made her heart an easier thing to reach for such a lover than for one
within her own grade; and as the voyage itself was a world of romance, a
little more or less of the romantic was an easy thing to add. Meanwhile
Madame de Noailles read her breviary and told her beads and took little
naps, wholly ignorant of the drama that was beginning its perilous
unfolding before her. When the Sieur de Roberval returned, the shipbuilder
became a mere shipbuilder again.

Three tall ships sailed from Honfleur on August 22, 1541, and on one of
them, _La Grande Hermine_,--so called to distinguish it from a
smaller boat of that name, which had previously sailed with Cartier,--were
the Sieur de Roberval, his niece, and her _gouvernante_. She also had
with her a Huguenot nurse, who had been with her from a child, and cared
for her devotedly. Roberval naturally took with him, for future needs, the
best shipbuilder of St. Malo, Etienne Gosselin. The voyage was long, and
there is reason to think that the Sieur de Roberval was not a good sailor,
while as to the _gouvernante_, she may have been as helpless as the
seasick chaperon of yachting excursions. Like them, she suffered the most
important events to pass unobserved, and it was not till too late that she
discovered, what more censorious old ladies on board had already seen,
that her young charge lingered too often and too long on the quarter-deck
when Etienne Gosselin was planning ships for the uncle. When she found it
out, she was roused to just indignation; but being, after all, but a
kindly dowager, with a heart softened by much reading of the interminable
tales of Madame de Scudery, she only remonstrated with Marguerite, wept
over her little romance, and threatened to break the sad news to the Sieur
de Roberval, yet never did so. Other ladies were less considerate; it all
broke suddenly upon the angry uncle; the youth was put in irons, and
threatened with flogging, and forbidden to approach the quarter-deck
again. But love laughs at locksmiths; Gosselin was relieved of his irons