After some searching they found a certain Madame Langlois, a widow who lived in a comfortable house on St. Louis Street, and could give the gentleman a front room on her first floor. There he could see the principal doings of the town, for it was not far from the Place d'Armes and the Castle. It suited him and he installed himself. As it was late in the afternoon, he occupied the time by unpacking his effects until called to supper by Madame Langlois. At the meal, he noted that his landlady—a thin, civil woman of thirty-eight or so, was simply dying of discreet curiosity. He vouchsafed her only his name, and that he was just arrived from France. He, however, asked a number of questions about the Castle, the Governor, his staff, and the prominent people of the town, and inflamed her interest as much by his questions as by his dress and manners. Then retiring till dusk fell, he went out and wandered about the neighbourhood.
The rock of Quebec is like a lion couchant beside the St. Lawrence. On the head is the fortress, on the back the Upper Town, around the feet nestles the Lower Town, while the River St. Charles flows around the hinder parts.
The city was no vast place: its population was but some seven thousand souls, with about two thousand of a garrison, and the occupied area in the Upper Town covered a few streets only, the remainder consisting of grassy fields stretching to the fortification walls. The citadel, picturesquely crowning the summit of the rock, stood several hundred yards higher, at one side. The Castle of St. Louis, the main ornament of the place next to the cathedral, overlooked the cliff, resting on a series of tall buttresses ribbing the side of the precipice.
At every point along the "lion's back," or upper edge of the cliff, where Germain was, a magnificent view greeted him. He stopped to enjoy it. The harbour lay glimmering far below in the moonbeams, across it the heights of Levis stretched along the weird landscape. The lighted windows of the Lower Town, of which he could see little more than the shimmering dark roofs, shone up obliquely. All was domed over by a dark-blue sky in which the harvest moon rode.
He walked back from the cliff along the Rue St. Louis to the city wall, and returned by the Rue Buade. In doing so he scanned the fortifications with military interest, and returning, remarked the dark, low pile of the convent of the Jesuits, and also the cathedral and the seminary adjoining. He remembered once hearing his father say this cathedral of Quebec had been designed by one of the de Lérys. From the place in front of it he could make out dimly, down the slope of Ste. Famille Street close by, the de Léry mansion itself.
"The father and mother will be there," he cogitated. "They will have had letters about me from France by this time."
He turned again along Buade Street, and continued his stroll with an object, for at the point where the sharp descent towards the Lower Town began he brought up before a stately house of stone, of an antique architecture, on the face of which, over the door, something indistinctly glittered. It was the house of the Golden Dog; and as he surveyed it and tried vainly to read the letters of the inscription, his shadowy visitor at Troyes once more arose vividly before his imagination, and the terrible scene of Philibert's murder seemed to be enacted again upon the flight of steps before the door. Absorbed in the gruesome story with which he was so strangely connected, he returned to his chamber, and retired.
Twice he heard the tramp of a change of guards passing along the street. Once a convent bell rang, perhaps for some midnight burial.
The next day at breakfast he learned from his hostess that the presence of the strange gentleman lodging with her had been remarked by several young women, and that it was already the gossip of the Upper Town. In the course of her stream of news she mentioned Monsieur de Léry. The hand with which he was about to lift his cup to his lips stopped, and he casually asked—
"Who is he?"