On Sundays, after Mass and Vespers, the habitans of all parts of the extended parish naturally met and talked over the affairs of the Fabrique--the value of tithes for the year, the abundance of Easter eggs, and the weight of the first salmon of the season, which was always presented to the Cure with the first-fruits of the field, to ensure the blessing of plenty for the rest of the year.

The Reverend Cure frequently mingled in these discussions. Seated in his accustomed armchair, under the shade of the maple in summer, and in winter by the warm fireside, he defended, ex cathedra, the rights of the Church, and good-humoredly decided all controversies. He found his parishioners more amenable to good advice over a mug of Norman cider and a pipe of native tobacco, under the sign of the Crown of France, than when he lectured them in his best and most learned style from the pulpit.

This morning, however, all was very quiet round the old inn. The birds were singing, and the bees humming in the pleasant sunshine. The house looked clean and tidy, and no one was to be seen except three persons bending over a table, with their heads close together, deeply absorbed in whatever business they were engaged in. Two of these persons were Dame Bedard, the sharp landlady of the Crown of France, and her no less sharp and pretty daughter, Zoe. The third person of the trio was an old, alert-looking little man, writing at the table as if for very life.

He wore a tattered black robe, shortened at the knees to facilitate walking, a frizzled wig, looking as if it had been dressed with a currycomb, a pair of black breeches, well-patched with various colors; and gamaches of brown leather, such as the habitans wore, completed his odd attire, and formed the professional costume of Master Pothier dit Robin, the travelling notary, one of that not unuseful order of itinerants of the law which flourished under the old regime in New France.

Upon the table near him stood a black bottle, an empty trencher, and a thick scatter of crumbs, showing that the old notary had despatched a hearty breakfast before commencing his present work of the pen.

A hairy knapsack lay open upon the table near his elbow, disclosing some bundles of dirty papers tied up with red tape, a tattered volume or two of the "Coutume de Paris," and little more than the covers of an odd tome of Pothier, his great namesake and prime authority in the law. Some linen, dirty and ragged as his law papers, was crammed into his knapsack with them. But that was neither here nor there in the estimation of the habitans, so long as his law smelt strong in the nostrils of their opponents in litigation. They rather prided themselves upon the roughness of their travelling notary.

The reputation of Master Pothier dit Robin was, of course, very great among the habitans, as he travelled from parish to parish and from seigniory to seigniory, drawing bills and hypothecations, marriage contracts and last wills and testaments, for the peasantry, who had a genuine Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen.

Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is full of seeds, and usually kept all parties in hot water and litigation for the rest of their days. If he did happen now and then to settle a dispute between neighbors, he made ample amends for it by setting half the rest of the parish by the ears.

Master Pothier's nose, sharp and fiery as if dipped in red ink, almost touched the sheet of paper on the table before him, as he wrote down from the dictation of Dame Bedard the articles of a marriage contract between her pretty daughter, Zoe, and Antoine La Chance, the son of a comfortable but keen widow of Beauport.

Dame Bedard had shrewdly availed herself of the presence of Master Pothier, and in payment of a night's lodging at the Crown of France, to have him write out the contract of marriage in the absence of Dame La Chance, the mother of Antoine, who would, of course, object to the insertion of certain conditions in the contract which Dame Bedard was quite determined upon as the price of Zoe's hand and fortune.

"There! Dame Bedard!" cried Master Pothier, sticking the pen behind his ear, after a magnificent flourish at the last word, "there is a marriage contract fit to espouse King Solomon to the Queen of Sheba! A dowry of a hundred livres tournoises, two cows, and a feather bed, bedstead, and chest of linen! A donation entre vifs!"

"A what? Master Pothier, now mind! are you sure that is the right word of the grimoire?" cried Dame Bedard, instinctively perceiving that here lay the very point of the contract. "You know I only give on condition, Master Pothier."

"Oh, yes! trust me, Dame Bedard. I have made it a donation entre vifs, revocable pour cause d'ingratitude, if your future son-in-law, Antoine la Chance, should fail in his duty to you and to Zoe."

"And he won't do his duty to Zoe, unless he does it to me, Master Pothier. But are you sure it is strong enough? Will it hold Dame La Chance by the foot, so that she cannot revoke her gifts although I may revoke mine?"

"Hold Dame La Chance by the foot? It will hold her as fast as a snapping-turtle does a frog. In proof of it, see what Ricard says, page 970; here is the book." Master Pothier opened his tattered volume, and held it up to the dame. She shook her head.

"Thanks, I have mislaid my glasses. Do you read, please!"

"Most cheerfully, good dame! A notary must have eyes for everybody--eyes like a cat's, to see in the dark, and power to draw them in like a turtle, so that he may see nothing that he does not want to see."

"Oh, bless the eyes of the notary!" Dame Bedard grew impatient. "Tell me what the book says about gifts revocable--that is what concerns me and Zoe."

"Well, here it is, dame: 'Donations stipulated revocable at the pleasure of the donor are null. But this condition does not apply to donations by contract of marriage.' Bourdon also says--"

"A fig for Bourdon, and all such drones! I want my gift made revocable, and Dame La Chance's not! I know by long experience with my dear feu Bedard how necessary it is to hold the reins tight over the men.

Antoine is a good boy, but he will be all the better for a careful mother-in-law's supervision."

Master Pothier rubbed the top of his wig with his forefinger.

"Are you sure, dame, that Antoine La Chance will wear the bridle easily?"

"Assuredly! I should like to see son-in-law of mine who would not!

