paddle, wild duck fly off low and swiftly, the plover circle away in bright handsome flocks, the gorgeous kingfisher leaves his little tree. In the water different spots have their special finny denizens. In one place a broad deep arm of the river—which throws off a dozen such arms, each as large as London's Thames, without the main stream appearing a whit less broad—shelters among its weeds exhaustless tribes of perch and pickerel; in another place a swifter and profounder current conceals the great sturgeon and lion-like maskinongé; while among certain shallower, less active corners, the bottom is clothed with muddy cat fish.
They approached a region of this kind, skimmed along by spirited athletic strokes, and had arrived at the head of the low-lying archipelago just described, where they came upon a motionless figure sitting fishing in a punt, some distance along a broad passage to the left.
Short blue blouse, little cap and flat-bottomed boat, the appearance of the figure at that hour made one with the drifting mists and rural strangeness of the landscape, and Chrysler knew it was Le Brun, and remarked so to Haviland.
"Without doubt, Bonhomme is part of nature and unmistakable—Hola
Bonhomme!"
"Mo-o-o-o-nseigneur," he sung in reply, without looking up or taking further notice of them.
Haviland gave a few more vigorous strokes.
"How does it bite, Bonhomme?"
"A little badly, monseigneur; all perch here; one pickerel. Shall we enter the little channels?"
"I do not wish to enter the little channels: I remain here."
They were soon fishing beside him, Chamilly at one end of the skiff intent upon his sport. The old man's flat punt was littered with perch. How early he must have risen! He was small of figure, weathered of face, simple and impassive of manner.
"Good day," Chrysler opened; "the weather is wettish."
"It is morningy, Monsieur."—
"My son knows you, Monsieur," he said again humbly, after a pause.
As Chrysler could not recall his son, as such, he waited before replying.
"He saw you at Benoit's."
Still Chrysler paused.
"On Sunday."
"A—ha, now I remember. That fine young man is your son?"
"That fine young man, sir," he assented with perfect faith.
After adjusting a line for Chrysler, he continued.
"Do you not think, monsieur, that my son is fine enough for Josephte
Benoit?"
"Assuredly. Does he like her?"
"They are devoted to each other."
"If she accepts him then, why not? You do not doubt your son?"
"Never, Monsieur! what is different is Jean. He thinks my Francois too poor for his Josephte, and he is for ever planning to discourage their love. Grand Dieu, he is proud! Yet his father and I were good friends when we were both boys. He wants Mlle. Josephte to take the American."
"Reassure yourself; that will never be. No, Bonhomme, trust to me; that shall never he," exclaimed Chamilly.
"How did you come to know these parties, sir," he put in English. But without awaiting an answer he continued: "Benoit is crazy to marry his daughter to that rowdy. Benoit was always rather off on the surface, but he has usually been shrewder at bottom. Cuiller infatuates him. He hasn't a single antecedent, but has been treating Benoit so much to liquor and boasting, that the foolish man follows him like a dog."
"My son has been to Montreal,—he has done business," said the Bonhomme with pride—"he is a good young man—and he had plenty of money before he lost it on the journey."
"How did he lose his money?"
"Some one stole it. He was coming down to marry Josephte. If he had had his money Jean would have let her take him.—But he can earn more."
"There was a mysterious robbery of François' money on the steam boat a couple of weeks ago," said Chamilly in English again, "I shall have to lend him some to set him up in business here, but mustn't do it till after my election."
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE IDEAL STATE.
The air, meanwhile, had been losing its dampness and the mist disappearing, when Haviland drew up his rod and threw it into the boat, and called upon his friend to turn and look at the sunrise.
American sunsets and sunrises, owing to the atmosphere, are famous for their gorgeousness; but some varieties are especially noble. Mountain ones charm by floods of lights and coloring over the heights and ravines, to whose character indeed the sky effects make but a clothing robe, and it is the mountains, or the combination, that speaks. But looking along this glassy avenue of water, flushed with the reflection, it was the great sunrise itself, in its own unobstructed fullness, spreading higher and broader than ever less level country had permitted the Ontarian to behold it, that towered above them over the reedy landscape, in grand suffusions and surges of color.
"It is in Nature," said Chamilly, comprehending that Chrysler felt the scene, "that I can love Canada most, and become renewed into efforts for the good of her human sons. I feel in the presence of this,"—he waved his hand upward, "that I could speak of my ideas."
"You would please me. You said a nation must have a reason for existing and that Canada should have a clear ideal of hers. What is the raison d'être of Canada?"
"To do pre-eminently well a part of the highest work of all the world! If by being a nation we can advance mankind; if by being a nation we can make a better community for ourselves; our aims are founded on the highest raison d'être,—the ethical spirit. We must deliberately mark out our work on this principle; and if we do not work upon it we had better not exist."
Then Haviland related to Chrysler freely and fully the comprehensive plan which he had worked out for the building of the nation.
"First of all," he said, "as to ourselves, there are certain things we must clearly take to mind before we begin:"
"That we cannot do good work without making ourselves a good people;"
"That we cannot do the best work without being also a strong and intellectual people;"
"And that we cannot attain to anything of value at haphazard; but must deliberately choose and train for it."
