Chapter V: The Itinerant Notary
editMaster Jean Le Nocher the sturdy ferryman's patience had been severely tried for a few days back, passing the troops of habitans over the St. Charles to the city of Quebec. Being on the King's corvee, they claimed the privilege of all persons in the royal service: they travelled toll-free, and paid Jean with a nod or a jest in place of the small coin which that worthy used to exact on ordinary occasions.
This morning had begun auspiciously for Jean's temper however. A King's officer, on a gray charger, had just crossed the ferry; and without claiming the exemption from toll which was the right of all wearing the King's uniform, the officer had paid Jean more than his fee in solid coin and rode on his way, after a few kind words to the ferryman and a polite salute to his wife Babet, who stood courtesying at the door of their cottage.
"A noble gentleman that, and a real one!" exclaimed Jean, to his buxom, pretty wife, "and as generous as a prince! See what he has given me." Jean flipped up a piece of silver admiringly, and then threw it into the apron of Babet, which she spread out to catch it.
Babet rubbed the silver piece caressingly between her fingers and upon her cheek. "It is easy to see that handsome officer is from the Castle," said Babet, "and not from the Palace--and so nice- looking he is too, with such a sparkle in his eye and a pleasant smile on his mouth. He is as good as he looks, or I am no judge of men."
"And you are an excellent judge of men, I know, Babet," he replied, "or you would never have taken me!" Jean chuckled richly over his own wit, which Babet nodded lively approval to. "Yes, I know a hawk from a handsaw," replied Babet, "and a woman who is as wise as that will never mistake a gentleman, Jean! I have not seen a handsomer officer than that in seven years!"
"He is a pretty fellow enough, I dare say, Babet; who can he be? He rides like a field-marshal too, and that gray horse has ginger in his heels!" remarked Jean, as the officer was riding at a rapid gallop up the long, white road of Charlebourg. "He is going to Beaumanoir, belike, to see the Royal Intendant, who has not returned yet from his hunting party."
"Whither they went three days ago, to enjoy themselves in the chase and drink themselves blind in the Chateau while everybody else is summoned to the city to work upon the walls!" replied Babet, scornfully. "I'll be bound that officer has gone to order the gay gallants of the Friponne back to the city to take their share of work with honest people."
"Ah! the Friponne! The Friponne!" ejaculated Jean. "The foul fiend fly away with the Friponne! My ferryboat is laden every day with the curses of the habitans returning from the Friponne, where they cheat worse than a Basque pedler, and without a grain of his politeness!"
The Friponne, as it was styled in popular parlance, was the immense magazine established by the Grand Company of Traders in New France. It claimed a monopoly in the purchase and sale of all imports and exports in the Colony. Its privileges were based upon royal ordinances and decrees of the Intendant, and its rights enforced in the most arbitrary manner--and to the prejudice of every other mercantile interest in the Colony. As a natural consequence it was cordially hated, and richly deserved the maledictions which generally accompanied the mention of the Friponne--the swindle--a rough and ready epithet which sufficiently indicated the feeling of the people whom it at once cheated and oppressed.
"They say, Jean," continued Babet, her mind running in a very practical and womanly way upon the price of commodities and good bargains, "they say, Jean, that the Bourgeois Philibert will not give in like the other merchants. He sets the Intendant at defiance, and continues to buy and sell in his own comptoir as he has always done, in spite of the Friponne."
"Yes, Babet! that is what they say. But I would rather he stood in his own shoes than I in them if he is to fight this Intendant--who is a Tartar, they say."
"Pshaw, Jean! you have less courage than a woman. All the women are on the side of the good Bourgeois: he is an honest merchant--sells cheap, and cheats nobody!" Babet looked down very complacently upon her new gown, which had been purchased at a great bargain at the magazine of the Bourgeois. She felt rather the more inclined to take this view of the question inasmuch as Jean had grumbled, just a little--he would not do more--at his wife's vanity in buying a gay dress of French fabric, like a city dame, while all the women of the parish were wearing homespun,--grogram, or linsey-woolsey,--whether at church or market.
Jean had not the heart to say another word to Babet about the French gown. In truth, he thought she looked very pretty in it, better than in grogram or in linsey-woolsey, although at double the cost. He only winked knowingly at Babet, and went on to speaking of the Bourgeois.
"They say the King has long hands, but this Intendant has claws longer than Satan. There will be trouble by and by at the Golden Dog--mark that, Babet! It was only the other day the Intendant was conversing with the Sieur Cadet as they crossed the ferry. They forgot me, or thought I did not hear them; but I had my ears open, as I always have. I heard something said, and I hope no harm, will come to the good Bourgeois, that is all!"
