Chapter X.

While you here do snoring lie
Open-ey'd conspiracy
His time doth take:
If of life you keep a care,
Shake off slumber, and beware:
Awake! Awake!
-- _The Tempest._

Amongst the seigniories contiguous to the eastern
extremity of the island of Montreal, lies that of
Montboeuf. Its present owner was Andre Duchatel,
a descendent of the Sieur Duchatel, a cadet of an
ancient French noble family, to whom the seigniory
was granted by royal letters patent, about the middle
of the seventeenth century. But if any nobility of
soul, or refinement of aspect existed in the first of
the Canadian dynasty of Duchatel, it had not been
transmitted to the living representative of the line.
As the long hung-up sword or unused ploughshare,
lose their brightness and edge from want of use,
perhaps these qualities of mind and body had disap-
peared for want of a fitter field for their display.
Andre Duchatel, seigneur of Montboeuf, was a
vulgar looking, short, broad-set, florid figure, of fifty
years or so; material in his tastes, in disposition
obstinate and narrow-minded, unenlarged by educa-
tion; shy with strangers, yet fond of good fellowship
with his acquaintance, and, with much reason,
accounted to be rich. He was a widower, but lived

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