The Father’s Land Lost: Country versus City in the Early Novel - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 84

dans le plus magnifique paysage et éclairé par les plus beaux rayons
d'un soleil de printemps. Mais si quelque chose contribuait surtout à
embellir ce spectacle, à coup sûr, c'était la personne de Clorinde.' (172-
3; a most charming genre painting, framed in the most magnificent
landscape and lit by the most beautiful rays of a spring sun. But if
something contributed especially to embellishing this spectacle, it was,
for certain, the figure of Clorinde.) Endowed with a leading role in a
particularly poignant landscape, Clorinde Wagnaër captures the waver-
ing heart of the impressionable Charles, who, surprised by his mother's
desire to emancipate him and put him in charge of the family fortune,
neglects to speak to her about Marichette and begins to pursue Clorinde,
whose father entices Charles into rendering him a 'small favour' by
endorsing a bank note.
As part three begins we have access to yet another voice and perspec-
tive through the diary and poetry of Marichette, who more and more
suspects that Charles has forgotten her, which is confirmed by a letter
from one of her friends and by various scenes in Quebec City, where
Charles continues to see Clorinde. But, thanks to his usual inaction,
Charles (a kindred spirit of Frédérick Moreau in Flaubert's L'éducation
sentimentale ) fails to heed Clorinde's warnings and speak to her father
about their future.
In the fifth chapter, entitled, significantly, like Lacombe's novel, La
terre paternelle (the paternal land), we have yet another description of
the family property, this time in the form of a legal description (230-1)
as the land is being put up for sale due to a series of machinations
guided by M Wagnaër, assisted by Henri Voisin, who himself has pre-
tensions for the hand of Clorinde and the fortune it entails. Indeed,
their scheme is confirmed by Jean Guilbault, who has learned of it
through a patient but who arrives too late to warn Charles. Thus, as in
La terre paternelle , the father's land is lost, due in part to his absence (or
abdication) and even more to the ineptitude of the son.
Clorinde continues to love Charles, but tells him that she cannot
marry against her father's wishes due to a vow made to her dying
mother. Part four begins with a quote attributed to Chateaubriand's
Atala , which the narrator then uses to talk about the tragedy that has
befallen the Guérin family, who must now leave their land and reside in
the city. The impact of the departure is underscored by yet another de-
scription of the same landscape seen through the eyes of Charles from
the same elevated perspective as in the initial scene:
Deux jours dans sa vie, et ces deux jours-là seulement, le jeune homme