THE SWALLOW

The Chateau Frontenac at Quebec is a turreted pile of masonry wandering down a cliff over the very cellars of the ancient Castle of St. Louis.  A twentieth-century hotel, it simulates well a mediaeval fortress and lifts against the cold blue northern sky an atmosphere of history.  Old voices whisper about its towers and above the clanging hoofs in its paved court; deathless names are in the wind which blows from the “fleuve,” the great St. Lawrence River far below.  Jacques Cartier’s voice was heard hereabouts away back in 1539, and after him others, Champlain and Frontenac, and Father Jogues and Mother Marie of the Conception and Montcalm—­upstanding fighting men and heroic women and hardy discoverers of New France walked about here once, on the “Rock” of Quebec; there is romance here if anywhere on earth.  Today a new knighthood hails that past.  Uniforms are thick in steep streets; men are wearing them with empty sleeves, on crutches, or maybe whole of body yet with racked faces which register a hell lived through.  Canada guards heroism of many vintages, from four hundred years back through the years to Wolfe’s time, and now a new harvest.  Centuries from now children will be told, with the story of Cartier, the tale of Vimy Ridge, and while the Rock stands the records of Frenchmen in Canada, of Canadians in France will not die.

Always when I go to the Chateau I get a table, if I can, in the smaller dining-room.  There the illusion of antiquity holds through modern luxury; there they have hung about the walls portraits of the worthies of old Quebec; there Samuel Champlain himself, made into bronze and heroic of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on river and lower city.  One disregards waiters in evening clothes and up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the “fleuve,” and the Isle d’Orleans lying long and low, and one thinks of little ships, storm-beaten, creeping up to this grim bigness ignorant of continental events trailing in their wake.

I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner one night in early September in 1918.  The head-waiter was an old friend; he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color, four men in service uniforms.

“Some high officers, sir,” spoke the head waiter.  “In conference here, I believe.  There’s a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir.”

I gave my order and sat back to study the group.  The waiter had it straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face.  The American had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his shoulders.  The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my neighbors.  They were talking in English.