"Fill up your glasses," cried Captain D'Haberville, pouring himself out a bumper. "I am going to propose a health which everybody will drink with applause: 'Success to our arms; and may the glorious flag of the fleur-de-lys float forever over every fortress of New France!'"
Just as they were raising the glasses to their lips a terrific report was heard. It was like a stupendous clap of thunder, or as if some huge body had fallen upon the manor house, which shook to its very foundations. Every one rushed out of doors. The sun was shining with all the brilliance of a perfect day in July. They scaled the roof, but there was no sign anywhere that the house had been struck. Every one was stupefied with awe, the seigneur himself appearing particularly impressed. "Can it be," he exclaimed, "that this phenomenon presages the fall of my house!"
In vain did M. d'Egmont, the priest, and Uncle Raoul endeavor to refer the phenomenon to ordinary causes; they could not remove the painful impression it had left. The glasses were left unemptied in the dining-room, and the little company passed into the drawing-room to take their coffee.
What took place afterward only confirmed the D'Haberville family in their superstitious fears. Who knows, after all, whether such omens, to which the ancient world lent implicit belief, may not indeed be warnings from heaven when some great evil threatens us? If, indeed, we must reject all that our feeble reason comprehends not, we should speedily become Pyrrhonists, utter skeptics, like Molière's Marphorius. Who knows? But one might write a whole chapter on this "who knows."
The weather, which had been so fine all day, began to cloud up toward six o'clock in the evening. By seven the rain fell in torrents; the thunder seemed to shatter the vault of heaven, and a great mass of rock, struck by a thunder-bolt, fell from the bluff with terrific noise and obliterated the highway.
Captain D'Haberville, who had carried on an immense deal of forest warfare along with his Indian allies, had become tinctured with many of their superstitions; and when the disasters of 1759 fell upon him, he was convinced that they had been foretold to him two years before.
Jules, seated at supper between his mother and sister and holding their hands in his, shared in their depression. In order to turn their thoughts into another channel, he asked his mother to tell one of those stories with which she used to amuse his childhood.
"It would give me," said he, "yet another memory of the tenderest of mothers to take with me to Europe."
"I can refuse my boy nothing," said Madame D'Haberville; and she began the following story:
"A mother had an only child, a little girl, fair as a lily, whose great blue eyes wandered from her mother to heaven and back from heaven to her mother, only to fix themselves on heaven at last. How proud and happy was this loving mother when every one praised the beauty of her child! Her cheeks like the rose just blown, her tresses fair and soft as the beaten flax and falling over her shoulders in gracious waves! Immeasurably happy was this good mother.