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Brilliant, enthusiastic, fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of the Seigneurial position. He was reactionary, seductive, generous, and at first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac. He did more than that. He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse.
I was Joe Lajeunesse yesterday, and I'll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I'll die Joe Lajeunesse the forgeron bagosh! So you take me as you find me. M'sieu' Racine doesn't marry me. And Madelinette doesn't take me to Paris and lead me round the stage and say, 'This is M'sieu' Lajeunesse, my father. No. I'm myself, and a damn good blacksmith and nothing else am I!"
See there!" he held out his wrist. The Seigneur nodded. "But I got to Fournel's first. I put the will into his hands. "I told him Madame Madelinette was following. Then I went to bring the constables to his house to arrest her when he had finished with her." He laughed a brutal laugh, which deepened the strange glittering look in Louis' eyes. "When I came an hour later, she was there.
These simple folk would marry, beget children, labour hard, obey Mother Church, and yield up the ghost peacefully in the end, after their kind; but now and then there was born among them one not after their kind: even such as Madelinette, with the stirring of talent in her veins, and the visions of the artistic temperament delight and curse all at once lifting her out of the life, lonely, and yet sorrowfully happy.
She collapsed with a cry of despair, for he had held the flaming paper above her reach, and its ashes were now scattering on the floor. "You will let me give you some wine?" he said quietly, and poured out a glassful. Madelinette was faint, and, sitting down, she drank the wine feebly, then leaned her head against the back of the chair, her face turned from Fournel.
Tardif's rage choked him. He tried to speak once or twice, then began to shriek an imprecation at Fournel; but the constables clapped hands on his mouth, and dragged him out of the room and out of the house. Fournel saw him safely out, then returned to Madelinette. "Do not fear for the fellow. A little gaol will do him good. I will see to it that he gives no trouble, Madame," he said.
The Seigneur nodded. "Then he will go. I have dismissed him I have a temper many times, but he never went. It is foolish to dismiss a man in a temper. He thinks you do not mean it. But our Madelinette there" he turned towards the Cure now "she is never in a temper, and every one always knows she means what she says; and she says it as even as a clock."
You have set them right, and you will keep him within the bounds of wisdom and prudence. You are his guardian angel, Madelinette." She looked up at him with a pensive smile and a glance of gratitude. "But suppose that will if there is one exists, see how false our position!"
Madelinette whispered to Havel, he got up on the box beside Lapierre, and the coach rattled away to a tavern, as the two women disappeared swiftly into the darkness. As the two approached the mansion where George Fournel lived, they saw the door open and a man come hurriedly out into the street. He wore his wrist in a sling. Madelinette caught Madame Marie's arm.
The day of pleasure done and dusk settled on Pontiac and on the encampment of soldiers in the valley, a light still burned in the library at the Manor House long after midnight. Madelinette had gone to bed, but, excited by the events of the day, she could not sleep, and she went down to the library to read.
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