— 160 — 



including the bombardment of the city, the engagement 

 of the English under Major Walley and repulse at the 

 Beauport Flats, is most vividly depicted ; the costumes 

 of the French officer, French soldier, French peasant of 

 1690, even to the wines served and dishes partaken of, 

 at camp or in the Chateau : every trifling incident is 

 well portrayed and authority quoted, in mostly every 

 case. The novelist seems to have drawn copiously from 

 that great source of antiquarian lore, Monteil — Amans 

 Alexis Monteil — the historian of the French people 

 from the 13th to the 17th century. Mr. Marmette 

 could not have selected, in the whole history of the 

 colony, a more glorious era for the supremacy of the 

 Gallic Lily than that of Frontenac, the epoch which 

 saw Sir William Phip's proud fleet of thirty-four ships 

 of all sizes repulsed before Quebec. He has given to 

 the tableau all the dark tracings peculiar to the times, 

 the rancorous feelings of the Briton and the Gaul car- 

 ried from across the sea. The book placed by a good 

 translation and appropriate notes before the English 

 reader, would no doubt meet with a ready sale. 



Let us now have our say on the personages of the 

 second novel, intended to portray the guilty existence 

 in Canada of that illustrious plunderer, Intendant Bigot. 



About one mile and a half north of the populous 

 village of Charlesbourg, that is five miles from Quebec, 

 there lies, in the gloomy depths of the Laurentides, a 

 dreary and most melancholy ruin, the fast-crumbling 

 walls of a spacious house, call it a chateau if you prefer ; 

 the English know it under the name of the Her- 

 mitage, the French, under that of Beaumanoir. It is 

 quite certain these hoary walls existed here prior to 

 1759 ; that they were used as a shooting-box, if for 

 nothing else, by the French intendant and his pleasure- 

 loving friends. They have given rise to a variety 

 of legends in which love, revenge, lust and plunder 

 each played their parts. 



