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Updated: June 26, 2025
"That was truly his name, m'sieu' Raoul Vaillantcoeur a name of the fine sound, is it not? You like that word, a valiant heart, it pleases you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black.
Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode over to them. "It's a dam' lie," he said, sullenly. "Prosper Leclere, you slipped the string.
I will take with me the notary, and the good man Girard, and the little Marie Antoinette. You shall hear an answer. What message?" "Mon pere," said Prosper, slowly, "you shall tell him just this. I, Prosper Leclere, ask Raoul Vaillantcoeur that he will forgive me for not fighting with him on the ground when he demanded it." Yes, the message was given in precisely those words.
"I have killed him," he muttered, "my friend! He is smashed to death. I am a murderer. Let me go. I must throw myself down!" They had hard work to hold him back. As they forced him down the ladders he trembled like a poplar. But Vaillantcoeur was not dead. No; it was incredible to fall forty feet and not be killed they talk of it yet all through the valley of the Lake St. John it was a miracle!
When a man is like that he is FANFARON, he shows off well, but well, you shall judge for yourself, when you hear what happened between this man Vaillantcoeur and his friend Prosper Leclere at the building of the stone tower of the church at Abbeville. You remind yourself of that grand church with the tall tower yes? With permission I am going to tell you what passed when that was made.
Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about. "Look here, you Leclere," said he, "I tried one of the cross-girders yesterday afternoon and it wouldn't go. The templet on the north is crooked crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again.
He was stronger, then, than me. I am always a friend to him. If I beat him now, am I stronger? No, but weaker. And if he beats me, what is the sense of that? Certainly I shall not like it. What is to gain?" Down in the store of old Girard, that night, Vaillantcoeur was holding forth after a different fashion.
Why was it that when the Price Brothers, down at Chicoutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the Belle Riviere, they made Leclere the boss, instead of Vaillantcoeur? Why did the cure Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of the new church? It was rough, rough!
But Vaillantcoeur had broken only a nose, a collar-bone, and two ribs for one like him that was but a bagatelle. A good doctor from Chicoutimi, a few months of nursing, and he would be on his feet again, almost as good a man as he had ever been. It was Leclere who put himself in charge of this. "It is my affair," he said "my fault! It was not a fair place to fight. Why did I strike?
Raoul Vaillantcoeur was the biggest and the handsomest man in the village; nearly six feet tall, straight as a fir tree, and black as a bull-moose in December. He had natural force enough and to spare. Whatever he did was done by sheer power of back and arm. He could send a canoe up against the heaviest water, provided he did not get mad and break his paddle which he often did.
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