Besides, Antoine is in the humor just now to refuse nothing for sake of Zoe. Have you mentioned the children, Master Pothier? I do not intend to let Dame La Chance control the children any more than Zoe and Antoine."

"I have made you tutrice perpetuelle, as we say in the court, and here it is," said he, placing the tip of his finger on a certain line in the document.

Zoe looked down and blushed to her finger-ends. She presently rallied, and said with some spirit,--"Never mind them, Master Pothier! Don't put them in the contract! Let Antoine have something to say about them. He would take me without a dower, I know, and time enough to remind him about children when they come."

"Take you without dower! Zoe Bedard! you must be mad!" exclaimed the dame, in great heat. "No girl in New France can marry without a dower, if it be only a pot and a bedstead! You forget, too, that the dower is given, not so much for you, as to keep up the credit of the family. As well be married without a ring! Without a dower, indeed!"

"Or without a contract written by a notary, signed, sealed, and delivered!" chimed in Master Pothier.

"Yes, Master Pothier, and I have promised Zoe a three-days wedding, which will make her the envy of all the parish of Charlebourg. The seigneur has consented to give her away in place of her poor defunct father; and when he does that he is sure to stand godfather for all the children, with a present for every one of them! I shall invite you too, Master Pothier!"

Zoe affected not to hear her mother's remark, although she knew it all by heart, for it had been dinned into her ears twenty times a day for weeks, and sooth to say, she liked to hear it, and fully appreciated the honors to come from the patronage of the seigneur.

Master Pothier pricked up his ears till they fairly raised his wig, at the prospect of a three days wedding at the Crown of France. He began an elaborate reply, when a horse's tramp broke in upon them and Colonel Philibert wheeled up to the door of the hostelry.

Master Pothier, seeing an officer in the King's uniform, rose on the instant and saluted him with a profound bow, while Dame Bedard and Zoe, standing side by side, dropped their lowest courtesy to the handsome gentleman, as, with woman's glance, they saw in a moment he was.

Philibert returned their salute courteously, as he halted his horse in front of Dame Bedard. "Madame!" said he, "I thought I knew all roads about Charlebourg, but I have either forgotten or they have changed the road through the forest to Beaumanoir. It is surely altered from what it was."

"Your Honor is right," answered Dame Bedard, "the Intendant has opened a new road through the forest." Zoe took the opportunity, while the officer looked at her mother, to examine his features, dress, and equipments, from head to foot, and thought him the handsomest officer she had ever seen.

"I thought it must be so," replied Philibert; "you are the landlady of the Crown of France, I presume?" Dame Bedard carried it on her face as plainly marked as the royal emblem on the sign over her head.

"Yes, your Honor, I am Widow Bedard, at your service, and, I hope, keep as good a hostelry as your Honor will find in the Colony. Will your Honor alight and take a cup of wine, such as I keep for guests of quality?"

"Thanks, Madame Bedard, I am in haste: I must find the way to Beaumanoir. Can you not furnish me a guide, for I like not to lose time by missing my way?"

"A guide, sir! The men are all in the city on the King's corvee; Zoe could show you the way easily enough." Zoe twitched her mother's arm nervously, as a hint not to say too much. She felt flattered and fluttered too, at the thought of guiding the strange, handsome gentleman through the forest, and already the question shot through her fancy, "What might come of it? Such things have happened in stories!" Poor Zoe!

she was for a few seconds unfaithful to the memory of Antoine La Chance.

But Dame Bedard settled all surmises by turning to Master Pothier, who stood stiff and upright as became a limb of the law. "Here is Master Pothier, your Honor, who knows every highway and byway in ten seigniories. He will guide your Honor to Beaumanoir."

"As easy as take a fee or enter a process, your Honor," remarked Master Pothier, whose odd figure had several times drawn the criticizing eye of Colonel Philibert.

"A fee! ah! you belong to the law, then, my good friend? I have known many advocates--" but Philibert stopped; he was too good-natured to finish his sentence.

"You never saw one like me, your Honor was going to say? True, you never did. I am Master Pothier dit Robin, the poor travelling notary, at your Honor's service, ready to draw you a bond, frame an acte of convention matrimoniale, or write your last will and testament, with any notary in New France. I can, moreover, guide your Honor to Beaumanoir as easy as drink your health in a cup of Cognac."

Philibert could not but smile at the travelling notary, and thinking to himself, "too much Cognac at the end of that nose of yours, my friend!"

which, indeed, looked fiery as Bardolph's, with hardly a spot for a fly to rest his foot upon without burning.

"But how will you go, friend?" asked Philibert, looking down at Master Pothier's gamaches; "you don't look like a fast walker."

"Oh, your Honor," interrupted Dame Bedard, impatiently, for Zoe had been twitching her hard to let her go. "Master Pothier can ride the old sorrel nag that stands in the stable eating his head off for want of hire. Of course your Honor will pay livery?"

"Why, certainly, Madame, and glad to do so! So Master Pothier make haste, get the sorrel nag, and let us be off."

"I will be back in the snap of a pen, or in the time Dame Bedard can draw that cup of Cognac, your Honor."

"Master Pothier is quite a personage, I see," remarked Philibert, as the old notary shuffled off to saddle the nag.

"Oh, quite, your Honor. He is the sharpest notary, they say, that travels the road. When he gets people into law they never can get out. He is so clever, everybody says! Why, he assures me that even the Intendant consults him sometimes as they sit eating and drinking half the night together in the buttery at the Chateau!"

"Really! I must be careful what I say," replied Philibert, laughing, "or I shall get into hot water! But here he comes."