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Updated: June 21, 2025
The large edifice beneath us, in Pinacle street, leading to the bay, is the Wesleyan Methodist church, or chapel, as it would be termed at home. Thanks to the liberal institutions of the country, such distinctions are unknown in Canada. Every community of Christian worshippers is rightly termed a church. The Church is only arrogated by one.
Opposite the guard-house I saw the pedler Pinacle afar off, his pack opened on a little table, and beside it a long pole decked with ribbons which he was selling to the conscripts. I hastened to pass by him, when he cried: "Ha! Cripple! Halt! Come here; I have a ribbon for you; you must have a magnificent one one to draw a prize by."
But although the villain made oath before the justice of the peace, Monsieur Goulden knew the contrary, for on the day in question neither he nor I had left the house. Besides, Pinacle wanted to dance with Catharine at a festival at Quatre-Vents, and she refused because she knew the story of the watch, and was, besides, unwilling to leave me.
I thought Pinacle was right; that I had seen the last of home. I thought of Catharine, of Aunt Grédel, of good Monsieur Goulden, and I cursed those who had forced me from them. At daybreak, wagons arrived with food and brandy for us; the rain had ceased; we made soup, but nothing could warm me; I had caught the fever; within I was cold while my body burned.
I went into the closet and hung the cloak and mittens in their places, and was about relating my adventure with Pinacle, when he resumed: "You had a pleasant day of it, Joseph." "I have had, indeed. Aunt Grédel and Catharine wished me to make you their compliments."
Unhappily the wretches from Bois-de-Chênes, the big Horni, Zaphéri Roller, Nicholas Cochart, the carder, Pinacle, whom they had made mayor to pay him for having shown the way to Falberg and Graufthal to the allies during the siege, all these rascals and others who were with them, who wanted the fleur-de-lis as if the fleur-de-lis could make them any better unhappily, I say, all that bad set who lived by stealing fagots from the forest, had discovered the old tri-colored cockade in the tops of their shakos, and "now," they thought, "is the time to prove ourselves the real supporters of the throne and the altar."
Thus my father, born in affluence, and always prosperous, clombe without the difficulty and various disappointments that all human beings seem destined to encounter, to the very topmost pinacle of happiness: Around him was sunshine, and clouds whose shapes of beauty made the prospect divine concealed from him the barren reality which lay hidden below them.
His little brother Jean was crying behind him, and said: "No, no, Jacob! not the black!" But Pinacle fastened the ribbon to the smith's hat, while the latter said: "That is what we want now. We are all dead, and should wear our own mourning." And he cried savagely: "Vive l'Empereur!"
As Zébédé spoke, I recalled those things, and I saw too that wretch Pinacle on the Town Hall Square, calling me and shaking a black ribbon over his head: "Ha, cripple! you must have a fine ribbon; the ribbon of those who win!" This remembrance, together with the cold, which seemed to freeze the very marrow in our bones, made me shudder.
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