The extent of Jean-Charles Harvey’s contribution to the defence of individual freedom in Quebec has long been underestimated. In his fifty-year career as writer and journalist, he was repeatedly the subject of controversy and much criticism; and in time he acquired a number of descriptive and revealing titles: in 1962 Jean Paré remembered him as “Bootlegger d’intelligence en période de prohibition”; three years later Pierre Chalout saluted Harvey as “grand-père de la révolution tranquille”; and shortly after Harvey’s death, Marcel-Aimé Gagnon examined his life and work as “pricurseur de la révolution tranquille.”¹ The fact that each of these observations is...

My name is Max Hubert. In my blood the native Norman strain is mixed with that of Highlander, Marseillais and American Indian, creating a constant friction between the strong, slow passion of Normandy, the sensibility of the Scot, the mercurial temperament of theMidiand the adventurous instinct of thecoureur de bois.My character is thus a compound of levity and reflection, of cynicism and naiveté, of reason-ableness and contradiction. I have no judgment in practical matters, and a great contempt for Mammon and his worshippers. Apart from intellect, beauty and love—those truly vital elements of human existence...

In such simple and peaceful surroundings as ours, the slightest scandal explodes like a bomb in the silence of the night. I remember a young woman called Marthe, very blonde and very pretty, who came to stay in a small hotel on the beach and was to cause a commotion that is still talked of in those parts. On days when the weather and tide were favourable I would see her on the beach, usually alone and wearing a flowered dressing-gown which delighted me with its bright colours. She would walk to within a few feet of the water, and...

Some time later my mother asked me about that evening when I had witnessed the scene of marital jealousy.

“You remember,” she said, “that night when people near the beach heard a woman screaming? Soon after, you know, Mademoiselle Marthe came back to the hotel with her face bleeding and her dress in tatters. I was told you were with her. What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Surely something happened. What bothers me is that you should have any secrets from your mother.”

“I promised not to tell.

“You promised. Very well then, keep your word. But from now on, my little Max,...

One August evening, just before I went off to boarding-school, I was fishing in a brook that was all rapids, falls and backwaters. The speckled trout, sleek and active, were leaping at the fly which I played from side to side against the current. A light twist of the wrist, and all at once I felt the pull of the spirited prey that was clearly bent on a bitter fight for its life. I delighted in allowing my victim a long struggle at the end of my line, letting it come nearly to my feet, then dash off in an...

I was half-way through college when my mother, driven by our poverty, moved to Quebec City. I was then seventeen. We took a sordid lodging in a neighbourhood swarming with children and vermin. Rats, furtive and sinister, slunk past our back door after rifling the garbage cans.

The frantic pace of life, the constant noise, the presence of the crowds, the grim and anxious faces in the street—all this, seen from my window, had the aspect of a nightmare. I was both awestricken and bewildered. The four previous years of my life had been spent between boarding-school and our...

Disappointment in love often leads to a fit of religiosity.I did not fail to undergo such a reaction. Although still in my teens, I joined a religious order.

The years that followed rise before me now like a long panoramic dream: the dream of a spacious garden full of flowers, fruits and birds, the serenity of monks interminably reading prayers or telling their beads amid the chirping of crickets and the fragrance of apple trees; of white-haired priests dispensing spiritual guidance to young men assailed by temptations worthy of aLife of St. Jerome;of puerile grey-beards, at once serious...

During the days following this encounter I divided my time between thoughts of Dorothée and considerations of the world I lived in, the world in which I wished to make my way. I consulted several of my friends. Lucien, noticing my indecision, introduced me to an elderly professor at the University, Séraphin Delorme.

“Try and make friends with him,” Lucien advised me. “He has a wide influence in University circles, and if you make a hit with him you could easily get a doctorate in either political economy or the fine arts.”

The Delormes lived on rue St.-Louis, in a...

“I’d advise you to try journalism. You have imagination, energy, the critical faculty and a good style. That’s where you’d find the best outlet for your talent.”

This was Lucien Joly’s advice as we came out of a little theatre where they were showing the film L’Enfant Martyr, an abominable title substituted, for the benefit of the mob, forPoil de Carotte.

Lucien, no more experienced than I, had not yet grasped the nature of our leading newspapers. I had the same illusions, and believed I could bring some intellect to bear on Canadian journalism. I laboured for a whole...

