ed up and down in
his drawing room, rubbing his hands and smiling as these fancies flitted
through his brain. If he had been serious, which he was not, his doubts
would all have been dissipated by the arrival of the Barons almost in a
body. Up they came through the spacious entrance and illuminated hall,
in claret-colored coats, lace bosom-frills and cuffs, velvet breeches,
silken hose, silver-buckled shoes, and powdered wigs, holding their
gold-knobbed canes aslant in their left hand, and waving salutations to
their host with their feathered tricorns. A lordlier band never ascended
the marble stairs of Versailles. Handsome for the most part, exquisite
in manners, worldly in the elevated sense of the term, they represented
a race which had transplanted the courtly refinement of the old world
into the wilds of the new--a race the more interesting that it did not
survive beyond the second generation after the Conquest, and is at
present only seen at glimpses amid the wreck of the ancient seigniorial
families about Quebec.

It was not long before the company was ushered into the banquet hall,
brilliantly lighted with waxen candles. A round table stood in the
centre of the floor charged with a treasure of plate and crystal. There
were twenty-four seats and a guest for every seat. We need not enter
into the details of the entertainment. It is enough to state that it was
literally festive with its succulent viands, its inspiriting wines and
its dazzling cross-fire of wit and anecdote. The present was forgotten,
as it should always be at well-regulated dinners; the future was not
thought of, for the diners were old men; the past was the only thing
which occupied them. They talked of their early loves, they laughed at
their youthful escapades, they sang snatches of old songs, while now and
again the memory of a common sorrow would circulate around the table,
suddenly deadening its uproar into silence, or the remembrance of a
mutual joy would flash merrily before their eyes like the glinting
bubbles of their wine cups.

It was five o'clock when the Barons sat down to their first course. It
was nine when they reached the _gloria_. Just at that supreme moment, a
waiter handed a paper to the Lieutenant-Governor. He opened it, and
having read it, exclaimed:

"Another glass, gentlemen. The rebel Jockey will have to swim the St.
Lawrence on horseback, if he wishes to pay us a visit."

The allusion was readily understood and hailed