"Labors worthy of Hercules!" ejaculated the old gentleman.
"Worthy of God," the young one replied. The difference of age between himself and the Ontarian seemed to disappear, and he proceeded confidently:
"The foundation must be the Ideal Physical Man. We must never stop short of working until,—now, do not doubt me, sir,—every Canadian is the strongest and most beautiful man that can be thought. No matter how utterly chimerical this seems to the parlor skeptic who insists on our seeing only the common-place, it cannot be so to the true thinker who knows the promises of science and reflects that a nation can turn its face to endeavours which are impossible for a person. Physical culture must be placed on a more reasonable basis, and made a requisite of all education. We need a Physical Inspector in every School. We need to regularly encourage the sports of the country. We require a military term of training, compulsory on all young men, for its effect in straightening the person and strengthening the will. We must have a nation of stern, strong men—a careless people can never rise; no deep impression, no fixed resolve, will ever originate from easy-going natures."
"Next, the most crying requirement is True Education. The source of all our political errors and sufferings is an ignorant electorate, who do not know how to measure either the men or the doctrines that come before them. There is necessity in the doctrine of the State's right over secular education. Democracy, gives you and me an inalienable interest, social and political, in the education of each voter, because its very principle is the right to choose our rulers. As to religious education, that of course is sacred, where it does not encroach on the State's right, and the arrangement I favor is that secular studies be enforced during certain hours, and the use of the school buildings granted to religious instructors at others."
"I notice you say true education."
"A man is being truly educated when his training is exactly levelled at what he ought to be:—first of all a high type of man in general, and next, a good performer of his calling. Let him have a scheme of facts that will give him an idea of the ALL: then show him his part in it."
"Let him be taught in a simple way the logic of facts."
"Let him be taught to seek the best sources only of information."
"Let him be taught in school the falsity of the chief political sophisms."
"Let him be branded with a few business principles of life in general: such as how much to save, and where to put it, and the wisdom of insurance."
"Let him learn these three maxims of experience:"
"Gain experience."
"Gain experience at the lowest possible price."
"Never risk gaining the same experience twice."
"Seek for him, in fine, not learning so much as wisdom, the essence of learning."
"But especially, let every Canadian be educated to see The National
Work, and how to do it."
"In short, educate for what you require and educate most for the greatest things you require, and in manner such that everyone may be equipped to stand anywhere without help, and fight a good battle."
"It is an Ideal Character, however, a character perfectly harmonized with his destinies as a soul, and his condition as a citizen, that is the most important armour in the panoply of the Canadian. Purity and elevation of the national character must be held sacred as the snowy peaks of Olympus to the Greek. And as those celestial summits could never have risen to their majesty without foundations of more humble rocks and earth; so we must lay foundations for our finer aspirations by the acquirement of certain basal habits:"
"The Habit of Industry."
"The Habit of Economy."
"The Habit of Progress."
"The Habit of Seriousness."
"In other words the habits of honestly acquiring, keeping and improving, all good things, material, intellectual and moral, and of dealing with the realities of things."
"The Habit of Seriousness may seem strange to insist upon, but one has only to mark the injury to everything noble, of an atmosphere of flippancy and constant strain after smart language. There is nothing in flippancy to have awe of—any one can learn the knack of it—but it is foolish and degrading, while seriousness is the color of truth itself."
"As to the Habit of Industry, there is no other way that can be depended upon for becoming wealthy in goods, or learning, or in good deeds. Materially, if we can learn to employ all our available time at something, we shall be the richest of nations. Why have we so many men idling about the villages? Why do so many women simply live on a relative? How different the country would look if the man spent his waste moments in building a gallery, an oriel window, or an awning, to his house, and the idle girl practised some home manufacture. The prosperity of certain Annapolis valley farmers once struck me. 'Do you know why it is?' said a gentleman who was born there. 'The forefathers of these people were a colony of weavers, and there is a loom in every house.'"
"The Habit of Economy is simply making the best use of our possessions and powers."
"The Habit of Progress, or of constantly seeking to improve, is to be deeply impressed. It alone will bring us everything. It is never time to say, 'Let us remain as we are.'"
"We could attend to some minor habits with benefit. How the popular intelligence would be improved, for instance, by:—"
"A habit of asking for the facts."
"A habit of thinking before asserting."
"A mean between liberality and tenacity of conviction."
"Now one more piece of equipment, but it is the highest: The Canadian, if he is to live a life thoroughly scaled on the scale of the reasonable, must place the greatest importance on those interests which transcend all his others, his future fare beyond this make-shift existence; his relations to the unseen world; and how to lay hold on purity and righteousness. Think what he may of them, life should at any rate think. Let him set apart times to ponder over these matters: and for this, I say that to be a lofty and noble nation, we must all borrow the rational observance of the Sabbath, not as a day merely of rest and still less of flighty recreation, but a necessary period devoted to man's thought upon his more tremendous affairs."
After the equipment of the ideal Canadians, Chamilly proceeded to describe their work. They were to see its pattern above them in the skies—The Perfect Nation.
