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The son of the merchant Lecour was a handsome youth, and there was great joy in the family at his coming home to St. Elphège. For he was going to France on the morrow; it was with that object that his father had sent to town for him the little walled town of Montreal. It was evening, early in May, of the year 1786.
Even the Norman servants loved their mistress, and hurried to her chamber; baron, priest, all were there; she lay as if insensible, but when Father Elphege, the prior, arrived, and began the litany for the dying, she raised her head and strove to follow.
It was the letter of Father Elphege to the Bishop of Coutances. The baron was scholar enough to read it few Normans were so, and fewer English nobles; but he was an exception. He read and knew all; he read, and blanched a deadly white as he did so; his knees shook together, and a cold sweat covered his face. It was known, then; to how many?
Another saint is added to the calendar; the Archbishop Elphege has suffered martyrdom. On Easter eve they told him he must find ransom or die. But he not only firmly refused to give money, but forbade his impoverished people to do so on his account. And then one smote him with an axe iron on the head, and with the blow he sank down.
"Our prior, the sainted Elphege, despatched me to some of our poor flock, who had taken refuge in the woods, that I might commit one deeply loved to their care." "His name?" "Wilfred of Aescendune.
I will send thee after supper, and give fitting charge to Father Elphege." Wilfred was forced to sit down during the meal, but he ate nothing. When it was ended, the baron called old Osbert the seneschal and gave his instructions. They led the youth away; he did not return the baron's half-ironical salutation, but departed with his guards in silence.
Lawrence almost anywhere was to leave human habitation. The hamlet of St. Elphège was part of the half-wild parish of Répentigny. The cause of its existence was its position some miles up the Assumption, as a gateway of many smaller rivers tributary to the latter, which itself was tributary to the River of Jesus; and that in turn, less than a mile further on, to the vast St Lawrence.
Thorkel's host was that which slew Elfheah, the good archbishop of Canterbury, whom his monks called Elphege, but last year. That, too, was the thought of the seamen to whom I spoke when the ships were yet distant, and so we went back to the hall heavy and disappointed. We would not speak to these men, knowing that from Thorkel's folk we should but hear boasting of Swein's victories.
I am the boy whom you knew as the little Lecour of St. Elphège." The somewhat humble and seedy Quinson, black sheep of an excellent family, was glad to brighten up his tarnished career as the cicerone of so brilliant a butterfly, and only too proud to be the means of introducing Germain to the young bloods of the city.
Elphège, my old protégé. Can it be any of his people! What is the appearance of this fellow?" "He is about middle height, cheerful, graceful, hair and eyes black." "It is that well-looking boy of Lecour's no other. His father would kill himself if he heard of his son duping the highest circles of Versailles. Poor man, he was the least of the very least when I knew him first a private in my corps.
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