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“But don’t you see that the only way to keep it from coming to you on your own soil is to fight against it over there? Hasn’t the English Government given you all your liberties, for home and church?”

“Yes, M’sieu’, especially since Sir Wilfred Laurier. Ah, that is a great man! A true French-Canadian!”

“Well, then, you know that he is against Germany. You know he believes the freedom of Canada depends on the defeat of Germany, over there, on the other side of the sea. You would not like a German Canada, would you?”

“Not at all, M’sieu’, that would be intolerable. But I have never thought of that.”

“Well, think of it now, will you? And tell your priest to think of it, too. He is a Christian. The things we are fighting for belong to Christianity–justice, liberty, humanity. Tell him that, and tell him also some of the things which the Germans did to the Christian people in Belgium and Northern France. I will narrate them to you later.”

“M’sieu’,” says Iside, dipping his paddle deeper as we round the sharp corner of a rock, “I shall remember all that you tell me, and I shall tell it again to our priest. You know we have few newspapers here. Most of us could not read them, anyway. I am not well convinced that we yet comprehend, here in French Canada, the meaning of this war. But we shall endeavor to comprehend it better. And when we comprehend, we shall be ready to do our duty–you can trust yourself to the men of Sacre Coeur for that. We love peace–we all about here (nous autres d’icite)–but we can fight like the devil when we know it is for a good cause–liberty, for example. Meanwhile would M’sieu’ like to stop at the pool ‘La Pinette’ on the way down and try a couple of casts? There was a big salmon rising there yesterday.”

That very evening a runner comes up the river, through the woods, to tell Iside and Eugene, who are Selectmen of the community of Sacre Coeur, that they must come down to the village for an important meeting at ten o’clock the next morning.

So they set off, quite as a matter of course, for their thirty-five mile tramp through the forest in the dark. They are good citizens, as well as good woodsmen, you understand. On the second day they are back again at their work in the canoe.

“Well, Iside,” I ask, “how was it with the meeting yesterday? All correct?”

“All correct, M’sieu’. It was an affair of a new schoolhouse. We are going to build it. All goes well. We are beginning to comprehend. Quebec is a large corner of the world. But it is only a corner, after all, we can see that. And those damned Germans who do such terrible things in France, we do not love them at all, no matter what the priest may say about Christian charity. They are Protestants, M’sieu’, is it not?”

“Well,” I answer, hiding a smile with a large puff of smoke, “some of them call themselves Protestants and some call themselves Catholics. But it seems to me they are all infidels, heathen–judging by what they do. That is the real proof.”

“C’est b’en vrai, M’sieu’,” says Iside. “It is the conduct that shows the Christian.”

IV

BELOW CAPE DIAMOND March, 1818

The famous citadel of Quebec stands on top of the steep hill that dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond–a natural stronghold. Indians and French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there, and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important part of the British Empire.

The Upper Town, on the high shoulders of Cape Diamond, with its government buildings, convents, hospitals, showy new shops, and ancient gardens, its archiepiscopal palace, trim theological seminary, huge castle-like hotel, and placid ramparts dominating the Ile d’Orleans with rows of antiquated, harmless cannon around which the children play–the Upper Town belongs distinctly to the citadel. The garrison is in evidence here. A regimental band plays in the kiosk on Dufferin Terrace on summer evenings. There is a good mixture of khaki in the coloring of the street crowd, and many wounded soldiers are seen, invalided home from the front. They are all very proud of the glorious record that Canada has made in the battle for freedom. Most of them, it seems to me, are from English-speaking families. But by no means all. There are many of unmistakable French-Canadian stock; and they tell me proudly of the notable bravery of a certain regiment which was formed early from volunteers of their own people–hunters, woodsmen, farmers, guides. The war does not seem very far away, up here in the region of the citadel.