The Young Seigneur Part 25

This statement created a visible sensation over the audience.

"Zotique called out: 'The National Liar!'"

Grandmoulin remained immovable.

"His a.s.sertion 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," "Notre frere!" and "Notre Chamilly!")

"Mr. Grandmoulin speaks a falsehood of perhaps not less importance in his a.s.sertion 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.signed, 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 n.o.ble feelings which it would be a shame to let die! I entreat that they be cherished, and let them incite us to new a.s.surance 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 n.o.ble 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 x.x.x.

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 Cure 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 a.s.sembly 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 Cure, 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 Cure, and then withdrew.

For many a day the story of Quinet and the bells was told in Dormilliere.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

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 confrere.

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 t.i.tle. 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 x.x.xII.

MISeRICORDE.

Fiercely the election stirred the energies of Dormilliere. For more than a generation, enthusiasm for political contest had been a local characteristic; but now the feelings of the village,--as p.r.o.nounced 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 h.e.l.las.

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 Misericorde 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 Misericorde 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 Dormilliere, was in his element.

A drinking house, misnamed "hotel," was the most prominent building in Misericorde. 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 "BOULONGe,"