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An Interview before Breakfast ... 14 III. Wreaths of Smoke 19 IV. Their Gossips 28 V. A Paternal and Filial Fight .... 38 VI. The Wastes of the World 45 VII. The Souriquois 53 VIII. Marchioness de Guergheville .... 64 IX. A Floating Jesuit 72 X. The Night Watch 81 XI. A Feudal Castle 89 XII. The Queen of -.: ^.a.dia y5 Xm. Ouangondy 102 XIV. Jemsek 109 XV. The Cardinal 119 XVI. The Acadian Wild 126 XVII. RoDERiGO Palladio 139 XVin. Richelieu's Echo 145 XIX. Charnac^ and his Snow Shoes . . . 153 XX. The Blockade 167 vi CONTENTS. Page ' XXI. Governor Winthrop's Garden . . 175 XXII. Captain Hawkins 185 XXIII. A Puritan Debatinq Society . . . 190 XXIV. Setting Sail 202 XXV. Passaoeewakeaq 215 XXVI. Versailles 222 XXVII. La Rochelle 231 XXVIII. The Acadian Wreath 243 XXIX. Baron Charnac^ 252 XXX. The Middle of the Sea 260 XXXI. The Suit of the Dolphin .... 271 XXXII. Castine 281 XXXIII. Rio Hermoso 287 XXXIV. Artillery Practice 295 XXXV. Constance and Charles of La Ro- chelle 307 XXXVI. The Tides of Fundy 312 XXXVII. In the Ice 316 XXXVIII. The Jesuit Fathers say Mass for the Repose of the Dead .... 324 XXXIX. The Widow Berni^res 833 XL. Before Sunrise and after Sunset . 342 XLI. La Tour 352 To the Reader 365 / CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. -•o*- I. LIGHT OVER A WESTERN SEA. "T T THEN shall I call you Lieutenant General of V V Acadia ? " asked the bride Constance of her husband, as they reclined upon shelving rocks near the mouth of the Penobscot, looking toward the southwest long after the sun had gone down. Be- yond the salt sea there was still a silent sea of dull crimson in the sky ; but the lambent flames so long playing upon the surface of the waters had been nearly quenched in the gathering night. The full moon — their honeymoon — was rising in the east ; but it was not yet dark enough for them to notice their luminary, — theirs in a peculiar sense in months of early marriage. " My father should bring the commission soon," replied Charles la Tour. " The Shoals vessel from La Eochelle, that hove to this morning, outside, brought news that having obtained the commission, he was captured on the high seas, and carried prisoner to England ; but had been released upon the repre- 10 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. sentation made by your old townsman Pierre Gaudet, that my father was allied to the Bouillon family. The English take kindly to Huguenot noblemen ; and none the less so if they know anything about Acadia. I look for him almost any day." The Guardian Angel who had watched, and waited upon, Constance for twenty-five years, must have ob- served, even in the gloaming, the color deepen in her face when Charles pronounced the home words, " La Eochelle," and " Pierre Gaudet ; " but the color had faded again when he came to the word "Acadia." Like a person whose body was in Acadia, and whose heart, will or nill, must be where her body was, — she asked mechanically, — " And what will Charles do when he gets to be Lieutenant General ? " There was no one of finer discernment of the hidden meaning of tones, of faces, of attitudes, than Charles la Tour, whenever his absorbing business plans al- lowed him to think of anything else than his gains, or when a keen perception of the mental state of any one he conversed with was likely to help him in a business way. " You speak, my Constance, of a third person : * What will Charles do ? ' You are dreaming of La Eochelle, and of the old man Gaudet." And, turning so as to see his wife's face, he took her hand in his, pressing it warmly. " These home words make you speak of me impersonally, as if I were as far off as your father's house ; or, as far off," — look- ing deeply into her dark eyes as the light upon the LIQUT OVER A WESTERN SEA. 11 water westward was reflected upon them, — " as your childhood loves." The poor wife, — I had almost said child-wife, since Charles was tall and the type of manly beauty, and Constance was in comparison so much shorter ami smaller as to seem childlike to him, although she averaged well with her countrywomen of the Bay of Biscay, — closed her eyes, and her Guardian Angel must have wiped away a tear-drop. Charles did not see it, but he saw visions beyond the reach of sight — far over sea. But Charles la Tour, who had high aspirations, had not married for love, not he ; he had, indeed, said that he loved. He was not without love. But Constance had taken his fancy as being the brightest and best judge of furs who had ever appeared in Acadia ; and he was in the fur-business. And as to fish, she knew well the La Rochelle market, and was a judge of values, and of seasons, — in a word she knew a cod from a haddock ; and he was making a vast deal of money in fish. ■ Out of the five thousand men in the eastern fisheries some two hundred and fifty years ago, he and his father, and their Port Royal partner the son of Poutrincourt, employed one twentieth. La Tour really loved Constance, more or less ; why