Order of Good Cheer Read Free Page A

harmed by many hundred tongues. Quite the opposite.
    LUCIEN ASCENDS A forested slope. The dog picks up its pace to lead him, and under his feet there is almost a path. It is a path made by him alone, one he has trod perhaps a dozen times now, breaking the weakest of twigs, retarding new foliage. It leads to the promontory overlooking not just the harbour but out between the two mountains through to the great French Bay and on to the west. Looking west is less painful than looking east, and homeward.
    Walking a half-path lets him be half lost in thought, and Lucien notes how the pains of homesickness are not unlike those of hunger: not altogether disagreeable, in that their plea augursa future fulfillment. And a sweetness in the pain resembles that delivered by certain music. There is also some philosophy to be had in homesickness: though these trees are sadly not France’s trees, in their newness is both a horror and a joy at meeting God’s limitless imagination.
    Lucien considers it an act of wisdom that they’ve brought the three dogs across the ocean, one of whom, Bernard, leads him now. Stooping to caress a dog and receive its love is the same here as it was in France, so when he caresses a dog he is wherever he wishes to be, the spirit of the act being primary, not the particular mud under one’s boots. He loves these dogs with his true heart and tries to copy their humour as they sit alertly guarding doors. Their manner reveals that the very best life has been found for them: half in the wild, half at their master’s hearth. Never has he seen dogs so content; they are quick to a command and yet, at rest, they sit so confident in their gazing at the vista, which they seem to feel they own.
    It begins to rain and, as is often weirdly the case in New France, it grows warmer for it. At home it rained the whole week before departure and in today’s rain he feels the sweet pain of envisioning his oldest brother, Albert — Albert laughing at the beer he holds in his hand, laughing at smiling women and duck farts and the surprise of a sunset. And the pain grows even sweeter in thoughts of his lovely sister Babette, closest to him in age and in heart. He will never forget the night before he put to sea. Neither of them could sleep, and for this they blamed the heat blown down on the early mistral winds. They spoke in whispers so as not to wake anyone else, and grew used to this kind of voice and the intimacy it needed — almost a touching of foreheads. They became giddy at having passed sleep by. At one point Babette took her portrait from the wall, bade Lucien come watch, placed it on her lap, and let fall numerous candle dripsupon it until her face was obscured fully. Then announced, “There, I am dead.” But the marvellous thing about her is that her mood was made content by this, and it was only a momentary depression, or perhaps even a purgative.
    They left the scraping of wax from paint to the artistry of Charles the cook, who always boasted of his delicacy with knives, claiming in full seriousness that if they would only give him a knife sharp enough he could split and split a pig’s bristle until it became a feather.
    LUCIEN’S SCALP LIFTS and he leaps an inch as Bernard roars into the trees, disappearing. The dog has begun to find food of his own, though usually it amounts to nothing but a long chase. And once the noble Breton, his head half white, half black, returned to the compound with his muzzle and the brow of one eye pierced with an agony of spears. White barbed little terrors, some an inch deep, they apparently came from a fearsome creature no one wants to meet. The mapmaker Champlain, it is said, claims to know of the creature. He likens it to a beaver that launches these harpoons with its tail, but no one believes him. Lescarbot, whose camp of allegiance is larger than that of the quiet Champlain, publicly refers to the unlikely beast as Champlain’s