Joseph-Robert-Hertel, seventh son of Louis-René-Hertel Larocque and Marie-Anne-Cordélia-Lilia d'Irumberry de Salaberry, was born at Manoir de l'Assumption, Quebec, in 1889. The family moved to Montreal at a date variously given, but in any case considerably earlier than Testament de mon enfance (1951), the first volume of his fictionalized memoirs, would lead one to suppose. He studied at Mont Saint-Louis, Montreal, from 1902 to 1905. The period begun by the move to Montreal, from 1893(") to his marriage, is covered in Quartier Saint-Louis (1966), his second volume of memoirs. In 1911 he married Marie-Louise-Joséphine Angers; they went to France for the next ten months. At this time he added the geographical suffix, "de Roquebrune," to his name; by 1918 he had dropped, for literary purposes, the (variously spelled) family name, Larocque. The couple returned to Montreal in 1912, intending to save enough money to go back to France in August 1914--an ominous...