t me to go to Father Point with you after
all."

That night at the opera Mademoiselle Laurentia, the critics said,
surpassed herself, though, strange occurrence for usually one so
punctual, she kept the audience waiting for a quarter of an hour. Never
before had she sung so well.

Great was the indignation of Monsieur Scherzo, her manager, when next day
she told him that after this month she would sing no more in public. He
swore, he stormed, he tore his hair, and finding threats were in vain he
wept in his excitable fashion, but neither threats nor entreaties moved
mademoiselle from her decision. "Bah!" he said, "it is the way with them
all, a woman can never be a true artist. Directly she rises to any height
she goes off and gets married, ten to one to some idiot, who interferes
in all her arrangements, and so her career is spoiled. I did think
Mademoiselle Laurentia was above such frivolity. I imagined that, at
last, I had discovered a true artist, one to whom her art was everything.
No, I am again mistaken, and Mademoiselle Laurentia--why, she is not even
going to marry a duke, there might be some sense in that, but only a
beggarly artist. Bah! what folly!"

Some six weeks later, one sunny afternoon, there came up the Gulf of St.
Lawrence a ship crowded with passengers bound for all quarters of the
great Dominion. It had been a backward season, and even so late as the
beginning of July great icebergs were still floating down the Gulf, huge,
white and glistening in the summer sun, as they floated on to their
destruction in the southern seas. However, the good ship "Vancouver"
passed safely through the perils of storms and icebergs, and after a
fairly prosperous passage of ten days arrived safely at Rimouski. There
she paused for a few hours to let off the mails and two passengers.

These two passengers had been the cause of a great deal of gossip and
attention on the voyage out, for they were both, in their different
spheres, celebrated personages, and known to fame on both sides of the
Atlantic. It seemed rather strange that they should land at a little
out-of-the-way place like Rimouski.

"Oh!" exclaimed one of the celebrities, a little lady clad in furs. "Oh,
Eugene, everything is just the same as it used to be in the old days, and
look over there on the pier is M. Bois-le-Duc."

Yes, there stood the tall, venerable priest, his hair now snowy white,
and his shoulders bent under the weight of years. But the g