"Grandmoulin,"—was Picault's subsequent remark, "The young fool has courage. What a deep game he is playing. I tell you he has more talent than the whole of our side together except yourself—curse him."
"It demonstrates the unpractically of his methods!" said the burly
Montreal politician to Zotique, with self-satisfied disgust.
"No," returned Zotique, firmly, "If we had followed his methods it would have been far better. But nothing can make up for lack of intelligence: Sacré bleu. I ought to have had a better head than to leave these people to such as Cuiller and Benoit!"
Chamilly addressed firm words to the disappointed electorate: "I seek not my own cause, friends. It is yours in which I do this thing and do you, too, give all for country's honor. Lose not heart. Work on, like iron figures, receiving blows without feeling them. Be we young in our strength and hope, as Truth our mistress is perennial. Accept from me who according to the rule of faint hearts ought to be most crushed by our failure, the motto, "Encouraged by disaster!"
CHAPTER XLI.
FIAT JUSTITIA
"I wonder at you!—I wonder at you!" exclaimed Chrysler, pacing the drawing-room of the Manor-house, to his friend, "What will be the result of it?"
"Cher Monsieur," Haviland replied. "I have done my duty and what have I to do with events? What is Dormillière county and a year or two of the consequences of this election? I do not live in them or of them."
The face of the far-seeing god himself, whose statue stood once more near, could scarcely show less regret than the easy, indomitable countenance of Chamilly; yet that his nerves had been strained to a severe pitch, lines of exhaustion upon it clearly told, and his restless, reckless movements from one spot and position to another made his friend anxious. A raw wind storm had risen quickly from the east and whistled without. He advanced to the window and threw both its curtains wide apart, revealing under an obscured snatch of struggling moonlight, the heavens covered with rapid-moving clouds, and the poplars opposite bending their vague shapes beneath the wind,—the beginning of one of those storms which come up from the Gulf, and overrun the whole region for days.
"I should like to be on the River now," he remarked exultingly. Madame entered at the moment and heard him.