Among themselves a few great ideas were to be striven for: "We must be
One People," "Canada must be Perfectly Independent:" "There must be No
Proletariat"
The principle of government was to be "Government by the Best
Intelligence."
"We must try to amend unfair distributions of wealth. Yet not to take from the rich, but give to the poor. Fortunes should be looked upon as national, and we should seek means to bring the wealthy to apply their fortunes to patriotic uses. The surroundings of the poor should be made beautiful. No labour should be wasted. Men should learn several occupations, and Government find means of instant communication between those who would work and those who would employ. The lot of the poor must not be made hopeless from generation to generation!"
The next demand of the Ideal was, "There must be No Vice."
"The difficulties!" sighed Chrysler.
"We ought to be ashamed to complain till we have done as well as
Sweden."
"Again, we must stamp our action with the Spirit of Organization. The nation must work all together as a whole. The public plan must be clearly disseminated, and especially the aim 'To do pre-eminently well our portion of the improvement of the world.' Consecrated by our ideal also we must seek to draw together, and foster a national distinctiveness. Canada must mean to us the Sacred Country, and our young men learn to weigh truly the value of such living against foreign advantages. For there is no surety of any excellence equal to a national atmosphere of it. They have always been artists in Italy; they have always been sternly free in Scotland: for a word of glory the French rush into the smoke of battle: the Englishman is a success in courage and practicality; the German has not given his existence in vain to thoroughness; nor the American to business. Let us make to ourselves proper customs and peculiarities, like the good old New Year's call, the Winter Carnival, the snow-shoe costume, and a secular procession of St. Jean Baptiste. Tradition too! Why should we forget the virtues of our fathers; or perhaps still better their faults? Let the man who was a hero—Daulac; Brock; the twelve who sortied at Lacolle Mill; our deathless three hundred of Chateauguay,—never to be forgotten. Have them in our books, our school books, our buildings. Make a Fund for Tablets; so that the people may read everywhere: 'Here died McGee, who loved this nation.' 'Papineau spoke here.' 'In this house dwelt Heavysege.' So might all Canada be a Quebec of memories."
He held that the office of our literature and art was to express the spirit of our work. "Nor let the poet," he said, "find the keystone of our spirits dull; let him not fear he sings a vain song when he leaves that voice lingering in some vale of ours that conjures about it forever its moment of richest beauty and romance."
In dress, in manners, we should be common-sense, tasteful and fearless, and in the development of our territory energetic and full of hope. "Believe me, sir, we shall yet learn how to have bright fire-sides on the shores of the Arctic."
"And where is our world-work?" Chrysler asked, like one awakening.
"Wherever there is world-work undone that we can reach to do."
"Think," cried he, finally, "of a country that lives, as I am suggesting, on the deepest and highest principle of the seen and the unseen—what has been the aspiration of the lonely great of other nations, the clear purpose of all is this: what have been the virtues of a few in the past, determined here to be those of the whole; and every citizen ennobled by the consciousness that he is equally possessed of the common glory!"
"It can be done! Heaven and earth tell us that all is under laws of cause and effect, and that this, which has been once, can be made universal. I hear the voice of Science, 'It can be done. It can be done!' I hear the voice of Duty, 'It must be done!' Inextinguishable voices!!"
"It comes to me so vividly that I almost point you to that sunrise and say, 'See yon beautiful city whose palaces and churches tower with the grace and splendors of all known architecture; those rural plains and vales of park and garden, where every home nestles so as one could not conceive it more lovely; that race of heroes and goddesses in strength and thought; those proud tablets and monuments of national and international honor and achievement and blessing.' And if any say, 'How can we attain to that greatness?' I would write him this amulet: 'Begin at the POSSIBLE!'"
The patriot ended, and when he had finished, Chrysler exclaimed:
"Work it out, Haviland! If a convert is any use to you, take me over and send me forth. It's a noble scheme. But, for Heaven's sake, fortify yourself. How many proselytes do you expect in the first hundred years?"
"You forget," replied Haviland. "I have always this faithful little legion of Dormillière. Has not Lareau said," and he smiled half in joke, half seriously, "that we are a people of ideals."
They returned to their fishing in silence, broken by a meditative query now and then from Chrysler, but no movement of curiosity from the Bonhomme.
CHAPTER XXVII.
JOSEPHTE.
"Sister Elisâ," lisped Rudolphe, the tiny boy. (In the garden the children of the farmer of the domain, and of Pierre, were playing together.) "Mr. Ch'ysl' has told me he was a Canadian."
"Did he say so, mon fin?" asked motherly ten-year-old Elisâ, picking a "belle p'tite" flower for the little fellow, whom she held by the hand.
"He's not Canadian," put in the large boy, Henri, with contempt befitting his twelve years of experience. "Because he doesn't speak French. He's an English."
"Speaking French don't make a Canadian," answered Elisâ. "The Honorable says every one who is native in Canada is a Canadian, speak he French, speak he English."
"O, well—the Honorable—the Honorable—" retorted Henri, testily.
