Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/74

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

A FORTRESS-LIKE RESIDENCE

the distant fields, then to the neighboring town to transact important business,—the sale of wine, the purchase of machinery or supplies. "I shall rest," he said, "when I am old. You see," he added, pointing to his little army of tow-headed and lusty Anglo-Saxo-Franco Algerians, "there'll be no lack of young Duloupys to manage my affairs when I shall have earned my right to leisure." We could but admit that there was every prospect that the farm would not pass out of the family. With their mother's British pluck, their father's French cleverness, and the knowledge that to them and to their generation the world looks for the building of New France and for the perpetuation of an enlightened government upon the shores of the Dark Continent, what may these youngsters not accomplish in the cause of liberty and progress? They may indeed accomplish much, but not unless they are content to remain colonists, to forget that they are Frenchmen, to conquer that almost irresistible impulse of the Frenchman to rush to the boulevards of Paris