Alice of Old Vincennes | Page 9

Alice's making! And the Roussillon claret, too, was always excellent. "Ah, child," he thought, "your old Father is not going away."
She presently returned, bearing on a wooden tray a ruby-stained pie and a short, stout bottle flanked by two glasses.
"Of course I'm better than I sometimes appear to be," she said, almost humbly, but with mischief still in her voice and eyes, "and I shall get to be very good when I have grown old. The sweetness of my present nature is in this pie."
She set the tray on a three-legged stool which she pushed close to him.
"There now," she said, "let the rain come, you'll be happy, rain or shine, while the pie and wine last, I'll be bound."
Pere Beret fell to eating right heartily, meantime handing Jean a liberal piece of the luscious pie.
"It is good, my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked with his mouth full. "Madame Roussillon has not neglected your culinary education." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and very fragrant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boyhood in France, of his journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy- brimmed youth in the gay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it all was! He sat with half closed eyes awhile, sipping and dreaming.
The rain lasted nearly two hours; but the sun was out again when Pere Beret took leave of his young friend. They had been having another good-natured quarrel over the novels, and Madame Roussillon had come out on the veranda to join in.
"I've hidden every book of them," said Madame, a stout and swarthy woman whose pearl-white teeth were her only mark of beauty. Her voice indicated great stubbornness.
"Good, good, you have done your very duty, Madame," said Pere Beret, with immense approval in his charming voice.
"But, Father, you said awhile ago that I should have my own way about this," Alice spoke up with spirit; "and on the strength of that remark of yours I gave you the pie and wine. You've eaten my pie and swigged the wine, and now--"
Pere Beret put on his straw cap, adjusting it carefully over the shining dome out of which had come so many thoughts of wisdom, kindness and human sympathy. This done, he gently laid a hand on Alice's bright crown of hair and said:
"Bless you, my child. I will pray to the Prince of Peace for you as long as I live, and I will never cease to beg the Holy Virgin to intercede for you and lead you to the Holy Church."
He turned and went away; but when he was no farther than the gate, Alice called out:
"O Father Beret, I forgot to show you something!"
She ran forth to him and added in a low tone:
"You know that Madame Roussillon has hidden all the novels from me."
She was fumbling to get something out of the loose front of her dress.
"Well, just take a glance at this, will you?" and she showed him a little leather bound volume, much cracked along the hinges of the back.
It was Manon Lescaut, that dreadful romance by the famous Abbe Prevost.
Pere Beret frowned and went his way shaking his head; but before he reached his little hut near the church he was laughing in spite of himself.
"She's not so bad, not so bad," he thought aloud, "it's only her young, independent spirit taking the bit for a wild run. In her sweet soul she is as good as she is pure."

CHAPTER II
A LETTER FROM AFAR
Although Father Beret was for many years a missionary on the Wabash, most of the time at Vincennes, the fact that no mention of him can be found in the records is not stranger than many other things connected with the old town's history. He was, like nearly all the men of his calling in that day, a self-effacing and modest hero, apparently quite unaware that he deserved attention. He and Father Gibault, whose name is so beautifully and nobly connected with the stirring achievements of Colonel George Rogers Clark, were close friends and often companions. Probably Father Gibault himself, whose fame will never fade, would have been to-day as obscure as Father Beret, but for the opportunity given him by Clark to fix his name in the list of heroic patriots who assisted in winning the great Northwest from the English.
Vincennes, even in the earliest days of its history, somehow kept up communication and, considering the circumstances, close relations with New Orleans. It was much nearer Detroit; but the Louisiana colony stood next to France in the imagination and longing of priests, voyageurs, coureurs de bois and reckless adventurers who had Latin blood in their veins. Father Beret first came to Vincennes from New Orleans, the voyage up the Mississippi, Ohio,