For it is true I came into the great dining-hall, and looked upon
the long loaded table, with its hundred candles, its flagons and
pitchers of wine, and on the faces of so many idle, careless
gentlemen bid to a carouse, with a manner, I believe, as reckless
and jaunty as their own. And I kept it up, though I saw it was not
what they had looked for. I did not at once know who was there, but
presently, at a distance from me, I saw the face of Juste Duvarney,
the brother of my sweet Alixe, a man of but twenty or so, who had a
name for wildness, for no badness that I ever heard of, and for a
fiery temper. He was in the service of the Governor, an ensign. He
had been little at home since I had come to Quebec, having been
employed up to the past year in the service of the Governor of
Montreal. We bowed, but he made no motion to come to me, and the
Intendant engaged me almost at once in gossip of the town; suddenly,
however, diverging upon some questions of public tactics and civic
government. He much surprised me, for though I knew him brave and
able, I had never thought of him save as the adroit politician and
servant of the King, the tyrant and the libertine.
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