The marquis--but why should I keep to the empty title, which I was never to use after that first hour? Nothing would do but that we should be friends on the instant, and for life,--Jacques and Yvon. "Thus it was two centuries ago," my companion declared, "thus shall it be now!" and I, in my dream of wonderment and delight, was only too glad to have it so. We talked of a thousand things; or, to be precise, he talked, and I listened. What had I to say that could interest him? But he was full of the wonders of travel, the strangeness of the new world and the new people. Niagara had shaken him to the soul, he told me; on the wings of its thunder he had soared to the empyrean. How his fanciful turns of expression come back to me as I write of him! He was proud of his English, which was in general surprisingly good. New York he did not like,--a savage in a Paris gown, with painted face; but on Boston he looked with the eyes of a lover. What dignity! what Puritan, what maiden grace of withdrawal! An American city, where one feels oneself not a figure of chess, but a human being; where no street resembles the one before it, and one can wander and be lost in delicious windings! Ah! in Boston he could live, the life of a poet, of a scholar. "And then,--what, my friend? I come, I leave those joys, I come away here, to--to the locality of jump-off, as you say,--and what do I find? First, a pearl, a saint; for nobleness, a prince, for holiness, an anchorite of Arabia,--Le Pere L'Homme-Dieu! Next, the ancient friend of my house, who becomes on the instant mine also, the brother for whom I have yearned. With these, the graves of my venerable ancestors, heroes of constancy, who lived for war and died for faith; graves where I go even now, where I kneel to pay my duty of respect, to drop the filial tear!" "Don't forget your living relations!" I said, with some malice. "Here is your cousin, coming to meet us." FOOTNOTE: [3] Pronounced Jakes Dee Arthenay. CHAPTER V. AN ox-team was lumbering along the road towards us. The huge oxen lurched from side to side, half-asleep, making nothing of their load of meal-sacks piled high in air; their driver walked beside, half-asleep, too. He was a giant in height (six foot six, Melody, in his stockings! I have measured him myself), and his white clothes made him look something monstrous indeed. Yvon stared and gaped, as this vision came slowly towards him. "What--what is it?" he asked. "Is it a monster?" "Oh, no!" I said. "It's only Ham Belfort. How are you, Ham?" "Smart!" said Ham. "How be you? Hoish, Star! haw! Stand still there, will ye?" The oxen came to a halt willingly enough, and man and beasts stood regarding us with calm, friendly eyes. Ham and his oxen looked so much alike, Melody (the oxen were white, I ought to have said), that I sometimes thought, if we dressed one of the beasts up and did away with his horns, people would hardly know which was which. "Taking a load over to Cato?"