went to sleep, hoping to dream again.




CHAPTER III

In less than one week Valmond was as outstanding from Pontiac as
Dalgrothe Mountain, just beyond it in the south. His liberality, his
jocundity, his occasional abstraction, his meditative pose, were all his
own; his humour that of the people. He was too quick in repartee and
drollery for a bourgeois, too "near to the bone" in point for an
aristocrat, with his touch of the comedian and the peasant also.
Besides, he was mysterious and picturesque, and this is alluring to
women and to the humble, if not to all the world. It might be his was
the comedian's fascination, but the flashes of grotesqueness rather
pleased the eye than hurt the taste of Pontiac.

Only in one quarter was there hesitation, added to an anxiety almost
painful; for to doubt Monsieur Valmond would have shocked the sense of
courtesy so dear to Monsieur the Cure, Monsieur Garon, the Little
Chemist, and even Medallion the auctioneer, who had taken into his bluff,
odd nature something of the spirit of those old-fashioned gentlemen.
Monsieur De la Riviere, the young Seigneur, had to be reckoned with
independently.

It was their custom to meet once a week, at the house of one or another,
for a "causerie," as the avocat called it. On the Friday evening of this
particular week, all were seated in the front garden of the Cure's house,
as Valmond came over the hill, going towards the Louis Quinze. His step