fairest and the
richest, can have been caught at the mere passing by your farm of
Stillyside, can at a glance have been so smitten as to meditate
this marriage. No, he has been decoyed, seduced. You might as well
declare that a young eagle would not return to its nest, but plunge
into some casually discovered coop, and roost there, as aver that,
without some irregular influence, Claude Montigny would seek your
ward in marriage. If she marry him, she will marry a beggar: not
an acre of mine shall he inherit, not a dollar of mine will he
receive. Give her a dowry? Give her a dukedom. No, sir; I will
not buy brass from you at the price of gold; I will not subsidize
you to avoid your ward." And, with the words, he bowed himself out
of the room, and the advocate, casting himself backwards in his
easy chair, laughing, exclaimed: "Was ever such a proposition
started?--started! yes; and shall eventually be carried. It is not
what we do, but it is the motive that induced the deed, that gives
the color to it. She shall be Madam Montigny, in spite of old
Montigny's self; and for her dowry, (which I asked Montigny to
provide, only that it might be returned to him through his son),
I'll mortgage my old brains to procure it for her."

CHAPTER X.

While you here do snoring lie
Open-ey'd conspiracy
His time doth take:
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber, and beware:
Awake! Awake!

_The Tempest._

Amongst the seigniories contiguous to the eastern extremity of the
island of Montreal, lies that of Montboeuf. Its present owner was
Andre Duchatel, a descendent of the Sieur Duchatel, a cadet of an
ancient French noble family, to whom the seigniory was granted by
royal letters patent, about the middle of the seventeenth century.
But if any nobility of soul, or refinement of aspect existed in
the first of the Canadian dynasty of Duchatel, it had not been
transmitted to the living representative of the line. As the long
hung-up sword or unused ploughshare, lose their brightness and edge
from want of use, perhaps these qualities of mind and body had
disappeared for want of a fitter field for their display. Andre
Duchatel, seigneur of Montboeuf, was a vulgar looking, short,
broad-set, florid figure, of fifty years or so; material in his
tastes, in disposition obstinate and narrow-minded, unenlarged by
education; shy with strangers, yet fond of good fellowship with
his acquaintance, and, with muc