Lavilettes, who owned the great farmhouse at the apex of that wedge of
village life, he had a profound respect. The parish generally did not
share his respect for the Lavilettes.

Once upon a time, beyond the memories of any in the parish, the
Lavilettes of Bonaventure were a great people. Disaster came, debt and
difficulty followed, fire consumed the old house in which their dignity
had been cherished, and at last they had no longer their seigneurial
position, but that of ordinary farmers who work and toil in the field
like any of the fifty-acre farmers on the banks of the St. Lawrence
River.

Monsieur Louis Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not
married well. At the time when the feeling against the English was the
strongest, and when his own fortunes were precarious, he had married a
girl somewhat older than himself, who was half English and half French,
her father having been a Hudson's Bay Company factor on the north coast
of the river. In proportion as their fortunes and their popularity
declined, and their once notable position as an old family became
scarce a memory even, the pride of the Lavilettes increased.

Madame Lavilette made strong efforts to secure her place; but she was
not of an old French family, and this was an easy and convenient weapon
against her. Besides, she had no taste, and her manners were much
inferior to those of her husband. What impression he managed to make by
virtue of a good deal of natural dignity, she soon unmade by her lack of
tact. She had no innate breeding, though she was not vulgar. She lacked
sense a little and sensitiveness much.

The Casimbaults and the wife of the old seigneur made no friends of the