"But one thing neither she nor Tarasque had thought of, and that was,
that the broth was hot. Of course he always took his food and drink very
cold. When he smelled its delicious fragrance he opened his mouth wide,
and she poured it hissing hot down his throat, and it melted him into a
famous bubbling spring. People go there to be cured of colic."
Helene drew a long breath. She did not believe that Lescarbot had found
that story in any book of legends of the saints, but she liked it none
the worse for that.
"I wonder if Sainte Marthe blessed this garden?" she said.
"I have no doubt she did, and that is why it flourishes from Easter to
Michaelmas. But I came to-day for a potato. Sieur de Monts desires to
see one and to understand the method of its cultivation."
"Oh, I know that," cried Helene, eagerly, and she took one of the queer
brown roots from the willow basket by the wall. "See, these are its
eyes, one, two, three--seven eyes in this one. You must cut it in
pieces, as many pieces as it has eyes, and plant each piece separately;
and from each eye springs a plant."
"Ah!" said Lescarbot gravely, and he put the potato in his wallet.
For two years Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and the valiant gentlemen
Samuel de Champlain, Bienville de Poutrincourt, and others of his
company, had been striving to maintain a settlement in the grant of La
Cadie or L'Acadie, between the fortieth and forty-sixth degrees of north
latitude in the New World, of which the King had made De Monts
Lieutenant-General.
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