Le Chien dOr | Page 9

our way again. The
Gray Brothers have forsaken our parish."
"Ah!" replied the Superior, in a tone of mock severity, while his eyes
overran with mirthfulness, "you are a crowd of miserable sinners who
will die without benefit of clergy--only you don't know it! Who was it
boiled the Easter eggs hard as agates, which you gave to my poor
brother Recollets for the use of our convent? Tell me that, pray! All the
salts and senna in Quebec have not sufficed to restore the digestion of
my poor monks since you played that trick upon them down in your
misnamed village of Beauport!"
"Pardon, Reverend Father de Berey!" replied a smiling habitan, "it was
not we, but the sacrilegious canaille of St. Anne who boiled the Easter
eggs! If you don't believe us, send some of the good Gray Friars down
to try our love. See if they do not find everything soft for them at
Beauport, from our hearts to our feather beds, to say nothing of our
eggs and bacon. Our good wives are fairly melting with longing for a
sight of the gray gowns of St. Francis once more in our village."
"Oh! I dare be bound the canaille of St. Anne are lost dogs like
yourselves--catuli catulorum."
The habitans thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed
themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father
de Berey of a clerical jest.
"Oh!" continued he, "if fat Father Ambrose, the cook of the convent,
only had you, one at a time, to turn the spit for him, in place of the poor

dogs of Quebec, which he has to catch as best he can, and set to work
in his kitchen! but, vagabonds that you are, you are rarely set to work
now on the King's corvée--all work, little play, and no pay!"
The men took his raillery in excellent part, and one, their spokesman,
bowing low to the Superior, said,--"Forgive us all the same, good
Father. The hard eggs of Beauport will be soft as lard compared with
the iron shells we are preparing for the English breakfast when they
shall appear some fine morning before Quebec."
"Ah, well, in that case I must pardon the trick you played upon
Brothers Mark and Alexis; and I give you my blessing, too, on
condition you send some salt to our convent to cure our fish, and save
your reputations, which are very stale just now among my good
Recollets."
A general laugh followed this sally, and the Reverend Superior went
off merrily, as he hastened to catch up with the Governor, who had
moved on to another point in the line of fortifications.
Near the gate of St. John they found a couple of ladies, encouraging by
their presence and kind words a numerous party of habitans,--one an
elderly lady of noble bearing and still beautiful, the rich and powerful
feudal Lady of the Lordship, or Seigniory, of Tilly; the other her
orphan niece, in the bloom of youth, and of surpassing loveliness, the
fair Amélie de Repentigny, who had loyally accompanied her aunt to
the capital with all the men of the Seigniory of Tilly, to assist in the
completion of its defences.
To features which looked as if chiselled out of the purest Parian marble,
just flushed with the glow of morn, and cut in those perfect lines of
proportion which nature only bestows on a few chosen favorites at
intervals to show the possibilities of feminine beauty, Amélie de
Repentigny added a figure which, in its perfect symmetry, looked
smaller than it really was, for she was a tall girl: it filled the eye and
held fast the fancy with the charms of a thousand graces as she moved
or stood, suggestive of the beauty of a tame fawn, that in all its
movements preserves somewhat of the coyness and easy grace of its

free life.
Her hair was very dark and thick, matching her deep liquid eyes, that
lay for the most part so quietly and restfully beneath their long shading
lashes,--eyes gentle, frank, and modest, looking tenderly on all things
innocent, fearlessly on all things harmful; eyes that nevertheless noted
every change of your countenance, and read unerringly your meaning
more from your looks than from your words. Nothing seemed to hide
itself from that pure, searching glance when she chose to look at you.
In their depths you might read the tokens of a rare and noble
character--a capability of loving which, once enkindled by a worthy
object, might make all things that are possible to devoted womanhood
possible to this woman, who would not count her life anything either
for the man she loved or the cause she espoused. Amélie de Repentigny
will not yield her heart without