"Who, then, do you pretend was my father?" cried the merchant in amazement. "There was no question of that matter before I left France."
"Because your mother had died, and your father, who was a poor man, though a gentleman, had departed for service in the East Indies, and there was heard of no more."
"In any event I do not care about these things. I shall always remain the Merchant Lecour," the old man said, with steady-going pride.
"But François Xavier!" cried his wife. "Have you no care about your children and me? Is it nothing to us if we are noblesse? Will you be forever turning over skins and measuring groceries when you ought to have a grand house and a grand office, like the gentry of the North-West Company at Montreal, who dine with the Governor, and are yet no better off than you? I am sure they are no Chevaliers de Lincy".
"I cannot believe it, wife. I know where I came from, and that I was nothing but a boy sent out with the troops by the magistrates of Paris"—Germain started—"then a poor private, and by good conduct at length a cantineer of the liquor. Chevaliers are not of those grades, as I well enough know, and I never heard of any good from a man getting out of his place."
The convent girl looked up in suspense at her hero for reply.
"Listen, father," exclaimed Germain with a kind of gaiety, appreciating the melancholy humour of the situation, "I have not only traced you up, but shall show you the evidence. Carry in my little box while I bring the black one."
They brought the boxes in, and the small one—that with the gilt coat of arms, from which Germain had taken his passport at Quebec—was put on the table. Germain unlocked it, and brought out the de Lincy genealogical tree.
"Here," said he to his father, while the family crowded to look over their shoulders, "you are the son of this one; I have seen and read your baptismal register which records it, in the Church of St. Germain-des-Prés."
"True—that was my parish," the old man answered. "Are you certain that my father was not——?"