true VOYAGEUR.
But a jest about the reality of the marquis! That struck him as almost
profane. It was a fixed idea with him. Argument could not shake it.
He had seen the papers. He knew it was true. All the strength of his
vigorous and healthy manhood seemed to have gone into it suddenly, as if
this was the news for which he had been waiting, unconsciously, since he
was born.

It was not in the least morbid, visionary, abstract. It was concrete,
actual, and so far as Alden could see, wholesome. It did not make Jean
despise his present life. On the contrary, it appeared to lend a zest
to it, as an interesting episode in the career of a nobleman. He was not
restless; he was not discontented. His whole nature was at once elated
and calmed. He was not at all feverish to get away from his familiar
existence, from the woods and the waters he knew so well, from the large
liberty of the unpeopled forest, the joyous rush of the great river, the
splendid breadth of the open sky. Unconsciously these things had gone
into his blood. Dimly he felt the premonitions of homesickness for them
all. But he was lifted up to remember that the blood into which these
things had entered was blue blood, and that though he lived in the
wilderness he really belonged to la haute classe. A breath of romance,
a spirit of chivalry from the days when the high-spirited courtiers of
Louis XIV sought their fortune in the New World, seemed to pass into
him. He spoke of it all with a kind of proud simplicity.

"It appears curious to m'sieu', no doubt, but it has been so in Canada
from the beginning. There were many nobles here in the old time.
Frontenac,--he was a duke or a prince. Denonville,--he was a grand
seigneur. La Salle, Vaudreuil,--these are all noble, counts or barons. I
know not the difference, but the cure has told me the names. And the old
Jacques Cartier, the father of all, when he went home to France, I have
heard that the King made him a lord and gave him a castle. Why not? He
was a capable man, a brave man; he could sail a big ship, he could run
the rapids of the great river in his canoe. He could hunt the bear, the
lynx, the carcajou. I suppose all these men,--marquises and counts and
barons,--I suppose they all lived hard, and slept on the ground, and
used the axe and the paddle when they came to the woods. It is not the
fine coat that makes the noble. It is the good blood, the adventure, the
brave heart."

"Magnificent!" thought Alden