“You are humorous,” replied the seigneur. “Excuse me, I am sorry, but it were best that I should speak plainly. I would not wish to see your ward dishonored.”
“Dishonored! not a seigneur, nor a seigneur's son dare dream of such a consummation, nor, daring so to dream, could compass it,” cried the advocate, growing crimson. “Yet this is kind of you;” he added, bowing as if deeply grateful;—“and yet,” he continued, “there can be no fear of an offence: is not your son a clergyman? for, if he be, and they confess to him anything worse than to have admitted him to their confidence—why, sir, he shall be allowed to enter, and shrive them when he chooses;” and after a momentary silence, “Fie! fie!” he resumed, rolling in his chair; “'the fool hath said in his heart there is no God,' and the wise man of Mainville, who has been all his life looking for purity in a petticoat, says 'there is no virtue in woman.' But I say, both these oracles are in the wrong; there is not only a Divinity, but there are women too who are virtuous. This is a clumsy jest, sir. My ward be dishonored by your son? Yes, when the diamond can be cut with a feather. Monsieur Montigny, a tempest is as harmless as a breath, when that tempest is being hurled against the rock; a breath is even as effectual as is a tempest, when that breath is puffed against the dust. So buzzing blandishments of sighing fops, may blow the frail flowerets from weak, wanton natures; whilst vehement vows of otherwise most honorable men, though urged as strongly as the northern blast, are in vain against the marble front of virtue. I am marble to your wishes.”
“You weigh your danger as little as you do your language,” observed the seigneur. “Will you permit a trespasser, a tempter within your grounds; a wolf, a fox, a bear within your fold?”
The advocate shrugged his shoulders and replied: “No, heaven forbid;—and Stillyside is to me as an outer court of heaven, wherein my ward dwells as a sort of semi-solitary angel.”
“Yet angels fell, and so may she fall,” interjected the seigneur quickly.
“They did, and without a tempter, too, Monsieur Montigny,” returned the advocate, quietly; then added: “the height of heaven turned the heads of the angels giddy.”
“Girls are giddy,” remarked the seigneur gravely.
“Boys are more frequently foolish,” drily retorted the advocate: “and often coming to girls for kisses, go away with cuffs. I hope your son has neither sought for the one nor yet received the other. But what is this son, Monsieur Montigny, that you would have me believe to be so formidable? Is he another Lucifer, couched at my Ward's ear, as his dark prototype once squatted at that of Eve? Or is he Lothario alive again? Is he Leander, and are the Ottawa's jaws a western Hellespont, with my ward and Stillyside, for Hero and her tower?”
“Your verandah,” remarked the seigneur, “is not higher than was Hero's tower, although, I trust, your ward's virtue may be more exalted than was Hero's. But are you aware, sir, that already my son has had her company, alone, at midnight, on your grounds; all others retired; she alone watching, with Claude Montigny and the broad, full moon?”
“An actionable moon,” exclaimed the lawyer, “and a decided case of lunacy against the lovers. But, alas, sir, in this respect we have all been sinners in our youth, and all grown wondrous righteous with our years. Have we not ourselves, when we were young,—ay, and upon inclement winter nights too, courted brown peasant girls beneath both stars and moon? What if the nights were cold, the blood was warm; and now with these volcanic veins of ours grown cool, why, we may walk on the quenched crater of concupiscence, and who dares challenge us, and say, ha, ha! smut clings to you, gentlemen; you have the smell of fire upon you. No, sir, no; we are fumigated, ventilated, scented, powdered, purged as with hyssop. Pish! he must be truly an Ethiop, whom time cannot whiten; a very leopard, who will not part with his spots, since the sun himself shall lose his some day, purged in his own fires.”