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 Curé with the first-fruits of the field, to ensure the blessing of plenty for the rest of the year.
The Reverend Curé 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 Bédard, the sharp landlady of the Crown of France, and her no less sharp and pretty daughter, Zoë. 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 régime 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 Bédard the articles of a marriage contract between her pretty daughter, Zoë, and Antoine La Chance, the son of a comfortable but keen widow of Beauport.
Dame Bédard 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 Bédard was quite determined upon as the price of Zoë's hand and fortune.
“There! Dame Bédard!” 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 Bédard, 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 Bédard. I have made it a donation entre vifs, révocable pour cause d'ingratitude, if your future son-in-law, Antoine la Chance, should fail in his duty to you and to Zoë.”
“And he won't do his duty to Zoë, 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 Bédard grew impatient. “Tell me what the book says about gifts revocable—that is what concerns me and Zoë.”
“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 Bédard 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 Zoë. Have you mentioned the children, Master Pothier? I do not intend to let Dame La Chance control the children any more than Zoë 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.
Zoë looked down and blushed to her finger-ends. She presently