I See,
Also, My Fellow-Citizens Of Quebec And Of Levis, My Native Town - The
Schoolmates Of My Earliest Days
- Confreres in professional
life and in the walks of literature - comrades of past political
struggles - friends, ever indulgent and generous
- Political leaders of
whom I have always been proud, and gentlemen of various origins,
divergent opinions and different religious beliefs, all tendering me
their warmest congratulations upon the success I have achieved in the
literary world. No words of mine are adequate to express my feelings,
not can I sufficiently thank you all for this spontaneous and
sympathetic demonstration in honour of one who regrets that he is not
more worthy of your favour. I can only accept your evidences of
friendship with cordial emotion, thank you from the depth of my heart
and bear with me from this hall a proud memory which will unite with
the remembrances of my youth, all of which are so intimately
identified with the hospitable people of Quebec, and, in so declaring,
I am but assuring you that this remembrance will ever attend upon me.
The past vouches for this; for when my tent of exile shook in the
winds from off the great Western lakes, or slept on the bowery shores
of Louisianian streams; when my traveller's skiff was rocked on the
waters of the Southern gulfs, or was reflected on the blue waves of
the Loire; when I had before me the wild majesty of Niagara, the
immensity of the ocean, or when, filled with admiration, I paused to
gaze upon the stupendous monuments of the Old World, my thoughts ever
instinctively flew back to the good old city of Champlain,
unparalleled in the world for the picturesque splendor of its site,
and the poetry which no less issues from the very stones of its
fortress, than it lingers upon every page of its history.
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