While I was chasing these scattered papers I heard a voice that was already dear to me.

“How do you do, Monsieur Hubert?”

It was Dorothée, on horseback. She came straight towards me, smiling divinely. The breeze was ruffling her horse’s flowing mane as well as her own black hair; the effect was delightful.

“You seem to be rather out of sorts,” she said.

“I’ve been sleeping.”

“You’ve chosen a good place to sleep in—a flower-garden, singing birds everywhere. . . .”

“And with a charming girl passing by.”

“Thank you! But you’re not telling me the whole truth....

From the Meunier town house one could look down, that morning, on the lawns and flowers of the Plains of Abraham. Robins, hopping over the grass, were pulling huge worms from the humid earth—worms which resisted, writhing and contracting, before suddenly yielding like sprung bows and causing the birds to tumble and pirouette like clowns.

Dorothée, seated on the verandah and wearing a maroon dressing-gown adorned with hand-painted daisies, stretched her supple, feline little body, yawning as if intoxicated by the languorous heat of the day.

Luc Meunier emerged from the front door, cigar in mouth, and strolled towards...

The image of Dorothée had haunted me ever since our meeting in the park. It was with her in mind that I was not reading Shakespeare’sOthello.From time to time my gaze would leave the page and wander over the books that lined my library shelves, and at last I ended by giving over my reading and sinking into a reverie wherein I seemed to see, through the smoke of my cigarette, Shakespeare himself—awesome, by turns sensitive and violent, tender and brutal, hurling at the world, in clouds torn by lightning or tinged with gold, all the dreams...

Three years after the founding ofThe Twentieth CenturyI had succeeded, with the help of a few brilliant and courageous collaborators, in gathering from twelve to fifteen thousand subscribers who enthusiastically supported us in the project of liberalizing the ideas of our country. Thus for the first time, in this archaic atmosphere of anonymity and deceit, where officially approved ideas alone helf sway, a genuinely free publication had appeared: open to all shades of intelligent opinion, it had undermined the spirit of conformity which for the past century and a half had been imposed on a people either servile, or...

Episodes like this fascinated Dorothée, who called daily at the editorial office and was always ready to talk shop. Later, towards evening, we would often drive to some spot in the Laurentians.

The very first of these little trips, which marked the beginning of our friendship, gave me such pleasure that the remembrance of it still haunts me. We had left by the lower town, crossed the St. Charles River by the Limoilou bridge, passed through the sedate middle-class d’Assise quarter, and at last driven through Charlesbourg straight towards the mountains. All Québécois know the opportunities for pleasure scattered along...

One night that winter I had taken Dorothée and her friend Maryse Gauty to the annual Dog Derby Ball, the highlight of the Winter Carnival. After a few intoxicating dances we had briefly entertained the winning driver, a man named Girardin, at our table. He was a short, stocky man with swarthy, weather-beaten features, whose hard life in the woods and on the traplines had taken their toll of him, though he was not old. To my congratulations on the success of his team, he replied in a voice already thickened by liquor:

“You know, me an’ my dogs are...

Dorothée, by now in great distress, said that she wished to leave. Did she sense trouble?

“That man will stop at nothing,” she said. “He’s madly jealous. He has been after me ever since I left boarding-school. I’ve been hiding from him like a mouse from a hawk! Only the other day I overheard him telling my father that he’d have married long ago if only he could have had a girl like me.”

“That boor! How could he dare?”

“Daring would have gotten him nowhere, Max. All the same, I’m frightened of his hold over my father. Papa has...

The following month was the most painful I had ever known. How could I face the prospect of never seeing my beloved Dorothée again? During the past months we had almost lived an existence in common. Three times a week she had come to my apartment, where we talked for hours. Perched on my desk, she would disarrange my papers, smoke her cigarettes, laugh at my feeblest jokes, then all at once resuming her serious air, she would ask me the most unexpected questions.

Now that she no longer came, I recalled those long conversations. One of them in particular...

Bereft of their primary object, my affections began to expand. The circle of my connections became wider, and my success as journalist and man of letters brought me many new acquaintances, so that I had now the widest choice of friends. I was especially drawn to those who seemed most in love with life or who could satisfy my intellectual curiosity.

One of my colleagues atThe Twentieth Century, the Hermann Lillois whom I have already mentioned, was much sought after in society. Thanks to his polished manners and brilliant conversation his social prestige in the city quite overshadowed my...

