till evening. Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis.”
Inside her room alone she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair.
“Louis—Oh, my God!” she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away.
CHAPTER II. WHEN THE RED-COATS CAME
A month later there was a sale of the household effects, the horses and general possessions of Medallion the auctioneer, who, though a Protestant and an Englishman, had, by his wits and goodness of heart, endeared himself to the parish. Therefore the notables among the habitants had gathered in his empty house for a last drink of good-fellowship—Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Benoit the ne’er-do-weel, Gingras the one-eyed shoemaker, and a few others. They had drunk the health of Medallion, they had drunk the health of the Cure, and now Duclosse the mealman raised his glass. “Here’s to—”
“Wait a minute, porridge-pot,” cried Muroc. “The best man here should raise the glass first and say the votre sante. ’Tis M’sieu’ Medallion should speak and sip now.”
Medallion was half-sitting on the window-sill, abstractedly listening. He had been thinking that his ships were burned behind him, and that in middle-age he was starting out to make another camp for himself in the world, all because of the new Seigneur of Pontiac. Time was when he had been successful here, but Louis Racine had changed all that. His hand was against the English, and he had brought a French auctioneer to Pontiac. Medallion might have divided the parish as to patronage, but he had other views.
So he was going. Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied that it was too late. The harm was not to be undone.
As Muroc spoke, every one turned towards Medallion. He came over and filled a glass at the table, and raised it.
“I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that fine old puffing forgeron Lajeunesse,” he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room. Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. “I knew Madelinette, as did you all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories, and listen to her sing French chansons—the best in the world. She has gone on; we stay where we were. But she proves her love to us, by taking her husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never find a spot so good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!”
He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his glass, Medallion let it fall on the stone floor. It broke into a score of pieces.
He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. “Give her my love,” he said. “Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses she gave me when she was five and I was twenty.”
Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.
“Why did he drop his glass?” asked Gingras the shoemaker.
“That’s the way of the aristocrats when it’s the damnedest toast that ever was,” said Duclosse the mealman. “Eh, Lajeunesse, that’s so, isn’t it?”
“What the devil do I know about aristocrats!” said Lajeunesse.
“You’re among the best of the land, now that Madelinette’s married to the Seigneur. You ought to wear a collar every day.”
“Bah!” answered the blacksmith. “I’m only old Lajeunesse the blacksmith, though she’s my girl, dear lads. I was Joe Lajeunesse yesterday, and I’ll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I’ll die Joe Lajeunesse the forgeron—bagosh! So you take me as you find me. M’sieu’ Racine doesn’t marry me. And Madelinette doesn’t take me to Paris and lead me round the stage and say, ‘This is M’sieu’ Lajeunesse, my father.’ No. I’m myself, and a damn good blacksmith and nothing else am I!”
“Tut, tut, old leather-belly,” said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor had mounted high, “you’ll not need to work now. Madelinette’s got double fortune. She gets thousands for a song, and she’s lady of the Manor here. What’s too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?”
“Not working between meals—that’s too good for me, Gingras. I’m here to earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they earn, and live by it. Let a man live according to his gifts—bagosh! Till I’m sent for, that’s what I’ll do; and when time’s up I’ll take my hand off the bellows, and my leather apron can go to you, Gingras, for boots for a bigger fool than me.”
“There’s only one,” said Benolt, the ne’er-do-weel, who had been to college as a boy.
“Who’s that?” said Muroc.
“You wouldn’t know his name. He’s trying to find eggs in last year’s nest,” answered Benolt with a leer.
“He means the Seigneur,” said Muroc. “Look to your son-in-law, Lajeunesse. He’s kicking up a dust that’ll choke Pontiac yet. It’s as if there was an imp in him driving him on.”
“We’ve had enough of the devil’s dust here,” said Lajeunesse. “Has he been talking to you, Muroc?”
Muroc nodded. “Treason, or thereabouts. Once, with him that’s dead in the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the Napoleons—I have my sword yet. Now it’s save Quebec. It’s stand alone and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of England. Independence—that’s it! One by one the English have had to go from Pontiac. Now it’s M’sieu’ Medallion.”
“There’s Shandon the Irishman gone too. M’sieu’ sold him up and shipped him off,” said Gingras the shoemaker.
“Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him along. He smacks and then kisses, does M’sieu’ Racine.”
“We’ve to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the days of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint,” said Duclosse. “I’ve got my notice—a bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door.”
“I’ve to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal,” said Muroc. “ ’Tis the rights of the Seigneur as of old.”
“Tiens! it is my mind,” said Benoit, “that a man that nature twists in back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in’s brain too. There’s Parpon the dwarf—God knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!”
“But Parpon isn’t married to the greatest singer in the world, though she’s only the daughter of old leather-belly there,” said Gingras.
“Something doesn’t come of nothing, snub-nose,” said Lajeunesse. “Mark you, I was born a man of fame, walking bloody paths to glory; but, by the grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron. Let others ride to glory, I’ll shoe their horses for the gallop.”
“You’ll be in Parliament yet, Lajeunesse,” said Duclosse the mealman, who had been dozing on a pile of untired cart-wheels.
“I’ll be hanged first, comrade.”
“One in the family at a time,” said Muroc. “There’s the Seigneur. He’s going into Parliament.”
“He’s a magistrate—that’s enough,” said Duclosse. “He’s started the court under the big tree, as the Seigneurs did two hundred years ago. He’ll want a gibbet and a gallows next.”
“I should think he’d stay at home and not take more on his shoulders!” said the one-eyed shoemaker. Without a word, Lajeunesse threw a dish of water in Gingras’s face. This reference to the Seigneur’s deformity was unpalatable.
Gingras had not recovered from his discomfiture when all were startled by the distant blare of a bugle. They rushed to the door, and were met by Parpon the dwarf, who announced that a regiment of soldiers was