"How did Zotique do it?" they cried.
"Voila the mystery."
"What was done to Mouton?"
"Pere Galibert boiled him down into tapers, and sold him to the congregation."
The old man put his pipe, which had gone out, once more to his lips and nonchalantly repeated the operation of lighting it between his hands.
Spoon, his low felt hat tipped over his eyes made Josephte blush crimson with his attentions. Her glances and smiles were to Francois.
Chrysler as he watched her, saw that it was she whose spiritual expression had attracted him at church. Near at hand, he took notes of her appearance. She was of modest face, regular and handsome in features, though not striking, and her cheek wore just a suggestion of color. Dressed in black, her apparel and demeanor were quietly perfect.
The fine sweep of view from the gallery across the water attracted him, and his eyes rested upon the leafy monarchs shadowing the river-bank before them.
"Your house is well placed," he said in admiration.
"Yes, Monsieur," replied the old man, simply, and he pointed out the various parishes whose spires could be descried across the water.
Thus conversing and observing, the Ontarian spent an instructive and delightful hour. When he rose to go, calm and rested, the hospitality again became profuse. "The gentleman will not walk!" shrilly protested highly-pleased mater familias. "Go Francois," turning to young Le Brun: "row Monsieur to the Manoir, you and Mr. Cuiller. Take the rose _chaloupe_, and Josephte shall go too."
Chrysler made a very admirable guest. He would have struck you as a fine, large man, of kindly face, and influential manner, and people pressed upon him their best wherever he went. "You speak our tongue, sir," said the grandfather, "That is a great thing. I have often thought that if all the people of the earth spoke but one speech they would all be brothers. What an absurdity to be divided by mere syllables."
So they parted, with many "Au revoirs" and mutual compliments at the water-side. The willing Francois planted one foot on a stone in the water and handed the young lady into the boat, and Cuiller hastening for the seat next her, made a pretended accidental lunge of his heavy shoulder at him into the water. Francois kept his balance and, quite unconscious of the malicious stratagem, held the ill-wisher himself from going over, which he almost did, to Josephte"s demure amus.e.m.e.nt; next Chrysler got in and Francois essayed to push off. But as the boat stuck in the bottom and refused to stir, he suddenly dropped his hold, and with an "Avance done!" gallantly slushed his way into the water alongside, in his Sunday trousers, lifted the gunwale and started her afloat, amidst a shower of final "Au revoirs," and the rose _chaloupe_ moved with noiseless smoothness down the current.
Peace reigned over every surrounding. The broad, molten-like surface; the dusky idealizing of the lines of cottages and delicate silhouetting of the trees along the sh.o.r.e near them; the artistic picture of the old white farm-house, mystic-looking in the soft evening light, with its shapes of lilac-trees rioting about it and the three great oaks darkening the bank in front; the ghost of light along the distant horizon; the gentle coolness of the air; the occasional far-off echo of some cry; and the regular splash and gleam of the oars as they leave the water or dip gently in again. A fish leaps. An ocean steamer, low in the distance, can be descried creeping noiselessly on. The islands and sh.o.r.es mirror themselves half-distinctly in the water.
A mile above, some boatful of pensive hearts are singing. So calm is the evening that the cadences come distinctly to us, and almost the words can be plainly caught. In a lull of their song, faint sounds of another arrive from far away. Rising and falling, now heard and now not, plaintive and recurring, it is like the voices of spirits.
But farther, farther yet, a still more distant echo--a suggestion scarcely real--floats also to us. The whole river, in its length and breadth, from Soulanges and the Lake of Two Mountains, and the tributary Ottawa, to Quebec and Kamouraska and the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf beyond, all is alive with plaintive sweetness, echoing from spirit to spirit, (for it is a fiction that music is a thing of lips and ears), old accents of Normandy, Champagne, and Angouleme.
The br.i.m.m.i.n.g Francois strikes up by natural suggestion of his dipping oars;
A la claire fontaine M"en allant promener.
I.
Beside the crystal fountain Turning for ease to stray, So fair I found the waters My limbs in them I lay.
Long is it I have loved thee, Thee shall I love alway, My dearest.
Long is it I have loved thee, Thee shall I love alway.
So fair I found the waters, My limbs in them I lay: Beneath an oak tree resting, I heard a roundelay.
Long is it, &c.
III
Beneath an oak tree resting, I heard a roundelay, The nightingale was singing On the oak tree"s topmost spray.
Long is it, &c.
IV.
The nightingale was singing On the oak tree"s topmost spray:-- Sing, nightingale, keep singing, Thou who hast heart so gay!
Long is it, &c.
V.
Sing, nightingale, keep singing, Thou hast a heart so gay, Thou hast a heart so merry, While mine is sorrow"s prey.
Long is it, &c.
VI.
For I have lost my mistress, Whom I did true obey, All for a bunch of roses, Whereof I said her nay.
Long is it, &c.
VII.
I would those luckless roses, Were on their bush to-day, And that itself the rosebush Were plunged in ocean"s spray.
Long is it I have loved thee, Thee shall I love alway, My dearest Long is it I have loved thee, Thee shall I love alway.
The melody was of a quiet, haunting strangeness, and from the end of the words "Thou who hast heart so gay," the maiden perfected it by interweaving an exquisite contralto into the chorus,
Long is it I have loved thee, Thee shall I love alway.
In this fashion was Chrysler delivered at the Manoir, and when Chamilly asked him "Where have you been-this evening?" as he entered the grounds, he answered, "In Arcadia!"
CHAPTER XXI.
DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE.
"Aie! cela ressemble un peu a certaine fable celebre, dont la morale se resume ceci ne comptez pas sans votre hote."
--BENJAMIN SULTE
"St. Gregory the Great! Here comes the Small-pox!" exclaimed Zotique, as he and Chamilly, with their guest, were off behind the Manoir, and standing by the weather-worn Chapel in the hayfields, which served as the tomb of the first Haviland, "the Protestant Seigneur."
The name "Picault" offered itself so readily to the pun of "Picotte,"--Small-pox,--that the jest had become almost a usage.
Startled by Zotique"s exclamation, Mr Chrysler looked from the commemorative table on the Chapel"s side (whose rivulet of eulogies he was reading line by line), towards the pine-walk round the Manoir, whence a distant figure was sauntering towards them along the path, meditatively smoking a cigar.
"That"s a fact," exclaimed Chamilly, straining his eyes towards the figure; and the three looked at each other in astonishment. "Has he actually the enterprise to try me again? Or what can he want?"
"I can answer you," the veracious Zotique undertook, "my eyes are good.--He is smiling fully a second hundred thousand."
"That is courage after what I gave him for the first."