should he not ? Toward her his heart was not divided with any other of womankind. But he was through and through a business man ; and his whole soul was in his affairs. He had no such sentiment, or believed then that he had none, as would lead ^ .,: 12 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. him to object to his wife's having a great variety of French loves, if that should please her French fancy. But little did he know of Constance Bernon, — even if he did look deeply into her eyes. • The moon had come forth in all her strength, illu- minating the bay of the Penobscot ; and Charles could discern far away upon the southern waters the gleam of the paddle-stroke, as Joe Takouchin was coming up with the flood from Long Island. " What will Charles do when he gets to be Lieu- tenant General of Acadia ? " asked Charles, repeating his wife's interrogation. "He will get to be very rich in a monopoly of fur and fish, and in great land- grants ; and then he will erect Castle La Tour at the mouth of one of the great Acadian rivers; then a feudal lord and lady will preside over Acadia; and then the house of Bouillon need not be ashamed of having poor relations. My father was once as rich as any of them. But he was a patriot, and lost his property in the civil wars, while some of his relatives saved their capons whatever became of their country." It is a matter of history that there were few men of that age in America, with its little handfuls of population scattered along the coast, who were the match of Charles la Tour in " presence," in " persua- siveness," in " affability," in power to gain the " con- fidence " of those with whom he had to do. When he set out to marry, he was perfect master of the art of making his wife believe that he thought everything \ , * LIGHT OVER A WESTERN SEA. 13 r* of her. He was fond of her, and so perhaps supposed that he loved her. He admired her matchless dis- cernment as a business woman ; if she only had as perfect a passion as he for beaver and cod, there need be no limit to their acquisitions in the vast area of inland waters and the great fishing-banks at their doors. She was, if anything, too spiritually-minded, as she called it ; too Huguenotish, as he called it. Here was to La Tour a solid business reason for marriage ; as Baron de Castin married the daughter of Madocawondo, upon business grounds. Constance being a woman he liked her more than he would a man, and more and more as long as she lived ; but he never loved her, was never devoted to her. But Constance was deserving of the profoundest love ; it is no wonder that her Guardian Angel stood by her and thought himself better off than in heaven, — so that one loved her, who was worthy. One who was not worthy also loved her, — although not her husband. 14 COJ^STANO: OF ACADIA. II. AN INTERVIEW BEFORE BREAKFAST. nnHE day -dawn, with all the colors of heaveu -^ reflected upon the Bay, found the bride alone, looking far eastward, as if by looking far enough she could have seen the weather-vane above the pointed roof of her father's house near the Lantern, close by the solid sea-wall in that well-armed, rich, and enter- prising Huguenot city La Rochelle, mistress of so many seas, and fair to look upon in the eyes of any lover of the true greatness of France. The Lieutenant General, whose commission had not arrived in the thirty-sixth month of patient waiting, had arisen before day, in his eager attention to tlie gains of his trade ; and he was now seeking out the intricate windings of the Biguyduce,^ with his birch. 1 An arm of the sea, now known as Bagaduce, east of Castine. Williamson thinks it was named for some French Major — Bigay- •iuce. The peninsula between this river and the Penobscot Bay on the west being known to history as the Majabigaduce. The older name of the Biguyduce River appears to have been Matchebiguntus. The attempt of an eminent Indian scholar to identify this word with Williamson's French Major is creditable. ,1 ■ AN INTERVIEW BEFORE BREAKFAST. 15 Constance cast her eyes downward, when the sun shone full-blaze athwart the eastern waters ; and she forgot her father's house in the broad daylight. It could not but occur to her that, after all, it evinced good judgment that she had sailed in one of her father's ships to a new world, to forget that dream which had taken definite shape, after having haunted her for more than ten years, a dream of being wedded to one whom she would have loved if he had not been, as she believed, an utter stranger to her God. The Huguenot faith, her own faith, not that of another, would not allow her to love one, or rather link her destiny to one, who did not make God the supreme choice of his soul. Of all the selfish, idolatrous, papistic, Jesuitical persons she ever saw, her would-be lover was the best. She would never confess to herself that she loved him ; and she left the country to be rid of him. He, apparently, was fully devoted to her, protesting his affection in strange heart-felt tones, which she had not yet heard from the business-like professional lover Charles la Tour. She thought to herself, bending her steps toward the great hearth where her breakfast was smoking, — " Charles la Tour is a Protestant ; and I think that he is religious. He is gifted, and apparently devout, in prayer. He is fluently religious ; and I shall not ^'soon believe that his Vaudois blood has been all sopped up by the furs of Acadia. I did wisely in this new world to take the world as I find it, and to marry in the line of my religious duty ; and I have fr /^/. 