The Young Seigneur | Page 8

me in the holy of holies
of my heart's inner chapel.
"What a rare autumn! What perfect foliage! What cool weather!"
Quinet had wakened up beyond my expectations, and soon we were
racing along, laughing and shouting repartees at each other. We reined
in at last to a walk.
"Mehercle, be Charon propitious to thee when thy soul meets him at the
river in Hades," he cried. "Be he propitious to thee, Chamilly, for
making me a horseman!"
Then the memorable picture;--we speeding along that bit of road in the
Park, the Mountain-side towering precipitously above us on the left and
sloping below us in groves on the right; our horses galloping faster and
faster; our dash into a bold rocky cutting; our consternation!--a young
maiden picking up autumn leaves within two yards before our

galloping horses! Near by, I remember quite clearly now her
companion, and not far off the carriage with golden-bay horses.
"Stop!" I shouted.
Even as I shouted, I was already past her, and the brush of Quinet's
horse flying as near on the other side of her, snatched off her bouquet
of autumn leaves and strewed them in a cloud. Thank God only that we
had not gone over her! The peril was frightful. My horse had had his
head down and I could not pull him up.
But what excited me most was the courage of the girl. She started; but
rose straight and firm, facing us as we charged. Even in that instant, I
could see changes of pallor and color leap across her brow and
cheek--could see them as if with supernatural vividness. Yet her eyes
lighted proudly, her form held itself erect, and her clear features
triumphed with the lines as if of a superior race. She could only be
compared, standing there, to an angel guarding Paradise! How fair she
was! And the face was the face of the little girl of the Manoir of
Esneval!
After the agitations of our apologies I retained just enough of my wits
about me to enquire her name. "Alexandra Grant," she said gracefully
enough. Ah yes, I recollected--the Grants, within a generation, had
bought the Esneval Seigniory, and its Manor-house.
CHAPTER VII.
QUINET.
Now a little more of Quinet. Small, gaunt and strange-looking, I pitied
him because he was a victim of our stupid educational wrecking
systems. His was too fine an organization to have been exposed to the
blunders of the scholastic managers; for his course had exhibited signs
of no less than the genius he had claimed. Most of his years of study
had been spent as a precocious youth in that great Seminary of the
Sulpician Fathers, the Collége de Montréal. The close system of the
seminaries, however, being meant for developing priests, is apt to

produce two opposite poles of young men--the Ultramontane and the
Red Radical. Of the bravest and keenest of the latter Quinet was. If
newspapers were forbidden to be brought into the College: he had a
regular supply of the most liberal. If all books but those first submitted
to approval were tabu: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If
criticism of any of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be
expiated hardly even by months of penance: there was nothing sacred
to his inquiries, from the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the
stigma miracle of the Seraphic St. Francis. He was an enfant terrible;
Revolutionist Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the
Excommunicate was his literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets
made their way by subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the
leader of a group who might some day give trouble to the Reverend
gentlemen who managed the "nation Canadienne." And yet, "What a
declaimer of Cicero and Bossuet! I love him," exclaimed the professor
of Rhetoric, in the black-robed consultations. "His meridians do me
credit!" cried the astronomical Father.
No--he was far too promising a youth to estrange by the expulsion
without ceremony which any vulgar transgressor would have got for
the little finger of his offences. The record ended at length with the
student himself, towards the approach of his graduation, when an
article appeared in that unpardonable sheet La Lanterne du Progrès,
acutely describing and discussing the defects of the system of Seminary
education, making a flippant allusion to a circular of His Grace the
Archbishop, who prided himself on his style; and signed openly with
the boy's name at the bottom!
Imagine the severe faces of the outraged gowned, the avoidance aghast
by terrified playmates--the council with closed doors, his disappearance
into the mysterious Office to confront the Directeur alone, and the
interview with him at white-heat strain beginning mildly: "My son" and
ending with icy distinctness: "Then, sir, Go!"
He did go. He came