Alice of Old Vincennes

								

circular motion over his bald and bedewed pate, the wind was momently
freshening, while up from behind the trees on the horizon beyond the
river, a cloud was rising blue-black, tumbled, and grim against the sky.
"Well," said the priest, evidently trying hard to exchange his laugh
for a look of regretful resignation, "you will have your own way, my
child, and--"
"Then you will have pies galore and no end of claret!" she interrupted,
at the same time stepping to the withe-tied and peg-latched gate of the
yard and opening it. "Come in, you dear, good Father, before the rain
shall begin, and sit with me on the gallery" (the creole word for
veranda) "till the storm is over."
Father Beret seemed not loath to enter, albeit he offered a weak
protest against delaying some task he had in hand. Alice reached forth
and pulled him in, then reclosed the queer little gate and pegged it.
She caressingly passed her arm through his and looked into his
weather-stained old face with childlike affection.
There was not a photographer's camera to be had in those days; but what
if a tourist with one in hand could have been there to take a snapshot
at the priest and the maiden as they walked arm in arm to that squat
little veranda! The picture to-day would be worth its weight in a
first-water diamond. It would include the cabin, the cherry-tree, a
glimpse of the raw, wild background and a sharp portrait-group of Pere
Beret, Alice, and Jean the hunchback. To compare it with a photograph
of the same spot now would give a perfect impression of the historic
atmosphere, color and conditions which cannot be set in words. But we
must not belittle the power of verbal description. What if a thoroughly
trained newspaper reporter had been given the freedom of old Vincennes
on the Wabash during the first week of June, 1778, and we now had his
printed story! What a supplement to the photographer's pictures! Well,
we have neither photographs nor graphic report; yet there they are
before us, the gowned and straw-capped priest, the fresh-faced,
coarsely-clad and vigorous girl, the grotesque little hunchback, all
just as real as life itself. Each of us can see them, even with closed
eyes. Led by that wonderful guide, Imagination, we step back a century
and more to look over a scene at once strangely attractive and
unspeakably forlorn.
What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from the
cities, the villages and the vineyards of beautiful France, for
example, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder savage
Indians, with a rude cabin for a home and the exposures and hardships
of pioneer life for their daily experience?
Men like Gaspard Roussillon are of a distinct stamp. Take him as he
was. Born in France, on the banks of the Rhone near Avignon, he came as
a youth to Canada, whence he drifted on the tide of adventure this way
and that, until at last he found himself, with a wife, at Post