“Mademoiselle, I was stupid with delight. For you will now be my mistress and have me to wait on you the rest of our lives. Had you no terrors at coming away with a strange man, mademoiselle?”
“Strange man, tongue of pertness! when the Sieur des Ormeaux has been my lover these many years.”
“Was he, indeed, one of those troublesome wooers who drove you out of France? You said this morning you would never be yoked in marriage, and long before the sun goes down you are a bride! Ah, madame, the air of this country must be favorable to women!”
Again the boats pushed up-river, following the afternoon westward.
They had passed Cap Rouge, a cluster of cabins, the seignior’s substantial stone hut forming one side of the fort-like palisades. The strip farms extended in long ribbons back from the shore. Their black stubble of stumps, mowed by ax and fire, crouched like the pitiful impotence of man at the flanks of unmeasured forest.
Before nightfall the voyagers came near a low beach where sand and gravel insensibly changed to flat clearing, and a côte of three or four families huddled together.
Wild red-legged children came shouting to the water’s edge before Dollier de Casson’s canoe was beached, and some women equally sylvan gathered shyly among the stumps to welcome him.
As the priest stepped from his boat he waved a hand in farewell to the other voyagers, and Dollard stood up, lifting his hat.
The sacrament of marriage, so easy of attainment in New France at that time, had evidently been dispensed with in the first hut this spiritual father entered. His man carried in his sacred luggage, and the temporary chapel was soon set up in a corner unoccupied. The children hovered near in delight, gazing at tall candles and gilt ornaments, for even in that age of poverty the pomps of the Roman Church were carried into settlers’ cabins throughout New France. Dollier de Casson had for his confessional closet a canopy of black cloth stretched over two supports. The penitent crept under this merciful wing, and the priest, seated on a stool, could examine the soul as a modern photographer examines his camera; except that he used ear instead of eye.