It was another thing when the dear uncle, trotting a little nephew on one knee and a little niece on the other, used to sing them the songs of the Canadian voyageurs. How proud he was when their mother used to cry:
"For pity sake, come to my help, dear uncle, for the little demons won't go to sleep without you."
Uncle Raoul had charged himself with the military education of his nephew. Therefore, before he was four years old, this pygmy warrior, armed with a little wooden gun, might be seen making furious attacks against the ample stomach of his instructor, who was obliged to defend with his cane the part assaulted.
"The little scamp," said the chevalier recovering himself, "is going to have the dashing courage of the D'Habervilles, with the persistence and independence of the proud islanders from whom he is descended through his mother."
José had at first shown himself rather cool toward his young mistress, but he ended by becoming warmly attached to her. She had speedily found the weak point in his armor of reserve. José, like his late father, dearly loved his glass, which, however, produced very little effect upon his hard head. It was as if one should pour the liquor upon the head of the weather-cock, and expect to confuse the judgment of that venerable but volatile bird. His young mistress was forever offering José a drop of brandy to warm him or a glass of wine to refresh him; till José ended by declaring that if the Englishmen were somewhat uncivil, their countrywomen by no means resembled them in that regard.
With their minds at ease as to the future of their children, M. and Madame D'Haberville lived happily to extreme old age. The captain's last words to his son were:
"Serve your new sovereign as faithfully as I have served the King of France; and may God bless you, my dear son, for the comfort that you have been to me!"
Uncle Raoul, dying three years before his brother, bid farewell to life with but one regret. He would have liked to see his little nephew fairly launched on the career of arms, the only career he considered quite worthy of a D'Haberville. Having perceived, however, that the child made great progress in his studies, he comforted himself with the thought that, if not a soldier, his nephew might turn out a savant like himself and keep the torch of learning lighted in the family.
José, who had a constitution of iron and sinews of steel, who had never had an hour of sickness, regarded death as a sort of hypothetical event. One of his friends said to him one day after his master's death:
"Do you know, José, you must be at least eighty years old, and one would scarcely take you to be fifty."