"—his moods
Of pain were keen as those of better men,
Nay, keener, as his fortitude was less."

The writer has elsewhere stated that the Roman Catholic clergy in this part of the world are easily divided into two classes, the rotund, rosy and jolly, and the thin, ascetic and reserved; the curÉ of St. Ignace belonged to the latter, and possessed a strongly marked characteristic face, the droop of his bitter mouth and the curve of his chiselled nose being almost Dantesque in effect. He had conserved a type of feature which, common enough up to the present, seems to be in danger of extinction; the passing of the aquiline, the slow disappearance of the Roman nose, are facts patent to thoughtful observers of national traits. Any contemporaneous collection of portraits of representative men in the higher walks of life reveals the fact that this fine racial curve is rapidly becoming extinct. From the Duke of Wellington down, this nose has been associated with men prominent in military and naval affairs, in literature (notably poetry and criticism) and in finance and diplomacy, until the possession of such a significant organ has become almost the sine qua non of an individual destined to be famous or successful. Varieties of course existed, such as when combined with beetling brows and sunken eyes one recognized the professor or arch-critic of his generation. Or, when taken with the square forehead, thin mouth and visionary eyes of the military genius, one saw some great general. Or simply existing in some silly scion of good family, and meaning nothing whatever, in this case usually over-high at the thin bridge, and in profile far too strong for the weak rest of the face. In women of gentle extraction this nose was found beautifully proportioned. In belles of the mid-Victorian era were the lineaments of Caesar clearly revealed, associated with the delicacy of colouring and rounded chin and cheek which redeemed them from hard masculinity, so that fifty years ago in any representative gathering of England's fairest and noblest the observer would note a similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the grandes dames of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted and wrenched to conditions of ugliness. Tennyson and the latest murderer apparently owned the same facial angle, if one corrected the droop of the eyebrow, the curve of the nostril, the set of the ear. Thus the Roman or aquiline nose made itself and its possessor known to the world. Other noses might, if they liked, take a back seat! this nose never. Sala, Lamb, Kingsley—all had varieties of the nose. The American variant is seen in hundreds of nineteeenth century writers, preachers, New England farmers, old Cape Cod characters, Gloucester fishermen, actors, especially of tragic mould; showmen, lecturers, bankers—the nose has prospered in the new world. The significance of the feature is matched by its endurance, by the persistency with which it appears in every decade up to the present.

For with the opening of a new century the nose, aquiline in its purest state, equine with its accompaniment of cruel gums and sharp teeth in its worst, seems on the point of disappearing. The contemporary portraits of great men and beautiful women no longer display it. There is a new nose. It is to be hoped that it retains the powers with which the organ was originally endowed; for example, we suppose that it still can detect and appreciate, repulse and define odours. But as a sign-post showing the path to glory, as an index of force of character or intellect, it is practically useless. The new nose is modest, retiring, seeketh not its own, is never puffed up. You would know it for a nose, certainly, but its ample and aristocratic proportions are wanting; it lacks a bridge, is spineless, immature, unfinished. Yet it is set in the faces of many eminent thinkers and workers among the younger men; it is already allied to keenness of vision and talent, and may or may not be associated with birth and good breeding. The query is—is it a new nose, or only one that has always been with us, but is now gradually supplanting the old one? Did the nose aquiline largely represent class, and does the phenomenon of the new semi-straight, semi-nothing nose represent the intrusion of mass? Against this timid and, it may be, spurious generalization, one may pit the working-man with the nose of a duke, and the young colonial ruler with the unformed, delicate feature of a school-girl. So we accept the fact that in our own day types are passing.

