The Advocate: A Novel

The advocate was by birth an Englishman, and a cadet of an ancient family, who, after having spent a dissolute youth and early manhood, had come to Canada. Here he became acquainted with an old, half-pay Highland officer of Wolfe's Army, who for his signal services rendered during the operations of the British force before Quebec, had been rewarded with a grant of land in that vicinity. Like others of his countrymen, the Highlander had settled in the Province, and married into a French Canadian family. But, soon, after their union, his wife died in giving birth to a daughter, which he reared to womanhood with all the strength of an undivided affection. The Englishman's frank bearing and singular mental powers won the admiration of the old soldier, and, at the same time, dazzled and captivated his comely and unsophisticated daughter, to whom the stranger was soon understood to stand in the light of a lover. But Macdonald--for such was the name of the warm-hearted clansman--was not destined to see his dearest wishes realized in the union of the two. A sudden sickness laid low his hardy frame, and, dying, he called the pair to his bedside, and joined their hands in anticipation of the rite of wedlock. The father dead, the lover betook himself to the study of the law, and with an extraordinary aptitude and diligence, not only mastered the details of legal practice, but comprehended, beyond others, the great principles both of English and of French jurisprudence as practised in Lower Canada. Ambitious of excellence, he resolved to complete his studies of the latter in France itself. Of means he had little, but she, confiding in his honor, consented that the estate left to her by her father should be sold, to furnish him with the necessary funds for his maintenance in Paris. In that gay capital--whilst taking advantage of libraries, and sitting at the feet of the Gamaliels of the French Bar,--he associated with gamesters and courtezans, and was at length left with resources barely sufficient to enable him to return to Canada. Settling in Montreal, his extraordinary acquaintance with both schools of law, his impassioned and versatile eloquence, his ready repartee, his habitual, grim and grotesque humour, his outrageous sallies of wit, his unmerciful logic, his fierce invective, his irony, his sarcasm, and his deep, irresistible scorn, all heightened by his singularly expressive personal presence, and eyes kindling with lambent fire, made him a forensic antagonist with whom few willingly chose to deal. He soon became the favorite counsel for the defence. Extensive practice, and its concomitant, a large income, were now his, and his betrothed, who, in giving him her fortune, felt as though she had given him nothing till with it she had given him herself, day by day looked for the nuptial tie, and at length besought him to relieve her from what had become a doubtful and even a dishonorable position. But such was no longer in his thoughts. Instead of performing towards her his long plighted vows, he sent her to a lonely dwelling on the then unpeopled Ottawa to hide her shame. There she remained till the scandal of their connection was forgotten, and he brought her, along with her female child, a creature of surpassing beauty, to a new retreat, called Stillyside, bought by him for that purpose, and situated behind the bluff known as Mount Royal, or popularly the "mountain," that lifts its wooded sides in the rear of, and gives name to, the City of Montreal. During these years of their separation, whilst laborious in his profession, he continued to indulge his vein for pleasure; not openly and abroad, as in his earlier days, but in the semi-secrecy of his home; and with a still increasing income, his expenditure from this ungracious cause also augmented. Moreover, in those days, the province was, in great measure, ruled by irresponsible officials, and often unscrupulous but energetic adventurers like himself;--men of powerful parts and free lives, whom a community of race, religion, language, and interest, united in a sort of Masonic association, whereof his house became one of the centres of reunion. There, aware of his gentle descent, and impressed with his transcendent abilities; charmed with his conversation--as pithy as it was apt to be impure--his wit, his taste, his information, his judgment; sensible, too, of the excellence of his wines, and luxuriance of his table, around which military officer and civil servant, merchant and judge, were accustomed to assemble, rank and office were forgotten, etiquette laid aside, and abandon ruled the hour. Votaries of Venus and of Bacchus were all of them, however disguised; and, secure in that close conclave, where no pure