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contracted steadily, so that, with all his wife’s good management and his own devotion to his
profession, he scarcely knew where to turn; until one day the Count de Frontenac walked into the shop and put out his hand
as if to rescue a drowning man. Auclair had never heard of the Count’s difficulties with the Jesuits in Canada, and knew
nothing about his recall by the King, until he appeared at the shop door that morning, ten years older, but no richer or
better satisfied with the world than when he went away.
    The Count was out of favour at Versailles, his estate on the Indre had run down during his absence in Canada, and he had
not the means to repair it, so he now spent a good deal of time in the house next door. His presence there, and his
patronage, eased the strain of the Auclairs’ position. Moreover, he restored to Euclide the ten years’ rent for the shop,
which had been scrupulously paid to the Count’s agent while he was away.
    The Count was lonely in his town house. Many of his old acquaintances had accomplished their earthly period and been
carried to the Innocents or the churchyard of Saint–Paul while he was far away in Quebec. His wife was still entertaining
her friends at her apartment in the old Arsenal, and the Count occasionally went there on her afternoons at home. Time hung
heavy on his hands, and he often sent for Euclide to come to him in a professional capacity, — a flimsy pretext, for, though
past sixty, the Count was in robust health. Of an evening they would sometimes sit in the Count’s library, talking of New
France. Frontenac’s thoughts were there, and he liked to tell an eager listener about its great lakes and rivers, the
climate, the Indians, the forests and wild animals. Often he would dwell upon the explorations and discoveries of his
ill-fated young friend Robert Cavelier de La Salle, one of the few men for whom, in his long life, he ever felt a warm
affection.
    Gradually there grew up in Auclair’s mind the picture of a country vast and free. He fell into a habit of looking to
Canada as a possible refuge, an escape from the evils one suffered at home, and of wishing he could go there.
    This seemed a safe desire to cherish, since it was impossible of fulfilment. Euclide was a natural city-dweller; one of
those who can bear poverty and oppression, so long as they have their old surroundings, their native sky, the streets and
buildings that have become part of their lives. But though he was a creature of habit and derived an actual pleasure from
doing things exactly as he had always done them, his mind was free. He could not shut his eyes to the wrongs that went on
about him, or keep from brooding upon them. In his own time he had seen taxes grow more and more ruinous, poverty and hunger
always increasing. People died of starvation in the streets of Paris, in his own parish of Saint–Paul, where there was so
much wealth. All the while the fantastic extravagances of the Court grew more outrageous. The wealth of the nation, of the
grain lands and vineyards and forests of France, was sunk in creating the pleasure palace at Versailles. The richest peers
of the realm were ruining themselves on magnificent Court dresses and jewels. And, with so many new abuses, the old ones
never grew less; torture and cruel punishments increased as the people became poorer and more desperate. The horrible mill
at the Châtelet ground on day after day. Auclair lived too near the prisons of Paris to be able to forget them. In his
boyhood a harmless old man who lodged in their own cellar was tortured and put to death at the Châtelet for a petty
theft.
    One morning, in the summer when Cécile was four years old, Count Frontenac made one of his sudden reappearances in Paris
and sent for Euclide. The King had again appointed him Governor General of Canada, and he would sail in a few weeks. He
wished to take Auclair with him as his personal physician. The Count was then seventy years old, and he was as