"I don't know where Christian folk would deal if anything happened him," said Babet, reflectively. "We always get civility and good pennyworths at the Golden Dog. Some of the lying cheats of the Friponne talked in my hearing one day about his being a Huguenot. But how can that be, Jean, when he gives the best weight and the longest measure of any merchant in Quebec? Religion is a just yard wand, that is my belief, Jean!"
Jean rubbed his head with a perplexed air. "I do not know whether he be a Huguenot, nor what a Huguenot is. The Cure one day said he was a Jansenist on all fours, which I suppose is the same thing, Babet--and it does not concern either you or me. But a merchant who is a gentleman and kind to poor folk, and gives just measure and honest weight, speaks truth and harms nobody, is Christian enough for me. A bishop could not trade more honestly; and the word of the Bourgeois is as reliable as a king's."
"The Cure may call the Bourgeois what he likes," replied Babet, "but there is not another Christian in the city if the good Bourgeois be not one; and next the Church there is not a house in Quebec better known or better liked by all the habitans, than the Golden Dog; and such bargains too, as one gets there!"
"Ay, Babet! a good bargain settles many a knotty point with a woman."
"And with a man too, if he is wise enough to let his wife do his marketing, as you do, Jean! But whom have we here?" Babet set her arms akimbo and gazed.
A number of hardy fellows came down towards the ferry to seek a passage.
"They are honest habitans of St. Anne," replied Jean. "I know them; they too are on the King's corvee, and travel free, every man of them! So I must cry Vive le Roi! and pass them over to the city. It is like a holiday when one works for nothing!"
Jean stepped nimbly into his boat, followed by the rough country fellows, who amused themselves by joking at Jean Le Nocher's increasing trade and the need of putting on an extra boat these stirring times. Jean put a good face upon it, laughed, and retorted their quips, and plying his oars, stoutly performed his part in the King's corvee by safely landing them on the other shore.
Meantime the officer who had lately crossed the ferry rode rapidly up the long, straight highway that led up on the side of the mountain to a cluster of white cottages and an old church, surmounted by a belfry whose sweet bells were ringing melodiously in the fresh air of the morning.
The sun was pouring a flood of golden light over the landscape. The still glittering dewdrops hung upon the trees, shrubs, and long points of grass by the wayside. All were dressed with jewels to greet the rising king of day.
The wide, open fields of meadow, and corn-fields, ripening for harvest, stretched far away, unbroken by hedge or fence. Slight ditches or banks of turf, covered with nests of violets, ferns, and wild flowers of every hue, separated contiguous fields. No other division seemed necessary in the mutual good neighborhood that prevailed among the colonists, whose fashion of agriculture had been brought, with many hardy virtues, from the old plains of Normandy.
White-walled, red-roofed cottages, or more substantial farmhouses, stood conspicuously in the green fields, or peered out of embowering orchards. Their casements were open to catch the balmy air, while in not a few the sound of clattering hoofs on the hard road drew fair faces to the window or door, to look inquisitively after the officer wearing the white plume in his military chapeau, as he dashed by on the gallant gray.
Those who caught sight of him saw a man worth seeing--tall, deep- chested, and erect. His Norman features, without being perfect, were handsome and manly. Steel-blue eyes, solidly set under a broad forehead, looked out searchingly yet kindly, while his well-formed chin and firm lips gave an air of resolution to his whole look that accorded perfectly with the brave, loyal character of Colonel Philibert. He wore the royal uniform. His auburn hair he wore tied with a black ribbon. His good taste discarded perukes and powder, although very much in fashion in those days.
It was long since he had travelled on the highway of Charlebourg, and he thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the road he traversed. But behind him, as he knew, lay a magnificent spectacle, the sight of the great promontory of Quebec, crowned with its glorious fortifications and replete with the proudest memories of North America. More than once the young soldier turned his steed, and halted a moment or two to survey the scene with enthusiastic admiration. It was his native city, and the thought that it was threatened by the national enemy roused, like an insult offered to the mother that bore him. He rode onward, more than ever impatient of delay, and not till he passed a cluster of elm trees which reminded him of an adventure of his youth, did the sudden heat pass away, caused by the thought of the threatened invasion.
Under these trees he remembered that he and his school companion, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, had once taken refuge during a violent storm. The tree they stood under was shattered by a thunderbolt. They were both stunned for a few minutes, and knew they had had a narrow escape from death. Neither of them ever forgot it.
