March came, and one day Tit’Be brought the news from Honfleur that there would be a large gathering in the evening at Ephrem Surprenant’s to which everyone was invited.

But someone must stay to look after the house, and as Madame Chapdelaine had set her heart on this little diversion after being cooped up for all these months, it was Tit’Be himself who was left at home.  Honfleur, the nearest village to their house, was eight miles away; but what were eight miles over the snow and through the woods compared with the delight of hearing songs and stories, and of talk with people from afar?

A numerous company was assembled under the Surprenant roof:  several of the villagers, the three Frenchmen who had bought his nephew Lorenzo’s farm, and also, to the Chapdelaines’ great surprise, Lorenzo himself, back once more from the States upon business that related to the sale and the settling of his father’s affairs.  He greeted Maria very warmly, and seated himself beside her.

The men lit their pipes; they chatted about the weather, the condition of the roads, the country news; but the conversation lagged, as though all were looking for it to take some unusual turn.  Their glances sought Lorenzo and the three Frenchmen, expecting strange and marvellous tales of distant lands and unfamiliar manners from an assembly so far out of the common.  The Frenchmen, only a few months in the country, apparently felt a like curiosity, for they listened, and spoke but little.

Samuel Chapdelaine, who was meeting them for the first time, deemed himself called upon to put them through a catechism in the ingenuous Canadian fashion.

“So you have come here to till the land.  How do you like Canada?”

“It is a beautiful country, new and so vast ...  In the summer-time there are many flies, and the winters are trying; but I suppose that one gets used to these things in time.”

The father it was who made reply, his sons only nodding their heads in assent with eyes glued to the floor.  Their appearance alone would have served to distinguish them from the other dwellers in the village, but as they spoke the gap widened, and the words that fell from their lips had a foreign ring.  There was none of the slowness of the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in no comer of France, which is only a peasant blend of the different pronunciations of former emigrants.  They used words and turns of phrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which to these simple men seemed fastidious and wonderfully refined.

“Before coming to these parts were you farmers in your own country?”

“No.”

“What trade then did you follow?”

The Frenchman hesitated a moment before. replying; possibly thinking that what he was about to say would be novel, and hard for them to understand.  “I was a tuner myself, a piano-tuner; my two sons here were clerks, Edmond in an office, Pierre in a shop.”