The False Chevalier Part 11

"I have pa.s.sed a great stone house there with a golden dog and an inscription above its door. I could not but remember it, the more so that my father refused to utter a word concerning it, though it was clear he knew some explanation. It was a curious black-faced house three stories high, eight windows wide, a stiff row of peaked dormers along the attic. From the edge of the cliff it looked over the whole country. There were ma.s.sive steps of stone before it as if gus.h.i.+ng out of the door and spreading on every side; above the door, which was tall and narrow, was the stone with the sculpture of the dog. Is that the golden dog you mean?"

"It is. There happened the most luckless deed in New France. The man who built that house was the citizen Nicholas Philibert, who had risen to wealth out of his business of baker, and was respected throughout the whole town. Bigot, the Intendant of the colony, was bringing the public finances to appalling ruin by his thefts and extravagances--for we all knew he was a robber--and was driving the people to madness. The Bourgeois Philibert was their mouthpiece. If the chateau of St. Louis stood out as the castle of the military officialdom and the Intendants Palace as the castle of the civil officialdom, the house of the Bourgeois Philibert was the castle of the people, standing against them perched upon the cliff at the head of the artery of traffic which united the Upper and Lower towns. It was too marked a challenge. Bigot determined to hara.s.s him. He sent Pierre de Repentigny, then a lieutenant in the provincials and a young fellow of the rashest temper, to billet in Philibert's house, though he had no right to do so, as Philibert, being a King's Munitioner, was exempt from billeting. Bigot knew there would be a quarrel. It turned out as he had foreseen.

Philibert stood at his door and refused to allow Repentigny to enter.

Repentigny insisted. Philibert loudly claimed his right, and the protection of the law from the outrage. Repentigny covered him with sneers, and pushed inward across the threshold. The merchant upbraided him for his want of respect for grey hairs and the rights of the people.

Repentigny thereupon flew into a rage. He rushed on Philibert, drew his sword with a curse and thrust him through the body, which fell out of the door upon the street, and the citizen died in a few minutes."

"How frightful!"

"Philibert's remains were followed into the cathedral by a weeping mult.i.tude. A number of us officers attended as a protest against Bigot.

In the evening Repentigny was burnt in effigy by the ma.s.ses in the square of Notre Dame des Victoires in the Lower Town. Philibert's son swore eternal vengeance, and had inserted the great stone over the door of the mansion which bore the figure that you have seen, of the golden dog crouching and gnawing a bone, and underneath it the legend:

"_I am a dog who gnaws a bone, In gnawing it I take my rest; A day will come which has not come, When I shall bite him who bit me._"

"Subsequently Repentigny was always held in disgrace, and after the loss of Canada he took refuge on the other side of the world. They say young Philibert has followed him thither. What do you think of the story?"

Germain shuddered and did not answer.

"Are you willing to wear the name?"

He shuddered again and hesitated. Finally he answered with a white face--

"I am willing to wear it long enough to see Versailles. But with your permission only."

"Not so, Germain, I entreat you as a free man."

"It is hard. It is to give up so much for ever."

"This sacrifice is the call of Honour, which stands above every consideration. Promise to remember that in deciding."

"I promise it," exclaimed Germain, who stood pondering. "Yet, sir, tell me one thing."

"Willingly."

"That should I decide to go, I am at least not to lose your affection."

"No, no, Germain, you have it for ever. Have no fear of that, whatever else. The heart of the father changes not towards the son. Nor shall ever your secret be lost through me. But, alas! I see you already resolving to do that that my honour, to which I refer every question, does not commend."

The old man turned away leaving him agitated and unable to answer. The tide of love swept over his miserable heart and the form of Cyrene rose in his thoughts. Her eyes turned the balance. How vast to him was their argument.

"I cannot," he exclaimed desperately.

The more he dwelt upon it the more he found this a settled point. Of us who think ourselves stronger, how many ever had such a temptation?

In a few hours he had left Eaux Tranquilles for Paris.

Dominique brought him to a house in the Quartier du Temple where there was an apartment which de Bailleul often occupied: there they installed themselves.

During the morning Germain would have in some obscure fencing or deportment master whose instructions he would adapt to suit himself. In the afternoon he would stroll off among the pleasure seekers who crowded the ramparts or the arcades of the Palais Royal, or would study the externals of high life in the Faubourg St Germain. His evenings were largely spent in the _parterre_ of the opera.

His signature, in place of plain "Germain Lecour" now read: "LeCour de Repentigny," with the capital "C," or "Repentigny" alone, in a bold hand, with a paraph. And there appeared on his fob a seal cut with a coat of arms highly foliaged--azure with silver chevrons and three leopards' heads gold, which he had discovered to be the Repentigny device. With it he sealed the wax on his letters. He had bought indeed a pocket _Armorial_, the preface to which was as follows:--

"_To the Incomparable French n.o.blesse._

"The Author presents to you, valiant and courageous n.o.blesse, the _Diamond Armorial_, which, despite the malice of the Times and the Flight of Centuries, will carefully preserve the l.u.s.tre of your name and the Glory of your Arms emblazoned in their true colours.

