Bless your heart, yes. The Frenchmen of lower Canada have never hesitated at helping England fight her battles. Within sixteen years after their own disastrous defeat before the walls of the citadel city that they loved so dearly, they were fighting alongside of their conquerors to hold her safe from the attacks of the tremendously brave, and half-fed little American army which ventured north through the fearful rigors of a Canadian winter, hopelessly to essay the impossible.
But our old gentleman was not a soldier. He was a seller of cheeses in St. Roch ward, who had retired in the sunset of his life. He knew the Quebec of the days when the Parliament house stood perched at the ramparts at the Prescott gate, and the old gateways themselves were narrow impasses at which the traffic of great carts and little caleches in summer, and dancing, splendid sleighs in winter, was forever fearfully congested; he could tell many of the romances that still linger up this street and down that, within the stout walls of this house or in the sheltered garden of some nunnery or half-hidden home. He could speak English well, which, for a Frenchman in Quebec, is a mark of uncommon education. But, best of all, he knew his Quebec. He was in a true sense the old Quebec living in the new.
Even among the cosmopolitan folk of the Terrace in the shady late afternoons, you could recognize him as such. He was apart from the throng—a motley of bare-footed, brown-cloaked friars, full-skirted priests, white nuns and gray and black, red-coated soldiers from the Citadel to give a sharp note of color to the great promenade of Quebec, millionaires real and would-be from New York, tourists of every sort from all the rest of our land, funny looking English folk from the yellow-funnelled Empress, which had just pulled in from Liverpool and even now lay resting almost under the walls of old Quebec—he was readily distinguished. To be with him was, of itself, a matter of distinction.
Four Brethren upon the Terrace
To walk the staid streets of the fascinating old town with him was a privilege. Always the excursion led to new and unexpected turns; one day up the narrow lane and through the impressive gates of the Citadel, where a petty officer detained our American cameras and assigned us to a mumbling rear private for perfunctory escort around the old place. It is no longer tenanted by British troops. The last of these left forty years ago. These red-coats are counterfeit; raw-boned boys from Canadian farms being put through their military paces by a distant government which may sometimes overlook, but not always. The Citadel as a military work is tremendously out-of-date. Even as it now stands, it is almost a century old, and that tells the story. The guns that have so wide a sweep and so exquisite a view from the ramparts may look fear-inspiring, but the ramparts are of stone and would be quickly vulnerable to modern naval ordnance.
The gun that is unfailingly shown to Americans is a small field-piece which is said to have been captured from us at Bunker Hill. Whereupon our tourists, with a rare gift of repartee, always exclaim:
"Ah, you may have the gun, but we have the hill!"
And the military training of the young Canadian militiaman is so perfect that he smiles politely in response. As a matter of fact, there is no record of the fact that the gun was ever taken from the Americans, although each little while there is a request from the States for its return, which is always met with derision and scorn by the Canadians. Politics in Our Lady of the Snows is almost entirely beyond the understanding of an American.
*****