e and Generous action have shown
their High and Lofty virtues; whereof Kings make use to recompense
to their gentry this mark of Honour and Dignity; that so they may
Impel each to goodly conduct on those occasions where Men of Stout
Hearts acquire Glory for themselves, and Their Posterity...."

In his chamber, on the day when he bought it, he left it on the table
and the open page began--

"The glorious house of _MONTMORENCY_ beareth a shield of gold with a
scarlet cross, cantoned with sixteen azure eagles, four by four."

CHAPTER XIII

A JAR IN ST. ELPHEGE

At noon, on a day late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphege sat
at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his
wooden soup spoon on its butt on the table. The windows, both front and
rear, were wide open, for one of those rare fragrant golden days of late
autumn still permitted it. He was listening, with some of the stolid
Indian manner, to his wife reading Germain's letter. He vouchsafed only
one remark, and that a mercantile one: "Seven weeks, mon Dieu! the
quickest mail I ever got from France!" From time to time, while he
listened, his eyes glanced out with contentment upon the possessions
with which he was surrounded--upon the rich-coloured stubble of his
clearings stretching as far as eye could see down the Assumption, with
their flocks, herds, and brush fences; upon the hamlet to which his
enterprise had given birth, and where he could see, in one cottage, his
_sabotiers_ bent over their benches adding to their piles of wooden
shoes; in others, women at the spinning wheel or loom, making the cloths
of which he had improved the pattern, or weaving the fine and beautiful
arrow-sashes, those _ceintures flechees_ of which the art is now lost,
yet still known as snowshoers' rareties by the name of "L'Assomption
sashes"; his makers of carved elm-bottom chairs and beef mocassins; and,
within his courtyard, the large and well stocked granaries, fur-attics
and stores for merchandise contained in his four great buildings. His
wife was dressed in cloth much more after the fashion of the world than
the prunella waist, the skirt shot in colors and the kerchief on the
head, which formed the Norman costume of the women seen through the
cottage doors. Her silk stockings and buckled slippers marked a desire
to be the gentlewoman. Her dark eyes struck one as clever. Her first
husband had been the butler of the M