While this went on, the voice of Josephte could be heard singing low and happy, in a corner of the walk of pines which surrounded the garden and the back of the grounds:
"Eglantine est la fleur que j'aime
La violette est ma couleur…."[H]
Next, lower, but as if stirred softly by the lingering strain rather than feeling its sadness:
[Footnote H: "Eglantine is the flower I love,
My color is the violet"]
"….Dans le souci tu vois l'emblème
Des chagrins de mon triste coeur."[I]
[Footnote I:
"….The symbol shall the emblem prove
Of my sad heart and eyelids wet"]
When she got thus far, she stopped and called out, cheerfully:—"Come along, my little ones; come along; come along and recite your duties!" And in a trice they all raced in and were panting in a row about her.
Thus one sultry afternoon, Mr. Chrysler found her sitting, book and sewing on her lap and only a rosary about her neck to relieve the modest black dress, whose folds,
"Plain in their neatness," accorded well with her indefinably gentle bearing. Seeing him, she stopped and dropped her head, like a good convent maiden.
"Procedez, ma'amselle," he said, nodding benevolently. "Do not disturb yourself."
"But, monsieur," she said, and blushed in confusion.
"Go on. I shall be interested in these young people's lessons."
"As monsieur wishes," she replied. "Now, my little ones, your catechism."
They ranged themselves in a line.
"Elisâ, thee first; repeat the Commandments of God."
Elisâ commenced a rhyming paraphrase of the Ten Commandments.
"Ah, no, cherie,—more reverence. Say it as to the Holy Virgin."
Elisâ went through it in a soft manner to the end.
"Rudolphe; the Seven Commandments of the Church."
The childish accents of the little one repeated them:—
1. Mass on Sundays them shalt hear
And on feasts commanded thee.
2. Once at least in every year,
Must thy sins confessed be.
3. Thy Creator take at least
At Easter with humility.
4. And keep holy every feast,
Whereof thou shalt have decree.
5. Quatre-temps, Vigils, fasts are met,
And in Lent entirely.
6. Fridays flesh thou shalt not eat;
Saturdays the same shall be.
7. Church's every tithe and fee
Thou shalt pay her faithfully.
"Henri, what is the Church which Jesus Christ has established?"
"The Church which Jesus Christ has established," said he stoutly, "is the Church Catholic, Apostolic and Roman."
The next was Henri's eight year old sister.
"Can anyone be saved outside of the Church Catholic, Apostolic and
Roman?"
"No," (solemnly,) "out of the Church there is no salvation."
"Say now the Act of Faith all together."
"My God," said the children in unison, "I believe firmly all that the Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches, because it is you who have said it and you are Truth Itself."
"You may rest yourselves."
Chrysler was most curious regarding what he heard thus instilled. The thought struck him: "There's something like that, in our Calvinism too."
"My dear demoiselle," he said aloud, "as I am a Protestant—"
"A Protestant, sir!" She regarded him with visibly extraordinary emotions, and involuntarily crossed herself.
"It is impossible!"
It was the first time a Protestant and she had ever been face to face. "Monsieur," she appealed in agitation "why do you not enter the bosom of the true Church?"
"Must one not act as he believes?"
"But, sir," said the dear girl, painfully, still regarding him with great wonder, "on studying true doctrine, the saints will make you believe; the priest can baptize you. He will be delighted, I am certain, to save a soul from destruction." She could not restrain the flow of a tear.
"My child," Chrysler said, for he saw that curiosity had led him too far: "Leave this to God, who is greater than you or I and knows every heart."
"Monsieur, then, believes in God!" Her present astonishment was equal to that before.
The rising voices of the children relieved him. That of Elisâ, who sat in a ring of the rest, nodding her head decidedly and rhythmically, was conspicuous:
"I am going to join the Sisterhood of the Holy Rosary and go to church early, early, often, often, four times a day, and pray, pray, and say my paters and my aves, and gain my indulgences, and be more devout than Sister Jesus of God; and then I am going to take the novitiate and wear a beautiful white veil and fast every day, and at last—at last—I am going to be a Religieuse."
"What name will you take, Elisâ?"
"I have decided," the little convent girl responded, "to take the name of 'Sister St. Joseph of the Cradle.'"
"Mais, that is pretty, that! But I prefer 'St. Mary of the Saviour.'"
"What are you going to be?" Elisâ asked of the smaller girl.
"I will be—I will be—I will take my first communion."
"I have taken it already," replied Elisâ, with superiority.
"Henri! Henri! it is your turn."
"I am going to be an advocate."
"And I am going to be a Rouge," replied little Rudolphe.
"Hah,—we are all Rouges," replied Henri.
"O, well—I will be, then—Monseigneur, like Monsieur Chamilly."
The garden stretched behind the manor-house. Along its paths these children delighted to explore the motherly currant-bushes. Old-fashioned flowers stocked it, and, as Chrysler walked away among them, they reminded him of the simple gardens of his childhood before the showy house-plant era had modernized our grounds. There were erect groups and rows of hollyhocks; monkshood offered its clusters of blue caps; striped tulips and crimson poppies flourished in beds of generous shapes; delicate astors, rich dahlias, and neat little bachelors' buttons peeped in crowds from green freshnesses. This was one of Madame's domains, where she walked, weeded and superintended every morning in broad straw hat and apron; and it was to Chrysler one of the attractions of the Manoir.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
GRANDMOULIN.
