— 158 — 



The early days of Canada abound with incidents of 

 most dramatic interest, inexhaustible stores of mate- 

 rials for the novelist. 



" The French Dominion is a memory of the past, " 

 says Parkman, "and when we wake its departed shades," 

 they rise upon us from their graves in strange romantic 

 guise : again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, 

 and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal 

 and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of 

 savage warriors knit in close fellowship on the same 

 stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us ; an 

 untamed continent; vaste wastes of forest verdure; 

 mountains silent in primeval sleep ; river, lake and 

 glimmering pool ; wilderness oceans mingling with the 

 sky, such was the domain which France conquered for 

 civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of 

 its forests ; priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses 

 of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, 

 pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent 

 the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes 

 with a mild parental sway, and stood serene before the 

 direst shapes of death. Men of a courtly nurture, heirs 

 to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their 

 dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of 

 toil." 



In the brightest spot of this romantic horizon, 

 during the quasi-regal sway of the proud Count of 

 Frontenac, in 1690, are located the incidents and scenes 

 which constitute the historical novel " Francois de 

 Bienville," the hero, one of the illustrious brothers of 

 Baron de Longueuil. 



In fact, the whole of the siege operations, at Quebec, 

 in 1690, as narrated by eyewitnesses — Major Walley, 

 Mere Juchereau de St. Ignace and contemporary 

 writers such as LaHontan, Charlevoix and others, 

 closing in with the glorious deaths of the two brothers 

 St. Helene and De Bienville and lighted up by the 

 sweet face of Marie Louise d'Orsy and some secondary 

 actors : such the plot of the novel. 



