The loss of the Seigneury had therefore cut deep, but there had been a
more hateful affront still. Four years before, Louis Racine, when
spasmodically practising law in Quebec, had been approached by two poor
Frenchmen, who laid claim to thousands of acres of land which a Land
Company, whereof George Fournel was president, was publicly exploiting
for the woods and valuable minerals discovered on it. The Land Company
had been composed of Englishmen only. Louis Racine, reactionary and
imaginative, brilliant and free from sordidness, and openly hating the
English, had taken up the case, and for two years fought it tooth and
nail without pay or reward. The matter had become a cause celebre, the
Land Company engaging the greatest lawyers in both the English and French
province. In the Supreme Court the case was lost to Louis' clients.
Louis took it over to the Privy Council in London, and carried it
through triumphantly and alone, proving his clients' title. His two poor
Frenchmen regained their land. In payment he would accept nothing save
the ordinary fees, as though it were some petty case in a county court.
He had, however, made a reputation, which he had seemed not to value,
save as a means of showing hostility to the governing race, and the
Seigneury of Pontiac, when it fell to him, had more charms for him than
any celebrity to be won at the bar. His love of the history of his
country was a mania with him, and he looked forward, on arriving at
Pontiac, to being the apostle of French independence on the continent.
Madelinette had crossed his path in his most enthusiastic moment, when
his brilliant tongue and great dreams surrounded him with a kind of
glamour. He had caught her to himself out of the girl's first triumph,
when her nature, tried by the strain of her first challenge to the
judgment of the world, cried out for rest, for Pontiac and home,
and all that was of the old life among her people.