"He acted, as I have said, under the advice of his superior officers, especially of Monsieur de Villerai, who is his relative, and a Canadian gentleman of distinguished ancestry."
"Ancestry! de Villerai of distinguished ancestry! This, then, is the man who has undertaken to crush my friend Lecour on the question of extraction! All the world knows that his paternal uncle, of the same name as he, is a common carter in Quebec, and his children in the last ditch of squalor and degradation."
De Lotbinière's countenance changed as quickly as though he had been stabbed.
"To the sorrow of his family, you speak but too truly, although the father was educated very differently. His misfortune was to have married a fool, who supposed herself obliged, as the wife of a gentleman, to dissipate their substance in innumerable petty entertainments; but from this the only rightful conclusion to be drawn is that that branch has derogated from noblesse, and can no longer pretend to enjoy for the future the state of its ancestors. But Monsieur Lecour must know well that, as for the branch of the Chevalier de Villerai, the further back you go in his family tree in Canada the more brightly his noblesse stands forth in splendour."
"His grandfather," the stranger retorted scornfully, "was a runaway bankrupt out of the prison of Rouen. And who is this de Léry? His father, during the siege of Quebec, instead of confronting the enemy, went buying up cattle in the parishes to sell over again to the commissariat at the expense of the misery of an expiring people."
"Who told you that?" cried de Lotbinière in a passion. "Who is the author of such an infamy? I have heard that story told of Monsieur de Lanaudière, but it is as false of one as of the other. It was to Captain de Lanaudière that the compulsion of farmers to bring in provisions was entrusted, but even he went out as an officer doing duty, and never as a trader in beef. Lies, all lies!"
"Let that pass, then," said the unknown Gendarme of the Guard; "but though I can understand de Léry's reporting to his superior on being pressed for information, it was nothing less than ignoble and disgusting of him to have spread these tales concerning my friend among his comrades."
"What!" returned de Lotbinière, "when Lecour was wearing the name of his uncle!"
"If he wore it he did not seek it; it was his companions who gave it to him."
"To have worn it at all, sir, admits of no excuses."