And now that the sturdy Champlain market is no more--literally torn apart, one stone from another--a few of these folk--typical of a North American race that refuses to become assimilated even after whole centuries of patient effort--still gather in the open square that used to face the market-house. They do not understand. There are only a few of them, and their little shows of wares are still individually brave, still individually gay. But even these must see that the folk with money no longer come to them. Perhaps they see and with stolid French-Canadian indifference refuse to accept the fact. Such a thing would be but characteristic of a folk, who, betrayed and forgotten by their home-land for a little more than one hundred and fifty years, still cling not merely to their religion, but to traditions and a language that is alien to the land that shelters them. In Montreal the traveler from the States first finds French all but universal, the hardy Tricolor of France flying from more poles than boast British Union Jacks. In Quebec that feeling is intensified. We hunted through the shops of the town for a British standard, and in vain. But every one of the obliging shop-keepers was quick to offer us the flag of France. And the decorative _motif_ of the modern architecture of new Quebec lends itself with astonishing frequency to the use of the lilies of old France. "It is that very sort of thing that makes Britain the really great nation that she is," an old gentleman told us one afternoon on the Terrace. We had been discussing this with him, and he had told us how the city records of Quebec--a British seaport town--were kept in French, how even the legislative proceedings in the great new parliament building out on the Grande Allee beyond the city wall were in that same prettily flavored tongue. "Yes, sir," he continued, "we may have a King that is English in title and German in blood, sir, but here in Canada we have one who through success and through defeat is more than King--Sir Wilfred Laurier--our late premier, sir."