CHAPTER XVII.
ZOTIQUE'S RECEPTION.
A noble looking man of fifty years, stood waiting to meet them as they made their way out. Of olive complexion, small cherry mouth and features, yet fine head and person, and smiling benignly, he advanced a step before Chrysler noticed him.
"Salut, M'sieu L'Honorable," bowed Haviland.
"Good-day, Chamilly," he replied quickly, without ceasing to smile directly towards the other man and holding out his hand.
Chrysler looked closer at his features.
"Ah, Mr. Genest!" he exclaimed, with pleasure, recognizing the Hon.
Aristide Genest, a personage potent in his time in Dominion Councils.
"I hope now to know the gentleman as completely as I have admired him,"
Genest complimented in the French way, twinkling his eyes merrily. "Many
a time I have listened to your advices in the Parliament. I say to you
'Welcome.'"
Chamilly started off to talk with his innumerable constituents in the crowd.
"Let us cross over here, sir, and hear what they have to say about the sermon," proposed Genest.
They crossed to a stone building on the other side of the road, and passed through a group of countrymen into a hall of some length, where sat sunk in a rustic rocking-chair, a singular individual, whose observations seemed to be amusing the crowd.
In appearance, he reminded one of no less remarkable a person than the Devil, for he bore the traditional nose and mouth of that gentleman, and his body was lean as Casca's; but he seemed at worst a Mephistopheles from the extravagance of the delivery of his sarcasms.
The subject of discussion was the sermon.
"Baptême, it is terrible!" exclaimed the cadaverous humorist. "Ever this indigenous Pius IX—fulminating, fulminating, fulminating!—Too much inferno. The curé does half his burning for Beelzebub! We are served in a constant auto-da-fé."
"Heh, heh, heh," creaked an old skin-and-bones, with one tooth visible, which shook as the laugh emerged. Stolid men smoking, deigned to smile.
People seemed prepared to laugh at anything he said.
"What is it that an auto-da-fé is?" a young man demanded from a corner.
"You don't know auto-da-fes?—A dish, my child.—An auto-da-fé is
Liberal broiled."
The character of the room, at which Chrysler now had time to glance, explained itself by a large painting of that lion-and-unicorn-supporting -the-British-arms, which embellishes Courts of Justice.
"This room is the Circuit Court," Genest remarked—"Zotique there, calls it the Circuitous Court—A very poor pun is received with hospitality here."
"I should like to know that man," said Chrysler.
"Nothing easier. Zotique, come here, my cousin."
He caught sight of them, and rising, without altogether dropping his broadly humorous expression, extended an invitation to take his rocking-chair, which Chrysler accepted.
Zotique was like the Mephistopheles he resembled, one of those who have been every where, seen much, done everything. Born respectably,—a cousin of L'Honorable's—he had executed in his younger days a record of pranks upon the neighbors, which at a safe-distance of time became good humoredly traditional. The trial and despair of Père Galibert, and the disapproved of Chamilly's father, he ran away to Trois-Rivières as soon as he knew enough to do so; thence to Montreal, and Joliette; and a Fur Post near Saipasoù (or, "Nobody-knows-Where," for Zotique asserts the region has that name); then was a veracious steamboat guide for tourists to the Gulf; edited a comic weekly at Quebec, "illustrated" it, itself cheerfully and truly confessed, "with execrable wood-engravings;" as Papal Zouave, he embarked for Rome to gallant in voluminous trousers on four sous a day; fought wildly, for the fun of it, at the Pia Gate against Victor Emmanuel's red-shirted patriots,—and came back to Dormillière disgusted. The Registrarship of the county being vacant, a pious government appointed him to the position, upon recommendation by the "high Clergy," as a martyr for the good cause; and on a similar sacred ground he obtained the passage of a private bill through the Legislature, admitting him to the honorable profession of notary without the trouble of studying.
So it came to pass that our friend was installed in the Registry Office end of the long cottage known as the Circuit Court House, and made use of the Court Hall itself for his Sunday receptions to the people.
The people themselves were worth a brief catalogue.
Jacques Poulin, the horse trader, stood against a window, with his big straw hat on. His trotting sulky was outside. Gagnant, the established merchant, with contented reticence of well-to-do-ness, was remarking of some enterprise, "It won't pay its tobacco." Toutsignant, his insecure and overdaring young rival; who was bound to cut trade, and let calculation take care of itself, sat on the opposite side of the room, and, bantering with him, the shrewd habitants, Bourdon and Desrochers, who were to profit by his theory of an advance in rye. The young doctor, Boucher from Boucherville, leaned near, superior in broad-cloth frock coat, red tie, and silk hat. Along a bench, squeezed a jolly half-dozen "garçons," and a special mist of tobacco smoke hung imminent over their heads. About the floor, the windows, the corners of the room, the bar of the court, sat, lounged, smoked, and stood, in friendly groups, a host of neighbors, amiably listening, more or less, to Zotique's harangues and conversations. It cannot be said, however, that they abated much of their own little discussions. Every now and then some private Babel would break in like a surge, over the general noise, and attract attention for an instant.
"The auto-da-fé—alas, it recalls me the ravishing country of Spain! O those Sierras!—those Vegas! the mountains shirting with snow! the green plains watered!—but misère! hot as—the disposition of the Curé. To-day, gentlemen, the affair becomes serious, for lo, the approach of a doubtful election, and a trifle of clerical interference, like a seed upon the balance, might well—" the sentence was appendixed by an explosive shrug.
