When Jules had said to his sister: "If I loved an English girl and she would have me, I would marry her as readily as one of my own countrywomen," Blanche had been far from suspecting her brother's real intentions. The truth was that Jules, on his voyage across the Atlantic, had made the acquaintance of a young English girl of great beauty. A second Saint-Preux, Jules had given her lessons in something more than French grammar during a passage that lasted two months. He had shown excellent taste. The young girl, in addition to her beauty, possessed the qualities to inspire a true passion. All obstacles being at length overcome, and the consent of both families obtained, in the following year Jules married the fair daughter of Albion, who soon won the hearts of all about her. Uncle Raoul, always bitter against the English on account of the leg which he had lost in Acadia, but too well bred to fail in the proprieties, used at first to shut himself up whenever he wanted to swear comfortably at the compatriots of his lovely niece; but by the end of a month she had entirely captivated him, whereupon he suddenly suppressed his oaths, to the great benefit of his soul and of the pious ears which he had scandalized. "That rascal of a Jules," said Uncle Raoul, "showed very good taste in wedding this young English woman. His Holiness the Pope of old was quite right when he said that these young islanders would be angels if only they were Christians; _non angli, sed angeli fuissent, si essent Christiani_." It was another thing when the dear uncle, trotting a little nephew on one knee and a little niece on the other, used to sing them the songs of the Canadian _voyageurs_. How proud he was when their mother used to cry: "For pity sake, come to my help, dear uncle, for the little demons won't go to sleep without you." Uncle Raoul had charged himself with the military education of his nephew. Therefore, before he was four years old, this pygmy warrior, armed with a little wooden gun, might be seen making furious attacks against the ample stomach of his instructor, who was obliged to defend with his cane the part assaulted. "The little scamp," said the chevalier recovering himself, "is going to have the dashing courage of the D'Habervilles, with the persistence and independence of the proud islanders from whom he is descended through his mother."