16 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. made my vows to God that I will be to my husband a minister of good. I have taken him for better or for worse ; and, if it is for worae, I am sure it will be my fault." Her train of pious and wifely reflection was inter- rupted by the sound of a ship's gun. Wheeling from her solitary seat at the table, she saw two English ships heavily armed, which had just rounded the western headland ; and were now standing in for the fort. For the sake of running before the wind, and avoiding the islets of the lower Bay on the east, they had ascended the western channel by moonlight. Constance despatched at once a messenger to her husband. There might be work in hand for the King's Lieutenant. These men-of-war had appeared suddenly, like Megunticut thunder-clouds; canvas clouds illuminated by the sun, but filled with lightnings and the peal of battle. When the ships hove to, and lowered two boats, Constance went toward the landing alone to meet them. An English baronet was in the foremost boat, with the English flag flying over his head. Constance waved her hand ; and her gunner, upon the platform fronting Pentagotiet ^ next the sea, fired a shot across the baronet's bows ; and his men peaked ^ Pemetigoet or Pentegoet was the name given by Champlain, in 1605, to the river which had been known to the Indians as Norem- bega. Wheeler (History of Castine, Bangor, 1875, p. 14) thinks that Pentagotiet is a combination of Indian and French, meaning entrance to the river. #'■ AN INTERVIEW BEFORE BREAKFAST. 17 their oars. "While the boat swung round to the wind upon the uneasy tide, Constance, putting her hand to her mouth for a speaking-trumpet, spoke in clear penetrating musical English, — " Lay your head off shore ; and land the baronet from the stern, then pull off. I will see him alone under a flag of truce. If you delay, I will blow you out of the water." She mised her hand, and another shot crossed the bows of the boat. When, in the next uplifting of her hand, she flaunted her white kerchief to the breeze, the baronet condescended to land from the stern ; and the boat and flag pulled off, and Constance was alone with the stranger, who also held out a flag of truce.. The English baronet had an important communi- cation to make to Chevalier la Tour. "My husband cannot be interrupted upon trivial business, at this hour," replied Constance. " He will see you later, if he thinks it important. Your present business I will attend to." The baronet rubbed his eyes, and he would have ripped out an oath or two if he had been an English- man ; being a Frenchman, he took out his snuff-box, and offered it to Madame la Tour, with a profusion of compliments, which led her to abandon her new- world direct Anglo-Saxon method of addressing one whom she had supposed to be a Saxon. It was her father-in-law, Claude la Tour, returned with her husband's commission as Lieutenant General of Acadia. 2 18 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. " Will the baronet be so good as to produce the commission, as a voucher for his personal identity as Claude la Tour ? " The baronet hesitated. Should he negotiate with a woman ? " Will the baronet be so good as to recall his boat, that he may get into it under his own flag, that I may proceed to blow him out of the water ? " The baronet looked into the deep dark eyes of Madame la Tour. " It would be less work to exhibit the commission ; which I will do with pleasure," he remarked, after looking at eyes which never quailed. The baronet accepted his fair enemy's invitation to breakfast, when satisfied that his countrywoman was his son's wife. But first he sent to the ship for his own wife ; whom he had picked up in Eng- land, a maid of honor to Queen Henrietta. The sound of the great guns had outstripped the messengers of Constance, and Charles la Tour — now indeed Lieutenant General — returned in season to breakfast with his step-mother, and his de-national- ized father, and his own faithful friend and defender Constance of La Rochelle. . WREATHS OF SMOKE, 19 A'*^ III. •i WREATHS OF SMOKE. TVTOTHING could exceed the self-complacency of ■^^ Charles la Tour except the self-complacency of his father. They were neither of them self-con- ceited men — far from that. Self-conceit implies something notional, almost whimsical ; but the La Tours were thoroughly well-balanced, and the better balanced they were, the better satisfied they were with themselves. Charles la