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WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC
CHAPTER I
On one corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat; on another,
the shop of the Little Chemist; on another, the office of Medallion the
auctioneer; and on the last, the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief
characteristics of Monsieur Garon's house were its brass door-knobs,
and the verdant vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's
shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober wall-
paper, and the bottles of coloured water in the shop windows; of
Medallion's, the stoop that surrounded three sides of the building,
and the notices of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front; of the Hotel
Louis Quinze, the deep dormer windows, the solid timbers, and the veranda
that gave its front distinction--for this veranda had been the pride of
several generations of landlords, and its heavy carving and bulky grace
were worth even more admiration than Pontiac gave to it.
The square which the two roads and the four corners made was, on week-
days, the rendezvous of Pontiac, and the whole parish; on Sunday mornings
the rendezvous was shifted to the large church on the hill, beside which
was the house of the Cure, Monsieur Fabre. Travelling towards the south,
out of the silken haze of a mid-summer day, you would come in time to the
hills of Maine; north, to the city of Quebec and the river St. Lawrence;
east, to the ocean; and west, to the Great Lakes and the land of the
English.
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