One Penisseault, A
Government Clerk (A Butcher's Son By Birth), Who Had Married In The
Colony, But Whose Pretty Wife Accompanied The Chevalier De Levis On His
Return To France, Seems To Have Fared Better Than The Rest.
But to revert to the chateau walls as I saw them on the 4th of June, 1863.
During a ramble with an English friend through the woods, which gave us an
opportunity of providing ourselves with wild flowers to strew over the
tomb of its fair "Rosamond," [323] such as the marsh marigold, clintonia,
uvularia, the star flower, veronica, kalmia, trillium, and Canadian
violets, we unexpectedly struck on the old ruin. One of the first things
that attracted our notice was the singularly corroding effect the easterly
wind has on stone and mortar in Canada; the east gable being indented and
much more eaten away than that exposed to the western blast. Of the
original structure nothing is left now standing but the two gables and the
division walls; they are all three of great thickness; certainly no modern
house is built in the manner this seems to have been. It had two stories,
with rooms in the attic, and deep cellars; a communication existed from
one cellar to the other through the division wall. There is also visible a
very small door cut through the cellar wall of the west gable; it leads to
a vaulted apartment of some eight feet square; the small mound of masonry
which covered it might originally have been effectually hidden from view
by a plantation of trees over it. What could this have been built for,
asked my romantic friend? Was it intended to secure some of the
Intendant's plate or other portion of his ill-gotten treasure? Or else as
the Abbe Ferland suggests: [324] "Was it to store the fruity old Port and
sparkling Moselle of the club of the Barons, who held their jovial
meetings there about the beginning of this century?" Was it his
mistresses' secret boudoir when the Intendant's lady visited the
chateau, like the Woodstock tower to which Royal Henry picked his way
through "Love's Ladder?" Quien sabe? Who can unravel the mystery?
It may have served for the foundation of the tower which existed when Mr.
Papineau visited and described the place fifty years ago. The heavy cedar
rafters, more than one hundred years old, are to this day sound: one has
been broken by the fall, probably of some heavy stones. There are several
indentures in the walls for fire-places, which are built of cut masonry;
from the angle of one a song sparrow flew out uttering an anxious note. We
searched and discovered the bird's nest, with five spotted, dusky eggs in
it. How strange! in the midst of ruin and decay, the sweet tokens of hope,
love and harmony! What cared the child of song if her innocent offspring
were reared amidst these mouldering relics of the past, mayhap a guilty
past? Could she not teach them to warble sweetly, even from the roof which
echoed the dying sighs of the Algonquin maid?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 345 of 451
Words from 181086 to 181604
of 236821