A train of thoughts never long absent from the mind of Philibert started up vividly at the sight of these trees. His memory flew back to Le Gardeur and the Manor House of Tilly, and the fair young girl who captivated his boyish fancy and filled his youth with dreams of glorious achievements to win her smiles and do her honor. Among a thousand pictures of her hung up in his mind and secretly worshipped he loved that which presented her likeness on that day when he saved her brother's life and she kissed him in a passion of joy and gratitude, vowing she would pray for him to the end of her life.
The imagination of Pierre Philibert had revelled in the romantic visions that haunt every boy destined to prominence, visions kindled by the eye of woman and the hope of love.
The world is ruled by such dreams, dreams of impassioned hearts, and improvisations of warm lips, not by cold words linked in chains of iron sequence,--by love, not by logic. The heart with its passions, not the understanding with its reasoning, sways, in the long run, the actions of mankind.
Pierre Philibert possessed that rich gift of nature, a creative imagination, in addition to the solid judgment of a man of sense, schooled by experience and used to the considerations and responsibilities of weighty affairs.
His love for Amelie de Repentigny had grown in secret. Its roots reached down to the very depths of his being. It mingled, consciously or unconsciously, with all his motives and plans of life, and yet his hopes were not sanguine. Years of absence, he remembered, work forgetfulness. New ties and associations might have wiped out the memory of him in the mind of a young girl fresh to society and its delights. He experienced a disappointment in not finding her in the city upon his return a few days ago, and the state of the Colony and the stress of military duty had so far prevented his renewing his acquaintance with the Manor House of Tilly.
The old-fashioned hostelry of the Couronne de France, with its high- pitched roof, pointed gables, and broad gallery, stood directly opposite the rustic church and tall belfry of Charlebourg, not as a rival, but as a sort of adjunct to the sacred edifice. The sign of the crown, bright with gilding, swung from the low, projecting arm of a maple-tree, thick with shade and rustling with the beautiful leaves of the emblem of Canada. A few rustic seats under the cool maple were usually occupied, toward the close of the day, or about the ringing of the Angelus, by a little gathering of parishioners from the village, talking over the news of the day, the progress of the war, the ordinances of the Intendant, or the exactions of the Friponne.
On Sundays, after Mass and Vespers, the habitans of all parts of the extended parish naturally met and talked over the affairs of the Fabrique--the value of tithes for the year, the abundance of Easter eggs, and the weight of the first salmon of the season, which was always presented to the Cure with the first-fruits of the field, to ensure the blessing of plenty for the rest of the year.
The Reverend Cure frequently mingled in these discussions. Seated in his accustomed armchair, under the shade of the maple in summer, and in winter by the warm fireside, he defended, ex cathedra, the rights of the Church, and good-humoredly decided all controversies. He found his parishioners more amenable to good advice over a mug of Norman cider and a pipe of native tobacco, under the sign of the Crown of France, than when he lectured them in his best and most learned style from the pulpit.
This morning, however, all was very quiet round the old inn. The birds were singing, and the bees humming in the pleasant sunshine. The house looked clean and tidy, and no one was to be seen except three persons bending over a table, with their heads close together, deeply absorbed in whatever business they were engaged in. Two of these persons were Dame Bedard, the sharp landlady of the Crown of France, and her no less sharp and pretty daughter, Zoe. The third person of the trio was an old, alert-looking little man, writing at the table as if for very life. He wore a tattered black robe, shortened at the knees to facilitate walking, a frizzled wig, looking as if it had been dressed with a currycomb, a pair of black breeches, well-patched with various colors; and gamaches of brown leather, such as the habitans wore, completed his odd attire, and formed the professional costume of Master Pothier dit Robin, the travelling notary, one of that not unuseful order of itinerants of the law which flourished under the old regime in New France.
Upon the table near him stood a black bottle, an empty trencher, and a thick scatter of crumbs, showing that the old notary had despatched a hearty breakfast before commencing his present work of the pen.
A hairy knapsack lay open upon the table near his elbow, disclosing some bundles of dirty papers tied up with red tape, a tattered volume or two of the "Coutume de Paris," and little more than the covers of an odd tome of Pothier, his great namesake and prime authority in the law. Some linen, dirty and ragged as his law papers, was crammed into his knapsack with them. But that was neither here nor there in the estimation of the habitans, so long as his law smelt strong in the nostrils of their opponents in litigation. They rather prided themselves upon the roughness of their travelling notary.
The reputation of Master Pothier dit Robin was, of course, very great among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and from seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations, marriage contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is full of seeds, and usually kept all parties in hot water and litigation for the rest of their days. If he did happen now and then to settle a dispute between neighbors, he made ample amends for it by setting half the rest of the parish by the ears.
