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Updated: September 21, 2025
The priest was less successful with this kind of outcast than with any other barbarian on the frontier. "Have you seen him, Waubudone?" inquired Archange. "I wonder if it is the same man who used to frighten us?" "This windigo a woman. Porcupine in her. She lie down and roll up and hide her head when you drive her off." "Did you drive her off?" "No. She only come past my lodge in the night."
The Chippewa widow usually passed over this threat in silence; but, threading a lock with the comb, she now said, "Best not go to the lodges awhile." "Why?" inquired Archange. "Have the English already arrived? Is the tribe dissatisfied?" "Don't know that." "Then why should I not go to the lodges?" "Windigo at the Sault now." Archange wheeled to look at her face. The widow was unmoved.
Louizon felt that inward breaking up which proved to him that he could not stand before the tongue of this woman. Groping for expression, he declared, "If thou wert sickly or blind, I would be just as good to thee as when thou wert a bride. I am not the kind that changes if a woman loses her fine looks." "No doubt you would like to see me with the smallpox," suggested Archange.
The labors put upon him by the autocrat of the house were sweeter than mococks full of maple sugar from the hand of the Chippewa housekeeper. At first Archange would not let him come into her room. She dictated to him through door or window. But when he grew fat with good food and was decently clad under Madame Cadotte's hand, the great promotion of entering that sacred apartment was allowed him.
Among these, two Capuchins, Father Hilaire of Grenoble and Father Archange, her confessors, the last in France, and the first in Rome, attached themselves recklessly to her interests, while at the same time numerous letters and pamphlets were distributed in the capital, advocating her cause; and so dangerously active had the cabal become in the Eternal City that the Cardinal d'Ossat considered it expedient to address a letter to the French Government upon the subject, which implicated in this wild conspiracy both the King of Spain and the Duke of Savoy, who, through the agency of Father Hilaire, were represented as upholding the pretensions of Madame de Verneuil.
This child, called by Bassompierre le Père Archange, and by Dupleix le Père Ange, was the son of Jacques de Harlay de Chanvallon, known at Court as "the handsome Chanvallon," and was the individual who, as the confessor of the Marquise de Verneuil, became one of the most active agents in the conspiracy which was formed against Henri IV and the French Princes. Dreux du Radier, vol. v. p. 176.
They had not noticed any voice at the window when they were speaking themselves, but some offensive thing scented the wind, and they heard, hoarsely spoken in Chippewa from the gallery, "How fat he is!" Archange, with a gasp, threw herself upon her mother-in-law for safety, and Madame Cadotte put both arms and the smoking candle around her.
People who did not give Archange the keen interest of fascinating them were a great weariness to her. Humble or wretched human life filled her with disgust. She could dance all night at the weekly dances, laughing in her sleeve at girls from whom she took the best partners. But she never helped nurse a sick child, and it made her sleepy to hear of windigos and misery.
Archange herself shuddered at such a tenacious creature. She was less superstitious than the Chippewa woman, but the Northwest had its human terrors as dark as the shadow of witchcraft. Though a Chippewa was bound to dip his hand in the war kettle and taste the flesh of enemies after victory, there was nothing he considered more horrible than a confirmed cannibal.
It must have been midnight when Archange sat up in bed, startled out of sleep by her mother-in-law, who held a candle between the curtains. Madame Cadotte's features were of a mild Chippewa type, yet the restless aboriginal eye made Archange uncomfortable with its anxiety. "Louizon is still away," said his mother. "Perhaps he went whitefishing after he had his supper."
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