"What! what! my rich friend Lecour. The owner of seventeen good farms, of three great warehouses, of four hundred cattle, of untold merchandise, and a credit of 500,000 livres in London, the best payer of tithes in the country, the father of the most brilliant son in the province, the husband of the finest wife, a woman fit to adorn the castle of the governor," cried the ecclesiastic, finishing his soup and attacking the duck.
Lecour thawed fast. But he reserved a doubt for the consideration of his confessor.
"Is it honest to pass for a noble when one is not one?"
"I do not see that he has done so. It is not his fault, in the manner that he has explained it. Let the young man enjoy himself a little and see a little of life. We are only young once, and you laics must not be too severely impeccable, otherwise what would become of us granters of absolution. Furthermore, we must not be too old-fashioned. Our people here are getting out of the strictness of the old social distinctions. It may be so too in France. On my advice, dear Lecour, accept every honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pushing aside his plate with the ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of a proud father."
Madame brought out the checkerboard. She brought besides for the Curé a little glass of imported eau de vie, and her husband, taking out his bladder tobacco pouch, commenced to fill his pipe, and that of his Reverence, and to smoke himself into a condition of bliss.
[CHAPTER XIV]
THE OLD-IRON SHOP
An enormous yellow and black coach lumbered and strained along by the aid of six lean horses, and many elaborate springs, chains and straps, from Brittany towards Paris. The autumn roads were execrable, for the rains had been heavy, and the ruts made by the harvest-waggons were deep. The lateness of the season intensified the deserted look of rural France. Little else was to be seen along most of the route than rows of polled trees lining the highway, and here and there an old castle on a hill, or a commune of a few whitewashed cottages, where the coach would pull up at the inn and perhaps change horses. The driver and guard remained the same; but various postillions took charge and then gave up their charges to others. Travellers of assorted ranks and occupations got in and out. Of the twelve for whom there were places in the coach some remained during long distances, some shorter, but only one was faithful from Brittany to the end. He was a short-statured, country bourgeois, whose woollen stockings and faded hat gave to him a certain look of non-importance. Moreover, he was always wrapped unsociably in a brown cloak, of which he kept a fold over his lower face, and in which he snored in his corner even when all the others jumped up to escape an upset.
After several days the aspect of the country suddenly changed. Immense woods and parks rendered it even more solitary, yet strange to say the increased solitude was evidence that the hugest capital in Europe was near, for these were the hunting domains of the princes of the blood and great courtiers, which encircled Paris.
During the night there was another sudden change. The forest solitudes disappeared, the horses sped forward on fine broad roads; and soon the coach dashed with a triumphant blast into the lights and stir of Versailles, crossed its Place d'Armes and turned again into darkness along the Avenue of Paris.