Before long my two associates became good friends. In spite of the contrast of their characters and ways of life, they had the common bond of culture. It was in their cqmpany that I sought—in vain—to forget Dorothée.

One evening Hermann had arranged for Lucien and me to attend awild partyat the Pinon’ house. What is awild party? A sort of blow-out staged by little groups of the well-to-do, where the guests indulge in all the excesses of eating, drinking and making love. These private revels usually take place on week-ends, between ten o’clock on...

On the following Monday Hermann came into my office, rubbing his hands; I realized at once that he had a good story to tell.

“How did you finish the night?” I asked.

“Oh, in grand style. You can’t imagine what happened! From the moment we entered the lodge—a splendid place, by the way, surrounded by trees and bushes, and overlooking a starlit lake—Kathleen didn’t let our former cabinet minister off the leash. Someone lit the fire in the fireplace and we all gathered around it. I was near Pinon and the American girl and overheard a few snatches...

Kathleen had played her part of Little Lady Vagabond in masterly fashion. She had come in search of profitable scandal, and she found it.

She spent five whole days with Pinon, during which he became more and more besotted with this perverse and exotic beauty who was deliberately playing on him.

By the third day his wife, ready to forgive him on all counts, blamed everything on the demon rum and sent her father as an ambassador to her husband. The ambassador was not even given the chance to parley: he was shown the door.

On the morning of the...

In the hectic life I was now leading, Maryse Gauty soon became my dearest companion; but the moment I found myself alone my thoughts would revert to Dorothée, with whom I was still in love. After such a mysterious and apparently causeless breaking-off, any forgetting was out of the question. Maryse could not supplant Dorothée; the first and strongest of my desires outweighed my possession of any other woman.

Yet Maryse had thc gift of making herself loved. Few women could surpass her in feigning the most delicate, intense and profound sentiments. The sadness which she simulated so expertly, her...

Three weeks went by without my accepting any invitation or making a single assignation. My heart was aching. I was sickened by life.

One night I was obliged to attend the Lieutenant-Governor’s Ball at the Citadel. Cabinet ministers, senators, members of Parliament and of the Legislative Council, judges, high civil servants and representatives of the professions, commerce and industry, all in tails and white gloves, filed past Their Excellencies. The Lieutenant-Governor, an Englishman of the ruling caste, had sharp features and the head of a Russian wolfhound. He smiled with fitting dignity at this crowd with whom he was trying...

“I can’t give you more than five minutes,” she said. “Tell me quickly, what is it you wish?”

“Only to see you, and hear your voice.”

“Thank you! I was afraid you were going to ask for explanations. But you are as discreet as I judged you to be. You know there are some things that can never be explained.”

Her voice was as musical as ever, but noticeably changed. Her affectation of unconcern could not hide her distress.

“I’m sure you would have explained everything long ago,” I said, “if it had been possible. I’ll say nothing more, except...

“Lucien, I saw Dorothée yesterday.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“Yes. She told me she was entering a convent.”

“Do you believe it?”

“It seems incredible. With her ideas, she could not—unless she has changed radically. And Meunier himself wouldn’t let his only daughter take the veil—for the pleasure of leaving his immense fortune to a religious order.”

“Meunier?” said Lucien. “Don’t you know he has spent the last twenty years of his life buying ecclesiastical titles and Papal decorations? Didn’t he buy from Rome, for more than their weight in gold, two or three resounding orders which...

A messenger brought me a copy ofThe Twentieth Century, fresh from the press room.

An article by Lillois caught my eye. It was entitled “No Stone Whereon to Lay His Head.” It had escaped my editorial supervision and was now headed, beyond recall, for the four corners of the land.

Hermann began by speaking of Our Lord with love and veneration: the poorest of the poor, sleeping under the stars on the sands of Judaea; wearing a coarse dress, eating crumbs from the tables of the rich; walking—thin, pale and fair—in the company of a crowd of...

Of course the bombshell burst. Two days later a journalist abused Lillois in an editorial. After borrowing a few typical expressions from Louis Veuillot—that most vigorous, skilful, fanatical and sectarian of nineteenth-century polemicists—he repeated the famous phrase of Montalembert: “We are the sons of the Crusaders, we will not retreat before the sons of Voltaire.” Upon which Lucien remarked, “The son of the Crusader who used this quotation was hiding out in the woods in 1917 to escape conscription.” The editorial continued in the same tone, pointing out, among other novelties, that Lillois did not represent the admirable...

