The Pomp of the Lavilettes | Page 3

which was almost at the door of the office. This
bridge crossed a stream that ran into the large river, forming a harbour.
It opened in the middle, permitting boats and vessels to go through.
Baby worked it by a lever. A hundred yards or so above the bridge was
the parish mill, and between were the Hotel France, the little house of
Doctor Montmagny, the Regimental Surgeon (as he was called), the
cooper shop, the blacksmith, the tinsmith and the grocery shops. Just
beyond the mill, upon the banks of the river, was the most notorious, if
not the most celebrated, house in the settlement. Shangois, the
travelling notary, lived in it--when he was not travelling. When he was,
he left it unlocked, all save one room; and people came and went
through the house as they pleased, eyeing with curiosity the dusty,
tattered books upon the shelves, the empty bottles in the corner, the
patchwork of cheap prints, notices of sales, summonses, accounts,
certificates of baptism, memoranda, receipted bills--though they were
few--tacked or stuck to the wall.
No grown-up person of the village meddled with anything, no matter
how curious; for this consistent, if unspoken, trust displayed by
Shangois appealed to their better instincts. Besides, they, like the
children, had a wholesome fear of the disreputable, shrunken,
dishevelled little notary, with the bead-like eyes, yellow stockings,
hooked nose and palsied left hand. Also the knapsack and black bag he
carried under his arms contained more secrets than most people wished
to tempt or challenge forth. Few cared to anger the little man, whose
father and grandfather had been notaries here before him.
Like others in the settlement, Shangois was the last of his race. He
could put his finger upon the secret history and private lives of nearly
every person in a dozen parishes, but most of all in Bonaventure--for
such this long parish was called. He knew to a hair's breadth the social
value of every human being in the parish. He was too cunning and
acute to be a gossip, but by direct and indirect ways he made every
person feel that the Cure and the Lord might forgive their pasts, but he
could never forget them, nor wished to do so. For Monsieur Duhamel,

the old seigneur, for the drunken Philippe Casimbault, for the Cure, and
for the Lavilettes, who owned the great farmhouse at the apex of that
wedge of village life, he had a profound respect. The parish generally
did not share his respect for the Lavilettes.
Once upon a time, beyond the memories of any in the parish, the
Lavilettes of Bonaventure were a great people. Disaster came, debt and
difficulty followed, fire consumed the old house in which their dignity
had been cherished, and at last they had no longer their seigneurial
position, but that of ordinary farmers who work and toil in the field like
any of the fifty-acre farmers on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
Monsieur Louis Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not
married well. At the time when the feeling against the English was the
strongest, and when his own fortunes were precarious, he had married a
girl somewhat older than himself, who was half English and half
French, her father having been a Hudson's Bay Company factor on the
north coast of the river. In proportion as their fortunes and their
popularity declined, and their once notable position as an old family
became scarce a memory even, the pride of the Lavilettes increased.
Madame Lavilette made strong efforts to secure her place; but she was
not of an old French family, and this was an easy and convenient
weapon against her. Besides, she had no taste, and her manners were
much inferior to those of her husband. What impression he managed to
make by virtue of a good deal of natural dignity, she soon unmade by
her lack of tact. She had no innate breeding, though she was not vulgar.
She lacked sense a little and sensitiveness much.
The Casimbaults and the wife of the old seigneur made no friends of
the Lavilettes, but the old seigneur kept up a formal habit of calling
twice a year at the Lavilettes' big farmhouse, which, in spite of all
misfortune, grew bigger as the years went on. Probably, in spite of
everything, Monsieur Lavilette and his family would have succeeded
better socially had it not been for one or two unpopular lawsuits
brought by the Lavilettes against two neighbours, small farmers, one of
whom was clearly in the wrong, and the other as clearly in the right.

When, after years had gone by, and the children of the Lavilettes had
grown up, young Monsieur Casimbault came from Quebec to sell his
property (it seemed to the