As You Like It.

It was near mid-day, and the advocate was engaged in his office, when the notary with whom Narcisse had been placed, suddenly entering, angrily demanded:

“Where is Narcisse, where is your son, sir? Here I am wanting his assistance, now, and he is missing, he is gone, no one knows where, nor where he has stowed those papers. Where is he, sir; where is the boy, I say; where is your son?”

The advocate looked up at this sudden disturbance, and, drawing a deep sigh, exclaimed with bitter emphasis:

“I would he were nowhere; that he were erased from the book of being; I would he were in heaven,—or else—in your office, Monsieur Veuillot. Is that a bad wish for either?”

“But he is not in my office,” said Veuillot.

“Nor in heaven neither, I fear,” rejoined the advocate.

“Where is he, then?” demanded the excited notary: “where is your son?”

“Such a son!” murmured the advocate, shrugging his shoulders. “Do you wish to be pleasant with me, Monsieur Veuillot? my evil genius call him. Son! I own I feed him, as I do other vermin that infest my house.”

“But where is he?” reiterated the notary with growing impatience, and seeming resolved to take no denial.

“Where is he?” echoed the advocate: “ask his mother; yes, sir, ask his dam. Oh, Monsieur Veuillot, is there not deep damnation in thus having an idiot for one's child? Here is your purgatory:—purgatory? no: for purgatory is a kind of half-way house to heaven, but this son of mine is to me a slippery stepping-stone to perdition. Sir, a child should be a cherub to lift its parents' spirit to the skies; but mine, oh!”—and a spasm of agony passed over the old man's visage, succeeded by a forced expression of calmness, as he continued:

“Veuillot, you have heard of Solomon. He speaks of the foolish son of a wise father. He was himself the father of a fool, that rent the kingdom,—Rehoboam I mean,—and he kept concubines, too; so I suppose he waxed fruitful in fools. I have but one fool, therefore I am thankful;—but then he is a thorough fool, a most unmitigated, and unmitigatable fool; the fool of fools, a finished fool, the pink of fools; a most preposterous, backwards-going, crab-like fool; a filthy fool; an idiot, sir, without either parts or particle of ambition; an ape, an owl that flits about by day; a bat, and a bad bat, that flits from tavern to sty; chief of the devil's nightingales; a raven that, roving to foul roosts, goes beating the bosom of the night; a soul that loves the darkness; a mole, sir, a blind mole; a piece of animated perversity, a creature that persists to go astray.”

“Where has he strayed to now?” demanded the notary.

“Into the hands of justice, perhaps;” was the fierce reply: “into the grip of the law; up to the foot of the gallows; on to the hill of my extreme disgrace.”

“Where is he, where can I find him? tell me only where,” cried Veuillot.

“Where! let echo answer,—would you wish to hunt him?” said the advocate, mocking. “Did you ever gallop, sir, after a hedgehog? have you assisted to draw a badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, that creeps in and out of its hole when the old cat is away. Away, Mr. Notary, away; go, good Monsieur Veuillot. There are more conceptions in man than he has yet expressed either in statutes or in testaments. Go; you are a deed-drawer; I'll be a deed doer: I'll do, I'll do,—I do not know what I'll do, but something shall be done. He shall be shaken over perdition; sent to grind in the prison house; sold into slavery:—fool! he shall be banished to Caughnawaga, or to Loretto;—the further the better; he shall be sent to the Lake of the Two Mountains, sir, or to Saint Regis to learn the war-whoop and gallant the squaws. You smile:—but to your errand, Veuillot; it is not known where my son is: I saw him last night, may I never see him again! Then, dying, my old age, perhaps, may close in peace: not else, not else.”

The notary departed, but the exasperated lawyer still conversed with himself. “I cannot decently die,” he said, “any more than I can devoutly live, pricked through the very reins and kidneys with that skewer. Alas! he is my goad, my thorn in the flesh, the messenger of satan sent to buffet me. He is the mosquitto that stings my knuckles; the little, black, abominable fly that will insist to assail my nose; he is my bruise, my blain, my blister, my settled, ceaseless source of irritation: the cause, the cause—of what is he the cause? Alas! that I should ever have been the cause of such a foul effect! But let it be so; the whitest skins have moles, the sun has spots; he is my mole, my spot; and I, I am the father of the fool, Narcisse.”

Narcisse was that moment at a tavern in the beautiful village of Cote des Neiges, adjacent to Stillyside, and much resorted to by pleasure seekers from Montreal. His companions, too, were there, bewailing the loss of one of their fowling-pieces, and devising means for revenge on their interrupter and successful assailant. There they remained, and, instead of spending the day, as was their first intention, on the side of the mountain, in popping at small birds they passed many of its hours in quaffing large potations, the effects of which they in some degree slept off by a long afternoon nap. It was now nightfall, and they were returning homewards, conversing in loud and angry tones on the humiliation of the morning, and threatening retribution against its cause, the gallant stranger. Narcisse, with the litigiousness of his maternal race, and prompted by his inkling of law, was for launching an action for assault and battery against their assailant's purse, whilst the others, pot-valiant, declared their anxiety to meet him in bodily conflict on another field; and thus discoursing in the deepening gloom, the party arrived opposite the mansion at Stillyside. For a few moments they halted, undetermined whether to approach, and demand the delivery of the captured weapon; but at last agreed to waive the requisition, chiefly at the instance of Narcisse, who authoritatively ruled, that to demand and accept of the feloniously acquired gun, would be to compound a felony. Hereupon, being somewhat more at ease in their minds, they proceeded, and now less noisily, continuing on their way with only occasional bursts of abuse, and the firing off of fag ends of French songs, accompanied with a fitful fusilade of low, horselaughter; and thus, mollified and maudlin, unsteadily continued their straggling march, until they halted at a gate on the roadside, and some distance behind which, loomed a large, dingy and deserted-looking dwelling, half concealed by tall trees. No light was to be seen, but, after a brief consultation, the party swung open the gate, entered, and having reached the house, one of the number gave a peculiar tapping at a window, followed by a low whistle or call, that was immediately answered by a corresponding sound from within, and this again by a counter signal, which was repeated like the faintly returning tone of an echo; and, after some delay, the door slowly opened, the voices of men and women, mingling in boisterous mirth, burst forth like the roar of a suddenly opened furnace, the party entered, and the door was closed again.