All that is over; one doesnot love a woman who has
been dead for nearly twenty years.
It was bad enough when she was shut up in her
fathers house; butnow she is no better than dead. When you can go to an Indian feast
and eat dogs boiled withblueberries, you can eat anything. They wanted to know,too,
why her father bought so many pigs bladders in the market.
Having made up his mind to die in the wilderness,
he had not longto wait.
The iron grille beside the altarbegan to move
outward.
Pierres mother has beenill, and he will tell us
first about her. You bought so many things at the market for meto cook. He had only
one hope; that miserable boysadventure had put a thought into his head.
At first she prayed aloud, but Iscarcely understood
her.
It was like a stone face; it had beenthrough every
sorrow. God was a witness,he murmured, that he knew the truth of Pierres remark only
toowell. In the wigwam they tirelesslyperpetrated indecencies to wound
him.
He was never the same man aftershe shut herself
away. Thecandles blurred before Auclair a little, too. Well, Jules, he said quietly,
that, too, is the Kings service.
The very smell of their bodies revolted him to
nausea.
The laundress was taken before theexaminers again,
but was sullen and refused to talk. The Huron converts were more brutal to him than
to Father Gamier. They were a green lot, and they let mostof our provisions get
stolen on the way.
My father used to boast thatin Languedoc you were
never out of sight of a field or a vineyard. What was it like thistime, my boy, a
return of her old complaint?
Are you like Mother Juschereau, do you think it
wrong for a girlto know Latin? By Heaven, they owe me something, those
women!
Ishould think it would be easier to starve. He
crossed the room to the doorof the enclosed staircase, and examined it to see that
it was shut.
He became ill at once, and they followed him into
theforest to make merry over his retchings. Mais non, noussommes plus tranquilles
comme ça, he decided. He soon tookoff his knitted cap, lit his pipe, and lounged at
his ease. The iron grille beside the altarbegan to move outward.
But couldnt we possibly grow one here in Quebec?