"Que Demosthènes,
En haranguant,
Entraine Athènes,
Come un torrent!"
—JACQUES VIORR—LE JARGON DU BEL-ESPRIT.
The events to which all others were leading now began to happen.
The great nomination day,—Sunday—is here. Mass is over, the whole parish, aye and crowds from far and near behind, surge all over the square, where the Church looks down upon them in serenity and silence.
When Chrysler came up, the Cure and his vicar were sitting on their gallery, and a man of strong frame stood upon the crier's rostrum looking round with the assertive consciousness that he was a recognized figure. His face wore a beard of strong but thin black wisps, which would have been Vandyke in form had it been heavier, but allowed the forcible outlines of his chin and cheek to be visible; and his locks, imitated by many a follower throughout the Province, were worn like Gainbetta's in a long and swelling black mass behind. His countenance, evidently from long experience, was so controlled that no trace of natural expression could be discerned upon it beyond an appearance of caution and diplomacy; but whatever its specific character, it bore without gainsay the stamp of power.
The man was Grandmoulin.
After looking this way and that way for several moments allowing the assemblage to hush, he began in a quiet tone.
"My friends!"
He paused deliberately some moments to permit the people's curiosity to concentrate upon him.
"My brothers!"
This with a rising, powerful voice.—Then higher:
"French—Canadians!!" separating the two words.
The audience strained with attention to hear him. What he had to say next became a matter of suspense.
Then with inflection of passionate enthusiasm:
"Canadian FRENCHMEN!!!" he cried, hurling out all his force. And the people could no longer restrain themselves; the rhetorical artifice took them by storm, and they shouted and cheered with one loud, far-echoing, unanimous voice.
Grandmoulin kept his attitude erect and immovable.
"My friends," he proceeded, when the applause began to subside, "I address you as heritors and representatives of a glorious national title. To wear it—to be called 'Frenchman' is to stand in the ranks of the nobility of the human race. I address you as a generous, a great, a devoted people, a people brave of heart and unequalled in intellectual ability, a people proud of themselves, their deeds and the deeds of their fathers in New France and in the fair France of the past, a people above all intensely national, patriotic, jealous for the advancement of their tongue and their race. I address you as faithful of the ancient Church which was founded on the Petrine Rock, and names itself Catholic, Apostolic, Roman; whose altars God has preserved unshaken through the centuries amid terrible hosts of enemies, bitter oppressions, diabolical persecutions; of whose faith your hearts, your bodies, your race itself, are the consecrated depositories set apart and blessed of Heaven."
"I address you further, Frenchmen of Canada, as an oppressed remnant, long crushed and evil treated under alien conquerors; who despoiled you of your dominion, your freedom and your future, and whose military despotism, history records, spurned your cry during eighty years with unspeakable arrogance; till you rose like men in the despair of the '37, for the simplest rights, brandishing in your hands poor scythes and knives against armies with cannon, O my compatriots!—and compelled them to dole you a little justice!"
"The brave and generous who still remain of the generation before, recount to you those living scenes, and your hearts take part with the wronged and valiant of your blood!"
"In this secluded countryside you see too little how they still insult you. Ask yourselves frankly whether that for which our nation strove has ever yet been had. What have we gained? Is not the battle still to be fought? There are no facts more patent than that the English are our conquerors, that they rule our country, that they are aliens, heretics, enemies of our Holy Religion, and that they are heaping up unrighteous riches, while we are becoming despised and poor."
"Think not that I speak without emotions in my breast. There was a day, my poor French-Canadian brothers,—a solemn day, when I bound myself by a great oath to the cause of my people. It was when my father told me, his voice choking with, tears, of the murder of my grandfather, ignominiously thrown from the gallows for the felony of patriotism! Was I wrong to rise in grief and wrath, and swear with tears and prayers before our good Ste. Anne that I would never rest or taste a pleasure until I free the French-Canadians?"
"'It is I who will defend my race and my religion!' cried I then, and I have ever striven to do this, and still so strive."
Having thus played along each different key of his hearer's prejudices, he turned them towards his end.
"It is possible you may think I have, been speaking of everything but politics, and that you are asking yourselves what I really mean. Do you know what this election signifies? It is a contest of the French with the English. It is a question whether that arrogant minority shall continue to impose their ideas, their leaders, their execrable heresies, their taxes and restrictions upon this great French-Canadian Province—the only country which you have been able to hold for your own. You are here, at least, the majority! If their artifices have succeeded in excluding you from a part in governing the Dominion, there is one thing left; you can govern this Province if you stand by me! If you stand by my me you can make our country purely and powerfully French! The ballot gives us the government: we will legislate the English. We will repay their oppressions with taxes and leave the Frenchman free; we will overvalue their properties, and undervalue our own; we will divide their constituencies; we will proclaim parishes out of townships; we will deprive them of offices, harass their commerce, vex their heretical altars; we will force new privileges from the Federal power; we will colonize the public lands with our own people exclusively, and repatriate our children lost; we will possess ourselves of those palaces and that vast wealth they wring from our labor, and finally, free as these great stretches of the valley, we shall live at peace in our own land."
