Full of high hopes, he joined with two of his classmates in October
1864 to organize the firm of Laurier, Archambault and Desaulniers. The
partners hung out their shingle in Montreal. But clients were slow in
coming, for the city was honeycombed with established offices. The
young partners found difficulty in tiding over the waiting time, and so
in the following April the firm was dissolved and Wilfrid Laurier
became a partner of Mederic Lanctot, one of the most brilliant and
impetuous writers and speakers of a time when brilliancy and passion
seem to have been scattered with lavish hand, a man of amazing energy
and resource, but fated by his unbalanced judgment utterly to wreck his
own career. Lanctot was too busy at this time with the political
campaign he was carrying on in the press and on the platform against
Cartier's Confederation policy to look after his clients, and the
office work fell mainly to his junior partner. It was a curiously
assorted partnership: Lanctot with his headlong and reckless passion,
Laurier with his cool, discriminating moderation: but it lasted a year.
{13} During this time Mr Laurier was in but not of the group of eager
spirits who made Lanctot's office their headquarters. His moderate
temperament and his ill-health kept him from joining in the revels of
some and the political dissipations of others. 'I seem to see Laurier
as he was at that time,' wrote his close friend, L. O. David, 'ill,
sad, his air grave, indifferent to all the turmoil raised around him;
he passed through the midst of it like a shadow and seemed to say to
us, "Brother, we all must die."'[1]

[Illustration: SIR ANTOINE AIME DORION From a photograph]

In fact, Mr Laurier's health was the source of very serious concern.
Lung trouble had developed, with violent hemorrhages, threatening a
speedy end to his career unless a change came. Just at this time the
chief of his party and his most respected friend, Antoine Dorion,
suggested that he should go to the new settlement of Arthabaskaville in
the Eastern Townships, to practise law and to edit _Le Defricheur_,
hitherto published at L'Avenir and controlled by Dorion's younger
brother Eric, who had recently died. Largely in the hope that the
country life would restore his health, he agreed, and late in 1866 left
Montreal for the backwoods village.

{14}

The founder of _Le Defricheur_, Eric Dorion, nicknamed _L'Enfant
Terrible_ for his energy and fearlessness, w