“Look at the Sieur de la Salle,” observed Du Lhut to Tonty. “There is a man who stands and fights off the approach of every other creature.”
“There never was a man better formed for friendship,” retorted Tonty. “Touching his reserve, I call that no blemish, though he has said of it himself, it is a defect he can never be rid of as long as he lives, and often it spites him against himself.”
La Salle turned his shoulder on these associates, uneasily conscious that his weakness was observed, and put many moving figures between himself and them. He had the free gait of a woodsman tempered by the air of a courtier. More than one Montreal girl accusing gold-embroidered young soldiers of finding the Quebec women charming, turned her eyes to follow La Salle. Possible lord of the vast and unknown west, in the flower of his years, he was next to Frontenac the most considerable figure in the colony.
Severe study in early youth and ambition in early manhood had crowded the lover out of La Salle. His practical gaze was oppressed by so many dames. It dwelt upon the floor, until, travelling accidentally to a corner, it rose and encountered Jacques le Ber’s daughter sitting beside her mother.
[V.]
SAINTE JEANNE.
When La Salle was seignior of Lachine, before the king and Frontenac helped his ambition to its present foothold, he had been in the habit of stopping at Jacques le Ber’s house when he came to Montreal.
The first day of the beaver fair greatly tasked Madame le Ber. She sat drowsily beside the eldest child of her large absent flock, and was not displeased to have her husband’s distinguished enemy approach Jeanne.
The wife of Le Ber had been called madame since her husband bought his patent of nobility; but she held no strict right to the title, even wives of the lesser nobles being then addressed as demoiselles. In that simple colonial life Jacques le Ber, or his wife in his absence, served goods to customers over his own counter. Madame le Ber was an excellent woman, who said her prayers and approached the sacraments at proper seasons. She had abundant flesh covered with dark red skin, and she often pondered why a spirit of a daughter with passionate longings after heaven had been sent to her. If Sieur de la Salle could draw the child’s mind from extreme devotion, her husband must feel indebted to him.