"Don't distress yourself, Monsieur Jacques Repentigny. The English will be the fashion in Quebec when you are grown."
It was amusing to hear her talk his language glibly while she prophesied.
"Do you think your ugly General Wolfe can ever make himself the fashion?" retorted Jacques. "I saw him once across the Montmorenci when I was in my father's camp. His face runs to a point in the middle, and his legs are like stilts."
"His stilts will lift him into Quebec yet."
The boy shook his black queue. He had a cheek in which the flush came and went, and black sparkling eyes.
"The English never can take this province. What can you know about it? You were only a little baby when Madame Ramesay bought you from the Iroquois Indians who had stolen you. If your name had not been on your arm, you would not even know that. But a Le Moyne of Montreal knows all about the province. My grandfather, Le Moyne de Longueuil, was wounded down there at Beauport, when the English came to take Canada before. And his brother Jacques that I am named for—Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène—was killed. I have often seen the place where he died when I went with my father to our camp."
The little girl pushed back her sleeve, as she did many times a day, and looked at the name tattooed in pale blue upon her arm. Jacques envied her that mark, and she was proud of it. Her traditions were all French, but the indelible stamp, perhaps of an English seaman, reminded her what blood was in her veins.
The children stepped nearer the parapet, where they could see all Quebec Basin, and the French camp stretching its city of tents across the valley of the St. Charles. Beneath them was Lower Town, a huddle of blackened shells and tottering walls.
"See there what the English have done," said Clara, pointing down the
sheer rock. "It will be a long time before you and I go down Breakneck
Stairs again to see the pretty images in the church of Our Lady of
Victories."
"They did that two months ago," replied Jacques. "It was all they could do. And now they are sick of bombarding, and are going home. All their soldiers at Montmorenci and on the point of Orleans are embarking. Their vessels keep running around like hens in a shower, hardly knowing what to do."