The Young Seigneur

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The Young Seigneur, by Wilfrid Chateauclair

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Title: The Young Seigneur Or, Nation-Making
Author: Wilfrid Chateauclair
Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15256]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR;
OR,
NATION-MAKING.
BY
WILFRID CH?TEAUCLAIR [hand written: i.e. William Douw Lighthall]
MONTREAL:
WM. DRYSDALE & CO., PUBLISHERS, 232 ST. JAMES STREET, 1888.
Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight, by WM. DRYSDALE & CO. in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PREFACE.
The chief aim of this book is the perhaps too bold one--to map out a future for the Canadian nation, which has been hitherto drifting without any plan.
A lesser purpose of it is to make some of the atmosphere of French Canada understood by those who speak English. The writer hopes to have done some service to these brothers of ours in using as his hero one of those lofty characters which their circle has produced more than once.
The book is not a political work. It must by no means be taken for a Grit diatribe. The writer is an old-fashioned Tory and an old-fashioned Liberal: all his parties are dead, and he is at present in a universal Opposition. The party names he uses are, therefore, in any present-day application, simply typical, and the work is not a political one in any current sense.
There are those who will say his characters are untrue and impossible. To these he would answer: Everything here, apart from a few little inaccuracies, is studied from the life, and you can find item, man and date for the essential particulars.
A charge of Metaphysics will be advanced also, by a generation not too willing to think. Mon ami, what we give you of that is not very hard. If you cannot understand it, leave it out or study Emerson. The main subject of the book cannot be treated otherwise than with an attempt to ground it deeply.
If Bigotry may not impossibly be laid to the author by some, because he has drawn two or three of the characters from unusual quarters and described them freely; the many who know him will limit any phrases to the several characters as individuals.
Lastly, the book is not a novel. It consequently escapes the awful charge of being 'a novel with a purpose.' None can feel more conscious of its imperfections than the writer, or will regret more if it treads on any sensitive toes.
WILFRID CH?TEAUCLAIR. Dormillière, March, 1888.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIèRE 1 II. THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR 4 III. HAVILAND'S IDEA 7 IV. THE MANUSCRIPT 13 V. CONFRéRIE 16 VI. ALEXANDRA 20 VII. QUINET 22 VIII. THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE 25 IX. ASSORTED ENTHUSIASMS 29 X. THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE 33 XI. THE CAVE 43 XII. LA MèRE PATRIE 48 XIII. SOMETHING MORE OF QUINET 52 XIV. THE ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERSHIP 54 XV. THE LIFE OF LEADERSHIP 57
BOOK II.
XVI. A POLITICAL SERMON 67 XVII. ZOTIQUE'S RECEPTION 72 XVIII. THE AMERICAN FRANCE 79 XVIII. A DISAPPEARING ORDER 86 XIX. HUMAN NATURE 88 XX. CHEZ-NOUS 91 XXI. DELIVER US FROM THE-EVIL ONE 100 XXII. THE MANUFACTORY OF REFLECTIONS 104 XXIII. THE STATESMAN'S DREAM 106 XXIV. THE INSTITUTE 109 XXV. THE CAMPAIGN PLAN 111 XXV. THE LOW-COUNTRY SUNRISE 120 XXVI. THE IDEAL STATE 126 XXVII. JOSEPHTE 134 XXVIII. GRANDMOULIN 139 XXIX. CHAMILLY 145 XXX. AN ORATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES 149 XXXI. LIBERGENT 151 XXXII. MISéRICORDE 153 XXXIII. BLEUS 156 XXXIV. THE FREEMASON 158 XXXV. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE 162 XXXVI. ZOTIQUE'S MISGIVINGS 168 XXXVII. A CRIME! 170 XXXVIII. THE PASSING OF THE HOST 173 XXXIX. THE ELECTION 175 XL. HAVILAND REFUSES 178 XLI. FIAT JUSTITIA 180
BOOK III.
XLII. QUINET'S CONTRIBUTION 187 XLIII. HAVILAND'S PRINCIPLE 191 XLIV. DAUGHTER OF THE GODS 194 XLV. NOT THE END 199

BOOK I.

THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR.
CHAPTER I.
THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIèRE.
In the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy odd, about six years after the confederation of the Provinces into the Dominion of Canada, an Ontarian went down into Quebec,--an event then almost as rare as a Quebecker entering Ontario.
"It's a queer old Province, and romantic to me," said the Montrealer with whom old Mr. Chrysler (the Ontarian) fell in on the steamer descending to Sorel, and who had been giving him the names of the villages they passed in the broad and verdant panorama of the shores of the St. Lawrence.
In truth, it is