Master Pothier's nose, sharp and fiery as if dipped in red ink, almost touched the sheet of paper on the table before him, as he wrote down from the dictation of Dame Bedard the articles of a marriage contract between her pretty daughter, Zoe, and Antoine La Chance, the son of a comfortable but keen widow of Beauport.
Dame Bedard had shrewdly availed herself of the presence of Master Pothier, and in payment of a night's lodging at the Crown of France, to have him write out the contract of marriage in the absence of Dame La Chance, the mother of Antoine, who would, of course, object to the insertion of certain conditions in the contract which Dame Bedard was quite determined upon as the price of Zoe's hand and fortune.
"There! Dame Bedard!" cried Master Pothier, sticking the pen behind his ear, after a magnificent flourish at the last word," there is a marriage contract fit to espouse King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba! A dowry of a hundred livres tournoises, two cows, and a feather bed, bedstead, and chest of linen! A donation entre vifs!"
"A what? Master Pothier, now mind! are you sure that is the right word of the grimoire?" cried Dame Bedard, instinctively perceiving that here lay the very point of the contract. "You know I only give on condition, Master Pothier."
"Oh, yes! trust me, Dame Bedard. I have made it a donation entre vifs, revocable pour cause d'ingratitude, if your future son-in-law, Antoine la Chance, should fail in his duty to you and to Zoe."
"And he won't do his duty to Zoe, unless he does it to me, Master Pothier. But are you sure it is strong enough? Will it hold Dame La Chance by the foot, so that she cannot revoke her gifts although I may revoke mine?"
"Hold Dame La Chance by the foot? It will hold her as fast as a snapping-turtle does a frog. In proof of it, see what Ricard says, page 970; here is the book." Master Pothier opened his tattered volume, and held it up to the dame. She shook her head.
"Thanks, I have mislaid my glasses. Do you read, please!"
"Most cheerfully, good dame! A notary must have eyes for everybody-- eyes like a cat's, to see in the dark, and power to draw them in like a turtle, so that he may see nothing that he does not want to see."
"Oh, bless the eyes of the notary!" Dame Bedard grew impatient. "Tell me what the book says about gifts revocable--that is what concerns me and Zoe."
"Well, here it is, dame: 'Donations stipulated revocable at the pleasure of the donor are null. But this condition does not apply to donations by contract of marriage.' Bourdon also says--"
"A fig for Bourdon, and all such drones! I want my gift made revocable, and Dame La Chance's not! I know by long experience with my dear feu Bedard how necessary it is to hold the reins tight over the men. Antoine is a good boy, but he will be all the better for a careful mother-in-law's supervision."
Master Pothier rubbed the top of his wig with his forefinger.
"Are you sure, dame, that Antoine La Chance will wear the bridle easily?"
"Assuredly! I should like to see son-in-law of mine who would not! Besides, Antoine is in the humor just now to refuse nothing for sake of Zoe. Have you mentioned the children, Master Pothier? I do not intend to let Dame La Chance control the children any more than Zoe and Antoine."
"I have made you tutrice perpetuelle, as we say in the court, and here it is," said he, placing the tip of his finger on a certain line in the document.
Zoe looked down and blushed to her finger-ends. She presently rallied, and said with some spirit,--"Never mind them, Master Pothier! Don't put them in the contract! Let Antoine have something to say about them. He would take me without a dower, I know, and time enough to remind him about children when they come."
"Take you without dower! Zoe Bedard! you must be mad!" exclaimed the dame, in great heat. "No girl in New France can marry without a dower, if it be only a pot and a bedstead! You forget, too, that the dower is given, not so much for you, as to keep up the credit of the family. As well be married without a ring! Without a dower, indeed!"
"Or without a contract written by a notary, signed, sealed, and delivered!" chimed in Master Pothier.
"Yes, Master Pothier, and I have promised Zoe a three-days wedding, which will make her the envy of all the parish of Charlebourg. The seigneur has consented to give her away in place of her poor defunct father; and when he does that he is sure to stand godfather for all the children, with a present for every one of them! I shall invite you too, Master Pothier!"
Zoe affected not to hear her mother's remark, although she knew it all by heart, for it had been dinned into her ears twenty times a day for weeks, and sooth to say, she liked to hear it, and fully appreciated the honors to come from the patronage of the seigneur.
Master Pothier pricked up his ears till they fairly raised his wig, at the prospect of a three days wedding at the Crown of France. He began an elaborate reply, when a horse's tramp broke in upon them and Colonel Philibert wheeled up to the door of the hostelry.
