CHAPTER XXI.
DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE.
"Aië! cela ressemble un peu à certaine fable celèbre, dont la morale se résume ceçi ne comptez pas sans votre hôte."
—BENJAMIN SULTE
"St. Gregory the Great! Here comes the Small-pox!" exclaimed Zotique, as he and Chamilly, with their guest, were off behind the Manoir, and standing by the weather-worn Chapel in the hayfields, which served as the tomb of the first Haviland, "the Protestant Seigneur."
The name "Picault" offered itself so readily to the pun of
"Picotte,"—Small-pox,—that the jest had become almost a usage.
Startled by Zotique's exclamation, Mr Chrysler looked from the commemorative table on the Chapel's side (whose rivulet of eulogies he was reading line by line), towards the pine-walk round the Manoir, whence a distant figure was sauntering towards them along the path, meditatively smoking a cigar.
"That's a fact," exclaimed Chamilly, straining his eyes towards the figure; and the three looked at each other in astonishment. "Has he actually the enterprise to try me again? Or what can he want?"
"I can answer you," the veracious Zotique undertook, "my eyes are good.—He is smiling fully a second hundred thousand."
"That is courage after what I gave him for the first."
"It is doubtless, then, glory:—say Member of the Council."
"Did I ever tell you of the last time he came to me, and offered not only that Membership, but finally advanced to the Presidency of it. Imagine the recklessness of the Province's interests—A President of the Council at twenty-four years! More than that, if I wished for active glory, he would give either the local Premiership, or undertake to combine the French parties at Ottawa, and put me at their head, with a surety of being Premier of the whole country. And this again for a youth of twenty-four years!—He tried to flatter me that I was a Pitt or a Napoleon. And I answered, that no man guilty of such a compact could be either."
"You will do it without him," replied Zotique, confidently.
Chrysler looked closely at the approaching figure, growing larger and clearer.
"Where is he Member for?" he asked.
"Member for Hoang-ho in partibus infidelium," replied Zotique, sarcastically.
Picault sauntered up with a smile of unfaltering genial sang-froid, bowed, removed his cigar, and addressed them.
"Salut, my dear Haviland, salut Messieurs. Oh! my dear Genest, how goes it?" offering his hand, which Zotique took with a caricature of extravagant joy and imitation of the other's style:
"My dear Small-pox—pardon me—my dear friend, I am charmed to meet again a man of so much sense and honor."
"Ah yes, we have fought on many a field, but we respect each other 'Honneur au plus vaillant.' But why, my dear Haviland," turning, "why should the valiant oppose each other, and half of them lose at each battle? Is it not because they are divided? Union makes strength!"
"Yes, it is because they are divided by impassable gulfs," said
Chamilly, coldly. "Did you come to see me, Monsieur?"
"My dear fellow, can't we have a little private conversation together?
I am, of course, in the country to oppose your politics, but being in
Dormillière, I cannot forget our social acquaintanceship."
"Do me the honor of saying here what you desire to say, Monsieur. I have no political secrets from these friends."
"Pardon me, what I have to tell you, is strictly private."
"If it is in political matters, I do not wish it to be so."
"It is personal, I assure you."
"Then you will humor me, sir, by writing it."
"My friend, do not let party differences put grimaces at each other on our real faces:—I would say rather party names; for I am in reality as much a Red as yourself. If you were willing we would prove that to you by changing the title, of our side to yours."
"At that moment, sir, there would be what I live for in the name
'Blue.'"
Picault drew a deliberative puff at his cigar, and lowered it again.
"You will not, then, do me the honor of a personal interview?" he asked, smiling unprovokably still.
"Cease, cease!" replied Haviland, "It will soon be the noon of plain words!"
The tempter with nice discernment, perceiving that this short and bold interview was useless, and that he ought to withdraw, put his cigar between his lips, puffed a "Good-day, gentlemen," and turned back meditatively, along the path towards the pines of the Manoir.
"Au plaisir!" returned Zotique to him with facetious exactitude.
Haviland was furious.
"Shall the children of these men, enriched perhaps and elevated through their crimes," he exclaimed, "pretend in time to come that they obtained their 'Honorables,' and Knighthoods, and seats on the Bench of Justice, and of Cabinets fairly from their country, and were the world's great and true? Forbid it, and forbid that their names should live except in memory of their paltriness!"
"But dear Mr. Chrysler," he added in a moment, "you must not take us for party bigots. The masses of the Bleus are honest, and any day our own name may be desecrated by a clique of knaves, our principles represented by the other name."