female presence was found to check the bacchanalian song, or forbid the ribald jest, all sat to listen to and applaud their host's inimitable stories, his grotesque descriptions, his wayward thoughts and fantastic images; to hearken to his close analysis, his robust reasoning, his wondrous pathos, his sublime exaggeration; and, as the wine circulated, to observe yet more his chameleon aspect and Protean character unfold itself; now grovelling like the Paradisal toad, wherein, at the ear of Eve, was hidden the form of Lucifer; now, touched by the Ithuriel spear of some keen conception, suddenly soaring, like to the bright expanded shape of the surprised and fallen Archangel, till the guests themselves, like the startled Ithuriel recoiling from the instant apparition of the fiend, drew back in amazement, or, as if at the jests of another Yorick, raised over the table a long, eruptive roar. Nor was that all. For a moment he would assume the moralist, the theologian, or,--leaving both revelation and the pandects,--become the philosopher, pacing the universe for occult truth; or the metaphysician, tracking the region of the supersensuous; and, over every theme, flying on mocking mental pinions, seeming an intellectual satan, passing through the region of vain questionings and doubtful disquisition, dim out to the abyss. And thus he lived, using, and abusing, his rare gifts; no virtuous and accomplished wife presiding at these feasts, ever degenerating into orgies, or giving sanctity to these walls; within which were gathered the brightest, gayest, noblest, most powerful --often most dissolute--of the land. But now the guests were thinned in numbers by death, by marriage, by worn out passions; and many a fierce spirit had been tamed by adversity, till the mirth had grown to be half moody, and the saturnalia gross rather in intention than in fact.

Yet ever amidst these distracting pleasures his heart reverted, first, to the woody wilds of Ottawa, and afterwards, to the sylvan shades of Stillyside, which latter he still took delight to visit and adorn; cherishing its mistress, and watching over and nurturing her child, the fruit of her fondness and of his falsehood;--but commonly known and publicly acknowledged, only as her foster daughter, and, in his own prouder circle, as his ward. For himself, he never occupied other than a handsome suburban residence, situated between the city and the foot of Mount Royal, and whose doors Mona Macdonald seldom entered; and when she did so, it was to be scowled upon by its menial mistress, a French Canadian, named Babet Blais, who viewed the melancholy visitor with angry and jealous eyes. Into this house many comely Abigails had come and gone; but Babet Blais remained in spite of him, having, as she deemed, acquired a wife's settlement and privileges, by virtue of the presence of a dwarfish, swarthy creature, half oaf, half imp, their mutual offspring. This strange being, as if in mockery, for he was ugly from the womb, was named Narcisse, and flitted about the house rather than made it his home; rarely entering it, except in his father's absence, and then chiefly to obtain largess from his mother, who loved and indulged him the more because others disliked or despised him. Reckless, stupid, savage; ignoble and stubborn; with thick, black, stubby hair, and dark, bushy, beetling brows; his protuberant eyes filled with cunning, and burning with a lustre like live coals; deep-chested, and with shoulders raised and rounded, giving him an air of pugnacity; snarl written upon his countenance, and pride in the pose of his pygmean figure; dull, dissolute, and disobedient, he was, nevertheless, the idol of his mother. She, poor woman, reverenced, almost worshipped, him, as being something superior to her plebeian self, by reason of the father's part that was in him; wondering how his sire should be so blind to his merits, and so severe upon his alleged faults and foibles. She the rather encouraged him in his irregularities since others rebuked them, and was the more liberal towards him, because of his father's stint; deeming his vices and extravagance to be not only excusable, but proper, in one who had to uphold and play the part of a gentleman. His father strove to instil into him some knowledge of law, but soon relinquished the distasteful and hopeless task, and articled him to a Notary, who, for a tempting premium, consented to take him into his office. But, instead of applying himself there, he spent most of his time in idleness and debauchery; by night frequenting the abodes of vice and infamy, and by day, haunting the doors and corridors of the court-house, in the latter always instinctively seeking to avoid a rencontre with his sullen and offended parent.