A sullen murmur passed about. The passions were being roused. "The
English eat the French-Canadians," repeated several.
"Messieurs of Dormillière, you can judge of me! They have said of me all sorts of calumnies, all kinds of insinuations. I have been painted as black as the evil spirits. Men are here who will tell you 'Grandmoulin is a hypocrite; Grandmoulin is a robber, a liar, a libertine,'—that I have ruined my Province and sold my people and committed all the list of mortal sins. But, my brothers, I turn from those who assert these wicked falsehoods and I justify myself to you."
"Because I have not sought peace with the strong—because I have not acted a vanquished to the victors—because I have suffered—but that is nothing—because I have freely poured out every energy, as I do to-day," (and there was certainly vast physical effort in the output he was then making of himself) "they have branded me that disturber, that robber, that murderer, that liar and that villain."
"Messieurs, let me tell you a secret that will explain! Scan close and you will find that there is no man who says these things of me who is not either a friend of the English, and traitor to you, or else has been rejected by my associates as unworthy to represent our patriotic ambitions. I must speak even of the agreeable young man of intellect and eloquence who opposes me. I do not blame him: I forgive him. He is young and inexperienced, and he sees things from certain aspects only. Have you never considered that it was natural for one whose father was an Englishman, and whose Protestant grandfather came across the seas among the army that conquered us, to look from a standpoint different from ours. If his birth and sympathies lead him in another direction from me, and my enemies have succeeded in prejudicing his mind, make allowance for him as I myself do, and trust me. I adjure you by the holy names of Mary and Joseph, I am your friend: understand only that Grandmoulin is your friend! Let the confidence be complete, and the triumph of your race in the Province of Quebec is secure!"
To Chrysler's utter surprise, the orator, pausing a moment, singled him out; pointed his finger towards him, and, turning to the people, cried: "Have I not said Mr. Haviland was a friend of your conquerors? Let me show you his adviser at this crisis of his plans!"
Grandmoulin knew he was in a community saturated with the Rouge tradition. He knew that even with all the weak and corruptible elements of the "back parishes" his chances were inferior on their face to Chamilly's, and he felt that he must at least retain his adherents here or lose the county. It was only after a final, truly magnificent effort of eloquence that he withdrew, and cheers upon cheers followed him, especially from a party among whom Cuiller, in a state of intoxication, was prominent. It was the first time that Grandmoulin had appeared in the neighborhood, and he had evidently created a great impression.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAMILLY.
"Mais, n'avons-nous pas, je vous prie,
Encore de plus puissants liens?
A tout preferons la patrie:
Avant tout soyons Canadiens."
—POPULAR SONG.
Chamilly rose upon the rostrum when Grandmoulin went down. He opened quietly, after the exciting peroration of his opponent, and in a manner which lulled and calmed the assembly.
"People of Dormillière, I have had a cause for wonder during Mr. Grandmoulin's discourse. I have been wondering at the perfect courage with which he invents a fact, a reason, a principle, an emotion, in cases where almost the whole world knows that none of these exist."
"I am accounted a person informed in the events of '37. I have studied all the accounts and documents that are accessible, and have made a point of conversing with the survivors of that time. I state with the fullest knowledge, and you have long known the value of my word, that it is a falsehood that Mr. Grandmoulin's grandfather died a martyr as he has alleged, nor is he known to have been concerned in the rebellion in any way."
This statement created a visible sensation over the audience.
"Zotique called out: 'The National Liar!'"
Grandmoulin remained immovable.
"His assertion that I am an Englishman," went on Chamilly, "is as absurd as it is futile here. Friends of mine through my youth, and children of the friends of my forefathers, whose lives arose and declined in this place like ours, am I not bound to you by ties which forbid that I should be named a stranger!"
(Cries of "Oui, Oui," "Nôtre frère!" and "Nôtre Chamilly!")
"Mr. Grandmoulin speaks a falsehood of perhaps not less importance in his assertion that the English are oppressing us. Where is the oppression of which he makes cry? The very existence of each of you in his full liberty and speaking French ought to be a sufficient argument. Speak, act, worship, buy, sell,—who hinders us so long as we obey the laws? Would you like a stronger evidence of our freedom? Grandmoulin himself presents it when he proclaims his violent incitations! Of oppression by our good fellow-citizens, let then no more be said.—"
"The object of Mr. Grandmoulin in these bold falsifications is I think sufficiently suspected by you, when you have it on the evidence of your senses that they are invented. Let us leave both them and him aside and keep ourselves free to examine that theme of far transcending importance, the true position of the French-Canadians."
"What is our true position? Is it to be a people of Ishmaelites, who see in every stranger an enemy, who, having rejected good-will, shall have chosen to be those whose existence is an intrigue—a people accepting no ideas, and receiving no benefits? Will they be happy in their hatred? Will they progress? Will they be permitted to exist?"
