As our travelers drew near the manor house of St. Jean-Port-Joli, whose roof they could see under the starlight, the conversation of Jules D'Haberville, ordinarily so frivolous and mocking, grew more and more thoughtful and sincere. CHAPTER VI. D'HABERVILLE MANOR HOUSE. Je bénis le soleil, je bénis la lune et les astres qui étoilent le ciel. Je bénis aussi les petits oiseaux qui gazouillent dans l'air. +Henri Heine.+ +D'Haberville Manor House+ was situated at the foot of a bluff which covered about nine acres of the seigniory, on the south side of the highway. This bluff was about a hundred feet high and very picturesque. Its summit was clothed with pines and firs, whose perpetual green formed a cheerful contrast with the desolation of the winter landscape. Jules D'Haberville used to compare these trees, triumphing on their height and flaunting their fadeless green in the face of the harshest seasons, to the mighty ones of the earth whose strength and happiness are beyond the reach of vicissitude, however much the poor may shiver at their feet. One might well believe that the brush of a Claude Lorraine had exercised itself in adorning the flanks and base of this hill, so endless was the variety of the trees which had gathered thither from all the neighboring woodlands. Elm, maple, birch, and beech, red thorn, cherry, ash, and cedar, sumach, and all the other native trees which are the glory of our forests, combined to throw a cloak of all imaginable greens over the rugged outlines of the bluff. A wood of ancient maples covered the space between the foot of the bluff and the highway, which was bordered with hedges of hazel and cinnamon rose. The first object to attract the eye on approaching the manor house was a brook, which, falling through the trees in a succession of foamy cascades down the southwest slope of the hill, mingled its clear current with that of a fountain which burst forth some distance below. After winding and loitering through a breadth of meadow country, the wedded streams slipped reluctantly into the St. Lawrence. The spring, bubbling from the very heart of the hill into a basin cut from the living rock, preserves its icy coolness, its crystal purity, through the fiercest heats of summer. It was inclosed in those days in a little white-washed pavilion, thick shaded by a group of ancient trees. The seats arranged within and without this cool retreat, the cone-shaped drinking-cups of birch bark hanging on the wall, served as so many invitations from the nymph of the fount to wayfarers oppressed by the dog-star.