The English face is going. It has served its turn, perhaps. Infusion of American and colonial blood will help to change it. The high-nosed country gentleman or landed noble, with Berserk or Viking blood in his veins, finds that, like Alice in Wonderland, it takes all he can do to keep where he is, and the work entailed takes something, a good deal, out of him. One thing goes, then another; finally, he casts away his birthright, the arch or bridge of his nose, and his son and the younger members of his family appear shorn of that important feature. The plebeian nose, so long as it is neither pug nor pig, is safer, better. Men are not afraid of it. Syndicates and boards breathe more freely when the barriers of nose are broken down, and a good mediocrity of feature may yet avert a war or preserve a treaty. At all events, a study of our chief contemporaries will bear out a considerable portion of this reasoning. The beauties of society and the stage have a leaning to noses tiptilted like the petals of a flower, or to a nose which is a kind of modification of the Greek, frequently found among Americans. For instance, in Canada there is fast growing up a new type of head, clean-shaven, firm, expressionless young faces, who bring their thick, straight dark hair and blue-grey eyes from the country to the town. They are forsaking the plough and the roadside school for the warehouse and the pestle and mortar. It is not openly reported of such that they would rather wear a black coat and starve than wear fustian and do well, to quote Thomas Hardy, but the stress of things drives them. The rural communities are dull; amusements are lacking; there seems nothing to live for outside work. Nature poets and wild-animal delineators are not among these set, earnest, straight-featured faces. The former are more likely to be denizens of cities. In this slightly dour Canadian face there are but few aquiline noses, and yet such is the danger of generalizing that perhaps the first people readers of this page meet after perusing it might be a group of students, none with Celtic hair and eyes and all with Roman contours. Likewise, on opening the current number of a leading musical journal, the long, high, prominent nasal organ of Sir Edward Elgar confronts us, whose peculiar cast of thought confirms the impression that spirituality, fine artistic conception and capacity to achieve are still the dower of those possessing this fast-disappearing feature. Ringfield belonged to the tribe of straight-nosed, grey-eyed thinkers—a finished contrast to Father Rielle, whose worn profile suggested the wormwood and the gall. Looks, however, not being in all cases indications of the character within, the priest was an exceedingly simple and earnest man, constitutionally timid, and physically frail; thus, he passed for what is known as a "deep" man, when he was nothing of the sort, and although it may be a mooted point whether in a Catholic community the local priest has or has not the entire conscience of that community at his mercy by means of the confessional, it was certain that there were a few things that Father Rielle did not know. Had he been social, convivial, fond, like most of his brother priests, of a game of cards, of good living and long drinking, he might have worked more reforms in the countryside, and holding the reins of priestly government stern and tight prevented some lapses from the moral code. That is to say, a worse man might have achieved better results, but as it was not in his nature to haunt Poussette's, make friends with the guides and call at unconventional hours upon his parishioners, he missed several revelations that fell to Ringfield's share. Crabbe was not upon his visiting list, nor Pauline of late years; for Henry Clairville he entertained a certain sad respect, as for a gentleman and landed proprietor fallen from grace indeed, but by the Will of God rather than by personal shortcomings. His tendency to fatalism was Calvinistic in its intensity, and he trod his accustomed path baptizing, marrying, burying, with the sour curve of his thin profile growing sourer every day. Thus this silent, censorious-looking priest presented a strong contrast to the optimistic young Ontarian, yet one emotion was common to them both—Father Rielle had for years nursed a hopeless passion for Miss Clairville.

It happened that the knowledge of Mme. Poussette's remaining on at Clairville as housekeeper to its master came to Father Rielle as something of a shock. Certain things are right and certain things are wrong in certain places; some things are right and some things are wrong in all places. Madame had a husband who, although plainly tired of her, had not yet openly neglected her; she also had a good home, and in her condition of mind it was not wise, according to the priest, that she should leave her husband and home to live with Henry Clairville. Dr. Renaud was questioned, but as medical men are everywhere less concerned with the conventions than are lawyers or priests, he only intimated that madame was probably happier at Clairville than in her own home, and that he saw no reason for disturbing the arrangement.

"But," said Father Rielle in their common tongue, "is it because the wife of Poussette is a little afflicted, light of head while sad of heart, that rules and customs no longer apply to her? I take it—it will make a scandal in the village and every man who is sick must expect some other man's wife to come in and care for him, and finally live in his house and take care of it. Our society may be small, but in some matters it is best conducted as are large communities. I think M. de Clairville should be instructed that his conduct is wrong."

"You call him 'de' Clairville, I see," replied the doctor from his buggy outside Gagnon's carpenter shop. "Well, it does not matter! Faith—he is both vicious and mad enough to be in truth the seigneur of all the parish as he styles himself—as nobles and seigneurs used to go. I have little knowledge of such myself! I am a plain man! my father was Renaud the harness-maker of Three Rivers. First I was fond of horses, then I was fond of gathering herbs and flowers, then I was fond of mixing medicines and quacking my friends when they were ill; then my mother saved some money and sent me to college and then one fine day I awoke, and I am Dr. Renaud! And you—you are one of the three Rielle brothers, likewise from Three Rivers; one is a notary, one a priest—yourself—and the youngest keeps the HÔtel Jacques Cartier at Sorel-en-haut. That is funny, that! You should have made him something else."

