Chapter I: Preface

The chief aim of this book is the perhaps too bold one--_to map out a future for the Canadian nation_, which has been hitherto drifting without any plan.

A lesser purpose of it is to make some of the atmosphere of French Canada understood by those who speak English. The writer hopes to have done some service to these brothers of ours in using as his hero one of those lofty characters which their circle has produced more than once.

The book is not a political work. It must by no means be taken for a Grit diatribe. The writer is an old-fashioned Tory and an old-fashioned Liberal: all his parties are dead, and he is at present in a universal Opposition. The party names he uses are, therefore, in any present-day application, simply typical, and the work is not a political one in any current sense.

There are those who will say his characters are untrue and impossible. To these he would answer: Everything here, apart from a few little inaccuracies, is studied from the life, and you can find item, man and date for the essential particulars.

A charge of Metaphysics will be advanced also, by a generation not too willing to think. _Mon ami_, what we give you of that is not very hard. If you cannot understand it, leave it out or study Emerson. The main subject of the book cannot be treated otherwise than with an attempt to ground it deeply.

If Bigotry may not impossibly be laid to the author by some, because he has drawn two or three of the characters from unusual quarters and described them freely; the many who know him will limit any phrases to the several characters as individuals.

Lastly, the book is not a novel. It consequently escapes the awful charge of being 'a novel with a purpose.' None can feel more conscious of its imperfections than the writer, or will regret more if it treads on any sensitive toes.

WILFRID CHATEAUCLAIR. _Dormilliere, March, 1888._

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE MANOIR OF DORMILLIERE 1
II. THE YOUNG SEIGNEUR 4
III. HAVILAND'S IDEA 7
IV. THE MANUSCRIPT 13
V. CONFRERIE 16
VI. ALEXANDRA 20
VII. QUINET 22
VIII. THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE 25
IX. ASSORTED ENTHUSIASMS 29
X. THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE 33
XI. THE CAVE 43
XII. LA MERE PATRIE 48
XIII. SOMETHING MORE OF QUINET 52
XIV. THE ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERSHIP 54
XV. THE LIFE OF LEADERSHIP 57