Some time later Lucien and I were invited to the house of my friend’s former professor, Louis Latour. Now a judge of the Supreme Court, Latour was in a position to befriendThe Twentieth Centurywith impunity. He and his wire gave us a hearty welcome; the other guests greeted us coolly; some were barely civil.

Sensing the hostility around me, I determined to retaliate by attacking the convictions of some of those present.

In the course of the evening, while a game of bridge was in progress, a heavy-set businessman said to me with a certain air of condescension,...

“Your place is as lovely as ever,” said Dorothée as she came in. “So warm and intimate! Our house is so huge, silent, cold.”

“You have only to come more often.”

“That’s out of the question, dear Max. Even tonight I’m taking a chance. If I were seen. . .”

“Have no fear. I’ll keep watch on the street. You’ll be able to slip out unnoticed.”

“Good. I’ll tell you in two words why I’m here. Tonight my father had a conversation with an important person on the subject of you and your magazine. They were both in the big...

It was such a changed, decrepit creature that walked into my office that I could hardly believe it was Meunier. He, the arrogant, purse-proud man I had known, with harsh features that only the sight of his daughter could soften—how broken he was! The first time I had seen him his hair was very thick and scarcely going grey. Now the crown of his head was almost bare. It was an old man who stood beforti me; yet he was under sixty.

To put him in a good humour I told him he was looking better than ever.

He...

“Dorothée has just entered the convent,” I said to Lucien. “As if that weren’t enough, there’s the debt of honour I owe her father. My heart is broken, and I’m ruined. My run of misfortune is complete.”

“Pooh! It’s only a matter of keeping your courage up. A man isn’t really beaten until he thinks so himself.”

“I feel I’ve been beaten on every front: in my love life, in my intellectual life, even in my material life. What can I fight with, totally disarmed as I am? I undertook to ventilate the spiritual atmosphere of this country I love,...

The mountain air! How good it is to breathe! And there is grandfather’s little house, still perched prettily on the height overlooking the salty river. It was meant to be there, indeed, and to be seen from all around, its whitewashed walls shining in the sun, throwing its many-paned windows open to the sky. It had nothing to hide, for everything it held was pure and innocent.

It is greatly changed. I had seen it full of boys and girls, and now they are all gone. The stranger who bought the farm has not seen fit to occupy this dwelling...

At she end of January, while a. snowstorm was raging, Meunier died from an attack of angina. A maid; bringing his morning coffee as usual, had stumbled on his lifeless body in his bedroom. Finding himself alone in the final throes, he had probably tried to call for help. Everyone around was sleeping. To be heard, or at least to feel a human presence, he had tried to reach the door, but had fallen on his face.

Rich, highly esteemed and loaded with honours, he had been accepted in the best society of the old capital in spite of his...

I awoke next morning at around eight o’clock. The maid brought me the newspaper. As I unfolded it, a banner headline caught my eye:

The news stunned me. Without stopping to collect my thoughts I dressed hurriedly and went out. I felt like a madman, obsessed by a single idea: to rescue Dorothée from the convent at once. She had only to learn that her tormentor was dead, I thought, and she would come back to me—because, as I knew, she was still in love with me.

I rang at the door of the convent. An old nun answered...

That night Dorothée was unable to sleep. Whenever she was on the point of dropping off she saw at the window the face of Max Hubert, his sad eyes fixed on her. She felt trapped in this gaze as if in a powerful net of love and reproof. Then the apparition moved away in the snow and disappeared in the blizzard raging outside. She would have liked to follow it.

But what a storm! The nor’-easter, blowing from the farther reaches of Labrador where it had swept over icebergs, was now moaning through the branches of poplars and making telegraph...

Suddenly roused from sleep by the bell, at first I thought to disregard it. Who could be calling so early? Perhaps a friend coming from some late party or other.

“Well,” I thought, “let’s go and see, anyway.”

I hurried to the door and opened it. A blast of snow-laden air pierced my dressing-gown, making me shivcr.

There, at my feet, was a head of black hair. I looked more closely. It was Dorothée.

I bent over the motionless figure, touching the beautiful arms stretched out over the icy threshold.

It was she! And dying of cold!

I picked her...