"Or shall their ideas be different? Tell me, ye who are of them; is it more natural or not that they shall open their generous hearts to everyone who will be their friend, their minds to every idea, their conceptions to the noon-day conception of the fraternity of mankind, liberty, equality, good-will? Is it more natural or not that we should find pride in a country and a nation which have accepted our name and history, and are constantly seeking our citizen-like affection to make the union with us complete? French-Canadians, the honor of this Dominion, which promises to be one of the greatest nations of the earth, is peculiarly yours. You are of the race which were the first to call themselves Canadians! The interests of your children are bound up in its being; your honor in its conduct; your glory in its success. Work for it, think on it, pray for it; let no illusion render you untrue to it: beware of the enemy who would demolish the foundation of one patriotism under pretext of laying the stones of another."
"Canadians!"—He lingered on the sound with tones of striking richness which sank into the hearts of his hearers. "Canadians!—Great title of the future, syllable of music, who is it that shall hear it in these plains in centuries to come, and shall forget the race who chose it, and gave it to the hundred peoples who arrive to blend in our land? To your stock the historic part and the gesture of respect is assigned, from the companies of the incoming stream. My brothers, let us be benign, and accept our place of honor. Identify yourselves with a nation vaster than your race, and cultivate your talents to put you at its head."
He said he had no condemnation, however, for those who were rightly proud of the deeds of the French race and its old heroes.
"I have nothing but the enthusiasm of a comrade for any true to the noble feelings which it would be a shame to let die! I entreat that they be cherished, and let them incite us to new assurance of our capabilities for enterprises fitting to our age. Let the virtues of old take new forms, and courage will still be courage, hospitality hospitality, and patriotism patriotism! Away with dragging for inglorious purposes the banner of the past through the dust of the present! Let the present be made glorious, and not inglorious, in its own kind, and the past shine on at its enchanted distance of beauty!"
* * * * *
"What shall that greatness be—that splendor of our Canada to come?" He pictured its possibilities in grand vistas. The people were spell-bound by noble hopes and emotions which carried them upward. Involuntarily, as Chrysler looked at his face and bearing, he was reminded of the prophets, and the old white church behind seemed to be rising and throwing back its head, and withdrawing its thoughts into some proud region of the great and supernatural. The old man forgot the crowd and the crowd totally forgot Chrysler:
"Canadians!" Chamilly closed, his figure drawn up like a hero's and his rich voice sounding the name again with that wonderful utterance, "the memories of our race are compatible only with the good of the world and our country. If you are unwilling to accept me on this basis, do not elect me, for I will only express my convictions."
CHAPTER XXX.
AN ORATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
"On high in yonder old church tower,
* * * * *
The ancient bell rings out the hour,
Sometimes with voice of wondrous power."
—JOHN BREAKENRIDGE.
Monsieur Editor Quinet mounted the platform and stood there, cool and masterful.
At the same moment the Curé in his black gown, bolted up from his chair beside his young vicar, on the gallery of the parsonage, and regarding the orator with indignation, raised his breviary towards the church with outstretched arm.
"Messieurs, what ruins us"…. Quinet commenced.
His sentence was shattered to pieces!
"KLING-KLANG-G-G-G!" a loud church bell resounded from one of the towers, sending a visible shock over the assembly and drowning the succeeding words.
"What ruins us"…. Quinet, with imperturbable composure, commenced again in a louder voice.
A cashing peal from the opposite belfry replied to the first and compelled him to stop.
The Curé, swelling with triumph, marched up and down his gallery, turning quickly at each end; while the bells of both the towers, swinging confusedly in their belfries, sent forth one horrible continued torrent of clangor over the amazed crowd.
The speaker was soon convinced that no amount of cool waiting would prevail. He did, therefore, what was a more keenly effective continuation of his sentence than any words,—raised his finger and pointed it steadily for a few moments at the Curé, and then withdrew.
For many a day the story of Quinet and the bells was told in
Dormillière.
CHAPTER XXXI.
LIBERGENT.
During the addresses, Libergent, Chamilly's nominal opponent, seemed to do nothing more than stand behind the rostrum and let things proceed. Libergent, lawyer, was a man of a shrewd low order of ability. About forty years of age and medium height, his compact, athletic physique, partly bald head, small but well rounded skull, close iron-grey hair and moustache would have made him a perfect type of the French military man, were it not for a sort of stoop of determination, which, however, added to his appearance of athletic alertness, while it took away much dignity. The expression of his face was not bad. The decided droop of the corners of the mouth, and hardness of his grey-brown eyes indicated, it is true, a measure of irritability, but on the whole, the objectionable element of the expression was only that of a man who was accustomed to measure all things on the scale of common-place personal advantage. His life was not belied by his appearance. He found his chief pleasures in fishing, and shooting, and kept a trotter of rapid pace. His quarters were comfortable in the sense of the smoker and sportsman. When he did not wear an easier costume for convenience, his shining hat and broad-cloth coat would have been the envy of many a city confrère. He lived a very moderate, regular life: now and then took a little liquor with a friend, but always with some sage remark against excess; made himself for the most part a reasonable and sufficiently agreeable companion; and had no higher tastes, unless a collection of coins, well mounted and arranged and at times added to, may claim that title. He therefore considered Haviland stark mad in spending so much money and brains upon nonsense; and the subject made him testy when he reviewed his refusal to accept some arrangement by which they could share the local political advantages between them.