Tour had a faculty of extracting from all circumstances an immense amount of downright happiness. If the marines told a true story, when they said that La Tour killed an Englishman in order to steal a ship, he undoubtedly did it with joy in his heart, and a smile at his own deftness in doing it. If he had a long and bitter contest with a rival, he enjoyed every minute of the time. The fun of fight- ing was exquisite. Then his skin was stuffed full of satisfaction when he delicately nibbled at sweetmeats or sipped wine with Governor Winthrop. And his conversations with Constance, whom he never to her dying day understood, were sources of rare pleasure ; as if, for the moment, his soul bathed in the pure 20 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. empyrean of a higher range of thought than he had known since his mother died at Saint Martin on R^, when he was fourteen years old, the day before his father sailed for Acadia. This happy disposition kept in subordination his curiosity to know just how his Vaudois father had become a Britisher in crimson and gold. As they lighted their tobacco for an after-breakfast stroll along shore, between the thick-set hackma- tacks and the Bay, the father and son chaffered each other upon their respective marriages. " How came you, my dear father, to find such a fair faced and attractive Frenchwoman among the fogs of England?" " She discovered me, my son, by my French accent. It was a love match on her part. And I responded heartily, since the Queen was very fond of her, and it strengthened my position at court. And my wife was anxious to see our new world, which I am going to turn over to England." " To England ? " replied Charles, almost forgetful of his even poise. T^en recollecting himself, he added, " That would indeed be very fine. But how do you propose to do it ? " " I have," said the father, " not only a baronetcy, but a land grant, big enough to make your heart jump, to give to you, which will be much better than the Lieutenant General's commission that Louis XIII. has sent you. Acadia will certainly be lost to France before the present hostilities terminate." WREATHS OF SMOKE. 21 "But do you think, father, that I would be a traitor to my country for a baronetcy, a few acres of bushes in what you propose to call Nova Scotia ? " " Traitor ! country ! You have no country but the soil your feet cover, and what you own in our new world," replied the father. "You can dissemble to the French King. I learned in the Maritime Alps to call no man my king except as I could make kings my subjects. What kings are for is to help the La Tour family. Louis and Charles are both my ser- vants, and yours too, if you will make them such." And he rattled his sword in its scabbard when he said this. "Indeed, indeed," answered the Lieutenant Governor of Acadia, "was it not upon the very ground that I was to keep Acadia for France, that I based my petition to my king ? " "Are you then settled that you will not surrender?" asked the baronet, in alarm. "Do you know, sir, since you claim to be a man of honor, that I obtained this land -grant and a baronetcy for you, and for my- self also, upon my pledge that you would surrender this fort to His Britannic Majesty ? And do you know, sir, that these men-of-war have crossed the ocean for the express purpose of taking possession of this fort ? I entreat you to surrender, and keep the engagement I have made for you with my king, and my newly adopted country. I throw myself upon your clemency. I plead as a father with his own son." CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. % ■A ** I iBifleed love you, and recognize my obligation to you who have given me life itself; and I value the honor you have brought nie from a foreign prince ; but 4- must seek the approval of my own king. Do you suppose me capable of betraying the truRt ^y king has placed in me ? What is my life wo'-^V v Jr ss I can be trusted ? France depends upon lae lo iioid * this fort." So replied the son with no ii'mill indig- nation and emphasis. " Did you ever know a French king to b*^ grate- ful ? " asked the father. " My word for it, he will have you in the Bastile to please some favorite, before you are done with him." "It will never be my fault, if he forgets me," responded the King's Lieutenant. "But it will be my fault if I do not do what I know to be right. My conscience is in it." Approaching now the shade where Constance was sitting with her mother-in-law, Charles said to his father, " If you have no other proposals to make, you may as well send away your ships of war, and take your charming bride and settle down with me to make money out of the Inc^ian Tu^-trade, and keep along with Lhe cod-fishinf w ^n^ in *''Ui Biencourt. Perhaps, however," lic added, — turning about to renew the pacing up and the pacing down, and changing his tone from that of a warrior to that of an accomplished diplomat, — "if I had married a Franco- Anglican wife, I might talk as you do. But WREATHS OF SMOKE. 