Alice of Old Vincennes

								

Vincennes, that lonely picket of religion and trade, which was to
become the center of civilizing energy for the great Northwestern
Territory. M. Roussillon had no children of his own; so his kind heart
opened freely to two fatherless and motherless waifs. These were Alice,
now called Alice Roussillon, and the hunchback, Jean. The former was
twelve years old, when he adopted her, a child of Protestant parents,
while Jean had been taken, when a mere babe, after his parents had been
killed and scalped by Indians. Madame Roussillon, a professed invalid,
whose appetite never failed and whose motherly kindness expressed
itself most often through strains of monotonous falsetto scolding, was
a woman of little education and no refinement; while her husband clung
tenaciously to his love of books, especially to the romances most in
vogue when he took leave of France.
M. Roussillon had been, in a way, Alice's teacher, though not greatly
inclined to abet Father Beret in his kindly efforts to make a Catholic
of the girl, and most treacherously disposed toward the good priest in
the matter of his well-meant attempts to prevent her from reading and
re-reading the aforesaid romances. But for many weeks past Gaspard
Roussillon had been absent from home, looking after his trading schemes
with the Indians; and Pere Beret acting on the suggestion of the
proverb about the absent cat and the playing mouse, had formed an
alliance offensive and defensive with Madame Roussillon, in which it
was strictly stipulated that all novels and romances were to be
forcibly taken and securely hidden away from Mademoiselle Alice; which,
to the best of Madame Roussillon's ability, had accordingly been done.
Now, while the wind strengthened and the softly booming summer shower
came on apace, the heavy cloud lifting as it advanced and showing under
it the dark gray sheet of the rain, Pere Beret and Alice sat under the
clapboard roof behind the vines of the veranda and discussed, what was
generally uppermost in the priest's mind upon such occasions, the good
of Alice's immortal soul,--a subject not absorbingly interesting to her
at any time.
It was a standing grief to the good old priest, this strange perversity
of the girl in the matter of religious duty, as he saw it. True she had
a faithful guardian in Gaspard Roussillon; but, much as he had done to
aid the church's work in general, for he was always vigorous and
liberal, he could not be looked upon as a very good Catholic; and of
course his influence was not effective in the right direction. But then
Pere Beret saw no reason why, in due time and with patient work, aided
by Madame Roussillon and notwithstanding Gaspard's treachery, he might
not safely lead Alice, whom he loved as a dear child, into the arms of
the Holy Church, to serve which faithfully, at all hazards and in all
places, was his highest aim.
"Ah, my child," he was saying, "you are a sweet, good girl, after all,