Master Pothier, seeing an officer in the King's uniform, rose on the instant and saluted him with a profound bow, while Dame Bedard and Zoe, standing side by side, dropped their lowest courtesy to the handsome gentleman, as, with woman's glance, they saw in a moment he was.
Philibert returned their salute courteously, as he halted his horse in front of Dame Bedard. "Madame!" said he, "I thought I knew all roads about Charlebourg, but I have either forgotten or they have changed the road through the forest to Beaumanoir. It is surely altered from what it was."
"Your Honor is right," answered Dame Bedard, "the Intendant has opened a new road through the forest." Zoe took the opportunity, while the officer looked at her mother, to examine his features, dress, and equipments, from head to foot, and thought him the handsomest officer she had ever seen.
"I thought it must be so," replied Philibert; "you are the landlady of the Crown of France, I presume?" Dame Bedard carried it on her face as plainly marked as the royal emblem on the sign over her head.
"Yes, your Honor, I am Widow Bedard, at your service, and, I hope, keep as good a hostelry as your Honor will find in the Colony. Will your Honor alight and take a cup of wine, such as I keep for guests of quality?"
"Thanks, Madame Bedard, I am in haste: I must find the way to Beaumanoir. Can you not furnish me a guide, for I like not to lose time by missing my way?"
"A guide, sir! The men are all in the city on the King's corvee; Zoe could show you the way easily enough." Zoe twitched her mother's arm nervously, as a hint not to say too much. She felt flattered and fluttered too, at the thought of guiding the strange, handsome gentleman through the forest, and already the question shot through her fancy, "What might come of it? Such things have happened in stories!" Poor Zoe! she was for a few seconds unfaithful to the memory of Antoine La Chance. But Dame Bedard settled all surmises by turning to Master Pothier, who stood stiff and upright as became a limb of the law. "Here is Master Pothier, your Honor, who knows every highway and byway in ten seigniories. He will guide your Honor to Beaumanoir."
"As easy as take a fee or enter a process, your Honor," remarked Master Pothier, whose odd figure had several times drawn the criticizing eye of Colonel Philibert.
"A fee! ah! you belong to the law, then, my good friend? I have known many advocates--" but Philibert stopped; he was too good- natured to finish his sentence.
"You never saw one like me, your Honor was going to say? True, you never did. I am Master Pothier dit Robin, the poor travelling notary, at your Honor's service, ready to draw you a bond, frame an acte of convention matrimoniale, or write your last will and testament, with any notary in New France. I can, moreover, guide your Honor to Beaumanoir as easy as drink your health in a cup of Cognac."
Philibert could not but smile at the travelling notary, and thinking to himself, "too much Cognac at the end of that nose of yours, my friend!" which, indeed, looked fiery as Bardolph's, with hardly a spot for a fly to rest his foot upon without burning.
"But how will you go, friend?" asked Philibert, looking down at Master Pothier's gamaches; "you don't look like a fast walker."
"Oh, your Honor," interrupted Dame Bedard, impatiently, for Zoe had been twitching her hard to let her go. "Master Pothier can ride the old sorrel nag that stands in the stable eating his head off for want of hire. Of course your Honor will pay livery?"
"Why, certainly, Madame, and glad to do so! So Master Pothier make haste, get the sorrel nag, and let us be off."
"I will be back in the snap of a pen, or in the time Dame Bedard can draw that cup of Cognac, your Honor."
"Master Pothier is quite a personage, I see," remarked Philibert, as the old notary shuffled off to saddle the nag.
"Oh, quite, your Honor. He is the sharpest notary, they say, that travels the road. When he gets people into law they never can get out. He is so clever, everybody says! Why, he assures me that even the Intendant consults him sometimes as they sit eating and drinking half the night together in the buttery at the Chateau!"
"Really! I must be careful what I say," replied Philibert, laughing, "or I shall get into hot water! But here he comes."
As he spoke, Master Pothier came up, mounted on a raw-boned nag, lank as the remains of a twenty-years lawsuit. Zoe, at a hint from the Colonel, handed him a cup of Cognac, which he quaffed without breathing, smacking his lips emphatically after it. He called out to the landlady,--"Take care of my knapsack, dame! You had better burn the house than lose my papers! Adieu, Zoe! study over the marriage contract till I return, and I shall be sure of a good dinner from your pretty hands."
They set off at a round trot. Colonel Philibert, impatient to reach Beaumanoir, spurred on for a while, hardly noticing the absurd figure of his guide, whose legs stuck out like a pair of compasses beneath his tattered gown, his shaking head threatening dislodgment to hat and wig, while his elbows churned at every jolt, making play with the shuffling gait of his spavined and wall-eyed nag.