This glorious heraldic material is a Science of State. Though it is not absolutely necessary that all gentlemen should know how to compose and blazon arms, it is Very Important for them to know their Own and not be ignorant of Those of Others. It is the office of the Heralds to form, charge, break, crown and add Supporters to, the coats of those who by some Brave and Generous action have shown their High and Lofty virtues; whereof Kings make use to recompense to their gentry this mark of Honour and Dignity; that so they may Impel each to goodly conduct on those occasions where Men of Stout Hearts acquire Glory for themselves, and Their Posterity...."

In his chamber, on the day when he bought it, he left it on the table and the open page began--

"The glorious house of _MONTMORENCY_ beareth a s.h.i.+eld of gold with a scarlet cross, cantoned with sixteen azure eagles, four by four."

CHAPTER XIII

A JAR IN ST. ELPHeGE

At noon, on a day late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphege sat at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his wooden soup spoon on its b.u.t.t on the table. The windows, both front and rear, were wide open, for one of those rare fragrant golden days of late autumn still permitted it. He was listening, with some of the stolid Indian manner, to his wife reading Germain's letter. He vouchsafed only one remark, and that a mercantile one: "Seven weeks, mon Dieu! the quickest mail I ever got from France!" From time to time, while he listened, his eyes glanced out with contentment upon the possessions with which he was surrounded--upon the rich-coloured stubble of his clearings stretching as far as eye could see down the a.s.sumption, with their flocks, herds, and brush fences; upon the hamlet to which his enterprise had given birth, and where he could see, in one cottage, his _sabotiers_ bent over their benches adding to their piles of wooden shoes; in others, women at the spinning wheel or loom, making the cloths of which he had improved the pattern, or weaving the fine and beautiful arrow-sashes, those _ceintures flechees_ of which the art is now lost, yet still known as snowsh.o.e.rs' rareties by the name of "L'a.s.somption sashes"; his makers of carved elm-bottom chairs and beef moca.s.sins; and, within his courtyard, the large and well stocked granaries, fur-attics and stores for merchandise contained in his four great buildings. His wife was dressed in cloth much more after the fas.h.i.+on of the world than the prunella waist, the skirt shot in colors and the kerchief on the head, which formed the Norman costume of the women seen through the cottage doors. Her silk stockings and buckled slippers marked a desire to be the gentlewoman. Her dark eyes struck one as clever. Her first husband had been the butler of the Marquis de Beauharnois when that n.o.bleman was Governor of Canada, and she had never ceased to look back upon the recollections of high life stored away in those days in her experience.

"There!" she exclaimed, as she flourished the letter at the end of Germain's account of the reception--"Presented to the Court! Lecour, when you said I was my boy's ruin, when you grumbled at his abandoning the apothecary's shop to go to the Seminary and learn fine manners, did I not tell you my son was baked of Sevres and not of clay? At the Court of France! and presented to his Most Christian Majesty! Among Princes, Counts, d.u.c.h.esses and Cardinals! What do you say to _that_, Lecour?"

Her husband's eyes twinkled: "That for the moment you are General Montcalm, victorious; though I remind you that General Montcalm afterwards had his Quebec."

"Quebec or no, my son is at the Court of France."

"I do not dispute that."

He began a.s.siduously making away with his smoking pea-soup.

"Let us proceed with the letter," said she, for she had indeed shown her generals.h.i.+p in stopping where she did.

"Ah," she went on, pretending to scan the next words for the first time, "Germain needs three thousand livres."

"What!"

"Only three thousand."

"But he kept three thousand out of the beaver-skins; the last draft was for nine hundred; whither is this leading? Have we not to live and carry on the business? and you grow more fanciful every day, as if we were seigneurs and not peasants."

"Certainly we are not peasants--_citizens_, if you please: anybody will tell you that a merchant is not a peasant. There are citizens who are _n.o.ble_, Lecour. Why should _we_ not make ourselves seigneurs? Who is it but the merchants who are buying up the seigniories and living in the manor-houses to-day? That is my plan."

"Three or four jacka.s.ses. Let them be jacka.s.ses. I remain Francois Xavier Lecour, the peasant."

"Well, Francois Xavier Lecour, the peasant, _my_ son, the n.o.ble, must have these livres."

Her black eyes flashed. "Will you have the poor boy disgraced in the act of doing you credit? Look at me, unnatural father, and reflect that your child is to experience from you his earliest wrong."

Lecour quailed. His powers of spoken argument were not great. He said nothing, but rose, threw off his coat suddenly, and sat down again.