23 '^onstdnct of La Rochelle, the daughter of Bernon, knows nothing of the independent spirit you brought from the Alpine crags looking into Italy; au'l she is French to her heart's core." "Ha, ha," continued Charges, " 1 see by the twi nkle in your eyes, that you already laugh at nic for havi '^ married a wife who is more of a man than T an. But I assure you, upon my honor, that I niarri i her for soldierly and statesman-like qualities. Vnd si. has made me swear by a great oath that I will set up the throne of France upon the ^^anks of the Penobscot, \ the Saint John, and the n. iring tides of Fundy." " And did you swear, my ^on ? I am duly proud you, for being of a piece witi your father. I see tha you on your part intend to eurn the approval of youi king; and have me on my p.irt hold our titles and our land grant. Is not this what you really mean, down at the bottom of your eyns ? " Charles and his father looked calmly into each other's eyes; as if they took d light in contemplat- ing each his own image reflecteii in the eyes of the other. It is noteworthy that they sh* ok hands upon it ; and turning, walked towards the fort. "You were speaking of your wife," said the baronet. " Does she not fear the power of the Jesuits ? " " Yes ; she thinks they will, for the present, control the Saint Lawrence. But in thifc part of Acadia, she has, — so far as I can discern what she really does intend to do, — a settled purpose to establish a 24 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. Huguenot colony upon these eastern shores of New France ; and if she does, she will make these strag- gling outskirts of the world the match of old France for the love of country, able to maintain her rights in the great struggle that must come between France and Ensrland for America. Of that I am satisfied." "And now, sir," added Charles la Tour, looking somewhat sternly at his father, "I believe that we understand each other. You and I are for the La Tours against all kings and all nations and all religions." Upon this, the baronet pulled out of his travelling- pocket the land grant, representing a magnificent strip of country fifteen leagues inland, along the coast for fifty leagues from Fundy to Mirliguesche.^ "Yes, I think we will take this land," said the Lieutenant of France. "We shall want for the La Tours all that we can get from both the kings. I think it is now settled between us, that you will be the friend and patron of Charles I., and keep this land he has given into your charge ; and that I am to be the friend of Louis XIIL, and take all he gives me." " Allow me to embrace you, my son." "This arrangement, my honored father, will of course involve a public separation of our interests, which will appear to others most painful, to say nothing of its being strange. "We must fight to maintain our respective rights; but as long as wo * From Yarmouth to Lunenburg. II ' II' WREATHS OF SMOKE. 25 have come to this private understanding, the world may wonder." At this point, they had come so near the place where their wives were conversing, that they again turned about. Ascending a slight elevation, Charles la Tour threw away his half-burned tobacco, and stood firmly upon both legs, looking every inch like the representative of a king, and pointed to the southwest over the Penobscot Bay: — " The Saxons are founding cities and planting an empire; and those who are descended from Roman soldiers and ancient Gauls will begin from this day forward relatively to lose ground in the world, and do less for advancing civilization, unless they seize on this new continent and hold it vigorously with both hands. At least, this is what my wife says. Under the pre- tence of fur-trading, and marrying me, and the con- verting — as she calls it — of the Indians, she expects to take the stifled Huguenots out of France, and bring them hitherward, where they can breathe the air of freedom, and worship God in the wilderness, and plant the industries and civilization of the Latin race upon a new continent." " That would please the spirits of the dead patriots of La Rochelle," answered the father. "The Due de Rohan and his compatriots said, that France was fast losing its grip upon the world by driving out of her borders the best blood of the nation. He desired to keep it in the country, by erecting a Huguenot republic. Failing in that, nothing could be better 26 CONSTANCE OF ACADIA. than to ship the Huguenots out of France in bulk, and build up a New France in America." " I have been so long out of France," replied the younger La Tour, " and I have had so little news in your absence, that I am glad to learn your views. Constance represents that no small part of the wealth, the business capacity, the intellectual force of France, have turned toward Calvinism ; and that the Roman Church, led by the Jesuits, proposes to destroy the very sinews of the nation itself, and leave a mere ilabby France, loyal to Eome. She is al! on fire to bring these Protestants to America. It .ould make your blood boil, father, to hear Consr