"It is true," replied the priest mildly, "I am not in love with his calling, but people who travel must be lodged. I use his place myself once or twice a year; it is the Will of God that such places must be; it is clean, and his wife, at the age of seventeen, already cooks well; he is lately married at the age of thirty-five. I myself am four years older. But of M. de Clairville I would say—that he must be brought to see that he is doing this poor Mme. Poussette a wrong, and I was going to ask you if you would drive me out to visit him this afternoon. That is, if, as I hear, it is quite safe to go there now."

"It would afford me pleasure indeed, mon pÈre," said Dr. Renaud, "but unfortunately I am waiting here for the young man who has charge of the new church by the river,—Poussette's fancy, Mr. Ringfield."

"You are driving him to Clairville?" A quick jealousy animated the priest's eager question.

"I am, but we can make room for you. Certainly, my friend, we are neither of us so very stout and you are thin; you shall sit in our laps—oh yes, I take no denial! You shall come with us, Father Rielle, and we three shall descend upon this sick seigneur of yours and his housekeeper and see what they are doing. Drive her back in the evening, if you like."

While the priest hesitated, Ringfield and Poussette appeared at the door, and the instant the latter heard of the expedition he also wished to go.

"I cannot see why!" cried Dr. Renaud angrily. "One charrette will not hold us all; it is going to snow and I must get back before dark. I'm calling here to leave an order for Gagnon about a coffin for old Telesphore Tremblay who died yesterday, and I have promised to see his poor wife to-night."

"Then I shall take my own buggy and Mr. Ringfield can go with me. The curÉ can go with you, sir."

"Well, if the whole village wishes to pay its respects to a crazy man all at the same time, let them come!" roared the irascible doctor. "You didn't care to go till you saw us going. But put your horse in, put him in; we will wait for you."

"Bien, M'sieu! I have three hams and a sack of potatoes; they shall go too."

This dialogue had been overheard by Pauline, sitting at cards with Miss Cordova in the front room, and with her natural impetuosity she jumped up, declaring that if Henry were well enough to see "these others," he was well enough to see her. Her impulsive movements sent the cards and counters flying up through the air, and one card hit Miss Cordova on the left eye directly over the pupil. As lightly as if flicked by a clever finger, but as unerringly as if deliberately and viciously aimed at her, one of the four sharp points of cardboard selected her dark eye for its target, and with a scream she too sprang up, overturning the table and seizing Pauline by the shoulder. The pain and distress were considerable, and Miss Clairville, opening the window, called for Dr. Renaud, who came at once to look at the eye and recommended bathing, bandages and complete rest. The exquisite tenderness of the inflamed organ gave Miss Cordova so much annoyance that after ten minutes she retired to her room, and the doctor again proposed himself ready to start for Lac Calvaire. The weather, fine and mild for so long, was changing now with every hour, and it was becoming strangely dark overhead.

"Whoever comes with me must prepare for a storm," said he, glancing at the blackening sky, "only a few flurries of snow, perhaps, but one cannot tell—it may prove more."

"You are sure there can be no danger of infection?" asked Ringfield, with an anxious glance at Pauline, who had raced to her room, stuck imitation solitaires in her ears, donned a worn-out but well-fitting seal jacket and muff and a dashing black and scarlet hat, and now stood in the village street—the embodiment of piquant French womanhood—quite conscious of her charms and insufferably weary of having no audience to show them off to! A certain disdain sprang into her treatment of Ringfield at this time, and it was a question with her, should he ever ask her to be his wife, whether she would not inevitably tire of the high aims and lofty ideals he no doubt would impose upon her.

"You don't suppose I'd be going if there were, do you?" she remarked in English tartly, curving her arching black brows at him; "how many are we—five? That's three too many, in my opinion. Father Rielle—I go with you in Mr. Poussette's buggy; you others there, you three messieurs—you can go how you please."

The priest flushed, then a sudden glance passed between him and Ringfield, and in that look each knew what the other wished and hated him for it! Still, Father Rielle followed Pauline instantly, and there was no opposition as she lightly leapt into Poussette's buggy, and with a wave of her muff, adorned by a bright scarlet bow, two of the five were soon out of sight.