Its keen buzzing complaint was harmonious with the grumble
of the mill-stones, as though a supreme maker of music had tuned it. So
said a master-musician and his friend, a philosopher from Nantes, who
came to St. Saviour's in the summer just before the marriage, and lodged
with Jean Jacques. Jean Jacques, having spent a year at Laval University
at Quebec, had almost a gift of thought, or thinking; and he never ceased
to ply the visiting philosopher and musician with questions which he
proceeded to answer himself before they could do so; his quaint,
sentimental, meretricious observations on life saddening while they
amused his guests. They saddened the musician more than the other because
he knew life, while the philosopher only thought it and saw it.
But even the musician would probably have smiled in hope that day when
the young "Spanische" came driving up the river-road from the
steamboat-landing miles away. She arrived just when the clock struck noon
in the big living-room of the Manor. As she reached the open doorway and
the wide windows of the house which gaped with shady coolness, she heard
the bell summoning the workers in the mills and on the farm--yes, M.
Barbille was a farmer, too--for the welcome home to "M'sieu' Jean
Jacques," as he was called by everyone.
That the wedding had taken place far down in Gaspe and not in St.
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