Shadows on the Rock (3 page)

It was the day after La Bonne Espérance had set sail for France. Auclair and his daughter were on their way to the Hôtel
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 Île d’Orléans, and the red-gold autumn sunlight
poured over the rock like a heavy southern wine. Beyond the Cathedral square the two lingered under the allée 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. Cécile loved that allée, 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 Hôtel 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. Cécile 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 Cécile settled herself on
the floor at Mother Juschereau’s knee. Theirs was an old friendship.

The Reverend Mother (Jeanne Franc Juschereau de la Ferté 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. Cécile had been coming to the Hôtel 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,” Cécile reminded her.

Mother Juschereau laughed. She had a deep warmhearted 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 quelle ait quitté sa belle Normandie), while Sister Catherine was a novice
at Bayeux, there lived in the neighbourhood a pécheresse 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 Cécile caught her hand and cried coaxingly,

“N’expliquez pas, chère Mère, 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 Hospitalières.
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 Cécile 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 Cécile 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, Cécile 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 Hospitalières 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:

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, Père Vimont,
from the Jesuit mission in Canada, came knocking at the door of the monastère at Bayeux, recruiting sisters for the little
foundation of Hospitalières 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 Hôtel 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 Brébeuf, 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 Brébeuf, communicated to her in these
visions, that she chose Jeanne Franc Juschereau de la Ferté to succeed her as Superior, and trained her to that end. To many
people the choice seemed such a strange one that Père Brébeuf 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.

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 Récollet 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-lièvre, 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–Salières. 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 Hôtel 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 Cécile and her father. When he came to their house to play, they endeavoured 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 Cécile 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 Cécile 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 goûter in the salon, and the apothecary was writing at his desk,
he overheard Jacques telling Cécile where he would kick any boy who broke down his beaver-dam, and he used a nasty word.

“Oh, Jacques!” Cécile 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.

Cécile 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 Cécile, 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 Cécile, 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.”

Cécile 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.”

That afternoon Cécile ran up the hill with a light heart. She was always glad of a reason for going to the Château, —
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 Cécile he snatched his drumsticks from his trousers pocket
and executed a rapid flourish in the air above his drum, making no noise. Cécile 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.

Cécile 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 Île d’Orléans, 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–Salières 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 Château 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 Château 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, Cécile 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 Cécile had
known him ever since she could remember. He took her by the hand and led her into the Château 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 Cécile 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 Cécile 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. Cécile 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 Cécile 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, Cécile, 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 Noël 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 yard-arms. I wish I had some sweetmeats; you do not often pay me a visit.”

“Perhaps you would let me look at your glass fruit,” Cécile 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 Cécile 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 Île Savary and represented garden scenes. One could
study them for hours without seeing all the flowers and figures.