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Updated: June 2, 2025
The snow-storm continued in unabated violence, and the weather was so gray that the lines of earth and sky were blended and utterly undistinguishable. A little after the hour of noon, Zulma Sarpy knelt in the little church of Pointe-aux-Trembles. Beside her there were only a few worshippers some old men mumbling their rosaries, and some women crouched on their heels before the shrine.
Bougainville now had 2,000 infantry, all the mounted men nearly 300 and all the best Indian and Canadian scouts, along the thirteen miles of shore between Cap Rouge and Pointe-aux-Trembles. His land and water batteries had also been made much stronger. He and Montcalm were in close touch and could send messages to each other and get an answer back within four hours.
It was far past midnight when I reached the town, after a weary tramp from Pointe-aux-Trembles. I knew all about the ball and that, of course, Bouchette would be there. We had planned to seize him on his way home from the Castle. Everything turned out as had been anticipated. Our men did their work to perfection. They acted with bravery and intelligence. It was a pity to spoil their success."
They then gave him a plan of their own, which was, to convey the army up the St Lawrence and fight their way ashore somewhere between Cap Rouge, nine miles above Quebec, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, twenty-two miles above. They argued that, by making a landing there, the British could cut off Montcalm's communications with Three Rivers and Montreal, from which his army drew its supplies.
His first stoppage was at Pointe-aux-Trembles, a beautiful village, which became historic during the war of invasion and with which will be associated several of the incidents of this story. He passed the inn of the place so as to avoid the queries and comments of the loungers who might be congregated there, and pulled up at a neat farm house on the outskirts.
Notwithstanding that his periodical visits to the Sarpy mansion had been interrupted during the American occupation of Pointe-aux-Trembles, he knew in a general way that Zulma had become acquainted with one or the other of the officers, which was the main reason why he judged that the early communication of the war news from his lips would be particularly interesting to Sieur Sarpy and his daughter, but he had no suspicion that Zulma's feelings went further, and had thus no idea of the effect which his words produced upon her.
The farmers and villagers, of Pointe-aux-Trembles were kept so busy providing food and lodgings for the army, or were so deterred from moving about by the sight of the patrols along the roads, that almost none of them called at the mansion during the whole period of occupation. And so passed the fortnight away. It was all too short considered by the number of days.
Pauline made nothing of that, attributing it to his military anxieties, a supposition which his conversation at first seemed to justify. "This is an exposed point," said he, "which in a few days none of us will be able to occupy. When the whole rebel army moves up from Pointe-aux-Trembles, they can easily shell us out of this side of the citadel."
He was now in great good humor, and she also affected to be gay, but there was a flush on her cheek which told of an interior flame that glowed, and when her father had departed, she walked up and down the floor of her bedchamber with the slow measured step of deep, anxious reflection. Four days later, the village of Pointe-aux-Trembles was startled by the approach of Arnold's men.
Feeling his inability to press the siege unaided, and learning that Colonel McLean, with his Royal Emigrants, had succeeded in reaching Quebec from Sorel, on the very day that he himself had crossed from Point Levis, thus strengthening the garrison of the town with a few regulars, Arnold, on the 18th November, broke up his camp and retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles, to await the arrival of Montgomery from Montreal.
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