In the cities were the strange and wonderful things whereof Lorenzo Surprenant had told, with others that she pictured to herself confusedly: wide streets suffused with light, gorgeous shops, an easy life of little toil with a round of small pleasures and distractions. Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet, where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft touch of that cooler air that draws from the northwest after set of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on the earth sinking to untroubled sleep.
“And yet they must be beautiful!” thought she, still dreaming of those vast American cities … As though in answer, a second voice was raised.
—Over there was it not a stranger land where people of an alien race spoke of unfamiliar things in another tongue, sang other songs? Here …
—The very names of this her country, those she listened to every day, those heard but once, came crowding to memory: a thousand names piously bestowed by peasants from France on lakes, on rivers, on the settlements of the new country they were discovering and peopling as they went—lac à l’Eau-Claire—la Famine—Saint-Cœur—de-Marie—Trois-Pistoles—Sainte Rose-du-Dégel—Pointe-aux-Outardes—Saint-André-de-l’ Epouvante … An uncle of Eutrope Gagnon’s lived at Saint-André-de-l’Epouvante; Racicot of Honfleur spoke often of his son who was a stoker on a Gulf coaster, and every time new names were added to the old; names of fishing villages and little harbours on the St. Lawrence, scattered here and there along those shores between which the ships of the old days had boldly sailed toward an unknown land—Pointe-Mille-Vaches—les Escoumins—Notre-Dame-du-Portage—les Grandes-Bergeronnes—Gaspé.
—How sweet to hear these names where one was talking of distant acquaintance and kinsfolk, or telling of far journeys! How dear and neighbourly was the sound of them, with a heartwarming friendly ring that made one feel as he spoke them:—“Throughout all this land we are at home … at home …”
—Westward, beyond the borders of the Province; southward, across the line were everywhere none but English names. In time one might learn to speak them, even might they at last come familiarly to the ear; but where should one find again the happy music of the French names?
—Words of a foreign speech from every lip, on every street, in every shop … Little girls taking hands to dance a round and singing a song one could not understand … Here …
Maria turned toward her father who still slept with his chin sunk on his breast, looking like a man stricken down by grief whose meditation is of death; and the look brought her swift memory of the hymns and country songs he was wont to teach his children in the evenings.
A la claire fontaine
M’en allant promener …
In those cities of the States, even if one taught the children how to sing them would they not straightway forget!
The clouds a little while ago drifting singly across a moonlit sky were now spread over the heavens in a vast filmy curtain, and the dim light passing through it was caught by the earth’s pale coverlet of melting snow; between the two wan expanses the ranks of the forest darkly stretched their long battlefront.
Maria shuddered; the emotion which had glowed in her heart was dying; once again she said to herself: “And yet it is a harsh land, this land of ours … Why should I linger here?”
Then it was that a third voice, mightier than the others, lifted itself up in the silence: the voice of Quebec—now the song of a woman, now the exhortation of a priest. It came to her with the sound of a church bell, with the majesty of an organ’s tones, like a plaintive love-song, like the long high call of woodsmen in the forest. For verily there was in it all that makes the soul of the Province: the loved solemnities of the ancestral faith; the lilt of that old speech guarded with jealous care; the grandeur and the barbaric strength of this new land where an ancient race has again found its youth.
Thus spake the voice.—“Three hundred years ago we came, and we have remained … They who led us hither might return among us without knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be true that we have little learned, most surely nothing is forgot.
“We bore oversea our prayers and our songs; they are ever the same. We carried in our bosoms the hearts of the men of our fatherland, brave and merry, easily moved to pity as to laughter, of all human hearts the most human; nor have they changed. We traced the boundaries of a new continent, from Gaspé to Montreal, from St. Jean d’Iberville to Ungava, saying as we did it:—Within these limits all we brought with us, our faith, our tongue, our virtues, our very weaknesses are henceforth hallowed things which no hand may touch, which shall endure to the end.
“Strangers have surrounded us whom it is our pleasure to call foreigners; they have taken into their hands most of the rule, they have gathered to themselves much of the wealth; but in this land of Quebec nothing has changed. Nor shall anything change, for we are the pledge of it. Concerning ourselves and our destiny but one duty have we clearly understood: that we should hold fast—should endure. And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many centuries hence the world will look upon us and say:—These people are of a race that knows not how to perish … We are a testimony.
“For this is it that we must abide in that Province where our fathers dwelt, living as they have lived, so to obey the unwritten command that once shaped itself in their hearts, that passed to ours, which we in turn must hand on to descendants innumerable:—In this land of Quebec naught shall die
