But Robert soon lost thought of Tayoga as he looked at the crowded city, and its mingling of the splendid and the squalid, its French and French-Canadians, its soldiers and priests and civilians and Indians, its great stone houses, and its wooden huts, its young officers in fine white uniforms and its swarthy habitants in brown homespun.  Albany had its Dutch, and New York had its Dutch, too, and people from many parts of Europe, but Quebec was different, something altogether new, without a trace of English or Dutch about it, and, for that reason, it made a great appeal to his curiosity.

A light open carriage drawn by two stout ponies passed them at an amazing pace considering the steepness of the street, and they saw in it a florid young man in a splendid costume, his powdered hair tied in a queue.

“De Mezy,” said the priest, who was just behind them.

Then they knew that it was the young man, the companion of Bigot in his revels, against whose chateau Father Drouillard had raised his threatening hands.  Now the priest spoke the name with the most intense scorn and contempt, and Robert, feeling that he might encounter de Mezy again in this pent-up Quebec, gazed at his vanishing figure with curiosity.  They had their gay blades in New York and Albany and even a few in Boston of the Puritans, but he had not seen anybody like de Mezy.

“It is such as he who are pulling down New France,” murmured Father Drouillard.

A moment or two later the priest said farewell and departed in the direction of the cathedral.

“There goes a man,” said Willet, as he looked after the tall figure in the black robe.  “I don’t share in the feeling of church against church.  I don’t see any reason why Protestant should hate Catholic and Catholic should hate Protestant.  I’ve lived long enough and seen enough to know that each church holds good men, and unless I make a big mistake, and I don’t think I make any mistake at all, Father Drouillard is not only a good man, but he has a head full of sense and he’s as brave as a lion, too.”

“Lots of priests are,” said Robert.  “Nobody ever endured the Indian tortures better than they.  And what’s the figure over the doorway, Dave?”

“That, Robert, is Le Chien d’Or, The Golden Dog.  It’s the sign put up by Nicholas Jaquin, whom they often called Philibert.  This is his warehouse and he was one of the honnetes gens that we’ve been talking about.  He fought the corrupt officials, he tried to make lower prices for the people, and beneath his Golden Dog he wrote:” 

   “Je suis un chien qui ronge l’os,
   En le rongeant je prends mon repos;
   Un jour viendra qui n’est pas venu,
   Que je mordrai qui m’aura mordu.”

“That is, some day the dog will bite those who have bitten him?”

“That’s about it, Robert, and I suppose it generally comes true.  If you keep on striking people some of them in time will strike you and strike you pretty hard.”