a la Lecour. Oh,
day of days!"

She went to the crane at the fireplace, uncovered the hanging pot, and
ladled out a deep bowl of steaming soup. At the same time she told him
excitedly of Germain's presentation at Court.

"What! what! these are fine proceedings. The Lecours are always going
up, up, up. Our Germain's distinction is a glory for the whole parish.
Lecour here ought to be proud of it."

Flattery from his Cure weighed more with Lecour _pere_ than bushels of
argument. The wife saw her accidental advantage and took it.

"He does not like to pay for it," she remarked demurely.

"What! what! my rich friend Lecour. The owner of seventeen good farms,
of three great warehouses, of four hundred cattle, of untold
merchandise, and a credit of 500,000 livres in London, the best payer of
tithes in the country, the father of the most brilliant son in the
province, the husband of the finest wife, a woman fit to adorn the
castle of the governor," cried the ecclesiastic, finishing his soup and
attacking the duck.

Lecour thawed fast. But he reserved a doubt for the consideration of his
confessor.

"Is it honest to pass for a noble when one is not one?"

"I do not see that he has done so. It is not his fault, in the manner
that he has explained it. Let the young man enjoy himself a little and
see a little of life. We are only young once, and you laics must not be
too severely impeccable, otherwise what would become of us granters of
absolution. Furthermore, we must not be too old-fashioned. Our people
here are getting out of the strictness of the old social distinctions.
It may be so too in France. On my advice, dear Lecour, accept every
honour to your family your son may bring, and pay for it in the station
fitted to your great means, that I may be proud of all the Lecour family
when I go to Quebec and boast about my parish at the dinner-table of the
Bishop. Come," exclaimed he, at length, pushing aside his plate with the
ruins of the duck, "bring out that game of draughts, and let us see if
the honours of Germain have not put new skill into the play of a proud
father."

Madame brought out the checkerboard. She brought besides for the Cure a
little glass of imported _eau de vie_, and her husband, taking out his
bladder tobacco pouch, commenced to fill his pipe, and that of his
Reverence, and to smoke himself into a condition of bliss.

CHAPTER XIV

THE OLD-IRON SHOP

An enormous yellow and black coach