f your nobility."

"He knew of none," said the merchant.

"Then we must go to him with our titles, and he must rectify it
to-morrow."

"As you please, if it will suit you better," the merchant murmured.

"I must be a Prince, for I create nobles," pronounced Germain, shaking
with fevered laughter, as he drew the sheets over him in the state bed
that night. His merriment was a pitiful cover for his desperation. In
his favour it is well to remember the dictum of Schopenhauer: that the
English are the only nation who thoroughly realise the immorality of
lying; and we must also keep in mind that the extent of his disorder was
a measure of the power of that passion which was its cause. Better
things were yet in him.

CHAPTER XXXVI

AT MONTREAL

Next morning, after old Lecour had, with a heart full of content, and a
pipeful of tobacco, taken his son the round of his warehouses and
granaries, his piles of furs, his mountains of wheat, and the rising
vaults of what was to be his newest and greatest building, they set off
down the village street to the Notary's house.

D'Aguilhe was of a famous breed of notaries, who had driven the quill
and handed it down from father to son from the earliest days of the
colony. When Lecour discovered that he was founding St. Elphege, one of
the first things he did was to jolt up to Montreal, and catch a young
scion of this race of d'Aguilhes, and here he had kept him making a
comfortable living at his profession ever since. It was therefore not
improper that the man of the _paraphe_--and a wondrous _paraphe_ his
signature had, flourishing from edge to edge of a foolscap page, in
woolly and laborious curves--should, when called upon next morning,
treat his best client to his best office manners.

"Monsieur d'Aguilhe," commenced old Lecour, "here is my son, who thinks
me a noble--and upon my honour I cannot argue against him; he is too
able for me."

"Aha!" returned d'Aguilhe, pricking up his ears, and saying to himself,
"This looks like something important."

"We desire," said Germain, taking the business into his own hands, "to
see the marriage contract of my father and mother."

"Certainly, Monsieur Germain," he answered, and going to his cupboards,
took his package of deeds for the year 1765, picked out the document and
handed it to Germain, who read a few lines at the beginning.

"I see," the latter said, "that my father is improperly described here,
as you will obser