"Politics is a sphere of business like any other," he said. "Haviland is doing the injury to himself and me that a theorist in business always does. He makes himself a cursed nuisance."
CHAPTER XXXII.
MISÉRICORDE.
Fiercely the election stirred the energies of Dormillière. For more than a generation, enthusiasm for political contest had been a local characteristic; but now the feelings of the village,—as pronounced and hereditary a "Red" stronghold, as Vincennes across the river was hereditarily "Blue,"—may be likened only to the feeling of the Trojans at the famous siege of Troy. Their Seigneur was the Hector, and their strand beheld debarking against it the boldest pirates of the French-Canadian Hellas.
In Chrysler's walks he met signs of the excitement even where a long stroll brought him far back into the country.
The one of such corners named Miséricorde from its wretchedness, was a hamlet of thirty or forty cabins crowded together among some scrub trees in the midst of a stony moor. The inhabitants, of whom a good share were broken-down beggars and nondescript fishermen, varied their discouraged existences by drinking, wood sawing and doing odd jobs for the surrounding farmers, while their slatternly women idled at the doors and the children grew up wild, trooping over the surrounding waste. Politically, the place was noted for its unreliability. It was well known that every suffrage in it was open to corruption. In ordinary times the Rouges troubled themselves little about this, but the strong combination they had now to fight might make the vote of La Miséricorde of considerable importance; hence, there was some value in the trust which had been placed, at the meeting, in Benoit and Spoon.
Here the latter, even more than at Dormillière, was in his element.
A drinking house, misnamed "hôtel," was the most prominent building in Miséricorde. It would not have ornamented a more respectable locality but, on the whole, possessed a certain picturesqueness, among these hovels, and arrested the Ontarian's steps. Stained a dark grey by at least fifty years of exposure, yet slightly tinted with the traces of a by-gone coat of green, it lifted a high peaked roof in air, which in descent, suddenly curving, was carried far out over a high-set front gallery reached by very steep steps. On the stuck-out sign, which was in the same faded condition as the rest of the building, were with difficulty to be distinguished in a suggestion of yellow color the shapes of a large and small French loaf, and the inscription "BOULONGÉ," but the baking had apparently passed away with the paint. While he was curiously surveying this antique bit, a loud voice sounded through the open door, and the heavy form of the "Yankee from Longueuil" precipitated itself proudly, though a trifle unsteadily, forward down the steps and along the middle of the street, swearing, boasting and heading a swarm of men and boys, and loudly drawling a line of Connecticut notions in blasphemy.
It could be seen that Spoon was some kind of a hero in the eyes of
Miséricorde. Rich,—for he had paid the drinks; travelled,—they had his
assertion for it; courageous,—he could anathematize the Archbishop;
Miséricorde had seldom such a novelty all to itself.
"Sacré! To blazes wit' you; set 'em up all roun', you blas' Canaydjin nigger! Du gin, vite done! John Collins' pour le crowd! I'm a white man, j'sht un homme blanc, j'sht Americain; I'm from the Unyted States, I am! Sacré bleu! Health to all!"
"Health, monsieur!"
"Health, monsieur!"
"A thousand thanks."
"Set 'em up again, baptème, you blas' Canayjin nigger!"
"What does he say!" inquired the landlord, on the verge of being offended.
"Shut up, Potdevin!" said the only man who understood English, fearful lest the second treat should go astray.
"Take!" cried Spoon, in a at of reconciliation, throwing down a five dollar bill; and at the sight of the money, Potdevin, true landlord, proceeded with the pouring out of the beverages into very small glasses with very thick bottoms.
It was funny, when he had precipitated himself from the door, as above said, to contemplate the fellow with his low hat on one side and far down on his nose, his swelling shirt-front, striped breeches, and mighty brass chain, leading the trooping crowd like some travelling juggler.
All this, however, was election work.
Was it the kind of method Chamilly would approve? There was a short and certain answer.
Which then of Haviland's friends supplied Spoon with money for these only too obvious processes of vote-obtaining. It was not the Honorable, it was not De La Lande, it would not be penurious Benoit?
"Ah, well," Chrysler thought, "I am here but to observe. Am I not under obligations to Zotique, if it be he, which prevent my interfering?"
Another of Chrysler's theories too was exploded. He had long revolved a suspicion that it was Cuiller who had stolen Francois' $750. "Where else," thought he, "does he get these liberal sums to spend?" Once he had ventured to ask Spoon himself about Le Brun's loss but was plumply faced with the growl, "Do you suppose I stole it?" and, ashamed of himself, withdrew the theory almost from his own mind. How he could explain even the American's expenditure.