Then, in a flash, Michaïl Lafond saw at least the outlines of his plan, and he knew why he had come in here to talk to the garrulous old man.
"You know the assay, then?" he inquired conversationally.
"But that is much. Do you not know that it is at Rapid, in the School of Mines, that the nearest assayer is? You have a profession here at your lands."
A sudden scream broke through the apartment, a rush of wings, a growl. The old man ran nimbly to the stove, and rescued the little raccoon from the savage attacks of a magpie. The magpie sailed back to his perch on one of the butterfly cases, where he ruffled his feathers indignantly. The raccoon curled up in the old man's lap.
"You are French?" inquired the latter, with more interest than he had hitherto shown.
"I have some French blood," replied Lafond cautiously.
"I knew it," said Durand, immensely pleased. "I am rarely mistaken. It was a twist of your words that suggested it, an idiom. _Et maintenant nous pouvons causer_," he added in the purest Parisian accent.
"_Oui, oui, oui,_" cried the half-breed, suddenly swept up by an uncontrollable excitement he could not himself understand. "_La belle langue!_"
He felt an unwonted expansion of the heart at thus hearing once more the language of his youth. The formality of the interview was gone. They conversed freely, swiftly, animatedly. Durand had been educated in Paris, and had a thousand reminiscences to impart. He told of many quaint customs, and Lafond, with growing emotion, recalled similar or analogous customs among his own expatriated branch of the race in the pine forests of Canada. His sullen, taciturn manner broke. He became the Gaul. He gesticulated, he overflowed, his eye lighted up, he said a thousand things.
After a time Durand opened a chest at the foot of the bed, from which he abstracted a bottle and two long-stemmed glasses. These he placed on the table with a quaint little air of ceremony.
"Sir," said he, "we must know each other better. We speak each the language we love. We talk of old days. Sir," he concluded, bowing with stately grace as he poured the red wine into the glasses, "I ask you to drink wine with me to our acquaintance. My name is Durand."
He inclined, his hand to his heart, and somehow there seemed to be nothing ridiculous in the act.