ng with cold, even beside this vast furnace, and
peevishly babbling of their hunger, and I did not say, "Poor souls!"
that for a time the power to feel my own misfortunes seemed gone, and a
hard, light indifference came on me.

For it is true I came into the great dining-hall, and looked upon the
long loaded table, with its hundred candles, its flagons and pitchers
of wine, and on the faces of so many idle, careless gentlemen bid to a
carouse, with a manner, I believe, as reckless and jaunty as their own.
And I kept it up, though I saw it was not what they had looked for. I
did not at once know who was there, but presently, at a distance from
me, I saw the face of Juste Duvarney, the brother of my sweet Alixe,
a man of but twenty or so, who had a name for wildness, for no badness
that I ever heard of, and for a fiery temper. He was in the service of
the Governor, an ensign. He had been little at home since I had come to
Quebec, having been employed up to the past year in the service of the
Governor of Montreal. We bowed, but he made no motion to come to me, and
the Intendant engaged me almost at once in gossip of the town; suddenly,
however, diverging upon some questions of public tactics and civic
government. He much surprised me, for though I knew him brave and able,
I had never thought of him save as the adroit politician and servant of
the King, the tyrant and the libertine. I might have known by that very
scene a few hours before that he had a wide, deep knowledge of human
nature, and despised it; unlike Doltaire, who had a keener mind, was
more refined even in wickedness, and, knowing the world, laughed at it
more than he despised it, which was the sign of the greater mind. And
indeed, in spite of all the causes I had to hate Doltaire, it is but
just to say he had by nature all the great gifts--misused and disordered
as they were. He was the product of his age; having no real moral sense,
living life wantonly, making his own law of right or wrong. As a lad, I
was taught to think the evil person carried evil in his face, repelling
the healthy mind. But long ago I found that this was error. I had no
reason to admire Doltaire, and yet to this hour his handsome face, with
its shadows and shifting lights, haunts me, charms me. The thought came
to me as I talked with the Intendant, and I looked round the room. Some
present were of coarse calibre--bushranging sons of seigneurs and petty
nobles, dashing and profane, and so