to swallow. The great thing that
stuck in his crop was the idea that the little Prosper, whom he could
have whipped so easily, and whom he had protected so loftily, when they
were boys, now stood just as high as he did as a capable man--perhaps
even higher. Why was it that when the Price Brothers, down at
Chicoutimi, had a good lumber-job up in the woods on the Belle Riviere,
they made Leclere the boss, instead of Vaillantcoeur? Why did the cure
Villeneuve choose Prosper, and not Raoul, to steady the strain of the
biggest pole when they were setting up the derrick for the building of
the new church?

It was rough, rough! The more Raoul thought of it, the rougher it
seemed. The fact that it was a man who had once been his protege, and
still insisted on being his best friend, did not make it any smoother.
Would you have liked it any better on that account? I am not telling
you how it ought to have been, I am telling you how it was. This isn't
Vaillantcoeur's account-book; it's his story. You must strike your
balances as you go along.

And all the time, you see, he felt sure that he was a stronger man and a
braver man than Prosper. He was hungry to prove it in the only way that
he could understand. The sense of rivalry grew into a passion of hatred,
and the hatred shaped itself into a blind, headstrong desire to fight.
Everything that Prosper did well, seemed like a challenge; every success
that he had was as hard to bear as an insult. All the more, because
Prosper seemed unconscious of it. He refused to take offence, went about
his work quietly and cheerfully, turned off hard words with a joke, went
out of his way to show himself friendly and good-natured. In reality, of
course, he knew well enough how matters stood. But he was resolved not
to show that he knew, if he could help it; and in any event, not to be
one of the two that are needed to make a quarrel.

He felt very strangely about it. There was a presentiment in his heart
that he did not dare to shake off. It seemed as if this conflict were
one that would threaten the happiness of his whole life. He still kept
his old feeling of attraction to Raoul, the memory of the many happy
days they had spent together; and though the friendship, of course,
could never again be what it had been, there was something of it left,
at least on Prosper's side. To struggle with this man, strike at his
face, try to maim and disfigure him, roll over and over on the ground
with him,