Bright and early in the morning, as Gaspe tells us, the
whole neighbourhood appeared, decked out fantastically,
and greeted the manor-house with a salvo of blank musketry.
With them they bore a tall fir-tree, its branches cut
and its bark peeled to within a few feet of the top.
There the tuft of greenery remained. The pole, having
been gaudily embellished, was majestically reared aloft
and planted firmly in the ground. Round it the men and
maidens danced, while the seigneur and his family,
enthroned in chairs brought from the manor-house, looked
on with approval. Then came a rattling feu de joie with
shouts of 'Long live the King!' and 'Long live our
seigneur!' This over, the seigneur invited the whole
gathering to refreshments indoors. Brandy and cakes
disappeared with great celerity before appetites whetted
by an hour's exercise in the clear spring air. They drank
to the seigneur's health, and to the health of all his
kin. At intervals some guest would rush out and fire his
musket once again at the maypole, returning for more
hospitality with a sense of duty well performed. Before
noon the merry company, with the usual round of handshaking,
went away again, leaving the blackened pole behind. The
echoes of more musket-shots came back through the valleys
as they passed out of sight and hearing. The seigneur
was more than a mere landlord, as the occasion testified.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE HABITANT LIVED
The seigneurs of New France were not a privileged order.
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