"Now, the Council of war! we must have a command to him from the Bishop; and it is I, Zotique Genest, as prominent citizen! as Registrar! as Zouave! who will write and get it."
"But more—that sacré Grandmoulin is coming, and we must receive him at point of bayonet, à la charge de cuirasse! that sacré Grandmoulin!"
"He will be received!" called out a voice.
"The National Liar!" proposed another.
"The breach in our wall is the Curé," continued Zotique.
"Mais."
Qu'allons nous faire,
Dans cette gallère?
"If we could only strap him up with, every mark of respect, like the sacred white elephant of the Indies!—But first, the Bishop's order! Remark my brother, I am not advocating disobedience:—only coercion."
The laugh rose again. It was not so much anything he said, but his extraordinarily grotesque ways—a roll of his large eyes, or a drawing down of his long, thin mouth, with some quick action of the head, arms or shoulders, that amused them.
"Me, I say sacré to the Curés," boasted a heavy, bleared fellow, stepping forward and looking round. His appearance indicated the class of parodies on the American citizen, known vulgarly as "Yankees from Longueuil," and as he continued, "I say to them,"—he added a string of blasphemy in exaggerated Vermontese.
"Be moderate, Mr. Cuiller," Zotique interposed, "None of us have the honor of being ruffians."
"In the Unyted Staytes," continued Cuiller, however, jerking his heavy shoulder forward, "when a curé comes to them they say 'Go on, cursed rascal,'" More oaths in English. The hearers looked on without knowing how to act, some of them, without doubt, in that atmosphere, tremblingly admiring his hardihood.
"Cuiller,"—commenced the Honorable, easily.
"My name is Spoon," the Yankee from Longueuil drawled, "I've got a white man's name."
Cuiller, in fact, was of the host who have Anglicised their patronymics.
Many a man who goes as "White" in New England, is really Le Blanc;
Desrochers translates himself "Stone," Monsieur Des Trois-Maisons calls
himself "Mr. Three-Houses," and it is well authenticated that a certain
Magloire Phaneuf exists who triumphs in the supreme ingenuity of
"My-glory Makes-nine."
"There is a respect due," proceeded the Honorable, ignoring the correction "to what others consider sacred, even by those who themselves respect nothing. This gentleman, besides, sir, is an English gentleman, and your use of his tongue cannot but be a barbarism to his taste."
The big fellow shoved his hands into the hip pockets of his striped trousers; and putting on a leer of pretended indifference, turned to a man named Benoit, who was regarding him with admiration.
This was an orator and a Solomon. He was a farmer, middle-aged, and somewhat short, whose shaven lips were drawn so over-soberly as to express a complete self-conviction of his own profundity, while his unstable averted glance warned that his alliances were not to be depended on where he was likely to be a material loser. A particularly "fluent" man, accomplished in gestures such as form an ingredient in all French conversation, he was in Zotique's Sunday afternoons a zestful contestant. His clothes were of homespun, dyed a raw, light blue, and he was proud of his choice of the color, for its singularity.
"Monsieur Genest," he began, with oratorical impressiveness, coming forward, and bowing to Zotique, "Monsieur l'Honorable; Monsieur;" bowing low; "and Messieurs. I speak not against the clergy, whom the good God and His Pontifical Holiness have set over us for instruction and guidance. I am not speaking against those holy men. But it seems to me to-day that you, my friend, are a little rash—a very little severe—in reproaching my friend, Mr. Cuiller, upon the language which he uses, coming from a foreign country where neither the expressions, nor the customs, are the same as ours; and it seems to me that there is a point a little subtle which should have been noticed by you before commencing, and on which I dare to base my exception to the form; and this point is, I pretend, that Mr. Cuiller has said nothing directly himself against the clergy, but has simply told how they were treated in the United States."
This beginning, delivered with appropriate gestures—now a bow, now an ultra-crossing of the arms, only to throw them apart again, now a chopping down with both hands from the elbow, now again a graceful clasping of them in front, made a satisfactory impression on Benoit himself, who prepared to continue indefinitely had not Zotique interrupted.
"Benoit, you are too fine for good millstone. But respecting friend Cuiller, we are willingly converted to your delusion. He is honorably acquitted of his crime."
"And now," he cried, "Oyez! Let all who have not forgotten how to make their marks, sign the requisition which I observe in the hands of Maître Descarries."
Maître Descarries, Notary, an elderly, active little man, carefully attired and wearing his white hair brushed back from his forehead, in a manner resembling a halo, or some silvery kind of old-time wig, stood at the door holding a document,—a paper nominating Sieur Chamilly Haviland to represent the Electoral District of Argentenaye.
The Notary, advancing, laid it on the bar of the Court, and everybody crowded to look on and see those requested to sign do so.
The Honorable, the first to be called, went forward and affixed his name, and Maître Descarries turned to a person who was apparently an old farmer, but a man with a face of conspicuous dignity.
"Will you sign, Mr. De La Lande?"
"Ah yes, Monsieur Descarries—'with both hands,'"—answered he, bowing quickly; and his signature read, to the Ontarian's astonishment: "De La Lande, Duke of St. Denis, Peer of France."
Thus, at this after-mass reception, Chrysler was introduced to a circle of whom he was to see much in the events to follow.